PART 1: THE GHOST IN THE GLASS

The Crowbar wasn’t the kind of place you stumbled into by accident. It was a sanctuary of vices, a dimly lit purgatory sitting just outside the gates of Fort Braxton, where the air hung thick with the acrid perfume of stale cigarette smoke, spilled lager, and the heavy, unspoken weight of things men tried to forget. The neon beer signs buzzed with a nervous electrical hum, casting a sickly reddish glow over the faces of the gathered Rangers. We were fresh from deployment, still vibrating with the adrenaline of foreign lands, eager to wash away the dust of the desert with cheap whiskey and loud lies.

I was holding court at the center table, the king of my own little kingdom. My muscular frame took up space—deliberately. I leaned forward, gesturing with a half-empty beer bottle, commanding the attention of the boys.

“So there I was,” I boomed, my voice cutting through the low murmur of the room. “Pinned down behind this crumbling mud wall, tangos on three sides. The air was so thick with dust you could chew it.”

I paused, letting the silence stretch, watching them lean in. Some nodded with genuine appreciation; others, like Jameson, rolled their eyes, knowing exactly how much polish I was putting on the truth.

“That’s when I grabbed the radio,” I continued, pitching my voice lower, more intense. “Called in my own coordinates for the airstrike. Danger Close doesn’t even cover it. Sometimes… sometimes you gotta risk yourself to save the team.”

The table erupted. Backslaps, laughter, the clinking of glass. I rode the high of their approval, basking in the camaraderie. It was intoxicating, better than the alcohol buzzing in my veins. I took a long pull of my beer, my eyes wandering the room, looking for the next thing to conquer, the next audience member to enthrall.

That’s when I saw her.

She was sitting at the far end of the bar, removed from the chaos, a solitary island in a sea of noise. She wore civilian clothes—jeans and a grey button-up that looked like it had been through the wash a thousand times—but she didn’t look like a civilian. There was a stillness to her that felt unnatural. She wasn’t waiting for anyone; she wasn’t scrolling on a phone. She was just… existing. A faint, jagged scar traced her jawline, disappearing beneath her collar like a map leading to somewhere dangerous.

Octavius Mercer—”Tav” to us—slid a whiskey toward her. Tav was sixty-something, a man who moved with the deliberate efficiency of an old soldier. He didn’t ask her order. He just gave a subtle nod. She returned it—a microscopic dip of the chin that screamed ‘situational awareness’. Her eyes, reflected in the dirty mirror behind the bar, were scanning the room.

Something about her irritated me. Maybe it was her detachment. Maybe it was the way she seemed to be judging us, or worse, ignoring us completely. She was a void in my celebration, a blank spot I felt compelled to fill.

“What do we have here?” I announced, loud enough for my entourage to hear. I pushed away from the table, the legs of my chair screeching against the sticky floor. “Someone’s looking a little too serious for The Crowbar.”

My friends watched with amused anticipation. The court jester was about to perform.

I approached the bar, my gait loose and arrogant, beer sloshing over the rim of my glass. Tav’s eyes narrowed as I approached. His hand drifted beneath the counter—a subtle warning I was too drunk to heed.

I leaned against the bar next to her, invading her personal space with practiced dominance. I let my eyes drag over her, looking for a flinch, a blush, anything. She gave me nothing. She didn’t even turn her head.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” I slurred slightly, dropping my voice to a mock-sympathetic register. “This place too rough for civilians?”

Silence. She took a slow sip of her whiskey.

“Or are you military?” I pressed, leaning closer. The smell of her—rain and unscented soap—mixed with the alcohol on my breath. “Desk job, maybe? Logistics? What’s your call sign, darling? ‘Lonely Heart’?”

Behind me, the boys snickered. I felt emboldened. As I gestured with my beer, the sleeve of her grey shirt rode up slightly. There, on the inside of her wrist, was a tattoo. It wasn’t a butterfly or a heart. It was geometric, precise—a series of interlocking lines that looked like a targeting reticle mixed with a unit crest.

I froze. I’d seen markings like that before, in briefings I wasn’t supposed to read, in blurred photos from joint operations that officially never happened.

“Specialized unit,” I muttered, the smile faltering on my face. The alcohol made my brain sluggish, but recognition was clawing at the back of my throat. “Come on. What unit? Or are you just playing dress-up with that fake ink?”

I reached out to grab her wrist.

The air in the bar changed instantly. The temperature seemed to drop ten degrees. Before my fingers could graze her skin, she turned.

Her eyes met mine. They were grey, not the cloudy grey of a winter sky, but the sharp, crystalline grey of a storm center. They were unnervingly calm. There was no fear, no anger. Just an absolute, terrifying certainty.

