Back at the safehouse, the light bled out of the sky in slow, dusty streaks of orange and gray.

  They didn’t talk much as night settled.

  San Marcos sat to the south—less controlled, less fortified, less disciplined than the north. That was where the movement lanes still existed. That was where convoys still ran thin enough to be hit.

  This time, Mitchell stayed behind.

  He leaned against the barn wall, rifle across his lap, listening to the faint rustle of wind through warped wood. Inside, the Royal Guard officer sat bound and silent, his earlier bravado long gone.

  “Don’t die,” Mitchell had told the others flatly before they left.

  It wasn’t sentimental.

  —

  The convoy rolled out of San Marcos just after full dark.

  Two APCs. One IFV. Transport trucks sandwiched between. Standard Royal Army escort pattern.

  They let it travel a few kilometers out of town—far enough that reinforcements wouldn’t arrive instantly, far enough that the echo of gunfire would dissipate into open terrain.

  Sonata gave the signal. The first explosion flipped the lead APC onto its side. The second disabled the IFV—track shredded, turret jammed mid-rotation.

  Jack’s rifle cracked. Sam’s precision shots stitched through headlights and exposed gunners. Cadenza moved.

  In Project Thunderbolt Assault Power Armor, she didn’t advance—she displaced air.

  A Royal Army officer panicked and fired his sidearm at her.

  Pop. Pop. Pop.

  The rounds struck her deflector shield and vanished in small flares of light, each impact draining a sliver of charge. The shield held. The officer froze. Cadenza didn’t.

  She closed the distance in two heavy steps, grabbed him by the front of his vest, lifted him off the ground like he weighed nothing and crushed his skull with a single tightening motion.

  It was efficient. Horrifying. Final. She dropped the body without ceremony. Gunfire tapered. Return fire had been chaotic and poorly coordinated. Royal Army troops—not Guard. Young. Unseasoned. Pressed into patrol duty.

  Within minutes, it was over. Smoke curled upward from disabled vehicles. Sonata moved to the transport trucks.

  “Check for Julia,” she ordered.

  They pulled open the doors. More FSF fighters. Bruised. Exhausted. Alive. Not Julia.

  Sonata didn’t speak. They cut restraints, handed over captured rifles, pointed them south.

  “Move,” she told the freed prisoners. “Don’t linger.”

  Cadenza stepped over a wrecked wheel assembly, visor reflecting flames.

  She glanced at the scattered bodies, then at the horizon.

  “Thirty down,” she said evenly. “About two dozen to go.”

  There was no triumph in her voice. Just arithmetic. Somewhere, Mitchell sat alone with a prisoner who kept changing his story. And somewhere north, the Royal Guard tightened its grip.

  Julia was still out there. And the fighting was only getting heavier. They made the decision fast.

  If convoys weren’t carrying Julia, if the prisoner kept shifting details, then waiting wasn’t buying them anything. San Marcos had to feel pressure. Not a probing raid. A direct strike. Cadenza didn’t argue. She simply moved to the front.

  When they breached the outskirts, the Royal Army didn’t understand what they were looking at.

  A seven-foot silhouette in powered assault armor. Titanium-steel plating layered over a reinforced exoskeleton. Deflector shield shimmering faintly around her frame. The first volley of rifle fire struck her chest.

  Rounds flared against the shield in brief pulses of light—each impact shaving charge percentage down incrementally.

  The soldiers hesitated. They’d trained to suppress infantry. They’d trained to fight vehicles. They had not trained to fight a literal supersoldier. Cadenza kept walking. Bullets sparked and dissipated.

  Behind her, Mackenzie Rose moved to the left flank, rifle steady. Sonata took right-side angles. Jack and Sam advanced in disciplined intervals, picking targets with precision. With Cadenza absorbing primary fire, their lanes opened cleanly. But Cadenza wasn’t just a walking shield. Project Phoenix supersoldiers weren’t specialists in one discipline. They were specialists in all of them.

  Average Phoenix? Could outshoot a conventional sniper. Outfly a trained ace. Outduel a seasoned blade master. And Cadenza wasn’t average.

  A turret rotated into view at the end of a street—mounted heavy machine gun nested behind sandbags. Cadenza tilted her helmet slightly.

  “Turret.”

  She said it the way a weather reporter might mention rain next Tuesday. Or a deli worker might ask how thick you wanted your cheese. No urgency. No stress. Just information. The others immediately broke for cover.

  Cadenza didn’t. She ran. Not lumbered. Not charged. Ran—like a collegiate track athlete accelerating into a sprint. Mid-stride, segmented armor plating along her thighs split open with hydraulic precision.

  Two M2 submachine guns slid forward into her gauntleted hands.

  Compact naval/SOC issue weapons—chambered in a common pistol caliber used worldwide. Reliable. High cyclic rate. Easy logistics.

  She leapt. A full front flip.

  While inverted, she fired. Controlled bursts. The gunner’s head snapped back first. The spotter-loader dropped second. Two additional Royal Army soldiers collapsed before their brains processed what they were seeing.

  Cadenza rotated through the arc of the flip, weapons still barking, muzzle flashes strobing upside-down against the night sky. She landed on both feet as if stepping off a curb.

