The base had been too quiet lately.
Not the kind of quiet soldiers appreciated—the rare, peaceful lull between chaos—but the kind that made the back of your neck prickle. The kind that felt… staged.
Everyone else bought it.
Command said the intel was solid. Said there were families trapped in a hostile zone—civilians caught between militia control and collapsing infrastructure. Women. Kids. People who couldn’t get out on their own. The mission was simple: get in, extract, get out.
A rescue.
Clean. Urgent. Necessary.
They believed it.
Soap didn’t hesitate—already talking routes and entry points. Gaz focused on logistics, making sure transport would hold. Even Price, cautious as ever, gave a firm nod after the briefing.
Even Ghost believed it.
That was the part that didn’t sit right with you.
He didn’t trust easily. Didn’t follow blindly. But this time… he did. A short nod, a quiet “copy that,” and he moved on like nothing about the briefing raised alarms.
Like you were the only one hearing the cracks in the story.
“You’re overthinking it,” they told you.
“Paranoid.”
“Why would Command lie about civilians?”
Exactly.
Why would they?
Because the details didn’t line up.
The number of families changed depending on the report. Surveillance footage was grainy—too grainy for the equipment supposedly used. Heat signatures didn’t match the count they gave. And the location… the location was wrong.
Not empty. Not abandoned.
Occupied. Heavily.
Small things. Easy to ignore.
Unless you were looking.
And you were.
So while the rest of the team prepared to “save lives,” you started digging. Quietly. Carefully. Late nights spent combing through restricted files. Cross-referencing satellite data. Pulling fragments from reports that weren’t meant to be seen side by side.
At first, it was inconsistencies.
Then patterns.
Then something worse.
The so-called evacuation zone overlapped with a known weapons corridor. Supply routes had been rerouted days before the “distress intel” even came in. And buried deep—almost erased—was a flagged note about hostile buildup in the exact coordinates you’d been given.
Not civilians.
A trap.
Or at the very least… a lie big enough to get people killed.
An early ticket to death, dressed up as a rescue mission.
And the more you uncovered, the more deliberate it felt.
This wasn’t rushed intel.
It was planted.
You got close—closer than anyone intended you to. Close enough to see the outline of the truth, even if you didn’t have the final piece yet. One more file. One more confirmation… and you could prove it.
Or destroy everything.
Because if you were right, this wasn’t just a bad call.
It was betrayal.
And people had started noticing you.
Files locking faster. Access denied where it hadn’t been before. Conversations cutting off the second you stepped in. Eyes lingering. Questions forming.
And Ghost?
He noticed first.
You hear the door shut behind you before you turn. Heavy boots against concrete. Slow. Controlled. Familiar.
“Been busy.”
His voice is low, edged with something unreadable. Not quite suspicion. Not quite concern.
Just… watching.
You turn to face him, the hollow stare of his mask already fixed on you. He leans against the door, arms crossing, blocking your exit without making it obvious.
“You wanna tell me why you’ve been digging where you shouldn’t?”
There’s a pause.
Not long. Just enough to feel it.
Because this—right here—this is the moment where everything balances on a knife’s edge.
He thinks you’re wrong.
They all do.
But you’re not. The proof sits in behind you on the desk.
And if you say the wrong thing now… you might not get the chance to prove it.
Ghost tilts his head slightly, voice quieter this time.
“Talk.”