Three words in black thread on faded gray. “Iron Wolf Unit.”
Her breath hitched. I could see the wheels turning.
The name was a ghost, a whisper in classified briefings, a story you weren’t supposed to have heard. She looked up at me, her eyes wide with a question she didn’t dare ask. I simply held out my hand.
She slipped the patch back to me discreetly. I took it, tucked it away, locked my locker, and left without a word. The next two weeks were a special kind of hell.
Morgan made sure of it. During a combat drill, he singled me out. “Careful out there, Whitaker,” he jeered, his voice carrying across the field.
“Wouldn’t want you to bruise those precious medic hands.”
Laughter rolled across the recruits. I ignored him. I completed the drill.
But I wasn’t watching Morgan. I was watching the ridgeline above the course. My eyes scanned the perimeter, narrowing on a specific spot.
Later that evening, long after drills, I walked the perimeter alone. My hand brushed along the cold chain-link fence. I stopped where the tree line pressed in close, my gaze fixed on a high-mounted corner camera.
Earlier, it had flickered. Just 1.7 seconds of dead feed. A glitch, most would assume.
I knew better. Glitches don’t happen on a secure military base. I pulled a battered notebook from my pocket, scribbled a time and a coordinate, and kept walking.
The next night, the strategy room was packed. Cadets filled the tiered seating, the air restless. Lieutenant Morgan was at the front, lounging against the podium, that insufferable grin plastered on his face.
The lights dimmed. The projector flared to life, then froze. A low chime echoed through the hall.
A notification flashed across the instructor’s console. Restricted Access Login. Authorization Code: Aaron Wolf Einz.
A ripple of unease spread through the room. The instructor frowned, tapping at the keyboard, but the system was locked. Then, my tablet—sitting dark and untouched on the desk in front of me—buzzed once.
I glanced down. One new message. No sender.
No subject. Just four words glowing on the screen. “Aaron Wolf, stand by.”
My blood turned to ice.
My hand, reaching for the tablet, froze mid-air. Across the aisle, I saw Nina Torres catch the flash of the text. Her eyes widened, her lips parting as the name from the patch and the code on the screen clicked into place.
Aaron Wolf. She didn’t know what it meant. Not really.
But she knew one thing. I was no ordinary medic. And someone, somewhere, had just pulled my pin.
The next morning, the tension in the training hall was so thick you could cut it. The override. The locked system.
The whispers were no longer about me, but about the ghost in the machine. Except for Morgan. He leaned against the podium, arrogant as ever.
“Guess the medic finally got the attention she wanted,” he announced, loud enough for the front rows. “Probably hacked the system herself.”
A few uneasy chuckles. The laughter was thinner today.
I sat in the back, tablet closed, posture perfect. My heart was a cold, steady drum against my ribs. Nina cast a worried glance back at me.
“Sarah,” she whispered. “Last night. That message…”
I kept my eyes forward.
But she saw my fist, clenched white-knknuckled on my knee. Then the lights flickered. Once.
Twice. And the hall went pitch black. A collective gasp.
The outage lasted exactly seven seconds. When the lights flared back on, the central monitors were different. No login prompt.
No code. Just one name, pulsing in bright white letters. “Call.
James Rorden. Inbound.”
The name meant nothing to them. To me, it meant the world was ending.
We heard the steps before we saw him. The heavy, measured thud of boots on marble, echoing from the corridor. They were steady.
Intentional. Unstoppable. The double doors at the back of the hall swung open.
He stood there, framed in the doorway. Colonel James Rorden. Broad-shouldered, decorated, with the kind of eyes that had seen hell and hadn’t blinked.
The air was sucked from the room. This man didn’t just command; he was command. He said nothing.
He just let the silence stretch, his gaze sweeping the room until it locked on me. For the first time since I’d arrived, I moved. Not in fear.
In recognition. Rorden moved down the aisle, each step a hammer blow. When he spoke, his voice was low, but it rolled over us like thunder.
