THE 4,000-METER LIE

PART 1: THE INVENTORY PRINCESS AND THE IMPOSSIBLE TRIAL

 

The Arizona defense testing range always felt like a furnace, even before the mid-day sun decided to use the concrete and steel as an anvil. On that day, the heat was a physical thing, pressing down on the hundreds of uniforms gathered to watch a spectacle. I stood back by the supply tent, an invisible woman in a uniform so plain it was a denial of rank.

Up at the firing line, thirteen of the best professional snipers in the country—all men, all with metal racks of accolades—were taking their turns. One by one, they knelt behind their high-powered rifles, checking wind and dialing turrets with the meticulousness of surgeons.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

Thirteen shots. Thirteen detonations of high-energy powder ripping across the desert.

Thirteen misses.

The spotters’ calls came back like a sick metronome: Two meters low. Three meters right. Dead vertical. Left 0.8.

General Ryan Carter, a man whose face was usually carved from granite, pulled off his shades. His jaw was clenched so tight I could see the muscle tick. He scanned the formation of defeated shooters, his voice carrying over the sudden, embarrassing quiet.

“Any shooters left?”

The silence that followed was heavy, humiliating. The best trigger pullers on the post had just eaten dirt. Who would step up now?

I took a deep breath. The heat didn’t touch the ice inside me.

Then, a voice—female, cool, and unshaken—sliced through the tension like cold steel.

“May I have a turn, sir?”

Every head snapped around. The general’s, the snipers’, the hundreds of troops lining the lane. They looked, not at a combat veteran, but at me: Captain Emily Brooks. Supply officer. Logistics. Inventory princess. Coffee girl.

I walked out from the shadow of the tent, my boots crunching the gravel. No flashy gear, no combat patches, just quiet certainty. If you’ve ever been counted out just for not fitting the mold, for being underestimated based on a title that doesn’t define your soul, keep reading. Because true strength doesn’t need a megaphone. It just needs a trigger and a perfect equation.

 

The Weight of the Morning

 

The day had started cold, the way the desert sun lies to you before it decides to burn. Dawn had cracked over the Arizona Post, and I was up, not by an alarm, but by the relentless, internal clock that had been calibrated in Kandahar. Thirty-two years old, medium height, brown hair twisted into a knot so tight it was a tactical decision. Nothing about me screams special, and that’s precisely the point. Special draws attention. Attention gets you killed.

I brewed black coffee in a dented steel pot—no sugar, no cream, just fire and fuel. While it dripped, I knocked out fifty push-ups on the icy barracks floor, then sit-ups, then stretches that pulled at old scars nobody ever asks about. Scars you carry in your muscle memory.

From under my bunk, I dragged a battered rifle case. Inside, an M2010 sniper rifle, retired three years back. The weapon wasn’t on the books anymore. It didn’t matter. Every morning, I broke it down, cleaned every part, and put it back together in four minutes flat. Muscle memory never sleeps; it just waits. I drank the coffee standing at the window, watching the sun gild the mountains, the rifle gleaming on my cot, a silent promise.

By 0600, I was striding across the training yard to the logistics office. I keep supply chains humming and ammo counts perfect. Not sexy. Not combat. Just vital. It’s the engine room.

A squad of young guys with fresh fades and loud jokes jogged past. One whistled. “Hey, coffee girl, any donuts today?”

Another piled on the disrespect. “Inventory princess. Don’t break a nail counting the 5.56!”

I kept walking, boots crunching the gravel, ignoring the noise. But my eyes—anyone paying attention would see them track motion like a hawk. I clocked the tiny hitch in the third guy’s left knee, the way the fourth babied his right shoulder. I saw the wind speed from the flags, the distance to the range from the echo of practice rounds. I see it all. I see the world in vectors and forces.

My first stop was the ammo depot. A rookie had dropped a crate. Rounds spilled everywhere—mixed calibers, different grains. Chaos.

“Damn,” the kid muttered, dropping to his knees.

I knelt beside him. No words. I didn’t need to look at the headstamps. My fingers sorted the bullets by caliber, grain, and maker in under thirty seconds. Each one placed exactly where it lives.

The rookie gawked. “How did you…?”

“Physics,” I said simply. I stood, brushed dust off my palms, and walked off.

Staff Sergeant Lopez, watching from the doorway, squinted. That wasn’t luck. That was schooling. Deep schooling. He filed it away, but stayed quiet.

