Chapter 2: Forging the Weapon

Chapter 2: Forging the Weapon

The name glowed on the screen, a small act of defiance in the quiet dark of the apartment: The Enlisted Deviant. It felt right. It was the title Finch had subconsciously bestowed upon them all, and Leo would wear it as a badge of honor. His war would not be fought with rifles and regulations, but with memes and megabytes. The battlefield was the vast, anonymous digital network that connected every disgruntled sailor, soldier, airman, and Marine on the planet. And Leo, the quiet corpsman with a knack for systems, knew its geography better than most.

The first step in any campaign was reconnaissance. Finch’s letter was the casus belli, but a successful attack required precise intelligence on the target. Leo’s fingers flew across the keyboard, his movements economical and swift. He started with the official Navy databases he still had access to. Dr. Alistair Finch’s service record unspooled on the screen. MD from a prestigious university, PhD in biomedical ethics—the irony made Leo’s lip curl into his trademark smirk. The official photo was a masterpiece of smug condescension: the neatly coiffed hair, the disdainful sneer Maya knew so well, the stethoscope draped around his neck like a prize.

But Leo wasn't interested in the polished façade. He was looking for cracks. The letter had given him the first one: “a brief, regrettable stint in the enlisted ranks of the Army.”

He switched to a different search, cross-referencing military archives. It took some digging, but he found it. Specialist Alistair Finch. A 68W, an Army Combat Medic. Served for three years, got out, and used his GI Bill to fund the pre-med degree that had become his ticket to a new life, a new identity. There were no deployments, no valorous awards. Just three years of service, which he now considered a "youthful indiscretion." He hadn't just climbed the ladder; he'd tried to burn it behind him so no one would know he started on the same rung as everyone else.

Hypocrite. The word echoed in Leo's mind. This was the core of the attack.

Next, he turned to the open source intelligence of social media. Finch’s digital footprint was as curated as his uniform. A LinkedIn profile listing his publications and academic honors. A public Facebook page featuring photos of him at yacht club regattas and wine tasting events, always in a crisp blazer, always with the same self-satisfied expression. He was a man performing the role of an elite officer, a caricature of privilege. It was perfect.

Now, for the weapon itself. Leo knew he couldn't just dump the screenshot of the letter online. That was amateur. An anonymous text dump could be dismissed as a fake. It needed context. It needed a narrative. It needed to be packaged for maximum virality within the unique ecosystem of military online culture.

He opened his graphic design software, the hobby he planned to turn into a career. He created a simple, clean template. At the top, in bold, stark letters, he placed the title: THE GOSPEL OF A TIN GOD.

Below it, he placed Finch's smug official photo next to a stock image of a stuffy, aristocratic man looking down his nose. Then came the text of the letter itself, each contemptuous sentence a payload of pure fury. But Leo wasn’t done. At the bottom, he added the coup de grâce. He juxtaposed Finch’s current rank and title—Lieutenant Commander, Medical Doctor, United States Navy—directly beside his buried past: Former Specialist, Combat Medic, United States Army.

He added a final line of text, the voice of The Enlisted Deviant: “He was one of us once. Now he thinks he’s better than us. Let him know the flock has a voice.”

He saved the image, a perfect, self-contained missile of outrage. Now, he had to choose the launch sites. He bypassed the official channels, the ones monitored by public affairs officers. He went straight for the heart of the enlisted world.

First, the sprawling, semi-lawless Facebook group “Goat Locker Shenanigans,” with its half-million members. Then, the Instagram meme page “Decades of Dependas,” known for its ruthless mockery of military pretension. Finally, the subreddit r/Navy, where the unfiltered opinions of sailors bubbled to the surface daily.

He drafted a short, identical post for each platform. No long-winded explanation. Just a simple, incendiary fuse.

Subject: A message from your ‘intellectual and social betters’

Body: Got this from a source in Yokosuka. Seems a certain O-4 doctor wants to remind the ‘flock’ of their place. Make it famous.

He carefully scrubbed the metadata from the image file he’d created, severing any link back to himself. He triple-checked his VPN, routing his signal through a server in Eastern Europe. Anonymity was his armor.

His finger hovered over the mouse. This was it. The point of no return. For a fleeting second, he thought of his quiet, peaceful exit. The dream of a simple civilian life. He could still close the laptop, delete the files, and let Finch’s arrogance fester in the dark, a minor injustice in a sea of them.

Then he thought of Maya, of Doc Henderson, of every enlisted person who had ever been made to feel small by a man whose only real skill was a sense of entitlement. He thought of the tribe.

His jaw set. The smirk returned to his face, cold and sharp. This wasn't just revenge. It was justice.

He clicked.

Post.

Post.

Post.

The three posts went live almost simultaneously. For a moment, there was only silence, the hum of his laptop the only sound in the room. He felt a strange sense of calm, the feeling a demolitions expert must get after setting the charges and walking away.

Then, the screen blinked.

A single notification. A comment on the r/Navy post.

“Holy shit, is this real?”

Then another. And another.

On Facebook, the share counter began to tick up. 1… 5… 17…

A comment appeared on the “Goat Locker” post from a user with a Chief Petty Officer insignia as their profile picture. “I work in Yokosuka. I know exactly who this piece of shit is. And yes. This is 100% him.”

That was the spark. The validation. The dam broke.

The share counter exploded: 58… 132… 476…

Leo leaned back in his chair, watching the numbers climb with hypnotic speed. The comments flooded in, a tidal wave of shared rage and dark humor from every corner of the armed forces. Corpsmen, mechanics, infantrymen, cooks—the entire enlisted world was waking up. They were sharing it, tagging their friends, adding their own stories of arrogant officers.

He hadn't started a fire. He had detonated a fuel-air bomb in a tinder-dry forest. The weapon was forged. The first salvo had been fired. And thousands of miles away, Dr. Alistair Finch was sleeping soundly, completely unaware that the digital world was already burning his effigy and that his life would never be the same. The ghost had begun his haunt.