Chapter 8: A Game of Minds
Sean was shoved into an opulent field office. A Sironan General Valerius sat behind a large desk, calmly finishing his lunch. He didn't look up, merely spearing a piece of meat with his fork before fixing Sean with cold, dismissive eyes. "I'm told you have something for me," the general said, his voice flat.
Sean’s heart was hammering, but he forced his expression into a mask of calm arrogance. This was a performance, and his life depended on it.
"A package," Sean began, pausing deliberately. "From the Parliament building..." He watched the general's face for any reaction.
The general's fork stopped halfway to his mouth. He slowly raised an eyebrow.
Right track, Sean thought. The adrenaline was a fire in his veins. He continued, letting the word hang in the air. "...originally."
The general placed his fork down. "Continue," he said, his voice now laced with interest. "I'm listening."
"...but it was transferred to Oakhaven before the city fell," Sean finished, keeping his gaze steady.
The general stood up abruptly, wiping his mouth with a napkin. The pretense of lunch was over. He circled the desk like a predator. "You do know a thing or two," he mused, his eyes narrowing. "So, who are you really?"
Stay calm. Don't offer information, make him question himself. You are important. You are in control. Sean’s internal monologue was a lifeline in a sea of fear. He allowed a contemptuous smirk to touch his lips.
"I'm with the Agency," Sean said, the lie tasting surprisingly natural. "Disguised as a low-ranking officer to oversee this operation. My reports go directly to the highest levels of the Agency. I know more than you think, General, but I am not authorized to disclose operational details to you. Now, if you'll let my train proceed as planned, I will ensure you get what was promised."
The general’s face contorted in a flash of pure rage that sent a jolt of genuine terror through Sean. He slammed his fist onto a large tactical map hanging on the wall, the impact echoing through the room. He whirled on Sean, his eyes blazing.
"YOUR PLAN OR OUR PLAN?" he roared.
Hold on. He's angry because he thinks *I'm the one breaking the plan. Let him talk. Let him tell me what the plan is.*
Sean met the general's furious gaze with a look of cold, professional disdain. "We followed the plan precisely," he said calmly. "You are the one deviating. I suggest you have a very good explanation before I report this to my superiors."
The general's face turned a shade darker. He seemed to lose all control, stabbing a finger at the map on the wall. "The plan was simple! The Seran River is the border! Everything to the east becomes your 'Eastern Erden Republic,' and everything to the west becomes ours! But your troops are all over the west bank! One of your damn companies wiped out my entire Fourth Battalion yesterday! What is the meaning of this? Does the Combine intend to devour the whole of Erden for itself?"
Sean's mind went blank. The general's furious words hit him with the force of a physical blow, revealing a conspiracy so vast, so treacherous, it took his breath away. He had been bluffing with a ghost story, only to stumble into a secret war being fought within the war itself. He never expected this. He was in far deeper trouble than he could have ever imagined.
Sean’s mind reeled from the revelation—a secret pact to carve up Erden. This must be Corvus’s hidden trump card, he realized. He forced his shock down, burying it under a layer of ice. Stay calm. Keep him angry. Make him name names.
"Our high command has already clarified the operational incursions with your side," Sean said, his tone dismissive. "I'm not sure if you have the clearance to be privy to those discussions, General."
The general sat back down heavily in his chair, stung by the insult. "I have the clearance for everything," he snapped. "Your General Kaelen explained it himself. He admitted that under this... collusion... some of your units are not under his direct control. But that's his problem! He should have reined in his rogue elements. The man is an idiot."
"The plan accounted for acceptable risks," Sean bluffed, pressing the advantage. "Were you cleared to know that part, too?" He was provoking him, goading him, and the general was taking the bait.
"Cut the bullshit!" the general roared again, slamming his hand on the desk. "I don't care about your internal politics. Just get me what I was promised."
Sean allowed a long, deliberate silence to hang in the air before he spoke, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial calm. "I am doing my job. I will deliver what you want. But first, you will let my train go. Your interference is jeopardizing the entire operation. Too many cooks spoil the broth." He leaned forward slightly, his eyes locking with the general's. "And frankly, General, after the reckless decision to use a neutron bomb, my superiors have concerns about how badly it could develop in the future and your ability to handle it."
The general flinched. The accusation hit its mark. Tell me, Sean thought, tell me who was stupid enough to do that.
