### Part 1

The chill at Fort Redstone wasn’t just in the air; it was in the stares. It was a 0500-hours kind of cold that dug into your bones, but I was used to it. What I wasn’t used to was the silence. Not the respectful silence of a disciplined unit, but the heavy, judgmental silence of exclusion.

I was Sergeant Sarah Whitaker, a fresh transfer from the medic corps, and in the eyes of the command school cadets, I was a joke.

I stood at the edge of the yard, hands locked behind my back, my boots polished to a mirror finish. It didn’t matter. The polish couldn’t hide the whispers.

“Why is she even here?”
“Medic corps. Probably begged her way in.”
“She doesn’t belong in command.”

I kept my eyes forward. I held my stance. But I heard every word.

Then came Lieutenant Blake Morgan. He was twenty-six, walked like he owned the ground the base was built on, and carried the kind of arrogance that only comes from a life without failure. He stopped just short of me, a smirk playing on his lips.

“Transfer, huh,” he muttered, just loud enough for the cadets behind him to hear.

“Sergeant Whitaker,” I corrected him, my voice flat, my gaze fixed on the horizon.

“Not here,” Morgan shot back, his smirk widening. “Here, you’re just another cadet, trying to keep pace.”

The group behind him snickered. “Medics playing soldier,” one of them scoffed. Another added that I “probably earned my spot with pity points.”

I didn’t flinch. I didn’t turn. I didn’t give him the satisfaction of a reaction. I learned a long time ago that the loudest man in the room is usually the weakest. My job wasn’t to win their approval. My job was to observe.

By nightfall, the whispers had turned to open mockery. In the locker room, Morgan was holding court, retelling the morning’s exchange.

“She actually corrected me,” he said, pitching his voice high to mimic mine. “‘Sergeant Whitaker.’” He barked a laugh, and his pack of followers joined in.

“Bet she can’t even strip a rifle without Googling it,” one said.
“She’ll wash out in a week,” another piled on.

I was at the far end, unlacing my boots. Calm. Deliberate. Silent.

But someone else was watching. Corporal Nina Torres. She was sharp, quiet, and missed nothing. As I folded my uniform into my locker, a small, worn patch slipped from my pocket and hit the concrete floor with a soft thwack.

Before anyone else even noticed, Nina had snatched it up. I saw her eyes lock on the stitching. Three words in black thread on faded gray.

“Iron Wolf Unit.”

Her breath hitched. I could see the wheels turning. The name was a ghost, a whisper in classified briefings, a story you weren’t supposed to have heard.

She looked up at me, her eyes wide with a question she didn’t dare ask. I simply held out my hand. She slipped the patch back to me discreetly. I took it, tucked it away, locked my locker, and left without a word.

The next two weeks were a special kind of hell. Morgan made sure of it. During a combat drill, he singled me out.

“Careful out there, Whitaker,” he jeered, his voice carrying across the field. “Wouldn’t want you to bruise those precious medic hands.”

Laughter rolled across the recruits. I ignored him. I completed the drill. But I wasn’t watching Morgan. I was watching the ridgeline above the course. My eyes scanned the perimeter, narrowing on a specific spot.

Later that evening, long after drills, I walked the perimeter alone. My hand brushed along the cold chain-link fence. I stopped where the tree line pressed in close, my gaze fixed on a high-mounted corner camera.

Earlier, it had flickered. Just 1.7 seconds of dead feed. A glitch, most would assume. I knew better. Glitches don’t happen on a secure military base.

I pulled a battered notebook from my pocket, scribbled a time and a coordinate, and kept walking.

The next night, the strategy room was packed. Cadets filled the tiered seating, the air restless. Lieutenant Morgan was at the front, lounging against the podium, that insufferable grin plastered on his face.

The lights dimmed. The projector flared to life, then froze. A low chime echoed through the hall.

A notification flashed across the instructor’s console. *Restricted Access Login. Authorization Code: Aaron Wolf Einz.*

A ripple of unease spread through the room. The instructor frowned, tapping at the keyboard, but the system was locked.

Then, my tablet—sitting dark and untouched on the desk in front of me—buzzed once. I glanced down. One new message. No sender. No subject. Just four words glowing on the screen.

“Aaron Wolf, stand by.”

My blood turned to ice. My hand, reaching for the tablet, froze mid-air. Across the aisle, I saw Nina Torres catch the flash of the text. Her eyes widened, her lips parting as the name from the patch and the code on the screen clicked into place.

