“Falcon One,” he said the floor is yours.”

The room freezes. Not a breath, not a whisper, not even the scrape of a boot against the concrete. A hundred young pilots stand rigid, eyes flicking between the General and me like they’re waiting for someone to shout that this is some elaborate prank. Mark looks like he’s been hit with a sandbag. His eyebrows jerk upward, and for a second I see raw confusion—then denial—flash across his face.

I step forward, the echo of my boots the only sound in the cavernous room. My heart drums like a turbine spool-up, not from fear but from anticipation. I’ve waited years for this moment. Years of staying silent. Years of being underestimated. Years of letting them believe what they wanted because the mission demanded it.

Now the mission demands the opposite.

“Good morning,” I say, my voice calm and steady. “Let’s get to work.”

I watch the shock ripple through the rows. Some pilots shift in their seats, suddenly unsure of their earlier laughter. Others straighten, trying to hide that they had just mocked the person now responsible for orchestrating every enemy maneuver they’re going to face in the sky.

Mark gives a tight, disbelieving laugh. “Come on,” he mutters, glancing around as if waiting for someone to rescue him. No one does.

The General steps aside and gestures toward me. “Falcon One will brief the Red Air plan. We follow her lead.”

Her.

Falcon One.

A title and a truth, dropped like a thunderclap.

I walk toward the podium. Every movement feels magnified in the stunned silence—my hand gripping the edge, the screen lighting up as I open the classified mission file, the deep breath I take before I speak.

“All right,” I begin, tapping the remote. A map flares onto the projector: the Nevada Test and Training Range, the sprawling desert battlefield where reputations are made and destroyed. “Today’s scenario simulates a high-threat, near-peer environment. Red Air”—I nod to myself—“that’s my team. We will be flying advanced adversary tactics based on real world threat data.”

Heads tilt. Spines straighten. This is no coffee-fetching clerk. This is no paperwork assistant.

I press the button again. Threat rings bloom around the airspace, layered overlapping circles of doom.

“Your job is to penetrate, survive, and complete your strike objective. My job,” I say, letting my gaze land briefly on Mark, “is to make sure you don’t.”

A low murmur rolls across the room—not laughter, but something closer to respect… or fear.

Good.

I continue the briefing, walking them through the enemy order of battle, electronic warfare profiles, intercept geometry, simulated weapons parameters. The more I speak, the more the room shifts. They lean in. They take notes. More than a few look stunned that someone who walked in wearing a blank flight suit can recite complex threat doctrine from memory.

Mark stares at me as if he’s watching a ghost he never believed existed.

When I finish, the General steps back up.

“Any questions?” he asks.

Silence.

Because now they know better.

“Very well,” Harris says. “We brief again at zero-nine. Dismissed.”

The room breaks. Conversation erupts—not the casual bragging from before, but hushed, rapidfire exchanges. I hear my own call sign repeated like a rumor spreading too fast to contain.

Falcon One.

Falcon One.

People glance at me then look away quickly, unsure if approaching me is allowed or dangerous. A few gather the courage to nod respectfully. I return it, expression neutral.

Then I turn—and Mark is standing right in front of me.

“Jules,” he says, barely louder than a whisper. The swagger is gone. He looks shaken. “What the hell is this?”

“Work,” I reply.

“That’s not—no.” He scrubs a hand through his perfect hair, something he only does when he’s spiraling. “You can’t be Falcon One. That doesn’t make sense. You’re not a pilot.”

I tilt my head. “Who told you Falcon One had to be a pilot?”

He opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. Words fail him, which is a rare sight.

I step closer, lowering my voice. “All these years you assumed I was in support. You assumed I wasn’t capable of doing anything… real. But while you were posing for squadron photos, I was studying adversary tactics. Training aggressors. Running threat sims. Leading scenarios that people in this room have flown without ever knowing who designed them.”

His jaw tightens. “Dad never said—”

“Dad never asked,” I cut in. “He never cared what I did as long as it didn’t threaten your spotlight.”

Mark flinches. A tiny motion, almost invisible, but I see it.

“Look,” he says, voice quieter, “this is serious. This is Red Flag. You can’t just walk in here and expect me to—”

“I don’t expect anything from you,” I interrupt. “But you’ll fly the mission I built. And you’ll either adapt or get crushed by it.”

His eyes harden, ego kicking back in. “You think you can beat me up there?”

“I know I can.”

A muscle jumps in his cheek.

Before he can fire back, General Harris approaches.

“Falcon One. With me.”

I nod, turning to follow him. Behind me, I hear Mark exhale shakily.

Good.

Let him feel what it’s like to be underestimated for once.

By zero-nine hundred, the flight line is alive. Jets shimmer in the rising desert heat, their canopies glinting like sharpened blades. Engines howl, ground crews hustle, and the faint smell of jet fuel saturates the air. This is my arena just as much as it is theirs.

Inside the Red Air hangar, my team is already suited up. Three seasoned pilots—adversary specialists—nod when they see me.

“Morning, Falcon,” Captain Reeves says. “Blue Air ready to get their teeth kicked in?”

I smile. “More than ready.”

We run through our final brief. Our jets aren’t stealth fighters or cutting-edge prototypes; they’re modified aggressor aircraft designed to mimic foreign capabilities. But in skilled hands, they’re instruments of chaos.

