Chapter 2 - The Perimeter Breach
Master Sergeant Miller didn't look at Olivia. He marched straight up to Colonel Vance, his boots clicking rhythmically against the floor, and placed the flashing tablet face-up on the wood between them.
"Sir," Miller said, his voice dropping into a harsh rasp. "We just lost primary sensor feed on Sector Four perimeter gate."
Vance didn't break eye contact with Olivia immediately. He let out a slow, controlled breath, then turned his head to look at the screen. The tactical grid displayed a blinking red hexagon near the old storage bunkers tucked against the foothills.
"Lost feed?" Vance asked, his tone sharpening. "Is it a hardware glitch? A power fluctuation from the wind?"
"Negative, Colonel," Miller replied, glancing sideways at Olivia with unconcealed apprehension. "The maintenance line was cleanly severed from the inside. And the secondary access log just flagged an unauthorized override using a legacy administrative PIN."
Olivia calmly buttered a piece of toast. "Sounds like someone didn't want the cameras recording who was coming or going from the bunkers."
Vance slowly stood up, towering over the table. He looked down at Olivia, his expression shifting from casual intimidation to absolute, razor-sharp focus. "What do you know about Sector Four?"
"I know it's where the old logistics inventory from the nineteen-ninety-two base consolidation is stored," Olivia said, not flinching as she met his towering posture. "Equipment that was supposed to have been decommissioned and shipped back to depot thirty years ago."
Miller’s jaw tightened. "Sir, how does a private fresh out of basic training know about the ninety-two inventory?"
"That's the million-dollar question, isn't it, Sergeant?" Vance muttered, his eyes never leaving Olivia's face. He reached down, snatched the flashing tablet off the table, and hit the intercom button on the side. "MP detachment, lock down the south perimeter road. Nobody moves in or out of Sector Four without my direct biometric authorization."
"Colonel," Olivia said, setting her fork down with a soft click. "If you lock down Sector Four now, you're only sealing the vault after the contents have already been moved."
Vance stopped dead, his thumb hovering over the intercom switch. "Explain."
"The legacy inventory wasn't just stored there," Olivia said, standing up from her chair and buttoning her uniform jacket with crisp, automatic precision. "It was cataloged under a secondary logistics directive signed by a Captain Marcus Vance thirty years ago—back when you were a junior supply officer running the Berlin-adjacent supply chains before you earned your commission."
The color drained entirely from Vance's face. The cool, arrogant command presence he had worn like armor for three years vanished in a single heartbeat.
"Who told you that?" Vance demanded, taking a heavy step toward her.
"Nobody had to tell me, sir," Olivia said, stepping around the table until she was standing eye-to-eye with him, her private's insignia suddenly looking less like a mark of low rank and more like camouflage. "My father was the master gunner sergeant who signed off on your logistics transfers in Berlin. And I spent the last three weeks reviewing every corrupted manifest you thought you buried in this desert."
Miller stepped between them, his hand twitching toward his sidearm holster. "Colonel, she's mutinied. Give me the order, and I'll have her locked in the brig before you can blink."
"No," Vance said, his voice terrifyingly quiet. He waved Miller back with a slight motion of his hand. He stared at Olivia, looking past her uniform, past her youth, seeing the exact ghost he had spent three decades trying to outrun. "You're Parker’s kid."
"I am," Olivia said coldly. "And my father isn't the only one who kept records of what happened in Berlin."
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Before Vance could answer, a loud, concussive thud echoed from the direction of the motor pool outside—a muffled explosion that shook the dust from the high rafters of the dining facility and sent the overhead lights flickering into sudden, total darkness.
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