My father scoffed, standing up to intervene. “What is she talking about? She’s an administrative officer!” The Captain finally turned to my father. He didn’t look angry. He looked terrified.
He handed my father a file stamped with a clearance level higher than the General had ever seen. “She’s not Admin, General,” the Captain whispered, loud enough for the front row to hear.
“She’s the reason we’re all still breathing.” My father looked at the file, then back at me. His face went pale. He opened his mouth to apologize, but I just walked out.
But when I got home that night, I found a letter on my doorstep from my father that made my blood run cold. It wasn’t an apology. It was a warning that said “They’re coming for you. Pack nothing. Don’t trust anyone—not even me.”
The letter is typed. No signature. Just those words, and the faintest smell of my father’s cigar smoke embedded in the paper.
I reread it three times, the words digging deeper into my spine until my breath shortens and my instincts kick in. I’m not scared—I’m activated. There’s a difference.
I close the door silently behind me and scan the hallway. No footprints. No sign of forced entry. I do a quick sweep of the house. Drawers are untouched, but I can feel it in the air—someone’s been here besides my father.
I shove the letter into my boot, grab the Glock hidden in the air vent behind the bookshelf, and slip out the back, ditching my phone in the neighbor’s trash bin as I go. I can’t afford to be traced. Not if they’re involved.
Ten minutes later, I’m inside an abandoned freight depot near Ybor City, where we used to run drills for ghost scenarios. I tap the emergency transponder stitched into my belt. One pulse. Two. Then hold.
Seconds later, a red light blinks above an old vending machine. I yank it open and climb down into the crawlspace below. The hatch slams shut behind me.
“Ghost-Thirteen confirmed,” a voice says through a grainy speaker.
“Authenticate,” I answer.
“Red Leviathan rides west.”
I close my eyes. That’s the burn code.
Something catastrophic is in motion.
The metal hallway flickers to life with old halogen lights, buzzing like bees overhead. I follow the narrow path until it opens into a hidden ops center, humming with data feeds and encrypted comms. There’s only one other person there: Ryder.
He’s in a sleeveless tactical vest, leaning over a terminal. His brown eyes snap up when he sees me. “Jesus, Kara. You’re not supposed to be above ground.”
I shrug. “Wasn’t my idea. Who tripped the protocol?”
He taps a few keys, pulling up satellite footage. “Someone rerouted a DoD satellite to scan coordinates off the Venezuelan coast. Then piggybacked a sub-layer signal onto it. Classified as solar interference. But it wasn’t.”
I lean in. “EMP signature?”
“Worse,” he says. “Quantum pulse. Someone just hijacked the Nova Relay.”
My stomach drops. The Nova Relay is a multi-orbital communications satellite. A blackout there means global military blindness—no comms, no GPS, no targeting.
“How long until it hits mainland systems?” I ask.
“Hours. Maybe less. Command thinks it’s a glitch.”
I scoff. “Of course they do.”
He pauses. “Your father signed the dismissal notice. He shut it down before we could escalate.”
My jaw tightens. “Then he either doesn’t understand what he’s looking at—or he does, and he’s protecting something.”
I pull the letter from my boot and hand it to Ryder. He scans it, his eyes narrowing.
“You think he knew they’d come for you?”
“He knew. The letter says not to trust even him.”
We exchange a long glance. That old ache from childhood returns. The push-pull of my father’s obsession with secrets. I was never supposed to know who he really was. And maybe I still don’t.
Ryder straightens. “You’re in the blast zone, Kara. If someone’s trying to wipe you off the board, it’s because you’re the last variable they can’t control.”
“Or because I am the only one who still can stop it.”
We run the cross-checks again. One of the sublayer signals routes through an inactive facility in Nevada—decommissioned years ago. Ghost units used it for off-book training. It shouldn’t be online. But it is.
“They’re bouncing signals through the Ghost training ground,” I whisper. “They’re using our architecture.”
Ryder curses under his breath. “That’s not rogue. That’s internal.”
He doesn’t have to say it. I already know. This isn’t foreign interference. This is a mutiny from within.
Suddenly, the lights in the room flicker, then surge. An override warning flashes on Ryder’s terminal.
