Isaac had a listless sleep that night. However, when he woke up the next morning, he felt confident in talking to Stockham. Both Reed and Babs raised good points in opposition, but Isaac needed Stockham’s resources, and Stockham needed his cultivator cadets as a fighting force. Isaac fully understood that one day, Stockham might have no further use for him, but he would have to cross that bridge when he got there. Right now, it was a matter of survival.

Reed and Babs were nowhere to be found. Presumably, they woke up earlier and left Isaac to his business. He didn’t blame them - they were in a messy situation, and their lives were tied to his decisions now. He felt a pang of guilt - when Greg died in his arms, he spoke of how, by digging into the conspiracy, he prevented Isaac from living a normal life. And now perhaps Isaac would do the same to Reed and Babs.

But they made their decisions, too. We’re not smalltown laborers, nor are we children. Reed ran away to the Navy, recruited me, and even saved me from the State Police. And Babs is fully onboard with changing this country.

The guilt never fully went away, but it condensed into just a very small thing in the back of his mind. Feeling much more confident now, Isaac departed the barracks, still conscious of the stares of the enlisted men as he passed by them. When he made it outside, he was greeted by - what else - the particular smell of Reed’s cigarettes.

She leaned against a lamppost outside the building, looking off into the distance. When she saw Isaac approach, she tilted her head and ashed the cigarette against the bottom of her shoe (perhaps she learned her lesson about tossing cigarettes away).

Neither of them said anything for a while. All the anger of last night disappeared from her face; she kept her eyes closed, her face twisted with internal turmoil, until she finally opened her eyes. “I’ll go with you to Stockham,” she declared. “Don’t get the wrong idea - I came to this decision myself after a long night of heart-wrenching soul-searching. But you have a point. If I do nothing or run away again, then what? People just keep getting lobotomized? I can’t let that happen.”

She nodded confidently, perhaps at herself. “I already ran away once. I’m not doing it a second time.”

Isaac sighed in relief. He felt better about approaching Stockham in a group. “Thanks, Reed.”

“You owe me sandwiches after this,” she quickly informed him. “But let’s do this.”

After all the events of last night, the base had finally settled down again. Isaac supposed he should’ve been at morning reveille and training, but the events of last night and current need to speak with Stockham gave him a good excuse not to go. As they headed down the road, another familiar face came to greet him. Babs stood ahead of them, her hands in her pockets, a disgruntled look on her face.

“I still think this is a terrible idea,” she reminded them. But then her face relaxed. “But you know why opposition to the status quo always fails? Because people can never agree on how to change the status quo, or what the world should look like afterwards. The only way to win is to fight as a united front. So, I don’t agree with it, but I’ll go with you guys. Squad 3 needs to stick together.”

Isaac smiled in appreciation. “Thanks, Babs.”

Babs gave him a thumbs-up, and the group of three, now at full-strength, headed to the administrative keep at the back of the base. Right as they arrived, Isaac’s classroom teacher Shokahu stepped outside and looked at the group with dull surprise.

“Good timing,” he informed them. “Stockham was just about to call you for a meeting. We should get going.”

The classroom teacher with his perpetual thousand-yard stare led them silently through the maze of hallways and floors of the administrative building. Isaac, having been there enough times, was sort of getting the hang of it, and recognized the hallway to Stockham’s office as they arrived. Shokahu knocked on the big mahogany door to the office, then ushered the three inside. He remained outside, closing the door behind them.

“Some night,” Stockham greeted, a mixture of jovialness, exhaustion, and disappointment in his voice. He sat behind his desk, framed pictures of past heroes on his regal-looking walls. The windows behind him revealed the gray sky and blue ocean beyond the shores of Narragansett. “It appears that Sam was murdered by the truck driver of our Machigonne mission. According to the Naval Police version of events, at least.”

That gave Isaac some confidence - Stockham found the deaths suspicious, too. The General struck one of his trademark cigars. “Now, tell me - why exactly was Connor in your room, and what did he say to you?”

This was where things would get tricky. Isaac planned on telling an abridged version of yesterday. When dealing with someone he couldn’t fully trust, he needed to keep some cards close to the chest. No doubt, Stockham was doing the same thing.

Connor likely came to Isaac’s room because he had previously searched it for the journal page and thus had that extra connection with him.

“I think Connor came to me because he previously told me about his sick daughter.”

The smoking gun that made Isaac think the State Police, Restorationists, Army, Zhanghai, and the Naval Police were all working together - Sam, a diehard Restorationist, had been sent to retrieve his journal page.

“The State Police and Army used the Naval Police to end the smuggling investigation. And then Sam died in Naval Police custody. His alleged killer died from a self-inflicted gunshot on the wrong side of the head.”

Of course, Isaac relayed some of the finer details beyond that, but that was the gist of it. Reed and Babs knew about the journal page. So did Mackenzie and Lynn - he could count on the elder Cartwright sibling, but he would have to speak with Lynn later. Beyond that, nobody else needed to know.

Stockham nodded thoughtfully at Isaac’s explanation of yesterday. When Isaac finally finished, Stockham kept quiet. He knocked off a piece of ash from his cigar and stood up, strolling slowly to the window, the gray sky matching the color of his hair.

“I find that a very interesting theory. It closely aligns with my own.” He turned back to them. “I will speak to each of you individually. I will speak to Cadet Spallacio first. The rest of you will wait outside with Shokahu.”