The morning’s disrespect didn’t end with a whistle. At the restricted ordnance cage, I found a crucial manifest—the daily log of all 7.62 and six millimeter precision rounds—crumpled and stuffed into a nearby barrel of cleaning rags. Soaked through with oil. Deliberately ruined just moments before Major Powell required it for his sign-off.

I straightened my face, a mask of practiced neutrality, and looked toward the far end of the depot where two junior armorers—the same two who’d called me “coffee girl”—were conspicuously wiping down equipment and failing to meet my eye. It wasn’t just lazy. It was intentional sabotage meant to make me miss my deadline and look incompetent in a non-combat role. The petty malice was suffocating.

Without saying a single word, I walked to the nearest workbench, pulled out a fresh manifest sheet, and began rewriting the entire inventory from memory. The rapid, rhythmic scratching of my pen against the ledger paper was the only sound, each entry a stark, silent rebuke. The count, batch numbers, expiration dates, and total weight flowed perfectly onto the new form, accurate down to the last digit. I didn’t check my notes. I didn’t consult the physical stock. When the armorers finally sidled past, pretending to leave, I simply placed the completed, spotless manifest exactly where the ruined one had been, a full five minutes ahead of schedule. The silence that followed was heavy with a grudging, resentful acknowledgment of my competence—far more potent than any shouted argument.

 

The Stomach for the Math

 

Later that morning, I sat in a briefing room with fifteen other officers. Major Powell clicked through the slides. “The 4,000-meter trial,” he declared. “Experimental extreme range program. We’re picking shooters for elite training.”

Names flashed on screen. Top-tier snipers, match winners, combat vets with confirmed kills at crazy distances. My name never showed.

“Captain Brooks,” Powell said without glancing my way. “This is combat billets only. No supply officers.”

I nodded once. No pushback, no whine, but my hands on the table tightened for half a heartbeat.

Just outside the briefing room, Staff Sergeant Lopez intercepted my path. He was a barrel-chested man, his uniform straining over hard muscle, bearing a reputation earned in places the media never talked about.

“Brooks,” he rumbled, his voice low but tight with professional condescension. “You think that nod sold anyone? Look, I saw you sort those rounds. Good logistic skill. Good for a support role.”

He stepped closer, his shadow falling over me. “But this is combat. The 4,000-meter trial isn’t about counting. It’s about being built different. It’s about the killer instinct. You don’t have the one that makes you want to be on that slide. You don’t have the stomach for the math when the wind tries to rip the barrel off your shoulder, Captain.”

He paused, letting his words land like brass slugs. “Don’t embarrass the command by even thinking about stepping outside your lane. Go count boxes. Leave the impossible to the professionals.”

I didn’t flinch. I simply tilted my head, my gaze penetrating and utterly devoid of malice.

“Sergeant,” I said, my tone cool and level. “The stomach for the math is the only thing that separates a shooter from a gambler. And my math is perfect. If the range opens up, I’ll see you on the mat.”

I didn’t wait for his response, walking past him and leaving the senior sniper standing alone, a vein ticking visibly in his temple, unsure if he’d just been threatened or promised a public humiliation.

Back in my quarters, the sun was brutal now. I passed the range where the chosen shooters were warming up but didn’t slow down. In my room, I opened my wall locker. Under folded uniforms, a small cedar box. I lifted the lid gently. Inside, a faded photo of five soldiers in desert camo. Younger Emily, rare grin, surrounded by her squad. Beneath the picture, a silver casing etched with coordinates and a date: Afghanistan 2016.

I shut the box, sliding it back into shadow. Some memories stay buried, but they never decay. They fuel the quiet competence.

 

The Colonel’s Warning and the General’s Resolve

 

Two days later, the whole base packed the extreme range lane. General Carter stood in front of hundreds, sharp despite the furnace heat. Behind him, a giant screen showed a target 4,000 meters out—almost 2.5 miles.

“This isn’t ego,” Carter started, his voice carrying. “This is stretching what humans can do. The Phantom training program needs shooters who can thread impossible shots under impossible conditions. Four thousand meters. Wind. Heat. Mirage. Bullet drop of over 800 feet. One round. Whoever rings steel earns the slot.”

Just as the first shooter prepared, a nervous colonel approached General Carter near the command trailer. His face was pale beneath his tan, his voice a frantic whisper.

