“Watch me,” Harper said.
\nThe words hung in the damp, red-lit air of the bunker, fragile as glass but sharp as a razor.
\nGeneral Marcus Vance didn\u2019t flinch. He didn\u2019t raise his hands. He just let out a low, cold chuckle that echoed off the concrete walls.
\n“Harper,” Vance said, his voice dripping with patronizing calm. “You do Pilates. You drink matcha. You complained this morning because your sister\u2019s grief was ‘exhausting.’ You are not a killer. If you pull that trigger, the recoil will bruise your wrist, the noise will rupture your eardrums, and you will spend the rest of your life in a federal prison while your parents lose their house.”
\nHe took a half-step backward, his eyes calculating the exact distance between the barrel of the antique revolver and his skull.
\n“Julian is in custody,” Vance continued, pressing his psychological advantage. “Your parents are complicit in a federal crime. The only way you keep your freedom, the only way you keep your lifestyle, is to lower that gun, walk out of here, and let me handle your sister. I can make the charges go away, Harper. I can save your family.”
\nHarper\u2019s hand began to shake. The heavy, rusted hammer of the revolver trembled. A tear cut through the concrete dust on her cheek. She looked at me, her eyes wide, pleading for me to tell her what to do.
\nShe was an accountant\u2019s wife. She was a sister who had stolen my bedroom. She was not a soldier.
\nBut Vance had made a fatal miscalculation. He thought Harper was shaking from fear.
\nShe was shaking from rage.
\n“He told me,” Harper whispered, her voice cracking. “Dad told me on the drive over. About the money. About Julian. About what you did to David.”
\n“Harper, don’t be dramatic\u2014”
\n“You put my sister in a freezing garage!” Harper screamed, the sound tearing through the bunker. “She was carrying my niece or nephew! She was wearing her dead husband’s shirt! And you stood in my kitchen and drank coffee while my mother told her to move!”
\nHer finger tightened on the trigger. The hammer clicked back another millimeter.
\nVance\u2019s eyes darted. He realized she was actually going to do it.<\/p>\n
In a fraction of a second, the General\u2019s demeanor shifted from arrogant commander to cornered apex predator. He dropped his center of gravity, his right hand snapping down to slap Harper\u2019s wrist upward while his left hand reached for the suppressed sidearm at his thigh.<\/p>\n
“Drop!” I roared.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t shoot Vance. With Harper in the crossfire, a headshot was impossible. Instead, I raised my Glock and put two rounds directly into the massive, humming server rack inches from Vance\u2019s left shoulder.<\/p>\n
*CRACK-CRACK!*<\/p>\n
The high-voltage lithium batteries inside the server ruptured. A blinding sheet of blue-white electrical fire exploded outward, accompanied by a deafening screech of tearing metal.<\/p>\n
Vance flinched, throwing his arm up to shield his face from the shower of sparks.<\/p>\n
That half-second of distraction was all Hayes needed.<\/p>\n
Hayes launched himself across the room, tackling Vance around the waist. The two men crashed into the concrete floor in a tangle of limbs and tactical gear. Vance was bigger, stronger, and heavily trained in close-quarters combat. He threw an elbow that caught Hayes in the jaw, then drew his combat knife, slashing upward.<\/p>\n
Hayes grunted in pain as the blade bit into his Kevlar vest, missing his ribs by a fraction of an inch.<\/p>\n
I closed the distance in three strides. I didn’t try to pull Vance off. I stepped into his guard, jammed the muzzle of my Glock directly under his chin, and pulled the trigger.<\/p>\n
*Click.*<\/p>\n
Empty. I had fired my last two rounds into the server.<\/p>\n
Vance smiled, blood on his teeth. He raised his knife to plunge it into Hayes\u2019s neck.<\/p>\n
I didn’t hesitate. I dropped the empty pistol, drew the heavy, unloaded Sig Sauer I had taken from my father upstairs, and used it as a blunt weapon. I swung the heavy steel frame of the pistol in a brutal, downward arc, smashing it directly into the side of Vance\u2019s knee.<\/p>\n
