General Vale's Reaction

General Vale recovered quickly. Men like him often did.

His shoulders drew back, his chin rose, and the surprise disappeared behind the formal mask of command. He set one hand beside the wet report, as though the table belonged to him and everything on it had occurred with proper authorization.

"General Reyes," he said. "We weren't expecting your review team until fourteen hundred."

"It's thirteen forty-two." Gabriel's gaze returned to Mara. "Apparently I arrived late."

The words were quiet. They landed harder than a shout.

Mara had spent most of her military life preventing this exact moment. She had enlisted under her own name, refused assignments connected to her father's command, and told almost no one at Fort Ellery who he was. She did not want soldiers wondering whether every good evaluation had been purchased with three silver stars.

Now fifty of them were looking from her to Gabriel and doing the arithmetic.

Vale did it last.

"Your daughter," he said.

Gabriel did not answer the implied question. He turned to the woman carrying the evidence case. "Major Brooks, call medical personnel. Photograph the table, the report, the bucket, and the floor. No one leaves until you record their name and contact information."

Major Naomi Brooks was small, silver-haired, and so composed that her calm felt more dangerous than anger. She passed the case to the colonel, removed her phone, and began issuing instructions.

Vale stepped forward. "This is my installation."

Gabriel looked at him. "Then you should be especially interested in preserving the facts."

"There's nothing to preserve. Specialist Reyes was participating in corrective training."

Mara heard several soldiers inhale at once.

Gabriel's expression did not change. "Corrective training involving heated water?"

"Tepid water."

Mara glanced at the angry red skin visible above her collar. Vale noticed and adjusted his claim.

"Warmer than intended, perhaps. A kitchen error."

"Who carried it here?" Major Brooks asked without looking up.

Vale turned toward her. "Excuse me?"

"The bucket. Who filled it, who carried it, and who measured the temperature?"

"I don't have those details."

"Then it's fortunate we have fifty witnesses."

The side door opened, and Captain Leah Morgan entered with two medics. Mara knew her from the base clinic. Morgan took one look at the soaked uniform and pointed toward a privacy screen stored against the wall.

"Behind there," she told Mara. "Slowly."

Mara did not move. Her father was watching her now—not as a general inspecting a soldier, but as the man who had once sat beside her bed all night when she had pneumonia at eleven. Anger lived in the rigid line of his jaw. So did fear.

If she let him act from either one, Vale would use it to poison everything that followed.

"Sir," Mara said.

Gabriel waited.

"I want an independent investigation."

Vale gave a short, disbelieving laugh. "You think you get to dictate terms?"

Mara kept her eyes on her father. "One handled by someone who doesn't report to General Vale—and doesn't share my name."

The hall went still again, but this silence felt different. Gabriel studied her for several seconds. Mara could almost hear the private argument taking place behind his eyes.

At last, he nodded.

"Agreed." He turned to Brooks. "You will report through the Inspector General's office. I will have no role in witness interviews, evidence review, findings, or recommendations."

"Yes, sir."

"That's absurd," Vale said. "You can't pretend your presence hasn't contaminated this already."

"My presence?" Gabriel's gaze dropped to the bucket. "Or yours?"

Captain Morgan reached Mara and spoke softly. "I need to get that fabric away from your skin."

Pain had become a steady pulse beneath Mara's uniform. She nodded and let the medic guide her behind the screen.

As soon as she was out of sight, her knees weakened. Morgan caught her elbow before she fell.

"Easy."

"I'm fine."

"That sentence is banned in my clinic." Morgan took trauma shears from her kit. "I'm cutting the undershirt. The jacket can come off normally if it doesn't stick."

Mara stared at the green canvas of the screen while the medic worked. Through it, she could hear Major Brooks separating the soldiers into groups and assigning an officer to guard each exit. Vale objected to every instruction. Each objection sounded less commanding than the one before it.

Then Colonel Miriam Kessler, Vale's chief of staff, spoke for the first time.

"Sir," she said, "the assembly hall camera system has been offline since yesterday."

Mara closed her eyes.

Of course it had.

Brooks did not sound surprised. "Who reported the outage?"

"I'll have to check."

"Do that. And Colonel—don't touch the system."

Behind the screen, Morgan peeled the last layer of fabric from Mara's skin. The air hurt almost as much as the water had.

Mara heard boots approach, then stop on the other side of the canvas.

"Mara," Gabriel said.

She had not heard him use her first name in uniform since the day she enlisted.

"I'm all right, Dad."

There was a pause.

"No," he said. "But you will be."