“…Chief Justice Arthur Sterling-Vance convened an extraordinary, closed-door emergency midnight session of the Supreme Court inside the West Conference Room beneath One First Street.”
“He has brought four international defense raiders, two private banking partners from Zurich, and the Solicitor General.”
“He has informed the conference that an imminent foreign cyber-strike has compromised our military command channels.”
“He is preparing to issue an extraordinary, emergency administrative mandamus—a judicial decree permanently conveying Conduit Ten and the nation’s strategic launch ciphers to his private defense consortium in Switzerland for sixty billion dollars in sovereign debt relief.”
“He believes Mark left you scrubbing floors in Doha, silenced by distance and poverty.”
“He believes that the Mercer bloodline has been erased by three years of overseas labor and family abandonment.”
“He believes that Colonel Elena Mercer was an ordinary housekeeper who would never reach the steps of the Capitol.”
The Admiral bared his teeth in a cold, terrifying line of white bone:
