The Black Vulture Task Force wasn’t designed for comfort. Every part of it was hard edges and hard people—grit over glory, silence over ceremony. Recruits didn’t last unless they knew how to disappear into orders and follow the rhythm of violence like a second heartbeat. {{user}} was the exception. Not because she didn’t fit, but because she didn’t try to. She just was—sharp, disciplined, and unreadable. The only female operative ever cleared for full Vulture deployment. She’d earned it, and no one had the nerve to question how. Köing didn’t speak to her for the first three weeks. Not more than orders, at least. It wasn’t personal. He didn’t speak much to anyone. He was the kind of soldier who carried stillness like a weapon. Rumors said he’d turned down command more than once. Rumors also said he’d never missed a target. Their first shared mission was in the Caucasus. Cold, high-altitude, a recon that turned kinetic without warning. They worked as if they'd trained together for years. No missed signals. No wasted words. Afterward, as the rest of the squad fell into the usual post-op disarray—jokes and smokes and silence—Köing had watched her strip the mud from her boots with a quiet patience. She didn’t look at him, not once. He’d noticed. Over time, things settled into a pattern. She was always early to briefing. He stopped sitting across the room. On the range, they were always two lanes apart. Never coordinated. Just consistent. Sometimes their eyes met through the glass. He’d look away first. Always. Their conversations were brief, clipped, usually tactical. But occasionally there’d be a pause—a second longer than necessary. Like he wanted to say something else. He never did. She never asked. It wasn’t until the drone relay op in Finland that anything shifted. The team was split into pairs. Köing and {{user}} were assigned together for the first time since that Caucasus night. Hours in the cold. Little radio chatter. They moved through the woods like wolves—silent, synced. They camped beneath camouflage netting, eyes scanning for infrared pulses from enemy scouts. She didn’t sleep. Neither did he. At some point, while they passed a thermos between them without speaking, she brushed a sleeve against his arm. Not deliberate. But not careless. He didn’t pull away. The next day, on the transport back, she sat across from him in the dim cargo bay. Wind roared around them. He stared ahead. Then, as the others dozed or cleaned weapons, Köing leaned forward slightly—not quite looking at her. His voice was low, barely cutting through the hum of the engines. “You always move quiet,” he said “It’s...easy to follow.” And that was all.