*Aaron Wolf.*

She didn’t know what it meant. Not really. But she knew one thing. I was no ordinary medic. And someone, somewhere, had just pulled my pin.

The next morning, the tension in the training hall was so thick you could cut it. The override. The locked system. The whispers were no longer about me, but about the ghost in the machine.

Except for Morgan. He leaned against the podium, arrogant as ever.

“Guess the medic finally got the attention she wanted,” he announced, loud enough for the front rows. “Probably hacked the system herself.”

A few uneasy chuckles. The laughter was thinner today. I sat in the back, tablet closed, posture perfect. My heart was a cold, steady drum against my ribs.

Nina cast a worried glance back at me. “Sarah,” she whispered. “Last night. That message…”

I kept my eyes forward. But she saw my fist, clenched white-knuckled on my knee.

Then the lights flickered. Once. Twice. And the hall went pitch black.

A collective gasp. The outage lasted exactly seven seconds. When the lights flared back on, the central monitors were different. No login prompt. No code. Just one name, pulsing in bright white letters.

“Call. James Rorden. Inbound.”

The name meant nothing to them. To me, it meant the world was ending.

We heard the steps before we saw him. The heavy, measured thud of boots on marble, echoing from the corridor. They were steady. Intentional. Unstoppable.

The double doors at the back of the hall swung open. He stood there, framed in the doorway. Colonel James Rorden. Broad-shouldered, decorated, with the kind of eyes that had seen hell and hadn’t blinked. The air was sucked from the room. This man didn’t just command; he was command.

He said nothing. He just let the silence stretch, his gaze sweeping the room until it locked on me.

For the first time since I’d arrived, I moved. Not in fear. In recognition.

Rorden moved down the aisle, each step a hammer blow. When he spoke, his voice was low, but it rolled over us like thunder.

“Iron Wolf, stand by.”

The hall froze. Two hundred cadets stopped breathing. I saw Blake Morgan blink, his smirk finally faltering. “Wait, what?”

Rorden’s eyes snapped to him. “Lieutenant,” he said, his voice dropping to absolute zero. “At ease. You’ve said enough.”

Morgan’s jaw clicked shut. The color drained from his face.

Rorden turned back to me. “Sergeant Sarah Whitaker, front and center.”

I rose. My boots clicked on the floor in a steady rhythm as I walked the aisle and stopped three feet in front of him.

His expression was stone, but his eyes… his eyes held a history. “Good to see you again, Iron Wolf.”

Gasps rippled through the room. “This… this is some kind of joke,” Morgan stammered from his seat. “She’s just a transfer. A medic. We…”

Rorden cut him off without even looking at him. “You think you know who trains beside you?” His gaze swept the stunned faces. “You think rank and ribbons tell the whole story? You haven’t got a clue.”

He looked back at me, and his voice filled the room, layered with pride and a terrible memory. “Seven years ago, a covert team executed an unsanctioned rescue during the Dawson Ridge incident. Twelve Marines, trapped behind enemy lines. Standard extraction failed. The mission was officially written off as lost.”

He let the words hang in the dead air. “Then a single operator, call sign Iron Wolf, led a four-person phantom squad straight into hostile territory. No air cover. No reinforcements. No chance.”

He paused, his eyes never leaving mine. “Forty-seven minutes later, every single one of those twelve Marines was walking free.” He took a deep breath. “She commanded that unit.”

A heavy, crushing silence. “And she saved my life.”

Nina Torres was staring, her chest rising and falling rapidly. Blake Morgan looked like he’d been punched in the gut.

Rorden finally turned to face him fully, his voice a blade. “You mocked her,” he said quietly. “You called her weak.”

“I… I didn’t know,” Morgan whispered.

“That’s exactly the point, Lieutenant,” Rorden snapped. “You never asked.”

He faced the hall again. “From this point on, you will address her properly. Sergeant Sarah Whitaker, Iron Wolf Unit.”

Then, something incredible happened. A lone cadet in the back row slowly rose, his heels clicking together, and his hand snapped into a salute. Another followed. Then another. In seconds, the hall was filled with the sharp crack of boots, two hundred cadets on their feet, two hundred arms raised in perfect, unified respect.

I stood there, silent, my expression unreadable. I wasn’t the medic. I wasn’t the joke. I was Iron Wolf.

But Rorden wasn’t finished. He stepped closer, lowering his voice so only I could hear. “They see it now,” he murmured. “But this isn’t about them.”

My jaw tightened. “Then who is it about?”

