PART 1

 

The Mojave Desert isn’t just a place; it’s a crucible. It bakes everything—the sand, the rocks, the corrugated tin roofs, and the souls of the Marines stationed there—until all that’s left is the raw, unvarnished truth of what you are. The heat is a physical presence, a 300-pound man sitting on your chest from dawn until dusk. It’s a weight that tries to erase you, to bleach you out like an old bone.

And I, Sergeant Elise Monroe, was trying very hard to be erased.

Camp Raven’s motor pool was my sanctuary and my purgatory. For two years, my world had been deliberately shrunk down to the smell of diesel, hot oil, and scorched metal. The soundtrack of my life was the percussive clang of a dropped wrench, the guttural cough of a Humvee engine refusing to turn over, and the incessant, tinny whine of a radio buried under a pile of greasy rags, always playing some country song about a home I didn’t have anymore.

I was the “Grease Saint.” I was “Machine Mom.”

I was the quiet woman in the corner who could coax a dead transmission back to life but couldn’t, or wouldn’t, manage a simple “good morning.” I was a ghost in olive-drab fatigues, and that’s exactly how I wanted it.

My life, the real one, felt like a story I’d been told about someone else. A violent, blood-soaked fever dream. All that remained of that life, the only proof it had ever happened, was a small, faded mark on the inside of my right wrist. It was barely visible under the daily grime: a coiled serpent, its scales worn thin, wrapped around the base of a compass rose.

To the new generation of Marines, the young bucks who came in pissing vinegar and eager to prove themselves, I was an enigma. And in a place built on rigid, brutal conformity, anything enigmatic is a target. They were kids, full of restless energy and the kind of unproven bravado that needs to chip away at anything quiet, just to see if it’ll break.

Private Mason was the ringleader, a kid with a grin that always seemed to arrive a few seconds before the rest of him. Corporal Diaz was his echo, a follower who mistook cruelty for strength.

“Hey, nice tat, Sergeant Monroe!” Mason’s voice boomed across the bay one blistering afternoon. He was deliberately loud, playing to the gallery of grease-stained privates. A few heads popped up from under engine hoods.

I didn’t look up. I just kept tightening the lug nuts on a heavy-duty wheel, the click-click-click of my torque wrench the only reply.

Diaz chimed in with a snort, not even bothering to look up from the tire he was failing to mount. “Nah, man, that’s bargain ink. Bet she got it done at one of those boardwalk shops in Venice Beach for twenty bucks.”

A wave of laughter erupted, sharp and thoughtless. It bounced off the high metal ceiling. Compass Girl. You lost or something?

I said nothing. I never did.

I didn’t flinch. I didn’t look up. I didn’t betray the flicker of white-hot rage that licked at the inside of my skull. A rage so old and familiar it felt like a part of my own skeleton.

If you only knew what this ink cost. If you only knew who bled for it.

My movements remained methodical, precise. There was a rhythm to my work that soothed the animal in my chest. With a slow, deliberate motion, I took a clean rag from my back pocket and wiped a smear of black grease from my forearm. The gesture was unhurried, almost meditative. As the grime came away, the full image was revealed, catching the harsh fluorescent light. The serpent. The compass.

The laughter began to falter, the momentum lost in my unshakeable calm. It sputtered out, dying completely as a new presence filled the cavernous doorway of the hangar.

A shadow fell long and sharp across the sun-bleached concrete, stretching like a knife blade toward the center of the bay.

The hangar, which moments before had been a cacophony of noise and testosterone, fell into a sudden, unnerving silence. The only sound in the entire, cavernous space was the steady click… click… click… of my torque wrench.

He stood with his cover perfectly squared, his uniform immaculate, defying the oppressive heat that wilted everyone else. He was lean, weathered, and held a stillness that vibrated with coiled energy. He wasn’t just standing there; he was occupying the space, dominating it simply by breathing.

This was the new CO, the one they’d all been whispering about for weeks. The one who had, according to rumor, cleaned out three separate commands that weren’t “up to standard.” A full-bird Colonel who, they said, had been a ghost in his previous life. Colonel Nathan Vail.

His gaze, sharp as broken glass, swept the bay. It was an apex predator’s gaze, a strategic assessment of every asset, every threat, every weakness. It scanned the clusters of now-silent Marines, the half-repaired vehicles, the tool chests…

And then it locked onto me.

Onto my arm.