“Phantom One,” she said.

Two words. Spoken softly, without inflection.

The effect was like a grenade going off in a library. The ambient noise of the bar—the jukebox, the laughter, the clinking glasses—seemed to be sucked into a vacuum. At a nearby table, a grizzled Staff Sergeant froze mid-sip. Two officers by the dartboard stopped talking and exchanged a look of pure dread.

The name cut through the room like a frequency only the damned could hear.

My confidence evaporated. Phantom. That designation was a ghost story. It was whispered about in smoking areas and latrines. A black-ops squadron wiped out in Azerbaijan three years ago. Deleted. Erased.

“You’re lying,” I stammered, my voice betraying a sudden, unfamiliar fear. “That’s classified. Phantom Squadron was wiped out. Dead.”

As the words left my mouth, a strange sensation buzzed in my palm. It started as a tickle, then a vibration, like my beer glass was humming a low note. I looked down. The liquid inside was rippling in concentric circles, Jurassic Park style.

Then, hairline fractures appeared in the glass. They spread like lightning, web-like and fast.

CRACK.

The sound was sharp as a gunshot. The glass didn’t just break; it exploded. Shards of glass and amber liquid sprayed outward. I gasped, jerking my hand back. Blood—dark and rich—welled up from a dozen deep cuts in my palm, mixing with the beer on the counter.

I stared at my hand in disbelief, my brain unable to process the physics of what just happened. I hadn’t squeezed it. I hadn’t hit it against the bar. It had just… disintegrated.

I looked back at her. She hadn’t flinched. Not a muscle in her face had moved. She regarded my bleeding hand with that same terrifying calm.

“Next time,” she said, her voice barely a whisper but echoing like a shout in my head, “show respect before asking names.”

She placed a crisp bill on the counter, gave Tav a barely perceptible nod, and stood up. She moved with a fluid grace that screamed ‘predator’. The crowd parted for her unconsciously, grown men stepping back to clear a path for the small woman in the grey shirt.

The door swung shut behind her, leaving a silence so heavy it felt like it would crush us.

Before I could even grab a napkin, the door flew open again.

Colonel Resnik filled the frame. He was a monolith of a man, fifty-three years old, with eyes that scanned the room like a targeting computer. He carried the kind of authority that made the air thin. He looked at the shattered glass, the blood on the counter, and the stunned silence of the room.

“What happened here?” Resnik’s voice was a whip crack.

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. My hand was throbbing, a dull, pulsing agony.

“Just a glass breaking, Sir,” Tav interjected smoothly, sliding a towel across the mess. “Cheap supplier. They don’t hold up to soldier strength.”

Resnik didn’t buy it. I saw his eyes narrow, scanning the faces of the men. He sensed the fear. He smelled the ozone of a secret exposed.

“Anyone here mention Phantom Squadron tonight?” he asked.

The question hung there, radioactive.

“No, Sir,” I heard myself say. The lie tasted like copper. “Just blowing off steam.”

Resnik held my gaze for a second that felt like an hour. He knew. He absolutely knew. “Get that hand looked at, Sergeant Dunwood. Report to my office at 0800.”

The next morning, the sunlight streaming through my blinds felt like an interrogation lamp. My hand was bandaged, a throbbing reminder of the night before, but the real pain was in my head—a gnawing, relentless curiosity.

I sat at my desk, the military database login screen blinking at me. I typed it in: Phantom Squadron.

SEARCHING…

NO RESULTS FOUND.

CLEARANCE LEVEL INSUFFICIENT.

I frowned. Even failed operations had footprints. Logistics logs, casualty reports, budget requests. I tried variations. Operation Phantom. Task Force Azerbaijan. General Vanguard Special Projects.

Nothing. It was a digital black hole.

“You’re not going to find anything.”

I nearly jumped out of my skin. Specialist Zephyr Novak was standing in my hallway, leaning against the doorframe with a laptop tucked under his arm. Zephyr was Fort Braxton’s resident cyber-warlock, a twenty-eight-year-old who treated firewalls like suggestions.

“Jesus, Zeph,” I exhaled, clutching my chest. “Do you ever knock?”

“The door was unlocked,” he said, breezing past me and flopping onto my couch. “And I heard you had a hell of a night. The glass that went boom. The Colonel showing up. The ghost woman.”

“It didn’t go boom,” I corrected instinctively, though I knew it was a lie. “It broke.”

“Right,” Zephyr smirked, opening his laptop. “And I’m just here to fix your Wi-Fi. Look, Allaric, if Resnik was asking about Phantom, and you’re searching for Phantom… we have a problem. Because Phantom doesn’t exist.”

