The Puppet Believes

During the flight, Jessica thought about Berlin. About the room full of old servers and half-buried ghosts. About the moment they'd discovered the truth, that the President hadn’t just been influenced by Dominion, he’d been reprogrammed, reshaped into something that looked like a man but functioned like a failsafe. Back then, she’d faced a choice: flip the switch and erase it all, or leave the neural architecture intact and dismantle the doomsday device instead. She’d chosen the latter. Not out of mercy, but because she couldn't bring herself to overwrite so many lives, to turn victims into husks. Dominion had rewritten enough people already. She wouldn’t be the one to do it again.

The plane descended through thick winter clouds, the city below stretching outward in a perfect grid of concrete, glass, and quiet power. Jessica stared through the window as the Potomac snaked through the landscape, glistening beneath the afternoon light. Washington, D.C. had always held an air of practiced indifference, a city of ghosts and puppeteers, where secrets were currency and truth was a matter of who controlled the narrative.

She exhaled slowly. Back in the lion’s den.

The airport was routine enough, customs, baggage claim, the dull hum of announcements layered over the static hum of American life. Jessica and the team moved effortlessly through the motions, keeping to the edges of attention, just three more weary travelers lost in the crowd.

Outside, the chill of late winter bit at Jessica’s skin. The air smelled like jet fuel, damp pavement, and something else, something she recognized. Surveillance.

The feeling was subtle but present, like the static charge before a storm. D.C. had always had eyes, always hummed with quiet observation, but this was different. This wasn’t routine intelligence. It was something else.

She glanced at Olivia, who was already scanning their surroundings beneath the veil of casual conversation. “White House credentials are set,” she murmured. “The press briefing is tomorrow afternoon. I should be able to get a look at him in person.”

Jessica nodded. “Make sure you’re recording everything.”

“I always do.”

Leanna adjusted the strap of her carry-on, her gaze flicking toward a man across the terminal, pretending to read a newspaper. “We need to go.”

Jessica followed Leanna’s eyes. The man never looked up, never acknowledged them, but something about the stillness of his posture set her on edge.

An observer. Not a threat. Not yet.

They kept moving, slipping into a taxi. Olivia gave the driver the address of their safe house, a modest rental in a quiet, residential neighborhood near Logan Circle. Not too close to government buildings, but not too far, either. A place to disappear without being absent.

The ride was silent, the city passing in fragments, embassies standing like fortresses behind high iron gates, political staffers moving briskly along sidewalks, security checkpoints marking the intersections of power. Jessica had spent years avoiding this place, and now she was walking back into it willingly.

She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

* * *

The townhouse was nondescript, the kind of place lobbyists and aides rented when they were in D.C. for the long haul. Three floors, narrow and deep, with a well-worn kitchen and a fireplace that hadn’t been used in years. It had been vetted, clean, unremarkable, an excellent place to work in silence.

Jessica dropped her bag inside the doorway, stretching the stiffness from her limbs. Olivia immediately moved to the dining table, setting up her laptop. Leanna swept through the rooms, checking for anything off.

“It’s clean,” Leanna confirmed, returning downstairs. “For now.”

Jessica nodded absently, rolling her shoulders before unzipping her jacket. “Let’s get to work.”

Olivia’s fingers moved swiftly over the keyboard, pulling up a web of connections. “I started running down financial records as soon as we landed. The Swiss accounts linked to Vanguard’s old shell corporations? Some of that money was funneled directly into the President’s last campaign.”

Jessica leaned in, reading over Olivia’s shoulder. The names on the financial documents were familiar. All were super PACs, donors with carefully curated histories, all perfectly legal on the surface. But underneath? The timing, the amounts, the method of transfer? All Dominion.

Olivia hesitated, her eyes still on the screen. “It’s more than just campaign funding. The patterns I’m seeing, these aren’t just financial. They mirror neural influence protocols we saw in Berlin. Structured repetition. Behavioral reinforcement.”

Jessica leaned in. “Are you saying the programming is still active?”

Olivia opened another folder, this one marked with red flags. “We were wrong. What we found before? That was just the visible layer. There’s a deeper protocol, residual, embedded like dormant code. It doesn’t need direct input anymore. It self-perpetuates.”

Leanna crossed her arms, jaw tightening. “So he thinks he’s free. That’s the worst part.”

Jessica’s eyes narrowed, her voice quiet. “A puppet that believes he cut his own strings.”

The words echoed longer than they should have. For a second, the room seemed too still. Jessica looked down at the financial data, but her mind was elsewhere, back in that white room beneath the ruins, Black’s voice curling like smoke around her thoughts. What makes you think you aren’t still in the cage? he’d said. Freedom is just another command if you don’t know who gave it to you.

She exhaled slowly, pushing the thought down like a rising tide.

“This is worse than I thought,” Jessica murmured. “This isn’t just influence. This is control.”

Leanna crossed her arms. “Meaning what? That the President isn’t just compromised, he’s owned?”

Jessica tapped a fingernail against the screen, thinking. “We don’t know yet. But if Dominion is embedded this high, we need confirmation.” She turned to Olivia. “That press briefing. Watch everything. His posture, his phrasing, his hesitation. If we’re right, it’ll be there.”

Olivia nodded, her expression sharpening with focus.

Jessica turned to Leanna. “And Richter?” The former NSA liaison had always kept one foot in the shadows.

Leanna exhaled. “He agreed to meet. But he’s skeptical.”

Jessica smirked faintly. “That’s fine. Skepticism we can work with.”

* * *

They didn’t linger in the house longer than necessary. Moving separately, they took the Metro to different locations, Olivia to the National Press Building, Leanna to a public records office. Jessica took a walk along Pennsylvania Avenue, watching, listening.

Washington had a way of hiding its own rot in plain sight. She passed the looming facade of the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover Building, the Department of Justice, the shadowed edges of Lafayette Square.

Washington was ruled by power, politics, and deception. It was a city of players and pawns. Jessica had never been either.

She paused near a bench, checking her watch. The cold air curled around her as she adjusted her gloves. She hadn’t been followed. Not yet. But she could feel it. Someone was watching.

She turned casually, scanning the street, the movement of the crowd. No obvious tails. But then again, Dominion wouldn’t be that careless.

She exhaled, rolling her tension from her shoulders, before moving on.

Tomorrow, Olivia would see the President. Leanna would run down the financials. And she? She would talk to Richter.

A familiar feeling settled over her, something old and instinctive. The first moves had been played. The game was beginning.

Jessica had no intention of losing.