And that’s when Colonel Davis realized the demonstration wasn’t for me. It was for him…

Colonel Davis stands frozen, staring past me at the wall, the implications settling in. The men behind him are silent now. One or two shift awkwardly, the weight of what just happened pressing down like Wyoming snow. My boots crunch softly as I step off the firing line. The metal of my rifle is still warm. I sling it without looking back.

“Private Harper,” Sergeant Foster calls after me, voice sharp but steady.

I stop.

“We’ll need a word. Now.”

I turn. For a moment, the eyes of every soldier on that range are on me—not with mockery, not with disdain, but with something else entirely. A cocktail of awe and uncertainty. One by one, I see the gears turning in their heads, the realization dawning that they might not know me at all. That maybe none of them ever did.

I follow Sergeant Foster toward the concrete block building that houses the range control office. Colonel Davis trails behind, his boots dragging like a man walking toward something he knows he won’t like.

Inside, the room is dim, the air stale with the smell of coffee and gun oil. Foster locks the door behind us.

“Sit,” she says.

I don’t.

Davis is already pacing. “I want answers. What the hell is she doing in my unit? Why didn’t I see this file? Who authorized this transfer?”

Foster opens a steel cabinet in the corner, pulls out a thin beige folder, and drops it on the desk with a heavy thud of silence.

“Because you weren’t cleared for it,” she says. “Until now.”

He snatches it up and flips it open. His lips move as he reads. Then his eyes go wide.

“This… this can’t be real. This unit was dissolved ten years ago. Blackstar? That’s a ghost. A rumor.”

I finally speak. “Not a rumor, sir. Just inconvenient.”

His eyes lock onto mine, panic mingling with confusion. “You were with Blackstar? What the hell were you doing running requisition forms?”

Foster folds her arms. “She wasn’t. That’s just where we put her until we needed her again.”

Silence.

I step forward and place both palms on the desk. “Look, I didn’t ask to come here. I didn’t ask to be reactivated. You want to know why I shot past the target today? Because I was testing the wind, the barrel integrity, the optics. If I’d aimed at that paper target, it’d have five holes dead center. That’s not what I needed to know.”

Foster nods. “She was checking drift at distance. Calculating off the terrain. That’s not a rookie mistake. That’s doctrine. Blackstar doctrine.”

Davis sets the folder down slowly, like it’s radioactive. “Jesus. What do you want from me?”

I glance at Foster. She answers for me.

“She’s going active. As of now. Field orders incoming. She’s under Joint Command.”

“Joint Command?” Davis chokes out. “That’s special ops. Deep field.”

Foster’s face is stone. “Worse. This isn’t a combat deployment. It’s a containment op.”

He turns back to me. “What are you being sent into?”

I unzip the front of my coat and pull out a laminated photo. Grainy. Infrared. The shape in it is humanoid—mostly. But its proportions are off. Too long. Wrong angles. The face is blurred by motion, but the heat signature is unmistakable. It’s alive. And it’s not supposed to be.

Davis stares at it, lips parting. “That’s not… that’s not human.”

“No,” I say. “But it used to be.”

He looks between us. “How many of these are there?”

I answer flatly. “We’ve lost count.”

Foster drops another document on the desk. Satellite recon. Forested terrain. Timestamps. Coordinates. The creature moves fast, never on roads. Never where cameras linger long. But it’s circling something. A town.

“Population?” I ask.

“Eight hundred,” Foster replies.

“Evac plans?”

“Nonexistent.”

Davis sinks into a chair like the air’s been pulled from his lungs. “Why the hell wasn’t I told?”

Foster leans forward, her voice low. “Because this isn’t Army business. It’s not even DoD anymore. It’s containment. Surgical. We send in the people who can end it before it spreads. Before it learns too much.”

“Learns?” Davis repeats.

I answer. “It copies. Movement. Language. Behavior. It watches. It mimics. We think it was part of a DARPA project twenty years back. Bio-adaptive warfare. Then it went dark. And feral.”

Foster pulls out a key fob and slides it to me. “Chopper lifts at 0700. You’ve got four hours to prep. Gear’s already been flown in.”

