The morning after the attack, Main Base looked like a place that had survived something it wasn't built to survive — scorch marks along the western wall, a hastily patched breach still smoking faintly in the dawn light, medical tents overflowing with the wounded from both sides of the fence. I hadn't slept. Neither, from the look of her, had Reyes, who found me at the infirmary checking on Ralph before the sun had fully cleared the horizon, dark circles bruised deep under her eyes, the shallow cut on her jaw from last night finally bandaged.
"He's stable," she said, before I could ask. "Bruce did good work. He'll be off active duty for a couple of weeks, but he'll keep the arm and everything else that matters."
"That's something."
"It's more than something. Last night could have gone a lot worse." She handed me a data tablet, and I felt my stomach drop before I'd even read the first line. "Major Voss filed an addendum to his inquiry an hour ago. Insubordination, unauthorized combat engagement while under suspension. He's citing witness statements from at least two soldiers who saw something during the depot fire they can't explain through conventional means."
I read the addendum twice, my hands going cold despite the warmth of the morning, each word landing heavier than the last. "You authorized my reinstatement. You said it yourself, emergency battlefield authority."
"I did, and I'll testify to that in the hearing, under oath, as many times as it takes." Reyes's jaw was set hard, a muscle working at the corner of it. "But Voss is arguing that my authorization doesn't retroactively cover actions that exceeded reasonable combat parameters. He's specifically flagging the depot incident — a soldier reported you appearing to move an active incendiary device from one location to another in what they described as an instant, with no visible transition."
"I saved the medical stock."
"I know. Cole knows. Half the base is calling you a hero this morning, and that matters, Johnathan, it genuinely does — but it also means Voss now has exactly what he's been fishing for since he opened this inquiry. A witness account that doesn't match your official ability." She dropped her voice, glancing once toward the infirmary entrance to make sure nobody was in earshot. "I need you to tell me honestly — is there any version of yesterday where that witness account holds up under closer scrutiny? Because if there is, I need to know now, not the day of the hearing."
I sat down heavily on an overturned supply crate outside the infirmary, the weight of the last twelve hours finally catching up with me all at once. "So I saved the base and handed him the rope to hang me with in the same breath."
"That's an ugly way to put it, but not an inaccurate one." Reyes crouched down to my level, her voice dropping, softer than I'd ever heard it, all the command-officer edges smoothed away for just a moment. "Off the record — whatever you actually are, Corporal, I don't care. I've seen what you can do in the field for three weeks now, and every single time, it's been to keep people alive who would otherwise be dead. That matters more to me than whatever's written on your file. I've served under officers who'd have court-martialed you for insubordination alone and called it a clean win. I'm not interested in that kind of clean."
"But it won't matter to the hearing."
"Not if Voss gets to frame the narrative first." She stood, offering me a hand up, which I took gratefully, my legs less steady than I wanted them to be. "Marlowe's requested an emergency session with me this afternoon. I suggest you be there. This is about to move a lot faster than any of us expected."
"Do you know what he's actually building toward? Beyond the warehouse and the depot?"
Reyes hesitated, and that hesitation told me more than whatever she said next. "I don't know for certain. But if I were building a case the way he's building his — narrow charge first, then widening the aperture the second something unexplainable happens in the field — I'd be aiming for a formal capability review. Not just 'did he break protocol.' 'What is he, and does the army get to own it.'"
The words sat in my chest like a stone. "That's what I've been afraid of since Voss first introduced himself."
"I know." Reyes's expression didn't soften the way I wanted it to, but it didn't turn cold either. "I can't promise you it won't get there. I can promise you I'll fight it every step of the way I'm allowed to. That's the honest version, Corporal. I owe you that much after last night."
I spent the walk to Marlowe's office turning the whole mess over in my head, trying to find an angle that didn't end with me either confessing to something I couldn't take back or losing everything I'd built over the last three months to protect the people I cared about. I didn't find one, not by the time I reached her door, but I found something almost as useful — Bruce, waiting outside, a folder clutched tight against his chest and an expression on his face I hadn't seen from him since the day we'd found the hidden lab together.
"You're not going to believe what I found," he said, before I'd even said hello, practically vibrating with the effort of holding it in.
"Try me. I've had a rough morning."
"Voss's interview transcripts with Ivan and Daniel." Bruce's voice dropped low, urgent, glancing once down the empty hallway before continuing. "My contact in records pulled the full session logs, not just the summary he filed. He threatened them, Johnathan. Off the record, no legal counsel present, told them their own service records would 'suffer complications' if they weren't more forthcoming. That's a textbook coercion violation."
I felt something in my chest loosen for the first time in what felt like days, a knot I hadn't fully realized I was carrying easing just slightly. "That's enough to sink his whole case?"
