PART 1: The Invitation
The notification didn’t sound like a bomb going off. It was just a soft ping from the tablet resting on my knee, barely audible over the low, rhythmic hum of the hangar’s ventilation system. I was sitting on the skid of my Apache, the metal cool and familiar against my flight suit, reviewing the post-flight logs from a training sortie that had left my muscles aching in that good, heavy way that comes from survival.
I picked up the tablet, wiping a smudge of grease from the screen with my thumb.
Subject: You’re Invited! Glenidge Academy Class of 2015 – 10 Year Reunion.
My thumb hovered over the screen. Glenidge Academy. The name alone was enough to trigger a phantom scent—floor wax, stale cafeteria pizza, and the metallic tang of fear. It had been ten years, but the body remembers what the mind tries to bury. My heart didn’t race; my training had drilled that reaction out of me years ago. But I felt a coldness settle in the pit of my stomach, a familiar, hollow weight I hadn’t carried since the day I walked out of those double doors for the last time.
I opened the email. It was a standard digital invitation—gold font on a black background, trying too hard to scream “elegance” and “we’ve made it.”
Cascadia Grand Estate. Black Tie. Saturday, 7:00 PM.
But it wasn’t the invitation that froze me. It was the thread attached below it. Someone—probably an assistant who didn’t know how to scrub the Forward history, or maybe just fate playing a hand—had included the entire conversation leading up to this moment.
I shouldn’t have read it. I was a Lieutenant Commander in the United States Navy. I had flown sorties into airspace so hostile the birds didn’t even fly there. I had a Navy Cross sitting in a velvet box in my locker. I was untouchable.
But I read it anyway.
From: Bridger Castellan
To: Sloan Devoe, Paxton Ree, Lennox Foust
Subject: The Guest List – Final Touches
“Wait, wait. What about Elowan? You know, the ghost? The one with the glasses who looked like she was drowning in her own sweaters?”
I could hear his voice. Bridger. The golden boy with the shark smile. The one who had crumpled my chemistry test—the one I scored a 98 on—and thrown it at the back of my head while the class laughed.
From: Sloan Devoe
“Oh my god. Elowan Ashby? I completely forgot she existed. That would be… tragic. And hilarious. Do it.”
Sloan. The curator of perfect moments. I remembered her standing by my locker, the smell of her expensive vanilla perfume suffocating me as she watched someone spray-paint the word GHOST across the metal door. She hadn’t held the can, but she had held the audience.
From: Lennox Foust
“This is perfect. We send her an invite. She shows up thinking people actually want to see her, thinking maybe she matters now. And we get to remind everyone—and her—just how far the rest of us have come. The contrast alone? Chef’s kiss.”
From: Paxton Ree
“She’ll show up in something from a thrift store. If she shows up at all. 20 bucks says she’s driving a Honda Civic.”
From: Sloan Devoe
“Oh, she will. People like Elowan always show up. They always hope things have changed.”
I lowered the tablet. The hangar was vast and dimly lit, shadows stretching long across the concrete floor. My crew—Chief Petty Officer Miller and the others—were packing up gear near the cages, their laughter echoing faintly. They knew me as Commander Ashby. To them, I was the one who kept the bird steady when the tracers were lighting up the night sky like fireworks. I was the one who didn’t flinch.
But reading those words, I wasn’t the Commander. I was seventeen again.
I was sitting in the corner of the cafeteria, my back pressed against the cold cinderblock wall because it was the only way to ensure no one could come up behind me. I had a book open on my lap—Flight Dynamics and Aeronautical Engineering—using it as a shield. The noise of the cafeteria was a roar of social hierarchy, a language I couldn’t speak. I was the static in their signal. The glitch. The Ghost.
I remembered Career Day. The gym smelling of sweat and desperation. The U.S. Navy booth tucked away in the corner, ignored by the future CEOs and real estate moguls of Glenidge Academy. I had stood there for twenty minutes, terrified to approach, until the recruiter—a petty officer with kind eyes—had handed me a brochure.
“You looking for a way out, kid?” he had asked.
“I’m looking for a way up,” I had whispered.
And across the gym, Bridger and his crew had seen me. They had pointed. One of them mimicked a salute, a jagged, mocking gesture that made his friends double over in laughter. They saw a girl who didn’t fit. A girl who was trying to be something she wasn’t.
I looked back at the email on my lap.
“People like Elowan always show up. They always hope things have changed.”
Sloan was right about one thing. I was going to show up. But she was wrong about the hope. I didn’t hope things had changed. I knew I had changed.
