“Lust is a whisper too sweet to deny...”

He holds it in front of his face now, breathing softly on the folds. Cute little hole, clit hiding back, not yet awake, and he wonders who it belongs to. No identifying marks, of course, and he hums and palms his cock as he kisses the clit, nuzzling it, imagining what it would be like on a real girl.

He's never eaten out a girl, either, and this would be a good way to practice.

He licks softly- he's maybe a little nervous- and does it again when the tight little hole clenches. He keeps it up, gentle touches, kisses, feeling out how the pussy responds- the way it throbs a little, getting slick from more than his spit, when he sucks at the clit a bit harder, when he drags his tongue up and down in long sweet licks.

The first spurt of slick, of musky-sweet pussy on his tongue, makes his cock leak, adding to the strokes he's giving himself. Delicious, delicious, and König squirms his tongue inside- so tight!- and goes after more of that taste, letting the smell fill his nose, fisting his cock harder at every gush, every pulsing squeeze around his tongue, feeling the little spasms, and- oh!

König pulls away to breathe, panting, and comes all over his belly.

"Amazing," he says to himself, licking his lips, and sets the portal pussy down to clean up. It shines wetly at him, folds swollen and hole slippery from his tongue, so he tucks it back into his pocket- he might get a chance again later.

He finds himself playing with it, idle, like he might flip a coin between his fingers or click a pen. The clit is firmer now and satisfying to rub his thumb over, feeling the way the rest of the pussy grows wetter, but he's sitting through two meetings for upcoming missions that he needs to be present for. He actually finds it helps him focus.

He ducks into a bathroom after the first meeting and pulls it out. The pussy is swollen and slippery, throbbing when he dares to slip a finger inside, feel the way it squeezes on him. So tight, he doesn't think he could fit his cock inside!

He's never done this before either, and König carefully draws his finger out, feeling the way the pussy clings to him, before pushing back inside with two.

The pussy clenches, shuddering, and he kisses its little clit again. There's a pulsing squeeze around his fingers, and he moves them back and forth, playing with the inner walls, rubbing around the soft, slick tissue. There's a firmer spot he finds, and the pussy gets so wet when he rubs it that he has to pause, and lick the slick away, to avoid a mess.

He only has a few minutes, so König takes his cock out and rubs the head over the pussy, smearing slick around, before he jerks himself off, quick. His come spills over the pussy, some of it sucked inside the clenching little hole, and there's a desperate sort of feeling about it, like the person attached to the other end is shivering, but he doesn't have time to wonder.

König makes it through the day with his little secret, now and then playing with the pussy, a reminder for himself of what he can have later, the wet folds and throbbing clit welcoming his fingers more easily. Two of them pump in and out, soft wet squelches in his pocket, and he keeps an eye out when he passes through the common areas- he doesn't see anyone gasping or moaning, no one stuck red-faced in a corner with their thighs squeezed together, so he figures whoever is on the other end is holed up in their own room.

He's so curious, why leave the portal somewhere it could be found? Was it an accident, did it roll away out of a bag or box? Was it meant to be found by someone else, someone special, a partner who would know the clenching, sweating body on the other side? Maybe the person wanted a stranger to find it, has been walking around with their pussy bare and vulnerable to whoever might pick it up and fuck it.

The thought excites him so much he forgets to be gentle, and his thumb presses down hard over the clit, pussy clenching so tight on his fingers it must ache, and König's cock throbs when there's a sharper spasm, a squeeze drawing his fingers in deeper, and he realizes he made the pussy come.

He all but runs back to his room, and takes the pussy out, looking at it. Dripping slick, flushed and swollen, clit sitting pretty at the top, and König licks it clean, swallowing every drop of cum, sucking at the clit again. Only when there's fresh new slick gushing onto his tongue does he let it go, and pull his own cock out, laying on his bed with his pants down.

The pussy resists him, the tight little hole clenching against the head of his cock, so he uses his fingers to stretch it out more- three spreading wide, feeling all the soft walls and spongy nerves, the wet heat, and when he fits the round head of his cock against it the pussy drools, folds all soft and open, welcoming him, and squeezes the head inside.

He pants, moaning, at the delicious pressure, the way the pussy spasms, straining. He can hold it just like this, swallowing the head of his cock, and he clutches at the cylinder end, pushing down steadily.

