Riker didn’t know my file was redacted because I’d spent the last ten years in a unit that technically doesn’t exist. He didn’t know my hands were classified as lethal weapons. I didn’t struggle.
I just locked eyes with him and shifted my weight, trapping his wrist in a hold that would snap his radius if he moved an inch.
The color drained from his face. He tried to pull back, but he was paralyzed. I leaned in close, so only he could hear me over the wind. “Sir,” I whispered, “you have three seconds to let go before I end your career.” He scoffed, trying to tighten his grip. That’s when I tilted my head and showed him the small, jagged scar behind my ear.
His eyes went wide. He dropped his hand instantly and stumbled back as if he’d seen a ghost. He looked at me, shaking, and stammered… “I didn’t know… I didn’t know you were one of them.”
“You’re not supposed to be here,” he mutters, backing away like I’ve pulled a live grenade from my pocket.
I don’t move. I let the silence weigh on him, heavy and suffocating. The platoon is still frozen, watching, barely breathing. Dust kicks up around our boots, swirling in little eddies of desert wind.
“You just assaulted a federal operative in front of twenty witnesses,” I say calmly, adjusting my collar. “Want to try again, sir?”
Riker swallows hard. Sweat beads along his temples. He glances at the stunned recruits and then back at me, his eyes darting like a man trying to find a ladder out of a pit he just dug with his bare hands.
“Dismissed!” he barks hoarsely to the platoon.
Nobody moves.
“Now!” he shouts louder, but his voice cracks.
The recruits scatter like startled birds, boots thudding against the sunbaked earth. But a few linger—eyes still on me, heads tilted, suddenly unsure whether I’m a friend or a weapon. It doesn’t matter. I didn’t come here to make friends.
Riker takes a breath and motions toward the barracks. “Inside. Now. We need to talk.”
He’s not ordering me. He’s pleading.
I follow him into the cool shadow of the command building, letting the door close behind me with a soft click. The noise echoes louder than a gunshot in the sudden quiet.
We walk down the hall in silence until we reach his office. He locks the door behind us, then turns, all the fake bravado bleeding from his posture like a popped balloon.
“What the hell is this?” he hisses. “Why are you here?”
“Orders,” I say flatly. “Same as you.”
“Bullshit.” He slams a file cabinet with his fist. “You’re not regular military. You’re… what? CIA? DIA? Special Projects?”
I don’t answer. I let him guess. Let his imagination fill in the blanks with worse things than I could ever say out loud.
“I read about your unit in whispers,” he says, pacing now. “Rumors. Ghost stories told in black sites.”
“They’re not stories.”
He stops and stares at me like I’ve just confirmed the existence of monsters.
“I didn’t know they’d send someone like you. They never send people like you unless…”
He doesn’t finish the sentence.
“Unless something’s wrong,” I say for him. “Something is wrong, Colonel.”
His face pales.
I toss a small, unmarked flash drive onto his desk. “Plug that in. I’ll wait.”
He hesitates. “Is this… is this from Langley?”
“No. Higher.”
He plugs it in.
The screen flickers, then comes alive with satellite footage. Grainy, infrared images of the base perimeter, movement patterns, timestamps. A red box hovers over the northeast quadrant—where the old supply depot used to be. It pulses.
“What am I looking at?” Riker asks.
I tilt my head. “Something buried. Something they don’t want anyone to find.”
He turns slowly. “You’re telling me we’ve got something here? At this base?”
“Not just something. Someone.”
He stiffens.
“Two weeks ago,” I continue, “a listening post in Nevada intercepted a scrambled signal. Old Cold War tech—Russian frequency bands, but with code signatures that match a project last seen in ’91. We traced it back here.”
“To Fort Irwin?” He looks sick. “Why would anyone use an active U.S. training facility as a broadcast site?”
“That’s the question.”
I pull a small folder from my cargo pocket. Inside is a single sheet with a photo: grainy, zoomed in, but unmistakable. A face with pale skin, glassy eyes, a crooked smile. Not quite human. A name scrawled underneath in red ink.