"I know, I know," the general grumbled, his anger deflating into frustration as he began to pace. "I told Corvus it was madness. We had a hell of a fight over it." He was talking too much now, desperate to shift the blame. "But he became obsessed. When he learned that our defected agent—the man who was supposed to run our Western Erden puppet government—was about to be extracted from the Parliament building to see President Rask, he went insane. He was terrified our entire arrangement would be exposed to the Federation. His logic was simple: if you can't capture the witness, you silence him. Permanently."
He gestured wildly with his hands. "Then, to make matters worse, he thought creating a nuclear crisis would ensure the Federation would never listen to a word Rask said. Later, we learned the agent had already been moved to Oakhaven. So Corvus sent his troops to storm the town, and they still couldn't find him." The general stopped pacing and glared at Sean. "The man will do anything to save his own skin. So, to calm him down and put this mess to bed, you had better bring that agent to me. Now."
So the package is a person, Sean realized with dawning horror. And Corvus is willing to use a nuclear weapon to silence him. It was a level of ruthless calculus that was hard to comprehend. But there was still one piece missing. He had to push his luck.
"You know," Sean said, his voice dangerously quiet, "the owners of that bomb were... outraged. Using it for his personal use was not part of the plan. You should know what they will do next if they feel their assets are being misused."
The general's eye twitched. A flicker of genuine fear. Sean had hit a nerve.
"Don't worry," the general said quickly, trying to regain his composure. "Your neutron bombs are safe. They will be smuggled into the Federation as scheduled, through the very espionage network we helped you develop. Just bring us the agent, and I will personally guarantee Corvus doesn't touch another asset."
Sean now had the whole picture—a conspiracy of breathtaking treachery. He had to end this now, before the lunatic Corvus did something even more insane. It was time to write the script for his own escape.
"Here is what happens now," Sean said, his voice taking on a tone of absolute command. "You will report that you stopped this train and disarmed it. You captured my men, but we 'escaped' during the transfer. As a gesture of humanitarian goodwill, you will allow the civilian train to continue its journey to the refugee camps in the north. I will continue my mission to deliver the agent." He paused, letting the lie sink in. "The people on that train are my only lead to finding him. You will not touch a single hair on their heads."
The general stared at him, a slow, evil smile spreading across his face. He was buying it. He threw a small, metallic device onto the table. It slid to a stop in front of Sean.
"You will report to me every hour through this," the general ordered. "I will be monitoring your every move. Don't play any tricks, 'Agent', or I will expose your entire espionage network within the Federation. I doubt the Combine can afford that."
Sean picked up the device. "I'm not authorized to carry Sironan military hardware..." he started to protest, playing his role to the end.
"Cut the shit and move!" the general roared.
Sean gave a curt, almost insubordinate nod, turned his back on the general, and walked out of the office, the tracking device feeling like a block of ice in his hand. He had just bluffed his way out of a death sentence, saving fifteen hundred lives in the process. But now he was a ghost, hunted by two armies, with a bomb-happy dictator and a cabal of traitors convinced he was one of them. His luck was holding, but he knew it couldn't last forever.
Sean walked through the crowded train car, the faces of the refugees a blur of exhaustion and fear. He found Lisa trying to comfort a crying child.
"Lisa," he said quietly. "The Erden platoon that helped you escape. When they arrived in Oakhaven, did they have anyone with them? A civilian?"
Lisa looked up, her expression puzzled. "Yes," she said, nodding. "They said he was a relative of one of the soldiers, someone they were evacuating from the capital."
"Can you show me where he is?"
The man was huddled in a corner, a thin, middle-aged man who seemed to shrink into himself. His eyes were wide, haunted by things Sean could only imagine. Sean knelt, speaking in a soft, low voice so only the man could hear.
"Are you still willing to tell the truth to your president?"
The man’s composure shattered. He collapsed onto the floor, his body wracked with sobs. "I never wanted to be a betrayer," he cried, the words torn from him. "Those bastards... they forced me. They threatened my family... and now my family is gone... all gone in the air raid in the capital." He looked up at Sean, his eyes raw with a pain that went beyond grief. "I won't work for those bastards anymore. I will tell her everything."
Sean felt a profound, weary sadness. He saw how a cruel system could grind a good man into dust. He placed a hand on the man's shoulder. "I promise you," he said, his voice a quiet vow, "we will bring them down. For your family."
Back in his small, private compartment, Sean retrieved the Sironan general's tracking device. He had it stored in a lead-lined box, a precaution to block any signal it might be sending. As he examined the device, he prepared to feed the general a stream of misinformation, a digital ghost story to keep him occupied.