  No stumble. No dramatic pause. Just forward motion. The turret fell silent. The Royal Army line wavered.

  For them, it wasn’t just that they were losing. It was that the laws of combat felt broken. Bullets weren’t stopping her. Explosions weren’t staggering her.

  She absorbed incoming fire until her shield flickered into low reserve, then shifted into aggressive tempo, forcing their line to collapse before depletion became critical.

  Sonata moved up, clearing a doorway with efficient double taps. Jack suppressed a second-floor window. Sam picked off a retreating squad leader attempting to rally troops. Mackenzie shifted to casualty triage without being told, scanning for friendly wounds.

  The Royal Army began breaking. Some fled deeper into San Marcos. Some dropped weapons. Some froze.

  Cadenza advanced through the intersection, armor scorched in spots where shield bleed-through had heated plating.

  “Shield at forty-two percent,” she said calmly.

  Like announcing a mild temperature drop. The message was clear. She could keep going.

  San Marcos wasn’t built to handle this kind of assault. They’d expected guerillas. They got a Phoenix.

  They pushed deeper into San Marcos, clearing corridors in disciplined bursts—room, corner, hallway, stairwell. The fighting thinned as Royal Army resistance fragmented, leaving pockets of confusion and scattered holdouts.

  Eventually they reached what passed for a control room—concrete walls, flickering fluorescent lights, dusty consoles bolted into steel desks. Analog dials mixed awkwardly with early-generation digital monitors. The place smelled like hot wiring and neglect.

  “I’ll get on the console,” Mackenzie Rose said, already moving.

  No one argued.

  Out of all of them, she was the most technically fluent. Not because Little Bird was some hyper-digital society—it wasn’t. Quite the opposite.

  Sonata had been born in 1976, when computers were rare office machines that required formal training just to operate. Back then, computer literacy meant college-level specialization. For most of Little Bird’s population, personal computing never became universal.

  Even in 2011, laptops were luxuries. A cheap one cost $800. In Little Bird, where the average salary hovered around $110 a week—about $5,700 a year—that meant eight months of pay for entry-level income earners. That wasn’t an impulse purchase. That was a life decision.

  Most of the country still functioned in what the rest of the world would call the pre-information era. Many careers didn’t require computers at all. Schools emphasized fundamentals: writing, reading, arithmetic, philosophy, shop class, home economics, physical labor. Typing was taught. True computer literacy was a university elective.

  Jack had grown up around a computer—his wealthy parents had one—but it was strictly business. He still typed like he was trying to break the keys, stabbing each letter as if force equaled accuracy.

  Sam avoided computers entirely. He was precise with a rifle, strong with his hands, fluid in motion—but give him a keyboard and he looked vaguely betrayed.

  Cadenza once summarized her stance simply:

  “I don’t need a computer to kill someone. That’s what my bare hands are for.”

  Even Jack and Sam’s government reporting was done via typewriter or handwritten drafts. Their reasoning was practical: paper doesn’t crash. Ink doesn’t freeze. Power outages don’t erase paragraphs. If the lights go out, you grab a flashlight and keep working.

  Mackenzie was different. Back home in Clearlake, she worked in the town comptroller’s office. Budget spreadsheets, municipal ledgers, payroll systems—her job required technical proficiency. Compared to the others, she might as well have been a systems engineer. She cracked her knuckles and leaned into the terminal.

  “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

  The interface was clunky. Slow refresh rates. Green-text command prompts. Archive directories nested in archaic file structures.

  “This hardware is ancient,” she muttered.

  Sonata paced behind her. “Find prisoner transfers. Holding facilities. Anything flagged high-security.”

  Mackenzie navigated menus, cross-referencing transport logs. Names scrolled. Identification codes. Convoy timestamps. A blast shook the building somewhere distant—Cadenza likely finishing resistance pockets.

  “Door ahead,” Jack called from the hallway. “Locked.”

  “We need it open now!” Sonata shouted back.

  “Working!” Mackenzie replied, fingers flying.

  She tapped commands, bypassed a lock protocol, triggered a remote release. A metallic clunk echoed down the corridor.

  “Got it!”

  Jack pushed through. Pause.

  “That’s a supply closet.”

  Sonata looked at Mackenzie.

  Mackenzie frowned at the screen. “This system’s labeling is backwards. I’m telling you, this is prehistoric.”

  She adjusted parameters, dug deeper into the access matrix.

  “Try again,” Sonata said.

  Mackenzie rerouted control, this time tracing the correct locking sequence. Another heavy door disengaged somewhere down the corridor.

  Jack’s voice came again, sharper this time.

  “Got it. This one’s real.”

  Sonata exhaled once.

  “Keep digging,” she said quietly.

  Because somewhere in that maze of outdated servers and flickering monitors. Julia’s name had to exist. And Mackenzie was the only one there who could coax it out of the machine.

  The hallway lights flickered as they moved, the smell of burned wiring and concrete dust still lingering from the earlier fighting.

  Sam exhaled sharply.

  “I’d rather relive the ’97 Clearlake Tornado than keep going through whatever this place is.”

  Sonata glanced back at him. “The what?”

  Sam adjusted his grip on his rifle. “You don’t know about that?”

  She shook her head once.

