Ju woke before dawn to alarms.
Not sirens.
Footsteps.
Military footsteps are different when they are moving under routine orders and when they are moving because something has gone wrong. These were fast, controlled, and close. She sat up too quickly, pain flashing through her hip, just as the medical bay door opened.
Captain Price entered first.
Then Reed.
Then two MPs.
Ju looked at them and knew.
“What happened?”
Reed’s face was set hard. “Someone tried to enter the evidence room.”
“The wafer?”
“Safe.”
She exhaled.
Then he added, “The intruder left something behind.”
He placed a photograph on the bedside table.
A small patch.
Not a uniform patch. A piece of cloth torn from something dark, bearing a stitched symbol: a blue shepherd’s hook over a silver line.
Ju stared at it.
“Cobalt Shepherd?”
“We think so.”
The name had become fabric.
An organization mark.
A unit? A contractor cell? A private network? Ju did not know. What she knew was that Aaron’s partial file had been right. Willy was not simply leaking information into a void. He was connected to a structure.
Reed sat down.
“I need to ask you about the medical pack.”
Ju’s face tightened.
“I dropped it.”
“I know.”
“You don’t have to say it like that.”
“I need you to hear me. I am not asking because I blame you. I’m asking because the pack disappeared after recovery.”
Ju looked up.
“What?”
“The official recovery log says it was destroyed in the first blast.”
“It wasn’t.”
Reed waited.
Ju’s memory returned in broken pieces: the pack sliding out, hitting dirt, tumbling near a rock shelf, not burning, not destroyed. She remembered seeing it later, half-covered in dust, while crawling toward Aaron. She did not retrieve it because Aaron was bleeding and speaking and pushing the wafer into her palm.
“It was near the rear wheel,” she said. “Thirty feet from the vehicle. Left side of the ravine.”
“The recovery log says no pack was found.”
“Then someone took it.”
Reed nodded slowly.
“Why would they want your pack?”
Ju thought of the official story.
Because the pack was proof.
If recovered, it might show she still had supplies on her vest. It might show it was not destroyed. It might show the contents had not mattered to Aaron’s survival time. It might also hold something else.
Ju’s breath caught.
“What?”
Reed leaned forward.
“When Aaron grabbed my wrist,” she said, “his blood got on my glove. The wafer went in the glove. But before that, he touched the pack.”
“Why?”
“He shoved something into the side pocket.”
Reed’s eyes sharpened.
“What?”
“I don’t know. I thought it was gauze. I was trying to keep pressure on his wound. I didn’t look.”
Reed stood.
“Sergeant Lin, if Aaron put a second item in that pack, then the person who took it may have more evidence than we do.”
Ju looked toward the guarded door.
“And if Willy knows that?”
Reed’s answer was quiet.
“Then he will tear this base apart looking for the person who has it.”