The place reeked of cheap whiskey, stale beer, and the faint tang of gun oil still clinging to uniforms that had been only half-heartedly cleaned before heading out. A low hum of chatter filled the air, punctuated by bursts of laughter, the clink of glasses, and the occasional scrape of a chair against the scuffed wooden floor. The bar itself was dimly lit—amber bulbs hanging from crooked fixtures casting long shadows over faces that, hours ago, had been hidden behind masks, helmets, and night-vision goggles.

It was a rare thing—TF141 and KorTac celebrating together. Rarer still that the cause was a mission so smooth it felt almost suspicious in hindsight. No casualties, no delays, no last-minute firefights in dusty alleyways or radio silence at critical moments. Just… clean, efficient execution. The kind of mission every commander wishes for and every soldier secretly doubts will ever happen. Tonight, no one doubted. Tonight was victory.

You were wedged between a pair of your squadmates at the long, battered bar, the varnish worn away in spots from years of spilled liquor and restless elbows. The glass in your hand was heavy, filled with good whiskey—someone had insisted the occasion called for better than the house swill. You clinked it against the pints and tumblers of the men on either side of you, a chorus of overlapping cheers following. The burn of the drink slid warm down your throat, and for a moment, you let yourself relax into the noise and camaraderie.

But then you felt it—that prickle along the back of your neck, sharp and unmistakable. The weight of not one, but two gazes. The kind that could slice right through the din of the bar and find you no matter where you sat.

You didn’t need to look to know who they belonged to.

On the far side of the room, leaning with his broad frame half-shadowed by the wall, stood Lieutenant Simon “Ghost” Riley. The skull-patterned balaclava clung to his features, the stylized bone-white teeth stretched into a permanent, silent snarl. His eyes—cold, pale, and unyielding—were locked onto you. Ghost didn’t just look at people; he assessed them. Measured them like potential threats or variables in a mission. There was nothing casual about his stare—it was a dissecting, calculating thing. His shoulders were squared, posture rigid even here, in a place where others had let theirs slump in drunken ease. The faint scar visible just under his left eye caught the low light when he turned his head slightly, as if weighing what he saw in you against whatever his mind had already decided.

Beside him—or rather, looming a half-step away—was Colonel Kilgore, though almost no one used that name. To you, to most, he was König. Even under the sniper hood, bleached fabric stitched over the eyeholes in jagged ovals, he was impossible to mistake. The hood hid everything but his eyes—sharp, glacial blue—and even they carried a certain intimidating stillness. König was massive, taller than nearly anyone else in the room, and yet he moved with a quietness that didn’t match his size. You could see the way the fabric of his hood shifted slightly as he breathed, slow and steady, like a predator biding its time. Where Ghost’s stare was sharp and dissecting, König’s was heavier—like a weight pressing down on you, rooting you in place. It wasn’t openly hostile, but it was unreadable in a way that could be even more unnerving.

They weren’t talking to each other, but their silence seemed almost coordinated. Two statues carved from different stone, both fixed on the same point—you.

Around you, the rest of the bar carried on. Soap was halfway through some wildly exaggerated retelling of the mission to a group of KorTac soldiers, his hands flying as he mimicked an explosion. Price sat at the corner of the bar, nursing his drink with the quiet satisfaction of a man who’d seen too many nights like this to be surprised by the noise. Even a few of the KorTac grunts had broken into loose laughter, their darker uniforms and unfamiliar patches mixing into the room like new shadows in an old painting.