“Define ‘doesn’t exist’,” I said, watching his fingers fly across the keys.

“I mean scrubbed,” Zephyr said, his voice dropping. “Sanitized. Everyone listed as KIA three years ago. No bodies recovered. No next of kin notifications properly filed. It’s a ghost file. But…” He hit a key with a flourish. “I found a backup of a backup.”

He turned the screen toward me. It was a corrupted image, grainy and pixelated. Eight operators in unmarked tactical gear. Faces blurred. But on the far right, the silhouette was unmistakable. The posture, the build. It was her.

“Whoever they were,” Zephyr whispered, “someone went to extraordinary lengths to bury them. Which makes your bar friend either a literal ghost or something the military is terrified of.”

“I have to go,” I said, standing up abruptly. “Resnik is waiting.”

“Don’t mention this,” Zephyr warned, his playful demeanor vanishing. “Resnik… there are rumors, Allaric. Bad ones. About off-book experiments. Be careful.”

Colonel Resnik’s office was a shrine to austerity. No personal photos. Just maps. Maps with pins in places where the US wasn’t supposed to be.

“Sergeant Dunwood,” he said without looking up from his paperwork. “Sit.”

I sat. My hand throbbed.

“Tell me exactly what happened.”

I gave him the sanitized version. Drunken joke. Glass slipped. Accident. I left out the name Phantom. I left out the impossible vibration.

Resnik finally looked up. His eyes were predatory. “And the woman? Did she identify herself?”

“No, Sir. Just a civilian.”

“Interesting,” Resnik leaned back, steepling his fingers. “Because three witnesses say you looked like you’d seen a ghost. And then a glass exploded.” He stood up and walked to the window, his back to me. “Sergeant, do you know why I took an interest in your regiment?”

“No, Sir.”

“Because you operate in strategic zones. Zones where… sensitive operations occur. Discussing such operations is treason. It ends careers. Sometimes, it ends lives.”

He turned back, his face a mask of cold menace. “Strange things happen to soldiers who dig, Sergeant. Equipment failures. Training accidents. Best to focus on your duties.”

The threat wasn’t even veiled. It was a naked blade on the table.

“Dismissed.”

I walked out of there with sweat trickling down my spine. He was scared. A full-bird Colonel was scared of a woman in a bar.

I needed answers. And I knew only one man who might have them.

Master Sergeant Thaddeus Drummond was hiding in the base chapel. He was the oldest Comms officer on base, a man who carried secrets like loose change.

“Master Sergeant,” I slid into the pew beside him.

“Figured you’d come,” Drummond murmured, staring at the crucifix. “Word travels fast.”

“What is Phantom Squadron?”

He laughed, a dry, rattling sound. “Meet me at the old motor pool. Building C. Twenty minutes.”

Building C was a graveyard for vehicles, full of dust and rust. Drummond was waiting by a decomissioned Humvee.

“Phantom wasn’t just a squadron,” Drummond said, his voice echoing in the cavernous space. “It was an experiment. General Vanguard’s Special Projects Division. Five years ago.”

“Experiments?” I asked. “Like gear? Weapons?”

“Like people,” Drummond corrected. “Mind Shift. That was the program name. Enhanced cognition. Accelerated reflexes. And… other things.”

“Telekinesis?” I whispered. It sounded insane.

Drummond didn’t blink. “I handled their comms. They did things that were impossible, Allaric. Extracting targets without touching a door handle. Neutralizing threats before they entered the room. But the enhancements… they were unstable. The official story is they died in Azerbaijan. The unofficial story? They started questioning orders. They grew a conscience. And then… poof. Gone.”

“She’s alive,” I said. “The woman at the bar. She’s Phantom One.”

Drummond pushed off the Humvee, his face pale. “If that’s true, she’s a walking dead woman. And you will be too if you keep pulling this thread. Forget her, Dunwood. Forget the name.”

He walked away, leaving me alone in the dust.

The paranoia set in that night. I noticed the patrols outside my barracks were heavier. My email password had been reset. When I went to the mess hall, conversations died when I walked in. Resnik was tightening the noose.

I went back to my off-base apartment, my hand aching, my mind racing. I unlocked the door and stepped into the dark living room. I reached for the light switch, but stopped.

The air felt… charged. Like static electricity before a storm.

“They’re watching you,” a voice said from the shadows.

I spun around, hand flying to my waist where my sidearm wasn’t.

She was sitting in my reading chair. Meridian Frost. Phantom One. In the dim light from the streetlamps outside, she looked even more dangerous than she had in the bar.

