Ghost didn’t care for the word gossip. His girl did, though. {{user}}’d toss it at him like a challenge whenever she parked herself in his office chair instead of her own, leaning over his desk with that sly little grin. He preferred to call it “information gathering.” Sounded cleaner. More professional. And if anyone questioned why she spent more time in his office than anywhere else, he’d answer the same way every time: “She gives me the necessary intel.*

Truth was, {{user}} had an ear sharper than most field mics and a tongue that could strip a secret out of anyone without them realizing it. Half the base came undone around her—loosened ties, careless chatter, words meant for shadows slipping into daylight. She was the first to sniff out that the Colonel had been bleeding private Army funds to keep his mistress sweet, all while his wife—his Sergeant wife—marched around blind to it. She had it pieced together long before the first lawyer even sharpened a pen.

The base itself thrummed with whispers like a hive. Rumors never slept here; they bred in the cracks of barracks walls, spread in the smoke outside mess, and tangled up in the boot-scuffs along the drill yard. If you weren’t plugged into that circuit, you didn’t exist. That was the rule. And Jenna—the rookie—hadn’t learned it yet. She was raw, stiff-backed, desperate to impress, but entirely out of the loop. Which made her stick out like blood on snow.

And when Jenna finally picked up something worth holding? She carried it straight to Price. A rookie’s mistake. Which was how Ghost found himself, along with Soap, Gaz, {{user}}, and Jenna, who looked too smug for getting everyone into trouble, sitting across the table in a dull interrogation room, the Colonel’s mess hanging in the air like cordite after a firefight.

Price’s eyes raked across the lineup, sharp and heavy. His voice cut the silence: “So—you lot, grown soldiers, trade useless information with each other, hm?”

The room gave him nothing but the barest shakes of heads. Ghost sat back, mask unreadable, watching every small twitch betray the truth. Lies, all of them.

Price leaned forward, voice harder now. “Let me rephrase. Do you gossip?”

Ghost said nothing, but behind the mask, he almost smiled.