“YOU’RE A DISGRACE!”—A Wealthy Father Shoved His Soldier Daughter Into a Medal Display, Until a Colonel Saluted Her as the Legendary GHOST COMMANDER! Then a Four-Star General Revealed a Secret Military File That Made Her Father Tremble in Fear...

The rain had ceased over the nation's capital, leaving the streets slick as obsidian beneath a moonless sky.

Senator Sterling had been taken into custody by military police on live television, his empire crumbling before the eyes of millions. The media was in a frenzy; headlines across the globe flashed the news of the Ghost Commander's complete exoneration, the dismantling of Prometheus Defense, and the uncovering of the deep-state syndicate that had betrayed its own soldiers.

At the veterans' counseling annex, the atmosphere should have been triumphant. Leah, Samir, and June were gathered in the main hall, watching the news ticker scroll across the television screen. They were free. Their pensions were restored, their records expunged of all dishonor, and the nation was finally bowing its head to the survivors of Outpost Vega.

But Rebecca sat alone in the director’s office in the back, the door locked.

The leather ledger of Project Cerberus lay open on the desk before her. The green desk lamp cast long, sharp shadows across the yellowed pages.

Her fingers turned to page forty-four.

There were no financial account numbers on the page. Instead, there was a single high-resolution black-and-white satellite photograph dated fourteen years prior—the day her mother had died in what the authorities had ruled a tragic, single-vehicle rollover accident on a secluded mountain road in Colorado.

Stapled beneath the photograph was an autopsy report stamped with the seal of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The cause of death was not blunt force trauma from the crash. It was a precise, high-velocity bullet wound to the base of the skull, fired before the vehicle had been pushed off the embankment.

And next to the order authorizing the scrub of the Colorado investigation was a signature that made Rebecca’s blood run completely cold.

It was not Senator Sterling’s signature.

It was not Charles Vance’s signature.

It was the signature of General Vance—her uncle, the man who had raised her after her mother died, the four-star general who had just marched into the Senate chamber to "save" her.

Suddenly, the lights in the counseling center flickered and died.

Total, suffocating darkness consumed the building.

The hum of the emergency backup generators didn't kick in. Outside, the steady drone of city traffic instantly vanished, replaced by the eerie, synchronized silence of an electromagnetic pulse cutting power to the entire four-block radius.

Rebecca stood up, her hand closing around her sidearm.

Her encrypted satellite phone, resting on the desk, suddenly lit up with a blinding red screen. A single, automated message flashed in high-contrast text, accompanied by a sound she had only heard once before in her life—the high-pitched warble of an Omega-level scorched-earth authorization:

**PROTOCOL ZERO ACTIVATED.**

**TARGET DESIGNATION: CAPTAIN REBECCA VANCE.**

**STATUS: ERASURE IN PROGRESS.**

Through the reinforced glass of the office window, a solitary crimson laser dot danced across the desk. It climbed up the leather ledger, slid across her tactical vest, and stopped precisely over the center of her chest.

From the hallway outside, the heavy, deliberate sound of combat boots echoed against the linoleum floor.