Part 2Runaway Princesses Pay the Price

At six o'clock the following morning, the shrill, brassy blast of the muster whistle tore through the dawn air.

On the dew-slicked turf of the main drill field, Captain Briggs stood atop the review dais, his jaw clenched so tightly the muscles bunched like walnut shells beneath his weathered skin. His slate-gray eyes swept the formation below like a pair of tactical scopes.

In the block designated for Squad 3, Class 2, there stood exactly one person.

Me.

"Where is the rest of your unit?"

Captain Briggs stepped down from the platform, clipboard in hand. The morning air around him seemed to plunge five degrees. A terrifying, suppressed fury radiated from every line of his rigid frame.

I snapped to attention, my chin level, my eyes fixed straight ahead. "Sir, I do not know. I was asleep in my quarters by ten o'clock."

"You don't know?" His voice didn't rise into a yell; it deepened into a subterranean rumble that caused the neighboring cadet companies to stiffen in terror. "You are the appointed deputy squad leader. Twenty-nine cadets are missing from mandatory roll call, and you're telling me you don't know?"

He crossed the turf in three long strides, stopping inches from my face. "Go find your academic advisor, Dean Evans. Immediately."

Ten minutes later, Dean Evans came stumbling across the grass, out of breath and disheveled. She had run so fast she had lost a low heel somewhere by the administration building, her beige blazer half-buttoned, dark hair loose around her pale face.

"Natalie, what on earth is happening?" Dean Evans gripped my shoulders, her fingers trembling with panic. "Where are Derek and the others? Unexcused absence during cadet orientation is grounds for permanent administrative suspension! Why didn't you stop them?"

I took a measured half-step backward, letting her hands fall away.

"Dean Evans, I tried to reason with them. But they refused to listen."

I reached into my pocket, pulled out the folded legal sheet, and handed it to her.

"What is this?" she whispered, blinking down at the paper.

"It’s a signed waiver, drafted and mandated by Class President Derek Mercer and Tiffany Cole before they walked out," I said, keeping my voice level and clear. "They told me that being young meant breaking the rules, and that they were heading to Disney World to be runaway princesses."

"Disney World?!" Captain Briggs roared, veins bulging across his shaved temples. "These undisciplined little brats deserted an active cadet post to go ride roller coasters?!"

Dean Evans stared at the twenty-nine signatures, the color draining from her lips until she looked entirely bloodless. "This is absolute madness... Natalie, if you knew this was happening, why didn't you report it to the night watch?"

"Dean Evans, please look at the bottom clause," I said softly, pointing toward Tiffany's sharp handwriting. "They explicitly threatened that anyone who snitched would be completely blacklisted and harassed out of the program. Derek is the class president, and Tiffany’s family donates millions to the university trust. I’m a first-generation student here on a state scholarship. How was I supposed to stand against all of them alone?"

Dean Evans choked on her words. She knew as well as anyone that Tiffany Cole treated the department like her private playground, and even the faculty routinely handled the Cole family with kid gloves.

"How did they leave the installation?" Captain Briggs demanded, his eyes narrowed into slits. "The main security checkpoint has armed guards. They couldn't have driven through the gate."

I inhaled slowly, dropping the anchor I had been saving.

"I overheard Tiffany saying she hired a private party bus to wait along the northern perimeter by the wooded tree line. And Derek had a pair of industrial-grade heavy bolt cutters in his bag. He told everyone that if the chain-link gates were locked, he’d just slice right through."

"The northern perimeter? Bolt cutters?!"

Both the captain and the dean froze, air catching in their throats simultaneously.

"Are you certain it was the northern perimeter?!" Captain Briggs lunged forward, his grip on my forearm like an iron vise.

"I... that's what Derek said while they were packing," I stammered, allowing a small tremor of fear to surface in my voice.

Captain Briggs dropped my arm as if he’d been burned. His face wasn’t merely angry anymore; it was the color of curdled milk.

"God almighty," he muttered, fumbling for the military radio at his hip with shaking fingers. "We have a catastrophic breach."

Dean Evans still looked bewildered. "Captain, what does the north fence have to do with anything? It’s just property damage, we can issue an administrative suspension—"

"Shut up, Evans!" Captain Briggs bellowed, shattering all academic decorum. "The Department of Defense took jurisdictional custody of that wooded parcel yesterday afternoon! They just buried the prototype fiber-optic grid for the regional military communications command under that exact fence line!"