We didn't get the luxury of figuring it out first.
The summons came two days later, hand-delivered by an aide with an expression that gave away exactly how serious this was before he said a single word. General Cole's office. Immediately. Bring nothing, expect to be there a while.
Vanguard Squad tried to come with me. Ian actually got halfway through insisting on it before the aide made it very clear that this particular meeting wasn't a squad matter.
"This is between the Corporal and the General," the aide said, not unkindly, but with the flat finality of someone who'd delivered this exact line before and expected to deliver it again. "I'm sorry, Sergeant. Orders."
"Fine," Ian said, though the look he gave me over the aide's shoulder said he was anything but fine with it. "We'll be right here when you're done."
"You don't have to wait."
"We're waiting," Alex said, already dropping into a chair in the hallway like he intended to plant roots there. "Ralph's got cards. We'll be productive about it."
"I don't have cards," Ralph said.
"You will by the time this is over. I'll make some."
Dustin caught my sleeve before I could follow the aide too far, voice pitched low enough that only I would hear it. "Whatever they ask you in there — you don't owe them your whole life story. You owe them the warehouse. That's the actual charge. Don't let Voss turn it into something bigger than it is just because he asks the question a different way."
"How do you know that's what he's going to try?"
"Because that's what I'd do, if I were building a case out of nothing but a hunch." A small, humorless smile. "I pay attention to how people ask questions. It's a hobby, remember?"
"Good luck in there," Ralph added, already dealing out a hand of cards he'd apparently improvised from a deck of ration-tracking chits, because of course he had. "Try not to get court-martialed. I don't want to have to break in a new fifth squad member. Training's exhausting."
"I'll do my best."
I appreciated it more than I let show on my face, and followed the aide down a hallway that felt three times longer than it had the last time I'd walked it, back when I'd been recruited into this squad in the first place, full of a kind of hope I hadn't quite realized I'd been running low on until this exact moment.
Cole's office looked different with Major Voss already seated in the corner, a thin folder in his lap, that same smile on his face that didn't reach anywhere near his eyes. Colonel Reyes stood near the window, arms crossed, expression unreadable in a way that worried me more than open hostility would have — she'd been almost warm two nights ago in the briefing room, and now she looked like a woman bracing for something she couldn't stop.
"Sit, Corporal," Cole said. He didn't sound angry. He sounded tired, which was somehow worse.
I sat.
"Major Voss has brought some concerns to my attention," Cole continued, folding his hands on the desk in front of him, "regarding your after-action report from the warehouse recovery operation three months ago. Specifically, a restricted sub-level your report doesn't mention, and access logs — since recovered from backup — indicating you were down there for nearly twenty minutes."
"Sir — "
"I'm not finished." Cole's voice stayed level, but something hardened underneath it, and he held up a hand without quite looking at me, like he needed the small motion to keep himself on track. "I've read your service record twice since Voss brought this to me. Fastest promotion in this army's recorded history. A tier four kill as a rookie. A wyvern kill last week that half my command staff still doesn't fully believe, and a report from two days ago about a named, tactically-commanding zombie intelligence that apparently knows your rank by name. You are, by every measure I have, one of the most valuable soldiers under my command."
"Which is exactly why this matters," Voss said smoothly, finally speaking up from his corner, setting the folder down on his knee with a small, deliberate motion. "A soldier this valuable, with an ability this poorly documented, concealing what he found in a restricted facility — forgive me, General, but that's not a small discrepancy. That's a pattern."
"A pattern of what?" I asked, and I heard my own voice come out sharper than I'd intended, sharper than I'd meant to let anyone in this room hear.
Voss's smile didn't waver. "That's what the inquiry is for, Corporal. To find out."
"He found a weapons cache and reported it exists," Reyes said, from the window, voice tight and controlled in a way that told me she'd been holding this back since before I'd walked in. "He didn't sell it. He didn't hand it to the enemy. He sealed the room and flagged an unspecified security concern to his commanding officer. That's a documentation failure, Major, not treason."
"Documentation failures are how treason usually starts," Voss said, still perfectly pleasant, like he was discussing the weather instead of my future. "I'm not accusing the Corporal of anything, Colonel. I'm asking why a sixteen-year-old with an ability nobody can fully verify made a unilateral decision to withhold classified information from a superior officer, and what else that same judgment might have led him to withhold since."
The room went quiet in a way that made my skin crawl.
I looked at Cole, searching his face for something — an ally, a way out, anything — and found only the careful neutrality of a man who couldn't be seen playing favorites, not with a formal inquiry already on the table, not with a room that had a major from internal review sitting in it taking careful mental notes of everyone's reactions, including, I suspected, the General's own.
