“You with me, Lieutenant?”
“Went a little long on the landing,” he slurs.
“Ten out of ten for drama,” I say. “One out of ten for style.”
The crew laughs. The kind of laugh you make when the danger’s passed and you remember you’re alive.
The debrief roomsmells like burnt coffee and feels like a dentist’s waiting room—dull walls, buzzing lights, and chairs no one wants to sit in. My team lines up across from me, steam rising off our gear as the storm melts off our shoulders. We're still cold, but the adrenaline is fading.
Major Lexi Chen stands at the front of the room, tablet in hand, pacing like she’s trying to burn through the floor.
“First off—good job,” she says, nodding at me and the med techs. “Pilot’s stable. Broken bones, some frostbite, but he’s alive. You got him out.”
“Copy,” I say. Praise isn’t the point. Alive is the only thing that matters.
She taps her screen, and a blurry image fills the monitor behind her—a drone, frozen mid-hover. Four spinning rotors in a stormy blur. Somebody caught it on video. Probably the crew chief. He records everything, just in case.
“This,” Lexi says, pointing at the image, “should not have been in our sky.”
“No markings,” I say, watching the video play out. “Went after the helicopter’s hoist cable. That’s not something a store-bought drone would do.”
She looks over her shoulder at me. “What do you mean?”
I watch the footage again. The drone’s movements aren’t random. It tilts into the wind before it even hits. Adjusts. Reacts. Like it already knows the terrain.
“That’s not hobby gear,” I say. “It moved like something trained. Military-grade, or close. Like the ones from the lab. It’s not the same model, but it’s thinking like one of ours.”
Lexi taps again, switching the screen to code—just lines of text that mean nothing to most people. But she’s already done the digging. She points to a single line near the top.
“We ran the drone’s digital signature against everything built here at Ridgeway,” she says. “It matches one of our programs. Ninety-two percent.”
I already know the answer, but I ask anyway. “Which one?”
She looks at me. “Riley Willow’s drone system. Her rescue platform. It’s either hers—or someone used her code to make it look that way.”
The taste of coffee goes bitter in my mouth.
Outside the window, the storm pushes against the glass like it’s listening.
“So what you’re saying,” I ask slowly, “is someone took our rescue drone and turned it into a weapon? Used it to try and take out one of our own during a mission?”
Lexi nods, her mouth tight. “Whatever tried to hit your hoist line had our signature all over it.”
Nobody speaks.
Somewhere down the hall, a metal door slams. The sound makes the silence feel louder.
On the screen, the drone floats again. Small. Cold. Calculated.
“Find out who did this,” Lexi says, voice sharp and low. “And make damn sure they never get near our people again.”
I stare at the image and see a flash of Riley’s hands—the way they trembled the first time she launched a drone in the lab, only to smile when it soared.
Someone took her work—something meant to save lives—and twisted it.
“Copy,” I say quietly. “We’ll start in the lab.”
TWO