Heaven, hot wet slick heaven, pussy quivering around him as he works his length inside. He has to stop and catch his breath halfway down, his bursts of precome slicking the way a little more, and rubs over its clit again, grounding himself with the little firm bud rolling under his thumb-

The pussy spasms, clenching, König moaning as he feels the shuddering waves on his cock this time, the orgasm sucking at him, begging for more, pussy so wet and open, and he howls in relief when he slams it down the rest of the way, a grip around his cock so tight and impossibly sweet he nearly cries. His first time fucking a pussy, and it's perfect, his to play with and enjoy, to sate his throbbing cock inside it.

Looking down, the pussy strains around the fat base of his cock, quivering, and he spits on his fingers to rub the clit again. He wants it again, the deep squeeze and pulse, the hot wet orgasm he can give it, and König fucks the portal pussy up and down over his cock, hard, as fast as he would normally jerk off, keeping his other thumb and fingers pinching on the clit.

The spongy, slippery insides shudder around his cock, and when he grinds it all the way down, clit and folds smashed to his groin, he feels the last resistance on his cock, the end of the pussy, no where else to go- he's filled it up completely, stretched it out, and König moans and shudders as the pussy spasms so hard it hurts, fluids leaking over his skin, musky and tangy and oh, he's coming, his eyes rolled back and his balls tight, shoving his cock deep and deeper into that little circle at the end, where his cock can't go.

Your eyes read the words. Read them again. A third time. Something in the back of your brain is holding the meaning at arm's length, the way you'd hold a door shut against something on the other side, not because you don't know what's there, but because once you let it through, it's through. Your thumb hasn't moved. The screen is very bright against your face and you can feel its heat on your chin, your lower lip, the soft skin under your eyes.

You see the photo.

John in his dress uniform. Smiling. Not the thin, tired version he gave you at the end- the real one, wide and warm, the one with the lines around his eyes that you used to trace with your finger in bed. The one you spent the last year of your marriage trying to earn back, rearranging yourself into smaller and smaller shapes to make room for whatever was wrong, and here it is. On his face. Given freely. To someone else.

And next to him, a woman. Brunette. Her hand flat on his chest, his arm around her waist. A wedding dress. White lace. Elegant. Expensive. She's looking up at him the way you used to look up at him, and he's looking back, and the expression on his face is one you recognize down to the muscle- every tendon, every crease- except it's not pointed at you. It was never going to be pointed at you again.

Elena Price.

The date stamp: three days ago.

Two weeks after you signed the papers. Two weeks after he looked you in the eye and told you there was nothing to fix. Two weeks after he let you beg him not to leave.

Two. Weeks.

Your hand is shaking. The screen judders, the photo smearing, and you realize it's not just your hand, it's your whole arm, tremoring from the shoulder down, the muscles firing without input. You can feel your heartbeat in your throat now. Not racing. Lurching. Arrhythmic, skipping, like a record needle dragged across a groove.

Your finger swipes. More photos. The ceremony. The reception. The cake. John kissing her, one hand on the small of her back, the other cradling her jaw, the same way he used to hold your face when he kissed you goodbye before deployments, his thumb tracing the line of your cheekbone like he was memorizing it in case he didn't come back.

He'd been practicing on you.

And in the background-

Your breath hitches, gets caught, your chest spasming. 

Gaz. Suit and tie, champagne glass raised.

Soap. Laughing, his arm around someone you don't recognize.

Laswell. Talking to an older woman. Smiling.

They were there.

They were at his fucking wedding.

Something happens in your chest deep behind your sternum, like a shelf pulling away from a wall in slow motion, plaster dust and screws and everything that was holding it up just… letting go. Your diaphragm contracts. Your mouth opens. Nothing comes out. Your lungs pull and pull and there's nothing to pull against because the air has gone solid, or you have, or the room has collapsed into a space too small to hold oxygen and a woman falling apart at the same time.

Your mind does it fast. Clicks the pieces into place. Cruel. The distance, the late nights, the perfume that one time. The way he stopped touching you. Stopped looking at you. The way he'd said nothing changed, that's the problem, and his gaze had drifted past your shoulder to the window, to the street, to anywhere that wasn't your face asking him to stay.

He was fucking her. In your house. In your bed. While you lay awake at three in the morning with your hand on his side of the mattress, the sheets still cold, wondering what you'd done wrong.

