Page 6 of Alien Mercenary's Wife
After Hughes signed off, she pulled up news feeds on her tablet, scrolling through the digital detritus of a world that had forgotten how to care about its broken soldiers. Mainstream media was useless… Corporate advertising budgets bought editorial silence more effectively than any government censor. But… She bit her lip as she tapped in a new search term. Local outlets sometimes missed the memo about which stories to bury.
There. Jacksonville local news: "Veteran Found Dead in Apparent Suicide."
The photo showed Janet Dubois, former scorperio pilot and one of the loudest voices in their lawsuit. The article described a single gunshot wound to the head, no note, no warning signs. Just another troubled veteran who couldn't handle civilian life, according to the neat narrative they'd constructed around her death.
Except Janet Dubois hadn't been troubled. She'd been furious, burning with rage that the government they’d all trusted had implanted defective equipment into their bodies and then gaslit them about the consequences. The Janet she'd known would have fought this battle to her last breath, not put a gun to her head in a moment of despair.
She copied the article and added it to her evidence files. Pattern recognition had kept her alive in three combat zones, and the pattern here was becoming as clear as sniper fire… Veterans who spoke out publicly were having "accidents" at statistically impossible rates.
Her tablet chimed with another news alert, this one from Detroit. Car accident, brake failure, another familiar name from her unit. Another voice silenced, another witness eliminatedwith the professional efficiency of corporate cleanup crews rather than random misfortune.
Two deaths in three days. Both veterans who'd been vocal about their symptoms, both now conveniently silent.
The coffee turned bitter in her mouth. Setting the cup down, she crossed to the window again, this time studying the street below with the tactical focus that had once made her one of the most effective scorperio commanders in the service. A blue sedan sat parked across from the building entrance, empty, but the heat shimmer rising from the hood said the engine was still warm.
Her eyes narrowed. Someone was watching. Professional surveillance, the kind that cost serious money and came with government clearances.
Memorizing the license plate, she stepped away from the window. The apartment suddenly felt smaller, more vulnerable, though she'd been careful when she picked it. Two ways out—the front door and the fire escape off her bedroom—plus sight lines to the street from multiple angles. Not perfect, but better than most places in her price range. You didn't survive years of combat by forgetting the basics, even when you were trying to disappear.
She walked to her bedroom closet and pushed aside civilian clothes that had never quite fit right on a body trained for war, revealing the gear she'd hoped never to need again: body armor, tactical vest, and weapons that could punch through corporate security like tissue paper. All off books, of course. They were the tools of a trade she'd tried to leave behind, but that she knew she was going to need again.
Her hands shook slightly as she ran inventory. Not from fear… she'd left that emotion behind in her first firefight. The tremor was getting worse each day, spreading through hernervous system like a slow poison, but her grip strength was solid, and her aim was still good.
Good enough for what might be coming.
Returning to her desk, she opened a new document, typing quickly despite the occasional muscle spasm that made her fingers jerk across the keys. A detailed report of everything she'd observed, complete with timestamps and evidence cross-references, all bundled up with a dead man’s trigger on the send function. If something happened to her,whensomething happened to her, at least the information would live to fight another day.
The cursor blinked at her from the screen, waiting for words that might be her last testimony. She pulled up her notes for tomorrow's holoconference with the neurologist who'd agreed to review their medical records. The woman was risking her career by helping them, sticking her neck out for soldiers she'd never met because she'd seen enough cases to know the military doctors were lying through their teeth about the psychological diagnosis.
Reese spread medical reports across her console screen, organizing them by symptom severity and progression timeline with the same precision she'd once used for battle plans.
Each document represented a soldier whose life was slowly being stolen by corporate greed and government complicity, their bodies betrayed by the very technology that was supposed to make them invincible. The meeting could be the breakthrough they needed… an independent medical expert willing to testify that the implant failures were real, not imagined.
She double-checked her list of questions, making sure she'd covered every angle the corporate lawyers might use to attack the doctor’s credibility. Details mattered in battles like this, where victory was measured in precedents and papertrails rather than body counts. One missed fact, one poorly documented symptom, and their case would crumble.
She hissed as her left hand cramped suddenly, fingers curling into an involuntary claw.
“God fucking dammit!” She massaged the muscles until they relaxed. The paralysis was spreading, climbing up her arm, but slowly. Thankfully.
Outside her window, the blue sedan was gone, replaced by a different car with tinted windows that reflected the morning sun. Maybe nothing. Maybe a routine surveillance rotation. Maybe corporate cleanup crews moving into position for the final phase of their operation.
Either way, she was ready for them.
Saving all her work to a digi-drive, she took it to the small safe hidden behind her bookshelf, her fingers working the combination lock. Old school, like the drive, so it couldn’t be hacked. Inside the safe were backup drives containing every piece of evidence she'd gathered over months…yearsof investigation. All insurance against corporate cleanup efforts, a legacy that would outlive her if they managed to put her down. If something happened to her, the truth would survive.
Locking the safe, she headed back to her desk, already planning tomorrow's strategy. The corporate lawyers thought they were fighting a broken-down veteran with PTSD and delusions of persecution—another damaged soldier ranting about government conspiracies.
They had no idea what a tank commander could accomplish when she had nothing left to lose.
2
The Veterans Affairs building squatted on the corner like a concrete monument to bureaucratic indifference, its brutalist architecture designed to crush hope before you even walked through the doors. Reese limped across the plaza, her left leg cooperating for now, though she could feel the familiar crawl of numbness starting in her toes. The morning's cramping episode had left her hand stiff, fingers not quite responding the way they should when she'd tried to button her jacket.
She'd dressed carefully for this meeting… a pressed shirt, her service pin displayed just so, polished shoes that still fit despite the swelling in her feet. Every detail was calculated to remind these people that she'd earned her benefits with blood and service, not charity and pity.
The lobby reeked of industrial disinfectant and stale air. Veterans in various states of repair occupied plastic chairs designed by someone who'd never sat in one for longer than thirty seconds. A double-amputee dozed in the corner, his prosthetics newer and shinier than anything else in the building. An older woman clutched a manila folder thick with medicalreports, her hands shaking with either neurological damage like Reese's or pure rage. Hard to tell the difference anymore in places like this.
Reese approached the reception desk, where a clerk with dead eyes and a nameplate reading “James” processed forms with the enthusiasm of someone counting the days until retirement.
