Chapter 43
It started with a comms glitch—five seconds of static on the building-wide channel, just enough to make the war room blink and look up from the river of data streaming across the cracked tactical display. The Equalizers had been processed, sorted, zip-tied, and set on the opposite wall in folding chairs: four men, two women, none of them taller than a smallish linebacker, but all of them projecting enough repressed threat to power a city block. Sweat and the stink of cold coffee were already fighting for dominance in the room, and the flicker from the bad light panel overhead made it seem like everything was running at a lower frame rate than it should have.
