Captain Dillon, still watching, saw nothing but silence stretch on for nearly a full minute, and it was that silence, more than anything spoken aloud, that first planted a genuine seed of doubt in his chest. Marcus hung up the phone without another word, thanked the captain quietly, and allowed himself to be led back to the holding cell, his expression unreadable, as though he already knew precisely what was coming next and felt no need to hurry it along.
Barely ten minutes later, the department's secure line—an old red telephone that sat untouched in Captain Dillon's office for months at a time—began to ring with a sharp, insistent tone that made every officer within earshot go quiet.
Dillon answered it himself. A composed, unfamiliar voice on the other end asked to confirm his identity before requesting immediate confirmation that a man named Marcus Hayes was currently being held at that station. Dillon confirmed it, his voice betraying the smallest tremor. The caller instructed him, in a tone that allowed no argument, to release Marcus Hayes from custody at once, and to make no further inquiries into his identification until additional instructions arrived.
Dillon, still clinging to his authority, asked who exactly was giving him orders inside his own precinct. The voice on the line answered plainly that this was the Pentagon, and that a colonel would be calling back shortly to explain the situation more fully.
Dillon set the receiver down slowly, his hand not quite steady, and for a long moment he simply stared at the old red phone as though it might ring again and take back everything it had just said.
Word of the call spread through the building faster than any official announcement could have managed: officers pausing mid-conversation, glancing toward the holding cells, murmuring questions that nobody could yet answer. Somewhere beneath the disbelief and the mounting unease, a quieter thought had begun to take root in more than one mind: the uncomfortable possibility that the tired man in the faded jacket, the one they had mocked and cuffed and laughed at only hours earlier, might be exactly who he claimed to be all along.
Barely had Captain Dillon set the receiver down when the red telephone rang again, and this time the voice on the other end was ice cold, carrying the unmistakable weight of absolute authority. The caller did not raise his volume—did not need to—and simply stated that General Marcus Hayes was to be released immediately and treated with the full respect his rank demanded, effective the moment those words left his mouth.