Part 1

The water was ice.

It hit my chest and ran in cold rivers down to my belt, soaking the thin fabric of my fatigues in seconds. It wasn’t a splash. It was a pour. Deliberate.

“You wear that uniform like it means something,” a voice sneered. “But up here, you’re nobody.”

I kept my eyes forward. I felt the silence of the C-17’s cargo hold shift. The low, guttural hum of the engines was suddenly secondary to the new sound: laughter. Braying, confident laughter from a half-dozen men who dripped testosterone and arrogance. SEALs. The best of the best, or so they told themselves.

I was just a woman in plain gray fatigues, no rank, no insignia, hitching a ride to a classified op. To them, I was invisible. A piece of furniture. And now, I was their entertainment.

I didn’t move. I didn’t speak. I just felt the cold water drip from my chin. I heard the men shifting, leaning in, energized by my non-reaction. I could smell the mix of sweat, gun oil, and stale coffee on them.

The one who had poured the water, a wiry one with a chipped front tooth I’d later learn was Sergeant Dean Voss, grinned at his commander.

Commander Blake Redden. I knew his file. All muscle and bravado, a man who walked into rooms and expected them to rearrange around him. His buzzcut glinted under the dim overhead lights. He leaned forward, his voice loud enough to carry over the engines.

“You got a name, or are we just calling you ‘Wet Shirt’ for the rest of the flight?”

More laughter. It bounced off the metal walls, hollow and sharp.

“What’s your deal?” Blake pressed, feeding off their reaction. “You get lost on your way to the mess hall and end up here?”

I slowly reached into my pocket, my movements measured. Calm. I pulled out a simple cloth. I wiped my face, deliberately. I wasn’t cleaning up a mess; I was resetting a timer. I folded the cloth, tucked it away, and finally, I looked at him.

My eyes met his. I didn’t let them waver. “You always talk this much before you know who you’re talking to?”

My voice was quiet. It wasn’t a challenge. It was a question.

The laughter died. Not all at once, but it sputtered out. Blake blinked, caught off guard. He was a man used to shouts, to posturing, to fear. He didn’t know what to do with quiet.

He recovered quickly, leaning back with a scoff. “Oh, she speaks. Guess we’ll find out what you’re made of, rookie.”

But the line had been drawn. And they, in their arrogance, felt the immediate need to cross it.

Dean, the one with the bottle, wasn’t done. He stepped forward. He didn’t splash me again. This was more intimate. He deliberately scraped his muddy combat boot down the shin of my trousers. A slow, grinding motion that left a thick, brown smear across the gray. It was petty. It was a physical marking of their territory, of their assumed superiority.

Another one, Lieutenant Grant Solen, Blake’s second-in-command, bumped my small pack with his own heavy gear bag. He knocked it hard against the metal wall. My comms gear. My life.

They watched my face, waiting for the crack. For the anger, the fear, the tears. Anything.

Dean even offered a sickly sweet, fake apology. “Whoops, Colonel,” he mocked, using a rank he clearly thought I didn’t deserve. “Didn’t see your poor little knees down there. Everything still intact?” His eyes flickered to the pack Grant had just hit, daring me to check it.

I didn’t.

I remained still for a beat. Then, I slowly extended my right boot. I hooked the toe under the strap of Grant’s heavy bag—the one he’d left in the aisle.

With a sudden, measured snap of my ankle, I pulled.

The bag, full of sharp edges and heavy equipment, tipped instantly. A cascade of loose items—a knife sheath, energy bars, and a small, complex thermal imaging unit—clattered across the metal floor.

The noise was brief, but it was loud. It cut through the engine hum. Every head in the hold turned. The pre-op chatter from the crew up front stopped.

I didn’t look at Grant. I just watched the expensive, sensitive equipment roll toward a grate.

Grant’s face was frozen. He’d been checkmated. He had to drop to his knees, scrambling to retrieve his gear before it was lost, avoiding the sharp edge of his own knife.

My movement was cold. Effortless. It said more than a shout ever could. It said, I am aware. I am precise. I am not the one you should be playing with.

Grant, furious and humiliated, got back to his seat. His face was red. He leaned across the aisle, his voice dripping with that fake, calculated concern. “Hey, don’t take it personal. We just don’t see a lot of… well, whatever you are… on a flight like this. You sure you didn’t sneak on? Those fatigues look like they came from a surplus store.”

