Vice Admiral Cross reached for my phone, but I did not hand it over right away.
My fingers had gone numb around it.
“Commander,” she said, sharper now. “Vale.”
I blinked.
The parade ground came back in pieces.
The ringing phones.
The circling dust.
The Black Hawks lifting higher into the white California sun.
The Marines standing in stunned silence.
And somewhere beyond all of it, Mason Creed was breathing.
“He’s alive,” I said.
Cross looked at the screen.
For one second, her iron expression cracked.
Then she became stone again.
“Trace it.”
The man in the dark suit took the phone from my hand and moved fast, speaking into his comms while two operators surrounded him. Cross turned to the remaining officers on the platform.
“Lock down every exit. No one leaves this base without clearance from my office.”
Several officers jumped into motion.
But one colonel did not.
Colonel Harris.
He had been standing behind Blackwood the entire ceremony, quiet, decorated, forgettable in the way dangerous men learned to be forgettable.
Now he was stepping backward.
One slow step.
Then another.
I saw his hand move toward his jacket.
“Harris!” I shouted.
He ran.
The parade ground exploded into motion.
Two MPs lunged for him, but Harris was faster than he looked. He slammed one into the railing, ducked beneath the other’s arm, and sprinted toward the reviewing platform stairs.
I moved before anyone ordered me to.
My ribs screamed.
My cheek burned.
But pain was just information.
I took the stairs two at a time and cut across the platform as Harris reached the far side. He shoved a junior officer into my path. I caught the officer by the shoulder, pushed him aside, and kept going.
Harris looked back.
That was his mistake.
I hit him from the side and drove him into the platform wall.
He grunted hard, twisting as we slammed down together. Something small and black skidded from his hand across the wood.
A detonator.
The nearest operator froze.
“Device!” he yelled.
Every Marine on that field heard it.
Cross didn’t panic.
“Find it!”
Harris laughed beneath me, breathless and bloody at the lip.
“You still don’t understand,” he whispered. “Reaper Protocol was never buried.”
I pinned his wrist harder.
“Where is he?”
His smile widened.
“Which one?”
Then the first blast hit.
Not on the parade ground.
Not near the Marines.
Somewhere deep inside the base, a dull thunder rolled through the air, shaking the platform beneath us. Smoke rose beyond the administration buildings.
A second later, sirens began screaming.
Cross turned toward the smoke.
“The communications wing,” someone shouted.
Harris laughed again.
I drove his face into the floor, not hard enough to break him, just hard enough to silence him.
“Where is Mason?” I demanded.
He breathed through his teeth.
“Ask your admiral.”
I looked toward the helicopter carrying Blackwood.
It was already banking west.
For one terrible second, I thought he was gone.
Then the sky answered.
The second Black Hawk turned sharply, nose dipping, moving like a predator.
A voice crackled from Cross’s radio.
“Target aircraft is refusing return order.”
Cross grabbed the radio.
“Bring it down intact.”
The chase lasted less than a minute.
The pursuing Black Hawk slid beside Blackwood’s aircraft, forcing it away from the coastline. A third helicopter blocked its path from the front. The trapped aircraft hovered, shuddering in the rotor wash.
Then it descended.
Hard.
Dust swallowed the far end of the parade ground as the helicopter touched down.
Operators surrounded it before the blades slowed.
Blackwood was dragged out moments later.
This time, he wasn’t smiling.
Cross walked toward him with me at her side.
Harris was already cuffed behind us. The detonator lay sealed in an evidence bag. The smoke beyond the buildings kept rising, but the base emergency teams had moved fast. No screams. No chaos. Just damage.
A warning shot from cowards who still thought fear could win.
Blackwood stared at me as they forced him to his knees.
“You don’t know what you’re chasing,” he said.
I crouched in front of him.
“No. But you do.”
His eyes flicked toward Cross.
Then back to me.
“You think Mason Creed is the victim?”
I stopped breathing.
Blackwood leaned closer, voice low enough that only I could hear.
“He helped build the door.”
The world tilted.
For a moment, the dust, the sirens, the helicopters, everything blurred into one long roar.
“No,” I said.
Blackwood’s smile returned, thin and cruel.
“He was captured in Syria, yes. But he didn’t stay broken. They turned him. Then he turned the protocol. And now every name on that list is awake.”
I grabbed him by the front of his uniform.
Blackwood’s eyes shone with victory.
“Already inside.”
A gunshot cracked from the administration building.
The Marines on the parade ground dropped into defensive positions with terrifying discipline. Operators moved around Cross. MPs shouted commands. Officers pulled sidearms.
And through the smoke, a man walked out.
Hands raised.
Face bruised.
Mason Creed.
My heart stopped.
He looked older than the man I had buried in memory. Thinner. Harder. His hair was shorter, his face marked by years that had not been kind. But his eyes were the same.
Those tired gray eyes that had watched my back through Syria, Kandahar, and every nightmare between.
“Mason,” I whispered.
He stopped twenty yards away.
Every rifle on the field pointed at his chest.
He didn’t look at them.
He looked only at me.
“Evelyn.”
My name in his voice nearly broke me.
Cross stepped forward. “Lieutenant Creed, get on your knees.”
Mason slowly lowered himself to the concrete.
“I didn’t build it,” he said. “I kept it alive long enough to bring it home.”
Blackwood laughed behind me.
“Liar.”
Mason’s gaze shifted to him.
“No, Admiral. You are.”
Then Mason nodded toward his own jacket.
An operator moved in carefully and pulled a drive from the inner lining.
Not a weapon.
Evidence.
Mason kept his hands raised.
“Every transfer. Every name sold. Every false casualty report. Every private contractor paid through shell accounts. Every officer who signed off.”
Cross took the drive.
Her face darkened as if she already understood the scale of it.