His gaze hardened. “Someone’s watching this base,” he said flatly. “Someone who shouldn’t be.”

My blood, which had been ice, now turned to fire. “Then it starts again,” I whispered.

He gave a single, grim nod. “Welcome back, Iron Wolf.”

### Part 2

The salutes dropped, but the silence remained, heavier than before. It was no longer the silence of judgment, but of awe. And fear. I was a ghost they suddenly realized was real.

As the cadets filed out, their eyes carefully avoided mine, Rorden and I were left alone in the hall.

“The camera flicker on the west perimeter,” I said, not as a question.

“You saw that,” he replied. “I knew you would. It wasn’t a glitch. They’ve been probing us for weeks. That override last night? That was a signal. ‘Aaron Wolf.’ They were trying to flush you out.”

“They succeeded,” I said flatly.

“They did,” Rorden agreed. “Which means they’re close. And they’re bold.”

That night, the sky opened up. Rain hammered Fort Redstone as if trying to wash the base off the map. I sat on my bunk, my encrypted tablet glowing with those same four words. “Iron Wolf, stand by.”

Before I could even process it, the alarms ripped through the compound. “BREACH DETECTED! WEST PERIMETER! ALL UNITS, ALL UNITS!”

The barracks exploded into chaos. Cadets spilled from their bunks, fumbling with gear, shouting. Sirens screamed, cutting through the thunder.

Within minutes, the strategy hall was a swirling mass of wet gear and panicked energy. Rorden stood at the central console, firing commands. “Lock down Alpha and Bravo gates! I want sensors at full power! Secure the armory!”

A young officer, his face pale, cut through the noise. “Sir! The alarms… they’re not from the perimeter!”

Rorden spun on him. “What?”

“They’re internal,” the officer said, his voice shaking. “Main security hub. Sub-level two. Whoever’s inside… they were already here.”

The room went dead silent. Rorden’s eyes found me across the room. There was no order, just a look.

“South wing,” I said.

He nodded. “Take Torres,” he commanded.

My eyes found Nina. She was already grabbing a sidearm. She was scared, but she was steady. She was a good choice.

We moved. We didn’t run; we sprinted, boots slamming on the polished floors, pushing through the shadowed emergency lighting of the south corridors. This was my world. The chaos, the shadows, the hunt.

“This way,” I whispered, pulling Nina into a maintenance passage.

“How do you know?” she panted.

“They’re not heading for the armory. They’re heading for the data core,” I said. “It’s what I would do.”

We burst into the main systems corridor. It was empty. Too empty.

“Where…” Nina started.

“Quiet,” I hissed. I scanned the walls. And there it was. A vent panel, just beside the security feed conduit. Two of the screws were freshly scarred.

“They’ve been in the walls,” I muttered. And then I heard it. Faint. Subtle. The scuff of a rubber sole on concrete. Behind us.

I spun, leveling my weapon in one fluid motion. “Step out. Now.”

From the shadows of an alcove, a figure emerged. He was dressed in black fatigues, carrying suppressed gear that I’d never seen in a Marine inventory. He froze for half a second, sizing us up. Then he lunged.

He went for me, underestimating Nina. Nina fired.

The sound was a dull *thwack*. The intruder dodged, impossibly fast, the round sparking off the wall where his head had been. He didn’t try to fight. He bolted, disappearing down a cross-corridor.

“He’s running to something,” I yelled. “Nina, cut him off at the junction! Go!”

She didn’t hesitate. She sprinted.

I gave chase, my legs pumping, my senses on fire. I tore through the twisting corridors of the lower maintenance wing, the intruder always one corner ahead. He was fast, but I was relentless.

I skidded to a halt at the corridor’s end. The main security panel for the entire wing. He was gone. Vanished.

But he’d left something behind. Affixed to the panel, a small, dark device was blinking with a silent, steady green light. I ripped it from the panel, my fingers tracing its casing. I knew this tech. I knew the machine-tooled precision.

I walked back to the command center as dawn was breaking. The sirens were off. The base was secure. The intruders, at least three of them, were gone. No casualties. Nothing stolen.

I dropped the device on the table in front of Rorden. It clinked heavily. “This wasn’t an attack,” I said, my voice rough. “They weren’t here to steal or destroy.”

Rorden’s face was a dark thundercloud. “No,” he said, picking it up. “They were testing us. They were testing you.”

I looked at the device. “It’s U.S. military issue,” I said. “Top-shelf. Someone inside authorized this.”

