their faces and rage in their eyes.

He did not deny it.

He reached for the recorder instead.

What Arman heard next stripped the last illusion from the room.

The tape contained two voices from earlier in the night, before the first penetrator struck the deepest level.

One was Vaziri’s.

The other belonged to Political Supervisor Farrokh, the regime liaison attached to the missile command.

Farrokh demanded confirmation that Chamber Seven had been secured and ordered that no internal seals be opened until inventory was protected.

When Vaziri raised concerns about evacuation, Farrokh cut him off.

No movement below.

No access beyond cleared personnel.

Hold everyone in place.

Inventory, Arman repeated.

What inventory?

Vaziri closed his eyes as if the answer had been waiting behind them for months.

It was not only weapons, he said.

It was proof.

The words came out in pieces.

Procurement records.

Readiness reports.

Fuel allocations.

Maintenance certifications.

For years, the missile cities had been presented as untouchable and fully stocked.

Billions had gone into the mountains.

But Chamber Seven held the documentation of what had been hidden from almost everyone below senior command: missing funds, falsified inspections, empty canisters stored as if they were armed assets, and operational missiles counted multiple times across separate readiness reports to inflate strength on paper.

If the lower ranks saw it during a panic, Vaziri said, the myth would die before the mountain did.

Leila stared at him in disbelief.

So you sealed men in to protect a lie?

Vaziri’s face twisted.

We believed the mountain would hold.

We believed the first wave would pass.

We needed time.

Time for what? Arman snapped.

For them to burn?

Vaziri did not answer directly.

Farrokh had given the order.

Brigadier Naderi, the base commander, had known about the blackout’s severity and had argued for a limited withdrawal when the radar picture vanished on February 28th.

Farrokh refused.

Chamber Seven could not be exposed.

Naderi retreated to a protected transit shaft with a small staff when the first strikes began.

The shaft collapsed.

Whether he died instantly or suffocated later, nobody in the room could say.

Farrokh?

Gone, Vaziri said.

Separate route.

No signal since the second impact.

For a moment the only sound was the strained hum of reserve power.

Then Leila said, Open Chamber Seven.

The colonel hesitated just long enough to condemn himself completely.

Arman took the service key from his neck and used it on the inner lock.

The room beyond was not full of the terror they had imagined.

It was worse.

Rows of missile canisters stood under maintenance cloths, but several were empty shells.

Crates labeled as critical components held scrap packing and obsolete parts.

A wall display showed readiness percentages that no longer matched the physical inventory in front of them.

Burned folders lay scattered beside sealed ledgers.

On one desk, under a paperweight shaped like the national emblem, sat a signed order: No evacuation from lower galleries until restricted inventory is secured.

At the bottom was Farrokh’s authorization code.

That was the decisive break.

Whatever the bombers had done from the sky, this betrayal had happened underground before the first impact reached them.

Leila found a maintenance map inside Chamber Seven showing an overlooked service duct that connected to an emergency shaft.

It was