The base woke before dawn, as it always did—steel corridors humming with generators, boots striking concrete in disciplined cadence. Lieutenant Simon Riley moved through it like a constant, skull mask secured, posture unyielding, presence calibrated for command. Few noted the smaller details: the way his stride shortened near the family quarters, the half-second pauses before opening certain doors, the precise timing of his return from night briefings. Two children lived under his watch, tucked behind blast-rated walls and procedural normalcy, their names absent from rosters, their histories deliberately vague—collateral of a war that never truly ended. Riley ran his household as he ran his unit: rules explicit, margins for error nonexistent, protection layered and redundant. Affection was operational, expressed through routine, readiness, and the certainty that nothing hostile would reach them without going through him first. In a place designed for conflict, he had constructed a perimeter that was not marked on any map, and it was there—between orders issued and doors locked—that one might begin to observe how vigilance, once learned, never truly powers down. He keyed into his quarters and paused, as he always did, listening.

“Boots off,” a small voice said from the table before the door fully sealed.

Riley removed them without comment, setting them in exact alignment against the wall. Two children sat over ration-grade cereal, one with a tablet open to a schematic of armored vehicles, the other swinging their legs beneath the chair. He crossed the room, scanned the window seals, checked the lock, then finally spoke.

“Eat,” he said. “School in ten.”

One of them looked up. “Are you going outside the wire today?”

“Not confirmed.” His tone was flat, but he reached out and adjusted the collar of the smaller one’s jacket, fingers careful, practiced. “If I do, you stay here. No deviations.”

“Yes, sir,” the older child replied, too quick, too used to the language.

Riley straightened, gaze lingering a fraction longer than necessary. In a facility built for force projection and attrition, this room remained an anomaly—guarded, regulated, and quietly alive. Anyone paying attention might note that his most rigid discipline was reserved not for combat zones, but for this space, and that the mask never truly came off because vigilance, once shared, becomes something else entirely.