Across the room, Lieutenant Blake Morgan stood, dripping wet, his arrogance completely gone, replaced by a hollow, sickening realization. “I… I didn’t know,” he muttered, his voice barely audible.

I turned to look at him, my expression unreadable. All that energy he’d spent mocking me, all that time he’d wasted proving his dominance, while the real threat was already inside the wire.

I held his gaze for a long, cold moment. “Now you do.”

I turned and walked out of the hall, leaving the device, the Colonel, and the shocked cadets behind me. The rain had stopped, but the air was still heavy. I stood under the gray dawn, my eyes on the misty horizon.

The call sign I had buried years ago was alive again. They wanted to see if the Wolf still had teeth. They were about to be severely mistaken.

### Part 3

The walk back to the barracks was a gauntlet. The cadets who had lined the walls to mock me now couldn’t meet my eyes. They parted for me like I was a live explosive, a wave of whispers and averted gazes following me down the hall. The air of awe in the strategy room had curdled into fear. I wasn’t their peer. I wasn’t even human to them anymore. I was a myth. And myths are terrifying.

Morgan was already there, slumped on his bunk, his head in his hands. His entire world—the one where he was at the top—had been detonated.

Only Torres was different. She was waiting by my locker, her arms crossed, her expression a mix of adrenaline and a thousand questions.

“Iron Wolf,” she said, testing the name. It felt strange on her lips. “The Dawson Ridge incident. That’s… that’s not in the history books.”

“It’s not supposed to be,” I said, my voice flat as I began to strip the mud from my gear.

“That patch,” she whispered. “I thought… I don’t know *what* I thought. A knock-off. A story.”

“It’s not a story, Corporal.”

“So what happens now?” she pressed. “You’re not just a cadet. You’re… *her*.”

“I’m Sergeant Whitaker,” I said, my voice sharp, cutting. “And you’re Corporal Torres. We have a security problem. Everything else is noise.”

She nodded, but her eyes told me she knew that was a lie.

The “security problem” was sitting in Rorden’s private office an hour later. The device I’d pulled from the panel was a “ghost key.” A passive data tap designed to do one thing: clone the base’s rolling security codes every 24 hours.

“It’s been active for three weeks,” Rorden said, his voice a low growl. He tossed a file onto the desk. “It was planted *before* you arrived.”

“So they weren’t trying to flush me out,” I reasoned, my mind clicking. “They were already here. My arrival… my cover… it just complicated their plan.”

“It forced their hand,” Rorden corrected. “That ‘Aaron Wolf’ signal? That was a panic move. They realized who was here. They had to know if you were active. The breach last night wasn’t a test. It was a retrieval. They were trying to pull their own device.”

“And I interrupted them,” I finished. “They left their toy.”

“Which means they’re not done.” He leaned forward, the full weight of his command pressing on me. “And now I have to tell you why you’re really here, Sarah. This isn’t just a command school.”

He unlocked a drawer and pulled out a single blueprint. “Fort Redstone is a cold storage facility. Sub-level 4, underneath the main armory, holds a prototype. Project Chimera.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“Nobody has. It’s a next-generation AI command-and-control system. Think of it as a strategic planner that can run a thousand war-game scenarios in a second. It’s designed to network and control our entire automated drone and armor fleet. It’s currently dormant. Decommissioned.”

“A decommissioned prototype. Why steal that?”

“Because,” Rorden said, his voice dropping, “it’s not decommissioned. That’s the cover. It’s the failsafe. If our primary command grid ever goes down, Chimera is what brings us back online. In the wrong hands, it wouldn’t just win a battle. It could cripple NATO’s entire command structure from the inside out.”

My blood ran cold. “My mission was never to ‘observe.’ It was to guard this thing.”

“Your mission was to be my eyes and ears, disguised as a cadet, until we could root out the internal threat,” he confirmed. “Now the threat is external, too. And they’re inside the wire.”

The base was locked down. No one in, no one out. The traitor was still here.

The hunt began. I stopped being a cadet and started being a hunter. I lived in the security hub, reviewing hours of footage. The “pale-faced officer” from the breach… he was clean. Just a kid in over his head.

My focus shifted. If the device was planted three weeks ago, who had access to that maintenance corridor? The list was short: high-level command, senior maintenance, and one civilian contractor group that had been upgrading the HVAC system.

And then there was Morgan.

I found him at the indoor range, long after hours. He was trying to shoot, but his hands were shaking so badly he couldn’t load the magazine. The *click-click-click* of his failed attempts echoed in the empty space.