  “It was first grade,” he said. “Severe thunderstorm that lasted all day. Multiple tornadoes. Not just one.”

  Jack snorted faintly. “Seven.”

  Sam nodded. “Seven confirmed. First one was a twin—outside town. Tore up tree lines and farmland.”

  Jack added, “Second one was the satellite. That’s the one that rolled into Clearlake proper.”

  “That’s the one that wrecked half the east side,” Sam continued. “Houses flattened. Businesses ripped apart. An ambulance ended up in an oak tree.”

  Cadenza’s voice came from behind them, calm as ever. “Fuel tanker went through the nickel-and-dime store.”

  She said it like she was recalling the weather.

  Sam swallowed.

  “Third tornado was a ‘dead man walking.’ You could see the multiple suction vortices inside it. Looked like legs moving across the field.”

  Jack nodded. “That one scared everyone.”

  “The fourth was the night tornado,” Sam said. “Actually the seventh of the day. Fifth and sixth were rope tornadoes—thin, but still destructive.”

  He shook his head slightly.

  “We were in the school basement all day. Old 1950s fallout shelter. Thick concrete walls. Steel door. Built during the Cold War.”

  That era had shaped Clearlake. Many homes had basements stocked with emergency supplies—rations, water, batteries, radios, maps, gas masks, medkits. Some were retrofitted fallout shelters. Others were purpose-built in the 50s and 60s.

  “If you didn’t have a basement,” Jack said, “you went to your neighbor’s. Or a public shelter.”

  Sam continued. “The night tornado was supposed to track southwest to northeast like the others. Instead, it went anti-cyclonic.”

  Sonata frowned slightly. “Opposite direction?”

  “Yeah,” Sam said. “Northwest to southeast. Went right through town center.”

  Jack’s jaw tightened. “Pickup truck got launched through town hall.”

  “And somehow,” Sam added quietly, “no one died.”

  The memory lingered for a second—wind like a freight train, emergency radios crackling, children huddled in a concrete bunker. Then reality pulled them back. They pushed deeper into the facility. Makeshift holding cells lined one corridor—steel bars, dim bulbs, stained floors. Empty.

  Sonata’s pulse ticked upward. “She’s not here.”

  Mackenzie checked the console again. “Transfer logs show recent movement. Timestamp’s fresh.”

  “Where?” Sonata demanded.

  “Western end of the facility,” Mackenzie replied. “But this system only covers this sector.”

  She tapped the monitor in frustration.

  “All these terminals are local network nodes. Old hardware. Sector-isolated. If we go west, I’ll have to find another system to access.”

  Jack glanced down the hall. “So we’re blind?”

  “For this section, yes,” Mackenzie said. “Once we cross into the western wing, we’re on our own until I find another console.”

  Sonata looked down the corridor leading west—darker, quieter.

  “Recently transferred,” she repeated.

  Mackenzie nodded. “It’s the only logical conclusion.”

  Cadenza didn’t hesitate when she said it.

  “If he lied again,” she muttered, voice flat inside the armor’s filtered tone, “I’ll boil him alive.”

  No flourish.

  No rage just logistics. Sonata glanced at her and felt that familiar disconnect—the one she could never quite resolve. Cadenza loved a fight. Thrived in it. Moved through violence like it was choreography.

  And yet, She wouldn’t harm an animal.

  She adored farm animals. Would kneel in a pasture and gently feed a lamb from her hand. Would carry an injured dog two miles without complaint. Would glare at anyone who mistreated livestock like they’d committed sacrilege.

  Sonata would never fully understand that balance. Cadenza was not a pacifist. Not even close.

  But she had rules.

  She would never attack someone who truly refused to fight. Her half sister-in-law Cadence—gentle, pacifist, the kind of woman who wouldn’t swat a fly—was safe around her. Cadenza would never lay a hand on her.

  But bring harm to Cadenza’s allies?

  Different story. Then the storm came out.

  She wasn’t a madwoman but that she was worse.

  She was unhinged in a controlled way—like a natural disaster that followed its own physics but no human predictability. If she were a tornado, she’d be an EF5: catastrophic, unstoppable, reshaping the landscape simply by passing through it.

  She didn’t posture. She didn’t threaten theatrically. She walked the walk. The kind of presence that made pampered, entitled people suddenly aware of their mortality.

  She’d once said, calmly:

  “Way up in the damn skies you thought you owned the world… But down here? I own you.”

  And she’d meant it. Cadenza hadn’t been pampered. She hadn’t been sheltered. She’d been trained to be a soldier since she was four years old. Pain, to her, was informational.

  Mitchell once told Sonata about the time Cadenza broke her lower right arm. No screaming. No tears. She’d grabbed her forearm, set it herself, and kept moving until someone forced her to get it properly treated.

  Or the gym class incident—some kid twisted their ankle badly enough that everyone thought it was broken. Cadenza knelt down, assessed it, and reset it without hesitation. Built like a tank. But faster. Mitchell is the strong silent type. Cadenza is the embodiment of: Speed and violence make a great team.

  They moved deeper into the western wing.

  More makeshift cells. Empty. Metal doors open. Restraints discarded. No prisoners. Sonata’s frustration simmered. They kept walking. Past another corridor. Another holding block. Another silent room. Nothing.