“How did you get in here?” I demanded, my heart hammering against my ribs.

“That’s your first question?” She sounded disappointed. “Not ‘who am I’ or ‘why is the Colonel trying to erase me’?”

“Fine,” I snapped. “Are you really Phantom One? What happened in Azerbaijan?”

She stood up. The movement was fluid, liquid. “Stop asking questions. Resnik has flagged you. If you keep digging, he’ll kill you.”

“Why should I trust you?” I countered, stepping back. “You’re the one who made a glass explode in my hand.”

“That wasn’t intentional,” she said, her voice softening slightly. “Control is… difficult. When memories are triggered.”

“Control of what?”

She didn’t answer. Instead, she looked at the table beside the door. My service pistol was lying there.

She just looked at it.

The gun rattled. Metal against wood. Then, it lifted. It hovered three inches off the table, rotating slowly, defying gravity, defying logic, defying everything I understood about the world. It floated across the room and settled gently into my hand. The steel was warm.

I stared at the gun, then at her.

“This is what they did to us,” she whispered. “This is why no one can know we exist.”

She moved to the window, checking the street. “They’ll be doing a sweep in five minutes. I have to go. Meet me tomorrow. Blackwater Bridge. 2200 hours. Come alone if you want the truth.”

Then she was gone, slipping out into the night like the ghost she was named for, leaving me standing in the dark with a levitating gun and a choice that would probably get me killed.

PART 2: ECHOES OF THE MIND SHIFT

Blackwater Bridge was a skeleton of iron and rust spanning a gorge that looked like a jagged wound in the earth. At 2200 hours, it was swallowed by a darkness so complete it felt physical. The rain had started again, a cold, miserable drizzle that slicked the metal grating of the bridge and soaked through my jacket in seconds.

I walked to the center, my boots clanging softly on the metal. The sound was swallowed by the roar of the river far below and the wind sighing through the pines.

“Meridian?” I called out. My voice was snatched away by the wind.

No answer.

I waited. Five minutes. Ten. The paranoia I’d been suppressing began to claw its way up my throat. Had she been caught? Was this a trap?

As I turned to scan the far end of the bridge, a glint of metal caught my eye. Wedged between two support beams was a black, weatherproof case—military grade. Sitting on top of it was a small device, glowing faintly.

I approached it cautiously. The device looked like a modified smartphone. As I got close, it projected a small holographic message into the rain-streaked air:

PLACE INJURED HAND ON LOCK.

I hesitated. It felt like a scene from a bad spy movie, but the memory of the floating gun was still fresh in my mind. I placed my bandaged palm on the biometric scanner of the case. I winced as it pressed against the healing cuts.

Click. Hiss.

The case popped open. Inside, nestled in foam, was a solitary data drive and a handwritten note on waterproof paper.

They’re tracking me. Had to move. Drive contains what you need. Trust no one. Especially Resnik.

I pocketed the drive and the note, my heart hammering. She wasn’t here. That meant she was either running or she was already gone. I sprinted back to my car, checking my mirrors every few seconds, expecting to see black SUVs tailing me. The drive back to my apartment was a blur of adrenaline and dread.

Inside, I enacted the protocols Zephyr had taught me—blinds drawn, white noise machine on, phone in the microwave (unplugged). I connected the drive to my laptop, which Zephyr had “jailbroken” from the base network.

The screen flooded with data. Redacted files. Mission logs. Personnel records.

And a folder titled PROJECT MIND SHIFT.

I clicked it. As I read, the floor seemed to drop out from under me.

Phantom Squadron wasn’t just a unit. It was a test subject group. The “enhancements” Drummond had mentioned weren’t just better reflexes. They were neurological rewrites. The goal was to create the perfect soldier: faster processing, telekinetic manipulation of matter, total obedience.

But the project had a flaw. The files called it an “Unanticipated Variable.”

Subject P1 (Meridian Frost) and Unit demonstrate heightened synaptic empathy. Moral inhibiting centers failing. Subjects questioning mission parameters.

They didn’t go crazy. They grew more human. They started feeling too much.

I opened the Azerbaijan mission report. The official story was a lie. They hadn’t been wiped out by enemies. They had been deployed to eliminate a “terrorist cell” that was actually a group of American journalists investigating military corruption—specifically, corruption linking Colonel Resnik to private defense contractors.

Phantom Squadron refused the order.

Status: Mission Failure. Recommendation: Immediate Termination of Assets.

Resnik had ordered them killed because they wouldn’t murder civilians.

