I walked toward the chopper, but stopped and turned back to Mark. He was shaking. I looked him dead in the eye and whispered… “I’m the one who rejected your application this morning.”
His face drains of color, the cocky grin wiped clean by the weight of realization.
I step into the chopper without another glance. The moment I’m inside, the door slams shut, and the interior lights flicker to life. Noise-canceling headphones are slipped onto my ears by one of the operators, and a secure tablet is placed in my lap. The face of the President appears on the screen.
“General Moody,” he says, his voice tight. “We’ve been breached. Level Seven clearance only. I want your eyes on this first.”
I nod. “Yes, sir.”
The footage plays. My heart thuds. A convoy of automated transport drones, carrying tactical warheads, has rerouted itself mid-flight and is now heading straight for Washington, D.C. The override protocol used is one I designed myself—only two people know it. Me… and one other.
The chopper banks sharply, veering east, while I tap into the cloud servers. My fingers fly across the tablet as I initiate a silent trace, bypassing every federal network with custom code I wrote during long caffeine-fueled nights in college. The attacker left a fingerprint. Not sloppy. Intentional. Like they wanted me to find it.
And I do.
“Rogue protocol. Origin: Munich. Signal masked through seven proxies, but the final node pings back to Arlington,” I say calmly. “He’s here. Or someone working with him.”
The President’s voice cuts through again. “You have full operational control, Moody. Whatever it takes.”
“Yes, sir.”
The tablet goes dark. I pull off the headphones. The moment we land on the helipad at Joint Cyber Command, I’m escorted inside by a full security team. No salute this time—they’re moving too fast. Inside the war room, screens display satellite footage, encrypted code, digital maps, threat matrices. I command attention, even in my tea-stained sundress. No one laughs now.
“Activate GhostNet,” I order. “Quarantine all drone traffic across NORAD sectors. I want visibility on every subprotocol running autonomous navigation.”
The technicians scramble. One of them—Simms, fresh out of MIT—stammers, “But GhostNet’s not fully tested yet…”
“It is now.”
The room locks down. Red lights pulse above. Doors seal with a hiss. We are officially in digital combat.
As I type, I feel a presence behind me. I don’t need to look.
“Mark,” I say coldly.
He clears his throat. “They… they brought me in for security. Said you’d need someone on the ground if this escalates.”
I finally glance up. He looks smaller than he did ten minutes ago, less smug, more human. “You think this is about boots on the ground?”
He shrugs, trying to regain confidence. “Thought I’d help.”
“Then stand over there and don’t touch anything.”
He obeys.
I dive deeper into the code. The breach wasn’t just external. It was surgical. Someone inside has mapped our systems, learning the contours like a thief studying a museum floor plan. Then I see it—a worm embedded in the drone firmware, named “EdenFall.” It was a prototype I developed before it was deemed too dangerous. The original was destroyed. Or so I thought.
“Get me my old workstation—serial J7-Kappa. I don’t care if it’s in a vault or a landfill. That worm was born on it.”
Fifteen minutes later, the dusty tower unit arrives, carried like a sacred relic by two marines. I jack into it directly. My old desktop—ugly UI, familiar lines of code, my fingerprints everywhere. I find the worm’s seed code. But it’s… changed. Someone took my blueprint and evolved it. Smarter. Faster. Self-replicating.
And then I see the signature at the end of the code. A single alias. TalonRex.
I freeze. My mouth goes dry.
Not him.
TalonRex was my co-developer back in the early days. We were close—genius kids who spoke in code and shared ramen packets and dreams of securing the world. Until he disappeared five years ago after a failed Pentagon test. They said he died in an explosion.
I guess they were wrong.
I stand slowly. “He’s back.”
“Who?” Simms asks.
I look at the drone map—five units now over restricted airspace. “Someone I once trusted with the kill codes.”
An alert flashes red across the screen: DRONE 4 CHANGING ALTITUDE — DESCENDING. Target: Capitol Building.
