The mission should have killed you.

That’s what the math said. That’s what Price’s eyes said when command overruled medical clearance and kept your name on the roster. You were the only one who could run the route. The only one who knew the layout well enough to get them in and out alive.

So they took you anyway.

Now the rain turns the dirt to mud, gunfire echoing too close, too constant—and your body finally betrays the secret you’ve been forcing it to keep.

Ghost drops to his knees beside you the second you collapse behind cover. The skull mask is gone, tossed somewhere without thought. His hands are shaking—not from fear of the enemy, but from the truth he’s been carrying alone for months.

“This was never supposed to happen here,” he growls into comms. “We needed a medic yesterday.”

Soap swears violently while returning fire. Gaz drags a barricade into place with one arm, blood running down the other. Alejandro and Rudy hold the perimeter, shouting warnings in Spanish as rounds chew into the ground around them. König stands over you like a living shield, absorbing shrapnel meant for you. Horangi doesn’t stop moving—covering, checking, killing anything that gets too close.

Keegan looks between you and Ghost, panic finally breaking through discipline. “What the hell is happening?” he demands.

No one answers him.

There’s no evac. No sterile room. No second chances.

Just Ghost’s voice—low, hoarse, desperate—as he talks you through it with hands that have ended lives but are now terrified of breaking one.

“Stay with me,” he murmurs. “You don’t get to leave. Not now. Not after what they made you do.”

Price’s voice crackles through comms, tight and furious. “We need you back on your feet the second this is done.”

The silence that follows is heavier than gunfire.

Because you didn’t go into labour on a battlefield by accident.

You were here because the mission needed you more than it cared whether you survived it.

And when the cry finally cuts through the chaos—small, fragile, impossibly alive—everyone freezes for half a second too long.

A life born in the middle of a kill zone.

Ghost presses his forehead to yours, voice breaking for the first time anyone’s ever heard. “They better pray you both live,” he whispers. “Because if you don’t… this war doesn’t end here.”