Davis shakes his head. “This is insane. You’re telling me a supply clerk with a made-up file is now getting choppered into some horror movie to fight science fiction nightmares?”

I look him dead in the eye. “No, sir. I’m telling you the war you trained for doesn’t exist anymore.”

He opens his mouth to respond, then closes it. There’s nothing left to say.

I step outside into the cold air, exhale slowly. The stars are out, glittering over the ridgelines. Quiet. Deceptive. Somewhere past that horizon, something waits. Watching. Moving.

Foster joins me, lighting a cigarette. “You sure you’re ready?”

“I’m never ready,” I say. “But I’m always prepared.”

She flicks ash to the ground, eyes searching the dark. “You’re not going in alone. You’ll meet up with two others from your old unit. If they survived the last op.”

I nod. “Names?”

“Greyson. Park.”

I smile despite myself. “Those two are hard to kill.”

Foster blows smoke through her nose. “They’ll need to be.”

We stand in silence for a moment longer, the kind that only comes when war is a whisper on the wind. Then she turns back inside, and I walk toward the barracks. Every step feels heavier now. Not with fear. With clarity.

By dawn, the chopper lifts off, rotor blades carving the sky. Inside, the hum of systems surrounds me. I check my loadout—suppressed rifle, thermal optics, recon drone, four vials of something labeled “Alpha Burn.” I don’t ask what’s in them. I already know. It’s not for the enemy.

It’s for me.

In case I lose.

We touch down ten miles out from the target zone. I move fast, low, silent. Through pine and shadow. At checkpoint Bravo, I see a glint—hand signal. Park. She’s waiting. Greyson steps out beside her. Still limping from Jakarta.

“Thought you were dead,” I say.

Greyson grins. “Only on paper.”

Park doesn’t smile. “It’s changed. It’s learning faster than before. Took out a hunter two nights ago. Left the body… but it talked like him. For hours.”

“Intel on its current form?”

Greyson holds up a sketchpad. It looks like a man in uniform. Could be anyone. “It’s wearing us now.”

My blood chills. “Then we clear by codeword. No visual confirms. No radio chatter.”

Park nods. “Codeword?”

I think for a second. Then: “Garden-hose.”

She huffs. “You’re kidding.”

“It’ll work.”

We move. Through brush and ruin. Toward the last known location. The town is silent. No cars. No dogs barking. Doors swing on hinges. Lights flicker in a diner but no one’s inside. It’s like the whole place held its breath… and forgot how to exhale.

We split. Park takes south. Greyson covers the church. I enter the sheriff’s station.

Empty.

Then I hear it.

Footsteps.

I press against the wall, weapon raised. A man rounds the corner. Uniform. Sheriff’s badge.

“Jesus, thank God,” he says. “I thought I was the only one left.”

“Codeword,” I say, eyes locked on him.

He frowns. “What?”

“Codeword.”

His eyes narrow. “It’s me, Harper. Don’t you recognize—?”

I fire.

Once. Clean shot through the sternum. He stumbles back, no blood. Just… steam. The skin sloughs off like wax. Underneath, muscle fibers knit and squirm, trying to replicate.

I don’t let it.

Two more shots and it drops.

Then the radio crackles. Park’s voice: “Contact. Three forms. Mimics. Greyson’s down. I’m compromised.”

“Location?”

No answer.

I sprint through the street, dodging shadow. I see Park near the diner, crouched, bleeding. Three figures advance.

I throw the drone—thermal bloom floods my vision. Only one is cold.

The real Park.

I take the shot.

Then another.

Then the last.

They fall, writhing, shifting back into the same grotesque, faceless shape. Park looks at me, gasping.

“Greyson?”

I shake my head.

She nods once. Doesn’t cry. Just reloads.

By dawn, we call it in.

The site is burned. Town scrubbed.

Bodies buried or vaporized.

On the chopper out, Park turns to me. “What now?”

I look out at the horizon.

“They’ll send us where the next one shows up.”

She nods. “Just like old times.”

And for the first time since the range, I let myself smile.

Because now they know who I am.

And what I do.

And the only thing scarier than what’s out there…

Is that I’m going back out to meet it.