Chapter 4 - THE SECOND GENERAL
The man beside me passed every biometric check except one.
A surgical plate in the real General Brooks’s left shoulder was missing.
He was an impersonator.
A highly trained double named Victor Brooks.
The real general disappeared six months earlier.
Victor had continued issuing orders, attending briefings, and directing the Night Harbor inquiry.
He arranged the military convoy outside my house.
Why expose the hidden room if he belonged to the conspiracy?
Because rival factions were fighting over the same evidence.
Victor wanted Margaret and Thomas removed.
Margaret wanted my command credentials.
Thomas wanted the original mission archive.
My mother wanted all of them exposed.
I wanted to know whether any part of my marriage or career had been real.
Military police detained Victor.
He activated a dead-man release from his watch.
Files began uploading to multiple news outlets.
Edited footage showed me ordering illegal strikes during Night Harbor.
The original mission recordings were missing.
If Victor’s version reached the public first, I would become the criminal face of the operation.
Then Sergeant Ruiz entered my study and found the camera card Thomas had hidden.
It contained the original route briefing.
My order was lawful.
Someone altered the map after I left.
The editor’s access code belonged to my late father, Colonel James Brooks.
Another dead parent tied to the case.
My father had helped build the same hidden detention network my mother discovered.
The family secret reached both sides of my bloodline.
Then the radio beneath the wall transmitted coordinates.
The real General Brooks was alive at a decommissioned Army hospital.
So was one more prisoner.
May you like
A woman registered as LAUREN HAYES.
Someone had prepared a replacement version of me.