  The facility felt hollow—like they were chasing a shadow that kept retreating just out of reach.

  Mackenzie checked junction panels as they passed, looking for another terminal. No luck. Jack cleared a side room. Sam covered the rear. Cadenza’s armor hummed softly with each step, shield charge slowly regenerating in the absence of incoming fire.

  Sonata paused at an intersection.

  “Where the hell are they?” she muttered.

  Silence answered. They had stormed San Marcos. Neutralized defenders. Taken control of the prison sector. And yet. Julia was still nowhere.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  The deeper they went, the more it felt like they were always one corridor too late.

  And somewhere behind them, back at the safehouse, a captured Royal Guard officer sat with a story that kept changing. Cadenza’s earlier words hung in the air like a promise. If he’d lied again. The storm would come home.

  They cleared the entire building. Every cell. Every office. Every supply room. Nothing. No Julia.

  No high-security holding block. No hidden transfer. Just empty cages and the echo of boots against concrete. Cadenza stood in the center of the final corridor, visor reflecting the fluorescent light.

  “That’s two strikes,” she said calmly. “He’s becoming stew for the animals.”

  There wasn’t anger in it.

  Just tally marks. They regrouped with Mackenzie Rose near the entry hall, confirmed there were no additional sectors accessible without heavy demolition, and exfiltrated before Royal Guard reinforcement could reorganize.

  —

  The ride back to the safehouse was quieter than usual.

  Sonata stared ahead for a long stretch before asking, almost offhandedly, “How many medals did you end up with?”

  Cadenza didn’t hesitate.

  “Almost all of them. Just short of the POW one”

  Sonata blinked. “All of them?”

  “Legion of Merit. Purple Heart. Branch-specific citations. Air Force commendations. Naval action ribbons. Marine combat distinctions.”

  She shrugged inside the armor.

  SPECWARGROUP in Little Bird wasn’t branch-isolated. It was integrated—Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines. Cross-branch operations meant cross-branch eligibility. Cadenza had served everywhere. It tracked. Jack, Sam, and Mackenzie had medals too. Not as many, not as broad—but respectable.

  None of them wore them outside of formal ceremonies. They were the consummate professionals they do the job, Walk away. That’s it.

  Cadenza added “No soldier should be honored for doing what’s expected.”

  No arrogance. No false humility. Just doctrine. She cracked her knuckles inside the armored gauntlets as the van bounced along the uneven road.

  “War and back home are the same,” she said.

  Sonata glanced at her. Cadenza continued.

  “No gender protects you in war. No excuses. No special treatment.”

  Little Bird operated on full legal equality. Men and women carried the same expectations. The same penalties. The same standards.

  “You don’t get more mercy because of what you are,” Cadenza said. “And you don’t get less either.”

  “Back home’s the same. Laws don’t care what you are. Mock someone’s pain? Don’t cry when someone mocks yours.”

  It wasn’t cruelty.

  It was symmetry. After a moment she added, almost casually, “I was here six years ago.”

  They looked at her.

  “Soviet base on Squalabalm. Fireteam Saber and I destroyed it before the Americans got eyes on it.”

  The airfield had been strategically placed—prime staging ground for what would have been the Third Battle of the Atlantic.

  If it had remained operational, it would’ve meant anti-ship missile sorties. Anti-submarine jets. A modern replay of the World Wars’ Atlantic campaigns—except this time with guided munitions and faster kill chains.

  History class had drilled that into them. German U-boats in WWI and WWII. Convoys hunted. Merchant fleets burned. The Soviets had tried to replicate the pressure point with modern doctrine.

  But Fireteam Saber had erased the runway before the USAF, RAF, RCAF, or even the Spanish Air Force could begin planning strike packages. Cadenza didn’t elaborate. She didn’t need to.

  —

  An hour later, they rolled back into the safehouse perimeter. Mitchell stepped out of the barn before the engine even fully died. He counted heads.

  Sonata, Mackenzie, Jack, Sam, and Cadenza. No Julia.

  “Not there,” Sonata confirmed.

  Cadenza stepped down from the van and began disengaging her armor.

  The Project Thunderbolt suit opened in segmented layers with mechanical precision. Hydraulic locks released. Titanium-steel plating retracted.

  She stepped free and immediately drew her combat knife.

  “Everyone out of the barn,” she said.

  No explanation. No raised voice they didn’t argue they exited and moved toward the rundown farmhouse. Sonata paused at the threshold and looked back at Mitchell.

  “What is she going to do?”

  Mitchell didn’t look at the barn. He didn’t look at his sister. He just answered.

  “Whatever she’s going to do… it’s better you don’t think about it.”

  He met Sonata’s eyes.

  “So you can sleep easier tonight.”

  Inside the barn, the door closed. And the storm went quiet.

  Sonata stood inside the farmhouse doorway, staring at the barn for a moment longer than she should have.

  It was better not to think about what Cadenza would do.

  Cadenza already made things that sounded “cruel and unusual” seem almost merciful compared to what they actually were. And Sonata knew her well enough to understand this wasn’t rage-driven theatrics.

  If Cadenza said she would do something she would. Sonata forced herself to look away. There were some storms you didn’t watch form.

  Instead, her mind drifted somewhere quieter.