I walked up, took the magazine from his nerveless fingers, seated the round, and handed it back.

He didn’t look at me. “They’re… they’re all looking at me,” he whispered. “Like I’m a joke. Like *I’m* the medic.”

“Get used to it,” I said, loading my own weapon.

“You… you let me,” he stammered, his voice thick with a humiliation I knew all too well. “You stood there, day after day, and you let me… let all of us… treat you like dirt.”

I raised my pistol, sighted the target, and fired. A perfect bullseye.

“You were the perfect cover, Lieutenant,” I said, not looking at him. “You were loud. Arrogant. Predictable. You drew all the fire. They never even looked at me. You did your job.”

“That’s not… I’m not…”

“You’re a distraction,” I said, firing again. Bullseye. “The question is, what are you now?”

Before he could answer, a new alarm blared. Not a breach. Not a fire. A medical emergency.

“All personnel, medical alert. Barracks C. Bunk 414.”

My blood turned to ice. Bunk 414. The pale-faced officer.

We ran. Rorden met us at the door. It was already too late.

The officer was in his bunk, just as the alert said. An empty syringe was on the floor beside him. A classic “overdose.” Tidy. Too tidy.

Rorden’s men were already securing the scene. “Keep back,” one of them said.

I ignored him, pushing past. I was a medic, after all. I dropped beside the body. His skin was still warm. I checked his pupils. Pinned. I checked his arm.

“No needle marks,” I said.

Rorden looked at me. “What?”

I lifted the officer’s head. On the back of his neck, just below the hairline, was a single, tiny puncture. A compressed air injection.

“This wasn’t an overdose. It was an execution,” I stated. “They staged it. He was suffocated first—see the petechiae around the eyes? This… this was just to make it look like suicide. A pro job.”

The enemy was cleaning house. The officer was their inside man. He’d gotten them in, planted the device, and managed the security logs. Now he was a loose end.

Rorden’s face was granite. “They’re moving fast. They know we found the tap. They’re cutting their losses and accelerating the timeline.”

He pulled me aside, his voice a whisper. “There’s something else.” He held up the ghost key I’d found. “The tech. The signature on the motherboard. It’s ‘Spectre’ tech.”

The name hit me like a physical blow. “Spectre” was the callsign of my comms specialist on the Dawson Ridge mission. Alex “Spectre” Kincaid. He was brilliant. He was my friend. And he was listed KIA.

“He’s alive, Sarah,” Rorden said, his voice grim. “And he’s here.”

This changed everything. This wasn’t a mission. It was a reunion.

We had to assume “Spectre” had full control of the internal network. The lockdown was useless. He wasn’t *in* the base; he *was* the base.

As if on cue, the lights went out again. Not just the hall. The *entire base*.

The red emergency power kicked in, bathing everything in a hellish glow.

And then a voice came over the PA. Not Rorden’s. Not an alarm. A synthesized voice. Cool. Calm. Chillingly familiar.

“Hello, Iron Wolf. Been a long time. Did you miss me?”

The base was now his kill box.

“I’m in Sub-level 4, Sarah,” Alex’s voice echoed through the compound, casual as if he were ordering coffee. “Project Chimera is a beautiful piece of work. A shame you never got to see it. I’m taking it with me. But first, a little housekeeping.”

*Click. Hiss.*

The barracks doors slammed shut, the electronic locks engaging. The fire suppression system kicked in… but it wasn’t water. It was Halon gas.

“You have 15 minutes to get to me, Sarah,” Spectre’s voice continued, a playful, monstrous tone under the synthesis. “Or 200 cadets, and your new friend Lieutenant Morgan, choke to death. Your choice, Wolf. The mission, or the men? Just like old times.”

Rorden, Torres, and I were locked in the command center. Morgan was trapped in the barracks.

“He’s sealed us in!” Rorden roared, slamming his fist on the steel door.

I was already at the wall schematic. “I can’t get to the barracks *and* Sub-level 4.”

“You’re not,” Rorden said, his face a mask of terrible resolve. He went to an old-fashioned steel locker in the corner, the kind computers hadn’t replaced, and spun the dial. He pulled out a rebreather and a heavy key.

“You go for Spectre. I’ll get the barracks.”

“You can’t,” I said. “He’s locked you out.”

“He locked *Rorden* out,” he said, holding up the key. “He forgot this base was built in 1950. This is a manual override for the barracks ventilation. He can’t stop it.” He strapped a rebreather to his own face. “I’ll get my men.”