And Soap… you'd asked Soap. Cornered him in the driveway three months ago when John missed your anniversary dinner. He'd been leaning against his truck, keys already in hand, and you'd caught his sleeve and he'd turned and your voice was shaking and your eyes were already wet and you'd asked Is something going on?

And he'd looked at you. Right at you. Not past, not through- at. And his face had done something quick, something that rearranged itself between one blink and the next, and he'd said, He's just stressed, hen. Ye know how he gets.

He'd patted your shoulder when he said it. You remember that now. The weight of his hand. The way he squeezed once before pulling away.

Gaz. You'd texted him at two in the morning from the bathroom floor, knees drawn up, the tile cold through your pajamas. Is Price seeing someone else? Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again. And then: Where's this coming from? You two are solid.

You'd believed him. You'd set the phone face-down on the tile and pressed your forehead to your knees and told yourself you were being paranoid, that you were making problems where there weren't any.

Laswell. You'd called her on a Wednesday afternoon, standing in the kitchen that still smelled like his cologne because he'd left that morning without kissing you goodbye. Your voice had broken on the second sentence and she'd listened- she'd listened, patient and steady, the way she always was- and when you'd asked, voice barely holding, if there was another woman, she'd paused. Just for a beat. Just long enough for something to move behind her silence.

And then she'd said, If there was, you'd be the first to know. Trust me.

Trust me.

The air comes back all at once. Your lungs seize on it, a gulp so deep your whole body jerks, spine curving, shoulders snapping forward, and the sound that comes out of you is not your voice. It doesn't belong to you. It belongs to something older and less evolved, something that lives in the part of the brain that existed before language, before thought, before any of the architecture that's supposed to keep a person from making a sound like this in a room where people might hear.

They hear.

Upstairs, everything goes quiet. Then footsteps, fast.

"YOU KNEW!" You're on your feet. You don't remember standing. The chair hits the wall behind you and the plaster gives, a soft crunch like stepping on snow, and you don't feel your legs but they're holding you up so it doesn't matter. "YOU FUCKING KNEW!"

Soap appears in the doorway first. His face is already wrong, already rearranging itself into something careful, something managed, and the sight of it makes your vision go white at the edges because you've seen that face before and you now recognize it for what it’s worth, for all the times he lied to you.

"What- "

You hurl your phone at him, full bodied, your shoulder rotating with it like you're trying to put your whole skeleton behind the impact. It hits him square in the sternum and he grunts, catches it on reflex because his hands are faster than his brain. Gaz and Laswell crowd in behind him, and the doorway is suddenly too full of people you trusted, people you loved, people who watched you bleed out for months and handed you a towel instead of a tourniquet.

"Sweetheart, what's- " Gaz starts.

"Don’t." The word comes out of you with a sound like tearing cloth. "Don't you dare call me that. Don't you fucking dare."

Soap's eyes drop to your phone. To the screen still open. The wedding photos, the dress, the smile, the date stamp. You watch it happen, watch comprehension move through his face the way a crack moves through ice, starting at one point and spreading outward until the whole surface is fractured.

"Oh fuck," he breathes.

"Yeah." Something leaves your mouth that is sounds like a laugh and tastes like bile. "Oh fuck is right."

Gaz takes a step toward you. "Listen, we can explain- "

"Explain what?" Your hands are vibrating at your sides. You can feel the tremor in your fingertips, in the thin bones of your wrists, in the tendons that run up your forearms like wires pulled too tight. "Explain how you watched him fuck someone else in my bed while I thought I was the problem? Explain how I asked you- I asked all of you- if something was wrong and you lied to my face?"

"We didn't- " Laswell starts.

"YOU WERE AT HIS WEDDING!" Your throat tears on it. You feel it go, a hot, wet rip somewhere deep in the tissue, and you don't stop. Can't stop. You slam your fist down and something behind you is rattling, a glass or a plate vibrating against wood with each syllable you scream. "TWO WEEKS! He married her TWO WEEKS after I signed those papers, and you were THERE! In the pictures! Smiling! Celebrating!"

"We didnae know he was gonnae- " Soap tries.

"Bullshit!" The mug is in your hand. Laswell's cold fucking tea, the one she made you an hour ago like she was doing you a kindness, like that small domestic gesture could coexist with what she knew and chose not to tell you. It leaves your hand before the thought finishes forming and shatters against the wall behind their heads, ceramic shrapnel and cold brown liquid spraying across the wallpaper in a pattern that looks, for one deranged second, like a Rorschach test. "You knew he was fucking her! You knew and you said NOTHING!"