There was a sickening *pop*.<\/p>\n
Vance howled, his leg buckling. The knife clattered to the floor. Hayes immediately rolled him onto his stomach, wrenched his arms behind his back, and slapped the zip-ties around his wrists.<\/p>\n
“Secure!” Hayes panted, pressing his hand against his bruised ribs.<\/p>\n
I stood over Vance, my chest heaving, my hand instinctively resting over my stomach. The baby kicked hard, a sharp reminder of the life I was carrying, and the life I had just protected.<\/p>\n
Vance looked up at me from the floor, his face pale with shock and pain. “You’re… a monster,” he spat.<\/p>\n
“I’m a mother,” I corrected him coldly. “And you’re done.”<\/p>\n
I turned to Croft, who was huddled under the metal table, clutching the ruggedized laptop to his chest. “Status on the upload!”<\/p>\n
Croft scrambled out, his fingers flying across the keyboard. The blue light of the screen illuminated his scarred face. His expression fell.<\/p>\n
“It stalled,” Croft said, his voice tight. “At ninety-eight percent. The electrical surge from the server fried the bunker’s external antenna. The local network is completely dead. The ledger is decrypted, but it’s not on the Inspector General’s servers.”<\/p>\n
“Can you fix it?” Hayes demanded, limping over to check the perimeter.<\/p>\n
“Not wirelessly,” Croft said. “But this bunker was built in the sixties. It has a hardened, physical landline for nuclear command continuity. It’s in the sub-basement. If I can splice into the copper line, I can hard-transmit the file. But it will take me three minutes to bypass the analog encryption.”<\/p>\n
“Three minutes,” I said. “We can hold for three minutes.”<\/p>\n
Suddenly, my phone vibrated against my thigh.<\/p>\n
I pulled it out. The screen was cracked, but the text message was clear. It was from my father.<\/p>\n
*Sarah. Please. They\u2019re here. The men in the black suits. They broke the back door. Julian\u2019s partners. They have the house. Mom is bleeding. Please.*<\/p>\n
My blood turned to ice.<\/p>\n
Julian\u2019s “renovation crew” hadn’t been his only muscle. When Julian was arrested at the house, it must have triggered a panic protocol. The syndicate\u2019s real cleaners\u2014the ones who didn’t get caught in kitchen brawls\u2014had been dispatched to secure the dead-drop and eliminate any witnesses.<\/p>\n
My parents. My cruel, entitled, cowardly parents. They were trapped in the house David had built. The house I had just reclaimed.<\/p>\n
“Hayes,” I said, my voice dropping to a dead, flat calm. “We have a situation at the primary residence. Syndicate cleaners. My family is inside.”<\/p>\n
Hayes looked at me, then at the laptop. “Colonel, if we leave now, Croft can’t finish the upload. Vance\u2019s backup team will breach this bunker in less than five minutes. If we lose the ledger, David\u2019s death means nothing. The syndicate wins.”<\/p>\n
“If we stay, my family dies,” I said.<\/p>\n
“I can finish the splice,” Croft said suddenly, looking up from the screen. “But I need someone to hold the corridor. Just for three minutes.”<\/p>\n
Hayes checked his magazine. “I’m out of flashbangs, and my ribs are cracked. I can hold the choke point, but I can’t do it alone.”<\/p>\n
I looked at Harper. She was still standing by Vance, the antique revolver trembling in her hands. She had heard everything. She looked terrified, but she didn’t run.<\/p>\n
“Harper,” I said.<\/p>\n
She swallowed hard. “I… I want to go home. I want to go to my house.”<\/p>\n
“You can’t go to your house,” I said gently. “You’re going to mine. And you’re going to help me save the people who put you in the garage this morning.”<\/p>\n
She stared at me, the irony hitting her like a physical blow. Then, she nodded. She lowered the revolver, but she didn’t drop it. “What do I do?”<\/p>\n
“Hayes,” I barked, shifting instantly into command mode. “Give her your backup weapon. The Glock 19. Show her the safety.”<\/p>\n
