My stomach clenched.
The older officer turned the tablet toward me.
A map. Open ocean. A red dot blinking like a wound that never healed.
Coordinates.
On the screen, a note: SIGNAL ORIGIN—ARCHIVED CHANNEL—LAST USED BY HER OLD SQUADRON.
My fingers went cold.
“That beacon was destroyed,” I said. “I watched it die.”
“Apparently not,” he replied.
The room felt smaller.
My mind yanked me backward—heat, static, desperate calls into a dead radio.
My squadron.
The Iron Talons.
Elite pilots sent on a mission that turned into a disappearance.
And me—the only one who came back.
“They never found the wreckage,” I whispered.
The older officer didn’t deny it.
He just said, “And now… we might.”
A younger officer tapped the screen.
Thermal signatures faintly blooming near the coordinates.
Not just debris.
Activity.
I stood before I realized I was moving.
“If it’s them,” I said, voice hard, “I’m going.”