"We were trying to protect you- " Gaz says.

"PROTECT ME?!" You're crying. You can feel it, the heat, the blur, the way your sinuses are flooding, the tears running into your mouth and down your chin and dripping off your jaw onto your shirt. You can taste salt and mucus and the copper tang of a bitten cheek, and underneath all of it something acrid that might be adrenaline or might be the last of your dignity metabolizing. "You let me sit here thinking I wasn't enough! Thinking I'd failed him! I asked you- " Your voice buckles at the knees. "I asked you if he was cheating and you looked me in the eye and you lied."

Soap's face has gone the color of wet cement. "We thought… we thought he'd end it. We thought- "

"You thought WHAT?" You're advancing on him. Each step is deliberate and unsteady, your body moving with the jerky, graceless momentum of someone who has stopped caring what happens next. Soap takes a step back. Then another. A trained soldier, six foot something of muscle and scar tissue and combat reflex, retreating from you across your own kitchen floor with his hands half-raised like you're the biggest threat in the room. "You thought it was better to let me BEG him? To let me sit here tearing myself apart trying to figure out what I did WRONG while he was balls deep in someone else?"

"That's not- " Laswell cuts in, and her voice has that tone. The one you've heard her use on calls, on base, in rooms full of men with fragile egos. Controlled. Logical. The voice of a woman who has never lost a negotiation because she never lets emotion into the equation. You don’t let her.

"In MY bed!" The screams are doing damage now, you can feel it, the rawness, the way each word costs more than the last. "He fucked her in the bed I sleep in! And you- " Your finger finds each of them. Shaking so hard it paints the air in zigzags. "You watched. You knew. And you let me think I was crazy. You let me think I was the problem."

"We were in an impossible situation," Laswell says.

"No." You shake your head, a hysterical laugh bubbling up, caught between your teeth. "You were in an easy situation. You picked the man who was betraying me, and you let me suffer for it."

"It wasn't like that," Gaz says quietly.

"Then what was it like?" Your vision has dissolved. Everything is liquid and blurred, the kitchen swimming behind a wall of water, their faces smeared into shapes you can't read. "Tell me. Explain to me how watching your friend get cheated on and saying nothing is anything OTHER than betrayal."

None of them answer. The silence fills the space where their excuses should be, and it's heavier than anything they could have said.

"I asked you," you whisper. Your voice drops so low it barely displaces air, and you watch them flinch harder than they did when you were screaming because this is worse, and they know it. This is the sound of someone who has stopped fighting. "Three months ago. Six months ago. I asked all of you. And you lied. You looked at me- at me, someone you called family- and you lied." Your voice climbs. Cracks upward. Your finger levels at Gaz, steady for the first time all night, a barrel finding its target. "You told me he was under stress and I should give him time."

He swallows. You can see the muscles of his throat work from across the room. "He was under stress."

"HE WAS UNDER ANOTHER WOMAN," you scream.

"We didnae want to hurt ye," Soap says. His voice breaks on the last word, actually breaks, splits down the middle and comes apart in his mouth like wet paper, and some part of you, some distant, demolished part, registers that he's in pain. That this is costing him something.

You don't care.

"Well you fucking DID!" The fruit bowl leaves your hands with everything you have left. Apples and oranges scatter mid-air, spinning out in separate arcs, and the bowl itself hits the edge of the counter and splits, a sharp, clean crack that sounds like what something makes when it breaks along a fault line that was always there. "You hurt me WORSE! Because I thought- " You're gasping. Hyperventilating. Sobs and screams competing for the same airway and neither is winning. "I thought I still had you. I thought even though John left, I still had my friends. But I don't. I never did."

"That's not fair," Laswell says.

"FAIR?!" The word rips something loose in your chest, something that was holding the rest of you in place. "Was it FAIR that I begged him not to leave while he had a FIANCEE? Was it FAIR that I tore myself apart trying to be better while he was planning a WEDDING? Was it FAIR that the people I trusted most in the world watched it happen and said NOTHING?"

Silence.

Your breathing fills the kitchen. Ragged, wet, obscene in its volume. You can feel snot on your upper lip. Tears cooling on your jaw. Your hands are still shaking at your sides, fingers curled inward, nails buried in the meat of your palms deep enough that you'll find the marks tomorrow, four perfect crescents in each hand, bruised purple, like something bit you from the inside.

