Chapter 3 - The Eye in the Sky
"That... that's impossible," Maribel stammered, looking at me as if I had suddenly grown a second head. "Rowan files paperwork. She answers phones."
"Rowan," Stellan said, ignoring his mother completely, "bypassed three regional commanders to seize manual control of an overhead drone. She had the only clear visual of the battlefield."
I closed my eyes. The memory of that basement room in Langley came rushing back. The hum of the servers, the blue glow of the monitors, the taste of stale coffee and pure, unadulterated adrenaline. I remembered watching the heat signatures of Stellan's team huddled in the dirt, surrounded by a swarm of hostile forces moving in for the kill.
"For six hours," Stellan told the silent table, "she talked us through the dark. She called out enemy movements before they happened. She threaded us through a heavily mined valley, step by agonizing step. And when we were clear, she manually guided in an airstrike with coordinates so precise they defied physics."
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He leaned forward, placing his hands flat on the mahogany table. "She didn't just answer a phone, Mom. She orchestrated an entire theatre of war from a continent away. She pulled my men out of the fire. I am breathing your air right now because Rowan Whitaker refused to let me die."
The silence returned, but it was different now. It was no longer a vacuum. It was heavy, saturated with a truth that was too massive for the room to hold.
