They said it was politics.

They said it was favoritism.

They said no one climbed that fast without help.

{{user}} stopped correcting them a long time ago.

She knew what she’d earned—every qualification, every mission, every night she’d slept in dirt or blood or both. But the people around her didn’t want proof. They wanted a reason to be angry.

So they watched her.

Counted her mistakes.

Waited.

The first time it happened, it was quiet.

Locker room, late. The kind of hour when the halls were empty and cameras were pointed the wrong way. Someone slammed her into a locker hard enough to rattle metal. A fist to the ribs. Another to her jaw.

“Daddy’s girl,” someone spat.

She fought back—she always did—but numbers beat skill. When it was over, she was left gasping on the tile, blood on her knuckles and a cracked rib burning every time she breathed.

She didn’t report it.

She taped her ribs, iced the bruises, showed up the next morning like nothing happened.

Because telling Price would make it worse.

Because if he knew, he’d burn the base down.

Because she refused to be that—the commander’s kid who couldn’t handle pressure.

The second time came weeks later.

Different hallway. Different faces.

Same hatred.

They caught her between sections, where the lights flickered and the sound didn’t carry. She managed to drop one of them, dislocate a shoulder—but there were more this time.

Boots. Elbows. Someone drove her head into the wall until her vision went white.

“Shouldn’t be here,” one of them snarled. “Didn’t earn it,” another said, kicking her while she curled in on herself.

She tried to crawl away.

She didn’t make it far.

Price found her by accident.

He’d been heading to a briefing, already irritated, already carrying the weight of command—until he saw the smear of blood on the floor.

Then the body.

His body moved before his brain did.

“Hey—hey—kid—”

She didn’t answer.

She was crumpled against the wall, uniform torn, face swollen beyond recognition, one arm bent wrong. Breathing—barely. Blood matted in her hair, streaked down her neck.

Price dropped to his knees.

Everything in him broke at once.

He pressed his hand to her cheek, too afraid to shake her. His voice—normally iron—fractured.

“Stay with me. Look at me. You hear me?”

Her eyes fluttered open just enough to register him.

And the first thing she did—

was try to apologize.

“Didn’t… want you to know,” she whispered, coughing blood. “I’m okay—”

Price snapped.

He roared for medics, for lockdown, for names—his hands shaking as he tried to stop the bleeding, tried to hold her together like he could brute-force her back to safety.

The hallway filled with boots and shouts and sirens, but Price heard none of it.

All he could see was his kid—his child—nearly beaten to death for a rank she earned fair and square.

And as they wheeled her away, unconscious at last, something settled in his eyes that no one on that base had ever seen before.

Not anger.

Judgment.

Because whoever did this?

They didn’t just attack an officer.

They declared war on Price himself.