He stopped in front of her. The air thinned. He said, thunder-quiet “Iron Wolf, report.”

And the room stops breathing.

Sarah’s spine clicks straighter, her boots anchoring her to the present like she’s been waiting on this moment forever. She doesn’t look at the others. She doesn’t need to.

“Sir,” she replies, crisp as frostbite. “Reporting, as ordered.”

Morgan scoffs, a sound too small for the room now. “This is a joke, right? Iron Wolf’s just—what? A codename from some old mission?”

But Roordon’s eyes don’t leave Sarah. “Step forward, Sergeant.”

She does. The crowd splits, tension trailing like wires behind her heels. The colonel doesn’t flinch, doesn’t blink. His voice carries, but it’s still soft enough to make the cadets lean forward to catch it.

“You’re not here for command school,” he says. “You’re here because Fort Redstone is compromised. You’re here because I called you. And because you’re the only one who doesn’t need to be told what’s already wrong.”

Sarah nods once. It’s not pride. It’s readiness.

“What the hell is this?” Morgan’s voice pierces the quiet. “Is this some kind of test? A theater game? She’s a medic, not a tactician!”

Roordon turns toward him slowly. “Lieutenant, shut your mouth.”

And Morgan does. Because everyone knows the colonel doesn’t repeat himself.

The silence that follows is louder than any insult. Sarah finally moves her eyes to Morgan, and when she does, he looks away first.

Roordon addresses the room. “Two nights ago, this base’s security grid logged an internal override. Minor. Easy to miss. But it wasn’t a glitch. It was a probe.”

He gestures, and Sarah pulls a drive from her pocket—black casing, no markings. She slots it into the console behind him, and a map of Fort Redstone lights up. Pulses in red ripple through the schematic—power taps, data leaks, low-tier cam feeds rerouted.

“Someone inside this base has been staging a blind zone,” she says. “Slowly. Carefully. To either move something in… or out.”

Gasps tighten the air. Someone in the back whispers, “Why not report it to Central Command?”

Roordon doesn’t answer. But Sarah does.

“Because we don’t know if Central’s clean,” she says. “And because Iron Wolf isn’t just a codename. It’s a protocol. A failsafe. One designed for when loyalty isn’t enough.”

She turns and points to the red flashes on the screen. “I tracked these. Twelve over the last five days. All inside buildings with strategic access—munitions, comms, motor pool. And each time, the override code is nearly identical.”

“Nearly,” Roordon says. “Because the person doing this is testing. They’re close to final-phase execution.”

Someone swallows too loud. Roordon looks across the cadets. “So we move now. Tonight.”

Morgan finally finds his voice again. “You’re seriously putting her in charge?”

“She’s not in charge of you,” Roordon replies. “She’s in charge of me.”

And that sentence lands like an earthquake. Because only one other soldier on record has ever had clearance to override the colonel in the field. Only one ever earned his protocol.

Iron Wolf.

Sarah looks at the cadets. No smile. No need.

“We sweep in teams of two. I’ve tagged the most likely data entry points. If you’re not ready, step back now.”

Nobody moves.

Roordon’s face softens, only slightly. “This isn’t a drill. This is extraction-and-neutralization. You’ll follow Iron Wolf’s lead. Dismissed for prep.”

They scatter like a trigger was pulled.

Hours later, the base breathes differently. Tension replaces air. Rain picks up again, hard and fast, like the sky is covering their tracks.

Sarah moves silent through Hall B with Private Keener at her six—new, but sharp-eyed, calm fingers on the grip. They scan door frames, glass edges, cable panels. The med-bay is empty. It’s never supposed to be empty.

Keener gestures. “Movement. West stairwell.”

Sarah doesn’t speak. Just signals. Moves low.

They approach fast—quiet boots, hearts in their throats. The stairwell light flickers again. Sarah lifts her sidearm. Thumb on the safety.

Footsteps echo—too light for a soldier.

Then a shadow dips left—small, fast, like it wants to be seen. Sarah frowns. “That’s not our guy.”

She bolts forward, catching just a flash of a jacket—civilian issue.

“Unauthorized presence,” she hisses into her comm. “Building 3 stairwell. Unknown status. Pursuing.”

Roordon’s voice cuts in, low and ready. “Backup inbound.”

Sarah doesn’t wait. She’s down the steps, breath sharp, chasing a silhouette into the sub-basement. Lights fail. Darkness like wool.

