The entire compound locked down in under three minutes.
Sirens sounded.
Security barriers rose.
Vehicle gates sealed.
Armed patrols flooded the perimeter.
And for thirty-seven seconds, everyone believed Jade Monroe had stolen the Black Talon and disappeared.
Then I found her.
She was unconscious behind the secondary armory cage.
No rifle.
No case.
A small cut marked her temple.
She was breathing.
I dropped beside her.
“Jade.”
Nothing.
“Monroe.”
Her eyes opened suddenly.
Her hand shot toward my throat before recognition stopped her.
“Daniel?”
“Easy.”
She sat upright.
“What happened?”
“You tell me.”
Memory returned instantly.
Her expression changed.
“The lights.”
“What?”
“Power flickered. I heard Vault Three alarm. Someone came behind me.”
She reached for her wrist.
“The rifle?”
“Gone.”
She swore.
Footsteps approached.
Collins and Martinez rushed inside.
Collins stopped when he saw Jade.
“She okay?”
“She will be.”
Jade pushed herself upright.
“Who accessed the vault?”
Martinez looked grim.
“You.”
She stared at him.
“What?”
“Biometric system says you opened it.”
Jade laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“They copied my credentials.”
“Biometric.”
“I know.”
Collins frowned.
“How do you copy a palm scan?”
Jade looked toward the scanner.
“You don’t need the palm if you control the maintenance interface.”
We all understood.
Somebody inside Weapons Systems had both technical access and intimate knowledge of secure protocols.
Gerald arrived moments later.
The general looked at Jade’s injury, then the empty vault.
“Medical.”
“No.”
“That wasn’t a suggestion.”
“I’m fine.”
“You were unconscious.”
“I’ve had worse.”
Gerald stared.
Jade sighed.
“Five minutes.”
Medical cleared her forty minutes later.
The mission countdown kept moving.
Less than eighteen hours.
The missing Black Talon created a new nightmare.
Not because it was magical.
It wasn’t.
But it contained specialized components tied to Jade’s old program, including an optic system calibrated specifically for her.
Soren knew what it meant.
And somebody had just delivered it to him.
Security found the empty rifle case near the vehicle depot.
No weapon.
The gate logs showed nothing unusual.
Then Collins discovered a detail everybody else missed.
A maintenance truck had left fourteen minutes before lockdown.
Authorized route.
Authorized driver.
Routine equipment run.
Except Collins knew the driver.
“He’s on leave.”
Martinez looked up.
“Who?”
“Staff Sergeant Owen Price.”
We found the truck abandoned nine miles away.
No driver.
No rifle.
Gerald ordered Price detained.
There was one problem.
Nobody could find him.
His quarters were empty.
Phone destroyed.
Locker cleaned.
Bank account suddenly missing twenty-three thousand dollars.
Everything pointed toward Price.
Jade didn’t believe it.
“Too easy.”
Collins frowned.
“He stole a truck and vanished.”
“Maybe.”
“You got another explanation?”
“Someone wants us to stop looking.”
“For who?”
Jade stared at the personnel board.
Then pointed toward Lieutenant Colonel Harris’s name.
The room froze.
Martinez shook his head.
“No.”
Jade looked at him.
“You asked.”
“Harris has been with this command six years.”
“That makes him trustworthy?”
“It makes him proven.”
Jade’s expression remained neutral.
“So was Soren.”
Nobody argued.
Gerald refused to accuse Harris without evidence.
Jade agreed.
Instead, we built a trap.
Gerald announced through restricted channels that the operation had been delayed.
Only four people received the real timeline.
Gerald.
Martinez.
Me.
Jade.
Everyone else got a false extraction schedule.
Then we waited.
Three hours later, intelligence intercepted a message associated with Soren’s network.
His people repositioned according to the false schedule.
The leak had come from someone outside our four-person circle.
Harris was possible.
So were seven others.
Jade studied the interception.
“This isn’t enough.”
“No,” Gerald said.
“But it tells us something.”
“What?”
“They’re confident.”
Jade pointed to the repositioned units.
“Soren believes his source completely.”
Martinez leaned closer.
“What does that mean?”
“Long relationship.”
Gerald’s face hardened.
“Not Price.”
“Probably not.”
Price was bait.
Somebody had used him.
We found proof two hours later.
A security team discovered Price alive at an abandoned storage building.
Bound.
Drugged.
His last memory was drinking coffee after shift with another officer.
He couldn’t remember who.
But the camera in the hallway outside the break room worked.
We reviewed the footage.
Price walked into the room at 19:12.
Three minutes later, Lieutenant Colonel Harris entered.
No one else did.
Collins stared at the screen.
“Son of a…”
Gerald looked devastated.
