My Marine brother threw my visitor badge into the gravel and mocked me in front of his entire unit—then I said two words, “Fury Ten,” and the Gunnery Sergeant who’d spent nine years searching for that voice went pale

Chapter 2

The courtyard did not gasp. Courtyards full of Marines and dependents do not gasp, not the way the movies say. What happened instead was quieter and far more terrible: the sound of a food tent collapsing in reverse, a hundred separate conversations pulling their breath in at the same instant, leaving a vacuum so complete that you could hear the flags snapping.

Tyler’s face did a complicated thing. It cycled through confusion, through certainty that this was a prank, through the first green pulse of real dread, and settled somewhere white.

“Major,” he repeated. Not a question. A stone falling into a well.

The general’s voice came again, patient as a man who was used to being the center of the room: “Major Hayes? Are you there?”