A C-17 transport plane slowly landed at Lambert–St. Louis Air Force Base in Missouri. General Hale, dressed in a blue Air Force uniform, impatiently brushed past everyone else and rushed down the ramp, immediately firing questions at the base officer.
"What did you mean by that signal? What exactly happened?"
Thinking back to the conversation at Malick Estate, General Hale was so nervous she nearly trembled. She certainly had her own calculations, but the Malik family's warning had left her deeply afraid. As an elite who had climbed to the rank of major general, she knew perfectly well that if her ally—rather than an ally, they were more accurately using one another, and she understood that clearly—broke their agreement, she would have no power to resist. She was not a politician who wielded power through votes and campaign donations. She wanted to become a ruler, but she also understood that her ambitions required matching strength.
Several airborne squads followed behind her. This Special Operations Team was the core force she had personally cultivated. In the middle of them stood a petite girl in training clothes, her eyes wide as she curiously observed her surroundings. Nearly platinum-blonde hair flowed over her shoulders. She was the product of the eugenics program that Dr. Daniel Whitehall—or rather, Dr. Werner Reinhardt—had carried on since the Third Reich: General Hale's genetically engineered daughter, Ruby.
According to the agreements between the old families, Ruby would begin shouldering the duty expected of her family. However, General Hale had no intention of allowing her daughter—even though she utterly despised this daughter she had been forced to bear—to become the womb for the next eugenics project, or a sacrificial pawn who climbed upward through a marriage alliance with Baron Strucker's worthless son.
She wanted Ruby to become a woman