Suddenly, memories he’d buried surged back—burning wreckage, chaos in the Nevada desert, a blacked-out mission called Operation Emberfall.

The kind of operation whispered about in secured rooms. Only one pilot was rumored to have escaped. His voice dropped. “Twelve years ago… where were you?” For the first time, she hesitated. Just a second. “Flying into the fire,” she said quietly. “To pull them out.”

Monroe’s breath catches in his throat.

He stares at her like he’s seeing a ghost—because he is.

Twelve years ago, Operation Emberfall ended with the total annihilation of a rogue weapons facility buried beneath the Mojave. Satellite feeds blinked out. Comms went silent. The team that went in never came back out.

Until now.

“You pulled them out?” he asks, his voice hoarse.

“I tried,” she replies. Her jaw clenches, just a flicker. “Only one made it. Me.”

Monroe rubs a hand down his weathered face. “That can’t be. I read the after-action report. You were listed as presumed KIA. The explosion wiped out everything for five square miles.”

“I got out the hard way.”

She turns slightly, the early morning sun catching the faint silver web of scarring at her neck—barely visible unless you’re looking for it. But Monroe sees. And now, it clicks. The quiet. The precision. The way she seems to live one second ahead of everyone else.

“Why now?” he asks, quieter now. “Why come back?”

Dana’s gaze shifts to the horizon, where a sleek black helicopter cuts across the sky. It doesn’t belong to Fort Ravenfield. No markings. No transponder. Monroe watches it too, eyes narrowing.

“Because Emberfall never ended,” she says.

The chill that moves through him is instant. She continues before he can speak.

“There’s a new cell. Same tech, same doctrine. But this time, it’s not underground. It’s embedded.”

“In the military?” Monroe asks.

“In command,” she corrects. “High up. Someone has resurrected the Emberfall directive under a different name. It’s not just research now—it’s deployment.”

He doesn’t ask how she knows. It’s written all over her. She’s not just reporting intelligence—she’s lived it.

“You have proof?”

Dana nods once. “Encrypted cache. I need access to Ravenfield’s Tier-4 servers to crack the last sequence. It’s time-sensitive.”

Monroe stiffens. “Those servers are air-gapped. That’s NSA-level clearance. Even I don’t—”

She pulls a coin-sized drive from inside her jacket, its casing matte black with a biometric reader embedded.

“I have authorization,” she says, and places her thumb on the reader.

The drive beeps once, then flashes green.

The colonel swears under his breath. “Who the hell signed off on that?”

“Langley,” she says. “Director Barnes.”

Monroe’s expression shifts. “Barnes is dead. Car accident two years ago.”

She nods slowly. “That’s what they wanted everyone to believe. He went underground. To protect what’s left of the real agency.”

He exhales, shaking his head. “Jesus, Riley. This is above everyone’s pay grade.”

“I know. That’s why they sent me.”

They stand in silence as the black helicopter lands far down the runway. Men in tactical gear begin to disembark, but something’s wrong. No insignias. No greetings. No clearance badges.

Monroe mutters, “That’s not a friendly arrival.”

“No,” Dana says. “They’re here for me.”

“How’d they find you?”

She finally looks at him again, and her voice drops. “They didn’t. I let them.”

Before he can respond, she’s already moving. Calm. Precise. She steps toward the control tower, tapping her comms earpiece.

“Command, this is Lieutenant Riley. Initiate Raven Protocol. Lock down base grid six through nine. Non-essential personnel shelter in place.”

The voice on the other end doesn’t question her. “Copy that, Phantom Seven.”

Monroe’s eyes widen. “They called you Phantom Seven. Out loud.”

“They have to,” she replies. “Because this is no longer covert.”

The lockdown sirens begin to wail. Red lights spin atop towers. Gates lock with pneumatic hisses.

Monroe jogs beside her as she strides into the operations building.

“What’s the plan?” he demands.

“We stall them,” she says. “I need ten minutes inside the server core to complete the trace.”

He punches in an override code at the next door. “Then what?”

“Then I give you what you need to take them down.”

Inside the command center, techs scramble to follow the emergency protocols. Dana heads straight for the inner sanctum, bypassing three biometric doors before arriving at a vault-like chamber.

She inserts the drive. The machine hums.

Monroe stands behind her, watching the tactical screen as the black-ops team splits into two squads—one heading toward their building, the other toward the airfield’s backup power station.

“They’re going to cut the grid,” he says.

“I’ll finish before they can,” she replies. Fingers flying over keys, eyes locked on the code decrypting line by line.

Suddenly, the lights flicker. Alarms whine. The base trembles as something detonates outside.

Monroe grabs the radio. “We’ve got hostiles breaching the east perimeter! Repeat, this is not a drill!”

Gunfire echoes faintly through the walls.

Dana stays focused. “Three minutes left.”

Another explosion—closer. A tech yells, “They’re inside the east hangar!”

Dana pulls a small pistol from her belt and places it on the console beside her. Not for defense. For insurance.

“If they take this room,” she says, “you destroy the drive.”

Monroe stares at her. “You expect me to shoot you and the only evidence we have?”

She meets his gaze with calm steel. “I expect you to finish what Emberfall started—exposure. Even if I’m not alive to see it.”

He doesn’t get to respond.

The blast door groans as impacts hit from outside. They’re trying to blow it.

Dana hits the final key. The screen flashes:

TRACE COMPLETE — LOCATION CONFIRMED: ANACOSTIA, DC.

A name appears beneath it.

Monroe’s mouth drops open.

“That’s not possible,” he says.

Dana looks at the screen. “It is. And it explains everything.”

The name is a general. A decorated war hero. The man who personally ordered Emberfall to be buried.

Suddenly, the server ejects the drive. Dana grabs it and tucks it back inside her jacket.

“They’ll try to erase this,” she says. “You need to get it to someone who can’t be compromised.”

Before Monroe can argue, the blast door rips open.

Flashbang.

Light.

Screams.

Dana moves like a ghost through smoke and chaos—two shots, two men down. Monroe shields his face, coughing, gun drawn.

One of the intruders shouts, “Take her alive!”

But she doesn’t give them the chance.

Sliding across the floor, she boots the console hard, sending a metal panel flying. It hits the fire suppression trigger. Instantly, halon gas floods the room.

Monroe gasps, struggling to breathe, but Dana’s already pulled a rebreather mask from her belt and tosses one to him.

They stumble out through the side maintenance hatch as chaos erupts behind them.

Once outside, she shoves the drive into his hands. “You’re not coming with me?” he asks, wheezing.

“No. They’ll follow me. You’ll have a chance.”

“What do I tell them?”

“Tell them the ghost came back. And she brought receipts.”

With that, she vanishes down the tunnel beneath the base—once used for fuel lines, now her escape route.

Monroe stares at the drive in his hand, still warm from her touch.

And he knows: nothing will ever be the same.

—

Hours later, in a secure location beneath Langley, Monroe watches as analysts verify the data.

Everything Dana said—true.

Emberfall. The black cell embedded at the top. The experiments. The assassinations. The cover-ups.

And the name at the top of the operation chart? Confirmed.

General Adrian Cross.

The man who once pinned a medal to Monroe’s chest.

He sits back, stunned.

Suddenly, a message pings through a secure channel.

No sender. No origin trace.

Just five words:

You bought me ten minutes.

Then it disappears.

He exhales.

Phantom Seven is out there. And she’s not done yet.