Hayes drew his backup, cleared it, and handed it to Harper. “Keep your finger off the trigger until you see the whites of their eyes. Point and press. Don’t hesitate.”<\/p>\n
Harper took the gun. Her hands were still shaking, but her jaw was set.<\/p>\n
“Croft, get to the sub-basement. Start the splice,” I ordered. “Hayes, hold the door. If Vance\u2019s team breaches, you fall back to the secondary exit and blow the charges. I will be back for you.”<\/p>\n
“Colonel, you can’t go back there alone,” Hayes protested. “You’re carrying. You’re out of ammo for your primary.”<\/p>\n
“I have a full magazine in the Sig,” I said, ejecting the mag from my father’s gun and checking it. Fifteen rounds. “And I have the home-field advantage. They think I’m a grieving widow. I’m going to use that.”<\/p>\n
I grabbed a spare plate carrier from the wall rack. I couldn’t strap it tight over my belly, so I loosened the side straps, wearing it like a loose vest to protect my chest and back. I grabbed two spare magazines and shoved them into my pockets.<\/p>\n
“Let’s move,” I said to Harper.<\/p>\n
We ran up the concrete ramp to the surface. The cold night air hit us like a wall. The armored SUV was waiting, the engine still idling.<\/p>\n
I threw open the driver’s side door and slid in. Harper scrambled into the passenger seat.<\/p>\n
“Drive,” I told myself, slamming the shifter into drive. The heavy tires spun on the gravel, then caught, and we rocketed up the ramp and out into the Virginia night.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
The drive back to the suburbs took twenty-two minutes. I drove like a madwoman, blowing through red lights, taking corners on two wheels. Harper sat in silence, the Glock resting on her lap, staring out the window.<\/p>\n
“You know,” she said quietly, breaking the silence as we hit the highway. “When we were kids, Dad used to make us practice fire drills. He was obsessed with it. But he never taught us how to fight.”<\/p>\n
“Dad thought money and status were armor,” I said, my eyes scanning the dark roads. “He was wrong.”<\/p>\n
We turned onto my street.<\/p>\n
I killed the headlights.<\/p>\n
The house was at the end of a long, dark cul-de-sac. But it wasn’t dark. The entire front lawn was illuminated by the harsh, white glare of halogen work lights.<\/p>\n
Three matte-black SUVs were parked in the driveway, blocking Julian\u2019s Audi. The garage door was smashed inward, the wood splintered. The front door was hanging off its hinges.<\/p>\n
“Six men,” I said, my mind automatically cataloging the threats as I coasted to a stop behind the tree line at the edge of the property. “Two on the porch. Two in the living room, visible through the window. Two in the kitchen. They’re tossing the place.”<\/p>\n
“What about Mom and Dad?” Harper whispered, her voice trembling again.<\/p>\n
“Dad’s text said they were in the garage,” I said. “Which means the cleaners haven’t found them yet. They’re still looking for the key.”<\/p>\n
I killed the engine. “Stay in the car. Keep the engine running. If I don’t come back out in ten minutes, drive to the police station and tell them everything.”<\/p>\n
“No,” Harper said. She opened the door, stepping out into the freezing night. She held the Glock with both hands, just like Hayes had taught her. “I started this. I’m finishing it.”<\/p>\n
I looked at my sister. The silk robe was gone, replaced by a heavy winter coat she\u2019d grabbed from the bunker\u2019s gear lockers. Her makeup was smeared, her hair was a mess, and she looked absolutely terrified.<\/p>\n
But she was standing her ground.<\/p>\n
“Stay behind me,” I ordered. “And shoot anyone who points a weapon at you.”<\/p>\n
We moved through the backyard, using the darkness and the bare winter trees as cover. The frost crunched softly beneath our boots. I moved with the silent, rolling step of a Ranger, keeping my body low, my eyes scanning the windows.<\/p>\n
We reached the back patio. The sliding glass door was shattered.<\/p>\n
I peered through the broken glass into the kitchen.<\/p>\n
The house was destroyed. Julian\u2019s “renovation” had been a cover; the syndicate had taken sledgehammers to the drywall. The custom cedar shelving David had built was smashed into splinters. The kitchen island was overturned.<\/p>\n
