Chapter 4 - GENERAL BROOKS
General Brooks arrived at O’Hare with federal credentials and demanded custody of all four children.
He called the operation a protected recovery.
I refused to surrender them without an independent child advocate.
He reminded me I remained subject to military orders.
I reminded him we stood inside a civilian airport with an active abandonment investigation.
Authority met a boundary it did not expect.
Brooks claimed Michael Carter went rogue and stole replacement-child files.
He said the twins were safer inside Safe Harbor.
Then Lily saw him.
She hid behind me.
“He came to our house.”
Brooks denied it.
Owen said the general took their father’s red folder.
Security footage from the Carter home confirmed a man resembling Brooks entered the night Michael vanished.
Brooks called it synthetic media.
Forensics found no manipulation.
Then Major Hayes received DNA results from his supposed dead daughter’s file.
The child existed.
Age nine.
Living at a Safe Harbor school.
His professional control cracked.
Brooks ordered him removed from the investigation.
Hayes handed over his radio and stayed beside the children as a civilian witness.
That choice mattered.
Then the military case revealed a flight manifest.
Lily and Owen were scheduled to leave Chicago on a government aircraft that night.
Destination: Fort Halcyon.
A base officially closed twenty years earlier.
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Michael Carter’s name appeared as receiving officer.
Alive.