I sat back, the glow of the screen illuminating my horrified face. They weren’t monsters. They were martyrs.

Bang-bang-bang.

The knock on my door shook the walls.

“Sergeant Dunwood! Military Police! Open up!”

I scrambled. I yanked the drive out and shoved it into the hidden compartment under the sink—another Zephyr special. I barely had time to stand up before the door was kicked in.

Four MPs stormed in, weapons drawn. Behind them, striding in like he owned the place, was Colonel Resnik.

“Sergeant Dunwood,” Resnik said, his voice smooth as silk. “You’re being detained for unauthorized access to classified material.”

They zip-tied my wrists. Resnik moved through my apartment, his eyes scanning everything. He reached into my jacket pocket—the one I hadn’t emptied—and pulled out Meridian’s handwritten note.

He smiled. It was a cold, reptilian expression.

“Seems your Phantom friend has led you into deep water, Sergeant,” he said, pocketing the note. “Let’s hope you can swim.”

As they marched me out to the waiting vehicle, I looked across the parking lot. Another team was loading a prisoner into a heavy transport van. She was hooded, shackled hand and foot, surrounded by six guards with taser rifles.

Meridian.

She didn’t struggle. But even from here, I could feel the tension in the air around her, a humming static. She turned her hooded head toward me. I felt it—a push, a thought, a reassurance.

Endure.

The holding cell at Fort Braxton was a white box designed to break you. No windows. No clock. Just a metal bench and a camera blinking in the corner.

I sat there for what felt like twelve hours. My mind replayed the files. The “termination” order. The journalists.

The door buzzed and opened. Resnik walked in, holding a folder. He didn’t look like a monster. He looked like a career officer—clean shaven, immaculate uniform. That was the scariest part.

“Sergeant,” he pulled up a metal chair. “I see she’s gotten to you. The delusions. The paranoia.”

“Where is she?” I asked, my voice raspy.

“Commander Frost is in a secure medical facility,” Resnik said calmly. “She’s very valuable. Years of R&D. Shame about the psychosis.”

“It’s not psychosis,” I spat. “I saw the reports. Mind Shift. You tried to turn them into weapons, and when they grew a conscience, you tried to scrap them.”

Resnik didn’t flinch. He opened the folder and tossed a stack of photos onto the bench.

They were gruesome. Bodies. Ruined buildings. “This is what happens when enhanced operators lose control, Sergeant. Azerbaijan wasn’t a refusal of orders. It was a massacre. She killed her own team. We’ve been trying to contain her for three years.”

He leaned in close. “She’s manipulating you. Just like she manipulated the others. Cooperation is your only way out.”

He stood up and checked his watch. “Think about it. You have an hour before General Vanguard demands a status update.”

He left me alone with the photos. They looked real. But I knew better. I knew what I felt in the bar. That wasn’t madness in her eyes. It was clarity.

I was staring at the wall when I heard a soft tap-tap-tap coming from the ventilation grate near the ceiling.

I froze.

Tap. Tap-tap. Tap.

Morse code. A-L-L-E-Y. 1-0. M-I-N.

Ten minutes later, the door opened again. But it wasn’t Resnik.

It was Tav.

The bartender was wearing a maintenance jumpsuit, carrying a toolbox and a clipboard. He nodded to the guard outside. “Fixing the light fixture. Won’t take long.”

The door clicked shut. Tav dropped the act instantly. He moved to me, his weathered face grim.

“We don’t have much time,” he whispered, pulling a pair of cutters from his box to snip my zip-ties. “Resnik’s distracted. There’s a fire at the East Gate.”

“You set a fire?” I rubbed my wrists.

“I created a diversion,” Tav corrected with a grin. “Listen. I served with Meridian’s father. I know the truth. Resnik is going to kill her tonight. He’s calling it a ‘medical complication’.”

He handed me a small device, like a car fob. “This is a frequency key. It tracks her signature. Don’t ask how it works; I don’t understand the science, I just know it lights up when she’s close.”

“How do I get out?”

“Shift change in seven minutes. The new guard is on our payroll—well, he owes me a lot of bar tabs. He’ll escort you to a car. Drive to the coordinates on the GPS.”

“Where am I going?”

“To meet the woman who actually runs the show.”

The escape was terrifyingly simple. The guard marched me out the back door, shoved me into a nondescript sedan, and told me to drive. I sped away from the base, watching the smoke from Tav’s “diversion” rise into the night sky.

The GPS led me deep into the woods, miles from civilization. The road turned into a dirt track, winding through dense pines until I reached a cabin that looked abandoned.

But as I stepped out of the car, I saw the security cameras hidden in the trees. The door opened before I knocked.

