“My mom flies an F-22 fighter jet.”

Beside him was Elias Voss.

Aunt June poured coffee into a mug and slid it to Mom.

“Carter vanished twenty minutes after the assembly,” she said. “Security cameras went black. His driver was found unconscious. No blood.”

Mom closed her eyes.

“He wanted me to see him.”

“Voss?”

“Yes.”

Aunt June tapped a photo on the wall. It showed Voss younger, smiling beside my mother near a hangar. Without the scar and shadow, he looked almost kind.

“He’s been moving again,” Aunt June said. “Whispers out of Europe. Missing engineers. Dead contractors. Someone is rebuilding Ghostwing.”

Mom looked at me.

I suddenly understood why she had never told stories.

Because stories had shadows.

And now those shadows had followed us home.

Aunt June turned to me.

“Lucas, did anyone at school touch your mother’s photograph?”

I thought back.

My notebook. The printed picture. Mr. Reynolds taking it from my hand before the presentation and holding it long enough to smirk.

“Yes,” I said. “My teacher.”

Mom and Aunt June exchanged a look.

“What?” I asked.

Mom opened the metal box and took out the original photograph, the same one I had copied for class.

Aunt June held it beneath a blue light.

A tiny symbol glowed near the edge.

A wing.

A ghostly, broken wing.

Mom whispered, “He marked it.”

Before anyone could move, every monitor in the room flickered.

Static filled the screens.

Then a face appeared.

Elias Voss.

Older than in the photograph. Thinner. One side of his face scarred from temple to jaw. But alive.

“Rachel,” he said, smiling faintly. “Still running toward danger. I always admired that.”

Mom stepped in front of me.

“Where is Carter?”

“Safe. For now.”

“What do you want?”

Voss leaned closer to the camera.

“Not what. Who.”

His eyes shifted, as if he could see through the screen directly to me.

“The boy.”

Mom’s voice turned cold.

“You come near my son, I’ll bury you properly this time.”

Voss smiled wider.

“You never told him, did you?”

The room went silent.

Mom did not move.

Voss continued, almost gently, “Lucas, ask your mother why Ghostwing responded only to one pilot’s neural signature. Ask her why they shut the program down after you were born.”

My skin went cold.

“Mom?” I whispered.

Voss’s image glitched.

“She saved Carter,” he said. “But she saved you first.”

The monitors died.