That’s when Dean, emboldened by his leader’s recovery, decided to push it one last time. He leaned over with his water bottle again. Just a small tip. Another splash, this time directly onto my boots.

“Oops,” he said, not even pretending it was an accident. “Got to keep you fresh, right? You’re looking a little out of place.”

I looked at the puddle at my feet. I didn’t sigh. I just adjusted the strap on my pack—the one Grant had hit—and sat back up.

“What’s the matter, sweetheart?” Dean pushed, his voice loud again, playing to the crowd. “You shy, or you just don’t know how to play with the big boys?”

The hyenas circled. The laughter returned, louder this time.

I looked at Dean. My gaze was steady. Unblinking. “You done?”

Two words. Soft, but sharp as a blade.

The laughter stopped. Dead. Like a radio losing its signal. Dean opened his mouth, then closed it. His face twitched. He wasn’t sure if he’d just been dismissed or threatened.

I didn’t wait for him to figure it out. I turned my head, looking out the small port window at the endless gray clouds.

But Blake, the Commander, couldn’t let it go. He couldn’t stand the loss of control. He stood up, crossing his arms, his shadow falling over me.

“You know,” he said, his voice booming, addressing his whole team. “I’ve seen a lot of people try to fake it on ops like this. Wearing a uniform doesn’t make you one of us. So, what’s your story? You some desk jockey who got lucky, or you just here to fetch coffee?”

The air in the C-17 felt thick enough to choke on. The whole plane was holding its breath.

I didn’t look up right away. When I finally met Blake’s eyes, my face was calm. “I’m here to do my job,” I said, my voice low, but clear. Each word landed like a stone. “What’s yours?”

His jaw tightened. He snorted and turned away, but his shoulders were stiff. The jab had landed.

Grant, seeing his opening to re-establish the hierarchy, leaned in again. This time, he wasn’t just bullying. He was challenging my presence.

“All right, Colonel,” he spat the name. “We’re coming up on our entry zone brief. This is restricted access. You need to vacate this section now, or you’ll be in violation of operational security. This op requires clearance level Delta 6.” He held up a thick, plastic-coated mission brief, flashing the ‘CLASSIFIED’ stamp. “I assume your surplus store ID doesn’t have that attached to it.”

He slotted the brief into a secured pouch on the wall, locking it with an electronic click.

Blake nodded, his command presence regained. “We can arrange a seating change toward the tail end. Away from where the real operators are getting prepared.”

The plane hit a pocket of turbulence. A quick, hard jolt. I didn’t budge.

Grant, trying to take back the moment from the spilled bag, tossed a folded map onto my lap. “Hey, rookie. You know how to read this? Or did they not teach tactical symbols in whatever admin course you came from?”

I picked it up. A standard grid map, worn, covered in notations. I scanned it for less than a second. I set it back down on my knee.

“It’s a grid map,” I said, my voice flat. “You want me to read it to you?”

Grant’s face flushed. He snatched the map back, muttering “smartass.”

Dean, desperate to be one of the boys, pulled out his phone. He held it up, camera aimed at me. “Smile, rookie,” he grinned, mean and wide. “Got to get this for the team group chat. ‘Wet Shirt’s Big Day.’”

A few of them chuckled, egging him on.

I didn’t move. I didn’t even blink. I just looked at him, my eyes steady, memorizing his face.

“You sure you want that on record?”

Part 2

My question hung in the air, colder than the water on my chest. “You sure you want that on record?”

Dean’s grin froze. The hand holding the phone lowered, just a fraction. A flicker of… something. Not fear. Not yet. Just… uncertainty. The first crack in his bravado. He didn’t understand why he felt uneasy. He just did. The pack of hyenas behind him fell silent, waiting for their leader to reassert the pecking order.

He was a bully, and bullies operate on a simple script: action, reaction, escalation. My non-reaction, my quiet, reasonable question, had just thrown the script out the window. He didn’t know his next line.

He glanced at Blake, who was watching me with a new expression. The dismissive smirk was gone, replaced by a narrow-eyed, analytical stare. He was reassessing. He was a commander, after all, and even a bad one learns to spot an anomaly. I was an anomaly.

Blake opened his mouth, probably to cut the tension with another booming insult, but he never got the chance.

The plane’s intercom crackled to life. A burst of static, and then the pilot’s voice, suddenly stripped of its casual, ‘long-haul’ drawl.

STATIC “Maverick, this is Sky Eye. We’ve got a priority signal on the radar, fast approach. Signature unclear. Standby.”