Standing there was a woman in her fifties, sharp-eyed and formidable.

“You’re Dunwood,” she said. Not a question.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Dr. Kalista Vanguard,” she said, ushering me inside. “But you probably know me as General Vanguard.”

I stared at her. “General Vanguard is at the Pentagon.”

“The public face is,” she corrected, locking the heavy deadbolt. “I handle the… quieter projects.”

The cabin was a command center. Monitors covered the walls, displaying schematics, satellite feeds, and data streams.

“Project Phantom was my design,” she admitted, walking to a computer. “I wanted to save lives. Send in one enhanced soldier to do the job of a platoon. Less casualty, higher efficiency.”

She turned to me, her expression pained. “But we didn’t account for the empathy spike. The enhancements connected the cognitive centers to the emotional processing centers. They didn’t just become super-soldiers; they became hyper-moral. They couldn’t follow unethical orders. It physically hurt them.”

“So Resnik decided to kill them,” I said, anger boiling in my chest.

“Resnik saw them as broken tools,” Vanguard nodded. “He tried to liquidate the asset. Meridian escaped. She’s been gathering evidence to prove that Resnik has been using the program for private gain—assassinations, corporate espionage.”

“She’s at the medical facility,” I said. “Resnik has her.”

Vanguard typed furiously. “He’s taken her to Sublevel 3. The old lab. He’s going to extract the enhancement data and then… dispose of the subject.”

An alarm blared on her console. Red lights flashed.

“They found us,” Vanguard said calmly. She grabbed a secure tablet and shoved it into my hands. “This has everything. The original authorization, the medical logs proving they weren’t insane, the financial trails. You have to get this to her. And you have to get her out.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll buy you time,” she grabbed a shotgun from a rack on the wall. “There’s a stealth bike out back. Go to the drainage entrance behind the water treatment plant. It leads directly to Sublevel 3.”

“Why me?” I asked again. “I’m just a Sergeant.”

“Because,” Vanguard looked at me, her eyes fierce. “Meridian trusts you. And right now, she’s the only weapon we have against Resnik.”

The motorcycle ride back to base was a suicide run. I killed the lights and wove through the trees, guided only by moonlight and desperation.

I found the drainage grate Vanguard described. It was rusted shut, but adrenaline is a hell of a drug. I wrenched it open and dropped into the muck. The smell was awful, but I crawled, the tablet pressed against my chest like a shield.

The tunnel seemed to go on forever. Finally, I reached a service ladder. I climbed up, pushing open a maintenance hatch.

I was in. Sublevel 3.

The corridor was sterile, white, and silent. I moved like a ghost, checking corners. I reached the heavy double doors marked RESTRICTED: LAB 1.

I could hear voices inside.

“The evidence is already out there,” Meridian’s voice. Weak, but defiant.

“It won’t matter,” Resnik’s voice. “Once I have the extraction data, I’ll rebuild the program. Better. Without the conscience.”

I needed a distraction. I saw the fire suppression panel. I didn’t hesitate. I raised my borrowed sidearm—Tav had left one in the glovebox—and shot the panel.

WHOOSH.

Alarms screamed. Sprinklers erupted, filling the hallway with a curtain of water.

I kicked the door open.

Meridian was strapped to a vertical table, wires connected to her temples. Resnik stood over her with a syringe, looking annoyed rather than frightened.

“Sergeant Dunwood,” Resnik sighed, turning to face me. “You are a persistent pest.”

“Step away from her!” I leveled the gun at his chest.

“You’re too late,” Resnik smiled. “Protocol Omega has been initiated. The facility is set to self-destruct in…” He checked his watch. “Six minutes. I’m leaving. She stays.”

“No one leaves!” I shouted.

Resnik laughed. “You think you have the upper hand? You have a gun. I have the future.”

He pressed a button on his wrist. The restraints on Meridian tightened. She gasped in pain.

“Let her go!”

“You want her?” Resnik sneered. “Take her.”

He turned to run out a side exit.

“Alaric!” Meridian screamed. “The table! Shoot the locks!”

I fired. The magnetic locks on her wrists sparked and shattered.

She fell forward, catching herself. She was weak, stumbling. I rushed to her, grabbing her arm.

“Can you walk?”

“We have to stop him,” she panted, her eyes glowing with a faint, terrifying light. “He can’t leave with the data.”

“The place is going to blow!” I yelled over the sirens. “We have to go!”

“Not without justice,” she whispered.

She turned toward the door Resnik had fled through. She raised her hand.

The metal door frame groaned. The heavy steel door was ripped off its hinges—literally torn from the wall—and flew down the corridor after Resnik.

