The canister rolled across the bunker floor and stopped beneath the ventilation grille.
White smoke began pouring from its seams.
“Behind the divider,” I told the scouts.
Private Ellis was already on the ground, one leg twisted beneath her. Corporal Mara Chen crawled after me with her injured arm pressed against her chest. I dragged Ellis across the concrete, then pulled an emergency blanket from its wall case and pushed it into the gap beneath the divider.
The blast door closed with a heavy metallic thud.
Mara looked up. “Who shut us in?”
Through the small observation window, I saw Commander Sterling crossing the yard toward his armored transport.
“He did.”
Sterling had sent us into the bunker to retrieve an operation ledger before an inspection team arrived. He said the records needed to be secured. Inside, I found patrol reports with changed dates and quantities. Supplies had been moved through the forward post, then removed from the official inventory.
I had radioed Sterling to tell him what I’d found.
Less than a minute later, the door sealed.
I pulled the emergency wall alarm. Its light flashed red through the window.
“Three personnel inside Bunker Four,” I said into the intercom. “Two injured. Smoke entering the room. Open the blast door.”
Sterling answered. “Remain where you are. Rescue is coming.”
His transport engine started before he finished speaking.
Ellis heard it. She looked at the door, then at the smoke gathering above us.
“Is he leaving?”
I kept my voice steady. “The fire team has the alarm.”
We stayed low. I checked that both scouts could answer me and shifted Ellis farther from the ventilation grille. Mara helped hold the blanket in place with her good hand.
Outside, the transport moved away.
Then sirens sounded.
The base fire team arrived through the east access road. I could hear their voices beyond the door as they checked the control panel. When it finally opened, fresh air reached us first. Firefighters brought Ellis and Mara out while another team dealt with the canister.
A medic took the scouts to a treatment vehicle. I followed with the ledger held against my chest.
Across the yard, Sterling’s transport was stopped near the gate. A military police officer stood beside its open door.
Sterling walked toward us as though he had come to supervise the rescue.
“Are they all right?” he asked.
“They’re being examined.”
He glanced at the ledger. “I’ll take that.”
I held it out to the investigator who had arrived with the MPs. She placed it in an evidence sleeve before Sterling could touch it.
He gave a short, disbelieving laugh. “This was a scheduled evacuation drill.”
The investigator checked the exercise board on her tablet. “There’s no drill listed.”
“Then someone failed to update it.”
She turned the screen toward him. The bunker door-control log showed a remote seal command from the terminal inside his transport.
Sterling’s face tightened.
“Another officer had access to that terminal.”
“That’s possible,” the investigator said. “We’ll establish who used it.”
Mara approached with her arm in a sling. She stopped when she saw the ledger lying open inside its sleeve.
The investigator had turned to the final altered patrol report. It listed the canister as evidence disposal equipment, issued that morning. Beside the authorization was Mara’s name and digital signature.
“I didn’t sign that,” she said.
Sterling looked at her. “Corporal, be careful.”
Mara did not look away from the page. “I was in the medical building this morning. Ellis was with me.”
Ellis, sitting on the treatment vehicle’s step, raised her head. “She never touched a terminal.”
The investigator photographed the report. “Where were you at the time shown here?”
Mara gave her the medical building and the name of the clinician who had treated her arm. Sterling interrupted before she could finish.
“You’re relying on two injured scouts’ memories?”
“No,” Mara said. “The clinic scanned my identification card when I arrived.”
Sterling went quiet.
The investigator examined the entry more closely. Mara’s credentials had authorized the canister at 08:12. The clinic had scanned her card at 08:09, and she had remained there until 08:46. The supply depot was on the opposite side of the base.
Sterling’s explanation had changed from a drill, to another officer using his terminal, to a wounded scout authorizing the equipment. None of those claims explained why he had driven away after hearing us report smoke inside the bunker.
The investigator asked an MP to secure his transport.
Inside it, they found a portable terminal. Sterling said he had not used it that morning. The MP left it powered on for the technical team and recorded the position of every item in the cab.
Mara sat beside Ellis while the medic checked her arm again. I brought them water.
“I thought he chose us because we were on the retrieval roster,” Mara said.
“So did I.”
She stared toward the bunker. “He asked for my card yesterday. Said he needed to verify our access before the inspection.”
That gave the investigator a place to look.
The access office confirmed Sterling had held Mara’s card for eleven minutes. The ledger showed her authorization had been created during that window, then set to activate the next morning. Someone had prepared the entry before sending us into the bunker.
By evening, the investigators had traced the altered patrol reports to shipments that never reached the forward post. The amounts were large enough to account for months of missing supplies. The reports carrying my team’s signatures had been changed after we filed them.
Mara and Ellis had not been sent into Bunker Four to help retrieve a ledger. Their names were on the records Sterling needed to bury.
I visited them at the medical unit that night. Ellis’s leg was braced, and Mara’s arm was still in its sling. Both were tired. Both wanted to give their statements.
Mara had one question before the investigator arrived.
“If Sterling forged my authorization, who gave him the canister?”
The answer came from the depot issue log. A supply clerk had released it after receiving Mara’s scheduled request. The clerk had also saved the accompanying message because its wording seemed strange.
The request instructed him to deliver the canister directly to Sterling’s transport.
The investigator showed us the message on her tablet. It ended with Mara’s forged signature—and included a second approval from someone above Sterling in the supply chain.
I recognized the name. That officer was due to lead the inspection the following morning.
Mara read it twice, then looked at me.
“He wasn’t leaving before they found us,” she said.
I looked back at the approval.
“He was going to tell someone the ledger survived.”
