The first page was a warning he’d never seen before:
But now he remembered: for those four seconds, the cockpit had smelled like rain on hot asphalt. And his left hand, resting on the throttle, had felt… cold. Not the cold of high altitude. The cold of something passing through .
He pressed the button. The slate smoked and died. The vault was silent.
The vault was a concrete coffin deep inside the Nevada base. Vance swiped his palm, retina, and a voice print. The slate glowed to life. ntrp 3-22.2-fa18a-d
The Reflection does not fly the aircraft. The Reflection flies the space around the aircraft. It inserts itself into the pilot’s sensorium—radar, RWR, even the seat-of-the-pants feel. By the time you see it on your left wing, it has already rewritten your vestibular system. Your horizon is now its horizon. Your fear is its targeting data.
Vance turned the page.
But he felt something watching from that direction anyway. Patient. Frequency-tuned. And very, very cold. The first page was a warning he’d never
But here it was. Codified. Procedure number: NTRP 3-22.2-FA18A-D.
Vance stared at the words. Then he looked at the date on the wall. Tomorrow morning at 0600, he was scheduled for a routine proficiency flight. In an F/A-18C. Solo.
Commander Elias Vance walked out into the Nevada night, the stars cold and sharp overhead. He didn’t look left. He didn’t look left all the way back to his quarters. The cold of something passing through
And it only appeared when the pilot was alone. Emotionally isolated. The manual had a clinical term: Acoustic Cognitive Lacuna —a specific, measurable state where a pilot’s mind was so fatigued, so overtasked, that their brain’s natural threat-verification systems began to oscillate at 3.5 hertz. That frequency, the manual claimed, was a door.
The manual had no title, only an alphanumeric ghost: . It arrived on a sealed, radiation-shielded data slate, hand-delivered by a two-star’s aide who refused to make eye contact. “Read this in the vault. No notes. No digital copies. Your eyes only. Then we burn it.”
Reading this manual makes you visible to the Reflection for a period of not less than 72 hours. You are now a designated observer. Do not fly solo. Do not fly at night. Do not under any circumstances fly an F/A-18 A, B, C, or D model within the next three calendar days. If you have flown one in the past 30 days, report to psychological services immediately. Do not explain why. Say the words: “I need to update my will.” They will know what to do.
He almost laughed. A prank. Someone had embedded a creepypasta into a military publication. But the authentication watermarks were real—NSA, Fleet Forces Command, and a third logo he didn’t recognize: a black key inside a white circle.
And then, for exactly four seconds, his radar had painted a target directly off his left wingtip. Co-altitude. Co-speed. No transponder. He’d looked. Nothing there but dark sky and the faint glow of oil fires. He’d blinked, and the return was gone.