Old Falcon took a mont, visibly gathering the strength to recount his history. The silence in the Director’s office was heavy, broken only by the hum of the ventilation.
"Eternal was my life," Old Falcon began, his voice surprisingly deep and ragged with age. "I built it from the ground up, a private security firm focused on high-net-worth individuals and corporate protection in volatile zones. We prided ourselves on loyalty; once you hired Eternal, we were your shield until the contract was severed or you died. We were the best in the world at what we did, and my n—my family—were elite."
"So how did an organization dedicated to protection end up fighting Celestial?" Ethan asked, his arms crossed over his orange jumpsuit.
"A client," Old Falcon replied, shaking his head with lingering bitterness. "That’s always how it starts, isn’t it? A rich man with more ambition than sense. Our client, a high-ranking defense contractor, was vying for control over certain resource contracts in the Middle East. To cut out the competition, he didn’t just compete; he attacked a regional boss of Celestial. A boss nad Malachai."
"And Celestial didn’t take kindly to that," Mr. Stone noted, looking grave.
"Celestial views any threat to their financial infrastructure as an act of war against the very establishnt they protect," Old Falcon confird. "When they ca for him, he hired us. For five years, my n and I defended him in the dust and heat of the Middle East. It was brutal. Celestial fought with resources, intelligence, and ruthlessness we’d never seen. They didn’t just send assassins; they sent coordinated military-grade operations."
"Five years of constant combat," Thompson murmured, the scale of the conflict clearly impacting the politician. "That must have cost a fortune."
"It cost more than money," Old Falcon stated, his eyes distant. "It cost lives. We lost hundreds of good n, but we held the line. Celestial couldn’t breach us. Eventually, the contract expired, the resource war subsided, and the attacks stopped completely. We packed up and returned to the United States."
"We thought it was over," Old Falcon continued, a fresh tremor entering his voice. "We spent another five years rebuilding here in the States, running legitimate security contracts, thinking Celestial had moved on to bigger fish. We were comfortable, lax even. We believed we had earned our peace."
"But you hadn’t," Ethan stated, the question hanging in the air.
"No. They were just patient," Old Falcon revealed, clenching his fists until his knuckles were white. "One morning, five years after we returned, Celestial hit us with everything. It wasn’t an attack; it was an execution. They ambushed our headquarters—a fortress we thought was impenetrable—with coordinated precision. Drones, specialized explosives, and hundreds of their own people. It was a complete bloodbath."
He paused, struggling for breath, the mory clearly agonizing. "I lost them all. Hundreds of n and won who were closer to than any blood relative. Nearly every single mber of Eternal was wiped out that day. I survived because, by so coincidence, I was traveling overseas on a logistical supply run. Only about twenty of my n who were scattered across three different countries survived the massacre."
A palpable wave of shock moved through the room. Cassandra’s hand went to her mouth, and Lena looked ill.
"The sheer malice," Cassandra whispered. "Five years of waiting, just to ensure maximum lethality."
"It was pure, targeted revenge," Old Falcon confird. "They didn’t want to wound us; they wanted to erase us. When I returned and saw the ashes of my ho and the bodies of my people... that’s when I knew the true aning of hate."
"We had nothing left," Old Falcon said, his voice hardening, becoming a sound of cold steel. "But we had one thing: rage. The twenty of us who survived dedicated the next six months to finding out how they did it. How did they breach our security? We had to find the source of the intelligence."
"The client," Ethan stated, his eyes narrowing, piecing together the betrayal.
"The client," Old Falcon confird, his face a mask of bitter disgust. "He was being pursued by Celestial for years after we stopped protecting him. He made a deal: in exchange for his life and the forgiveness of his debt to them, he offered them the complete schematics, routine changes, and access points to our headquarters. He sold us for his miserable life, after we protected him for five grueling years."
"Did you find him?" Cassandra asked, his tone heavy.
"We found him," Old Falcon replied simply, his eyes dark. "We spent weeks tracking him down. When we finally cornered him, we tortured him until he gave us every single piece of information he had: every contact, every financial ledger, every safe house, and the location of the main regional leadership hub for Celestial."
Old Falcon’s body was rigid with rembered violence. "With my last few loyal n, we spent everything we had left. We didn’t plan an attack; we planned a purge. We packed a series of comrcial delivery vans with enough military-grade explosives to level a city block. We drove them directly into that hideout and detonated everything."
"We blew their entire base to smithereens," Old Falcon concluded, his voice trembling slightly with satisfaction and old grief. "Hundreds of their people, gone. Obliterated. We may have died in the process, but we took a piece of Celestial’s heart with us."
A silence settled in the room, thicker and more profound than before. Everyone was stunned by the savagery of the story, understanding now the depth of hatred Celestial must harbor for Eternal—and anyone associated with the remnants of that organization.
"That is... an incredibly bloody history," Thompson admitted, shaking his head slowly.
Ethan looked at the distraught man who had just confessed to mass murder and organizational collapse.
"I understand the vengeance," Ethan said, his voice asured. "But what does any of this have to do with the five million dollars they paid Lena and Cassandra, and the fifty million they offered to help us fight Olympus?"
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