Chapter 3 - The Paper Prison"Return to your station, Lieutenant," Holt ordered coldly.
"Yes, Sir," Mara murmured, quickly stepping past me and disappearing down the busy hallway.
Holt watched her go, then turned to me, leaning in slightly. "A word of advice, Commander. Vance suffers from severe combat-related delusions. She has this fantasy that she was the primary medic during the Sangin ambush. I highly recommend you ignore her bedtime stories. It’s better for everyone’s careers."
"Understood, Colonel," I lied smoothly, offering a polite nod. "Thank you for the heads-up."
He walked away, completely satisfied that I was just another officer who would fall in line.
But he was wrong.
That night, I stayed late in the administrative office, using my security clearance to pull Mara’s complete digital service record. What I found was a masterclass in bureaucratic execution. Her glowing performance evaluations ended abruptly on the exact day of the Sangin ambush. Every evaluation written after that date—all signed by Holt or officers who owed their promotions to him—painted her as emotionally unstable, insubordinate, and unfit for field duty.
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Her severe burn treatment had been coded under a generic, anonymous casualty number, ensuring her medical scar could never be easily linked to the Sangin incident.
They had built an invisible, paper prison around her, using official military records to lock her away. But every prison has a weak point, and I was going to find the sledgehammer to tear this one down.
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