The General Barked an Odd Command No One Could Understand – Until the Cleaning Lady Snapped to Attention.

Ashford nodded: “Not directly, but he used the uplink access 2 hours before it went live.”

Cassia’s fingers curled tighter around her weapon: “He’s the breach.”

Stratton stepped back from the terminal: “We bring him in.”

Cassia shook her head: “No. We don’t give him a chance to lie.”

Ashford blinked: “Then what?”

“We follow him,” she said. “Let him lead us to whoever’s behind this.”

Stratton hesitated, then nodded: “Agreed. But carefully. If Raven08’s signal is being faked, someone’s trying to bait you.”

Cassia looked again at the terminal. Her face was unreadable.

“If it’s bait,” she said, “they’re going to regret who they put on the line.”

The trap wasn’t just technological, it was psychological. Lieutenant Marcus Bell had always been loud, overconfident, a showman. The kind of officer who climbed ladders faster than his record justified because he looked the part and knew who to impress. But now after Vanguard 7, after the simulation, after that single command turned a janitor into a ghost with perfect formation, he had grown quiet, too quiet.

Ashford tracked his badge movements through the internal net. Bell had filed out with the others after Stratton dismissed the briefing, but instead of heading to the officer’s mess or the comm’s bay, he diverted to subsector epsilon, maintenance level, cold, unused.

“He’s not reporting, he’s checking in,” Ashford muttered.

Cassia and Stratton watched the same feed in silence. The halls he moved through had no cameras, but the motion sensors pulsed clean. A steady walk, no deviation, no panic.

“He’s done this before,” Stratton said. “Knows how to avoid trip wires.”

“Because he’s not working alone,” Cassia replied.

Ashford overlaid Bell’s movements with a 3D base map.

“That area backs into the old Vex archive. If someone wanted to physically house a mirror node, that’s the most shielded place on base.”

Stratton nodded once: “Then that’s where he’s going.”

They didn’t suit up in armor. They didn’t bring backup. They moved through the base like it was memory. Cassia leading, Ashford ghosting behind, Stratton with eyes forward like he was returning to a battlefield he once escaped.

No alarms, no sirens, just the hum of hallway lights and the deep echo of old steel doors. Cassia signaled them to stop as they neared the edge of Epsilon. A faint light bled under a door. She raised her weapon. No sound inside, no movement, just that steady hum, the kind old servers made when thinking too hard.

Stratton whispered: “Ashford on me. Stack left.”

They flanked. Cassia stepped into position on the right, held three fingers up, counted down silently: 3, 2, 1. She kicked the door in.

The room was empty except for the screen. A single chair spun slowly on its axis, still warm. The monitor in front of it pulsed with a blinking cursor. On the desk a comm’s jack had been pulled too recently for the trace signature to have cooled.

Cassia walked in first, then froze. On the screen a line of text had appeared: “I know you’re awake. I remember what you did.”

Stratton stepped up beside her: “Someone wants to rattle you.”

Ashford pulled a data drive from his coat, inserted it into the terminal.

“Let’s see where this was pushed from,” his voice trailed off.

Cassia turned: “What?”

Ashford looked pale: “This isn’t a standard message. It’s a live injection broadcast straight into this terminal’s OS shell. No route, no signature. It bypassed Centravex entirely.”

Stratton cursed: “Meaning?”

“Meaning,” Ashford said slowly, “they’re inside the system already, watching, waiting. And if they know how to ghost like this, they were trained for it.”

Cassia stared at the text, then leaned closer. She typed a single word: “Who?”

The screen blinked once, then responded: “You called her dead. You left her.”

Cassia’s blood turned to ice.

“That’s not a message for me,” she whispered.

Stratton frowned: “What do you mean?”

Cassia’s face was stone: “That’s for someone else in the Raven unit.”

Ashford’s voice dropped: “You think Raven08 is still alive?”

Cassia didn’t answer. But the cursor blinked again. One more line appeared: “Come alone. Sector 19, 0400 hours.”

Cassia didn’t sleep. She didn’t rest. Didn’t sit. She just waited. By 3:39 hours she was already two levels below sector 19. No escort, no comms, no authorization, no hesitation.

Stratton had protested, of course. Ashford too. But Cassia shut them both down with a single look and a single truth.

“If I don’t go alone, they won’t show.”

She walked through the base’s forgotten arteries like a ghost reclaiming old bones. Ventilation shafts, steam tunnels, even the sealed drop shafts that predated Centravex. Her steps were silent, purposeful. The kind of movement no civilian could mimic. Because this wasn’t civilian. This was muscle memory from a life she never fully left behind.

At exactly 3:58 she reached the final threshold. A steel door, manual lock. Rust crept around the hinges like old blood. She paused just for a breath, then pushed it open.

The room inside was wrong. Too clean, too quiet. Banks of servers lined the far walls, all powered but humming in low idle mode. In the center a single chair facing a blank screen. A warm mug sat on the floor beside it, half drunk tea, jasmine. Someone had been here recently, maybe still was.

