Marcus Reed's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Marcus drove home with the folded page in his jacket. One copy. One signature. If a colonel could tear his report in half, a general could burn this. He needed the proof to live past him. He parked outside the fort barracks and called the one man he still trusted. Michael Stone met him in the gravel lot. They had served together, same platoon, before the valley took eleven of their own. Michael still moved like a soldier on patrol, eyes sweeping the lot, boots quiet. He carried a hard case under one arm. "You said it's real," he said. No greeting. "Show me." Marcus unfolded the page. The timestamps sat in black ink. The march order. The false all-clear. Two records that could not both be true. Michael read it twice. His jaw tightened. "This hangs the general." He looked up. "And whoever leaked it." "That's the problem," Marcus said. "It's one copy. They find it, they shred it. Then I've got nothing again." Michael set the hard case on the hood. He opened it. Inside sat a battered field scanner, scratched gray and orange, built for a war zone. "Then we make it stop being one copy," he said. He laid the page flat and ran the scanner across it. A green light passed over the ink. "Digital copies. I send them tonight. A lawyer. A reporter. A sealed drive off-base." He glanced at Marcus. "You spread it wide enough, destroying the paper means nothing." Marcus watched the light move. "If they trace the sends to you—" "I know what it costs." Michael didn't look up. "Eleven men. I was supposed to be in that valley. I owe them more than my record." The scanner beeped. Michael thumbed through three screens, then nodded. He pulled a small drive from the case and sealed it in a padded envelope. "Copies out in an hour," he said. "The paper's not the evidence anymore. It's just one copy of it." Marcus felt the weight shift off his chest. The thing a colonel could tear was no longer the only truth. "Keep the original off me," he said. "If they search me, I want it somewhere they can't reach." Michael tucked the folded page into the hard case and locked it. "I'll bury it tonight. You never touch it again." He shut the case and started for his truck. Marcus caught his arm. "When those copies land, the general knows. He'll move fast." Michael met his eyes. "Then we move faster." He got in and drove off. Marcus stood alone in the lot. The proof was safe now, copied and scattered. But he had just lit the fuse. By morning the general would know the log existed, and that someone had made it impossible to bury. The next move would come from above, and it would come hard.