Death Touch novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Formation

By six the next morning the video was on four hundred phones.

Trina shook me awake and held out hers.

On the little screen I was against steel shelves with my skirt around my waist, and a man's hand held my hip.

The caption read: Lab girl and her sergeant. Staff wing is a brothel.

I did not throw up.

I got dressed, one button at a time, and put on my gloves.

"Mara," Trina said. "I've got something. I got Talmadge's friend's phone from under the gym bleachers. It was still recording."

She held up a second phone.

"I watched it twice. It's everything."

"Bring it."

"What are you going to do?"

"Walk onto the field," I said.

The whole academy stood in formation in the cold dawn, four hundred grey uniforms in straight rows, breath smoking.

Colonel Strake waited on the reviewing stand with his hands behind his back.

Forrest stood at attention at the foot of it, eyes forward, in full dress uniform.

He had not been told to wear it.

He had put it on because he knew.

"Staff Sergeant Dalton," Strake said.

His soft voice carried across the field without a microphone.

"You have violated the conduct of this post. You will surrender your rank and your quarters. Effective immediately you are relieved."

A murmur ran through the ranks.

Brent Talmadge stood at the head of the battalion with a smirk on his face and his bandaged hand in a sling.

I walked out from the staff wing and across the empty ground between the building and the rows.

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