I stood up, the movement sharp and decisive. The Apache loomed above me, a beast of war dormant in the shadows. Its rotors were still, tied down, but I could feel the latent power in the machine. It was ugly to some people—insect-like, aggressive, utilitarian. To me, it was beautiful. It was honest. It didn’t pretend to be anything other than what it was: a predator.
“Chief!” I called out.
Miller looked up from a crate of ammunition, wiping his hands on a rag. “Ma’am?”
“What’s the status on Bird One for the weekend transport exercise?”
Miller frowned, checking his clipboard. “She’s green, Commander. We were just gonna run a standard coastline nav. Why?”
I looked down at the tablet again, at the names that had once held so much power over me. Bridger. Sloan. Paxton. Lennox. They were building a stage for my humiliation. They wanted a show?
“Change of flight plan,” I said, my voice steady, the voice of the officer who had pulled twelve Marines out of a kill box in Yemen while taking fire from three sides. “We’re taking a detour. I have a prior engagement.”
Miller tilted his head, a slow grin spreading across his face. He’d been with me in Yemen. He knew the look in my eyes. It wasn’t the look of a pilot going for a joyride. It was the look of a pilot locking onto a target.
“Roger that, Commander,” he said. “What’s the LZ?”
I zoomed in on the invitation. Cascadia Grand Estate.
“Downtown Seattle,” I said. “And Miller? Make sure she’s polished. I want her shining.”
Saturday arrived with a sky that looked like bruised iron.
The Cascadia Grand Estate was a fortress of wealth, perched on the edge of the city like a crown jewel. I knew the type of place. I’d flown over plenty of them—mansions built on old money and new debt, places where the problems of the world were kept at bay by high gates and security systems.
I wasn’t in a limousine. I wasn’t in a Honda Civic.
I was at 2,000 feet, banking hard over the Puget Sound.
The AH-64 Apache is not a subtle machine. It is not designed for comfort. It vibrates with a violence that rattles your teeth. The smell inside the cockpit is a mix of jet fuel, sweat, and ozone. It is loud—a deafening, mechanical roar that screams existence.
“Commander, we are ten mikes out,” Miller’s voice crackled in my headset. “Target is the main lawn. South side.”
“Copy,” I replied. My hands rested lightly on the cyclic and collective, the controls feeling like extensions of my own nervous system.
I looked down at the city sprawled beneath us. From up here, everything looked small. The skyscrapers were just toys. The cars were ants. The people were invisible. It gave you perspective. It made you realize how insignificant the things that happen on the ground really are.
But some things don’t stay on the ground. Some things follow you up.
I thought about the dress I would have worn if I were the person they thought I was. Probably something ill-fitting, bought off a rack at a discount store, trying desperately to blend in. I thought about the awkward conversation, the way I would have stood in the corner, clutching a drink I didn’t want, waiting for someone to acknowledge me.
I looked down at my flight suit. Olive drab. Flame resistant. Covered in pockets and zippers. The patch on my right shoulder read HSC-85. The trident on my chest was subdued black metal.
I wasn’t wearing a costume tonight. I was wearing my skin.
“Descending to five hundred,” I said. “Let’s make some noise.”
Below us, the estate came into view. It was lit up like a Christmas tree, golden light spilling from the floor-to-ceiling windows. I could see the tiny figures of people spilling out onto the terraces. I could imagine the scene inside.
Bridger would be holding court at the bar, wearing a suit that cost more than my first car. Sloan would be taking selfies, angling her face to catch the best light, filtering out the reality of her soul. Paxton would be analyzing the room, calculating social capital. Lennox would be checking his watch, waiting for the punchline.
The punchline. That was me.
I checked my airspeed. 120 knots. We were coming in hot.
“Miller, light ’em up,” I ordered.
The landing lights of the Apache blazed to life—twin beams of blinding white cutting through the twilight.
I could see the guests now. They were reacting. The sound of the approach would be hitting them about now. That distinctive thump-thump-thump of the rotors. It’s a sound that brings hope to Marines pinned down in a valley, and terror to anyone standing on the wrong side of history.
To the Class of 2015, it must have sounded like the apocalypse.
I watched them on the infrared display. Heat signatures scattering. Drinks dropped. Heads turned skyward. The orderly, manicured elegance of their evening was fracturing.
“LZ in sight,” Miller said. “Lawn is clear. Taking her down.”
“Steady,” I murmured. “Let’s give them a good look.”