“General, sir, we need to scrub this distance now. The atmospheric data from the range control tower shows a 14-degree Fahrenheit temperature inversion over the second mile, creating an unpredictable, oscillating mirage. We ran simulations. The margin of error for even the slightest wind adjustment at 4,000 meters is exponentially impossible. This isn’t a trial, sir. It’s a spectacle of failure. We’re going to shatter the morale of every elite shooter here.”

Carter listened, his eyes fixed on the distant target, almost invisible against the heat haze. He reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a worn photograph of his Kandahar fire team, and tucked it back in without a word.

He turned to the colonel, his voice a low, hard rasp that tolerated zero dissent. “Impossible is exactly what Phantom needs, Colonel. If they can’t face this range, they can’t face the threat. If the rules of physics are broken, we need to find the shooter who can write a new rule. The distance stays. Every miss today is a lesson they’d rather learn here than in a hot zone.”

The colonel swallowed hard, glanced from the general to the impossible distance, and retreated, the absolute finality of Carter’s resolve hanging in the desert air.

 

PART 2: THE EQUATION AND THE JUDGMENT DAY

 

 

The Kaleidoscope of Chaos

 

Thirteen elite snipers stepped up—men with three-digit body counts, men who lived by their charts.

The first shooter was meticulous. He checked wind with a Kestrel, logged humidity, and clicked the turret with surgeon precision. He breathed. Steadied. Fired.

The report cracked. Four seconds of nothing. Then the spotter’s call: Miss. Left 2M.

The snipers were not simply missing the steel. They were failing to even hold the same square meter. The spotters’ calls charted a dizzying pattern of dispersion—a visible map of the desert’s chaotic manipulation.

Captain Diaz, one of the elite, muttered to Lieutenant Parker: “They’re fighting a kaleidoscope. Look at the mirage on the 3,000-meter mark. It’s not just bending the light. It’s making the target jump, breathing in and out with the heat pockets. You can’t dope for that because it changes in the bullet’s flight time.”

A renowned competitive shooter threw his log book onto the ground in frustration, pages of useless data fluttering open. His teammate knelt gently, retrieving the book, his expression one of profound professional defeat.

“It’s the Coriolis,” he whispered, a tremor in his voice. “We adjusted for spin, but the density shift is throwing the vertical plane. It’s too complex. The target might as well be on another planet.”

The collective realization settled over the elite crew. This wasn’t about equipment or skill anymore. It was a physics problem. Too dense, too dynamic, and too cruel for human calculation.

The misses piled up: third, fourth, fifth. The crowd’s buzz faded to nervous quiet. Sixth, seventh, eighth. By the tenth miss, whispers rippled: Conditions must be rigged. The target must be busted. This is a psych-out.

General Carter watched, stone-faced. Eleventh miss, twelfth, thirteenth. Captain Diaz, the final shooter, lowered his rifle, defeated. He’d rung steel at 3,200 meters before. This should be doable. But it wasn’t.

Carter scanned the formation. “Anyone else?”

Silence dragged. Then, I walked forward. The “coffee girl.”

Lieutenant Parker actually laughed out loud. “You for real right now?”

Captain Diaz smirked. “She doesn’t even rate a combat badge. Maybe she’ll shoot the moon.”

I kept walking, eyes locked forward. I didn’t hear the mockery; I heard the variables.

 

The 0.00001 Inch Challenge

 

As I reached the firing line, Captain Diaz, still stewing from his humiliating miss, spoke up with a malicious edge.

“Wait a minute, General. If she’s going to make a spectacle, let’s at least make it fair. That Chay-Tac has a fresh zero. Brooks, the supply clerk, hasn’t fired a precision round in three years. She probably couldn’t tell the difference between a mil-dot and a donut. I demand she use my rifle.”

He gestured toward his heavily customized, personally tuned long gun—a masterpiece of expensive engineering that required weeks to master. He wanted to ensure my failure, not just on my own terms, but on his.

General Carter started to intervene, but I cut him off, my voice slicing through the tension like cold steel.

“No, sir,” I stated, addressing Carter but keeping my eyes fixed on Diaz. “His rifle is doped to his breath control and his ocular bias. It’s his equation. I brought my own method.”