She slows. Listens.

And then a voice—small, shaking. “Please… don’t shoot.”

She swings her flashlight beam up.

A teenager. Maybe fifteen. Soaked, shivering, hands up.

“What the hell?” Keener whispers behind her.

Sarah lowers the weapon slightly. “Who are you?”

“My brother,” the boy says. “He told me to hide here. Said the base wasn’t safe. Said I’d get caught in something I didn’t understand.”

Sarah glances at Keener. “We’re not looking for civilians. How’d he get past the outer walls?”

The boy doesn’t answer.

And then she sees it—just a flicker. The badge peeking from under his coat. Not a civilian. Decoy.

She pivots just in time—catches the second shadow behind them.

“DOWN!”

Keener drops. Sarah fires twice. A flash, a grunt, then silence.

The attacker falls, weapon clattering across the concrete.

Sarah kneels fast, checks for pulse. “Alive. Masked. Gear says intel division, but there’s no name, no ID.”

Roordon arrives seconds later, flanked by two cadets.

Sarah points to the boy. “He’s not a civ. Bait. He was set up to stall us.”

Roordon doesn’t react outwardly. But his eyes darken.

“Good catch.”

They secure the boy and the fallen man. As they exit, Sarah murmurs to Roordon, “It’s bigger than data theft.”

He nods. “It always is.”

In the strategy room again, the attacker is restrained, mask removed. Morgan stares like he’s seeing a ghost.

“Briggs?” he chokes. “That’s not possible. He was reassigned months ago. He’s—”

Sarah steps forward. “No. He wasn’t reassigned. He went underground.”

Briggs spits blood. “You’re too late. It’s already inside.”

Sarah kneels. Looks him dead in the eye. “What is?”

He grins. “You’ll see.”

Then he bites down. Hard.

Roordon lunges, but it’s done. The capsule in Briggs’ mouth foams. His body convulses.

Dead.

Everyone stills.

“What the hell just happened?” Keener asks.

Sarah stands slowly. “He was a trigger, not a weapon.”

And then the base alarms scream.

Across the compound, something explodes.

Windows rattle. The main lights drop out, replaced by emergency reds.

“Mainframe hit,” a voice crackles over the radio. “South hub breach!”

Roordon grabs the comm. “Lock it down. Whitaker, with me.”

They run.

Outside, smoke curls from the southern wing. Sparks light the fog like war ghosts.

Sarah kicks into full sprint. She reaches the comms bunker. The outer wall’s torn open—like it was peeled from the inside.

They enter.

Data racks hum. A single server burns low near the center.

But it’s not the destruction that stops Sarah cold.

It’s the symbol painted in ash on the floor—an old mark, one not used since covert warfare training in Syria.

Iron Wolf’s opposite number.

Roordon sees it too. “Goddamn. They activated Phantom Protocol.”

Sarah exhales hard. “That means—”

“They knew you were coming. This wasn’t infiltration. This was provocation.”

Sarah straightens. “Then they don’t get what they came for.”

Together they trace the signal remnants. A last active ping leads them to the far edge of the training hall, where a terminal hums faintly.

Sarah slides in, decrypts fast, keys dancing.

Keener’s voice cuts in. “Movement on the east fence line. Fast.”

Too fast.

Sarah finishes decoding. The file opens. A data shell—empty.

But behind it—hidden deep—is a countercode. One built to mirror Redstone’s AI gatekeeping.

“Oh no,” she breathes. “They were building a shadow net. Something that could take this base offline without lifting a finger.”

Roordon grabs the radio. “Abort all uplinks. Wipe external relays.”

Sarah types fast. “I can trap the signal. Loop it. Burn the decoy server from inside their net.”

“Do it.”

The room pulses red as the firewall erupts in code.

Seconds feel like years.

Then—click.

The power stabilizes.

The alarms go silent.

Smoke clears.

And the Iron Wolf lives.

Later, the cadets gather again. The air is thick with everything that didn’t happen—because of her.

Sarah stands at the front, silent until the room holds its breath again.

She looks at Morgan.

He meets her eyes—and this time, he salutes.

She returns it.

Roordon stands beside her. “Iron Wolf is not a rank. It’s a reckoning.”

And every cadet knows: Fort Redstone survived not because of command—but because someone had the spine to stand by.

Sarah turns and walks out, boots steady, purpose louder than applause. And though the day ends, the legend begins.

Iron Wolf… endures.