"It's enough to sink his credibility," Bruce said. "Which, from what Marlowe's been telling me, might be worth even more. A prosecutor whose methods get thrown into question — every piece of evidence he's built gets a shadow over it, even the parts that might otherwise be solid."
"How solid is the rest of it, actually? Have you seen everything he's filed?"
"Not everything. Enough to know the depot addendum is the strongest thing he's got left once this transcript issue lands. Everything else is circumstantial — timing, access logs, a couple of witness impressions that don't quite line up with the official record. None of it's a smoking gun on its own. It's death by a thousand small inconsistencies, which is exactly the kind of case a man like Voss is patient enough to build."
We found Marlowe already deep in conversation with Reyes when we reached her office, both of them looking up sharply as we entered, papers spread across the desk between them.
"Corporal," Marlowe said. "You have impeccable timing, or terrible timing, depending on how the next hour goes. What have you got?"
Bruce held out the folder, and I watched Marlowe's expression shift as she scanned the pages inside — the first genuine, unguarded reaction I'd seen from her since we'd met, her sharp eyes widening just slightly before narrowing again into something more calculating.
"Well," she said, after a long moment, a thin, sharp smile finally cracking through her permanent neutrality. "This changes things considerably. Sergeant — " she glanced at Bruce, " — your contact in records. Are they willing to testify to the authenticity of this, if it comes to that?"
"I'd have to ask her. She's already taking a risk just flagging it to me."
"Ask carefully," Marlowe said. "But ask. This is exactly the kind of thread that unravels a case built on sand." She looked back at me, something almost approving in her expression. "You've got good people around you, Corporal. That's not nothing, in a fight like this one."
I thought about Ian and Alex and Ralph and Dustin, about Ivan and Danny sitting through Voss's interrogation without giving him anything real, about Bruce risking his own career to dig up a coercion violation, and understood, for the first time since the summons to Cole's office, that maybe I wasn't as alone in this as it had felt.
"There's something else you should both know," Reyes said, once Marlowe had finished making her own notes on the transcripts, sliding the folder into a locked drawer for safekeeping. "The depot addendum isn't the only thing moving today. Command's fielding calls from three separate outposts this morning, all reporting increased activity matching the coordinated-pack profile. Whatever's out in that forest, it either heard about last night's attack or it's using the confusion to push harder somewhere else."
"Coincidence?" Bruce asked.
"I don't believe in that particular coincidence," Reyes said flatly. "Not with an intelligence that already knows our ranks and our operational tempo well enough to call Corporal Johnathan by name. If I had to guess, whatever's directing that warband is testing how thin it can spread us before we're forced to choose between defending the base and defending the perimeter."
"That's not a comforting theory," Marlowe said, closing her own notepad.
"It's not meant to be comforting. It's meant to be accurate." Reyes rubbed at her eyes, the exhaustion from the sleepless night finally showing through the crack in her usual composure. "Corporal, I need you focused on the hearing until it resolves. I mean that. I can't have you split between an inquiry and a warband, not with Voss actively looking for any excuse to say your judgment can't be trusted under pressure."
"Understood."
"I mean it, Johnathan." Something almost gentle crept into her voice, an informality she rarely allowed herself. "You've spent the last several weeks proving over and over that you'll run toward whatever needs you the most, consequences be damned. That's exactly the instinct that's going to get you buried in that hearing room if you're not careful. Let Marlowe fight this one. Let your squad hold the line without you for a few more days if it comes to that. You can't win every fight by being the one who shows up."
It wasn't advice I particularly wanted to hear, and it landed anyway, settling somewhere uncomfortable in my chest because some part of me knew she was right.
Bruce walked me out afterward, both of us quiet for the length of the hallway, processing everything that had just happened in the span of one very long morning.
"You okay?" he asked, finally, as we reached the courtyard, sunlight doing little to chase off the exhaustion sitting behind my eyes.
"Ask me after the hearing."
"Fair." He hesitated at the fork in the path, one way toward the infirmary, the other toward the barracks. "For what it's worth — Reyes is right. You don't have to be the one who fixes everything. Some of us are actually trying to help, if you'd let us."
"I know. I'm trying to let you."
"Working on it counts," he said, echoing my own line back at me with a small, tired smile, and clapped me once on the shoulder before heading off toward the infirmary to check on Ralph again, leaving me alone in the courtyard with the weight of everything Reyes had just laid out settling slowly over me like the morning fog still clinging to the base's scorched perimeter. Somewhere out past the wall, whatever was coordinating that warband was still watching, still patient, still perfectly willing to wait for the exact moment I was least prepared to answer it. I intended to be ready anyway, hearing or no hearing.