I reached into a small canvas pouch and produced a single, high-tolerance micrometer and a miniature spirit level. I carefully placed the level on the Chay-Tac scope rail, then, with uncanny speed, used the micrometer to check the exact distance of the locking lugs on the rifle’s bolt—the heart of its accuracy.

I glanced at Diaz, my expression utterly flat. “I know this weapon to 0.00001 of an inch,” I said. “If I miss, it won’t be the rifle’s fault.”

The raw, undeniable competence of my physical inspection, the way I treated the foreign weapon like an extension of my own nervous system, snapped the laughter out of the crowd’s lungs. Diaz could only watch, his challenge neutralized by my intimidating professionalism.

Carter studied me. Something scratched at his memory—something he couldn’t grab. “Captain Brooks,” he said, slow. “You get that this is 4,000 meters in shifty wind with mirage screwing ballistics past 500 meters.”

“Yes, sir,” I answered, calm. “I get it.”

Carter held my stare a long beat, then tipped his chin. “One round, Captain. Don’t waste it.”

 

The Communion with the Desert

 

The rifle waiting was a different model—a new, unfamiliar Intervention. I heaved it, felt the balance, and cycled the bolt. Around me, troops whispered and grinned. A supply clerk out-sniping gods.

I pulled a small leather journal from my pocket, flipping to pages crammed with scribbled dope, wind formulas, density tables, and Coriolis charts. I didn’t need the numbers; the act was a ritual. I eyed the wind flags, then the heat ripples dancing over the berm. My gaze traced invisible rivers in the air.

I drew one bullet from my pocket, a custom load, perfectly balanced. I seated it with ritual care. The crowd leaned in despite themselves.

I dropped prone, snugging the stock. Through the glass, the target swam, warped by temperature layers and sky trickery. It wasn’t where it looked. Physics lies at this range. But I speak fluent lies.

Breathing: Slow. Metronome steady. Heart rate: 58 BPM.

The desert noise—the murmuring crowd, the thrum of generators—all coalesced into a loud buzzing backdrop that most snipers tried to eliminate with deep concentration. I didn’t try to eliminate it. I processed it.

As I settled into that absolute perfect point of tension, my senses intensified beyond the realm of normal perception.

The faint woo-woo-woo of a helicopter engine miles away told me the pressure gradient was dropping slightly north. The dry, papery rattle of a tumbleweed snagged on the fence behind me indicated a new, lower ground-level gust not visible on the flags. I felt the micro-vibrations of the concrete slab through the cheek rest, sensing the subtle thermal shift in the pad beneath my body. My skin read the air density against my exposed forearms like Braille, translating invisible dynamic pressure differentials into pure, raw data.

This wasn’t observation. It was communion.

For a fraction of a second, the entire complex ecosystem of the desert became a single, perfectly legible three-dimensional blueprint of the bullet’s inevitable path. That silent moment of complete sensory absorption was the core of my viper ability. The reason I never needed the electronics everyone else relied upon.

Wind gusts without gadgets. I clicked 0.3 mil right.

The desert held its breath. Silence, thick, electric, humming. My universe shrunk to one dot, 4,000 meters away. Everything else vanished.

Wind 12 MPH, gusting 15. Northeast veering. That means right push, but gust adds vertical string. Dial left 1.8 mil. Down 0.4.

Temp 96 degrees. Barometer 30.12.

Drop at 4,000 meters is roughly 819 feet. 3.8 seconds flight time.

My mind raced numbers faster than fingers could type. Coriolis. Earth spin nudges right at this latitude. Counter left 6 inches. Spin drift. Rifling twist nudges right another 0.3 mil.

Adjust again. All in under ten seconds.

Finger kissed the steel—not yanking, caressing. Rifle fused to bone and will.

Half exhale. Pause. Heart thumps once, twice. On the third, between beats, in the pocket where flesh and machine sing harmony, I sent it.

CRACK.

Recoil, familiar, almost kind. The bullet leaped at 3,000 feet per second, a copper-jacketed prayer arcing 2.5 miles.

The crowd was frozen. The round climbed, peaked, and fell. Wind shoved, but my dope held. Gravity tugged, but I called it. Time stretched like taffy. 3.8 seconds of eternity.

Then: TING.

Faint, but pure. Metal kissing metal.

Spotter whispers: “Hit.” Then shouts: “HIT! BULLSEYE!”

The formation exploded.

 

The Indictment

 

I stayed ice. I safetied the rifle, set it down gently, and removed my ear protection. Hands rock steady, face serene.