Onto the tattoo.

The air didn’t just get quiet. It evaporated. The 115-degree heat turned to ice. I could feel the blood drain from Mason’s face without even looking at him. I could hear the swallow in Diaz’s throat from ten yards away.

The Colonel’s expression didn’t change, but his eyes… his eyes narrowed, just a fraction. A spark of something I hadn’t seen in two long, empty years flashed in their depths. It wasn’t just recognition. It was something more complex. Shock. Disbelief. And… anger.

He knew the mark. He knew the serpent. He knew the compass.

And in that one, terrible, suffocating second, as the click of my wrench finally stopped, I knew my time hiding in the shadows was over. The past I had buried six feet deep in the desert had just walked into my hangar, and it was wearing officer’s insignia.

PART 2

 

The world snapped back into focus with a single, clipped word.

“Dismissed,” Vail said.

His voice was low, not a parade-ground shout, but it cut through the silence like a stiletto. It wasn’t a request. It was a command meant for a different kind of soldier, in a different kind of war.

Nobody moved. They were too stunned. Mason, Diaz, the others—they were just kids. They were frozen, caught in the tractor beam of his authority, their brains unable to compute what was happening.

“I said,” he repeated, his voice dropping another octave, turning lethal, “dismissed. All of you. Now.”

This time, they scrambled. It was a panicked, clumsy exodus of boots scraping on concrete, tools dropped with a clatter, muttered “Yes, sirs” and “Aye, sirs.” Mason looked like he was going to be physically sick. Diaz didn’t even grab his cover. Within twenty seconds, the massive hangar was empty, leaving just the hum of cooling engines, the smell of ozone, and the two of us. Two relics from a forgotten war, standing in a sea of grease.

He walked toward me, his polished boots making no sound on the dusty concrete. He didn’t stop at a respectful, regulation distance. He stopped inside my perimeter, close enough for me to see the old, white scar that cut through his left eyebrow. Close enough for me to see that his eyes were the same shade of glacial blue I remembered.

His eyes never left my wrist.

“Where did you get that?” he asked. It wasn’t a question. It was an interrogation.

I finally lifted my head, my gaze meeting his. The mechanic, the Grease Saint, she was gone. She evaporated like a drop of water on a hot skillet. The person looking back at him was someone else. Someone older. Someone he used to know.

“The same place you did, sir.” My voice was rusty, unfamiliar even to me.

His jaw tightened. A storm passed through his eyes. Slowly, as if peeling away a layer of armor, he unbuttoned the cuff of his right sleeve and rolled it up, once, twice.

And there it was.

The same serpent. The same compass rose. His was darker, the lines sharper, a newer vintage, but it was the same. The mark of Task Force Meridian. The ghosts of the Hindu Kush. The unit that officially didn’t exist.

A breath I hadn’t realized I was holding for two years shuddered out of me. “I thought…” I started, my voice barely a whisper. “I thought everyone burned theirs. I thought I was the only one.”

“Some of us kept reminders,” he said, his tone rough, gravelly. He looked around the empty hangar, his eyes scanning the exits, the high rafters, the shadows. It was a tactical scan. My scan. “I never thought I’d see another one. Not in a place like this.” He looked back at me, the full weight of his command pressing down. “This base isn’t as quiet as it looks, Monroe. You should know that.”

“I do, sir,” I replied. “It’s why I chose it. You can’t find a ghost in a graveyard.”

He gave a single, curt nod. The mask of the Colonel slid back into place. “My office. 0600. Do not be seen. And Sergeant…”

“Sir?”

“Get that wheel torqued. It’s a disgrace.”

He buttoned his cuff, turned on his heel, and was gone. His shadow lingered for a second longer than he did.

The aftermath in the motor pool was immediate. The open mockery vanished, but it was replaced by something worse: a thick, suffocating blanket of whispers and fear. I was no longer a joke. I was a spook. The crew was terrified. They had seen a ghost, and they’d seen their new, hard-as-nails Colonel speak its language.

I became a pariah. They gave me a wide, ten-foot berth at all times. No one made eye contact. No one spoke to me unless it was a mumbled “tool, Sergeant?” But they watched. God, how they watched. Every time I moved, every time I picked up a wrench, I could feel a dozen pairs of eyes on my back.

