The digital payload transmitted by sixteen-year-old Brooke Sterling landed on First Sergeant Marcus Vance’s burner tablet at 0342 hours, carried by a heavily encrypted proxy server that bypassed every firewall the Sterling family’s corporate IT infrastructure could muster. Marcus sat in the Spartan confines of an extended-stay motel room just outside the Asheville city limits, the harsh glow of the LED monitor casting long, skeletal shadows across his weathered face.
Chapter 6 - The Final Audit of Sterling FallsThree weeks after the raid, the mountain town of Sterling Falls looked entirely different under the bright morning sun. The rusty iron gates of the Sterling Timber Mill were wide open, bearing a massive federal sign: SEIZED BY ORDER OF THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT.