G.I. Joe - Revelations (A Fan Fiction Story)

"The President is ready for you, Sergeant Hauser."

Duke rose from the chair in the waiting room as the Secretary to the President of the United States opened the door to the Oval Office.

"Thank you, Ms. Landigham." The two exchanged nods as he walked past her and into the most famous office in the world.

Former General Randall Flagg sat behind the Resolute Desk, the weight of his second term as President visible on his face and in his posture.  "Duke. Great to see you. Thank you for getting here so quickly."  Flagg rose and offered a hand.  "Please sit." Flagg pointed to a century old chair opposite his and began to pace.

"Of course Mr. President." Duke said

"Jesus, Duke.  Decades together fighting Cobra and that's what you call me? *Mr. President*?" The comment caused Duke to laugh.

"Didn't you read my green sheet? I respect rank. There is no higher rank in the Armed Forces than Commander In Chief." The attempt at levity fell flat, both men understood the gravity of this meeting.  "With that respect in mind, I would like to get down to it. You requested my presence to discuss *Project Founding Fathers*."  The President coughed.  

"Yes, Duke. This is not the usual Cobra scheme.  This goes deeper than even Cobra Commander and Destro can fathom. This is an operation that threatens the very existence of the United States of America."

Duke leaned forward in the hand carved oak chair that he occupied.  "Sounds more serious than your message made it seem to be."

"It is. Far more serious than I could afford to admit to in a simple voice mail." Flagg's tone was serious.  More so than Duke could ever recall.

"What, exactly, is going on?  What is *Project Founding Fathers* and who is behind it?" Duke asked.

Flagg replied. "That's the part that's going to be hard for you to hear."

"I've heard pretty much everything over the years, Randall. Just give the intel and let me know how I can help." Duke was determined to keep his professional military demeanor.  

President Flagg turned to the window facing the Rose Garden.  His shoulders, usually square and rigid, slumped under the weight of the conversation.  "Duke," he resigned himself to the revelation. "Before I explain, I need to you to understand that you cannot bring anybody on the team in on this. However, there is a man out there who can help.  Joseph Felton."

The name landed in Duke's head harder than he would have expected.  Joseph Felton was a ghost. "Recoil? His dossier lists him as KIA.  Recoil was on the security detail at the National Archives during the attack by the Iron Grenadiers.  We lost Recoil, Outback, and Tunnel Rat that day". The memory was still vivid in Duke's mind. Three good Joes killed protecting the original Constitution during its restoration.  What should have been a simple security detail in a period of relative quiet for the Joe team had turned deadly when Destro's shock troopers assaulted the archives.  It had been years now and there was still no known reason for the attack.  Nothing was stolen, no hostage taken. No discernible reason other than sheer violence.

Duke's fists opened and closed reflexively as the anger inside him began to rise. "Are you telling me Recoil survived and the Brass has been lying for years?"

Flagg turned to face his old friend. "No. I'm telling you that Recoil, Tunnel Rat, and Outback all survived. They weren't even at the Archives at the time of the attack."

The rising anger in Duke's core turned to barely controlled fury.  "So you're telling me three of *my* men went fucking AWOL?" The sudden revelation made the scenario finally make sense.  All three were listed as KIA but no bodies had ever been found.  The families of Tunnel Rat and Recoil had requested there be no formal military funeral.  Outback had no family and accordingly his funeral proceeded with minimal pageantry. Duke had stood with military precision at Outback's sparse service. Now he was being told that the man he held back tears for was still alive.

"I'm about to tell you something that might cost me this office, cost you your career, and both of us our freedom.  So I need to emphasize that this does not leave this room.  Ever.  I am going to address Conrad, not Duke. Understand?"

Duke nodded, his jaw tightening as he locked eyes with Flagg. The use of his first name—Conrad—hit him like a gut punch. Flagg only pulled that out when the stakes were life and death. He straightened his posture, forcing his hands to unclench, and braced himself. "Understood, sir."

Flagg exhaled, rubbing his temple as if weighing the consequences one last time. "Those three weren’t AWOL, at least not in the strictest sense. All three walked away when they learned the truth."

"What *truth*?" Duke managed through gritted teeth.

Flagg's voice dropped to something barely above a whisper, the kind that carried the weight of treason. "The truth, Conrad, is that our government is a lie. The Constitution you swore to protect? Invalid. A straw document. The United States federal government—everything we’ve fought for—has no legal standing."

Duke’s breath hitched. He could feel the pulse in his neck hammering against his collar. "That’s insane." The words came out flat, automatic. But something in Flagg’s face—the way his eyes didn’t flinch, the pallor of his skin—made the denial hollow before it left his mouth.

"In the eyes of this government what I just told you is treason. That's why it cannot leave the room.  To acknowledge what your three men discovered would be to invalidate everything we fought for.  The very formation of G.I. Joe, the conflict with Cobra. Our special missions unit.  But it does not end there. What those three discovered would tear the entire structure of our nation to the ground.  Here is the real problem, Conrad.  These three men walked away because they felt betrayed by a government that had no right to exist in the first place.  And they were right."

Duke’s knees buckled slightly, the weight of Flagg’s words pressing down on him like a physical force. He caught himself against the edge of the Resolute Desk, fingers digging into the polished wood until his knuckles turned white. "You expect me to believe," he said slowly, "that everything—every op, every flag we’ve saluted, every goddamn funeral—was for a *sham*?"

Flagg didn’t blink. "I expect you to listen. Because Felton? He didn’t just walk away. He went digging. And what he found…" A grimace twisted Flagg’s mouth. "Let’s just say Cobra’s been playing a longer game than we realized."

Flagg abruptly silenced himself.  Duke realized he did not need the President to continue.  The reality hit him. "Cobra-La.  Golobulus is behind this."

Flagg’s silence confirmed it. Duke’s throat went dry as the implications spiderwebbed through his mind—Cobra-La’s ancient machinations threading through centuries, their tendrils coiled around the foundations of nations. He swallowed hard, tasting copper. "How deep does it go?"

"Far enough that three good soldiers chose exile over service," Flagg said, moving to the desk and pulling a slim dossier from a locked drawer. The seal on it was unfamiliar—a serpent coiled around a broken quill. "Felton left breadcrumbs. Scattered, encrypted, but deliberate. He *wanted* someone to follow."

"Breadcrumbs," Duke muttered. "Honestly I don't give a shit about his breadcrumbs.  What I care about is that these three men abandoned their oath.  If not to the government, then to their fellow Joes.  They walk away with secrets and we have to bury Snake Eyes, Gung Ho, Lifeline, Sc-" the last name caught in Duke's throat.  This was the first time in years he had to deal with the death of the woman he loved, just ten days before their wedding. "Scarlett."

The silence stretched between them, thick enough to choke on. Flagg didn’t flinch when Duke’s fist slammed into the Resolute Desk, sending a hairline crack through centuries-old mahogany. “You’re telling me,” Duke seethed, “that Scarlett died for *nothing*?” His voice cracked on her name—raw, unguarded, a wound ripped open after years of cauterization.

Flagg’s hand hovered over the dossier, fingers twitching like a man debating whether to light a fuse. “Not nothing. Just… not what we thought.” He flipped it open, revealing grainy surveillance stills of Felton—alive, unmistakably alive—standing in what looked like the ruins of a Mayan temple, his face half-lit by torchlight. “They didn’t abandon us, Conrad. They went *underground*. Literally.”

"Bullshit!" Duke's voice cracked against the Oval Office walls like a whip. The Secret Service outside probably heard it—hell, half the West Wing probably heard it—but Flagg didn’t so much as blink. "AWOL is AWOL. Let’s assume for a second this ‘illegitimate government’ horseshit is correct. They still had a duty to stand beside their *brothers*. They abandoned *us*." His fist came down again, this time splitting the crack in the desk wider. "How many Joes did we lose directly because they stayed gone? How many lives—" His throat closed around Scarlett’s name this time, a phantom fist squeezing his windpipe.

Flagg waited. Not the patient silence of a superior officer, but the grim stillness of a man who’d rehearsed this moment in his head a hundred times. When he spoke, it was quieter, colder. "You think I haven’t asked myself that?" He tapped the dossier. "Felton left coordinates. Dates. Names. Cobra-La’s been seeding sleeper agents since before the Civil War. They weren’t just infiltrating the government—they *built* it. Layer by layer. And your men?" A muscle jumped in Flagg’s jaw. "They weren’t running. They were hunting."

"So that means," Duke began to shake in fury, the veins in his temples standing out like live wires, "G.I. Joe works for Cobra-La? That means *you* work for Cobra-La." The accusation hung between them, jagged and lethal. His hand twitched toward his sidearm—not to draw, but because every muscle in his body was screaming for action, for vengeance, for something solid to grip before the world dissolved into ash.

