Title: The Deferred prompted by Michael Poole

 Setting: England, 1987 – Thatcher-era tension, Cold War nerves, and military bureaucracy

 Main Character:
Daniel Ashford – a brilliant but socially awkward 25-year-old mechanical engineer from Manchester. He’s just completed a defense-related project for a major military contractor, building experimental terrain-adaptive armor plating.

 Plot Summary:
In 1987, Daniel Ashford receives a shocking letter from the Ministry of Defence: he's being called up for service with the Royal Green Jackets, one of the British Army’s elite infantry regiments. Conscription had long been abolished, but the letter cites a "classified emergency powers provision" — a Cold War contingency law never before enacted.

 Daniel had filed a military deferment years earlier while working on critical defense R&D. That deferment, he discovers, has mysteriously vanished from official records.

 At first, he thinks it's a clerical error. But when he tries to appeal, he's met with silence, threats, and shadowy visits from intelligence officers. The few people who help him—an army lawyer, a former Green Jacket, and his ex-girlfriend (a human rights journalist)—start facing surveillance and harassment.

 Digging deeper, Daniel uncovers a covert military program: Operation HOLLOW TREE. It involves using engineers like him as guinea pigs for experimental battlefield integration—essentially fusing technical minds with frontline roles in ultra-classified war games designed to counter a hypothetical Soviet invasion. And once you're in, you don't come back out.

 The deferment wasn't lost. It was erased.

 Now, Daniel has a deadline: either show up to the Royal Green Jackets' secret training facility in Wales—or be arrested under the Official Secrets Act. His only option is to expose the program without being silenced first.

 Climax:
In a tense courtroom sequence (classic military style), Daniel’s rogue legal team sues the Ministry of Defence in a closed-door judicial review. But the judge is ex-military. The MOD plays dirty, introducing "national security" to seal all evidence.

 Just as the case is about to be buried, Daniel leaks the entire program to a foreign intelligence channel—with evidence that HOLLOW TREE already cost lives. The scandal breaks globally, and Parliament is forced to shut the operation down.

 Ending:
Daniel disappears into quiet exile in Jersey Channel Islands, his name cleared but his future uncertain. The case becomes a footnote in Cold War history, but those who know the truth—know how close Britain came to using its own civilians as pawns in a hidden war.