The cheer from the troops was deafening, a sudden, cathartic explosion of sound. But it didn’t last. A strange, absolute silence fell over the firing line, dominated by the heavy, panting breathing of the thirteen elite shooters.

Captain Diaz, still kneeling by his untouched gear, was visibly shaking, his face drained of color as he stared at the screen’s dead center hole. Lieutenant Parker, who’d mocked me mercilessly, walked three feet behind the firing line and simply vomited into the gravel—the humiliation a physical gut punch.

The shock wasn’t just that I hit the target. It was how clean the hit was, proving their collective failure wasn’t due to impossible conditions, but due to their own comparative inadequacy.

Staff Sergeant Lopez, the man who had warned me to stay in my lane, slowly picked up the log book the competitive shooter had thrown down, and with a grim reverence smoothed out the crumpled pages, recognizing that every equation he had ever relied upon had just been rendered obsolete.

I didn’t spare any of them a glance. I adjusted the knot of my hair and waited for the general to speak, my composure a silent, devastating indictment of their swaggering, noisy efforts.

“Hold dead center,” Carter muttered, his voice still carrying. “Cleanest 4,000-meter shot he’s ever clocked. How? Did you dope that?”

“Physics, sir. Wind right to left 14.3 MPH average with gusts. 96 degrees spawned mirage at 600 meters. Compensated left 1.8 down 0.4. Standard ballistic. Standard.”

Lieutenant Parker looked sick. “Nothing standard about that.”

My face didn’t move. “Just math and reps.”

“Where’d you get the reps?” Carter asked.

I paused, a flicker. Then, “Afghanistan, sir. 2016. Operation Silent Guardian.”

Carter froze. “I was your overwatch.”

I added, soft, “The Kandahar Province, sir. Your platoon pinned in a mud-walled maze, eating fire from three rooftops. They were done. Then from nowhere, enemy gunners started dropping. One, two, three. Perfect dome shots from a ghost. They never spotted you.”

The general’s eyes blew wide. Memory slammed home. Command later said, “Phantom unit, call sign, Viper 1.” They never said, “Female.”

“You pulled us out of the fire,” Carter breathed.

I nodded once. The crowd had gone church quiet, but now it was reverence.

Carter did something rare. He smiled—real, warm, earned. He snapped a salute. “Welcome back, Viper 1.”

I returned it, razor crisp. Around us, soldiers slowly started to clap. Not mockery, not shock. Respect. The sound rolled like artillery across the sand.

 

The Weight of the Star and the Wall

 

Three days later, the jokes died. I still clocked in at logistics, still ran ammo spreadsheets. But when I crossed the grinder, troops nodded. Some threw salutes even outside my chain.

Lieutenant Parker found me at the depot, hands clasped behind his back, sheepish. “Captain Brooks, I owe you an apology.”

I looked up from my tablet. “For what?”

“For doubting you. For laughing.”

I weighed it, then nodded. “Apology accepted. You didn’t know.”

“Still, it was weak,” he said. “How do you shoot like that? I’ve trained ten years and never seen dope that fast.”

I set the tablet down. “You trained ten years. I calculated fifteen. Every shot is an equation. Solve the math. Ring the steel. But the feel isn’t magic. It’s volume. Ten thousand hours reading grass. Ten thousand more knowing bullet souls. Drill until math is heartbeat. Most want the trophy, not the grind.”

That afternoon, General Carter called me to his office.

“I dug,” he said, placing a small cedar box between us. “Phantom Cell 2014 to 2017. 47 confirmed kills past 1,500 meters. 17 missions. Zero friendly KIA.”

He looked at me. “You asked for supply. Why?”

“I was done, sir. Done dropping bodies.” The truth hung heavy.

“I get it,” Carter nodded. “But that shot three days ago, that wasn’t cobwebs. That was surgical. Muscle memory doesn’t retire.”

He opened the cedar box. Inside, a plain silver star, no ribbon, no fanfare. “This isn’t official. No cameras, no parade. Phantoms don’t get those, but I wanted you to wear it anyway. For duty beyond, for lives saved in the dark.”

He pinned it himself. I fingered the star, feeling its weight. “Thank you, sir.”

He slid a folder over. “We’re rebooting the Phantom program. New rules, new missions, new blood. We need someone to mold them. Someone who knows precision is discipline, not decibels.”