"Get out." Your voice comes from somewhere low and gutted, scraped along the floor on its way to your mouth. Flat. Final.

"Wait, just let us- " Gaz reaches for you.

"GET OUT!" A picture frame is in your hand- when did you pick it up?- and it’s John's face, smiling up at you through glass, and your arm is already moving, already cocked, already releasing, and it hits the wall six inches from Soap's head and shatters. Glass sprays across the tile in a bright, sharp fan, pieces spinning and skittering and catching the overhead light as they scatter. "Get his shit and GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE!"

They go.

You hear them take the stairs two at a time. Hear the careful handling from before- the folded shirts, the wrapped frames, the quiet respect for objects that belonged to a man who deserved none- replaced by frantic shoving. Drawers yanked open. Things dropped into boxes without padding. 

They come back down with arms full. Boxes and bags and the last of him, all of it clutched to their chests. None of them look at you. They can't. You're standing in the middle of the kitchen with blood on you from where the ceramic of the fruit bowl cut you and you didn't feel it, and your face is a wreck- swollen, blotched, streaked-  and you're breathing like you've just finished drowning, and none of them can look at you because looking at you means seeing what they did.

Soap stops at the door. His back is to you. His shoulders are shaking.

"I'm sorry," he says. His voice is barely there. "I'm so fuckin’ sorry."

You don't answer. Your jaw is clenched so tight your molars are grinding against each other, a slow, involuntary pressure that sends pain radiating up through your temples. If you open your mouth, what comes out won't be words. It'll be the sound from before- that torn, animal thing- and this time it won't stop.

He waits.

You give him nothing and Gaz grabs him and drags him out and they leave.

You stand in the wreckage of your kitchen. Ceramic dust on the counter. Brown tea stains drying on the wallpaper in long, slow drips. Glass on the tile, glinting. An apple under the table, bruised where it landed. An orange against the baseboard. A picture frame with no picture in it, the backing hanging loose, the little metal clips bent where the glass tore free.

The house is so quiet you can hear the clock in the hallway. The refrigerator humming. A car passing on the street outside, its headlights sweeping across the ceiling and then gone.

Your knees go first.

They just stop holding. No warning, no wobble, just the sudden absence of anything between your hips and the floor. You go down hard, knees hitting tile, the impact jolting up your spine, and then your hands, palms flat in the glass and the ceramic dust, and the cuts open fresh and you feel them this time, thin and bright and precise, and you don't move.

Then the rest of you.

You fold. Slowly. Forehead to the floor, arms around your head, knees curled in, making yourself as small as physics will allow in the middle of your destroyed kitchen, and the sound that comes out of you is low and formless, a long low frequency that vibrates in your teeth and the tile under your head, pressed out of your lungs by the weight of your own body against the floor.

The clock ticks.

The refrigerator hums.

Outside, it starts to rain.

London, UK // Present…

Eli drags you, fist locked around your arm hard enough to bruise, raw adrenaline doing the thinking for both of you.

You stumble off the main platform, the drop to backstage jarring up your spine. Your heel catches a cable; your ankle twists; you pitch sideways. Eli hauls you upright and keeps moving, half carrying you through the entrance to backstage.

Chaos. Cases overturned, cords everywhere, set pieces looming in the emergency lighting. Crew members running in every direction- some toward exits, some toward the gunfire, some frozen with their headsets hanging and their eyes seeing nothing.

Another burst of gunfire. Closer. Sharper without the arena's shell to blunt it. You flinch so hard your teeth click together.

Eli shoves your head lower. "Down. Eyes forward. Don't stop."

Flashes as you move- a lighting tech curled under a table. One of your dancers clutching her phone, sobbing, "My mum- my mum's in there- "

"Eli, the others- " you choke. "My band, the girls- "

"They're moving. You're priority."

He cuts right, through a fire door, into a service corridor. Concrete walls. Strip lighting. Cooler air, sharp with dust and electrical burn.

You're running. Actually running now, legs finding a rhythm born of pure terror. The corridor stretches ahead, grey and long, lit in intervals by emergency floods that pulse like something dying.

A stagehand rounds the corner ahead of you, sprinting toward you, eyes wild. "This way's clear!" he shouts, waving you forward. "Loading bay's- "

The round takes him in the shoulder.

