Project Black Flag

The flag in Simon’s hands was heavier than it looked. His mother had held it first, trembling as she pressed it to her chest. Then, she passed it to him. The cloth was smooth beneath his fingers, crisp from careful folds, but it felt wrong—like something stolen, something that shouldn’t be his. The stars on the blue field left indentations in his palms, as if the weight of a nation’s lies were pressed into his skin.

Twelve years old, Simon barely understood the words the colonel said—“noble sacrifice,” “just cause.” The man’s voice was practiced, his expression a mask of granite, but Simon noticed the way his lips tightened. Behind him, the television flickered silently: soldiers kicking down doors, the desert wind throwing sand against the lens, bodies crumpled in the dirt. The colonel’s polished shoes crushed a dandelion growing through a crack in the graveside pavement. Simon’s gaze followed the severed stem, oozing white sap, its tiny surrender an echo of something larger.

In the kitchen, his mother had left the news on, and the broadcaster’s voice carried through the house: "Enemy forces using children to scout for landmines. 'Golden Children,' they called them—wearing enchanted armbands to protect them from explosions."

That night, Simon woke to voices downstairs. He heard the clink of glass on wood; the low murmur of men who didn’t belong there. He crept halfway down the stairs, crouching to peer through the railing. The grandfather clock ticked, its steady rhythm now a countdown. 2:17 AM. Jamie had been dead for nine days. Officially, anyway.

Two officers sat in his father’s chair, drinking whiskey. Their uniforms lay discarded on the floor, sleeves rolled up against the heat. One of them sighed, rubbing his temple. Simon recognized the insignia on his jacket—the same eagle clutching arrows that adorned Jamie’s coffin plaque.

“They knew Delta was clean,” one muttered.

“Doesn’t matter,” the other replied. “Covington needed the ‘Golden Children’ story to stick.”

Simon’s breath hitched.

“And the Carys boy?”

The first officer stared into his glass, exhaling slowly. “Collateral damage.”

Simon’s grip tightened around the empty tumbler in his hand. He turned to leave, but the ice inside shifted, clinking against the sides. The room below fell silent. When he glanced back, the two men were watching him. Their eyes held something—cold, knowing. Like he was already a ghost.

Simon backed up the stairs on bare feet, silent as the dead. By the time he heard his father's steps in the hall and the officers’ voices brightening into false camaraderie—he was already in bed, staring at the ceiling. The house hummed with lies beneath him.

Twelve years later, the air in the briefing room was thick with sweat and burnt coffee. The heat seeped through the canvas tent, making the projector screen flicker as it displayed its message. A fly buzzed against Simon’s notepad, drawn to the salt stains from his wrists. He wondered if the drones they were about to deploy would atomize insects mid-flight—incinerate entire ecosystems along with the ‘high-value targets.’

Eclipse Project: confirmed enemy weapons development.

The slide changed.

Flesh-melting drones.

Another.

Human battery labs.

Simon sat in the back, notepad balanced on his knee. His pen hovered over the page, but he wasn’t writing. He was staring at the words, the way they sat on the screen—sterile and absolute. The briefing officer droned on, clicking through bullet points, emphasizing “high-confidence sources.” The man’s pointer finger had a nicotine stain. Simon imagined him lighting a cigarette off the first bomb’s explosion.

He flipped to the classified dossier in his lap—leaked to him by a contact in intel—and skimmed the appendix:

Source T-14 reliability rating: D (Fabricator).

His grip tightened. The bombs would start falling before the Q&A. Outside, a private contractor whistled while loading crates marked "HUMANITARIAN AID."

The intelligence building had been hit two weeks earlier, leaving it half-collapsed and smelling of burnt paper and piss. Simon stepped through the wreckage, debris shifting beneath his boots. His flashlight skimmed over broken desks, a shattered map case, an overturned file cabinet. A rat scurried past, its tail dragging through a puddle of ink—black liquid bleeding into the cracks of the floor. The building would outlast every lie told here.

He crouched, pushing aside debris until his fingers closed around a piece of paper—charred at the edges, but intact.

The first document he scanned:

A 1988 invoice for tanks sold to the enemy’s Ministry of Defense.

A 1991 memo calling the “Golden Children” intel “fabricated but useful.”

His brother’s mission file. Stamped: LOW-CONFIDENCE.

The breath left Simon’s chest in a sharp exhale. His pulse thudded in his ears. He clenched his jaw, flipping through the pages, searching for anything—anything—that explained why they sent the unit in, knowing it was a lie. Jamie’s service number glared up at him, a cold string of digits: *************. Nine digits to summarize a life. Nine digits to justify a death.

His satellite phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out, stared at the screen.

“New embed rules,” his editor said when he answered. “No more unescorted—”

Simon hung up. He threw the phone against the wall. It hit with a dull crack, then clattered to the floor. The silence that followed was worse. The building seemed to hold its breath, as if even the rubble understood that some lines, once crossed, couldn’t be uncrossed.

That night, Simon slipped past the patrols, hitching a ride with a supply truck headed toward the eastern sector. The warlord’s safehouse was suffocating, the air thick with dust, and cordite. The Butcher of Al-Khadir sat at the head of a long wooden table, fingers adorned with heavy rings, a chipped teacup resting lightly in his hand. Simon recognized the ring on his thumb—stolen from a dead French journalist.

“You Americans,” the Butcher said, voice smooth, almost amused. “Always searching for monsters to match your bombs.”

He gestured lazily, and one of his men stepped forward, setting something on the table between them.

A child’s armband. Faded red cloth, frayed at the edges.

Simon swallowed. “No gold?”

The Butcher laughed, a dry, knowing sound. “You brought the real weapons. We just buried the receipts.”

Outside, an airstrike rumbled in the distance, shaking the walls. The Butcher took a slow sip from his teacup, unbothered. The teacup trembled in Simon’s hand. The distant wail of a funeral chant drifted through the walls. Another family digging shrapnel from bones. The Butcher’s smile never reached his eyes.

“Every war needs two graves,” he said. “One for the body. One for the truth.”

The Chronicle published what they could. Redacted names. Missing pages. Enough truth to make noise, but not enough to shake the machine. The official response was swift: "Misinterpretations. Unverified sources. Reckless journalism."

At the awards dinner, Simon stood in a stiff suit, shaking hands with General Covington. The man’s breath reeked of bourbon.

“Hell of a story,” Covington said, his smile tight. “Pity nobody reads past the headline.”

Simon watched him walk away, medals glinting under the chandeliers. He thought of his brother’s grave. Of the armband on the Butcher’s table. The ink-black sky over the desert, the sound of bombs falling like distant thunder.

He ordered another drink.

Years later, a fresh-faced reporter stood in another war zone, microphone in hand, back straight with the righteousness of the newly embedded.

“Credible reports indicate bioweapons development...”

Simon turned off the screen and leaned back in his chair. He exhaled slowly.

Somewhere, another twelve-year-old was listening. Somewhere, a flag was being folded into a tight, perfect triangle—another mother’s hands shaking as she accepted the weight of it.