I opened the folder. Dossiers on fresh faces, hungry eyes. “You want me to teach?”

“I want you to command. Train them. Forge them into something the military’s never fielded.”

I studied the photos. So young, so sure, so blind to the bill. “When do I start?”

“0600 tomorrow.”

I stood and saluted. As I hit the hatch, Carter called, “Captain Brooks.”

I turned. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “Sorry it took me years to see you.”

My mouth softened a hair. “You see me now, sir. That’s enough.”

One week later, Dawn was cold and clean over the memorial wall on the east fence. Black granite drank the sunrise. Names etched deep: Sergeant Tyler Reed, Specialist Mia Wong, Corporal Jacob Holt, Lieutenant Ryan Quinn. My phantom squad. My family. The ones lost at Cobble. Three years back, bad intel walked them into a killbox. I dropped twelve tangos that day, shot till my fingers split, but I couldn’t save them all. Four names on this wall are mine.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, pressing my forehead to the stone. “So damn sorry.”

Boots crunched gravel behind me. General Carter stepped beside me, eyes on the names.

“I read the after-action,” he said. “You held that ridge 43 minutes solo against a battalion, and four still bought it.”

“14 would have without you.”

My jaw locked. “Math doesn’t numb the ache.”

“No,” Carter said soft. “It doesn’t. Why come back to the life? You had quiet and supply. Safe.”

I finally met his eyes. “Because those four up there didn’t get a vote. They’d want the mission to keep breathing. Train the next ones. Keep the wall shorter.”

“That’s why I tapped you.”

An hour later, I stood at the podium. Carter introduced me, calling me what we all prayed every troop becomes: “Skill without swagger, power without pride, accuracy without cruelty.”

Then I faced the formation.

“I’m no hero,” I said, clear. “I’m a troop who learned to aim. The real heroes are carved behind you. They charged the fire when others ducked. I just kept the body count lower.”

I paused. “If I teach you one thing, it’s this: precision is mercy. Every round you place perfect is a life you don’t have to mourn—yours or theirs. So when we train, I won’t make killers. I’ll make surgeons: exact, clean, respectful of the weight on that trigger.”

 

Round Two

 

That night, after ribbons and handshakes, I returned to quarters and packed: two duffles and a rifle case. Travel light. Old ghost habit.

A knock. General Carter stepped in, holding a thick folder. “Your orders.”

Paper says: Special Ops Training Command. Reality says: Phantom Cell.

“New paint. Same game,” I finished. Elite shooters, no-win missions, zero credit. I flipped it open. Schedule, syllabi. Five mugshots. Three guys, two women. All hungry.

“These my kids?” I asked.

“Your fire team. You’ll break them, build them, turn them into legend.”

“The quiet ones are the hardest,” I said, my voice dropping to a low, conspiratorial register. “They don’t fill the memory gap when things go south. They don’t pay the price of command.”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the spent casing, the one etched with the Kandahar coordinates. I didn’t offer it, just held it, letting Carter see the dull gleam of the empty shell.

“This is the price. A piece of the past that never leaves. If I take these five, you have to guarantee me they know the cost of the bullet, not just the velocity. No shortcuts. No compromise on the discipline that keeps them off a wall.”

Carter walked around the desk, stopping beside the flag, and placed his hand on the heavy folded corner of the training folder. “Captain Brooks, they will be your legacy, not your debt. The cost has already been paid. Now it’s time to build the armor.”

“And you think I can fix that?”

Carter locked eyes. “I think you can show them what mastery smells like, what discipline tastes like, what silent badassery feels like.”

“One rule. Name it.”

“My circus, my monkeys. No brass, no cameras, no ego. We win quiet, or we don’t win. Deal.”

“Deal.”

Two hours later, a C-130 squatted on the runway, engines whining awake. I crossed the tarmac, duffles slung, rifle case in hand. Sun bleeding out, sky bruised purple and gold.

I climbed the ramp, claimed a canvas seat, and buckled in. I pulled the silver-etched casing from my pocket, held it to the dying light, and watched it glow. Then I pocketed it, rested my skull against the cold fuselage, and shut my eyes.

The bird climbed into the black. Somewhere ahead, five rookies waited to learn what Phantom means. And Emily Brooks, Viper 1, was going to burn the lesson into their bones. Phantoms aren’t real, but their bullets never miss.