I flared the aircraft, pulling the nose up. The airspeed bled off, transformed into lift and noise. The downwash hit the estate with the force of a hurricane. I saw the manicured hedges whip violently. I saw tablecloths ripped from outdoor tables, wine glasses shattering. A cloud of dust and debris rose up, swallowing the pristine red carpet.
It was chaotic. It was messy. It was glorious.
I lowered the collective, settling the beast onto the soft earth of the Grand Estate’s lawn. The wheels sank slightly into the turf—probably a twenty-thousand-dollar landscaping job ruined in seconds.
I cut the engines to idle. The roar dropped to a high-pitched whine, then a rhythmic whoosh-whoosh as the blades slowed.
For a moment, I didn’t move. I sat in the cockpit, the vibrations slowly dying away in my bones. I took a breath. This was it. The threshold.
Ten years ago, I had walked away from these people with my head down, staring at the pavement, wishing I could dissolve into the air. Tonight, I had brought the air with me.
“Ready, Commander?” Miller asked, his voice soft.
I unclipped my mask, letting it hang to one side. I reached up and pulled off my helmet. The cool air of the cockpit hit my sweat-dampened hair. I checked my reflection in the dark glass of the instrument panel.
No glasses. No fear. Just eyes that had seen things Bridger and his friends couldn’t even dream of in their worst nightmares.
“I’m ready,” I said.
I popped the canopy. The seal hissed, and the sounds of the world outside rushed in—the distant sirens, the rustle of wind, and the stunned silence of two hundred people holding their breath.
I climbed out, my boots hitting the skid, then the grass. Solid. Real.
The dust was still settling, drifting like fog in the harsh glare of the landing lights. Through the haze, I saw them. A sea of tuxedos and gowns, frozen in tableaux of shock. And at the front, clustered near the French doors like a blockade, were the four of them.
Bridger. Sloan. Paxton. Lennox.
They looked like statues. Bridger’s mouth was hanging open. Sloan was clutching her phone like a shield, but her hand was trembling.
I adjusted my flight suit, tugging the jacket straight. I tucked my helmet under my left arm. I didn’t smile. I didn’t wave. I just started walking.
Every step felt heavy, grounded. The crunch of my combat boots on their gravel path was the only sound in the world. The crowd parted. It wasn’t a polite stepping aside; it was a recoil. They moved back as if I were radioactive, or holy. Maybe both.
I locked eyes with Bridger. He was ten yards away. I could see the confusion warring with recognition in his eyes. He was trying to reconcile the memory of the girl he had bullied with the woman walking toward him out of a war machine. The math wasn’t adding up.
I stopped three feet in front of him. He smelled of expensive scotch and fear.
The silence stretched, tight as a bowstring.
“You sent me an invitation,” I said. My voice was calm, lower than it used to be, stripped of the desperate need to please.
Bridger blinked, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed dryly. “I… we…” He looked at the others for help, but they were paralyzed. “We thought…”
“I know what you thought,” I said, holding his gaze until he flinched. “I’m here.”
I didn’t wait for a response. I walked past him, my shoulder brushing his silk lapel with the rough Nomex of my suit. I walked straight into the ballroom, into the lion’s den, leaving the door open behind me.
The reunion had officially begun.
PART 2: The Silent Salute
The ballroom was a kaleidoscope of crystal and judgment.
Stepping inside felt like walking into an over-saturated photograph. The air was perfumed with expensive lilies and the stale, recycled breath of two hundred people who had spent the last hour gossiping about my absence. The jazz band had stopped playing mid-measure, the saxophonist lowering his instrument slowly, his eyes wide as he stared at me.
I walked to the center of the room. The space opened up around me, a natural vacuum created by shock.
At the far end, a massive projection screen dominated the wall. It was cycling through a slideshow—the “Class of 2015 Memory Lane.” I watched as a photo of the prom queen flashed up, followed by the football team holding a trophy. Cheers, nostalgia, warmth.
And then, the slide changed.
The room seemed to drop ten degrees.
There I was. Seventeen years old. The photo was a school portrait, the kind with the mottled grey background that makes everyone look washed out. But I looked worse than washed out; I looked erased. My hair was pulled back so tight it looked painful. My glasses were too big for my face. I was staring at the camera with the wide, startled look of prey sensing a predator.
Beneath the photo, in a font that was supposed to be whimsical but looked cruel, someone had captioned it: Most Likely to Disappear.