Riker recoils.
“No. That’s not possible. That project was shut down. I read the reports—they said it was terminated in Uzbekistan!”
“Turns out they lied.”
He sinks into his chair, staring at the photo like it might crawl off the page.
“This… thing,” he whispers. “It’s here?”
I nod. “And it’s not alone.”
He stares for a long moment. “What do you need from me?”
“I need access to every tunnel beneath the base. Blueprints. Personnel logs. And I need you to keep your mouth shut. If word of this gets out before we confirm containment—”
“I’ll bury it,” he says quickly. “No reports. No paper trail.”
I lean in. “And one more thing, Colonel.”
He straightens, anxious.
“You touch another recruit again, I will break your wrist. Understood?”
He nods like a student caught cheating on an exam.
By midnight, I’m beneath the base.
The tunnels are colder than expected, the walls dripping with condensation that shouldn’t exist in the middle of the Mojave. Old concrete reinforced with steel, built during the paranoia of the ’50s, forgotten during the efficiency drives of the ’80s.
The deeper I go, the worse it smells. Mold. Oil. Something metallic, like blood left too long in the sun.
My boots echo down the corridor. I check the map on my wrist HUD. I’m close.
I kill the lights and press forward in the dark. The infrared picks up movement ahead—slow, shambling, but deliberate. Two figures. One tall. One small.
I crouch behind a crate and watch them pass.
The tall one walks with unnatural stiffness. Its limbs are too long, too jerky, like marionette strings controlled by a drunk puppeteer. The small one clings to its side, barefoot and dirty, maybe a child—but I can’t be sure. Their silhouettes shimmer slightly, like they’re not fully here.
A chill skates down my spine.
I wait until they pass, then move silently behind them, shadowing them through the maze of tunnels. Eventually, they reach an old vault door. The tall one places its hand on the biometric pad—an old Soviet model, long decommissioned.
The door hisses open.
Inside is a lab.
Or what’s left of one.
Flickering lights. Broken glass. Cages. Too many cages.
And in the center, a pod. Sealed. Cryogenic.
I creep closer. The display reads: “SUBJECT 17: VASILY.”
Riker was right. This wasn’t supposed to exist.
A whisper cuts through the air behind me.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
I spin.
It’s the small one. A girl. No older than twelve. Pale. Black eyes. She stares through me, not at me.
“What are you?” I ask.
She tilts her head.
“Not yours to find.”
Then she screams.
Not a human scream. A frequency so high it ruptures a pipe above me. Water explodes. Alarms blare.
The tall thing—Vasily—jerks to life like a flipped switch and lunges.
I dive to the left as his arm smashes through a metal support beam like it’s made of cardboard. He’s fast. Too fast.
I hit a button on my belt. A beacon.
Within seconds, I hear boots. Heavy ones.
My backup arrives—two men in unmarked black gear. No insignias. No names. They fire tranquilizers, three rounds each.
Vasily stumbles.
Screams again. This time in Russian.
Then collapses.
The girl is gone.
We stand in silence, hearts pounding.
“I thought this project was a myth,” one of the men says.
“It was,” I reply. “Until tonight.”
By dawn, the base is locked down. Riker has been reassigned—something about early retirement and “family obligations.” The official report will say a gas leak in the lower tunnels forced a temporary evacuation.
But I stay.
I watch as the cryo-pod is airlifted out, triple-wrapped in lead-lined insulation. Destination: undisclosed.
Before the transport leaves, I approach it one last time. Inside the pod, Vasily’s eyes flicker open just briefly.
And he smiles.
Not a friendly smile.
The kind that promises we’ll see each other again.
I don’t smile back.
Instead, I walk out into the burning desert sun, my boots crunching the sand. I pass the same 19-year-old recruit from yesterday—he nods at me now, eyes wide with quiet respect.
He doesn’t know what happened. None of them do.
And that’s how it has to stay.
Some wars are fought in silence. Some monsters wear uniforms. And some missions never make the books.
But I’ll be here.
Waiting.
Because they’re not done yet. And neither am I.
