The FBI entered the compound at dawn.
Officially, the justification was simple: credible evidence of organized domestic terrorism activity. Unofficially, everyone involved knew the truth—what had happened the night before had forced their hand.
The Seventh Sons' outer perimeter was breached without resistance. There was none left to give.
Agents moved in teams, weapons raised, nerves tight, expecting traps, ambushes, or last-stand theatrics. Instead, they found bodies—alive, but shattered. Men sprawled across dirt and concrete, some unconscious, others groaning softly, their weapons twisted, crushed, or rendered useless by force no standard engagement could explain.
Paramedics were called in immediately.
As stretchers were deployed, FBI agents began to realize something was profoundly wrong—not with the victims, but with the scene itself.
There were no shell casings near most of the injured. No blood splatter consistent with gunfire. Instead, there were dents in walls shaped like human silhouettes. Craters in reinforced flooring. Bent steel railings warped inward as if struck by industrial machinery.
One agent crouched beside a shattered assault rifle, running his fingers over the twisted barrel.
"This didn't jam," he muttered. "It was crushed."
Inside the compound buildings, the discoveries escalated rapidly.
Hidden rooms. Locked basements. Soundproofed containers.
Human trafficking victims—alive. Drug stockpiles. Explosives. Unregistered heavy weapons. Digital storage devices filled with evidence that would take years to fully unravel.
The Seventh Sons weren't just extremists.
They were a logistics hub.
By mid-morning, the operation had been escalated from field-level to counterterrorism command.
And then the footage was found.
The compound's internal security system—high-end, redundant, privately maintained—had survived the chaos. Wealth had funded paranoia, and paranoia had funded excellent surveillance.
Analysts crowded into a mobile command unit as the footage played.
The image was clear. Unmistakably so.
A figure stepped into frame, unhurried. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Wrapped in matte-black armor that absorbed light rather than reflected it. The eyes glowed faint red—cold, deliberate.
Gunfire erupted.
The figure didn't flinch.
Bullets struck and failed. Rounds deformed, deflected, vanished.
Then the figure moved.
Not fast—decisive.
Every motion was purposeful. Brutally efficient. Not a single wasted strike. Not a single hesitation.
The room was silent when the footage ended.
Finally, someone spoke.
"That's not body armor," an analyst said quietly. "That's… something else."
The footage didn't stop there. Multiple angles. Thermal overlays. Exterior cameras capturing the same impossibility.
The video was packaged, encrypted, and sent upward.
Within hours, it landed on the desk of a Deputy Director.
He watched it twice.
Then a third time, slower.
When he finished, he leaned back in his chair and exhaled slowly.
"Get Counterintelligence," he said. "And loop in DHS. Quietly."
By afternoon, a secure conference room deep within a federal building hosted a conversation that none of its participants had prepared for.
Representatives from the FBI, CIA, and Department of Homeland Security sat around a polished table. No press. No aides. No recordings beyond classified transcripts.
The footage played again.
The CIA representative was the first to speak.
"That's not ours."
The DHS official nodded. "Not ours either. No active black ops matching this profile."
The FBI Deputy Director steepled his fingers.
"So we're looking at a non-state actor with access to materials that shouldn't exist, shrugging off rifle fire like it's rain, and dismantling a fortified militia with his bare hands."
No one contradicted him.
An analyst cleared her throat. "We ran comparative modeling. The suit's energy dispersion suggests multilayer composite materials beyond current military prototypes. Graphene-based… but reinforced with something denser. Non-Newtonian behavior under stress."
The CIA rep frowned. "That kind of R&D footprint leaves trails."
"Not if it's privately funded and compartmentalized," she replied. "And not if it's built by someone who already knows what works."
Silence followed.
The DHS official spoke next. "Could this be foreign?"
The Deputy Director shook his head. "If it were, this wouldn't have happened on U.S. soil without messaging. No demands. No statement. No claim of responsibility."
"So what is it?" someone asked.
The answer hung unspoken in the air.
A new variable.
An unknown.
The Deputy Director made a decision.
"This stays internal. No task force announcements. No interagency turf wars. We investigate quietly. Whoever finds the source first owns the narrative."
No one objected.
Across agencies, analysts were reassigned. Databases cross-referenced. Procurement anomalies flagged. Private aerospace and materials firms discreetly reviewed.
The hunt had begun.
And Derek Morgan was nowhere in their equations.
Back in Bel Air, the ripples moved differently.
The neighborhood had always been polite. Wealth demanded courtesy, if not warmth. But now the tone had shifted—subtly, unmistakably.
Smiles lingered a fraction longer.
Greetings carried a note of respect that hadn't been there before.
Invitations arrived more frequently—dinners, fundraisers, casual get-togethers—but each came wrapped in caution, as if the hosts were unsure how close was too close.
At country clubs and gated homes, conversations lowered when his name surfaced.
"He's connected," someone whispered over wine.
"Military, maybe," another suggested. "Special operations."
"I heard government contractor," a third said. "Black projects."
No one said vigilante.
No one said killer.
The story had already been rewritten into something more palatable.
Derek noticed all of it.
He responded to none of it.
He remained exactly as he had been before—polite, composed, unfailingly courteous. He returned greetings. Accepted invitations selectively. Declined others with gracious excuses.
He did not correct assumptions.
He did not encourage them either.
At night, alone in his Bel Air home, Derek reviewed reports from his companies, skimmed intelligence briefs his security team didn't realize were missing pages, and monitored Reality Quest's expanding influence.
He slept poorly.
Not from guilt.
From anticipation.
The world had bent around him again—institutions absorbing shock, narratives reshaping to preserve stability, power reallocating itself quietly.
Somewhere deep within federal systems, alarms were ringing softly, growing louder by the hour.
Derek knew it was only a matter of time before someone connected threads they weren't meant to see.
Until then, he would continue as he always had.
Unchanged.
Unremarkable.
And increasingly impossible to ignore.