It was just as well. My old instincts, the ones I had fought to smother under layers of routine and grease, came roaring back, raw and insistent. I wasn’t just Sergeant Monroe, mechanic, anymore. I was Operator Monroe, and the hair on my arms and the back of my neck wouldn’t lie down.

I started scanning exits again. I mapped the rhythm of footsteps. I noticed the morning patrol had shifted its route by ten minutes, three days in a row. I noticed the civilian contractor who didn’t look like a contractor at all.

He was in the chow hall at lunch. Too clean-cut. Too calm. His shoulders were too square. He sat with a newspaper, but in the ten minutes I watched him, he never turned a page. His eyes, reflected in the window behind him, scanned the room in a perfect, repeating 180-degree arc.

And his watch. It was a standard government-issue timepiece, a model I recognized. A model issued only to certain intelligence and special operations personnel.

He didn’t belong here.

I decided to test him. I picked up my tray and walked toward the exit, my path taking me right past his table. As I drew level, I “tripped” on my own boot, sending my tray, my coffee, my water, everything, clattering to the floor in a spectacular mess.

A normal person would have jumped. A normal person would have flinched or cursed or tried to help.

He didn’t move a muscle. He didn’t even blink. His head just swiveled, his eyes locking on me. They were as empty and cold as a winter sky. He hadn’t been startled; he had assessed me as a non-threat.

I mumbled an apology to the air, bent to grab the tray, and his voice, quiet and smooth, slithered into my ear.

“Sloppy, Sergeant.”

My blood went cold. He knew my rank.

I stood up, but he was already folding his newspaper, his eyes on his own business. I walked out of the chow hall, my heart hammering a new, terrifying rhythm against my ribs.

Outside, in the blistering sun, I saw it. Parked near the PX, in a ‘No Parking’ zone. A black, civilian-model SUV with windows so heavily tinted they looked like polished obsidian. It had no base stickers, no government plates.

It was still there when I finished my shift five hours later.

That night, my small, spartan off-base apartment felt different. It felt wrong. The air was stale, the silence too thick. I did a standard sweep. Windows locked. Door chain on. I checked the tiny closet, the shower. Nothing.

I was being paranoid. The man in the chow hall, the SUV… it was just the stress of Vail’s arrival. I was seeing ghosts where there were only shadows.

I went to my bedroom to change.

And I froze.

There, on the single, neatly-made military fold of my pillow, was a note. Just a small, square piece of paper, folded in half.

My hands were shaking. I had locked my door. I had checked my windows. No one had been in here. It was impossible.

I unfolded it. The handwriting was stark, composed of neat, efficient block letters. No signature. Just five words that stopped my heart and stole the air from my lungs.

YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO STAY DEAD.

My head snapped up. I scanned the room, the shadows in the corners, the closet door I knew I had just checked.

Nothing.

I backed out of the room, my hand already reaching for the 9mm I kept disassembled in a false-bottomed toolbox. I assembled it in seconds, the familiar, oily click-clack of the slide a grim comfort.

I was clearing my own tiny apartment, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my teeth. Kitchen, clear. Bathroom, clear. Living room, clear.

I was alone.

But the note was still there. On my pillow. In my locked home.

And just as that realization settled in, all the lights in my apartment, and the entire block outside, flickered. Once. Twice.

Then darkness. The power cut. The low hum of the refrigerator died. A profound, suffocating silence swallowed the world.

And then I heard it.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Rotor blades.

Distant at first, then closer. A dog barked down the street, a sharp, panicked sound that was abruptly cut short.

I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. I remained in the dark, my back against the wall, weapon in a low-ready position.

The thump-thump-thump grew louder, becoming a physical vibration that rattled the cheap glass in my windows. It was low, and it was slow. It wasn’t a patrol. It wasn’t a medical transport. It was a search pattern.

A blindingly bright searchlight snapped on, flooding the street outside, sweeping across my building. It hit my window, turning my dark apartment into a stage, catching the dust motes dancing in the air.

I dove to the floor, rolling behind the cheap sofa as the light swept past.

It hovered. Directly over my building. For a full, agonizing minute, the world was nothing but that terrifying, rhythmic sound, so loud it felt like it was inside my chest, trying to beat its way out.

Then, as suddenly as it began, the light snapped off. The thump-thump-thump faded into the distance.

The lights in my apartment flickered back on. The refrigerator hummed to life.

I lay on the floor for a long time, my cheek pressed against the dusty wood, the gun still heavy in my hand.

The note. The blackout. The flyover.

