My eyes locked with the Admiral’s. The air crackled. His smirk remained, but his eyes were expectant. He was waiting for a nervous laugh, a stammer, a “No, sir, just picking up my kid.”

He didn’t get one. He got the heavy, profound silence of a man who has seen the inside of the machine.

His smile tightened. The public teasing was now a public challenge. He couldn’t back down. “I asked you a question,” Reed pressed, his tone hardening, annoyed by my lack of deference.

I felt Ethan flinch at the man’s voice. And that’s when the decision was made.

The fog seemed to swirl around us, insulating the four of us from the rest of the world. I took a shallow breath, the iron-laced air burning my lungs. My voice, when it came, was quiet. It didn’t boom. It didn’t need to. It was low, flat, and cut through the damp air with surgical precision.

“Major General,” I said.

Part 2