  Home.

  Strangely, she found herself thinking about something as mundane as jobs.

  Mitchell and Sonata’s twins—little Mitchell and Sonata Jr.—would probably have an easier time finding work someday than most kids in other countries.

  Little Bird didn’t have online job portals. No endless digital application forms disappearing into algorithmic voids. No résumé filters scanning for buzzwords.

  If you wanted a job, you walked into a building with a “Now Hiring” or “Help Wanted” sign and asked for an application. Or you checked the classifieds in the newspaper. Or you looked at a physical job board in town. And every application—every single one—was reviewed by a human being. An actual person. Someone who read your name. Maybe looked at your résumé. Maybe picked up the phone.

  Dial-up internet existed, sure—but it ran through phone cables and was unreliable at best. Most businesses didn’t depend on it. You didn’t need to log into a portal or upload a PDF just to stock shelves or answer phones.

  And job postings were honest. They listed the pay—per week. They listed the shift. They listed the hours. They listed exactly how to apply:

  “To apply, call:” followed by a number.

  That was it.

  Mitchell’s cousin, for example, worked night security at a children’s pizzeria. She made $120 a week just watching security cameras, checking doors, making sure no one was inside after closing. She got the job by calling a number in the classifieds. No ten-year experience requirement to answer phones. No master’s degree to sit behind a front desk.

  Sonata couldn’t help but compare it to stories she’d heard from abroad—entry-level jobs demanding absurd qualifications. Six months out scheduling dental appointments. Receptionists asking if you were available “six months, eight weeks, forty-two minutes from today.”

  Back home, at least if you had a dentist appointment, they’d call you seventy-two hours ahead. And mail you a reminder.

  Military service helped too.

  So many job listings included the line:

  “Qualifications: Military preferred but not necessary.”

  Little Bird’s workforce was saturated with veterans. Mechanics learned their trade in motor pools. Police officers often came from military backgrounds. Electricians, heavy equipment operators, logistics coordinators—training carried over.

  The country wasn’t obsessed with degrees. It valued competence.

  In that sense, it resembled older civilizations—Sparta, Rome, Imperial Japan, even wartime America—societies where military experience translated into social credibility.

  Sonata could see her son working in public transportation someday.

  Or maybe her daughter.

  Little Bird’s cities weren’t built around cars. They were dense, walkable, influenced by European and Soviet urban design. Millions relied on buses, L-trains, subways.

  Many people didn’t even need cars.

  Some walked to work because their house was literally down the street. City districts were self-contained ecosystems—healthcare, schools, shops, cafeterias, playgrounds, clubs, maintenance offices, specialized services—all within reach.

  Towns were different. Dilimore and Clearlake.

  Suburban spreads of single-family homes, a few apartments, grocery stores, a secondary school, a couple of clubs.And usually one gun club. Hunting wasn’t a hobby there—it was tradition. Deer season filled freezers. Sonata grew up around that culture. So did Mitchell. So did Jack, Sam, Mackenzie. She found a strange comfort in thinking about it.

  Outside, somewhere in the barn, Cadenza was finishing what she believed needed to be finished. Inside, Sonata let her mind stay with something quieter: Her children growing up in a place where applications were read by humans. Where jobs were posted in ink. Where you shook someone’s hand to get hired.

  Where equality wasn’t a slogan—it was expectation. War felt distant in that image. But she knew better. Because as Cadenza had said. War and back home weren’t as different as people liked to pretend. Both demanded resilience. Both demanded discipline. And neither handed out mercy just because you asked for it.

  The farmhouse felt smaller the longer they waited.

  Sonata leaned against the cracked plaster wall and, for no real reason, asked, “Any of you ever go through a hurricane?”

  She paused.

  “—I mean cyclone.”

  She caught herself mid-word.

  In the southern half of Little Bird, they called them cyclones. In the northern half, hurricanes. Technically, neither term was interchangeable depending on the ocean basin—Atlantic hurricanes, Pacific typhoons, Indian Ocean cyclones—but back home most people didn’t care about meteorological precision.

  To most citizens it boiled down to one thing:

  Strong winds. A ton of rain.

  An hour passed.

  Then the barn door opened. Cadenza stepped into the farmhouse. No armor this time. Just her undersuit, boots, knife still sheathed at her hip.

  “The Royal Guard officer,” she said evenly, “is going to become stew for animals.”

  The sentence landed like ice water down Sonata’s spine.

  In eleven years of service, Sonata had seen death in almost every form imaginable—gunshots, explosions, blades, garrote wire slipping silently around a sentry’s throat.

  But boiling someone alive? That wasn’t a battlefield death that was something else.

  Sonata swallowed. “Some countries use boiling tanks in factory farms,” she said carefully. “For livestock.”

  Cadenza’s eyes snapped toward her. The glare wasn’t loud. It was worse than loud. Then she turned and walked out again without another word.

  Sonata stared after her. “Where is she going?”

  Mitchell rubbed his jaw.

  “You don’t want to ask that.”

  “That doesn’t answer—”

  “She saw a guy kick a dog once,” Mitchell said flatly. “Guy’s still in a coma ten years later.”

  The room went quiet.