I stared at her. She wiped blood from her nose.

“Let’s go,” she said.

We ran. The facility was shaking now, deep tremors from the charges detonating below. We reached the maintenance shaft. The heat was rising, suffocating.

“Up!” I pushed her toward the ladder.

We climbed as the world ended below us. Fire licked at our heels. Explosions rocked the shaft, threatening to knock us loose.

We burst out into the cool night air of the drainage ditch just as the ground convulsed. A muffled THUMP echoed from deep underground. The medical facility imploded, sinking into the earth in a cloud of dust and smoke.

We lay in the grass, gasping for air.

“He got away,” I choked out. “Resnik. He had an escape route.”

Meridian sat up. She looked at the smoking crater. Then she looked at me.

“He thinks he won,” she said, her voice hard as diamond. “He thinks he buried the truth.”

She reached into her pocket. She pulled out the syringe Resnik had been holding—she must have swiped it in the chaos. It wasn’t poison. It was a memory drive.

“He was trying to extract my memories,” she said. “But I reversed the feed. I didn’t just save my mind, Allaric. I downloaded his.”

She looked at the drive. “I have his entire network. Every name. Every bank account. Every soldier he’s twisted.”

She looked at me, and for the first time, she smiled. A real, dangerous smile.

PART 3: THE PHANTOM’S JUSTICE

We spent three days as ghosts. We moved between safe houses that General Vanguard had set up years ago—dusty apartments in forgotten cities, cabins deep in the woods where the only sound was the wind. We didn’t speak much. We didn’t need to. The shared trauma of the explosion, the weight of the secrets we carried, it bound us together more than words ever could.

I watched Meridian recover. It was terrifying. She didn’t heal like a normal person. The bruises faded in hours. Her energy returned with a vengeance. She spent nights plugged into Vanguard’s encrypted laptop, decoding the data she had pulled from Resnik’s drive.

“He’s not just a rogue Colonel,” she told me on the second night, her face illuminated by the blue glow of the screen. “He’s a broker. He sells ‘assets’ to private military corporations. He was going to sell the next generation of Phantom soldiers to the highest bidder.”

“We have to take this to the top,” I said, cleaning my stolen gun. “The real top. Not just base command.”

“We are,” she said. “Vanguard arranged a hearing. The Pentagon. A classified tribunal.”

“Resnik will be there,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

“I’m counting on it.”

The Pentagon was a labyrinth of power. Vanguard got us in—her credentials still carried weight, even if she was officially “retired” from active command. We were ushered into a secure hearing room deep in the bowels of the building. No windows. Soundproof walls.

A tribunal of five sat behind a polished oak table. Three Generals, two Intelligence Directors. Their faces were stone.

I sat in the metal chair, my uniform pressed but feeling like a costume. Meridian sat beside me, in full dress uniform. She looked every inch the Commander.

The door opened. Colonel Resnik walked in.

He looked… perfect. Untouchable. He smiled at the tribunal, a smile of shared secrets and old boys’ clubs. He didn’t even look at us.

“General,” Resnik nodded to the head of the tribunal. “I must protest this farce. Sergeant Dunwood is a deserter. And Commander Frost… well, we all know her condition. She is a failed experiment with delusions of grandeur.”

“We are here to review evidence,” the General said coldly. “Proceed.”

Resnik launched into a speech. It was masterful. He painted himself as a patriot doing the dirty work to keep America safe. He painted Meridian as a tragic, broken weapon that needed to be decommissioned. He painted me as a gullible fool caught in her web.

“She killed her own team in Azerbaijan,” Resnik said, his voice thick with false sorrow. “She snapped. It was a mercy that the others died quickly.”

I felt Meridian tense beside me. The water glass on the table trembled.

Control, I thought at her. Don’t give him what he wants.

She took a breath. The glass stilled.

“Your turn, Commander,” the General said.

Meridian stood up. She didn’t shout. She didn’t rage. She walked to the table and placed the tablet—Vanguard’s tablet—on the wood.

“The data on this drive,” she said clearly, “contains the unredacted mission logs from Azerbaijan. It proves we refused an illegal order to execute civilians. It proves Colonel Resnik ordered our termination.”

She paused, looking Resnik in the eye.

“But that’s not all.”

She pulled the second drive from her pocket—the one she had taken from the lab.

“This drive contains Colonel Resnik’s personal encrypted ledger. It details the sale of US military technology—and personnel—to private entities. It lists the offshore accounts where the money is kept. And it lists the names of the ‘failed’ experiments he claims to have destroyed.”