“Someone’s accessing the bunker systems,” he growls.
“Shut it down.”
“I can’t. They’re in.”
The monitors go black. Red emergency lights kick in. My hand goes to my Glock automatically. A heavy clang echoes down the hallway.
Then—footsteps.
Heavy. Unhurried.
Ryder grabs the emergency access codes from his locker and tosses me a secondary data key.
“Go east tunnel. Take the key to Langley. Encrypt it with Code Sigma.”
“What about you?”
He smirks. “I’m bait.”
Before I can protest, the wall behind us explodes inward. Smoke and sparks fill the air. I duck, roll, and sprint for the escape shaft, Ryder already firing cover rounds.
The last thing I hear is his voice in my earpiece.
“Keep running, Ghost.”
I emerge three miles away, through a storm drain that empties near the shipping yards. Blood is running down my arm, a gash from the explosion, but I don’t stop. I have one goal now: deliver the key. Expose whoever is behind this. And make my father look me in the eye after.
I hijack a dirt bike from a construction site and ride north through the night, switching routes every ten miles. I sleep two hours beneath a bridge, then wake to the buzz of a surveillance drone hovering low across the interstate.
They’re scanning by heat signature now.
I dump the bike in a canal and hike six miles to a pre-cleared safehouse outside Jacksonville. There, I upload the contents of the key to a black-site satellite relay. The screen lights up with names.
And one of them hits me like a fist to the gut.
Lt. Colonel Darius Monroe.
My godfather. My father’s oldest friend.
He taught me to fire a rifle before I turned nine.
I cross-reference locations. Monroe has been stationed at Fort Bragg for months—but the logs don’t match. His ID’s been cloned. The real Monroe is either dead… or helping coordinate the attack.
Either way, the signal routes to a cargo ship docked in Norfolk, Virginia.
I grab another vehicle and drive straight through.
When I reach the docks, it’s just past 3 a.m. The fog is thick. Perfect for a ghost.
I infiltrate the perimeter and climb aboard the ship, ducking under cameras. The main control cabin is locked, but a single guard stands outside. He’s wearing Monroe’s unit patch—but he’s not military.
He’s PMC. Private contractor.
Mercenary.
I take him down silently, chokehold and pressure points, no wasted motion. Inside the control cabin, a single hard drive is connected to the ship’s navigation system. It’s routing an uplink.
I plug in my drive. The encryption is deep, but Ryder’s code slices through. My screen floods with logs.
Red Leviathan. That’s the op name.
They’re targeting every Ghost operative worldwide. Not just me. Not just Ryder.
A full purge.
And leading the authorization?
General Michael Rourke.
My father.
I stare at the screen, heart pounding.
The man who raised me to serve, who trained me to fight, who once told me I was the only thing he had left after Mom died… has declared me an enemy of the state.
Unless…
I dig deeper.
Rourke’s signature is there. The codes are valid. But the timestamps are off. Some of the orders were issued while he was with me at McDill.
My hands tremble. They’ve cloned his access. Someone is framing him.
That’s why he warned me.
I pull the hard drive and start planting charges. I won’t let this vessel be used as a control node. As I move, I hear a groan from the floor below.
I follow the sound and break open a locked hatch.
And there, beaten and zip-tied, is my father.
Barely conscious.
I fall to my knees beside him. “Dad. It’s Kara.”
He lifts his head, eyes swollen, lips cracked. “Told you… not to trust even me…”
I cut his bindings. “You didn’t sign the orders. They cloned you.”
He gives me a weak smile. “Took you long enough.”
“I thought you were behind it.”
“I would be,” he mutters, “if they hadn’t tried to kill you first.”
I help him up, drape his arm over my shoulder.
We barely make it off the ship before the charges blow.
The fireball lights up the bay. Sirens scream in the distance.
We limp to a waiting van parked under a fishing warehouse.
Inside is Ryder. Bloodied, but alive.
We look at each other. No words needed.
We’re at war now—with our own.
But we’ve got the drive.
We’ve got the real General Rourke.
And we’re done playing dress-up.
Because now, Ghost-Thirteen is going dark. And when we come back up, we’re not asking for permission.
We’re taking our country back.