"Effective immediately," Cole said, and I could hear how much it cost him to say it evenly, each word landing like it had weight he didn't want to carry, "you're suspended from active Vanguard deployment pending review. Colonel Reyes will oversee the investigation personally, given her operational knowledge of your service record. I expect full cooperation, Corporal. This can go quickly, or it can go slowly. That part is entirely up to you."
"General, with respect," Reyes said, stepping forward from the window for the first time since I'd sat down, "this Corporal single-handedly identified two named, tactically-commanding threats in the field within the last two weeks, alongside a confirmed apex-class kill. Suspending him in the middle of an active escalation isn't just a personnel decision. It's an operational risk."
"I'm aware of the timing, Colonel." Cole's voice carried the particular weariness of a man who'd already had this exact argument with himself before either of them walked into the room. "I don't love it either. But an open inquiry and an active field deployment don't coexist cleanly, not when the inquiry concerns judgment calls made in the field. If I let this slide because the timing's inconvenient, it looks exactly like the kind of favoritism Major Voss is already implying I've been showing."
"What about the squad, sir?" I asked, because it was the only question I trusted myself to ask without my voice cracking around something bigger. "They've got two named tactical threats active in that forest right now. They're going to need every asset they have."
"Vanguard will continue operating at reduced strength until this resolves," Cole said. "I'm not thrilled about it either, Corporal. Believe me."
I sat there for a long moment, the weight of every secret I was carrying pressing down at once — the warehouse, the weapons, the true shape of my power, the cover story I'd built three months ago and never once let myself stop maintaining — and understood, with a cold, sinking clarity, that I couldn't tell them the truth without losing something I might never get back. Not just my rank. Not just my standing with the only people who'd started to feel like family again since Ivan and Danny. Something more fundamental than that — the last piece of control I still had over how this army decided to use me, once it finally understood exactly what "short-range teleportation" had never actually meant.
"I understand, sir," I said finally, and meant almost none of it, in the specific way where understanding and accepting were two very different things wearing the same words.
Voss stood as the meeting broke, gathering his thin folder with the same unhurried care he did everything, and for a moment I thought he'd leave without another word. He didn't.
"For what it's worth, Corporal," he said, pausing at the door, "I don't enjoy this part of the job. I imagine that's difficult to believe, given the circumstances. But a soldier who climbs this fast deserves a record that can withstand scrutiny — for his own protection, if nothing else. I'd think about that, going forward. About what protects you, and what doesn't."
He was gone before I could decide whether that had been a threat or, in some twisted way he probably believed himself, actual advice.
But as I stood to leave, I caught his eyes one last time through the closing door, and the look on his face wasn't satisfaction.
It was patience. The look of a man who already knew exactly how much further he intended to dig, and had no intention of stopping until he found what he was looking for — a look I recognized, uncomfortably, because it was the same one I gave a fight I hadn't finished yet.
Ian was on his feet the second I stepped back into the hallway, Alex's improvised deck of cards scattered forgotten across three chairs.
"Well?" he asked.
"Suspended," I said. "Pending review."
Alex swore under his breath, low and creative enough that Ralph actually huffed out something close to a laugh despite everything. Dustin just nodded slowly, like he'd already run this exact outcome in his head on the walk over and hadn't been surprised to be right.
"What does 'pending review' actually mean?" Ralph asked. "Like — days? Weeks?"
"I don't know. Nobody in there seemed eager to give me a number." I leaned back against the wall, suddenly aware of exactly how tired I was, the kind of tired that had nothing to do with mana or sleep and everything to do with holding a shape for people that didn't quite match what was underneath it. "Reyes is running the actual investigation. Cole seemed like he hated every second of it. Voss seemed like he was having the best day of his month."
"Of course he was," Alex muttered. "Guy probably keeps a scorecard."
"You're benched, then," Ian said, working through it out loud, already thinking three steps ahead the way he always did. "Which means we're down to four for whatever comes next in that forest. That's not nothing, especially against something that already adapts to formation changes in real time."
"I know."
"I'm not saying it to make you feel worse. I'm saying it because we need to figure out how to cover the gap, and you're the only one of us who's actually fought that thing up close." Ian's expression softened, just slightly. "This isn't your fault, Johnathan. Whatever you did or didn't report three months ago — you kept fighting for this army every single day since. That has to count for something, even if it doesn't feel like it right now."
Nobody said anything for a moment. Then Ralph, quietly, without a trace of his usual joking, tucking the improvised cards back into his jacket pocket like the game had never really mattered: "We're not going anywhere. Whatever this turns into. You didn't leave any of us behind out there. We're not starting the tradition of leaving people behind now."
I believed him. I just wasn't sure, yet, whether believing him was going to be enough to survive whatever Voss intended to dig up next.