Flagg didn’t reach for his own weapon. Instead, he spread his hands, palms up, like a man showing he had nothing to hide. "No," he said, too calm. "It means Cobra-La *let* us exist. Let us *think* we were fighting them. We were never the scalpel, Conrad. We were the fucking *bandage*."

Duke was across the desk and had his hands on the President's throat before the other could react. "You son of a bitch.  I looked up to you.  You were like a father to me. And you have known all along that all of this," Duke nodded to the window looking out at the landscape of D.C. "was nothing but a show?" His hand tightened around the older man's windpipe.

"You either knew Cobra-La was behind this and went along with it, or," the fury in Duke's eyes instantly died as he understood the impact of the situation. He released Flagg and exhaled slowly. "You were a believer like me until Felton contacted you with this intel."

Flagg staggered back, coughing, his fingers gingerly touching the reddened skin of his throat. He didn't call for security. Didn't even raise his voice. When he spoke, it was with the weary cadence of a man who’d already lost everything. "I found out three months ago," he rasped. "Right after the Situation Room briefing on Cobra’s new bio-weapon. One of Felton’s breadcrumbs led me to a vault under Arlington. The original Articles of Confederation—unsigned. The Constitution we’ve got? A placeholder. A *distraction*."

Duke’s hands trembled at his sides, his mind racing through decades of missions, battles, flag-draped caskets. "Then why tell me now?"

"Because Felton’s gone dark." Flagg straightened his tie with a jerk, his composure returning in increments. "Two weeks ago, his last transmission came through—just coordinates in the Yukon and two words: *They’re moving*." He slid a satellite image across the desk. It showed a snow-blurred compound, its architecture unmistakably Cobra-La—organic curves fused with obsidian alloy. "That’s not an outpost. It’s a hive. And if Felton’s right, it’s where they’ve been storing the real prize."

Flagg hesitated for a second before handing Duke a second file. No words were spoken as he rifled through the pages contained inside.  The intel provided by the former infantryman twisted Duke's guts. Clones of every President, Congressman, and SCOTUS judge in the nation's history.  Replicants of the Founding Fathers.  A complete historical copy of the United States government going back to the ratification of the Constitution.

Duke’s fingers traced the edge of the photograph—Washington’s face, eerily perfect, suspended in some gelatinous fluid inside a translucent pod. The edges of the image were smudged, as if Felton had taken it in a hurry, his hands shaking. "This is impossible," Duke muttered, but the words tasted like ash. The proof was right there: Jefferson’s clone, mid-sentence in a speech Duke had seen footage of a hundred times. Same inflection. Same pause for breath. *Same fucking mole above his eyebrow.*

Flagg leaned forward, his voice a blade wrapped in velvet. "Felton didn’t just find a hive, Conrad. He found their *workshop*. Cobra-La’s been refining their replicants for centuries. Subtle tweaks—enough to steer history, never enough to tip their hand." He tapped Lincoln’s clone, frozen mid-emancipation. "Imagine if the *real* Honest Abe had been… swapped out before Gettysburg. Or FDR before Yalta. How many decisions—how many wars—were theirs… and how many were *theirs*?"

A cold sweat prickled down Duke’s spine. He thought of Scarlett’s last mission—the one she’d begged him to cancel. A routine extraction in Karachi that went sideways when the *entire* local police force opened fire with Cobra-issue rifles. The brass had called it bad intel. Now? Now he wondered if someone had *wanted* her dead. His fist clenched around the file. "Felton’s coordinates. You sending me in?"

"Not directly." Flagg had finally regained his composure. "There is a location Felton was known to visit when his recon went sideways. Since I have not had any comms with him in months, I am praying he's there." He slid a dog-eared Polaroid across the desk—a crumbling brownstone in Brooklyn, its fire escape rusted into a skeletal grin. Duke recognized it instantly. Mama Leone’s boarding house. A relic from the Cold War, unofficially sanctioned as a safehouse for assets too hot for official channels. The kind of place where the walls still had bullet holes from ‘83 and the landlady asked no questions if you paid in cash.

Duke’s thumb traced the photo’s torn edge. "You expect me to walk in there *blind*? If Felton’s gone rogue—if he *believes* this shit—he’ll put a bullet in me before I clear the foyer."

Flagg’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. "He won’t. Because you’re taking *her*." A second photo joined the first—a woman in her late fifties, dark-eyed and sharp-boned, her hair pulled into a no-nonsense bun. Duke’s breath hitched. Esther Levine. Codename: *Chronograph*. Mossad’s legendary "timekeeper," retired after Beirut ‘91. The only handler Felton ever trusted.