A beat of silence.

STATIC “Correction, Sky Eye. Signal is… code Q24. I repeat, Q24 priority code. Anyone in the hold know what’s up?”

The casual tone from the pilot was gone. The air in the cargo bay turned to glass.

Q24.

It wasn’t a code you heard often. It wasn’t a distress call. It wasn’t a standard check-in. It was a high-level, high-clearance ‘Eyes On’ protocol. It meant someone, somewhere, with a very big, very powerful eye, was watching. It meant an asset of critical importance was in the vicinity and all other traffic was to clear the air.

The SEALs exchanged confused looks. I saw Grant’s brow furrow. He knew codes. He knew this one was above his pay grade.

Blake’s reaction was immediate and territorial. He seized the chance to reassert control, lunging toward the internal comms panel on the bulkhead.

“Pilot, this is Commander Redden!” he barked, his voice rattling the metal. “Confirm the code origin. Who is issuing Q24? We are on a restricted op and are not accepting external comms outside the designated task force channel!” His finger hovered over the override button, ready to shut down the signal, to put this ‘anomaly’ back in its box.

But the pilot’s voice came back before he could. And this time, it was different. It was clipped, formal, and utterly devoid of deference to Blake.

STATIC “Hold commander, my comms console is locked.”

Blake’s finger froze an inch from the button. “What did you say, Pilot?”

“The inbound signal has taken priority routing, sir. It’s… it’s not a request.” A beat of profound, electronic silence. “Colonel Corin, do you have confirmation on the approach vector?”

Every man in that hold stopped breathing.

It wasn’t just the rank. It was the context. An external, high-priority signal had remotely, and with absolute authority, hijacked the C-17’s internal communications systems. It had bypassed a SEAL Commander’s authority, and it was… asking me for instructions.

Blake’s hand dropped from the override button. His head swiveled toward me, his movement slow, robotic. His face, which had been a mask of arrogant certainty, was now a blank slate of pure, unadulterated confusion.

“Who,” he said, his voice a low, dangerous growl, “the hell is ‘they’?”

I didn’t answer him. My eyes were on my pack. The one Grant had knocked. My “little admin pack.”

When he had slammed it against the wall, I had felt the jolt. A critical system check had been interrupted. My calm exterior had been a front for a very real, very cold spike of professional anger. The men in this hold, in their juvenile game of dominance, had potentially just compromised a multi-million dollar piece of surveillance hardware.

While they were posturing, I had been running a silent diagnostic, my fingers tapping a sequence on the wristband hidden beneath my fatigue cuff. The system was rebooting, but it was slow.

Now, as Blake stared at me, I ignored him. I reached into my pocket, pulled out the simple cloth again, and began wiping the mud from my trousers. Deliberately. Calmly.

“You should be more careful with other people’s equipment, Lieutenant,” I said quietly to Grant. “That was careless.”

Grant’s face flushed. “What… what did you…”

“Who are you talking to?” Blake demanded, stepping toward me.

I finished wiping the mud from my leg. Then, I checked my watch. A plain, standard-issue black band. A faint red light on the side, which had been blinking erratically, now turned solid green.

System online. Signal locked.

I looked up at Blake, who was now standing directly over me, his shadow a physical weight.

“My team,” I said, finally answering his question. “And they’re right on time.”

“Your team?” Blake let out a sharp, brittle laugh. It was a desperate sound. “What? You got a squad of paper-pushers out there? You call in the typing pool?”

The rumble started.

It wasn’t the C-17’s engines. It was something else. It was a sound that didn’t just enter the ears; it vibrated through the metal floor, up through the soles of our boots. A low, deep thrum that escalated in a fraction of a second to a high-pitched, terrifying whine. It was the sound of something fast. Something built for violence.

“What the hell is that?” Dean yelled, pressing his face to one of the small port windows.

And then it was there.

Through the gray, swirling clouds, a sleek, deadly shape broke through. A Su-24. Not a friendly F-16. Not a standard escort. A Sukhoi. A specialized, high-speed, ground-attack and interdiction aircraft.

It ripped past the cockpit, its wings flashing the unified crest of Air Command. It was so close, the C-17 shuddered in its wake, a massive transport plane buffeted like a leaf. The roar was so total it eclipsed thought.

The SEALs froze. Their faces were a mask of shock. These were men who had seen combat, who lived in the sky, but this was different. This was a predator.