The sound reaches you a fraction of a second later, a single flat crack, the concrete corridor turning it into something enormous. The stagehand spins. His feet tangle. His body hits the wall and slides down it in a way that doesn't look like a person anymore. It looks like a coat falling off a hook.

Blood. Bright and wrong on the grey concrete, spreading faster than makes sense. His hand twitches once.

Eli's arm slams across your chest, clotheslining you backward. You hit his body hard enough to lose your breath and then he's already moving his hand on the back of your neck into a narrow alcove. A dead end, maintenance access panel, locked. He stops. You stop. His hand is still on your arm and his breathing is hard and controlled, forced through his nose the way people breathe when they're trying not to panic, and for the first time since this started you're standing still.

The silence is worse than the noise.

It presses in from every side, thick and physical, broken only by the muffled wail of a fire alarm somewhere far above and the wet, uneven drag of your own breathing. Your ears are ringing. Your shoulder throbs where you hit the flight case on stage. Your hands are sticky with someone else's blood and they won't stop shaking, won't stop-

Beep.

Your eyes drop.

Not a conscious decision. Not a choice. Something older than thought, something threaded into the base of your brainstem where the animal lives, the part that tracked predators across open grassland a hundred thousand years ago, the gut instinct that senses the wrong thing in a room before the higher brain can name it. Your gaze falls like a stone, pulled down and to the left by a gravity that has nothing to do with physics.

It's there.

Beep.

The world thickens.

That's the only word for it. The air itself seems to change viscosity, to slow around you like you've been submerged in something clear and heavy. The fire alarm fades. Eli's breathing fades. The distant screaming fades. All of it pulling back to the edges of your awareness like a tide retreating, leaving you standing on the bare floor of your own mind with nothing in it except the matte black case you’re staring at and the sound of the beep and the slow, heavy thud of your own heart in your ears.

Beep.

You watch the numbers change.

Your brain does something strange. It splits. The front of it- the part that processes, that plans, that screams and bargains and fights- goes very quiet. Steps back. Sits down. And the part underneath, the old part, the part that's been running on fumes and adrenaline and sheer refusal to die since the first explosion, looks at the device with a recognition so plain and so total that it doesn't even register as fear.

It registers as oh.

Just that.

Small and dull and almost funny in its inadequacy. The same flat, resigned understanding you felt when you looked down at divorce papers on your kitchen table and realized that begging wasn't going to change anything. The same numbness that settled over you like silt when you signed your name and watched John walk out the door without turning around.

Oh, you think, and somewhere behind the thought there's a laugh trying to get out, high and thin and half hysterical, because of course. Of course. You survived five years of heartbreak and public humiliation and rebuilding yourself from raw materials into someone who could stand in front of forty thousand people and scream her pain into a microphone and make them love her for it.

And now there's a bomb three feet from your ankle, and the numbers are getting smaller, and your brain can't even be bothered to panic.

Oh. There's another bomb.

Eli sees your face.

He follows your eyes down. You know the exact moment he finds it because his hand tightens on your arm, a seizure, every finger contracting at once, hard enough to hurt, hard enough to bring you back into your body for one lurching second.

He says something. You see his mouth move. The words don't reach you. They're somewhere on the other side of the glass that's settled between you and the rest of the world, muffled and distant and irrelevant.

The numbers tick. The beeping increases in frequency.

He moves.

You feel his body rotating, his arms closing around you, pulling you into him, his back to the device and his chest against your face and his chin pressing hard into the top of your skull. He is trying to make himself a wall. He is trying to put as much of himself as possible between you and the thing that's about to happen, and the last thing your mind registers is the pressure of his ribs against your cheek and the wild, arrhythmic hammer of his heartbeat and the way his arms tighten like he can hold you together through sheer force.

The beeping stops.

For one fraction of one second, the corridor is perfectly, absolutely silent.

And then then everything turns white.

Undisclosed military base // Present…

The TV is on.

That's the first thing. The screen, cycling through the same loop of footage it's been running for the last fifteen minutes- aerial shot of the arena, smoke rising from two places now. Emergency vehicles. A cordon. Tiny figures that might be people. A scrolling banner at the bottom that reads EXPLOSION AT LONDON ARENA- MASS CASUALTY EVENT- MULTIPLE VICTIMS REPORTED in letters too small and too neat for what they're describing.

