Chapter 1 - The Shirt That Tore
Olivia Mitchell had been warned that someone might test her cover. She had not expected the test to begin with her face being shoved into mashed potatoes.
A rough hand grabbed the back of her hair and drove her toward the tray.
"Eat up, logistics trash!" Cadet Mason Pike shouted over the laughter in the central cafeteria. "Learn your place."
Olivia's cheek hit cold gravy. A plastic fork skittered across the floor.
For half a second, instinct told her to break his wrist.
Training told her not to move.
Around them, recruits laughed because they thought she was Olivia Mitchell, twenty-nine, quiet transfer, paperwork specialist, no combat record worth mentioning.
That was exactly who she was supposed to be.
Pike yanked her upright by the collar.
The back of her T-shirt ripped open with a hard tearing sound.
The laughter died so fast it felt like someone had cut the power.
Across Olivia's upper back, beneath the torn fabric, sat the black-and-gray emblem almost nobody outside classified command channels was supposed to recognize: a narrow-winged raven over a broken compass.
Ghost Division.
Colonel Raymond Hale was carrying a coffee cup near the officers' table. He stopped mid-step.
Then the sixty-one-year-old veteran set the cup down and came to rigid attention.
He saluted Olivia.
Not casually.
Not politely.
Like a man facing an officer whose orders he had once followed in a place nobody in that cafeteria was cleared to discuss.
Pike's grip loosened.
"Sir..." he stammered. "She's nobody."
Hale crossed the room in three strides, knocked Pike's hand away, and shoved him back from Olivia.
"Shut your mouth. You just put your hands on Commander Mitchell of the Ghost Division."
Pike's face emptied of color.
Olivia slowly wiped gravy from her cheek.
She gathered the torn pieces of her shirt, then crouched until she was eye level with him.
"I have one question," she said quietly.
Pike swallowed.
"Did you really think pushing my face down was your own idea... or were you testing my reaction for your handler?"
His eyes flicked toward the second-floor observation window.
Only once.
May you like
But Olivia saw it.
And behind the tinted glass, someone stepped away.