My stomach twists. “We don’t have time.”
“Can we shoot it down?” Mark asks.
“If we hit it with a missile, the warhead detonates. Too risky.”
“Then what do we do?”
I don’t answer. Instead, I jack directly into the control feed. The digital connection pulses through me like adrenaline. I can’t override it conventionally—it’s locked. But there’s one thing TalonRex doesn’t know: I built a ghost key. A private backdoor I buried so deep even I almost forgot about it.
I access it. The command line flickers.
ENTER PASSCODE:
I type in the phrase only I would ever use.
C:>lightbringer_awakens
Access granted.
I’m in.
The drone resists. The worm fights me, throwing loops and false protocols at every keystroke. It’s like fighting a shadow with bare hands. But this is my battlefield. My domain. I push harder. Code flies. Alarms blare. But slowly, I seize control. One drone. Then two. Then the third surrenders.
But the fourth—the one descending—is faster. It’s locked into a kamikaze path. No time left.
Unless…
“Redirect to sea,” I command.
It refuses.
“Override. Push into dead zone. Atlantic coordinates 47.9, -67.3.”
Still no response. It’s been coded to ignore civilian fail-safes. But military ones…
“Mark!” I shout. “Your sidearm. Now!”
He hesitates, then unclips it and tosses it to me. I point it at the old tower unit.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Giving it a reason to listen.”
I pull the trigger. The bullet punches into the hard drive, shattering it.
The system screen blinks—error—backup protocol engaging—emergency override accepted.
Boom.
The drone curves violently midair, climbing back up. Seconds later, it rockets east, losing altitude fast. We watch on the screen as it crashes into the ocean, detonating safely beneath the waves. The shockwave reaches the satellite feed, briefly turning the screen white.
Silence falls.
Then cheers erupt.
But I don’t celebrate. I scan the residual code. A beacon pulse is still transmitting from somewhere nearby. TalonRex didn’t plan to win with the drones. They were a test. A distraction. A handshake attempt.
He wanted me to see him.
And now, I do.
Coordinates embedded in the worm’s last heartbeat. An abandoned power station in Maryland.
“Scramble a team,” I say. “I’m going.”
Mark steps up. “I’m going too.”
I study him. He looks shaken, but determined. Not the same man who mocked me over beer an hour ago.
“Fine. But this time, you hold my coffee.”
We touch down outside the facility just before midnight. The air smells of ozone and ash. The building is dark except for a faint blue glow from the upper windows.
Inside, it’s like stepping into a cathedral of code. Screens line the walls, filled with pulsing symbols. And in the center, standing with arms crossed, is TalonRex.
He hasn’t aged. Still wiry, still brilliant, still dangerous.
“I knew you’d find me,” he says.
“You tried to kill millions.”
“I tried to prove the system is broken. That you broke it by walking away.”
I walk forward. “You don’t get to make that call.”
“You do?” he spits. “You think hiding behind passwords and protocols makes you a hero?”
“No,” I say quietly. “What makes me a hero is stopping people like you. People who think genius is a license to play god.”
He steps forward. “Then pull the trigger. Prove you’re better.”
I raise my weapon.
Mark flinches beside me.
But I don’t shoot.
I flip a switch on my watch instead. The pulse stuns the server grid. All his code, his work—fried. He lunges at me, screaming, but Mark intercepts him, tackling him hard to the floor.
It’s over.
An hour later, we’re back at the command center. The President calls again. I’m offered a commendation, another promotion, another layer of clearance.
I decline.
I don’t want medals. I want quiet. And a new lawn for my mother.
As I step outside into the cool dawn light, Mark catches up to me.
“Hey. About earlier…”
I wave him off. “Just hold my tea next time.”
He grins sheepishly. “Yes, General.”
I walk away, back into my life. Still the “IT girl” to some, sure. But now, maybe a few more people know the truth.
And I’m fine with that.