It was a classic escalation. A pressure play. A psychological operation. They weren’t just threatening me. They were reminding me that the world of Task Force Meridian, the world of ghosts, was never truly gone. They were reminding me that they knew where I slept. And that they could get to me anytime they wanted.

At 0550, the desert was still a deep, bruised purple, the air blessedly cool. I moved across the base like a shadow, sticking to the alleys between buildings, avoiding the lit main paths. I saw the black SUV, parked near the command building, a man I didn’t recognize sleeping in the driver’s seat. A new watcher.

I arrived at Vail’s office, picking the lock on his outer door—a simple two-pin that was more of an insult than a barrier—and was waiting inside when he walked in at 0559.

He didn’t even flinch. He just nodded, walked past me to his desk, and hit a small, black button underneath it. A faint hiss of white noise filled the room. A sound-dampener.

“He’s here,” I said. No preamble. I placed the note from my pillow on his desk.

He read it, his face turning to granite. “When?”

“Last night. In my locked apartment.” I told him everything. The man in the chow hall. The SUV. The blackout. The helicopter.

He listened without interruption, his hands steepled in front of his face. When I was finished, he let out a long, slow breath.

“They’re not just watching anymore,” he said, his voice grim. “They’re activating.”

He stood, walked to a massive, old-fashioned safe in the corner, and spun the dial. He pulled out a slim black folder, sealed with red ‘Top Secret’ tape that had been torn and re-sealed. He placed it on the desk between us.

“Task Force Meridian,” he said, his voice low. “Officially, we ceased to exist two years, three months, and twelve days ago. Six of us made it out of the Hindu Kush. A seventh, Briggs, our comms tech, died during extraction.”

“Briggs didn’t die during extraction, sir,” I said quietly, the memory rising up, sharp and bitter. “He got us to the bird. He stayed behind to cover our six. He chose to die so we could get out. He was executed.”

Vail’s eyes met mine, and in them, I saw the same ghost I lived with. “You’re right. He was. And I’ve been lying to myself about it ever since.”

He opened the folder. Inside were photos. Grainy, long-lens surveillance shots.

“The other four survivors were scattered. New names, new lives. Harper went to intelligence analysis at Bragg. Jackson, our demo expert, to a logistics unit in Stuttgart. Reyes, our medic, to a tactical training unit at Quantico.”

He slid a photo toward me. A man in running gear, face-down on a jogging path, a small crowd around him.

“Reyes. Official report was a sudden, massive cardiac event. He was 34 years old, a decorated combat swimmer, and had the resting heart rate of a sleeping bear.”

He slid over another. A car, wrapped around a highway median, so mangled you could barely tell what it was.

“Harper. Vehicular accident. Hit-and-run. Two weeks ago.”

My stomach tightened into a cold, hard knot. Harper. Reyes. My brothers. Gone.

“What about Jackson?” I asked, my voice tight.

“Jackson,” Vail said, “is smart. He went dark three days ago. Vanished from his post in Stuttgart. No one knows where he is. He’s the only one left, besides us.”

“So, it’s just us,” I whispered.

“It’s just us.” He tapped the note I’d brought. “Whoever is doing this, they’re cleaning house. They’re erasing Meridian, one by one. And they’ve saved the command element—me and you—for last.”

“Why now?” I demanded. “Why after two years of silence?”

“Elections,” he said, the word tasting like ash. “A new administration is coming in. They’re cleaning up the old administration’s messes. And we… we were their biggest, dirtiest mess.”

He looked at me, his face carved from stone. “Operation Cinder Fall. You remember?”

How could I forget? It was our last mission. The one that went wrong. The one that got Briggs killed. “We were sent to extract a high-value target. A politician.”

“He wasn’t a politician,” Vail corrected me, his voice flat. “He was an asset. An analyst who had proof of an illegal arms deal. Proof that went all the way to the top. We weren’t sent to extract him, Monroe. We were sent to silence him. And the mission was a setup. They meant for all of us to die on that mountain, along with the analyst. Briggs was the only one who figured it out. He patched the comms through a secure server… a server I think Jackson still has access to.”

A cold, dawning horror washed over me. “The proof. They’re not just killing us. They’re hunting for the data Briggs and Jackson saved.”