In the center of the room, two men in dark tactical gear were using crowbars to pry up the hardwood floor.<\/p>\n
But it was the man standing by the kitchen doorway that made my blood run cold.<\/p>\n
He wasn’t wearing tactical gear. He was wearing a tailored wool overcoat. He was holding a suppressed Heckler & Koch MP7 in his right hand, and in his left hand, he was holding a leather-bound folder.<\/p>\n
He turned his head slightly, and the halogen light from the driveway caught his face.<\/p>\n
I stopped breathing.<\/p>\n
It was Colonel Thomas Sterling.<\/p>\n
David\u2019s base commander. The man who had stood at the podium at David\u2019s funeral. The man who had handed me the folded flag. The man who had looked me in the eye and told me my husband died a hero.<\/p>\n
Sterling wasn’t just a node in the syndicate. He was the architect.<\/p>\n
“Check the foundation,” Sterling was telling the men with the crowbars. His voice was calm, cultured, and utterly devoid of humanity. “If David hid the physical cipher in the walls, it will be in the load-bearing studs. Tear it all down.”<\/p>\n
One of the men with the crowbar paused. “Sir, the old man and the mother are still in the garage. What do we do with them?”<\/p>\n
Sterling sighed, adjusting his cuffs. “Finish the kitchen first. Then take them into the woods. Make it look like a murder-suicide. The husband went crazy, killed the wife, then himself. Tragic.”<\/p>\n
Harper let out a small, choked sob behind me.<\/p>\n
I put a hand over her mouth, silencing her. I leaned in close to her ear. “Listen to me,” I whispered. “When I breach, you take the two men in the kitchen. I’m going for Sterling. Do you understand?”<\/p>\n
Harper nodded against my hand.<\/p>\n
I let go. I raised the Sig Sauer.<\/p>\n
I didn’t use the door. I used the element of absolute, shocking violence.<\/p>\n
I stepped through the shattered glass, bringing the Sig up in a two-handed grip.<\/p>\n
“Federal agents! Drop your weapons!” I roared, my voice echoing through the ruined house.<\/p>\n
The two men with the crowbars spun around, reaching for their sidearms.<\/p>\n
I didn’t hesitate. *Pop-pop.* Two rounds. Both men dropped, their weapons clattering to the ruined floor.<\/p>\n
Sterling moved with terrifying speed. He didn’t panic. He dropped to one knee, raising the MP7, his eyes locking onto me.<\/p>\n
“Sarah,” he said, his voice eerily calm over the ringing in my ears. “I wondered when you’d show up.”<\/p>\n
“Where are my parents?” I demanded, keeping the sights aligned with his chest.<\/p>\n
“Safely locked in the garage, for now,” Sterling said. He glanced toward the hallway. “But we have a bigger problem, don’t we?”<\/p>\n
From the hallway behind him, Harper stepped into the kitchen. She raised the Glock, her hands shaking, but her aim steady. She had the two remaining cleaners in her sights. They froze, hands raised.<\/p>\n
Sterling looked at Harper, then back at me. He smiled. A genuine, warm smile. The smile he had worn at David\u2019s funeral.<\/p>\n
“You’re doing wonderfully, Sarah. Truly. David would be so proud,” Sterling said. He slowly lowered the MP7, resting it on his knee. “But you’re making a mistake. You think this is about money. You think this is about Julian’s shell companies, or Vance’s treason.”<\/p>\n
“I think it’s about the ledger,” I said. “And I think it’s about the fact that you sold my husband to the cartel.”<\/p>\n
Sterling chuckled softly. “David didn’t just find a ledger, Sarah. He found the Olympus Protocol.”<\/p>\n
My heart skipped a beat. The Olympus Protocol. It was a myth. A ghost story whispered among intelligence officers. A master list of every deep-cover operative, every illegal black-site, and every assassinated journalist funded by the US government over the last twenty years. If the syndicate got it, they could blackmail the entire Western intelligence apparatus.<\/p>\n
