And that’s when I heard footsteps—coming from inside the ceiling above me..

The door behind me is sealed tight. My ears pick up the unmistakable rasp of fabric against metal—someone crawling through the ventilation ducts. I back away from the center of the room, pulling my sidearm. My eyes flick between the dark corners and the live drone feed, which now displays only static. Every instinct screams that I’ve been outmaneuvered, but I’m not down. Not yet.

“Operations, respond,” I bark into my comm. Nothing but dead air.

Then I hear it—another footfall. Closer now. Directly above the light fixture. I move toward the side wall, flatten myself against the cold metal, and raise my weapon. If they’re coming, I’ll see them before they see me.

The light above me swings slightly, then a panel creaks. A hand reaches through—gloved, silent, trained. This isn’t some rogue intern. This is special forces. Mine? No. They would’ve identified themselves.

I wait until I see the head appear, goggles first, face obscured. Then I fire. One shot cracks through the air. The intruder jerks back with a grunt, disappearing into the duct with a metallic thud. I rush toward the door, slam the emergency override panel, and jam my military ID into the slot.

“Mitchell, Sarah. Fleet Commander. Override priority Tango-Two-Nine-Bravo.”

The system hesitates, grinding. For a second, I think they’ve revoked my clearance. Then the bolt retracts with a groan, and the door hisses open.

I sprint down the hall, boots thudding on polished concrete. The base is in lockdown—red strobes flash along the ceiling. No sirens. Just the silent alarm. The worst kind.

I reach the secure server room, swipe myself in, and slam the door behind me. Inside, the rows of towers hum. I grab a data jack, plug my secure tablet in, and start pulling logs.

I need to know who approved the duplicate Halvorsen’s access. I need to know how long he’s been inside. But what I find instead is worse.

Three classified files were accessed in the past hour.

All with my clearance.

All from my profile.

Someone cloned my credentials.

I start a trace—something only I can initiate without tripping internal AI. It leads me to a remote terminal in an unused wing of the base—an abandoned intelligence suite tagged for demolition. It’s not on the maps anymore. Someone hid it. Purposefully.

I don’t wait for backup.

I draw my weapon, exit the server room, and head for the dark end of the corridor that leads to the wing we were told not to use. The lights flicker less here. Dust covers the windows. Every footstep echoes louder than it should.

I find the door.

No lock.

No keypad.

Just a single red fingerprint scanner.

I press my thumb against it.

Access granted.

The door slides open.

Inside, the room glows with dozens of wall-mounted monitors showing every feed on base—some I didn’t even know existed. In the center sits a woman. Slim build. Civilian clothes. Pale blue eyes that don’t flinch when she turns to face me.

“You’re early,” she says.

“Who are you?” I demand.

She gestures to a chair. “There’s no time for introductions, Commander. They’ll be here soon.”

“I’m not playing your game.”

She stands. Calmly. “Neither am I. You’re here because someone inside ONI—the Office of Naval Intelligence—decided you were too unpredictable to control. The plan was never for you to lead this mission. It was for you to vanish during it. With your team. And the blame? Assigned posthumously.”

I step closer. “Why?”

“Because you found the name ‘Sable Dawn’ on that encrypted flash drive in Okinawa six weeks ago.”

My heart stops. That operation was black-level. Only I and one analyst knew about the term. I never included it in the final report.

“I never wrote it down,” I say.

“You didn’t have to. The moment you heard it, your file was flagged. Sable Dawn is the deepest ghost program in U.S. defense—autonomous assets with no allegiance to any branch. They answer only to shadow command.”

She walks to a screen, taps it. Footage plays—of Halvorsen. My Halvorsen. Speaking with someone off camera.

“They replaced him over a year ago,” she says. “Same face. Different allegiance.”

“That’s not possible,” I whisper.

“It is,” she replies. “And now he’s replicating. They call them Mimes. Neural doppelgangers. Synth-organic shells with real-time memory backups from the original subject.”

I step back, stomach turning. “You’re saying the man I’ve been working with—the man I just saw—isn’t human?”

“He was. Now he’s something else.”

A loud crack echoes through the ceiling.

I raise my weapon.

She doesn’t flinch. “You need to leave. Now.”

“I’m not leaving without my team.”

“They’re alive. For now. Held at grid 7-Foxtrot. But not for long. If they upload your mimic next, you’ll lose everything. And so will we.”

I glance at the terminal. It’s still live.

“Give me access,” I say.

“You can’t stop it.”

“Try me.”

She nods. “It’s already transmitting. But you can overload the mimic sync. Trigger a failsafe protocol in the core uplink. It’ll fry the shell’s neural net.”

“Will it kill the others?”

“No. Just Halvorsen. Both of him.”

I hesitate. Then take her seat.

The interface is alien—layers of encrypted code I’ve never seen. But one thread catches my eye. A live clone map. Synaptic patterns in motion.

I tap into the node labeled HN-01.

It pulses red.

I follow the uplink signal to a server below sea level—deep base infrastructure.

“Detonation code,” I say.

She hands me a slip of paper. “Don’t memorize it. Just type.”

I key it in.

The system pauses. Warns me.

I confirm override.

One second.

Two.

Then the screen shudders, goes black.

Somewhere far below us, I feel the rumble in my boots.

The lights flicker, then steady.

I stand. “Now take me to my team.”

She opens the far door. “They’ll have posted security on the route. We’ll go underground.”

We descend into the old service tunnels beneath Coronado. It smells of salt and rust. Pipes hiss above our heads. We move quickly, avoiding main access points.

Twenty minutes later, we reach a sub-locker marked ‘Decommissioned.’

She knocks three times.

The door opens.

Inside, six of my operators sit bound. Gagged. But alive.

I rush in, cutting their restraints. My second-in-command, Chief Parker, gasps as the gag falls away.

“We were set up,” he says. “It was Halvorsen. He—he knew every move before we made it.”

“Because he’s not Halvorsen,” I say. “He’s gone. We took him offline.”

“But not for long,” says the woman behind me. “The backups still exist.”

I turn to her. “Then we erase them. All of them.”

Her eyes narrow. “That means going to the root. Langley.”

I nod.

Chief Parker rises, rubbing his wrists. “We with you, Commander?”

I look at them all. Bloodied. Betrayed. But unbroken.

“Suit up,” I say. “We leave in ten.”

The woman—codename Cipher—hands me a drive. “Everything you’ll need is on here. Proof. Protocol. And names.”

I pocket it. “What’s your real name?”

She smiles faintly. “You’ll know when it matters.”

Outside, the storm has cleared.

We move under darkness, ghosts in the night, bound for the one place we’re not supposed to go. The one place where answers live.

As we board the stealth transport, I glance once at the base behind us.

Coronado glows like a trap that didn’t quite close.

And as we vanish into the clouds, I know one thing:

They tried to erase me.

But I’m still here.

And I’m coming for whoever thought Fleet Commander Sarah Mitchell was expendable.

They wanted a ghost.

Now they’ve got one.