Three days of fragile peace ended with an alert.
[HUNTER INTEL NETWORK: PRIORITY NOTIFICATION] [SUBJECT: MICHELLE MONTGOMERY] [ACTIVITY: CONTACT WITH REGIONAL HUNTER NETWORKS] [DESCRIPTION PROVIDED: "TALL MAN IN SUIT, SMELLED WRONG, CLAIMED FBI"] [THREAT ASSESSMENT: MODERATE — POTENTIAL EXPOSURE RISK]
I read the report in my quarters, coffee going cold beside me. Michelle hadn't accepted her husband's disappearance. She'd pushed past the police, past the FBI's denials, all the way to people who believed in monsters.
Hunters.
Jack found me an hour later. He'd been integrating well—Thomas's guidance had given him structure, and the coalition's acceptance had provided community. His control was still shaky, but the worst of the transformation crisis had passed.
"You're tracking my wife," he said from the doorway. Not accusatory. Resigned.
"I'm tracking threats to the coalition. Your wife became one when she contacted hunters."
"What did she tell them?"
I handed him the report. Watched his face as he read—hope when he saw she was alive, followed by horror as he understood the implications.
"She described me," he said quietly. "The glamour version."
"Yes."
"And now hunters are looking for a tall man in a suit who smelled wrong."
"Yes."
He set down the report. His hands were steady, but something behind his eyes was breaking. "What are you going to do?"
I'd spent the past hour wrestling with that question. The System had opinions—cold, efficient recommendations that prioritized coalition security over individual welfare. But I'd overruled the System before and could do it again.
"Jenny thinks she's a liability," I said.
"She's my wife."
"I know." I stood, moving to the map that covered one wall of my quarters. "There are options. None of them are good."
"Tell me."
"Option one: elimination. Solves the problem permanently. Creates others—you'd never forgive me, your loyalty would be compromised, and murder leaves evidence that could trace back to us."
Jack's jaw tightened but he didn't interrupt.
"Option two: we redirect the hunters. Create a false trail, make them chase ghosts until Michelle's story loses credibility. Buys time, doesn't solve the root issue."
"Option three?"
"We discredit her." The words tasted bitter. "Make her look unstable. Unreliable. The kind of witness that hunters ignore because her testimony can't be trusted."
Silence stretched between us. Jack stared at the map—at territories and boundaries and the complex web of alliances I'd built—without seeing any of it.
"You'd destroy her reputation."
"To save her life." I turned to face him. "Hunters don't kill crazy people. They ignore them. If Michelle becomes the grieving widow whose husband's disappearance drove her to breakdown, they'll write off her story as trauma-induced delusion."
"And she'll spend the rest of her life thinking she's insane."
"She'll spend the rest of her life alive. That's more than option one offers."
[RECOMMENDATION OVERRIDE LOGGED] [OPTIMAL SOLUTION: ELIMINATION] [HOST SELECTED: DISCREDITING OPERATION] [DEVIATION NOTED]
The System registered its disapproval in cold data packets. I ignored it.
Jack's hand found the edge of my desk, gripping hard enough that the wood creaked. "Do it."
"Are you sure?"
"No." His voice cracked. "But I'd rather she think she's crazy than be dead. And I'd rather..." He stopped. Started again. "I don't want to hate you. If you killed her, I would."
"That's what I figured."
The operation began that night.
Anonymous calls to Lincoln police expressing concern about Michelle Montgomery's mental state. Social media posts from fabricated accounts questioning her stability. A carefully crafted paper trail suggesting a history of anxiety and paranoid episodes that predated her husband's disappearance.
Ruth handled the technical work—she'd learned useful skills from the ghouls' experience with identity management. Catherine contributed contacts in Nebraska who could add credibility to the disinformation. Even Edgar's family helped, their experience with long-term deception providing templates for the narrative we were constructing.
By morning, Michelle Montgomery was no longer a credible witness.
The hunters who'd received her description would still investigate. But they'd do so skeptically, filtering everything through the lens of "disturbed widow experiencing trauma-induced delusions." Her story would join the pile of unverifiable accounts that hunters collected but never acted on.
Jack didn't attend the planning sessions. He stayed in his quarters, processing grief and guilt and the particular horror of participating—through silence if not action—in his wife's public humiliation.
I found him afterward, sitting alone in the dark.
"It's done," I said from the doorway.
"I know." He didn't look up. "Thomas told me."
"She'll be okay. The campaign doesn't hurt her directly—just makes her testimony less credible."
"You don't have to justify it." His voice was flat. Exhausted. "I understand why. I even agree with why. But understanding doesn't make it right."
"No. It doesn't."
Silence stretched between us. I could feel the shift in our relationship—the trust we'd built during the extraction, damaged by the necessary cruelty that followed. He'd still be loyal. He'd still follow orders. But something had changed.
Some costs couldn't be measured in corruption indices.
"For what it's worth," I said, "I'm sorry."
"Yeah." Jack finally looked at me. His eyes held no hatred—just a weary acceptance of the world he now inhabited. "Me too."
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