Chapter 12 - Before Lena
Major Pryce asked for counsel after that sentence.
But the sentence was enough to widen the investigation.
Captain Reed pulled archived disciplinary summaries from the previous three years.
Patterns appeared slowly.
A complaint withdrawn after a reassignment.
A witness recanting after a contract job offer to his father.
A junior officer transferred after raising concerns about contractor access.
Nothing proved a conspiracy by itself.
A pressure system everyone had learned to live under.
Lena read the summaries in Reed’s office.
“How many?”
“Potentially eleven.”
“Eleven people?”
“Eleven incidents. Maybe more.”
She had spent months believing she had failed to make herself heard.
Now she understood something worse.
People had heard.
Rina joined her that afternoon.
“I used to think I was weak for leaving,” Rina said.
“You were taking care of your mother.”
“I also wanted out.”
“You’re allowed to want out of a bad place.”
Rina looked at her. “You didn’t.”
“I almost did.”
That was the first time she admitted it aloud.
After the second complaint vanished, she had drafted a transfer request. She had stared at it for two nights.
Then she remembered her father telling her, years earlier, that leaving a burning building was not cowardice—but if you could pull the alarm on the way out, you did.
So she filed a third complaint first.
Reed’s investigation soon found another name: Sergeant Maya Keene, discharged eight months earlier after an altercation with Derek.
The case had been used for months as proof that Derek was the victim of “hostile accusations.”
They located Maya in Missouri.
When Reed called, Maya laughed bitterly.
“You finally found the video?”
“The full one.”
The official file contained a seventeen-second clip showing Maya punching Derek.
Maya claimed the original was nearly four minutes long.
It showed Derek grabbing her wrist first.
It showed Major Pryce entering the hallway before the punch.
And doing nothing.
“Do you have a copy?” Reed asked.
Maya was quiet.
“No.”
Then she added, “But the soldier who filmed it does.”
“Who?”
May you like
Maya answered.
“Command Sergeant Major Ellis.”