  “Another time,” he continued, “some idiot chained a dog too tight. She hopped the fence, kicked him so hard he folded. Then wrapped that same chain around his neck just tight enough to make swallowing hurt.”

  Mitchell’s tone never changed.

  “She told him, ‘Let’s see how you like it.’ Then she kicked him in the face and took the dog.”

  Sonata blinked. “She what?”

  Mitchell shrugged faintly. “She loves a fight. Can kill or maim someone and sleep fine.”

  He paused.

  “But when it comes to animals? She turns into—”

  “Into what?”

  “Fern,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “Charlotte’s Web. Girl saves the pig from being slaughtered.” He hesitated. “I didn’t read it. Saw the ’73 movie in seventh grade. Teacher was out. Substitute had no lesson plan.”

  Sonata stared at him.

  “She’ll go terminator mode on anyone who hurts an animal,” Mitchell added. “She once broke every bone in a guy’s body for kicking a puppy.”

  Jack shifted uncomfortably.

  Mitchell didn’t exaggerate. He never did.

  “He cried,” Mitchell said. “She kept going.”

  Sam finally spoke. “She’s terrifying.”

  They looked at him.

  “Once broke her fingers,” Sam continued. “Bent wrong. Misaligned. She grabbed each one and popped them back straight.”

  He mimed it with his own hand.

  “Then grabbed a soda, smacked the bottle cap off on a car hood like nothing happened.”

  Sonata exhaled slowly. Cadenza wasn’t just strong she was built differently. Violence didn’t unnerve her. Pain didn’t register the same way. And yet harm an animal and she became something elemental.

  Mitchell leaned back against the kitchen counter, arms crossed.

  “You think that’s bad?” Mitchell said. “You should’ve seen what happened when Francis’s extended adoptive family tried to move into her farmhouse.”

  Sonata blinked. “They what?”

  “They showed up with boxes,” Mitchell said. “Like they were staying.”

  Jack winced. “That’s bold.”

  “It lasted about fifteen minutes,” Mitchell replied.

  Cadenza had walked out onto her porch, taken one look at the pile of suitcases, furniture, and plastic bins and started throwing them back into the yard.

  Not tossing. Throwing. A dresser hit the dirt hard enough to split.

  When Francis’s cousin’s wife began wailing talking about her children, her unborn baby, how they had nowhere to go Cadenza hadn’t softened.

  She’d said, flatly, “Then get out of bed, close your legs, and get a job.”

  It wasn’t elegant. It wasn’t kind. It was Cadenza. When the woman tried the next angle—“Family helps family”—Cadenza had stared at her like she was something under her boot.

  “You are not my family,” she’d said. “You’re parasites.”

  The pregnant woman tried to hold her ground. Tried to stare her down. But Cadenza didn’t blink. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t raise her voice. And something in that silence made the woman double-take—the kind of double-take that said:

  If I push this… my husband might become a widower. My kids might lose their mother.

  Mitchell exhaled through his nose.

  “If they’d kept pressing,” he said quietly, “she would’ve made that guy a widower.”

  The room went still.

  Sonata looked between them. “Would she really?”

  Mackenzie Rose didn’t hesitate.

  “In the few years I’ve known her?” Mackenzie said slowly. “She makes the Terminator look like an insurance salesman.”

  Mackenzie continued, her voice steady but distant.

  “I once witnessed an execution. Electric chair. Botched.”

  No one interrupted.

  “The guy screamed. The current didn’t kill him fast. It cooked him. He kept yelling until his vocal cords fried. His face caught fire before he finally went still.”

  The farmhouse felt colder.

  “And Cadenza?” Sonata asked.

  Mackenzie gave a humorless smile.

  “She was unfazed.”

  Silence.

  “What did she say?” Jack asked.

  Mackenzie looked at the floor.

  “She said, ‘Wish they gave out popcorn to watch someone be executed.’”

  No bravado, no shock value just an observation. Sonata swallowed.

  There was something deeply unsettling about a person who could watch that and remain untouched. But what unsettled her more was that Cadenza’s lack of reaction wasn’t cruelty for cruelty’s sake.

  It was… detachment. Pain didn’t disturb her. Suffering didn’t move her. Unless it involved an animal or someone under her protection. Mitchell rubbed the back of his neck.

  “She doesn’t enjoy suffering,” he said. “She just doesn’t fear it.”

  That was the difference. Cadenza didn’t flinch at violence. She didn’t romanticize it. She didn’t moralize it. She treated it like weather. It happens. You endure it. Or you cause it.

  Outside, the barn door creaked faintly in the wind. And Sonata realized something uncomfortable. Cadenza wasn’t a monster. She was a weapon.

  And weapons don’t feel conflicted about being used they just function.

  Jack had been quiet for a while, leaning back in the chair like he was replaying a dozen memories at once.

  “You know what she reminds me of?” he finally said. “The kind of person who’d install a drum mag on a shotgun.”

  Sam admitted “That tracks.”

  It did.

  Most people, when they see a shotgun, think in simple numbers. Four shells if it’s a civilian model. Maybe eight to ten if it’s military-issue. That mental math gives people comfort. It creates limits.

  Cadenza doesn’t believe in limits. If she runs a shotgun, she modifies it. Box mag. Drum mag. Extended tube. Twelve to fourteen shells instead of what the enemy expects. And she doesn’t waste them.

