Chapter 6 - THE FORGED FILEI walked slowly out of the service hallway, my low heels clicking rhythmically against the marble floor, joining General Vance in the center of the ballroom.
Every eye in the room was fixed on me. The senators who had been praising Elowen moments earlier now backed away from her as if she carried a deadly plague.
I reached into the inner pocket of my blazer and pulled out a thick, waterproof tactical folder bearing the crimson stamp of the Department of Defense Inspector General.
“Elowen,” I said, my voice cutting through the quiet room like a scalpel.
She couldn't look me in the eye. She stared down at the floor, trembling violently in her pristine Army dress uniform—a uniform she had disgraced by pinning unearned oak leaves to her shoulders.
“You always hated being second best,” I said softly, stepping closer to her. “At West Point, when you couldn't pass the tactical logistics examinations, you cried until Mom hired private tutors. When you graduated in the middle of your class, Mom bought your way into a prime regional command office in Norfolk.”
“Shut up… just shut up!” Elowen hissed, tears spilling over her mascara, her voice cracking with humiliation.
“And when your promotion board packet was officially rejected by the Pentagon three months ago due to a dozen unresolved inventory discrepancies,” I continued, opening the crimson folder to reveal certified digital audit logs, “you didn't accept it. Instead, you used a stolen administrative override key—provided by your civilian contractor fiancé—to hack the personnel database and swap your personnel identification number with mine.”
Gasps rippled through the crowd.
“You thought you could sneak a Major’s rank past the automated system while I was deployed overseas running deep-tier classified logistics operations,” I added. “You just forgot one tiny detail, Elowen.”
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“What… what detail…?” Elowen choked out, her voice barely a whisper.
“I’m the one who designed the security firewall you hacked,” I said calmly. “An automated alert went straight to my secure terminal the second your keystrokes hit the server.”