A few hours ago, this image had probably elicited roars of laughter. Sloan would have made a toast. Bridger would have pointed. But now? Now the photo loomed over the room like an accusation.
I looked at the screen, then I looked at the crowd.
“I remember that sweater,” I said. My voice wasn’t loud, but in the tomb-like silence of the ballroom, it carried to the back corners. “It was two sizes too big because I was trying to hide.”
I turned slowly, scanning the faces. I saw people I had sat next to in Biology. People I had passed in the hallway every day for four years without ever exchanging a word. They were looking at me now. They were looking at the flight suit, the patches, the mud on my boots that was staining their polished marble floor.
They weren’t looking at Elowan the Ghost anymore. They were looking at a glitch in their reality.
Sloan was standing near the dance floor, her phone raised. She was still recording, her thumb frozen over the screen. I met her eyes through the lens of her camera. She lowered the phone slowly, her hand shaking so hard the device slipped and clattered onto the floor. She didn’t pick it up.
“You invited me,” I said, turning my gaze to the quartet who had followed me inside like stunned children. “You placed bets. Paxton, I believe you had twenty on a Honda Civic?”
Paxton Ree, the lawyer who prided himself on never being caught off guard, looked like he was choking on air. His face was ashen. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. The charade of the “cool, detached observer” had crumbled. He was just a terrified boy in a suit.
“I didn’t… I mean, we just…” Paxton stammered, his hands coming up in a pathetic gesture of surrender.
“You thought it was a joke,” I finished for him. “You thought I would walk in here and you could relive the glory days of making someone feel small. You wanted to see if I was still the same victim you created in your heads.”
I took a step closer to them.
“I’m not.”
The tension in the room was brittle, ready to snap. The air was thick with it. And then, movement from the back of the room broke the spell.
A man stepped out of the shadows near the bar. He wasn’t wearing a tuxedo. He was in full Dress Whites, the uniform immaculate, the gold stripes on his sleeves catching the light. He was older, silver-haired, with a face carved from granite.
Captain Dorian Graves.
I felt a flicker of genuine surprise. Graves was a legend in the community—Naval Special Warfare command. I hadn’t seen him since the debriefing in Bahrain.
“Captain,” I said, snapping into a posture that was pure reflex—spine straight, chin up.
“Commander Ashby,” Graves said. His voice was a deep baritone that commanded instant obedience. He walked toward me, the crowd parting for him like the Red Sea. He stopped a few feet away, his eyes warm but his expression serious. “I was in the area for the Pacific Fleet conference. Heard a rumor one of my best pilots might be making a scene.”
He looked around the room, his gaze sweeping over the tuxedos and the ballgowns with a look of mild amusement. Then his face hardened as he looked at the projection screen, at the cruel photo of the girl I used to be.
He turned to the crowd. He didn’t need a microphone.
“For those of you who are confused,” Graves announced, his voice projecting to every corner of the room, “Lieutenant Commander Elowan Ashby is a Naval Aviator and a lead pilot for SEAL Team support operations.”
A gasp rippled through the room. It started in the front and rolled to the back. SEAL Team support. The words hung in the air, heavy and foreign in this room of soft hands and soft lives.
“Two years ago,” Graves continued, pacing slowly like a panther, “Commander Ashby was flying a night extraction in Yemen. Her bird took critical damage from ground fire. She lost her hydraulics. She lost her co-pilot to injury. Most pilots would have punched out. Most pilots would have saved themselves.”
He paused, letting the silence stretch.
“Commander Ashby stayed in the air for six hours. She flew that broken machine into a hot zone—twice—to pull out a twelve-man Marine recon unit that was pinned down and out of ammo. She took sustained fire the entire time.”
I stared straight ahead, keeping my face impassive. I could feel the heat of the memories—the smell of burning wire, the screaming of the warning alarms, the voice of the Marine radio operator begging for a pickup.
“Every single one of those Marines made it home to their families,” Graves said, his voice dropping to a reverent whisper. “Because of her.”
He turned back to me.
“She was awarded the Navy Cross for extraordinary heroism.”
The room wasn’t just silent now; it was dead. You could hear the hum of the air conditioning. You could hear the ice melting in abandoned drinks. The Navy Cross. It was the second-highest military decoration for valor. It was a medal usually awarded to the dead.
I saw Lennox Foust sink into a chair, his face buried in his hands. I saw Bridger staring at me with a look of absolute horror—not because he was scared of me, but because he was realizing how small he was. He had spent ten years building a portfolio; I had spent ten years building a legacy.
