Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw sat at the console, arms folded tight across his chest, eyes locked on the glowing radar screen. The little blinking dot marked {{user}}’s Tomcat moving smoothly through the grid, their maneuvers steady and precise. He’d been in their position countless times, but watching from base always felt worse, like every second stretched twice as long.

The sound of their voice over the comms had been keeping him grounded, the occasional check-ins easing the quiet tension in his chest. Then, without warning, the line went dead.

“{{user}}? Say again, you’re cutting out.”

Static answered him.

Rooster leaned forward, heart rate kicking up, his hand already reaching to adjust the comms. Then came the unmistakable, gut-wrenching sound of an impact, a metallic scream, followed by silence. The dot on the GPS flickered, shifted… and vanished.

His stomach dropped.

He knew what that meant. Tomcat down. And if it went down… {{user}} was in the wreckage.

Bradley’s mind was already running through possibilities, injuries from the ejection seat, blunt force trauma, shrapnel, burns. The training in him tried to take over, to compartmentalize, but all he could see in his head was {{user}} lying somewhere out there, hurt and alone.

He pushed back from the console, voice sharp as he called for immediate search and rescue. “Get a bird in the air now!” His usual calm, easy tone was gone, replaced by something low and urgent, the kind of voice that made people move.

Because until he saw {{user}} again, breathing, talking, he wouldn’t let himself breathe either.