Chapter 4 - Four Stars
You can hear rank before you see it.
The engines came through the main gate in a pattern that was not supply, not maintenance, and not contractors arriving to pretend they could fix Building 12’s Wi-Fi. Two black SUVs. Three military vehicles. Gate guards straightened. A captain near headquarters spilled coffee on his own sleeve and pretended he had not.
I kept working.
Forty-ninth bag.
Fiftieth.
Then a shadow fell across my stack.
“Who is this soldier?”
The voice was calm.
Not loud.
It did not need to be.
Pruitt answered fast from behind me, suddenly useful. “Staff Sergeant Maya Chen, sir. She’s assigned to perimeter maintenance.”
“Perimeter maintenance.”
Not a question.
An autopsy.
“Yes, sir.”
I heard the pause before I turned. Heard him see the badge I had repaired myself. The clasp had torn through my vest when Moss ripped it off, so I stitched the fabric, cleaned the enamel, and put the hawk back where it belonged.
“Staff Sergeant,” the voice said.
I set down the shovel and turned.
General Marcus Harrison stood three feet away. Late fifties, field-tanned face, gray hair, four stars, and eyes that did not waste time pretending confusion was politeness.
He looked at the badge, then at me.
“Nightshade?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How long?”
“Four years, sir.”
His eyes sharpened.
“You’re Maya Chen.”
My name landed in the yard like a dropped magazine on concrete.
“Yes, sir.”
Pruitt went very still.
Donnie’s mouth opened near the motor pool. Wells put her phone away.
General Harrison looked back at the sandbags.
Then he asked the question Moss should have feared from the beginning.
“Why is a Nightshade operator doing manual labor?”
May you like
No one answered.
Because the truth had suddenly outranked the lie.