“Exactly,” Vail said. “And now they’re here. They’re watching me. They’re watching you. They’re trying to see if we’ll connect, if we’ll lead them to Jackson.” He leaned forward, his eyes boring into mine. “They’ve forced my hand. We have to play this smart, but I’m done hiding. I’m going to make a statement. Today.”

“What kind of statement?”

“The kind they can’t ignore,” he said, a grim, dangerous smile touching his lips. “They think you’re just a broken-down mechanic? They think I’m just a desk-jockey Colonel? Good. Let them. Today, we remind them what Task Force Meridian really is.”

That afternoon, the order came down. Crackling over the base-wide comms system.

“All-hands, Maintenance Division. Report to Hangar 4 for a mandatory, all-hands briefing. 1400 hours. Sharp.”

The air in the motor pool, already thick with heat, grew heavy with curiosity and a nervous, vibrating tension. The entire division. Vail himself. What the hell was this?

I arrived early, as I always did. I found a spot near the back, by a stack of spare tires, and stood with my hands clasped behind my back, my expression unreadable. The others filed in, in twos and threes, their voices low and murmuring. Their eyes darted nervously between me and the raised platform at the front where a single podium stood.

Mason and Diaz found a spot near the front, trying to look bored and failing miserably. Master Sergeant Reed, the grizzled lifer who ran the motor pool, just looked weary. He knew a storm was coming; he just didn’t know which direction it was coming from.

At 1400 on the dot, the massive hangar doors were rolled halfway open, letting in brilliant stripes of high-desert sunlight that stretched across the dusty concrete floor.

And then, Colonel Nathan Vail entered.

He didn’t need to speak to command attention. His presence alone was a gravitational force that pulled the room into alignment. He walked to the front, his boots making a crisp, solitary sound, and stood tall before the assembled group, the base flag hanging limply behind him in the still air.

He looked out at them. Over a hundred Marines, all specialists, all grease-stained and tired, all wondering why they’d been pulled from their work.

When he finally began to speak, his voice carried with calm, unwavering precision, reaching every corner of the hangar. “Marines,” he said, his eyes scanning the faces. “In light of recent security assessments, I am implementing new protocols across all divisions. Effective immediately, no unverified civilian personnel are to access the maintenance perimeter without a direct escort. All clearance levels will be re-validated. All high-value equipment will be logged and secured at the end of every shift.”

Heads nodded. A few people scribbled notes. It was standard procedure, the kind of speech that came with every new commander tightening the reins. It was boring. It was unremarkable.

And I knew it was all for show. It was for the watchers. For the man in the chow hall. For the black SUV. He was establishing a new, locked-down baseline.

But then, mid-sentence, he paused. He set the clipboard he was holding down on the podium. The silence that followed was absolute, unnatural. His tone shifted, becoming more personal, more intense.

“And one more thing.”

Slowly, deliberately, he reached for the buttons of his service jacket and began to unfasten them. The soft snick-snick of the buttons was the only sound in the vast, silent room. He shrugged the jacket off and laid it carefully over the back of a chair.

Then, with all eyes fixed on him, he unbuttoned the cuff of his right sleeve and, with a smooth, powerful motion, rolled it up. Once. Twice. Past the elbow.

A collective gasp sucked the air from the room.

There, etched into the hardened muscle of his upper arm, was the serpent and the compass. It was identical in design to mine, the same coiled symbol they had mocked only days earlier. But his was not faded; it was a bold, dark emblem, gleaming under the sterile fluorescent lights—a badge of something older, deeper, and far more dangerous than any of them could possibly comprehend.

The younger Marines exchanged confused, wide-eyed looks. Private Mason’s smirk had vanished. His face was the color of spoiled milk. He looked physically ill. Diaz was white-lipped, his eyes wide enough to land a bird in.

Colonel Vail’s eyes moved across the crowd until they settled on me, standing motionless in the back.

“For anyone who was wondering,” he said, his voice quiet but firm, carrying a weight that pinned them all in place, “that emblem belonged to one of the finest covert units this country has ever fielded. A unit that operated where the maps stopped and the official orders didn’t reach. It was called Task Force Meridian.”

He let the name hang in the air like a ghost.

“Most of its members never came home,” he continued, his voice resonating with a deep, controlled grief. “But a few did. One of them is standing in this room right now.”

He turned his body fully toward me, and the shift in his expression was unmistakable. It was a look of profound respect, of shared history, of fierce, terrible pride.

