At 0756, I was Commander Thalia Blackwood. By 0800, I was a security risk with two silent Marines flanking me like funeral escorts.

Twelve years. Gone in four minutes.

They said it was protocol. That I’d “breached trust.” But this wasn’t discipline. It was erasure. The kind designed to make you vanish.

Admiral Hargrove didn’t just want me out. He wanted me buried. He stood there on the bridge, hiding behind mirrored aviators while he deleted every trace of the Leviathan Protocol—the system I built to save the SEALs he abandoned. Now he needed me gone before Operation Starfall launched… and turned the ocean into a weapon.

I kept my head high walking off the USS Dauntless. But inside? My pulse was a war drum.

Chief Kesler risked everything to salute me. Just one gesture. Silent, defiant. It said everything.

They stuck me on the Hawthorne, a rusted supply scow with one destination: Port Aurelia. Where careers—and people—disappear.

But I wasn’t done.

In that claustrophobic comms room, I sent a final message. Just nine words: LEVIATHAN COMPROMISED. POSEIDON PROTOCOL ACTIVE.

Then everything changed.

The water didn’t ripple—it moved. Shifted. As if something massive had risen beneath us.

The Navy boats escorting me broke formation. Their radios went white-hot with panic. And then the moon disappeared.

An unmarked Ohio-class sub surfaced like a leviathan from a myth. No flags. No numbers. Just silence and power.

And then I saw him. Commander Reese. The man I saved. The man Hargrove tried to erase.

He raised a green flare.

We didn’t run. We turned.

And we came back.

What happened next wasn’t a rescue. It was a mutiny. His face when I walked back onto that flight deck—soaked, unbroken, and flanked by ghosts—was worth everything.

The air on the bridge was thick enough to choke on. Hargrove’s face, usually a mask of cold iron, had cracked. He saw me, then he saw Reese, then he saw the men standing behind him—the very SEALs he’d listed as “acceptable losses.”

“Treason,” he finally spat out, his voice shaking with rage. He pointed a trembling finger at me. “This is mutiny! Arrest this woman!”

None of the bridge crew moved. Their eyes darted between the decorated Admiral and me, the Commander who knew all their names. They saw his lie, and they saw my truth standing right beside me.

Reese took a step forward. “Ghosts can’t commit treason, Admiral. You left us to die in the dark. You cut our comms and signed our death certificates. We’re just here to collect.”

Hargrove let out a short, ugly laugh. “You have no proof! It’s your word against mine. I’ll see you all buried so deep no one will ever find you.”

That’s when I noticed it. While he was yelling, his other hand was hidden beneath the main console. His fingers were flying across a keypad. He wasn’t calling for security. He was trying to launch Operation Starfall right then and there. He was going to sink us all to hide his crime.

I started walking toward him, my wet boots squeaking on the pristine floor. “It’s over, Admiral. I built a backdoor into the Leviathan Protocol. Your command codes are useless. You’re locked out.”

His fingers froze. A slow, chilling smile spread across his face. He wasn’t looking at me anymore. He was looking at the main viewscreen behind his command chair.

“You think this was just about sinking a few enemy subs, Commander?” he whispered, his voice dripping with poison. “You were so proud of your little protocol. You built the perfect lock. But you never stopped to ask what I was locking away.”

The viewscreen flickered to life. It wasn’t a deep-sea tactical map. It was a live satellite feed of the California coast. A city. A red circle was drawn around the naval base in San Diego. The blast radius covered millions of people.

My heart stopped. My blood turned to ice. “What is this?”

He chuckled. “The Poseidon Protocol. Your brilliant distress signal. You thought it called for help. You thought it locked me out.” He shook his head slowly. “It didn’t lock me out, Thalia. It just changed the target. Your message was the first key. And the green flare Reese just fired? That was the final launch authorization.”

A countdown timer appeared on the screen. 1 MINUTE 30 SECONDS.

“Starfall was never for them,” Hargrove hissed, his eyes wide with madness. “It was for us. A wake-up call. And you, Commander Blackwood… you just lit the fuse.”

I stared at the console, at my own code twisted into a weapon of mass destruction. He was right. The system was locked. I couldn’t stop it. The launch command was already sent, authenticated by my own failsafe. The crew stared at me, their faces a mix of horror and betrayal.

Reese’s jaw was tight. “Thalia… what did you do?”

My mind was screaming, searching for a way out, but there was none. It was my system. My fault. Millions were about to die because of me.

Then Chief Kesler, who had been standing stone-faced this whole time, took one small step forward. His face was ghost-white. He wasn’t looking at me or the Admiral. He was staring at a tiny, blinking light on a secondary comms panel that everyone else had ignored.

He opened his mouth to speak, but only a choked whisper came out.

“Commander,” he said, pointing a shaking finger at the panel. “That launch signal… it’s not coming from this ship.”