Vanessa gasped and dropped her phone. It bounced off her knee to the carpet. Her jaw fell open.

Daniel’s eyes darted from my rank insignia to my face, his mind rejecting the reality in front of him.

“Colonel Evelyn Shaw. Department of Defense Procurement Oversight, and Chief Architect of Advanced Cybernetics,” I said, in a voice he had never once heard from me — the voice I used to command battalions.

I walked to the end of the table, peeling off my white gloves, and laid my hands flat on the wood, leaning into his shrinking eyes.

“Daniel Thorne. As of 0800 this morning, your company’s security clearance is permanently revoked. The contract on that table is null and void.”

I let the silence hang. “And you are under federal arrest — for wire fraud, forgery, the embezzlement of military funds from a deployed officer, and corporate espionage.”