And then, the second, more terrible realization dawned. It swept through the men like a wave of nausea.

Q24.

Grant was the first to piece it together. I watched the calculation in his eyes, the blood draining from his face. He knew the protocols. He knew what that jet was. And he knew what Q24 meant.

It wasn’t just a priority code. It was the active security and clearance designation for a Joint Special Task Force Commander. The absolute highest, active-theater clearance for any non-combat flight operation.

The silence that followed the jet’s passage was heavier than the sound had been.

I could see the thoughts colliding in their heads. They hadn’t just insulted an officer. They had aggressively mocked… …drenched… …and physically assaulted… …a high-value command asset.

An asset who was, for reasons they could not possibly comprehend, currently disguised in unmarked fatigues. An asset who had just confirmed that jet was “her team.”

I watched Grant’s gaze drop to the small, critical-looking pack he had so carelessly knocked against the wall. His mind was racing. What was in that pack? What security protocols had they just violated?

I saw Dean’s face, pale and sweaty. His gaze darted to the cloth I’d used to wipe my face. He was realizing it wasn’t just a cloth. It was a sensor wipe. He was realizing the phone in his hand, the one he was going to use to post a picture of her, was a massive breach of operational security. He had attempted to photograph a covert commander. The implications of that, the court-martial, the years in Leavenworth, hit him like a physical blow. He looked like he was going to be sick.

The intercom crackled again. The pilot’s voice was tight, respectful. “ID confirmed. Command arrival. Maintaining holding pattern.”

Slowly, deliberately, I stood up.

My movement was smooth, unhurried. The water from my fatigues dripped onto the metal floor. Drip. Drip. Drip. It was the only sound.

I reached under the collar of my damp uniform. I pulled out a simple, beaded chain.

The two metal tags caught the dim green light.

Blake’s eyes squinted, trying to read them. Dean’s phone, the one he was still numbly holding, slipped from his fingers. It hit the metal floor with a loud, pathetic clatter that echoed in the deathly quiet hold.

I let them hang there for a long, heavy moment.

“Lieutenant Colonel,” I said, my voice not rising, not changing. It just was. “Meera Corin. Air Force Command.”

The hold went utterly, completely silent. Blake’s face went slack. Grant’s mouth was half-open, his mind clearly broken, unable to process the reality.

This was the woman they had smeared with mud. The woman they had called “sweetheart” and “rookie.” The woman they had barred from their “classified” brief.

Blake found his voice first, but it was a strangled, reedy thing I barely recognized. “Ma’am,” he stammered, his eyes wide. “Lieutenant Colonel… I… this was… this was just a training thing. A misunderstanding. We were… testing…”

Grant, ever the politician, jumped in, his voice high and nervous. “We were just testing you, ma’am! Team spirit, you know. To see… to see what you were made of. Standard hazing.”

“Hazing,” I repeated. The word was flat. An admission of guilt.

“We respect rank, ma’am!” Grant pleaded, his hands coming up in a gesture of surrender. “We just… we didn’t know!”

Dean, who looked like he had aged ten years, just mumbled, “Sorry… ma’am… I… I got kids…”

I didn’t acknowledge them. I didn’t look at them. I turned and walked, my boots making steady, even sounds on the floor. I walked to the small utility screen mounted on the front bulkhead, the one used for pre-jump briefings.

My fingers, steady and dry, found the auxiliary input. I pressed a button.

The screen flickered to life.

It wasn’t a map. It wasn’t a mission brief.

It was grainy, high-definition footage. My view.

The screen showed Blake’s leering face. “You got a name, or are we just calling you ‘Wet Shirt’?”

The audio was crystal clear, captured by the microphone woven into my collar. Their laughter, braying and ugly, filled the hold for a second time. But this time, it was their death knell.

The screen showed Dean’s hand, holding the bottle. The sound of the water. It showed Grant’s boot scraping mud onto my leg. It showed the map being tossed into my lap. It showed Dean, grinning, holding up his phone. “Smile, rookie…” And it showed my face, reflected in the dark screen of his phone, calm and steady. “You sure you want that on record?”

The SEALs’ faces went from pale to ashen. They were watching their careers, their lives, unravel in real-time. They were watching their own court-martial.

Blake’s jaw was clenched so tight I thought his teeth would crack. Grant looked physically ill, his eyes darting from the screen to me and back again, his mind no doubt calculating the sheer, inescapable depth of the hole he was in.

