He opened the leather folder and held up a document with a dark blue seal.

“You are relieved of command, effective immediately,” Harris said.

Carter let out a long, shaky breath.

He leaned against the metal desk as if his legs could no longer support him.

“This is absurd,” Turner said.

“We have the logs from the *Providence*,” Harris said. “And we have the routing data from your personal terminal.”

The red light on the communications rack continued to blink, casting a rhythmic shadow across Turner’s face.

“The transmission is active,” I said, pointing to the screen. “He’s routing the telemetry files to an external server in Boston.”

Harris nodded to one of his agents.

The second agent, a woman with her hair pulled back tightly, stepped around Turner.

She began typing rapidly on the keyboard.

“Encryption block is active,” she said. “But I can trace the destination.”

“It’s a dummy server,” I said. “He’s using the civilian contractor line to bypass the military firewall.”

Turner glared at me.

“You think you understand how this base runs, Mitchell?” Turner spat. “You sit in your lab with your designs.”