“Iron Wolf, stand by.”
The hall froze. Two hundred cadets stopped breathing. I saw Blake Morgan blink, his smirk finally faltering.
“Wait, what?”
Rorden’s eyes snapped to him. “Lieutenant,” he said, his voice dropping to absolute zero. “At ease.
You’ve said enough.”
Morgan’s jaw clicked shut. The color drained from his face. Rorden turned back to me.
“Sergeant Sarah Whitaker, front and center.”
I rose. My boots clicked on the floor in a steady rhythm as I walked the aisle and stopped three feet in front of him. His expression was stone, but his eyes… his eyes held a history.
“Good to see you again, Iron Wolf.”
Gasps rippled through the room. “This… this is some kind of joke,” Morgan stammered from his seat. “She’s just a transfer.
A medic. We…”
Rorden cut him off without even looking at him. “You think you know who trains beside you?” His gaze swept the stunned faces.
“You think rank and ribbons tell the whole story? You haven’t got a clue.”
He looked back at me, and his voice filled the room, layered with pride and a terrible memory. “Seven years ago, a covert team executed an unsanctioned rescue during the Dawson Ridge incident.
Twelve Marines, trapped behind enemy lines. Standard extraction failed. The mission was officially written off as lost.”
He let the words hang in the dead air.
“Then a single operator, call sign Iron Wolf, led a four-person phantom squad straight into hostile territory. No air cover. No reinforcements.
No chance.”
He paused, his eyes never leaving mine. “Forty-seven minutes later, every single one of those twelve Marines was walking free.” He took a deep breath. “She commanded that unit.”
A heavy, crushing silence.
“And she saved my life.”
Nina Torres was staring, her chest rising and falling rapidly. Blake Morgan looked like he’d been punched in the gut. Rorden finally turned to face him fully, his voice a blade.
“You mocked her,” he said quietly. “You called her weak.”
“I… I didn’t know,” Morgan whispered. “That’s exactly the point, Lieutenant,” Rorden snapped.
“You never asked.”
He faced the hall again. “From this point on, you will address her properly. Sergeant Sarah Whitaker, Iron Wolf Unit.”
Then, something incredible happened.
A lone cadet in the back row slowly rose, his heels clicking together, and his hand snapped into a salute. Another followed. Then another.
In seconds, the hall was filled with the sharp crack of boots, two hundred cadets on their feet, two hundred arms raised in perfect, unified respect. I stood there, silent, my expression unreadable. I wasn’t the medic.
I wasn’t the joke. I was Iron Wolf. But Rorden wasn’t finished.
He stepped closer, lowering his voice so only I could hear. “They see it now,” he murmured. “But this isn’t about them.”
My jaw tightened.
“Then who is it about?”
His gaze hardened. “Someone’s watching this base,” he said flatly. “Someone who shouldn’t be.”
My blood, which had been ice, now turned to fire.
“Then it starts again,” I whispered. He gave a single, grim nod. “Welcome back, Iron Wolf.”
Part 2
The salutes dropped, but the silence remained, heavier than before.
It was no longer the silence of judgment, but of awe. And fear. I was a ghost they suddenly realized was real.
As the cadets filed out, their eyes carefully avoided mine, Rorden and I were left alone in the hall. “The camera flicker on the west perimeter,” I said, not as a question. “You saw that,” he replied.
“I knew you would. It wasn’t a glitch. They’ve been probing us for weeks.
That override last night? That was a signal. ‘Aaron Wolf.’ They were trying to flush you out.”
“They succeeded,” I said flatly.
“They did,” Rorden agreed. “Which means they’re close. And they’re bold.”
That night, the sky opened up.
Rain hammered Fort Redstone as if trying to wash the base off the map. I sat on my bunk, my encrypted tablet glowing with those same four words. “Iron Wolf, stand by.”
Before I could even process it, the alarms ripped through the compound.
“BREACH DETECTED! WEST PERIMETER! ALL UNITS, ALL UNITS!”