“Sergeant Elise Monroe was one of its best,” he said, each word landing with the deliberate impact of a hammer blow. “When others fell, she was the one who kept the rest of us alive. That mark on her arm isn’t a decoration. It’s a testament to survival. It’s the reason I’m standing here today.”

He stepped down from the platform. The sound of his boots on the concrete was the only sound in the universe.

Every single pair of eyes in the hangar followed him as he crossed the floor, parting the sea of stunned, silent Marines. He walked directly toward me.

He stopped only a few feet from me, his posture ramrod straight, his eyes calm. He was a quiet, walking reminder that some legacies never die.

His voice, when he spoke again, was no longer the clipped tone of an officer. It was the voice of a Marine setting the record straight, for good.

“Every joke you’ve made about her tattoo,” he began, his gaze sweeping the room, making eye contact with Mason, with Diaz, with every person who had ever whispered or smirked, “was aimed at a Marine who carried a wounded man five miles through chest-deep snow, under constant fire, to an extraction point that didn’t officially exist.”

He paused, his eyes finding mine again. “I know this. Because I was that man.”

No one breathed. The silence deepened, becoming heavy, absolute, and suffocating with shame.

Then, the Colonel’s right hand rose sharply to his brow. The gesture was crisp, deliberate, and absolute. It was a salute. Given not out of protocol or regulation, but out of pure, unadulterated honor. A full-bird Colonel. Saluting a Sergeant.

My first instinct was to deflect, to minimize, to fade back into the shadows. I hadn’t been this seen in years, and it was agonizing. But this wasn’t about me. This was about him. This was about Meridian. This was a signal to the watchers.

We are still here. We remember.

Slowly, with a quiet precision that was almost painful to watch, I lifted my right hand. My posture straightened, my shoulders locking into the formal, rigid stance I hadn’t used since the day Briggs died.

I returned the salute.

As if a single switch had been flipped, a sound like a thunderclap ripped through the hangar.

THWACK.

It was the sound of a hundred Marines, all at once, snapping to attention. A sound of unified, terrified respect.

Vail held my gaze for one second longer. A lifetime of unspoken words passed between us. Stay alive. Hunt well.

He lowered his hand. He turned to the stunned, silent crowd. “As you were.”

He walked out then, his jacket still off, the serpent and compass on his arm visible for all to see.

For a long moment, I stood alone, the focal point of every eye in the room. But no one dared to speak. The oppressive weight of mockery had been transmuted into something else entirely: a profound, humbling, and terrified respect.

I held their gaze for a beat. Then I lowered my hand, turned back to the Humvee, picked up the torque wrench… and went back to work.

The rest of the day was surreal. The hangar was as quiet as a church. The only sounds were the sounds of work. No jokes, no radio, no laughter. Just the clink of metal, the hiss of air-tools, and the shuffling of boots.

When the shift ended, the others filed out. Mason, the loudmouth, the one who started it all, lingered. He approached my workbench, his cover in his hands, wringing it. He looked like he was 12 years old.

“Sergeant,” he mumbled, his eyes fixed on the floor. “I… I didn’t know. I’m… I’m sorry.”

I finished cleaning my last tool and placed it in its slot. I looked at him. He was just a kid. A stupid, ignorant kid who had no idea what world he had just brushed up against.

“You’re not paid to know, Private,” I said, my voice flat. Not unkind, but not forgiving. Just… empty. “You’re paid to do your job. You do it well, you go home. You do it sloppy, you get yourself or someone else killed. Don’t be sloppy.”

“Yes, Sergeant,” he whispered, and fled.

I was the last one in the hangar. Master Sergeant Reed found me packing up. He just stood there for a long moment, watching me.

“Heard a story once,” Reed said, his voice a low rumble. “About a ghost unit in the Khost province. A whole team, wiped out. Except for two. The leader and his NCO. They walked out. Took ’em three weeks. Story said they brought hell with them.” He paused. “Just a story, I guess.”

“Just a story, Master Sergeant,” I said.

He nodded, understanding nothing and everything. “You be careful, Sergeant Monroe. There’s a storm coming.”

“I know,” I said.

That night, I went to a small, 24-hour diner off the main highway, a place a few miles from the base, all glass and flickering neon. I needed to think, and my apartment was compromised.

I was in a booth, nursing a bitter black coffee, when a shadow fell over my table.

It was him. The man from the chow hall. “Mr. Clean.”