The intercom buzzed. A new voice. Not the pilot. This one was different. Deep. Authoritative. Cold as space. It felt like it came from everywhere at once.

“This is Command. Seal Team 45, your operational status is revoked. You are suspended, pending investigation into violation of UCMJ articles 93, 117, and 134. Standby for further orders. All comms are now routed through Colonel Corin. Out.”

The words hit like a hammer. The collective air of bravado, the arrogance that had filled the plane, evaporated completely, leaving a vacuum.

Grant, the calculated climber, the man who lived for the next promotion, broke first. He saw his entire future—his career, his transfer, his reputation—flashing before his eyes. He took a stumbling step forward, his hands clasped in a pathetic plea.

“Lieutenant Colonel,” he begged, his voice cracking. “Please. Ma’am. My service record. It’s clean. It’s… it’s a stellar record. I have a transfer pending to Special Projects. This…” He gestured wildly at the screen, at his teammates. “This was a lapse. A terrible lapse in judgment. An unfortunate mistake in reading the room.”

He was babbling, the words tumbling out. “I assure you, my entire career is based on discipline and adherence to protocol. We can… we can redact this. We can contain this.”

He took another step, his eyes desperate. He lowered his voice, as if to make a secret deal. “I will personally write up Sergeant Voss and the others. Full disciplinary action. I’ll take responsibility for my team’s failure. We can log this as a… as a necessary training exercise. A stress test of covert assets. I will ensure this team faces full discipline, ma’am. Internally. Away from… away from the public eye.”

He was offering to sacrifice his men to save his own reputation. It was the most cowardly, predictable thing he could have done.

I let him finish. I let his desperate, craven offer hang in the dead air.

Then, I turned my head, just slightly. “Lieutenant Solen.”

“Ma’am?” he asked, hope flickering in his eyes.

“Are you attempting to bargain with a superior officer… on an open channel… regarding an official incident report?”

His face fell. He didn’t understand.

I didn’t speak again. I just lifted one finger and pointed. Not at him. Not at the screen. But at a tiny, blinking red light just below the screen. The light that read ‘LIVE.’

His eyes followed my finger. He read the word. ‘LIVE.’

He realized. This wasn’t just a recording. This was a live feed. His pleading, his bargaining, his pathetic attempt to throw his men under the bus… all of it… was being broadcast right now. To Command. To my team. To everyone who mattered.

His face turned a sickly, yellowish-gray. He made a small sound, a high-pitched “oh,” and physically stumbled backward, catching himself on a cargo strap. He was done. His career wasn’t just over; it was annihilated, and he had just provided the narration for his own execution.

Blake simply stood in rigid, white-faced silence, his hands clenched into fists. He knew. He was a commander. He knew what this meant. There was no coming back.

Outside, the Su-24, my guardian, made another pass. It was slower this time. Its wings tilted in a sharp, precise salute.

I raised my right hand to my brow, returning the gesture. A silent acknowledgment. Mission parameters updated. Asset secure.

“On your feet,” I ordered, my voice cutting through the silence.

One by one, like broken automatons, the six SEALs scrambled to their feet.

“Salute,” I said.

They followed the order. Their hands, the hands of “the big boys,” the elite killers, were shaking. They rose to their brows, their eyes fixed forward, their faces masks of shame and terror. Saluting me. Saluting the jet. Saluting the authority they had so profoundly failed to recognize.

The flight to the tarmac, which should have been another three hours, was the longest of their lives. The silence was a living thing, thick and suffocating. The only sound was the hum of the engines and the occasional, sharp drip of water from my still-damp fatigues.

When the cargo door finally hissed open, the rush of cold air and the smell of jet fuel was a relief. I stepped off first. My boots hit the tarmac with a soft, final thud.

A man was waiting.

He was standing near the forward landing gear, tall and broad-shouldered, in a flight suit that didn’t need a name tag to scream authority. He stood with an impossible stillness, his helmet under his arm. His eyes, dark and intense, scanned me from head to toe. They registered the damp uniform, the mud on my trousers. His jaw tightened.

He didn’t need to speak. His presence was enough.

Blake froze mid-step on the ramp. Grant looked away, his hands stuffed in his pockets. Dean’s shoulders slumped, as if the weight of the sky was on him.

They knew who he was. They knew the plane. This was the pilot.

The man, Captain Arvin Dah, took a step forward. He didn’t look at the SEALs. He didn’t have to. His eyes never left mine.

