CHAPTER 1 – THE WARRANT

The barrel of a rifle pressed against my skull.
I could feel the cold metal tremble — not from the soldier holding it, but from the wind howling through the ruins of the hangar.

“On your knees, Lieutenant Morgan!”

The command split the night like a thunderclap.
I didn’t move. I just stared at the man in front of me — the same man who taught me how to fire my first gun.

My father.
Admiral Richard Morgan.
The hero of three naval wars.
The man who built his career on loyalty, order, and blood.

Now, he was the one calling me traitor.

Earlier – Twelve Hours Before

The storm hadn’t stopped for days.
In Alaska, snow doesn’t fall — it devours.
The sky was a pale wound, bleeding light through the clouds as I stumbled into an abandoned storage cabin, breath fogging the air.

Inside, the air smelled like rust and oil.
I stripped off my frost-covered gloves and placed the radio on the table. Static hissed through the channel until a voice — his voice — broke through.

“All units, this is Admiral Morgan. Target identified as Eli Morgan — Navy SEAL, formerly Team Nine. Suspected of treason. He is armed and extremely dangerous. Shoot on sight.”

The sound froze my lungs.
That voice had once called me son.

I stared at the frost forming on the edges of the table. It looked like spider veins, fragile but spreading fast — just like the rumors about me.
Three days ago, I was a soldier. Now, I was a ghost on my own country’s radar.

I opened the worn leather notebook I’d kept since my first deployment. Between its pages lay a small metal drive — black, unmarked, about the size of my thumb.
Inside it were files from Project Leviathan — a classified bioweapons program that shouldn’t exist.

I’d uncovered it by accident during a cross-border data sweep in Syria.
Encrypted shipment logs. Unauthorized research grants. Human testing reports.
And the signature at the bottom of every approval form — R. Morgan.

My father.

I’d thought there had to be an explanation. Some kind of cover operation, a misdirection.
So I reported it to Command. Quietly. Properly.
Forty-eight hours later, my credentials were revoked.
Seventy-two hours later, I was wanted for treason.

They’d erased me clean.

The radio crackled again.

“Admiral, satellite ping confirms Morgan’s signal near Anchorage sector. Authorization to engage?”
“Granted,” my father’s voice replied, cold and steady. “Bring him in alive — if possible.”

The “if possible” hit harder than any bullet could.

I moved to the corner of the cabin, loading my rifle by touch.
Every click echoed like a heartbeat.
Outside, the snow had swallowed the tracks of my boots, erasing proof I’d ever been there.

I had twenty minutes before the drones reached the grid. Maybe less.

I took one last look around — rusted tools, a frozen bottle of water, a photo frame half-buried under dust.
A young boy in a navy uniform saluting beside a tall man in white.
The boy’s smile looked proud.
The man’s eyes — cold, sharp, unreadable.

I smashed the glass. The photo tore down the middle.

“Guess loyalty skips a generation,” I muttered.

The first explosion hit the ridge outside.
The night flared orange as snow turned to steam.
They’d found me.

I grabbed my pack, slung it over my shoulder, and sprinted into the blizzard.
Bullets hissed through the air — invisible snakes slicing past my ears.
Every breath burned. Every step sank knee-deep into ice.

Through the storm, I saw the red blink of drone lights scanning the white void.
Their hum was like a swarm of angry wasps closing in.

I veered left, sliding down a frozen slope into the tree line.
Branches whipped my face. The cold cut through my clothes like knives.
But it didn’t matter — pain meant I was still alive.

I reached the edge of an old logging road and stopped to catch my breath.
The adrenaline was fading, replaced by the ache of exhaustion.

For a moment, I almost laughed.
Two years ago, I was leading missions in hostile territories, rescuing diplomats, breaking into enemy networks.
Now I was running from my own flag.

“Hell of a promotion, Lieutenant,” I whispered.

Then I heard it — the deep, rhythmic thump of rotor blades.
A helicopter, close. Too close.

The wind shifted, bringing with it a voice amplified through a loudspeaker.

“Eli Morgan! This is your final warning. Lay down your weapon and surrender!”

I turned toward the sound, heart hammering. The floodlights sliced through the snow, blinding me.
Figures in tactical gear descended on cables, forming a perimeter.
Their precision told me exactly who they were.

SEAL Team Nine.
My team.

The same brothers I’d trained, bled, and nearly died with — now aiming rifles at my chest.

The lead operator raised his visor. I recognized him instantly — Commander Hale, my former second-in-command.

“Don’t make this harder than it already is, Eli,” he said, voice low through the comms. “We have orders.”

“Orders from who?” I shouted back.
But I already knew.

A second later, the helicopter’s side door opened.
A man stepped out, uniform crisp, boots untouched by snow, eyes colder than the storm itself.

Admiral Richard Morgan.
My father.

He walked forward until he was standing a few feet from me.
The spotlight cut across his face — sharp lines, silver hair, the same scar above his right brow from the time I’d seen him wounded in Iraq.

“Eli,” he said evenly, “you’re under arrest for treason against the United States of America.”

I stared at him, breath fogging between us.
“Against the United States… or against you?”

His jaw tightened, but he didn’t answer.
Instead, he nodded at Hale.

“Disarm him.”

Hale hesitated for half a second — long enough for me to see the guilt flicker behind his eyes. Then he moved.
Two soldiers rushed me. I didn’t fight back. Not this time.

They pinned me down in the snow, zip-tied my wrists.
I could taste blood in my mouth — iron and frost.

When they hauled me up, my father was already turning away, voice clipped and official:

“Ensure he doesn’t speak to anyone. Every word from his mouth is a lie.”

The rotor wash blew snow across his face as he stepped back into the helicopter.
He didn’t look at me again.

As the engines roared to life, I caught my reflection in the side window — bruised, handcuffed, eyes hollow.
The son of a national hero.
Now, the nation’s enemy.

And yet, beneath all that noise and humiliation, one thought burned clear:
If he called me a traitor, it meant he was hiding something worse.

Something I was getting too close to.

To be continued …