Mercer looked genuinely frightened.
“Three days ago.”
Nobody moved.
“What are you talking about?” Vale asked.
Mercer stepped toward the terminal.
“Candidate intake paperwork.”
Mara felt her mind go blank.
“Whose paperwork?”
Mercer typed quickly.
A personnel record appeared.
Candidate number 18.
Ellis.
The young soldier currently inside the medical wing.
His full legal name displayed on the monitor.
ELIAS THOMAS KNOX.
Owen Knox stared at the screen.
“No.”
The room seemed to shift beneath Mara’s feet.
She looked at him.
“You know him?”
“I’ve never seen that name before.”
Vale’s face had lost all color.
Mara remembered Ellis laughing near the rear of the gym.
Ellis limping during the ruck march.
Ellis disappearing.
Vale ordering that he remain under observation.
Vale insisting the young soldier not be released.
Mara whispered:
“He’s the other child.”
Knox looked at her.
“My brother?”
Vale slowly shook his head.
“No.”
Mara turned toward him.
“Then who is he?”
Vale answered almost inaudibly.
“Daniel’s son.”
Chapter 8: THE FAMILY OF GHOSTS
Mara could not speak.
Daniel had a son.
The idea seemed impossible.
Daniel had never married.
Never mentioned having a child.
Vale opened the rest of the personnel record.
Elias Vance had been born under a different surname.
His mother died while he was still young.
He grew up in foster care.
At eighteen, he joined the military.
At twenty-three, he applied to the selection course.
Someone had altered his surname inside the internal candidate system.
Knox continued staring at the screen.
“Why does the record list him as Knox?”
Vale looked genuinely confused.
“It didn’t when he arrived.”
Mercer swore under his breath.
“Someone changed the database.”
Mara was already heading toward the medical wing.
They ran.
Ellis’s bed was empty.
The IV line lay on the floor.
The window was open.
A nurse was unconscious nearby but still breathing.
Mara’s heart accelerated.
“Elias!”
No answer.
Knox searched the corridor.
“Security?”
Vale grabbed his radio.
Only static answered.
Mercer looked toward the ceiling.
“The cameras are offline.”
Then the entire base lost power.
Darkness swallowed the corridor.
Emergency lights flickered on, bathing everything in red.
An alarm began howling somewhere above.
Mara understood.
“The test isn’t finished.”
Vale shook his head.
“This is not mine.”
A gunshot sounded somewhere in the distance.
Everyone froze.
A second shot followed.
Then silence.
Knox moved first.
They reached the stairwell.
A security guard lay unconscious near the landing.
His weapon was missing.
Mara checked him.
Pulse.
Alive.
They climbed.
The upper training building was dark.
Rain hammered the roof.
A shadow moved near the gym.
Knox raised the recovered pistol.
“Elias!”
The lights suddenly snapped on.
Elias stood alone in the center of the same combat mat where Mara had dropped Knox days earlier.
He held no weapon.
Mara stopped.
“What are you doing?”
Elias looked different.
No limp.
No uncertainty.
No nervousness.
His posture had completely changed.
Balanced.
Loose.
Controlled.
Familiar.
Mara felt her skin prickle.
She had seen that stance before.
On old recordings.
Daniel.
Elias smiled slightly.
“You took long enough.”
Knox lowered the pistol a fraction.
“Who are you?”
Elias looked at him.
“Not your brother.”
Then his eyes shifted toward Mara.
“Hi, Aunt Mara.”
Tears immediately filled her eyes.
“Daniel was your father?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t he ever tell us?”
“Probably the same reason he never told you he survived.”
“He believed he was protecting us.”
Elias nodded.
“He was wrong about a lot of things.”
Vale stepped closer.