Captain Graves stepped back. He squared his shoulders. And then, slowly, deliberately, he raised his hand in a salute.
It wasn’t a casual gesture. It was crisp, perfect, a transfer of respect from a superior officer to a warrior.
I returned it. My hand cut the air, locking into place at the brim of my invisible cover. We held it for a heartbeat—a private language spoken in a public space.
As I lowered my hand, movement caught my periphery.
To my left, a man in a rumpled suit stepped forward. I recognized him vaguely—David, maybe? He had been a quiet kid in band. He stopped, stood at attention, and saluted. His form was sloppy, but the intent was clear.
To my right, a woman I didn’t recognize—someone’s wife, maybe—stepped out. She had a small pin on her dress. Gold Star Family. She didn’t salute. she just placed a hand over her heart and bowed her head.
Then another. An older man, probably a father of a graduate, wearing a VFW hat. He stood up from his table, his knees cracking, and snapped a salute that had been drilled into him fifty years ago.
One by one, the veterans and the people who understood sacrifice stepped out of the fog of superficiality. They formed a loose ring around me. They were acknowledging something that Bridger and Sloan and their kind would never understand.
The slideshow screen went black. Someone had finally had the decency to kill the power.
I looked at Sloan. She was crying. Not the pretty, single-tear crying she used for her apology videos. This was ugly, snot-nosed crying. She looked at her phone on the floor, then at me. She looked like she wanted to disappear.
“You wanted a show, Sloan,” I said softly, breaking the tableau. “Are you entertained?”
She flinched as if I’d slapped her.
I turned to the room at large. The adrenaline was fading, leaving behind a cold clarity.
“You invited the girl you remembered because you needed to feel superior,” I said. “You needed to believe that the hierarchy you built in high school still matters. That it’s still the law of the universe.”
I looked at the mud on my boots, then up at the chandeliers.
“But the world is so much bigger than this room. And out there? Your popularity contests don’t stop bullets. Your money doesn’t buy courage. And your opinions?” I paused, letting my gaze drift over Paxton, who was gripping a table like it was a life raft. “They don’t weigh a thing.”
I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Graves.
“Let’s get some air, Commander,” he said quietly. “The air in here is too thin.”
I nodded. I turned my back on them. On the prom queens and the quarterbacks and the bullies who had peaked at eighteen. I turned my back on the ghost of the girl I used to be.
I walked toward the glass doors that led to the balcony. The crowd parted again, but this time, they didn’t recoil. They leaned in. They watched with a hunger, a desperate need to be close to something real, something that wasn’t filtered or curated.
I pushed open the doors and stepped out into the night air. It was cool and smelled of rain and ozone. The silence of the garden was a relief after the suffocating pressure of the ballroom.
Behind me, the chaos began. The whispers started as a low hum and erupted into a roar of recrimination and shock. I heard Bridger’s name being spoken with disgust. I heard Sloan sobbing.
I walked to the railing and looked down. My Apache was sitting there on the ruined lawn, a dark shadow against the grass. My crew was leaning against the fuselage, smoking cigarettes, watching the party with the detached amusement of gods watching mortals.
I took a deep breath. My hands weren’t shaking. My heart was steady.
I had survived the reunion. But I wasn’t done yet.
PART 3: The Afterburn
The cool night air on the balcony felt like a baptism. Behind me, the glass doors were a barrier against the noise of the ballroom—the frantic whispers, the accusations, the sound of a world shattering. But out here, in the dark, it was just me, the wind, and the distant, rhythmic strobe of the city skyline.
Captain Graves stood beside me, leaning his forearms on the stone railing. He didn’t speak for a long time. He just let the silence do the work. That’s something you learn in the service: silence isn’t empty; it’s heavy.
“You know,” Graves said finally, his voice low, “I’ve seen a lot of extractions. But that…” He gestured vaguely toward the ballroom with his chin. “That was surgical.”
I let out a breath I felt like I’d been holding for ten years. “They didn’t see me, Captain. Even when I was standing right in front of them. They were still looking at a ghost.”
“People see what they’re conditioned to see, Elowan,” Graves said. He turned to face me. “But you didn’t do this for them, did you?”
I looked down at my hands. They were calloused, scarred from wrenching on engines and gripping collectives. They were the hands of someone who built things, fixed things, saved things. Not the soft, manicured hands of the people inside.
“No,” I said. “I did it for the girl in the sweater. The one they erased.”
The glass door behind us slid open. The sound of the party—now subdued, almost funeral-like—spilled out for a second before being cut off again.
