Part 2: An arrogant sergeant grabbed my hair and ordered his crew to handcuff me like a common criminal upon arriving at my new airbase, completely unaware that I was a high-ranking colonel on a classified command assignment.

The base was finally asleep.

It was 2330 hours on a Tuesday. The operational logs were clean, the supply depots were sealed with triple-tier electronic locks, and for the first time since my arrival, the silence on Blackridge felt earned.

I sat alone at my desk, finishing the final administrative reports for Headquarters Air Combat Command. The room was dark except for the green banker's lamp casting a warm circle of light across my blotter.

Suddenly, the red landline—the direct, encrypted terminal connected to the Joint Chiefs of Staff—sounded a single, high-pitched chime.

I picked up the receiver immediately.

"Colonel Carter."

A voice I had known for fifteen years answered. It was General Raymond Vance—Marcus Vance's estranged uncle, but more importantly, the Deputy Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

"Evelyn," Raymond Vance spoke, his voice clipped, strained, and stripped of all administrative formality. "You need to listen to me very carefully. You don't have much time."

I sat up straight, my hand tightening on the receiver. "General? What is this?"

"Marcus was an idiot. A common crook," the General said rapidly. "He didn't understand what he was really moving. The avionics he stole from Blackridge weren't just sold to Eastern European brokers. The final crate... the one that left your hangar three nights before you arrived... contained an experimental quantum encryption core developed by DARPA. It was never meant to leave that vault."

The temperature in my office seemed to drop twenty degrees. "Who has it, Raymond?"

"A splinter mercenary faction known as the Iron Vane," he whispered. "And Evelyn... Henderson didn't fly into Blackridge to buy Vance out. He flew in because the Iron Vane told him if the core was intercepted, they would burn the base to the ground to erase the evidence."

Before I could reply, the main power grid across Blackridge Airbase instantly died.

The green lamp cut out.

The hum of the ventilation system choked and stopped.

Outside my window, the endless field of blue runway lights vanished into pitch-black void. The entire installation was plunged into total darkness.

Then, from the north perimeter fence where Hangar Nine stood in the dark, the distant, unmistakable crack of suppressed automatic gunfire echoed through the night air.