Martinez said nothing.
Harris had served with him for years.
Trust is strange in military units.
You don’t always like each other.
You don’t always agree.
But you may still place your life in someone else’s hands.
Finding out those hands belong to a traitor feels like discovering the floor beneath you was never solid.
Gerald summoned Harris to headquarters.
Harris never arrived.
His vehicle crashed through a maintenance gate six minutes later.
He abandoned it and disappeared into wooded terrain surrounding the base.
Security followed.
Jade stopped them.
“He wants you chasing him.”
Gerald looked at her.
“What makes you sure?”
“Because Soren doesn’t waste pieces.”
She checked her watch.
“Operation leaves in four hours.”
Martinez understood.
“Harris is distraction.”
“Yes.”
“And the rifle?”
“Already with Soren.”
Gerald looked at Jade.
“We can abort.”
She shook her head.
“The hostages disappear if we do.”
“You’ll be going without the Talon.”
Jade walked toward the ordinary armory racks.
“Then give me something else.”
Collins stared at her.
“All that mythology around that rifle and you don’t need it?”
Jade selected a standard precision rifle.
She checked the balance.
“The weapon matters.”
Then she looked at him.
“But not as much as the person holding it.”
Collins almost smiled.
“Okay, Armory Ghost.”
Jade gave him a look.
“Don’t make that a thing.”
“Too late.”
Despite everything, several men laughed.
Jade did too.
Barely.
It was the first genuine smile I had seen from her.
At 0200, our aircraft lifted away from the base.
Jade sat across from me.
Martinez beside her.
Collins checked his equipment repeatedly.
Reed slept.
Nobody mentioned Harris.
Nobody mentioned Soren.
The aircraft vibrated around us.
Jade leaned her head against the metal wall.
For several minutes her eyes remained closed.
Then Collins spoke.
“Monroe.”
She opened them.
“I owe you another apology.”
“You already apologized.”
“Different one.”
She waited.
“I thought the rifle made you dangerous.”
Jade raised an eyebrow.
“And now?”
“Now I think you were dangerous while cleaning mine and just had the manners not to tell me.”
Reed laughed.
Martinez shook his head.
Jade looked at Collins.
“Your rifle was filthy.”
“That hurts.”
“It should.”
For a few seconds, we were just soldiers traveling toward a mission.
Then the red light overhead switched on.
Twenty minutes.
The humor disappeared.
Jade unfolded the operational map.
“We enter from the west.”
Martinez nodded.
“Team One moves south.”
“Daniel establishes relay here.”
I pointed.
“Confirmed.”
“Collins and Reed cover Martinez.”
Collins nodded.
“And you?”
Jade tapped the northern ridge.
“I go alone.”
Martinez immediately objected.
“No.”
“It’s the best angle.”
“And Soren knows you’ll choose it.”
“That’s why I won’t stay there.”
He stared.
Jade moved her finger.
“I establish on the ridge, let him see me, then shift eighty meters south before first engagement.”
“You’re using yourself as bait.”
“I’m correcting his expectations.”
Martinez looked unhappy.
But he couldn’t argue with the logic.
The aircraft descended.
Ten minutes.
Jade pulled on her gloves.
I noticed her left wrist scar briefly.
“Does the mark mean Talon?”
She looked at it.
“No.”
“What does it mean?”
She hesitated.
“Two halves.”
“Of what?”
“A promise.”
The aircraft shook.
“Which promise?”
Jade looked toward the darkness beyond the small window.
“That no operator would ever be abandoned.”
Her eyes hardened.
“Soren broke it.”
Five minutes later, we landed.
The world outside was dark, wet, and silent.
We moved.
For ninety minutes, everything went according to plan.
Then I established the relay.
My equipment came online.
Perfect signal.
No interference.
Jade’s warning about communications seemed unnecessary.
Until exactly seven minutes after Martinez entered the industrial corridor.
Every channel died.
Not weakened.
Died.
I stared at my equipment.
“No.”
The system was functioning.
Signal was being blocked.
Jade had predicted it perfectly.
I switched frequencies.
Nothing.
Emergency band.
Nothing.
Then one channel came alive.
A voice crackled through my headset.
Male.
Calm.
Older.
“Daniel Mercer.”
My blood froze.
He knew my name.
“Tell Jade I still have her rifle.”
I said nothing.
The voice continued.
“And tell her I kept something else.”
A pause.
“One member of Talon survived.”
Static.
Then silence.
I turned toward the northern ridge.
Jade was somewhere in the darkness.
And Soren had just delivered the one message capable of destroying every wall she had spent nine years building.
One member of her old team might still be alive.
And she had no idea whether it was the truth.
---