Kyler
Langley AFB
The briefing room's too damn small for the number of bodies packed inside. Every seat filled, every wall lined. There’s representation from every branch.
Even a couple of the agency suits hanging near the back, pretending they aren’t sweating through their dress shirts.
If you’ve got clearance high enough to breathe in this room, you’re here.
It smells like hot metal and jet fuel and adrenaline no one’s wasting yet.
I sit back, arms crossed, boot hooked under the table, eyes forward, ignoring the other operators laughing at something I didn’t hear. I don’t talk. I don’t fidget. I just listen.
The JSOC commander, General Mathers, clicks through slides on a too-slow projector.
Satellite shots. Thermal scans. Intel summaries flashing by like a graveyard parade.
The images flicker across the screen, each one heavier than the last—half-collapsed compounds, charred trucks, grainy shapes caught in sniper crosshairs.
He doesn’t waste words. It’s part of why I’ve always liked him.
He’s been head of Joint Special Operations Command since before I passed selection and OTC, and he sure as hell didn’t get the job by playing nice.
I shift in my seat, arms crossed, boots planted wide.
These classified briefings are for the kind of missions they don’t teach you about in basic.
Not that basic was ever the plan. I enlisted at eighteen because home was hell and the only thing I was ever taught to do was fight.
The military gave me a reason to do it for someone else.
I got my first taste of war in Afghanistan less than a year later.
Spent most of my twenties chasing gunfire with the Rangers, running raids, kicking down doors, burying brothers.
It wasn’t enough.
Not when there was a chance to do more. To be part of the group that answers when every other option fails. So I volunteered for selection. The Long Walk damn near killed me—broke down every muscle and bone and thought I had—but I made it through.
I passed the Operator Training Course a few weeks ago, and now I’m here.
General Mathers pauses on a frame showing a cluster of heat signatures moving across scrubland under heavy cloud cover.
He points with his laser. “Unmanned aerial vehicles—drones. Modified for surveillance and light payload delivery. Launched from a coastal site tied to the Al-Shaheen network.” His voice cuts clean through the stale air. No bullshit. No sugarcoating.
My jaw flexes.
Al-Shaheen.
The same insurgent network that’s been bleeding us dry for years.
The same bastards that took good men off the map and turned parts of Africa into fucking no-man’s lands.
Their hands are dirty all over the Middle East, too.
And now they’re trying to reach across the Atlantic. To my home. This isn’t just some far-off war anymore. Not some faceless mission halfway around the world. They’re aiming at us now—at what we love. What we protect.
Most of the guys in my unit keep their lives clean. No ties. No distractions. No weaknesses. It’s easier that way, makes sense when the job asks for everything and then some. I used to believe that, used to think I could live that way, too.
Until I met her.
The night I finished selection. Body wrecked, mind fried, barely standing. There she was. A light in my bleak world.
She isn’t a distraction. She’s not my weakness. She’s the reason I give a damn. This threat is personal.
Because if they make it all the way here…
They don’t just get my country.
They get her.
And they’ll have to go through every last fucking bone in my body before that happens.
I inhale deeply, scrubbing a hand down my face and over my facial hair. It’s growing out again and in the itchy phase.
Around the room, men sit stone-faced. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine. Fed. It doesn’t matter what you wear here. You bleed the same.
There’s an Air Force pilot sitting two rows up.
Flight suit. Clean-cut hair. Straight as a damn board.
I catch a glimpse of his name tape when he shifts slightly in his chair: Everett.
He’s younger than most of the guys here. Probably mid-twenties. Maybe not that much younger than me, but he’s fresh-faced, probably hasn’t seen enough of the fucked-up shit going on to weigh him down yet. His jaw is locked in place, like he’s still up there at thirty thousand feet.
I squint at him.
No swagger. No dumb smirk. Just ice.
"Recon flight was completed at oh four hundred this morning by Lieutenant Everett," Mathers says, nodding Everett’s way without missing a beat.
The room shifts, subtle.
Eyes cut toward the lieutenant.
He doesn’t react. Doesn’t square his shoulders. Just keeps his hands flat on his knees, still as stone, waiting.
I lean forward a fraction, studying him.
No bullshit. No bravado. That's rare. Most pilots I’ve worked with strut like they’re God's gift to the battlefield. This one’s different.
Tight. Focused. Which is saying something since the mission he flew would have relied heavily on stealth capabilities few fighters have. The kid probably flies a Raptor.
“ISR sweep picked up two stationary technicals,” General Mathers says, flipping to a grainy overhead image. “Thermal confirms both are armed—mounted DShK heavies, likely. Minimal personnel visible, maybe a half-dozen guards tops, no fortified positions.”
He clicks again. A new screen pulls up. This one showing heat signatures moving erratically against a cooler terrain backdrop. “Drone activity here, two clicks north. Movement is irregular. Could be automated loiter patterns, or someone testing manual control latency.”
He glances around the room, voice steady but clipped. “No launches observed during recon window, but activity's spiking. Risk profile's changing.”
I lean in, eyes narrowing. If it were automated, the spacing would be cleaner.
Consistent loop. But this—these sudden shifts, the twitchy adjustments—it feels off.
Like someone’s riding the stick themselves.
Testing the edge of control range, maybe gauging response time through some kind of relay.
Either sloppy programming or someone’s getting cute out there.
And cute gets people killed.
There’s murmur from the back of the room, like whoever said it didn’t mean to say it aloud. “Movement along the coast this close to home?”
Mathers hears it, addresses it head-on. “That’s the concern. They're operating inside a zone that used to be low threat. Launch origin traces to a fishing port that’s gone dark—comms, power, AIS traffic—everything cut. Best guess: a covert site feeding the Al-Shaheen network.”
He straightens, flipping to a third slide—a coastal map with red rings showing potential drone flight paths.
He looks from Everett to the pilot sitting beside him.
“ROE remains weapons tight unless fired upon,” he says, hard.
“But posture is elevated. You see a bird get within two miles of a hard target, you light it up.”
He flicks a finger toward the map’s eastern edge. “Overwatch is being handled by 142nd Phantom Lancers. Charlie Flight.”
Raptors.
Mathers is flipping to the next slide when the door bangs open hard enough to rattle the frame.
An airman leans in, his face tight. "Sir, NORAD just transmitted scramble orders through AFNORTH. Charlie Flight is tasked. Multiple drones inbound toward CONUS—Atlantic corridor. Fast movers, multiple vectors.”
The whole damn room freezes for half a second.
Mathers doesn’t miss a beat. “Scramble Charlie. I want a direct feed from the E-3 as soon as it’s airborne.” He nods solemnly toward an officer who I assume is Charlie Flight’s commander.
The commander looks from his phone to Evertt. “Riot and Titan are already in the hangar. We’re wheels up in five. Ghost, we have to move.”
Ghost.
Good name for him.
He’s already halfway invisible sitting there.
The kid’s on his feet before the words are even out. Zero hesitation. He cuts through the room, head down, boots hitting tile with steady weight. The glass door swings shut behind him, and it’s like all the oxygen is sucked out.
I shift in my seat, flex my fingers, feeling the itch in my blood. The world is changing faster than any of us can keep up with. And the kid who's supposed to cover our asses? He's already wheels up, chasing shadows we haven't even seen yet.