  Mitchell nodded slightly. “She counts shots.”

  He didn’t say it with admiration. Just fact.

  “If it’s an eight-shell tube,” he continued, “she’ll fire seven. Reload immediately. Always leave one in the chamber. If someone catches her off guard? There’s still a shell ready.”

  “And if it runs dry?” Sonata asked.

  “She chamber-loads,” Mitchell said. “Fast.”

  Jack added, “And she doesn’t run standard buck.”

  Of course she doesn’t. Magnum buckshot. Heavier payload. Harder hit. Less forgiving.

  Mitchell rubbed his jaw. “She’s also used Dragon’s Breath.”

  Sonata blinked. “For illumination?”

  Mitchell gave her a look.

  “No.”

  Not for flares. Not for signaling. Not for destroying equipment. Anti-personnel.

  He’d seen it once—Cadenza running a pump-action. She’d slam-fired through the tube, then deliberately racked it hard, ejecting every remaining shell onto the ground. Opened the action. Dropped a Dragon’s Breath round straight into the chamber. Flipped the shotgun upside down to feed more incendiary rounds into the tube.

  When the last of the fire-spitting shells burned out, She switched back to magnum buck. Layered escalation. Unsettling.

  Sonata exhaled slowly. “What do you think she’s doing right now?”

  Mitchell didn’t hesitate.

  “Looking for a factory farm.”

  “She hates them,” Sam muttered.

  Mitchell nodded once. “If she finds one abusing livestock?” He shrugged slightly. “She’ll give them the same treatment they give the animals.”

  That wasn’t exaggeration.

  Cadenza’s moral code wasn’t complex. It wasn’t philosophical. It was binary and brutally consistent. You hurt those under your power?

  You deserve the same helplessness. Sonata folded her arms, unease curling in her stomach.

  It was strange. Cadenza could threaten to boil a man alive then actually do it without blinking.

  But let someone kick a dog? That’s when the real violence started. Mitchell stared toward the dark barn outside.

  “She doesn’t like cruelty,” he said quietly. “She just has a different definition of justice.”

  And that, somehow, was worse. Because when Cadenza decided something was unjust she didn’t argue.

  Mitchell crossed the farmhouse in three long strides and dropped into the chair beside the battered field radio. The set hummed faintly, warm from earlier transmissions. He adjusted the frequency with practiced fingers, thumbed the transmit switch, and gave his callsign.

  There was a burst of static.

  Then he hailed his mother-in-law by hers.

  “Raid on San Marcos is negative,” he said evenly. “Julia is a negative. We’re out of leads.”

  The words felt heavier than they sounded.

  A few seconds passed before a familiar voice cut through the static.

  Star.

  “Copy that,” she replied. “Stand by. We just intercepted movement intel. A facility in the far north received a new batch of POWs minutes ago.”

  Mitchell straightened slightly.

  “Not standard prisoners,” Star continued. “Priority detainees. Interrogate-first, execute-after.”

  Sonata moved to his side instantly.

  “Location?” she asked, leaning toward the mic.

  Star didn’t hesitate. “Far north. Northernmost peninsula. Single access point. One bridge.”

  Sonata’s jaw tightened.

  “Satellite recon?” she pressed.

  “Minimal blind spots,” Star answered. “Bridge is fortified. Coastal side is worse. Basic fortifications lining the beaches—anti-landing obstacles, reinforced firing positions. Enough to shred rowboats, inflatable craft, anything not made of serious steel.”

  Jack muttered under his breath.

  Star continued, voice clinical. “Coastal artillery batteries capable of engaging landing craft and screening ships. Likely calibrated for shallow-water denial. Each fortified structure has rooftop AA coverage.”

  Sam let out a painful exhale.

  “So no soft belly,” he murmured.

  “Correct,” Star said. “They’re not half-measuring.”

  And that was the difference. In fiction, villains make mistakes. They guard the bridge but forget the coastline. Or they defend the shore and leave the road open. Not here. Not the Royal Guard.

  “They’re not the dumbasses in every war movie who guard everything except the obvious route.” Mitchell said

  “No,” Star replied dryly. “They learned.”

  The farmhouse fell quiet as the implications settled in. A peninsula.

  Single bridge. Layered coastal guns. Rooftop AA. Interrogate-first prisoners. If Julia had been moved. That’s where she’d be. Sonata folded her arms, staring at the radio like it could give her something easier.

  “So,” she said quietly, “they built a kill box.”

  Mitchell nodded once.

  “And we’re talking about walking into it.”

  Static crackled again before Star spoke.

  “There’s more,” she said. “Satellite recon shows a partially bombed-out town just south of the facility.”

  Sonata’s eyes narrowed. “Define ‘bombed-out.’”

  “Artillery damage. Structural collapse in multiple blocks. Some roofs intact. Some gone. Debris in the streets. Limited civilian presence—if any.”

  A dead town.

  Perfect for staging.

  “Facility layout?” Sonata asked.

  Star didn’t sugarcoat it.

  “Before the civil war? It was a fish packing plant. Tuna processing.”

  Silence filled the farmhouse kitchen. No one needed Sonata to say what she was thinking.

