Inside, a courtyard hummed with activity. Men crowded around a central tent where Hale sat bound to a folding chair, the rope biting into his wrists. His uniform was torn; his jaw had a bruise that made his face an honest map of pain. When their eyes locked across the chaos, something like recognition crossed his face — not surprise, but a small, private relief — and then he swallowed it, masked it with the soldier’s discipline.

Grace could have shot the guards, grabbed Hale, and run for the line of trees where she’d left a small cache of explosives meant for demolition. That would have been loud and righteous and probably fatal. Instead, she listened.

A megaphone crackled as the broadcast team set up: a thin-faced man with a camera, another with a microphone, a translator reading lines in a borrowed tongue. The field where Hale would be paraded had salt for footprints and enough room for an audience the enemy dreamed of.

She crept along the tent’s shadow and found the main feed cable — a thick black wire leading to a panel. Her hands, steady and fast, cut it. The camera, mid-breathe, blinked to black. Voices hissed in a dozen languages. Someone swore. The operator’s anger was a flint to a spark.

They circled, frenzied, searching. Grace used their noise and their rage to move. She slipped between two tents where men clustered, pretending to sob — the human camouflage of the wounded. She wasn’t innocent. She had made herself a story.