Justice Served

The sterile white walls of the interrogation room seemed to mock Alex’s exhaustion. He leaned back, the cheap plastic chair digging into his spine, a familiar ache that was nothing compared to the hollow space where his brothers used to be. Across the table, Agent Miller watched him, her gaze a mixture of weariness and a hard-won respect. The air between them hummed with the residue of adrenaline, the echoes of the raid still thrumming in their bones.

“He’s talking,” Miller said, her voice low, cutting through the silence. “Thorne. He’s singing like a canary.”

Alex grunted, his eyes fixed on a scuff mark on the linoleum floor. Talking. It was a small victory, a fragile one, but a victory nonetheless. For months, the silence had been deafening, punctuated only by the phantom whispers of his fallen unit, the screams that clawed at his sleep. Thorne’s confession, no matter how self-serving, was a release, a loosening of the vise that had been squeezing his chest for so long.