Part 2
The ride to the Oakridge police precinct was a masterclass in psychological restraint. I sat in the cramped, sour-smelling back seat of the cruiser, my wrists throbbing against the unforgiving steel of the handcuffs. Up front, Officer Vance was whistling a tuneless melody, entirely too pleased with himself.
“You know,” Vance drawled, turning onto Main Street, “people come down here thinking they can flash some fake medals and play the victim. We don’t tolerate that disrespect.”
“Those medals were awarded by the President of the United States,” I said evenly, staring a hole into the back of his neck. “And the transponder currently broadcasting my coordinates to the Pentagon is also federal property.”
He laughed, a sharp, grating sound. “Right. And I’m the Commander in Chief.”
Vance pulled into the gated lot of the precinct, jerking the car to a halt. He dragged me out of the back, his grip unnecessarily brutal, and frog-marched me through the heavy glass doors. The station was a dismal, fluorescent-lit concrete box. A half-dozen officers looked up from their desks.
“Got a live one, Clint?” the desk sergeant asked, barely glancing at me.
“Resisting arrest, impersonating a military officer, and matching the description of our hit-and-run suspect,” Vance lied effortlessly. “Process her. Throw her in Cell 4.”
“I am Major General Sarah Sterling,” I announced, projecting my voice so it carried to every corner of the room. “I demand my one phone call. I demand you run my fingerprints through the federal database. If you process me into that cell, you are committing a federal crime under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.”
The room went dead silent for a fraction of a second. Then, a heavy-set man with a gold captain’s badge stepped out of a back office. Captain Miller. He looked me up and down, his eyes lingering on the three stars on my shoulders, then on the color of my skin.
“Vance, what the hell is this?” Miller muttered, though he didn’t sound particularly alarmed.
“She was causing a disturbance at the cemetery, Cap. Refused a lawful order,” Vance replied.
Miller sighed. “Strip her of the costume, take her prints, and put her in the back. We’ll figure it out.”
The blatant corruption was suffocating. Two officers grabbed my arms. I didn’t fight back physically—that’s exactly what they wanted, an excuse to use lethal force. But as they stripped me of my uniform jacket, leaving me in my white undershirt, they removed the transponder. It clattered to the floor, a sleek, black piece of DARPA technology that looked completely alien in this rundown station.
Vance picked it up, frowning. “What the hell is this? A burner phone?”
He pushed a button on the side.
Instantly, the device emitted a piercing, high-frequency screech, followed by a synthetic voice that echoed through the precinct: “Authentication confirmed. Operation Vanguard initiated. ETA: Four minutes.”
Vance dropped it like it was on fire. “The hell?”
Before anyone could speak, the precinct’s landlines started ringing. All of them. Simultaneously. The desk sergeant hesitantly picked up the receiver. His face drained of color almost instantly. “C-Captain? It’s… it’s the Governor.”
Miller snatched the phone. “Governor? Yes, sir, this is Captain Miller… Wait, what? Sir, there must be a misunderstanding…”
Suddenly, the lights in the precinct flickered and died. The emergency backups kicked in, casting the room in an eerie red glow.
“Power grid’s down!” someone yelled.
“No,” I corrected them, my voice cutting through the panic. “The airspace has been secured. Your communications are being jammed. You are officially operating in a blind spot.”
The twist of the knife came when the ground began to vibrate. It started as a low rumble, rattling the cheap coffee mugs on the desks, and quickly escalated into a deafening roar. Everyone in the room froze. It wasn’t thunder. It was the unmistakable, bone-shaking acoustic signature of four Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters hovering directly over the building.
Vance looked at me, pure, unadulterated terror finally cracking his smug facade. “What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything, Officer Vance,” I said, stepping forward as the windows rattled violently. “You declared war.”
The heavy steel doors of the precinct were suddenly blown completely off their hinges in a shower of sparks and concrete dust. Through the smoke, laser sights cut through the red emergency lighting like deadly green spiderwebs, all of them converging perfectly on Officer Vance’s chest.
Part 3
