Chapter 5 - The Doors Open
The mess hall doors swung open hard enough to cut through every conversation. Boots struck the tile in a slow, measured rhythm. The fluorescent hum seemed louder after the laughter died, and Brody’s hand loosened around the bottle as every head in the room turned toward the entrance.
Vice Admiral Thomas Davidson entered in dress whites, face calm enough to be terrifying. Two military police followed behind him. In his right hand, he held a blurred phone. No readable text. No visible screen detail. Just the shape of the evidence everyone suddenly understood.
Wade lowered his phone.
Too late.
Brody stepped back from McKenzie’s table. The third cadet’s face collapsed into panic. Around them, the crowd that had laughed minutes earlier became a room full of people trying to remember exactly how visible they had been.
McKenzie remained seated, soaked and silent, one hand flat beside her tray. She did not look relieved. Relief would come later, if it came at all. In that moment, she looked exactly like what her father had trained her to become: controlled under pressure, still enough to make guilty people hear themselves breathing.
Davidson stopped at the end of the table. His eyes moved over the liquid in her hair, the stained uniform, the bottle in Brody’s hand, the phone in Wade’s grip, and the cadets pretending they had not been part of the room.
He did not look at McKenzie first. That mattered. He did not turn her into the problem.
He looked at Brody.
“Who ordered this?”
May you like
The question was quiet.
Brody went pale anyway.
