And for the first time since I got here, I feel useful.
8
Kraken
The rotation change goes out at 2200. Brothers adjust without complaint. The west perimeter gets two extra bodies. I head back to the control room. I watch the feeds cycle and feel the room recalibrate around the new timing.
Tia’s still at the table. She's watching the screens the way she watches everything, like she's looking for the thing that doesn't fit. She's on her second cup of coffee. At some point she borrowed a pen from Mace's side of the table and started making notes on a fresh napkin, and Mace let her, which tells me something about how the room has shifted in the last two hours.
I don't look at her directly.
"Feed three," Ghost says.
I look at the screen. The west camera, the one that's been dropping on the eleven-minute interval. It holds. Normal. Grass, fence line, the dark tree line beyond.
Then it flickers.
Not thirty seconds. Two seconds. And when it comes back the shadows near the base of the fence have rearranged themselves in a way that shadows don't.
"That's not a test," Mace says.
"No." I'm already moving. "That's a breach."
The room snaps. Ghost is at the door before I finish the word. Mace closes his laptops with both hands in one motion. Two prospects materialize from the hallway. Weapons check, the fast practiced kind that happens in the hands before the brain catches up.
Tia pushes back from the table and stands. She's not panicking. Her face has gone still and focused in a way I haven't seen before, the same look she gets when she's reading the camera feeds, turned outward. "What do you need from me?"
It stops me for half a second. Notwhat's happening, notI'm scared. What do you need from me.
"Stay in this room," I tell her. "Lock the door behind us. Don't open it until I knock three times."
She nods once. No argument. No curtsy. Just: "Go."
We move fast through the compound. Night air hits humid and thick when we push through the west access door. Floodlights cut harsh across grass and chain link. The fence stands tall ahead with razor wire catching the light. Ghost goes left. Mace right. I go straight toward the blind spot near post seven where the shadows moved wrong.
I find him twenty feet in. One of my prospects, down against the post. Blood dark on his shirt, breathing shallow. Not dead. Close enough.
"Get him to the infirmary," I snap at the two brothers behind me. They move.
I scan the tree line. Something shifts in the dark beyond the fence.
"Contact," Ghost calls low from the left flank.
The first shot comes from the trees. Then three more in quick succession, the crack of them flat and professional. My men return fire. The night opens up with muzzle flashes and the smell of cordite and the specific chaos that sounds like violence and is, just violence, nothing more complicated than that.
I push forward along the fence line, low and fast. A figure breaks from the palms and runs. I put two shots past him and he drops into a roll, comes up moving, gets ten more yards before Ghost takes him down from the side. Another one retreats deeper into the trees. I let him go. Retreating is information too.
It takes eleven minutes to secure the perimeter. I count them.
The same eleven minutes.
They weren't probing the fence. They were testing whether the interval change worked. Checking if we'd found them. Which means they know we were looking.
I get back to the operations room in time to hear Tia on the other side of the door before I knock. Not crying, not pacing. Talking. Low and steady. I can’t make out the words, but I know she’s safe.
I knock three times.
The lock disengages. The door opens. She takes one look at me, at my hands, my face, checking for damage the way you checkfor damage when you've been afraid for someone, and lets out a breath.
