Chapter 1 - The Salute
Mason Reed put me on one knee before I had been back in the building for thirty seconds.
He grabbed the front of my uniform and shoved.
My palm hit the red mat.
My knee followed.
A few soldiers around the circle shifted, but nobody stepped in.
Mason stood over me.
“You really thought coming back would erase everything?”
I looked up.
I knew his name.
I knew his face.
I knew that, according to the personnel summary I had been given during recovery, Mason and I had served together before my transfer.
What I did not know was why he looked at me like I had ruined his life.
I stood.
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
His smile disappeared.
Then he swung.
My body moved before thought did.
I slipped past him and hit him once across the face.
Mason staggered two steps.
The soldiers went quiet.
At the back of the room, Colonel Walter Hayes unfolded his arms.
He had been watching since I entered.
Mason came at me again.
I put him onto his back.
Walter's expression changed.
Not concern.
Recognition.
“Enough,” he said.
Mason ignored him.
He pushed himself up and charged again.
I caught his arm.
Then something happened inside my body that did not feel like a decision.
My hand changed position.
My feet turned.
A short control sequence locked Mason off balance and forced him down onto one knee.
I froze with him there.
The room disappeared for half a second.
Not black.
White.
White walls.
A whistle.
Someone saying:
Again.
Then a line of people standing perfectly still.
I released Mason.
He stumbled away.
I stared at my own hands.
Walter had gone pale.
“Who taught you that?”
I looked at him.
“I don't know.”
That answer scared me more than the move.
Mason heard it too.
His expression changed.
He jerked his arm free and came at me one final time.
I turned with his momentum and sent him flat onto the mat.
Then I straightened.
Nobody cheered.
One soldier directly in front of me came to attention.
The soldier beside him followed.
Then another.
Within two seconds, every uniformed person surrounding the red mat stood rigid.
Right hands rose.
They saluted me.
All of them.
I stared around the circle.
“What are you doing?”
Nobody lowered a hand.
Mason, still on the floor, looked as if he'd seen a body sit up at its own funeral.
I turned toward Walter.
He was the only person in the room who had not saluted.
He took one slow step backward.
“You weren’t supposed to remember how to make them salute.”
Silence.
I looked at him.
“What does that mean?”
Walter seemed to realize what he had said.
Too late.
A woman near the front of the circle lowered her salute.
Staff Sergeant Dana Ortiz.
I remembered her name from the morning roster.
She looked at Walter.
“Sir.”
Walter said sharply:
“Not now.”
Dana didn't move.
“You testified there was never a signal.”
Mason slowly pushed himself upright.
My heartbeat changed.
I looked from Dana to Walter.
“What signal?”
Walter's face hardened.
“Everybody out.”
Nobody moved.
“Colonel—”
“Out.”
The soldiers began lowering their hands.
Dana stayed where she was.
So did Mason.
I walked toward Walter.
“You knew that move.”
He said nothing.
“You knew they would salute.”
“Rachel.”
“You knew this happened before.”
Mason laughed once from behind me.
It was an ugly sound.
I turned.
He was standing now, one hand against his jaw.
“You really don't remember.”
“Remember what?”
He looked at Walter.
Walter's expression warned him.
Mason ignored it.
“Ask him why the last time this room saluted you, six careers stopped moving the next morning.”
The soldiers at the door froze.
Walter stepped forward.
“Mason.”
Mason stared at me.
“And ask him why your name disappeared from the investigation before mine did.”
I could hear my own breathing.
Walter reached for the door.
Dana stopped him with one sentence.
“Colonel, she didn't remember anything when she walked in.”
Walter looked at her.
Dana nodded toward me.
“You just gave her the first thing nobody else could.”
“What?”
“Proof that the salute was real.”
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For the first time since my injury, one of the blank spaces in my memory had people standing inside it.
And every person in that room seemed to know why except me.
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