“David stole the Olympus drive,” Sterling said, his eyes gleaming. “He hid it. And I need it. If you let me walk out of here with the cipher, I will let your parents go. I will let Harper go. I will even let you keep the house.”<\/p>\n
“You’re lying,” Harper said from the hallway, her voice shaking but loud. “You just said you were going to kill them in the woods!”<\/p>\n
Sterling didn’t even look at her. “I’m a pragmatist, Harper. I adapt.” He looked back at me. “The cipher, Sarah. Give me the titanium drive, and your family lives. Refuse, and I start shooting.”<\/p>\n
He raised the MP7, aiming it not at me, but at Harper.<\/p>\n
“Drop the gun, Sarah,” Sterling commanded. “Or your sister dies.”<\/p>\n
Harper whimpered, but she didn’t lower her weapon. She looked at me, her eyes wide with terror.<\/p>\n
I looked at Sterling. I looked at the gun in his hand. I looked at the ruined kitchen David had built with his own hands.<\/p>\n
And then, I heard it.<\/p>\n
A faint, rhythmic tapping coming from the floor vents.<\/p>\n
*Tap. Tap. Tap.*<\/p>\n
Morse code.<\/p>\n
David used to tap on the floorboards when he was working in the basement, just to let me know he was okay. *Tap-tap. Pause. Tap.*<\/p>\n
It wasn’t David. It was my father. He was in the garage, directly beneath the kitchen. He was tapping on the heating ducts.<\/p>\n
He wasn’t just telling me he was alive. He was telling me where the structural weak point was.<\/p>\n
The gas line.<\/p>\n
David had replaced the gas line to the kitchen stove last month. He had complained about the old copper piping. He had run it right beneath the floorboards, directly under the kitchen island.<\/p>\n
I looked at the overturned granite island. I looked at the main gas valve on the wall behind Sterling.<\/p>\n
“Sterling,” I said softly.<\/p>\n
“Yes, Sarah?”<\/p>\n
“You’re right about one thing,” I said. “David would be proud.”<\/p>\n
I didn’t shoot Sterling.<\/p>\n
I shot the main gas valve on the wall.<\/p>\n
The high-pressure natural gas hissed into the room with the force of a jet engine, filling the enclosed kitchen in a cloud of highly flammable, invisible vapor.<\/p>\n
Sterling\u2019s eyes widened in horror. “Are you insane?!” he screamed, coughing as the gas hit him. “A single spark will blow us all to hell!”<\/p>\n
“I know,” I said.<\/p>\n
I grabbed the heavy, cast-iron skillet from the ruined stove, and I hurled it as hard as I could directly at the halogen work light shining through the window.<\/p>\n
The heavy iron smashed through the glass, but it also smashed into the light’s external power box.<\/p>\n
*SPARK.*<\/p>\n
“Harper, down!” I screamed.<\/p>\n
I dove backward, tackling Harper to the floor just as the gas ignited.<\/p>\n
The explosion was a physical wall of heat and sound. The kitchen ceiling blew outward in a shower of flaming wood and drywall. The shockwave threw me across the room, slamming me into the dining room wall.<\/p>\n
My ears rang with a high, piercing whine. Dust and smoke filled the air.<\/p>\n
I coughed, pushing myself up on my elbows. My vision was blurry. My shoulder screamed in pain.<\/p>\n
“Harper!” I choked out.<\/p>\n
“I’m… I’m here,” Harper coughed, crawling out from under a fallen beam. She was covered in soot, but she was alive.<\/p>\n
I looked toward the kitchen.<\/p>\n
The explosion had blown the exterior wall completely out. The kitchen was a blazing inferno.<\/p>\n
Sterling was gone. Blown out into the backyard.<\/p>\n
The two cleaners were dead, crushed by the collapsing roof.<\/p>\n
I forced myself to stand, swaying slightly. I checked my stomach. The baby was fine. I was fine.<\/p>\n
“The garage,” I gasped, grabbing Harper\u2019s arm. “We have to get to the garage.”<\/p>\n
We stumbled through the smoke-filled hallway, out the shattered front door, and around to the side of the house.<\/p>\n
The garage door was blown off its tracks. The freezing concrete floor was littered with debris.<\/p>\n
My parents were huddled in the corner, behind my father\u2019s workbench. My mother was clutching her head, blood seeping through her fingers. My father was holding a heavy steel wrench, his face pale, his eyes wide with shock.<\/p>\n