The members of Squad 3 gave each other glances, but Reed and Babs escorted themselves out of the office. Once the door shut behind them, silence settled over the room. Smoke trailed from Stockham’s cigar; he placed it in his ashtray and allowed it to rest. When Stockham gazed at Isaac, he had a grim look on his face - but at the same time, there was a little light in his eyes, dancing with opportunity.

“You’re missing one piece of the puzzle, Isaac. It’s through no fault of your own, but perhaps, with your boots-on-the-ground perspective, you can give me your thoughts on it.” The General looked back at the window, folding his hands behind his back. “I will freely admit it. The raid on Machigonne was a rush job. Cartwright pressured me into including the wounded Kieran, and that is my own fault for listening. And you should have had a conventional marine platoon backing you. But I do have an excuse for that.”

“What is it?”

“As evidenced by Officer Connor, there are people of unknown loyalties within our military. I suspected the same for my cultivator cadets. I am new to my position - no doubt, our enemies would send people to infiltrate my ranks. I now have fifteen cultivator cadet squadrons. You don’t work in a vacuum, Isaac - while you raided Machigonne, I had other squadrons investigate abandoned Zhanghai facilities and known Restorationist depots. They too, on those missions, were sent without backing. I wanted to keep knowledge of the missions on a need-to-know basis.”

A brief patch of sunlight broke through the clouds, illuminating Stockham’s face, now full of ambition. “Their missions were successes. Only your mission suffered calamity. Only myself, the nine cultivator cadets of Squads 1, 2, and 3, and the truck driver knew of the raid on Machigonne. To keep it that way, that’s why it happened just an hour after our briefing. Based on the testimony of the captured civilians, they started burning their papers fifteen minutes before your arrival. So, either they have a great early-warning system, and they somehow knew that their building in particular would be raided, or…”

Isaac's blood ran cold. “Or someone told them." There was a traitor among them. Somehow, after the briefing, somebody warned Machigonne that the raid was coming.

“The traitor is crafty,” Stockham continued. “To throw us off their trail, they utilized the truck driver in the death of Sam. By concocting the story of the truck driver shooting Sam, they wanted us to believe that he was the traitor. And then they had Connor kill him to keep the truth from getting out. Unfortunately for them, their plan wasn’t foolproof.”

Stockham planted his hands on his desk and leaned forward. “Eleven people knew of the raid on Machigonne. I can trust myself. Since you came to me about Connor, I will trust you as well. The truck driver and Kieran are dead. I doubt that, if Kieran was the traitor, he would’ve allowed himself to die. Nor did I believe he had the personality for it. That means, out of the seven remaining cadets, one of them is working for the Restorationists. One of them is a traitor.”

Reed, Babs, Mackenzie, Lynn, Dan, Demetrius, Oksana. One of them had a hand in Kieran’s death. One of them had a hand in the smuggling and human trafficking rings. One of them had a hand in the overarching conspiracy. The thought of any of them being a traitor made Isaac’s stomach roil.

“There’s a lot of circumstantial evidence,” he reasoned weakly. He didn’t want to believe it. Seeing comrades die was tough enough. Seeing comrades betray him might hurt him even more.

“Indeed,” Stockham admitted. “Do you have any thoughts? The traitor must possess the ability to inform Machigonne without speaking to anyone.”

It was foolish of him, but Isaac decided not to have any thoughts at all. These were his friends. Battling a government conspiracy was great when it’s just a faceless entity occasionally sending soldiers after him. But if his friends were involved in that conspiracy, if he had to battle them…he didn’t want to think about it.

“No. Not right now. I’ll give it some thought.”

“Good,” Stockham merely said. Did he also feel sorrow about one of his cadets turning out to be a traitor? Behind his impassive face, Isaac couldn’t tell. “I’ll continue working to narrow down the possibilities. And I won’t rule out the possibility of traitors in Squads 4 and beyond either.”

He gave Isaac the corporate version of a genuine smile. “You’ve done great work for me, Isaac. And I have more you can do. I will have your next assignment in the coming days. This is a two-way street now. Beyond just cadet and general. In exchange for your success in that assignment, I will show you my greatest secret - what I worked on within the Naval Department of Metaphysical Research. It’s not an offer the other cadets will receive. I expect you to remain quiet about everything we discussed in this meeting.”

The downside to knowledge was the sorrow it carried with it. In another life, if he made other decisions, he could've remained an innocent miner in a small town. But despite all his qualms, Isaac couldn’t stop now. He still only scratched the surface of the truth. He had to keep going.

He stood up and saluted. Stockham returned it, and then gestured toward the door.

“Dismissed. You can send in Hibiscus now. No doubt she’ll ask me for a reward in exchange for her services.”

Isaac gave an empty laugh at his joke. He had one more question. “Will you tell her and Babs and everyone else about the traitor?”

Stockham shook his head. “No. And neither will you.”

Isaac could only nod at that. His last sight of the office before exiting was Stockham’s face, which still maintained that mixture of grimness and ambition. When he stepped out into the hallway, Shokahu looked exhausted as Reed counted off on her fingers.

“I think I want a company car. Friday’s off, too. Bare Minimum Monday’s. Daily deliveries of sandwiches.”

She stopped when she saw Isaac approach. The smile on her face disappeared when she saw the look of sorrow on Isaac’s. “Something wrong?”

Isaac looked over both Reed and Babs and considered the possibility of either of them being traitors. It hurt him too much to think about. He knew he would have to at some point, but right now, he just wiped his face and lied.

“Ah, you know. The General just likes to talk for a while. It can get a little tiring.”