Author: CuongM Mr

[PART 2] The rain hammered against the asphalt, pooling around the tires of the four armored vehicles. Dr. Redfield stood frozen in the downpour. His expensive leather shoes were soaking through. His chest was still puffed out, his chin still raised, but his authority was bleeding out into the puddles. He was used to running…

The armored SUV pulled away from Westbridge Memorial before I could close the door all the way. Rain hammered the roof like someone was throwing gravel from above. The wipers swept back and forth in a rhythm that should have been calming but wasn’t. Nothing about this night was calming. I sat in the back,…

“Protocol Vanguard Seven. Initiate.” The words didn’t just echo in the room. They bypassed my conscious brain and rewired my nervous system in a fraction of a second. It wasn’t a choice. It was a conditioning so deep, so absolute, that the fifteen years of civilian life I had built instantly vaporized. The wooden handle…

[PART 2] The word hung in the air between us like smoke after an explosion. KJ. A name I hadn’t heard spoken aloud in fourteen years. A name that belonged to a woman who died in Fallujah — or so everyone believed. The man in front of me — the soldier with the close-cropped gray…

[PART 2] The first contraction that truly broke me came just after midnight. Not the polite, warning twinges I’d been ignoring all evening—those I could breathe through, pretend were nothing, hide behind a clenched jaw while Maisy danced around the living room hanging paper snowflakes on the tree. No, this one seized my entire body…

[PART 2] I got Emily home that night, but I didn’t sleep. She conked out in my arms before we even hit the front door, her small fingers still twisted into the fabric of my jacket like she was afraid I’d disappear if she let go. I laid her down in her bed, pulled the…

[PART 2] The heavy oak door hadn’t finished swinging shut when every sound in the room died. Not a rustle. Not a cough. Just the fluorescent hum and the soft, measured click of General Dana Brooks’s heels on the tile floor. She didn’t look at the judge. She didn’t look at the bailiff or the…

[PART 2] I stood in Lauren Kingsley’s office, the yellowed newspaper clipping trembling in my hand, and I didn’t move. I couldn’t. The date in the corner of the paper read twelve years ago, almost to the day. The photograph was grainy, black and white, but it was unmistakably me—younger, harder, my jaw set in…

[PART 2] The ID card sat on Judge Isabella Reeves’s palm like it weighed ten pounds. She didn’t speak. For a long moment, she didn’t even look up. Her thumb traced the curled edge of the laminate, the faded photo, the Marine Corps seal that was barely visible anymore after seven years in a wallet,…

[PART 2] I read the first page three times before I believed it. The attic was silent except for the rain dripping through a crack in the east corner. Silas was still crouched beside me, one hand braced on a dusty rafter, watching my face. The bare bulb overhead swung slightly in the draft, casting…