When he saw me, he dropped the wrench.<\/p>\n
“Sarah,” he sobbed, falling to his knees. “Sarah, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”<\/p>\n
I didn’t comfort him. I didn’t have the time, or the energy.<\/p>\n
“Get up,” I ordered, my voice raspy from the smoke. “Get in the SUV. We’re leaving.”<\/p>\n
We helped them up, half-carrying them to the armored SUV. Harper got in the back with them. I slid into the driver’s seat, my hands shaking as I turned the key.<\/p>\n
As I put the car in gear, my phone buzzed again.<\/p>\n
It was Croft.<\/p>\n
*Sarah. Upload complete. The ledger is at the IG. Vance is in custody. But you need to get to the Annex. Now.*<\/p>\n
I frowned, pulling the SUV onto the main road. I hit the speakerphone. “Croft, we’re coming in. The house is burned. Sterling is dead. The cleaners are dead.”<\/p>\n
There was a long pause on the other end of the line.<\/p>\n
*Sarah,* Croft\u2019s voice came back, tight and strained. *Sterling isn’t dead.*<\/p>\n
I slammed on the brakes, pulling the SUV onto the shoulder of the dark highway.<\/p>\n
“What do you mean he isn’t dead? I blew up the kitchen with him in it!”<\/p>\n
*We just got a secure transmission,* Croft said. *It came from a burner phone. It\u2019s Sterling. He\u2019s alive. And he has something you need to see.*<\/p>\n
“Put it on the screen,” I ordered.<\/p>\n
The dashboard monitor flickered. A video feed appeared.<\/p>\n
It was Sterling. He was sitting in a dark room, his face bruised, his overcoat torn. He was bleeding from a cut on his forehead, but he was alive. He had survived the blast.<\/p>\n
But he wasn’t alone.<\/p>\n
Sitting in a chair behind him, bound and gagged, was Captain Hayes.<\/p>\n
My breath caught in my throat.<\/p>\n
*Hello, Sarah,* Sterling said to the camera, his voice calm, though his eyes were burning with a terrifying, psychotic intensity. *You played a brilliant game. You got the ledger. You got Vance. You even got my cleaners.*<\/p>\n
He leaned closer to the camera.<\/p>\n
*But you forgot one thing. David didn’t just steal the Olympus Protocol. He stole the activation key. And I have Hayes. I’m going to peel him apart, inch by inch, until you tell me where the key is.*<\/p>\n
Sterling smiled, raising a bloody knife into the frame.<\/p>\n
*You have one hour, Colonel. Come to the old shipyard at Pier 4. Alone. Or Hayes dies, and I burn the Olympus Protocol to the ground.*<\/p>\n
The screen went black.<\/p>\n
I sat in the idling SUV, the cold night air rushing through the cracked windows. In the back seat, my parents were weeping. Harper was staring at me, her face pale in the dashboard light.<\/p>\n
I looked down at my stomach. I rested my hand over the baby.<\/p>\n
David had built this house to protect us. He had died to protect the country.<\/p>\n
Now, it was my turn to protect what was left.<\/p>\n
I put the SUV in gear, my eyes hard, my heart turned to stone.<\/p>\n
“Hold on, David,” I whispered. “I’m coming.”<\/p>\n
“Watch me,” Harper said. The words hung in the damp, red-lit air of the bunker, fragile as glass but sharp as a razor. General Marcus Vance didn\u2019t flinch. He didn\u2019t … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2802,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nexttaleus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nexttaleus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nexttaleus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nexttaleus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nexttaleus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4126"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nexttaleus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4130,"href":"https:\/\/nexttaleus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4126\/revisions\/4130"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nexttaleus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nexttaleus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nexttaleus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nexttaleus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}