Fallon sat on her bunk, finally alone. She had cried in private, the jagged, suffocating weight of Portsmouth coming back to her in the silence. What had happened? The question circled her mind like a predator. Something had killed or cleared out hardened Navy personnel without a single bullet being fired. What could possibly do that? As she went to close the book, a white sticky note fluttered to the floor. She leaned down, picking it up with trembling fingers.
'Morse code key. 112 general H enacting protocol 12'
"Hardaker, you son of a bitch," Fallon whispered into the silence of her cabin.
The name carried the weight of a dozen classified briefings and cold, windowless rooms. She didn't need to wonder what he was capable of; she had seen his signatures on the contingency files that everyone else had prayed would stay buried in the archives. If anyone could survive the sky falling, it would be him. He was a man who saw the world not as a home, but as a series of strategic assets to be managed, sacrificed, or burned as necessary. She hoped, with a jagged, conflicting ache, that somewhere he was still breathing. Not because she missed him, but because he was the only one who would have the answers to the nightmare unfolding on the surface.
She looked at the sticky note again. If Hardaker had left a breadcrumb trail to a Morse key on frequency 112, he was waiting for someone with enough steel in their spine to answer. It was a summons, draped in the guise of a lucky find. Fallon stood up, the grief of Portsmouth hardening into a cold, focused anger. She shoved the note into her pocket and headed for the door. She didn't have time to mourn anymore. If Hardaker was at the other end of that frequency, she was going to find out exactly why the Protocol he had authored was being enacted now.
***
The red battle-lamps of the bridge cast long, bleeding shadows across the consoles. As Fallon stepped onto the deck, the night watch didn't even salute. They remained hunched over their stations, their pale faces streaked with the exhaustion and the crushing weight of the decision she had made earlier that day.
She felt the cold shoulder, the silent judgment vibrating in the cramped space, but she didn't care. It was her burden to carry. Despite their resentment, she secretly hoped they would all live long enough to one day have to make the same impossible choices themselves. Survival was a debt paid in blood, and she had just settled the first installment.
"Where's the XO?" she asked the watch officer.
Sioban looked up, her eyes bloodshot and hollow, reflecting the amber glow of the sonar array. She hesitated for a heartbeat, her fingers twitching near the comms toggle.
"Erm... I think he's in the mess, Ma'am," the watchwoman answered, her voice sounding thin and brittle in the recycled air.
Fallon nodded curtly, not waiting for a formal dismissal she knew wasn't coming. She turned on her heel, her boots clicking sharply against the metal deck plates.
The walk to the mess deck felt longer than usual. Every rating she passed seemed to shrink into the shadows of the companionways, avoiding eye contact. The ship was holding its breath, waiting for the reality of their situation to finally settle. She found the mess hall bathed in a dim, flickering light.
The smell of the Grade A rations actual meat and seasoned vegetables wafted through the area, a cruel irony given the mood of the men. Chris was sitting alone at the end of a long, bolted-down table. He had a mug of coffee between his hands, the steam rising in a lazy coil toward the overhead pipes. He looked like a man who had reached his limit and kept walking anyway.
"The watch thinks you're hiding, Chris," Fallon said, stepping into the room.
He didn't look up, but his grip tightened on the mug.
"I'm not hiding, Elira. I'm just trying to remember what it's like to eat a meal that didn't come out of a tube."
"Leave the coffee," she said, her voice dropping to a low, commanding register.
"We need to talk about frequency 112. And we need to do it away from prying ears."
***
In Fallon's office was a claustrophobic box of brushed steel and shadowed corners. She waited until the heavy hatch was dogged shut, the metallic *thud* sealing them off from the rest of the boat.
"Hardaker sent this," Fallon said, her voice a low vibration.
She shoved the note into Chris's hand.
She watched his eyes track the jagged handwriting. In the dim light, his face seemed to age another decade. He turned the small slip of paper over, as if looking for a hidden catch, a joke, or a reprieve.
"Key 112? Protocol 12?" Chris looked up, his brow furrowed in genuine confusion.
"Elira, 112 is a ghost frequency. It hasn't been used since the Cold War trials. And Protocol 12... I've seen the contingency headers, but the files were always empty."
"That's because they weren't files, Chris. They were instructions for a world that no longer exists."
Fallon leaned against her desk, the cold edge of the metal pressing into her spine. She kept her voice just above a whisper, knowing that even in a nuclear submarine, the walls had ears.
"What I am about to tell you, Chris, is above TTC Level 1. It's White-papered."
Chris froze. "White-papered?"
It was a term few ever heard and even fewer survived knowing. It meant the information didn't officially exist; it was a black directive, off-ledger and beyond any oversight. It was the survival of the state at the expense of its people.
"Protocol 12 is the 'Evisceration' directive," Fallon continued, her eyes locked onto his.
"It's not about rebuilding, and it's not about rescue. It's a scorched-earth policy designed to ensure that if the central government falls, nothing and no one is left behind for an enemy to use."
Chris looked down at the note, his thumb brushing the corner of the paper.