Every cadet in Spartan Company was a statue. Mouths open. MREs forgotten. They were staring at her, then at me, then back at her. The respect I had spent four years bleeding for, the authority I had built brick by agonizing brick, had just been leveled. It was gone. In its place was this… this awe. And none of it was for me.

I looked at the blue pistol in my hand. It looked like a child’s toy. A pathetic, plastic joke. I had pulled this on her. I had threatened her. The absurdity of it was so profound, so complete, that I felt a hysterical laugh bubble in my chest. I choked it down, but the shame was so hot it felt like swallowing fire.

Then, the sound of boots. Slow. Measured. Not running. Not frantic. Confident.

The tent flap was pulled aside. Major General Ivan Wallace stepped inside, and the temperature in the tent dropped twenty degrees.

He wasn’t a big man, not physically. But he occupied space like a battleship. He had that “old Army” look—lean, weathered, with eyes that had seen everything and were impressed by nothing. He was on-site to evaluate our leadership, and I had just given him a full-scale demonstration of how to fail.