  A fish plant had industrial freezers. Steel tables. Drainage systems. Industrial blades. Conveyor lines. Canning machinery.

  Interrogate. Kill. Dispose. Efficient.

  Sonata felt something cold settle behind her ribs. Star continued. “Waterway between the plant and the town is patrolled. Two patrol boats cycling the river bend. They run a loop from the plant dock to the town’s waterfront and back.”

  “So no quiet swim,” Jack muttered.

  “Negative,” Star replied.

  “There’s a sniper,” she added. “Tower on the northwestern edge of town. Elevated position. Overlooks the entire grid.”

  Sam straightened slightly despite the pain tugging at his ribs.

  “What kind of sniper?” he asked.

  “Stand by,” Star said.

  Twenty seconds of static felt like two minutes. When she came back, her voice was tighter.

  “Elite designation. One hundred twenty confirmed kills during the Third World War. Warsaw Pact side. Operational from Eastern Poland to the final engagements in the Ural Mountains.”

  The room went very still.

  “He survived that?” Mackenzie whispered.

  “That’s the record,” Star said. “How he avoided capture or death is unclear.”

  Which meant one thing. He was very good. Sam winced again—not from fear, but from the sharp reminder of his earlier landing. Concrete had not been forgiving.

  “One-twenty confirmed,” he murmured. “So probably more.”

  “Likely,” Star agreed.

  “Thermals?” Mitchell asked.

  “Tower has been modified,” Star said. “Thermal signature irregular. Possible shielding. Booby traps confirmed around the base. Likely pressure triggers and tripwire systems.”

  Sonata exhaled.

  “So we have: single bridge access, layered coastal guns, AA on rooftops, patrol boats on the river, bombed-out kill lanes in town, and an elite sniper with a century’s worth of experience watching it all.”

  “Correct,” Star said.

  “And,” she added, “if you intend to infiltrate, the cleanest option appears to be hitching onto convoy trucks running between the town and the plant.”

  “Which means,” Jack said quietly, “we have to deal with him first.”

  Sam rolled his shoulder, testing it. Pain flared, but he ignored it.

  “Tower sniper with that kind of record,” he said softly, “he’s not just good at pulling a trigger. He’s patient. He knows patterns. He watches for anomalies.”

  Mitchell looked toward Sonata.

  “Convoy’s viable,” he said. “But not if he’s alive.”

  Sonata nodded once. The peninsula wasn’t a fortress because of walls. It was a fortress because of layers.

  And at the very top of that layered defense. Sat a man who had survived Poland to the Urals. Watching. Waiting. And if Julia was inside that fish plant they were going to have to walk straight through his line of sight.

  The radio clicked dead, leaving only the faint electrical hum in the kitchen.

  For a few seconds, nobody spoke.

  Mitchell staring at nothing in particular.

  “You know,” he said finally, “I’ve met all kinds of officers.”

  Sonata glanced at him.

  “The kind who use their rank to get their kid stationed somewhere comfortable,” he continued. “Some base with a beach and a PX that stocks imported chocolate.”

  Jack snorted faintly.

  “Or the ones who marry into money and quietly hope their in-laws don’t live too long,” Mitchell added. “The kind who talk about ‘family values’ while calculating inheritance.”

  Mackenzie raised an eyebrow. “That’s specific.”

  “I pay attention,” Mitchell replied evenly.

  He continued, tone almost conversational.

  “There are the officers who hate the sea. Spend their whole career seasick and counting down the days until they can retire to some mountain village where the only water is in a creek.”

  Sam shifted carefully against the wall, ribs protesting.

  “And the ones who think they’re brilliant card players,” Mitchell went on. “But scratch their nose every time they’ve got a good hand.”

  A faint smile tugged at Jack’s mouth. Mitchell’s expression didn’t change.

  “I once met a naval officer with thalassophobia.”

  Sonata blinked. “Fear of the ocean?”

  “Yep.”

  “And he was Navy?”

  “Draft,” Mitchell said simply. “Draft board doesn’t ask what keeps you up at night.”

  He shrugged slightly.

  “That’s the thing about institutions. They don’t know you. They don’t know your phobias. Your weak spots. Your blind corners.”

  Sam gave a quiet exhale. “So they assign you anyway.”

  “They assign you anyway,” Mitchell confirmed.

  The farmhouse creaked in the wind.

  “And that sniper?” Jack asked.

  Mitchell’s eyes sharpened slightly.

  “He survived Poland to the Urals,” he said. “One hundred twenty confirmed kills. That’s not luck. That’s discipline.”

  He paused.

  “But he’s still human.”

  Sonata studied him. “Meaning?”

  “Meaning he’s got something,” Mitchell said. “A habit. A tell. A preference. Maybe he favors one shoulder. Maybe he adjusts his scope twice before every shot. Maybe he smokes between rotations.”

  He looked toward the dark window.

  “No one survives that long without building rituals. And rituals are patterns.”

  Sam nodded slowly.

  “And patterns,” he said quietly, “can be broken.”

  The message hung in the air. No matter how hardened someone is.

  No matter how many kills. No matter how legendary their record. They’re still flesh. And flesh can be outthought. The question wasn’t whether the sniper was dangerous. It was whether they could be more dangerous. Before he ever saw them coming.