He looked at me, his eyes hard. “You get *your* man. End this, Wolf.”

Torres looked at me, her face pale but resolute. “What about me?”

I grabbed a second rebreather and tossed it to her. “You’re with me. Spectre’s good. He’s a ghost in the machine. But he’s a hacker, not a fighter. He’ll have protection. We’re the welcoming committee.”

Rorden nodded. “Go.”

We didn’t take the halls. We took the vents. Crawling through the guts of the base, the metal groaning around us, Spectre’s voice a constant, mocking presence over the comms he’d left open for me.

“Remember Dawson Ridge, Sarah? Remember that ‘forty-seven minutes’ the Colonel loves to talk about? You forgot the forty-eighth minute. The one where you left me.”

“You were dead, Alex!” I hissed into my comm, pulling myself over a junction. “The feed went dark! We… *I*… thought you were gone!”

“I was *hiding*!” he screamed, the voice cracking, the real man coming through. “Waiting for the exfil you never sent! They found me, Sarah. They… *changed* me.”

We dropped into the Sub-level 3 maintenance corridor. It was dark, save for the red emergency light. And two men in the same black fatigues as the intruder from the night before.

They raised their weapons. Torres was faster. She put two rounds in the first man’s chest. I didn’t even draw my pistol. I closed the distance, broke the second man’s wrist, and used his own weapon to put him down. Close. Fast. Quiet.

Torres stared. “Medic corps,” she breathed.

“Let’s go,” I said.

We blew the hatch to Sub-level 4. It was a vast, cold server room, the size of a football field, filled with rows of humming black towers.

In the center, bathed in the glow of a dozen monitors, sat Alex “Spectre” Kincaid.

He was waiting. He looked different. Thinner. Scarred. One eye was a milky white prosthetic. He wasn’t flanked by guards. He was alone.

“You’re slow, Wolf,” he said, not turning around.

“You were sloppy, Spectre,” I countered, weapon steady. “You killed the wrong officer. The pale-faced kid just managed the logs. Your *real* inside man was the quartermaster who signed for the HVAC contract. The one who’s probably halfway to Mexico by now. You’ve been working blind.”

I saw his shoulders tense. A flicker of doubt. That’s all I needed.

“Torres,” I said. “The servers.”

Torres didn’t question. She ran to the main console. “He’s downloading Chimera!”

“Of course he is,” I said, walking slowly toward him. “Stop the download, Torres.”

“I can’t! It’s… it’s not downloading. It’s uploading. He’s… he’s uploading himself *into* it.”

I froze.

“They… changed me,” Alex whispered, finally turning. His face was a mask of sweat. Wires ran from a console into a port on his temple. “They put this… this *poison* in me. I can’t control it. But Chimera can. It can filter me. Fix me.”

“Alex, that’s not how it works,” I said, lowering my weapon. “That’s not you. That’s a myth. Let me help you.”

“You *left me*!” he screamed. “I’m not letting you leave me again!”

His hand darted to his belt. Not a gun. A dead man’s switch.

“He’s wired the servers!” Torres yelled. “Explosives!”

“If I can’t be clean,” Alex sneered, his good eye wild, “then we all go dark. You and I, Sarah. We’ll finally be KIA together. The way it should have been.”

He clicked the timer. 30 seconds.

I looked at the switch. I looked at him. I looked at Torres.

“Torres,” I said, my voice impossibly calm. “On my mark, kill the main power.”

“That’ll trap us down here!”

“Mark!”

Torres fired into the main breaker. The room plunged into absolute darkness. The 30-second timer on the explosive… died.

The only light was the red glow from Alex’s cybernetic eye and the green blink of the dead man’s switch.

“You can’t shoot what you can’t see, Alex,” I whispered into the dark.

I moved. He was a comms guy. I was a hunter. The fight lasted six seconds. It was a symphony of brutal, practiced, silent movements.

When the emergency lights sputtered back on, I was standing over him. His switch was in my hand. The cable was ripped from his temple. He was on the ground, breathing, but he was out cold.

I keyed my comm. Rorden’s voice came through, laced with static and the sound of coughing. “Wolf… Status…”

“Sub-level 4 secure, sir,” I said, my voice shaking for the first time. “I have… I have a package, ready for pickup.”

I looked down at the man who had been my friend. “And Colonel… we need to talk about Dawson Ridge. You didn’t tell me the whole story.”

A long silence. Then: “Neither did I, Wolf. Get topside. The real mission just started.”