Duke's fingers froze mid-air above the Polaroid. The fire escape in the grainy image triggered something—not just recognition, but *connection*. "Hold on. *Brooklyn*?" His voice tightened like a winch cable. "That's where Tunnel Rat grew up. Is there any reason to believe Specialist Lee is there as well?"

Flagg exhaled through his nose, slow and deliberate, like a man measuring how much truth he could afford. "Nicholas Lee hasn't been seen since the Archives op. But if Felton's recruiting from the old roster..." He trailed off, letting the implication hang.

The boarding house’s address glared up at Duke from the file—a corner of Myrtle Avenue so deep in Bushwick it might as well have been its own sovereign nation. Tunnel Rat’s childhood stomping grounds. Duke remembered the wiry little bastard grinning over a hand-drawn map during the siege of Benzheen, marking sewer routes with a chewed-up pencil. *"Ain’t no tunnels I can’t navigate, boss. Born in ‘em."*

Duke’s knees gave out. He crashed into the chair opposite Flagg, the leather creaking under his weight like a coffin lid. "Christ, Randall." His voice was hoarse, stripped raw. "If *any* of this is true..." His fingers twitched toward the dossier, the photo of Washington’s clone staring up at him with hollow eyes. "Then not a single page of American history can be trusted." The room tilted slightly—or maybe that was just his world detonating. He steadied himself against the desk, knuckles whitening. "For that matter," he eyed Flagg with a blade’s-edge glare, "how do I know *you’re* not one of Golobulus’ puppets?"

Flagg didn’t flinch. Instead, he rolled up his sleeve with deliberate slowness, revealing a jagged scar that ran from wrist to elbow—puckered and keloid, the kind that never healed clean. "Sierra Gordo. ‘89. You dragged me out of that burning APC while Cobra shot the tires out from under us." He tapped the scar tissue, the sound dull and thick. "Clones don’t scar. Their bodies reset. Ask Doc if you don’t believe me."

Duke’s breath hitched. He remembered that day—the stench of melting rubber, Flagg’s blood hot on his hands as he’d hauled him through the crossfire. The memory was too visceral, too *human* to be fabricated. He exhaled through his teeth. "Fair enough. But that doesn’t explain why *you* get to know the truth while the rest of us—" His throat closed around *Scarlett’s* name again.

Flagg walked around the Resolute Desk and placed a hand on his friend's shoulder.  "Let's get this out in the open.  You have been a mess since Scarlett died.  I understand that. I lost my Mary in the first assassination attempt at my inauguration. I swear, Conrad, if I could have gotten my hands on Firefly that day I would have torn him to pieces with my bare hands."

Duke’s fingers dug into the arms of the chair, the leather groaning under his grip. Flagg’s words—*I would have torn him to pieces*—echoed in his skull, too raw, too *familiar*. He’d spent nights imagining the same thing, replaying Karachi in his head, rewriting the ending where he got there faster, where he took the bullet meant for her. His voice came out hoarse. "Difference is, Randall. You *knew* who killed Mary."

Flagg’s hand tightened on his shoulder. "And you think I don’t know who killed Shana?" The use of Scarlett’s real name—the one only her closest friends ever spoke—hit Duke like a gut punch. Flagg leaned down, his breath hot against Duke’s ear. "Firefly didn’t pull that trigger in Karachi. The bullet that killed her was *American issue*. M4 carbine. Serial number scrubbed, but the rifling matched a batch stolen from Fort Bragg six months prior." He let that sink in, then added, quieter, "Same batch that showed up in Cobra-La’s Yukon armory last year."

Duke’s head snapped up. "You’re saying—"

"Yes, Duke.  It is all connected."

Duke stared at the Polaroid of Mama Leone’s boarding house until his vision blurred. The rusted fire escape looked like the ribs of some long-dead beast. "You think Felton’s been hiding there all this time?"

Flagg shook his head. "Doubtful. But Esther knows how to reach him. She’s the only one he trusts." He slid a burner phone across the desk. "Her number’s pre-loaded. Call it when you’re three blocks out. No sooner."

Duke pocketed the phone without looking at it. His mind was already tracing routes—subway lines, back alleys, every potential ambush point between the White House and Brooklyn. Old habits. "And if she’s compromised?"

Another deep breath from Flagg. "I hate to say this out loud but if you believe that to be the case, you are to use extreme prejudice."

Duke swallowed hard, his resolve returning. "Is that an order, Mr. President?"

Flagg steepled his fingers. "An order, yes. From the President, no. This order is coming from General Randall Flagg."