“Master Chancery Auditor Elena Eleanor Morales-Mercer,” Admiral Mercer announced.
His voice was sixty decibels of mountain quarry explosive, reverberating through the four-bedroom house like heavy naval artillery:
“The Joint Chiefs of Staff have ratified the operational perimeter.”
“The tactical line is established.”
“And the master vellum deed to Conduit Ten… has returned unto the Daughter.”
I lifted my right hand, returning the salute with textbook, eighty-year mechanical symmetry:
“At ease, David.”
I unbuttoned the front of my civilian travel shirt.
Beneath the linen, my immaculate, tailored **Navy Auxiliary Officer Service Uniform** gleamed under the tactical halogen lights.
The golden seal of a **Master Chancery Conservator** sat rigid on my collar.
Three dense rows of combat and service decorations covered my chest.
Pinned to the left lapel of my grandfather’s twenty-ounce Scottish tweed hacking jacket, which Clara Benitez handed to me from her garment bag, was Arthur Mercer Senior’s unpolished bronze surveyor’s transit pin.
Strapped to my left wrist was his restored **1956 Admiralty Gold Chronometer**.
Its sweep-second hand advanced with that deliberate, unhurried sixty-cycle cadence:
*tack… tack… tack.*
Mark stared at my uniform.
His mouth worked in dry, spastic, uncoordinated clicks:
*k-k-k.*
“Auditor…?”
Mark wheezed, his voice rising into that raw, pathetic register of a cornered grifter whose universe has just been vaporized:
