They gave the rookie nurse the deaf Navy SEAL because they wanted to watch her fail.

The silence in the concrete room was absolute, save for the hum of the old terminal and the steady, quiet breathing of the two adversaries.

Lily Parker sat perfectly still, her finger resting on the cool plastic of the enter key. She could feel the cold metal of Concincaid's weapon pressing into the base of her skull, but her mind was entirely clear. The static was gone. The fear was gone.

She was no longer the rookie nurse. She was the Sparrow.

"You won't shoot me, doctor," Lily said, her voice dropping into a low, terrifyingly calm register that made Concincaid's hand twitch slightly. "If you kill me, the terminal’s dead-man switch will automatically trigger a global dump of every file on this drive to thirty-two different intelligence agencies. You'll be the most wanted man on three continents before my body hits the floor."

Concincaid's eyes narrowed, his gaze shifting from the back of her head to the glowing green monitor.

"You're bluffing," he hissed, though his tone had lost its casual arrogance. "The reserve grid doesn't have that kind of protocol."

"Try me," Lily whispered, her fingers executing a rapid, silent sequence on the side keys of the console, activating a localized diagnostic loop that made the terminal emit a low, rhythmic warning beep.

The beep was a classic psychological anchor. To a civilian, it meant nothing. To a man who had spent thirty years hiding his crimes behind administrative walls, it sounded like the end of the world.

Concincaid took a half-step back, the weapon lowering slightly as he hesitated.

That single, half-second of hesitation was all the space Lily needed.

She threw her body backward, her chair slamming into Concincaid's knees, throwing him off balance. As he stumbled, Lily spun on her heel, her right arm sweeping upward to deflect his weapon.

A muffled shot cracked through the room, the bullet shattering the green monitor, showering them in sparks.

But Lily was already inside his guard. She drove her palm hard into his nose, the cartilage breaking with a wet, sickening crunch. Before he could cry out, she grabbed his wrist, twisting the weapon from his grip with a clean, effortless disarm she had practiced ten thousand times in the dark rooms of Coronado.

Concincaid fell to his knees, his hands clutching his bleeding face, his breath coming in ragged, terrified gasps.

Lily stood over him, the silenced pistol held steady in her right hand, pointing directly at his chest. Her face was a mask of cold, absolute stone.

"Who is the buyer?" she asked, her voice quieter than the wind outside.

"I... I don't know," Concincaid sobbed, his eyes wide with a very real, primal terror as he looked up at the weapon. "The middleman is in Washington. A lobbyist named Vance. He’s the one who handled the logistics for the Karachi shipments."

"And the girls?" Lily asked, her finger tightening on the trigger. "The ones from my unit?"

"They... they are at a private holding facility in the harbor," Concincaid gasped, his voice shaking. "Pier 42. They are scheduled to be loaded onto a transport ship tonight. I swear, that’s all I know! Please, Lily... we were on the same side once."

Lily looked at the man who had sold her life and the lives of her sisters-in-arms for a handful of foreign currency.

"We were never on the same side," she said.

She didn't pull the trigger. She drove the heavy butt of the pistol hard into his temple, knocking him unconscious before his body could hit the concrete floor.