Cassia stepped forward, hand near her holster. No sign of entry, no sound of movement. Just a tension in the air that felt older than the systems around her.

And then the screen came alive. No keyboard input, no voice command, just activation. Lines of code scrolled like falling ash. No prompt, no UI, just a flood of data. Encrypted, scrambled, marked with a signature that made her stomach twist: Raven 08.

Her breath caught. She hadn’t seen that ID since Ivory Fire, since the final night, since the last time the team bled together in the dark. And the woman behind it, Operator Mave Lawn, had been confirmed KIA by Centravex. Auto log burned, gone, nothing left. Yet here it was. Blinking active. Screaming without a sound. Alive.

Then the room spoke. Not a voice from speakers, not mechanical. A voice behind her: “You always were early.”

Cassia turned fast, weapon raised, stance solid, and then stopped. Standing in the doorway dressed in a gray undersuit, sleeves rolled, hair tied back in a braid that hadn’t changed in 15 years was Mave. Older, leaner, scarred, but alive. Alive.

Cassia didn’t lower the weapon, not yet. Mave stepped forward, slow, deliberate, like she knew exactly how much time had passed and exactly how fragile the moment was. Her expression was unreadable, but her eyes were sharp, alert, watching for tremors in Cassia’s grip, for hesitation in her breathing, for any sign that the woman in front of her had broken in the years they’d been apart.

“You’re not dead,” Cashia said flatly.

Mave gave a ghost of a smile: “Neither are you.”

The silence between them felt denser than the walls.

Cassia didn’t blink: “I saw the blast. You were 5 feet from it.”

“I was,” Mave exhaled. “And someone pulled me out.”

“Who?”

Mave exhaled: “Does it matter?”

Cassia’s finger tensed against the trigger: “You faked your death. You disappeared. The team burned because we thought you were gone.”

Mave’s jaw shifted: “The team burned because someone gave the wrong coordinates and pulled extraction before the mission was complete.”

Cassia’s voice dropped: “You’re saying I gave the wrong coordinates?”

“I’m saying someone wanted you to believe you did.”

Cassia stepped closer, guns still raised: “Then why didn’t you come back? Why this?”

Mave’s smile faded: “Because coming back would have made me a liability, and staying gone let me trace who buried us.”

She pointed at the screen: “You think this room is the trap? It’s not. This is the evidence.”

Cassia’s gaze flicked to the code still scrolling: “I don’t need proof. I need answers.”

“You’ll get them,” Mave said. “But not with that in my face.”

Cassia hesitated, then slowly lowered the pistol, just enough. Mave didn’t move.

“I’ve been watching Black Ridge for years,” she continued. “Watching Centravex adapt. Watching them erase us, one protocol at a time. Raven wasn’t just a unit, Cassia. We were a prototype. And when it worked too well, they buried it. Us. Everything.”

Cassia’s voice was cold: “You think I didn’t know that? You think I didn’t feel it every time someone pretended Raven was a glitch in the system?”

Mave shook her head: “I know you did. But you stayed.”

“I stayed because someone had to be left alive to remember it.”

Mave’s posture softened just slightly. They stood there for another beat. Then she turned back toward the main terminal and tapped the interface. The scroll stopped. A single file remained. Encrypted, locked, timestamped the night of Operation Ivory Fire.

Cassia stepped forward.

Mave said: “This is what they killed us to hide.”

Cassia stared at the file. Its title read: Strike red internal authorization Bell Vex link manual failover. Cassia’s breath stopped.

“Bell,” she whispered.

Mave nodded: “He was the relay. The inside line. The one who rerouted our exfil for complications. He got promoted 3 weeks later.”

Cassia didn’t speak. She just stared. The silence returned, heavier now. And somewhere beneath it something sharp began to rise. Not rage. Not pain. Purpose. Cassia didn’t say anything for a long time. She didn’t need to. The name on that file said enough.

Marcus Bell. The same man who mocked her in front of a room full of officers. The same man who triggered the ghost relay 2 hours before it came online. The same man who’d been standing 20 feet from her the day Raven burned and lived to tell everyone she hadn’t.

Mave moved back to the console. Her fingers gliding across the keys with a familiarity that hadn’t faded.

“We have to move fast. Once this file decrypted, it started a relay echo. Centravex will flag it within minutes, even off-grid.”

Cassia’s voice was like ice breaking: “Where is he now?”

Ashford’s voice crackled softly through a concealed earpiece in her collar. She hadn’t acknowledged the connection earlier, but she knew he’d stay linked no matter what Stratton said.

“Cassia, Belle just accessed restricted airframe logs, Hangar 2. He’s requesting clearance for a night flight, solo.”

Mave frowned: “He’s running.”

“No,” Cassia said. “He’s erasing.”

Ashford’s voice returned: “ETA to lift off: 10 minutes. You won’t get there in time.”

Cassia didn’t answer. She turned to Mave: “How many files are stored in this node?”

“Only one that matters.”