“Corin,” he said. His voice was a low rumble, pure command.

“Dah,” I replied, giving him a short, professional nod.

He nodded back, a flicker of something… pride, anger… passing through his eyes before they went cold again. He stepped to my side, a silent, unmovable wall of support. The SEALs, shuffling off the ramp, had to physically walk around him. They looked like schoolboys, their bravado gone, their eyes fixed on the ground. They realized, in that final, crushing moment, that the man who flew the predator jet… the man they had all admired… was my husband.

The humiliation was total.

We walked away, our steps even. I didn’t look back at them.

By the time Arvin and I reached the command center, the footage from my hidden camera was already uploaded, time-stamped, un-editable, and attached to the formal incident report.

The fallout was swift. It was biblical.

Blake got the call before he even cleared his gear from the plane. His CO’s voice was cold. A final, “You’re done. Pack your desk.” He was officially, dishonorably discharged by 1800 hours.

Grant’s name hit an internal blog post by the next morning. An anonymous “whistleblower’s” account—complete with the audio of his “let’s make a deal” plea—was shared across every secure military network. His “Special Projects” transfer was permanently revoked. He was reassigned to a desk in an archival warehouse in Utah, processing supply requisitions. His career wasn’t just over; it was a joke.

Dean’s buddies, the ones who had laughed with him, stopped answering his texts. His name was off the group chat by the end of the week. He was transferred to a supply depot in Thule, Greenland. His last message to the group was “It’s cold.” No one replied.

I didn’t stay to watch them fall. I was already at the command center, showered, in a fresh, crisp uniform. I was signing the last of the papers for my new role.

As my pen paused over the final signature line, the base-wide intercom buzzed to life.

“Attention on deck,” a clear, formal voice announced across the entire base. “By order of Joint Chiefs and Air Command, effective immediately, Lieutenant Colonel Meera Corin assumes command of Joint Special Task Force Alpha. All base personnel will render honors accordingly. That is all.”

I signed the form.

The SEALs were standing in a ragged formation on the tarmac, a direct order from their new, temporary CO. They had been ordered to stand at attention and await my final dismissal.

They heard the announcement. I watched their faces as the realization hit them. The “nobody” they had tormented was not only a Colonel, she was now their acting base commander. The highest authority in the entire task force.

I walked out of the command center and onto the tarmac. The sun was setting, painting the sky in colors of fire and brass. The Su-24, Arvin’s jet, made one final pass overhead, its flare tracing my unit’s emblem—a silent, burning mark against the dusk.

I walked toward them. My boots were steady on the ground.

As I approached, Blake, his face a mask of stone, called his men to attention.

“Sa-lute!”

Their hands, shaking with fatigue and shame, rose to their brows.

I stopped in front of them. I returned the salute, crisp and professional. Then I let my hand fall. They held theirs, waiting for my order.

I let them wait. I let them stand there, their arms trembling, their careers in ashes.

I looked at Blake. “Respect doesn’t come from a rank, Commander,” I said, my voice quiet but carrying on the wind. “It comes from character. You have none. That’s your first lesson.”

I let my gaze travel to Grant. He flinched.

“Here is your last. The Delta 6 security clearance you were so aggressively protecting? The mission brief you so smugly locked away?”

I paused, letting the moment hang.

“It was a decoy. A plant, to test your team’s security protocols. You failed.”

Their faces, somehow, went even paler.

“The actual operational parameters were being transmitted via my personal comms unit. The one,” I said, my eyes landing on Grant, “that you knocked against the bulkhead. While you were… testing me… I was running diagnostics, re-routing the entire operational data stream, and updating the mission for three separate units already in the field.”

I looked back at Blake.

“The mission was successfully updated, broadcast, and acknowledged by all cleared personnel precisely three minutes after you attempted to restrict my access. Your operational security was breached because you prioritized bullying over vigilance.”

I took a step closer, my voice dropping.

“You were so focused on who I wasn’t, you failed to recognize who I was. You were not a threat. You were not even an obstacle. You were… a distraction.”

“And in our world,” I said, my voice cutting through the twilight, “that is a catastrophic failure of intelligence. That is the only failure that matters.”

I held their gaze for one last, long second.

“Dismissed.”

I turned my back on them and walked away, the glow of the fading sunset behind me. I didn’t need to look back. I could feel their humiliation burning into my back. They didn’t disrespect me because I was a woman.

They disrespected me because they thought I was nobody.

That was their last mistake.