People find government paperwork so boring that they stop asking almost immediately.

My family filled in the rest with their own assumptions.

Priscilla believed I had briefly played soldier in my early twenties before settling into a desk job.

My father thought of me as a low-level civil servant who took the occasional routine business trip.

None of them knew that I was still an active major with top-secret clearance.

None of them knew that Tristan’s final mission had triggered security reviews that were, even then, underway.

And absolutely none of them knew that late the previous night, an encrypted emergency message had reached a secure terminal in my study, instructing me to remain inside my residence and wait for military transport at first light.