He slid into the booth opposite me, as casual as if he were an old friend. He didn’t ask. He just sat. He was smiling, a thin, reptilian smile that didn’t touch his cold, empty eyes.

“That was a cute show today, Sergeant,” he said, his voice a pleasant, cultured baritone. “The Colonel and his pet ghost. Very… theatrical. It moved me. Really.”

I said nothing. My hand was under the table, on the grip of the 9mm tucked into my waistband.

“We know about Jackson,” he said, still smiling. He signaled the waitress. “Coffee. Black.”

My blood froze.

“We know he’s in Berlin. We know he has the Cinder Fall data. And now, thanks to your little performance, we know you and the Colonel are active. You’ve just made our job so much easier.”

“What do you want?” I asked, my voice low.

“I want you to give us the data. Or, better yet, you’ll be the little Judas goat that leads us right to Jackson.” He leaned in, his smile fading. “You know, Reyes… he really did have a heart attack. It’s amazing what a precisely targeted, high-frequency electrical impulse can do to a man’s heart. Looks just like a regular Tuesday.”

He was bragging. He was taunting me.

“You’re sloppy,” I whispered, using his own word against him.

His eyes flashed. “Am I? I’m in your booth. Your Colonel is in his office, being watched by three separate teams. Your friend Jackson is a dead man running on fumes. Give us the data. We’ll let you go. We’ll let you go back to fixing trucks. A real retirement.”

“No.”

He sighed, as if I were a disappointing child. “That’s what they all say.” He stood up, dropping a few bills on the table for the coffee he never touched. “Well, when you’re ready to talk, let me know. You can’t run. You can’t hide. The past always finds you, Sergeant. And we are the past.”

He walked out, disappearing into the night.

I sat there for a long time. He was wrong. I wasn’t the Judas goat. I was the hunter. And he’d just given me the target.

Berlin.

I went straight back to Vail’s office. I didn’t knock. He was there, in the dark, waiting for me. The black SUV was still across the street.

“He was at the diner,” I said. “He told me everything. They know about Jackson. They know he’s in Berlin.”

Vail nodded, as if he expected it. “It was a trap. Your little scene at the diner. He was feeding you the location.”

“It’s a setup,” I said. “They want me to run. They want me to lead them to him.”

“Exactly.” He went to the safe and pulled out a heavy duffel bag. He tossed it to me. “And that’s exactly what you’re going to do.”

I unzipped it. Inside. New IDs. A passport. Stacks of cash in Euros and Dollars. A burner phone. And a small, matte-black satellite communicator.

“This isn’t an order, Sergeant. This is an escape. And a hunt. Your ‘specialized equipment procurement’ papers are on my desk. You are officially detached from this unit, effective 0400.”

“What about you?” I asked, my voice tight. “They’re watching you.”

“I know,” he said, and for the first time, he looked tired. “I’ll make enough noise here to give you a head start. I’ll leak a false report. I’ll send them on a wild goose chase to Quantico. I’ll be the diversion.”

“What kind of noise?” I asked, dreading the answer.

“The kind that gets a Colonel court-martialed,” he said grimly. “Or killed. Doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that data. It’s the only thing that proves Briggs and Harper and Reyes ever existed. It’s the only thing that gets us justice.”

He stood and offered his hand. I didn’t take it. I stepped forward and gave him a short, sharp hug.

“Stay alive, sir,” I whispered.

“That’s an order, Monroe,” he whispered back. “Go. Be the ghost you were trained to be.”

I melted back into the shadows of the base. I changed in the hangar, swapping my fatigues for the black jeans, t-shirt, and boots from the duffel bag. I was no one. A ghost in the machine.

I walked toward the main gate. The black SUV was there, waiting.

“Mr. Clean,” or “Smith” as I now thought of him, was leaning against the fender, smoking a cigarette. He saw me coming. He smiled. He didn’t move. He just watched me.

He nodded to the MP at the gate. The MP, seeing the ‘Smith’ and his credentials, looked at my papers and waved me through.

He let me go.

I walked past him, out the gate, and into the cool desert night. I didn’t look back.

The realization hit me as I hit the main highway. This was the hunt. They weren’t just trying to kill me; they were using me as bait to find Jackson. They thought I was a puppet on their string. They thought they were the hunters.

I looked down at my wrist, at the faded serpent and the compass. The compass was pointing north again.

They were wrong. The hunt had just begun. And I was the one holding the leash .