Reeves cracks his knuckles. “You taking point today?”

“I’m taking all of it,” I say.

They laugh—but with me, not at me.

Minutes later, I climb into the cockpit of my jet. The world shrinks to the familiar embrace of metal, switches, and glass. My helmet settles into place. My hands dance across the controls. The hum of avionics warms the air around me.

“Falcon One, Red Air is set,” Reeves calls over comms.

“Copy,” I reply. “Let’s fly.”

We taxi out, four predators rolling toward the runway. Across from us, Blue Air prepares as well. I spot Mark’s jet—sleek, polished, brimming with more thrust and tech than ours. He sits there upright, every movement clipped with tension.

Good. Pressure sharpens the mind.

We line up. The tower clears us for takeoff. One by one, we roar into the sky, engines shrieking against the desert silence until all that remains is the thunder of controlled violence.

At altitude, the air is smooth, endless. My pulse steadies. My brain settles into that razor-focused place where instinct, training, and strategy merge.

“Red Air, hold position,” I command. “Blue Air launches in sixty seconds.”

We wait. Hovering in the emptiness like wolves circling outside a village.

Then the scope lights up.

Four Blue Air fighters streak into our battlespace.

“Falcon One, we have tally on Blue,” Reeves says.

“Push,” I answer. “Phase One begins.”

We dive.

The first merge happens fast. Blue Air tries a standard bracket maneuver, hoping to split us and isolate the weakest link. Too predictable. Too rehearsed. I counter by dragging them into a vertical spiral, forcing them into a geometry they didn’t expect.

My radar lights up—someone targets me.

Blue Air Lead.

Mark.

Of course.

He locks on, confident, aggressive.

“Falcon One, break!” Reeves shouts.

I don’t.

Instead, I pull hard into the threat, flipping the engagement. My jet groans, G-forces clawing at my limbs, but I stay with it. My nose swings up. My radar snaps a tone.

I’ve got him.

Mark tries to roll out but he’s late—two seconds late, an eternity in a dogfight.

“Blue Lead, Fox Two,” I call, firing the simulated missile.

A loud tone sounds in his cockpit. A kill.

The radio erupts.

“Falcon One guns Blue Lead!”

“Jesus—she got him!”

“What the—who IS she?”

But I don’t bask in it. The fight isn’t over.

Blue Air collapses. Their formation breaks apart under pressure. We chase them, herd them, dismantle their plan piece by piece. Every maneuver I built into the scenario traps them deeper. Every tactic I predicted unfolds exactly as expected.

By the time the exercise ends, Red Air holds complete dominance.

We land to radio chatter that practically vibrates with disbelief.

Back on the ground, pilots gather near the flight line like they’re waiting for a celebrity to appear. When I step out of the jet, helmets turn, conversations halt, and a strange hush settles over the crowd.

Then someone starts clapping.

Another joins.

And another.

Within seconds, the applause swells, rolling across the tarmac like a wave.

I freeze for half a heartbeat. I’ve never been applauded in uniform before—at least not for anything that mattered. My chest tightens, heat prickling behind my eyes, but I keep my posture straight.

Reeves slaps my shoulder. “You just made believers out of all of them.”

Maybe.

But one person doesn’t clap.

Mark.

He stands at the edge of the crowd, helmet tucked under his arm, expression torn open. Pride fights with humiliation. Admiration clashes with denial. Anger wrestles with something softer—something he hasn’t shown me since we were kids.

When the crowd disperses, he approaches slowly.

“Jules,” he says, voice low, “I didn’t know. I swear, I had no idea.”

“I know,” I reply.

“I shouldn’t have talked to you that way. Any of those ways.” He swallows. “You didn’t deserve it.”

My chest aches. Not from the hurt he caused, but from the sincerity in his tone. Real sincerity—the kind you can’t fake even if you want to.

“I’m sorry,” he finishes.

The words hang there, weighty, unfamiliar.

I let out a long breath. “Thank you.”

He nods, eyes glistening just slightly. “You’re incredible, Jules. Dad was wrong about you. I was wrong about you.”

I step closer, placing a hand on his shoulder. “You don’t have to compare yourself to me, Mark. We can both be good at different things. But you do have to stop assuming I’m less.”

He exhales shakily. “Yeah. I can do that.”

For the first time in years, we stand together without tension twisting between us.

General Harris approaches, arms folded, grin sharp.

“Falcon One,” he says, “you just rewrote half the call sign gossip in this entire base.”

“I try,” I reply.

He laughs. “Debrief in twenty. And bring your brother. He has some lessons to learn.”

Mark winces. “Great.”

I nudge him lightly. “Welcome to my world.”

He cracks a smile—tiny, but real.

As we walk toward the debrief room, side by side for the first time in what feels like a lifetime, I glance at the horizon. The desert wind swirls across the runway. Jets roar overhead. And inside me, something shifts, settles, strengthens.

For once, I’m not trying to earn a place.

I am the place.

And everyone here knows it now.

Especially my brother—who walks beside me not as the golden boy, not as the rival, but as someone who finally sees me clearly.

The room no longer belongs to him.

The sky no longer belongs to him.

It belongs to both of us.

But today?

Today it belongs to Falcon One.