The rec room smells like cold coffee and sweat and the particular staleness that settles into a space when too many people have been sitting in it for too long without moving. Someone left a protein shaker on the table hours ago. The whey has separated. Nobody's touched it.

Ghost is standing by the window.

He's been standing there for eleven minutes. Soap knows because he's been watching him, not looking away, not getting closer, just... tracking. Waiting to see what happens.

Ghost's phone is in his right hand. His thumb moves. The screen lights. He presses call.

The sound fills the room, a tiny, distant ring, small as a coin, cycling through the silence once, twice, three times.

Nobody speaks.

Four. Five.

The TV murmurs behind them. A reporter's voice, carefully modulated, saying something about confirmed fatalities and ongoing investigation and no statement yet regarding the condition of- and it doesn't matter. None of it matters. The only sound that matters is that ring, thin and mechanical, threading through the stale air like a pulse.

Six.

Click-

"The number you have dialed is currently unavailable. Please try your call again later."

The recording is flat, the vocal equivalent of a form letter. It says nothing and means everything and Ghost listens to it, completely still, completely focused, the kind of attention that has already started to grieve.

The call drops.

Ghost's thumb moves. Screen lights. He presses call.

Ring.

Soap is sitting on the edge of the couch with his elbows on his knees and his hands knotted in his hair. He hasn't moved from this position in ten minutes. His jaw is clenched so tight the muscle jumps at his temple, a rhythmic twitch that he doesn't seem to notice.

Ring.

Gaz is by the door. Arms crossed, shoulder against the frame, one boot tapping a pattern against the floor in anxiety. His face is doing the thing it does when he's working very hard to feel nothing- smooth, neutral, empty-except for his eyes, which are already red.

Ring.

Price is in the corner. Standing the way he stands during mission briefings, feet planted, hands clasped behind his back, chin level. Command posture. But his fingers are white where they grip each other, the knuckles bloodless, and he hasn't spoken a word since he walked in and saw your face on the screen and the words about a bomb and an active shooter at your concert.

Ring.

Laswell is on her phone speaking in low, clipped tones to someone. Clearances. Transport. Access to the scene. She's working the problem because that's what Laswell does, she works the problem, she finds the angle, she pulls the strings. Her voice is steady. Her hand, the one not holding the phone, is gripping the back of a chair so hard her knuckles match Price's.

Ring. Ring. Ring.

"The number you have dialed is currently unavailable- "

Ghost hangs up. The motion is the same as before. Mechanical. A soldier performing a function.

His thumb moves.

Screen lights.

He presses call.

The TV plays footage of men in tactical gear pulling up to the arena, pouring through the entrance while officers fan out, directing civilians past a police cordon to where paramedics are already working in the spaces they’ve cleared. The banner says POSSIBLE SECOND EXPLOSION BACKSTAGE- The anchor is careful about it- unconfirmed, we want to stress, unconfirmed- and the word does nothing. Confirms nothing. Denies nothing. Just takes up space where an answer should be.

Unconfirmed.

Ring.

The protein shaker on the table has a ring of condensation around its base, soaking into the wood. There's a half empty mug next to it. The overhead lights are too bright. They buzz faintly at a frequency that sits right at the edge of hearing, the kind of sound you can't unhear once you've noticed it.

Ring.

Ghost's face hasn't changed. The mask helps with that; hides the mouth, hides the jaw, hides whatever's happening in his expression. But his eyes are visible, and they're fixed on the middle distance, focused on nothing, the way eyes go when the thing they're looking at is internal.

Ring.

"The number you have dialed- "

He hangs up.

The silenceis loud.

It's a different kind of silence than before. Heavier. The kind that has weight and texture and a taste, metallic, like blood, like the inside of a bitten cheek. The kind of silence that settles over a room when everyone in it has run out of ways to pretend that what they're waiting for is anything other than what it is.

Soap lifts his head. His eyes are wet.

"Si," he says. His voice sounds like it's been dragged over gravel. "Maybe- "

"No." Ghost's voice is quiet. The word comes out flat and absolute, a single syllable that closes a door.

His thumb moves.

Screen lights.

He presses call.

The phone rings into the empty room, into the stale air, into the space between what they know and what they're afraid of. It rings and rings and rings, and the sound is small and relentless and faithful, and no one on the other end is ever going to pick up, and he is going to keep calling anyway.

Ring.

Ring.

Ring.

"The number you have dialed is currently unavailable. Please try your call again later."​​​​​​​​​​​​​