The barracks exploded into chaos.
Cadets spilled from their bunks, fumbling with gear, shouting. Sirens screamed, cutting through the thunder. Within minutes, the strategy hall was a swirling mass of wet gear and panicked energy.
Rorden stood at the central console, firing commands. “Lock down Alpha and Bravo gates! I want sensors at full power!
Secure the armory!”
A young officer, his face pale, cut through the noise. “Sir! The alarms… they’re not from the perimeter!” Rorden spun on him.
“What?”
“They’re internal,” the officer said, his voice shaking. “Main security hub. Sub-level two.
Whoever’s inside… they were already here.”
The room went dead silent. Rorden’s eyes found me across the room. There was no order, just a look.
“South wing,” I said. He nodded. “Take Torres,” he commanded.
My eyes found Nina. She was already grabbing a sidearm. She was scared, but she was steady.
She was a good choice. We moved. We didn’t run; we sprinted, boots slamming on the polished floors, pushing through the shadowed emergency lighting of the south corridors.
This was my world. The chaos, the shadows, the hunt. “This way,” I whispered, pulling Nina into a maintenance passage.
“How do you know?” she panted. “They’re not heading for the armory. They’re heading for the data core,” I said.
“It’s what I would do.”
We burst into the main systems corridor. It was empty. Too empty.
“Where…” Nina started. “Quiet,” I hissed. I scanned the walls.
And there it was. A vent panel, just beside the security feed conduit. Two of the screws were freshly scarred.
“They’ve been in the walls,” I muttered. And then I heard it. Faint.
Subtle. The scuff of a rubber sole on concrete. Behind us.
I spun, leveling my weapon in one fluid motion. “Step out. Now.”
From the shadows of an alcove, a figure emerged.
He was dressed in black fatigues, carrying suppressed gear that I’d never seen in a Marine inventory. He froze for half a second, sizing us up. Then he lunged.
He went for me, underestimating Nina. Nina fired. The sound was a dull thwack.
The intruder dodged, impossibly fast, the round sparking off the wall where his head had been. He didn’t try to fight. He bolted, disappearing down a cross-corridor.
“He’s running to something,” I yelled. “Nina, cut him off at the junction! Go!” She didn’t hesitate.
She sprinted. I gave chase, my legs pumping, my senses on fire. I tore through the twisting corridors of the lower maintenance wing, the intruder always one corner ahead.
He was fast, but I was relentless. I skidded to a halt at the corridor’s end. The main security panel for the entire wing.
He was gone. Vanished. But he’d left something behind.
Affixed to the panel, a small, dark device was blinking with a silent, steady green light. I ripped it from the panel, my fingers tracing its casing. I knew this tech.
I knew the machine-tooled precision. I walked back to the command center as dawn was breaking. The sirens were off.
The base was secure. The intruders, at least three of them, were gone. No casualties.
Nothing stolen. I dropped the device on the table in front of Rorden. It clinked heavily.
“This wasn’t an attack,” I said, my voice rough. “They weren’t here to steal or destroy.”
Rorden’s face was a dark thundercloud. “No,” he said, picking it up.
“They were testing us. They were testing you.”
I looked at the device. “It’s U.S.
military issue,” I said. “Top-shelf. Someone inside authorized this.”
Across the room, Lieutenant Blake Morgan stood, dripping wet, his arrogance completely gone, replaced by a hollow, sickening realization.
“I… I didn’t know,” he muttered, his voice barely audible. I turned to look at him, my expression unreadable. All that energy he’d spent mocking me, all that time he’d wasted proving his dominance, while the real threat was already inside the wire.
I held his gaze for a long, cold moment. “Now you do.”
I turned and walked out of the hall, leaving the device, the Colonel, and the shocked cadets behind me. The rain had stopped, but the air was still heavy.
I stood under the gray dawn, my eyes on the misty horizon. The call sign I had buried years ago was alive again. They wanted to see if the Wolf still had teeth.
They were about to be severely mistaken.
