Victory in Obscurity

evening light. Marcus, ever loyal, followed without another question, quickly getting the car. He op

d looked at me through the rea

's residen

s no longer a part of. I felt no sadness, no heartbreak. Only a hollow, cold resolve. I ha

and her expression hardened. She didn't ask what happened. She was a woman who underst

her, standing in the middle of

of a fierce, protective

. "The one for the national secur

bersecurity initiative. I had turned it down for David, for a life I now knew was a lie.

a call. "It's done," she said a few minutes later. "A transport will be ready in the morning. Your i

"Thank y

or you, my girl. I never said it, but I always knew it." Her embrace

', the anonymous architect of the nation's most advanced cyber-defense system. I lived and breathed the work. The remote facility was my

t respect of the nation' s top intelligence operatives. I also built connections.

le bride who had left a good man at the altar. They had used my disappearance to build a narrative of their own tragic romance, a story that strengthened

longer a source of terror but a focusing agent. It reminded me why I was there, what I was working toward. It was

in the form of an

conference in the world. It wasn't an invitation for Amelia, the disgraced fiancé

s being held

te sponsor was David

creen. The time for hiding was ove

time to