I looked at the envelope. I hadn’t asked for updates on my mother and sister, but protocol dictated the files cross my desk regardless. I hesitated for a fraction of a second before breaking the seal and sliding the glossy photographs out onto the metal desk.

The first photo was of Tessa. She was wearing a faded, generic polo shirt with a nametag that read ‘Manager in Training’. She was standing behind the customer service desk of a midwestern grocery store, looking exhausted, arguing with a customer over a coupon. Her hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail. The diamonds, the silk, the weaponized arrogance—it was all gone, stripped away by the crushing weight of ordinary, inescapable reality.

The second photo was of Eleanor. My mother was sitting on the porch of a small, vinyl-sided duplex in a sprawling, identical suburban tract. She was wearing a thick cardigan, staring blankly out at a gray, overcast street, a plastic cup of cheap wine in her hand. She looked profoundly, completely unremarkable.

I stared at the photos for a long time. I tried to find a trace of the woman who had humiliated me in front of forty-two guests at the Hay-Adams. I tried to find the sister who had smiled as my identity was erased. But they weren’t there. They were just two strangers living out a life sentence of mediocrity.

I gathered the photographs, tapped them neatly against the desktop, and fed them directly into the heavy-duty shredder beside my desk. The machine roared to life, grinding the glossy paper into confetti.

“Everything alright, Commander?” Miller asked quietly.

“Everything is perfectly fine, Chief,” I said, turning away from the shredder and looking out at the sprawling tactical display of the global threat matrix. The world was on fire, as it always was, and there were monsters lurking in the shadows, trading secrets for gold.

I picked up my rifle, the weight of the metal grounding me, centering me. I was Evelyn Hayes. I was the Commander of Ghost Team. And I had a war to win.

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