Chapter 6
Daniel left instructions.
She did not reply for six minutes.
When she did, the message was different.
What instructions?
I turned off the phone.
That evening, I stood in the bedroom of the secure residence Stratix had assigned me.
It was larger than any hotel suite I had ever seen, with soft gray walls, warm lighting, and a view of a private courtyard dusted with snow. A bassinet had already been placed near the bed, still wrapped in clear protective plastic.
Someone had filled the closet with maternity clothes in my size.
Someone had stocked the bathroom with prenatal vitamins, unscented lotion, and fluffy white towels.
Someone had thought about what I might need.
The kindness nearly undid me.
I sat on the bed and opened Daniel’s old field notebook.
Most of the pages were technical. Diagrams. Signal-routing theories. Encryption sketches. Notes written in his slanted handwriting.
But in the back, tucked between two pages, was a letter.
Maya.
I knew it was for me before I read the name.
My hands trembled.
I don’t know if you’ll ever see this. I hope you don’t. I hope I come home and make fun of myself for being dramatic.
But if I don’t come home, listen carefully.
Orion is not just software.
I frowned.
The room seemed to narrow.
Daniel’s letter continued.
There was a communications failure during the Karsen extraction six months before this deployment. Officially, it was weather interference. It wasn’t. Someone jammed us from inside a protected channel.
I reported it.
The report vanished.
I built Orion because men died waiting for rescue that someone made sure would never arrive.
If I die on this mission and they say it was another signal failure, do not believe them.
My breath stopped.
For a moment, I could not hear anything.
Not the ventilation system.
Not the distant footstep outside the hall.
Not even myself.
I read the line again.
If I die on this mission and they say it was another signal failure, do not believe them.
Daniel’s entire unit had died after rescue helicopters lost contact during evacuation.
That was what they told me.
That was what they folded into a flag and placed in my arms.
A signal failure.
I pressed the letter to my chest.
Grief changed shape in that room.
It became colder.
Sharper.
Less like a wound.
More like a blade.
At 9:43 p.m., Colonel Hayes knocked once and entered only after I answered.
He saw the letter in my hands.
His face changed.
Not much.
Enough.
“You knew,” I said.
He closed the door behind him.
“I suspected.”
“Did Daniel tell you?”
“He told me enough to be afraid for him.”
Anger rose so fast I nearly stood.
“I buried him.”
“I know.”
“They told me it was a communications failure.”
“Yes.”
“You let me believe that.”
Colonel Hayes absorbed the accusation without flinching.
“I did not have proof.”
“You had his suspicions.”
“Suspicions do not reopen classified casualty findings.”
“But Orion does?”
His silence answered me.
I looked down at the notebook.
“What did Daniel build?”
Colonel Hayes came closer, slowly, as though approaching something explosive.
“Orion does more than protect battlefield communications,” he said. “It records interference signatures. Every attempted breach. Every unauthorized pulse. Every false command injected into a network.”
My mouth went dry.
“So if the same person or group jammed Daniel’s unit—”
“Orion may identify the method.”
“And the source?”
His eyes hardened.
“Yes.”
The room held us both in stillness.
Then Colonel Hayes said the thing that made my blood turn ice-cold.
“Your system ran its first full diagnostic this morning after Department authorization.”
I knew before he said the rest.
Some part of me knew.
“It found something,” I whispered.
He nodded.
May you like
“A matching interference signature.”
My hand went to my stomach.
