Chapter 7 - The Ghost of Sector Nine
Evelyn Carter finished rolling down her left sleeve and buttoned the cuff.
She did not return the salute. She did not stand at attention. She simply turned around to face General Marcus Hale, her hands resting loosely in the pockets of her olive-drab trousers.
Her gray eyes surveyed the ribbons on Hale’s chest, pausing briefly on a silver star with a bronze V-device. A faint, nearly imperceptible flicker of recognition passed through her features, but her expression remained as unreadable as an empty horizon.
"Hello, Marcus," she said softly. Her voice had the gravelly, steady timber of dry leaves brushing against stone. "You’ve put on some rank since the Euphrates."
Cole stood frozen against the ammunition crate, his mouth hanging slack. His smartphone had dropped to the dirt, the lens pointing uselessly into the gravel, recording nothing but the dust settling around his boots. His mind could not reconcile what his eyes were witnessing.
A two-star general. The commanding officer of the entire installation. A man who answered only to the Pentagon and the President. Standing at rigid, quivering attention before an elderly woman in work clothes carrying a cardboard box.
"We searched for you for three years after the valley, Major," Hale said, his voice hushed, speaking as if they were the only two souls left on the continent. "The wreckage was cleared. The telemetry showed no survivors. The records were redacted under executive order. We built a stone for you at the memorial garden at Bragg. It has no name on it. Just the number."
Evelyn looked toward the distant target array, where the five holes still smiled from the bullseye.
"Dead people don't have to fill out logistics requisitions, Marcus," she remarked calmly. "It’s quieter that way."
"Why are you here, Ma'am?" Hale asked, dropping his hand from the salute but remaining locked at the position of attention. "If you’re on the grid... if they know you’re here..."
Evelyn reached out and picked up the battered rifle from the sandbag. She ran her thumb along the peeling silver duct tape on the forearm.
"The extractor claw cracked on the farm last week," she said simply. "Nobody makes thirty-aught-six parts for this pre-war receiver anymore. The modern armories have the tooling to mill a replacement claw out of hardened tool steel. I came to see if the boys in the depot still knew how to cut metal, or if they only knew how to swap plastic modules."
She turned her gaze back to Sergeant Cole.
May you like
Her eyes did not hold anger, malice, or triumph. They held only the vast, indifferent weight of someone who had seen thousands of men come and go, live and die, shout and fall silent.
"Your sergeant here thought I was lost," Evelyn added mildly.
