The hangar was quiet — that rare kind of stillness that only came after a storm. The metallic scent of jet fuel still hung in the air, mingling with dust and hydraulic oil. Fluorescent lights buzzed faintly overhead, washing everything in pale yellow.

Sarah Mitchell moved carefully along the Black Hawk’s fuselage, her gloved hand tracing each rivet like she’d done a thousand times before. The night shift was thankless, but it was steady. Nobody noticed the woman pushing a mop bucket or wiping down cockpit glass — and that was exactly how she liked it.

Until tonight.

Colonel Davis strode in, clipboard in hand, his polished boots clicking against the concrete. He barely glanced at the workers — just another routine inspection before dawn. Then his eyes caught something — a patch, half-hidden beneath Sarah’s rolled-up sleeve.

Black. Embroidered in subdued thread.
A winged dagger over a crescent moon.

His throat went dry.

He took a step closer. “Where did you get that patch?”

Sarah froze. Slowly, she lowered the rag, meeting his gaze with eyes too sharp, too knowing for a janitor.

“I think you’re mistaken, sir,” she said quietly.

But Davis wasn’t. He’d seen that insignia once before — in a file stamped CLASSIFIED: JSOC EYES ONLY.
The patch that didn’t exist.
The unit that officially never was.

Task Force 160.
Night Stalkers.

And suddenly, the cleaner standing before him wasn’t Sarah Mitchell. Not anymore.

“You’re… Jessica Hayes,” he whispered, the name barely leaving his lips. “You died in the—”

“Training accident,” she finished for him, her tone flat, her eyes unreadable. “That’s what the report said.”

The air in the hangar shifted — heavy, electric, charged with a truth no one dared speak.

---

Ghosts in the Rotor Wash

Davis took a slow step closer. “Jesus Christ, Jess… it is you.”

She turned away, gripping the edge of the cockpit frame. “Not anymore.”

He stared at her, unable to process what he was seeing. Jessica Hayes — the best pilot he’d ever flown with, the woman who’d pulled impossible insertions in enemy territory — had vanished eight years ago during a covert mission in the Hindu Kush. Wreckage was found. Bodies weren’t.

“Where the hell have you been?” he asked.

She didn’t look up. “Off the radar. Where you left me.”

“Left you?” His voice cracked. “We searched for weeks.”

“No,” she said quietly. “You searched for what you were allowed to find.”

That hit harder than he expected. He looked around the hangar — at the mechanics pretending not to listen, at the way the air seemed suddenly thinner — and then motioned toward the side door. “We can’t do this here.”

She hesitated, then followed.

---

The Truth Beneath the Floodlights

Outside, the desert wind howled across the tarmac. Davis stood beside her under the security lights, their shadows stretching long and thin.

“I need to know,” he said. “What really happened that night.”

Jessica’s eyes drifted toward the dark horizon, where distant choppers slept under tarps. “You already know the story they wrote. Five aircraft downed. No survivors. Mechanical failure.”

“And the truth?”

She turned to him then — and the look in her eyes made him shiver. “The truth was inconvenient.”

He waited.

She finally spoke.

“We were sent in to extract a deep asset — a defector from an allied government. Orders came straight from JSOC command. But the intel was bad. We landed into an ambush. Four birds destroyed in the first thirty seconds.”

Her voice was calm, too calm. “I was the fifth.”

Davis felt his pulse quicken. “You made it out?”

She nodded faintly. “Barely. Broke my leg, cracked a few ribs. The defector didn’t make it. But before he died, he told me something — about where the intel came from.”

“What did he say?”

She hesitated. “He said it came from inside.”

Davis blinked. “Inside JSOC?”

“Higher,” she said. “Langley.”

---

Buried Alive

For a moment, the only sound was the wind.

“Jessica,” Davis said carefully, “you’re talking about accusing—”

“Not accusing,” she interrupted. “I’m remembering.”

She crossed her arms, watching his expression. “After I made it out, I tried to report what happened. My transmission was intercepted before it reached command. Next thing I knew, I was listed MIA — then dead.”

He felt his stomach turn. “So they buried you to protect themselves.”

Her jaw tightened. “They buried everyone.”

Davis rubbed a hand over his face. “You’ve been off-grid ever since?”

She gave a small, bitter smile. “You can’t exactly file for unemployment when your own government erased you. Cleaning hangars was the safest cover I could find near base. Keeps me close to the birds.”

He looked at her differently now — not as a ghost, but as a survivor. A soldier betrayed and still standing.

“Why now?” he asked softly. “Why let me see that patch?”

She met his eyes. “Because I need help.”

---

The Black Box

Jessica reached into her cleaning cart and pulled out a small metal container, no larger than a lunchbox. She held it out.

“I found this last week. Maintenance crew brought in a damaged MH-60 for retrofitting. The ID numbers matched one of the birds from our mission. This was wedged under the seat rail.”

Davis took it. “A black box?”

She nodded. “Encrypted flight data. Voice recorder still intact. If the logs survived, they’ll prove our orders came from somewhere they shouldn’t have.”

He felt the weight of it in his hands — more than metal. More than memory.

“You realize what you’re asking,” he said. “If this gets out—”

“I know,” she said. “They’ll come for me. Maybe for you too. But this can’t stay buried.”

He stared at her for a long time. The fluorescent lights from the hangar flickered across her face, catching the faint shimmer of the winged dagger tattooed just below her wrist — the mark of a Night Stalker. The mark she’d once sworn to die for.

Finally, he nodded. “All right. I’ll take it to someone I trust.”

---

Return of the Night Stalker

Two days later, Davis stood in his office at Fort Bragg, the black box on his desk. His phone buzzed — an encrypted call. Unknown number.

He hesitated, then answered.

A woman’s voice. Calm. Steady. Familiar.
“Colonel, they know.”

His chest went cold. “Jessica?”

“You need to leave. Now.”

He moved to the window — saw two black SUVs pulling up outside the admin building. Men in plain suits, no insignia.

“Jesus Christ,” he whispered. “You were right.”

“Burn the box,” she said. “And whatever happens, don’t trust the uniform.”

The line went dead.

---

Aftermath

By morning, Fort Bragg buzzed with rumors. The Colonel’s office had burned overnight — electrical fire, they said. No injuries. No classified material lost.

Officially, nothing happened.

Unofficially, men with clearance levels too high to question spent weeks combing the ashes.

And somewhere far from base — in a dusty motel off a forgotten highway — a woman sat alone, cleaning the grease from her hands. The winged dagger patch rested beside her on the bedspread.

She turned it over, revealing a second layer stitched beneath — coordinates, written in thread so fine it looked like veins.

Jessica Hayes smiled faintly.

“Let’s finish what they started,” she murmured.

Outside, the night hummed with rotor blades.