He called it the Petrov Review after the friend he'd lost 9 years ago, though for a long time only Colonel Hollis knew why. Every new pilot, every new engineer went through it. And the first lesson, the one Marcus taught personally, the one he never delegated, was always the same. The most important person in any room, Marcus would tell them, is the person willing to say the uncomfortable thing. The person who raises their hand and says, "I think we have a problem. " when everyone else wants to keep moving.
That person is not slowing you down. That person is saving your life. And if you ever work in a place that punishes that person instead of thanking them, you leave. You leave that day. Because a company that silences its honest voices is a company that is going to kill somebody.
I know. I've seen it. I've buried a friend because of it. Never let it be you and never let it be your company. And every time he gave that speech in the back of the room, more often than not, sat Evelyn Carter listening, taking notes, learning to be the leader she'd never been from a man she'd once called the cleaning staff.
The time was 6 months after the flight when Colonel Frank Hollis came to visit Falcon Dynamics and Marcus took him up to the roof of the building where they could talk without anyone hearing. "They're talking about you in Washington, you know. " Hollis said. "The old program. Some of the men who ran it are still around. Words gotten back to them that you're alive, that you're flying, that you're teaching.
There's talk of formally correcting your record, restoring your name, everything they took. Marcus was quiet for a while. I don't need my name back, Frank. He said finally. I made peace with losing it a long time ago.
I know you did, but your daughter deserves to know who her father really was. And Petrov's kid, the one who was born after that child, deserves to know the truth about what happened to their father and about the man who did everything he could to bring him home. Hollis put a hand on Marcus's shoulder. You've spent nine years carrying that alone, son. Let them give you back your name.
Not for you, for them. For the people who deserve the truth. Marcus looked out over the city and he thought about Petrov's child growing up somewhere out there, believing whatever story they'd been told. And he thought about his own daughter and the picture over her bed. And the four words she'd written under it before she ever knew they were true.