Breaking Protocol

**Sloane**

The mechanical hum of the aging refrigerator rattles through the oppressive silence of the safe house. It grinds against my frayed nerves, matched only by the harsh, grating buzz of the fluorescent tubes overhead. I sit rigid in a hard-backed wooden chair. My eyes bore into a dead laptop screen.

No video feed. No audio sound. No Ronan.

This was not how things were supposed to go. He