It was Paxton Ree.
He looked wrecked. His tie was loosened, his collar unbuttoned. The charcoal suit that had looked like armor an hour ago now looked like a costume that didn’t fit. He held a glass of whiskey, but he wasn’t drinking it. He was clutching it like a talisman.
He stopped a few feet away, looking from Graves to me. The arrogance was gone. The lawyer’s mask had dissolved.
“Elowan,” he said. His voice cracked.
I turned slowly. I didn’t square up to him. I didn’t need to intimidate him. The dynamic had shifted so fundamentally that he was struggling just to stand in the same gravity as me.
“Paxton,” I said.
He swallowed hard. “I… I read the citation. Online. Just now.” He held up his phone, the screen glowing with a Wikipedia page. “The Yemen extraction. The Navy Cross.”
He looked up at me, his eyes wet. “We were joking about your shoes. About your… your life.” He let out a harsh, jagged laugh that sounded like glass breaking. “My god. We are so small.”
It was the first honest thing he had said all night.
“You built a world where you were the kings,” I said, my voice steady. “But it’s a very small kingdom, Paxton. And the walls are made of paper.”
He nodded, looking down at his drink. “I wanted to say… I don’t know what to say. ‘Sorry’ doesn’t cover it.”
“No,” I said. “It doesn’t.”
I looked at him—really looked at him. I saw the fear behind his eyes. The realization that he had spent his life climbing a ladder that was leaning against the wrong wall.
“But you can start by being better,” I said. “Not for me. I don’t need it. For the next person you decide doesn’t matter.”
Paxton stared at me for a long moment. Then he nodded, once, a jerky, painful movement. He turned and walked back into the ballroom, leaving his whiskey glass on the railing. A small surrender.
Graves watched him go. “You let him off easy.”
“I didn’t come here to destroy them, Captain,” I said, looking out at the dark shape of my helicopter on the lawn. “I came here to free myself. Destruction is just… collateral damage.”
I pushed off the railing. “It’s time to go.”
We walked back through the ballroom. The atmosphere had shifted from shock to a strange, hushed reverence. The crowd parted for us again, but this time, eyes met mine. There was no mockery. There was shame, yes, but also awe.
I saw Marin Kovar near the door. She had been a quiet girl in school, one of the ones who watched the bullying and looked away. She was crying openly now. As I passed, she whispered, “Thank you.”
I didn’t stop, but I nodded.
I walked out the front doors, down the steps, and onto the ruined lawn. The air smelled of crushed grass and jet fuel—the perfume of departure.
My crew was waiting. Miller tossed his cigarette and snapped to attention.
“Ready to bug out, Commander?”
“Spin it up, Chief,” I said.
I climbed into the cockpit. The seat felt like a throne. I strapped in, the familiar routine of buckles and switches grounding me. The helmet went on, the world narrowing to the green glow of the HUD and the crackle of the comms.
“Clear prop,” I said.
The engines whined to life. The rotors began to turn, slow at first, then blurring into a disc of invisible power. The vibration returned, shaking the world, shaking the estate, shaking the very foundations of the memory I was leaving behind.
I pulled the collective. The Apache leapt into the air, eager to be gone.
I hovered for a moment at fifty feet, turning the nose back toward the estate. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, I could see them. A tableau of people frozen in the amber of their own insignificance.
Sloan was standing at the window, her hand pressed to the glass. Bridger was slumped in a chair, alone.
I didn’t feel anger anymore. I didn’t feel sadness. I felt lighter. The weight I had carried for ten years—the shame of the outcast, the fear of the invisible girl—was gone. It had been blown away by the rotor wash, scattered into the night.
“Commander, course?” Miller asked.
I keyed the mic. “Home, Miller. Let’s go home.”
I pushed the cyclic forward. The Apache dipped its nose and accelerated, climbing into the dark sky. We banked over the city, leaving the Cascadia Grand Estate behind, leaving the Class of 2015 to their champagne and their regrets.
Below me, the city was a grid of lights. Above me, the stars were infinite.
I thought about the message I would leave them with. Not words. Words can be twisted. Actions are absolute.
I had shown up. I had stood my ground. And I had flown away.
As the city lights faded behind us, replaced by the deep velvet darkness of the Pacific, I realized something.
The invitation hadn’t been a trap. It had been a gift. They had invited the victim to mock her, but they had given the warrior a chance to bury the ghost.
And the ghost was finally resting in peace.
The only thing left was the sky. And it was all mine.
