Caleb's POV:
By 8 a.m., my team and I were back in the office, the air stale with exhaustion and burnt coffee. I sat in my father’s seat, the weight of it settling on my shoulders like chainmail. His scent still clung faintly to the leather—earth, pine, steel. Every breath of it twisted like a blade beneath my ribs.
There was no time for mourning. No space for reflection. My father was dead, and it was my face they looked to now. My voice they obeyed. My signature on orders that would determine whether we survived the night.
The meeting began without ceremony. Strategy bled into logistics, which bled into contingency planning. It didn’t stop. It couldn’t.
“The sweeps,” Grey said, dragging a finger down the map, “need to be sporadic. No patterns. We hit every sector at random.”
“That’s
