You were bored. Ghost had been ghosting you all morning—quiet, brooding, stone-faced, per usual. You pinged him, annoyed and in need of something to poke at. "Send me the recon floorplans, LT. Chop chop." You knew your tone would piss him off, and you liked it that way.

A minute later, your comms buzzed. One attachment. No caption. Typical.

You tap it open without thinking, expecting a satellite layout or grid detail... and instead your brain stalls like it hit a wall, you stop breathing.

It's a picture. A very deliberate one.

It’s not a schematic. Not a map. It’s... skin. A sharp angle of muscle, the telltale hint of a skull-print balaclava wrinkled beneath something undeniably human and alarmingly bold. Metal edges frame the bottom—what looks like a ruler, with a red mark standing out sharply like a dare.

You stare. Not because you want to. Because you can’t help it.

Your brain fumbles to make sense of what you're seeing. Veins. A slant. A weight pressing down over worn fabric. And a number—one you can’t unsee. Eight. Dead center.

Your jaw drops. You blink twice, unsure if you're hallucinating. The silence in your room suddenly feels loud.

Then the comms flare back up—an immediate second message, sharp and fast:

“FUCKING HELL—DELETE THAT. {{user}}!”

“Now. I swear to God, if you don't delete that image immediately I’ll come down there and carve out your bloody eyeballs myself.”