But as he began to probe the device's software, he discovered something that made him freeze. It was a security flaw so stupid, so arrogant, it was almost unbelievable. The general, for his own convenience, had linked the tracker's monitoring software directly to his own personal command account.
With a few lines of code, Sean wasn't just blocking the signal; he was inside the general's private network.
With a little more hacking, it all came tumbling out. Everything. He downloaded the general's personal files, a treasure trove of treason and conspiracy that was more valuable than all the gold in the Erden vault.
The detailed plan to divide Erden.
The full, unredacted list of the Combine's espionage network inside the Federation.
The complete manifest for the smuggled neutron bombs—their point of origin, their production facility, their shipment itinerary.
And, most damning of all, a series of furious, encrypted emails between the general and Corvus, arguing about the unauthorized use of the neutron bomb to kill the very agent now sitting on Sean's train.
He had it all. The entire conspiracy, laid bare.
Sean leaned back, the magnitude of what he now possessed settling over him. This was the weapon that could end the entire shadow war. But it was a weapon he couldn't wield alone. He took a deep breath, his course of action suddenly, terrifyingly clear.
It was time to call the one person in the universe he could trust. —— Ruby Vance.
Upon arriving in the fortified city of Northgate, Sean was granted an immediate audience with the president. He presented himself to the officials, stating simply, "I have some personal effects of General Rask. I was instructed to deliver them only to the President, in person."
He brought the agent—the human "package"—with him into President Kaelen Rask's makeshift office. There, Sean laid out the entire, sordid story: the looting, the abandonment, the conspiracy, and the final, desperate bluff. President Rask listened in silence, her expression a mixture of grief, fury, and profound gratitude.
"What you have done for my people... for Erden... is a debt we can never repay," she said, her voice heavy with emotion. "You are a man of extraordinary bravery. But are you safe? We can offer you asylum here. You would be a hero."
Sean shook his head. "Thank you for the offer, Madam President, but I think I can manage my own return. I trust you will keep the details of my involvement a secret." He paused, the shame of his uniform suddenly feeling heavy. "And I am sorry for what my country's forces did in your capital."
He then held out the small bundle he had been carrying: General Rask’s dog tags, his insignia, and his tablet. "Your brother fought bravely with his men until the very end."
President Rask took the relics, her hands trembling as she clutched them to her chest. She stood tall and proud, but a single tear escaped, tracing a path down her cheek for the brother she had lost.
The fallout was brutally swift. As Sean had predicted, the Federation handled its "bad guy" in less than twenty-four hours. Without the Federation's military backing, President-Marshal Corvus's regime imploded. He was executed by one of his own ambitious rivals before the day was out. Uprisings erupted across Sirona, and the troops occupying Erden were recalled to a futile effort to suppress the chaos, leaving Sirona to collapse into a patchwork of feuding warlords—a failed state.
In the Caspian Combine, the political purge was quieter but no less decisive. The Defense Secretary and the Director of the Intelligence Agency were both dismissed for "health reasons." The arsenal that had produced the neutron bombs was officially decommissioned following a convenient and catastrophic "industrial accident." Whether they were the true conspirators or merely scapegoats, the world would never know.
Publicly, the relationship between Erden and the Combine remained a "strategic alliance." Privately, it was shattered. President Rask would never again trust the nation that had sent jackals to loot her capital.
A few days later, Sean stood by the shore of a quiet lake, trying to digest the whirlwind of the past week. He felt a deep gratitude for Ruby, for her courage and the implicit trust she had placed in him, allowing him to act. He was relieved that Erden was, for the moment, safe. He still had to invent a plausible cover story for his own return, but for the first time in a long time, he felt a sense of peace.
He did not know then that his journey was far from over. He could not imagine that, many years later, he would return to this nation not as a foreign soldier, but as a figure destined to change the fate of Erden forever.
Scenes from this Chapter:
for the first time in a long time, he felt a sense of peace. sample video
"What you have done for my people... for Erden... is a debt we can never repay," she said, her voice heavy with emotion. "You are a man of extraordinary bravery. But are you safe? We can offer you asylum here."
"Thank you for the offer, Madam President, but I think I can manage my own return. I trust you will keep the details of my involvement a secret." He paused, the shame of his uniform suddenly feeling heavy. "And I am sorry for what my country's forces did in your capital."
sample video
"I never wanted to be a betrayer. Those bastards... they forced me. They threatened my family... and now my family is gone... all gone in the air raid in the capital. I won't work for those bastards anymore. I will tell her everything."
sample video