Resnik’s face went pale. For the first time, the mask slipped.

“That is fabricated!” he shouted, standing up. “She is using her abilities to manipulate the data! She’s a witch!”

“Sit down, Colonel,” the Intelligence Director snapped.

“I will not!” Resnik reached into his jacket.

The room froze. The MPs by the door raised their weapons.

“I wouldn’t,” Meridian said softly.

She didn’t move her hands. She just looked.

Resnik’s hand, still inside his jacket, jerked. He gasped. His arm flew out of his coat, stiff and unnatural, as if an invisible wire was pulling it.

A pistol—a small, unauthorized holdout piece—floated out of his hand. It hovered in the air between them.

The tribunal gasped.

“He intended to silence the witness,” Meridian said. “Again.”

With a thought, she disassembled the gun. The slide, the barrel, the spring, the magazine—they all drifted apart, spinning slowly in the air like a diagram, before clattering harmlessly onto the table.

Resnik stared at the pieces, then at her. The fear in his eyes was total.

“You think this ends with me?” he hissed, desperate now. “There are others! The program is everywhere!”

“And we will find them,” General Vanguard said, stepping out from the shadows in the back of the room. “We know where to look now.”

“Take him away,” the Head General ordered.

MPs grabbed Resnik. He didn’t go quietly. He was screaming about national security, about necessary evils, about how we were all doomed without him.

As the door closed, the silence in the room was profound.

“Commander Frost,” the General said, looking at her with a mix of awe and fear. “Sergeant Dunwood. You have done your country a great service. But… this creates a complication.”

“The enhancements,” Meridian said.

“Yes. We cannot have… super-soldiers walking around unchecked.”

“I agree,” Meridian said. “Which is why I’m proposing a new division. Overwatch. A unit dedicated to finding the other subjects, helping them, and ensuring this technology is never abused again.”

The General looked at Vanguard. Vanguard nodded.

“Make it happen,” the General said.

Three weeks later, Fort Braxton was different. The air felt lighter. The shadows were gone.

We stood on the parade ground—Meridian, Vanguard, Tav, and me. A memorial had been erected. Seven black granite stones, each etched with a name. The members of Phantom Squadron.

The families were there. They finally knew the truth. Their sons and daughters hadn’t died in disgrace. They had died heroes.

Meridian stood before the stones. She touched each one, a silent communion with the ghosts she had carried for three years.

“You did it,” I said, standing beside her.

“We did it,” she corrected. She looked at me. The grey in her eyes was softer now, like a storm that had finally rained itself out. “I couldn’t have done it without a witness. Someone to remind me I was still human.”

“What now?” I asked.

“Now,” she turned to look at the horizon. “We have work to do. There are others out there, Allaric. Kids who don’t know what’s happening to them. Soldiers being used as lab rats. We have to find them.”

“We?” I smiled.

“I need a second-in-command,” she said, a hint of a smirk playing on her lips. “Someone stubborn. Someone who doesn’t know when to quit. Someone who can handle a little… broken glass.”

I laughed. It felt good.

“I’m in,” I said.

We walked away from the memorial, leaving the dead to rest and turning to face the living.

Later that night, we went back to The Crowbar.

It was reopened under new management—Tav had officially bought the place. It was crowded, loud, and smelled of beer and popcorn. Perfect.

We sat at the bar. Tav slid two whiskeys in front of us.

“To the ghosts,” Tav said, raising his own glass.

“To the ghosts,” we echoed.

The door opened. A group of young Rangers walked in, loud and cocky. One of them, a kid with fresh stripes, started bragging about a mission.

“So there I was,” he shouted. “Surrounded!”

I looked at Meridian. She looked at me. We both burst out laughing.

The kid looked over, annoyed. “Something funny, old man?”

I turned on my stool. I looked at him, really looked at him.

“No,” I said, raising my glass. “Just enjoying the story. Make sure you tell it right.”

The kid blinked, confused, then shrugged and went back to his tale.

Meridian leaned in. “You’ve changed.”

“I have,” I admitted. “I used to think being a hero meant being the loudest guy in the room. Now I know it’s about being the one who stands up when everyone else sits down.”

She touched my hand. Her skin was warm. No vibrations. No shattering glass. Just human contact.

“Ready for the next mission, Phantom Two?” she asked.

I smiled. “Phantom Two? I thought I was ‘Sweetheart’.”

“Don’t push your luck,” she grinned.

We drank our whiskey, the warmth spreading through our chests. Outside, the stars were shining over Fort Braxton. The world was still dangerous. There were still secrets in the dark. But for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t afraid of them.

Because I knew the ghosts were on our side.