“My mom flies an F-22 fighter jet.”

I wanted to say it was impossible, but the invisible aircraft had bent rain around itself over Aunt June’s cabin. Impossible had already crossed the sky.

Near dawn, we reached desert country.

Raven Mesa appeared first as a shape against the horizon, a dark ridge under a fading storm. The facility itself was hidden inside the rock, marked only by a rusted security fence and a road that looked abandoned.

Aunt June scanned the gate with equipment that looked older than she was.

“Still powered,” she said. “That’s unpleasant.”

Mom parked behind a line of scrub trees.

She turned to me.

“Lucas, listen to me. If anything happens, you stay with June.”

“No.”

“Lucas.”

“No. You don’t get to tell me I’m part of this and then tell me to wait in a truck.”

Her face hardened, then softened.

“You are thirteen.”

“And apparently the living key to an invisible airplane.”

Aunt June snorted.

“He has your mouth too.”

Mom closed her eyes for one second.

Then she handed me a small radio.

“You do exactly what I say, when I say it.”

I nodded.

 

We entered through a maintenance tunnel Aunt June remembered from “a year I refuse to discuss.” Inside, Raven Mesa smelled like dust, metal, and old secrets. Emergency lights glowed along the walls. Somewhere deep in the facility, machinery pulsed.

We found Admiral Carter in a control room, tied to a chair but alive.

His face was bruised. One eye was swollen. But when he saw Mom, he smiled faintly.

“Rachel,” he said. “Always late.”

She cut him free.

“Always ungrateful.”

He looked at me.

“Lucas.”

I stood awkwardly.

“Sir.”

He grimaced as he stood. “Your presentation was excellent.”

Aunt June rolled her eyes. “We can admire the school project after we stop the ghost plane.”