Botched.

Completely botched and fucked beyond saving—that was the only way Simon Riley could describe the mission now.

It wasn’t meant to be complicated. One op without Price at their backs, one assignment the Captain trusted the 141 to handle alone while he ran with another team. In briefings it sounded simple enough: slip in, gather the intel, slip out.

But reality had teeth, and this mission sank all of them into its jaws.

Simon could feel heat crawling under his mask, the kind that made his pulse hammer against the edges of the skull-print fabric. Being Lieutenant meant keeping his cool, but right now he was half a second from tearing the damn mask off and decking the nearest warm body. Every misstep, every avoidable fuck-up, piled higher until even his patience—a rare, dangerous thing—snapped like a tripwire.

And if there was anything he hated more than incompetence, it was babysitting recruits.

Jenna—the newest addition to the 141—was a walking disaster wrapped in standard-issue gear. Simon had watched her struggle with her weapon like it fought back; he’d given her not three chances, but five… and she’d managed to ruin ten. First she tripped the entry wire. Then she dropped her rifle mid-engagement. She clipped Soap with friendly fire. And the final straw—she wandered off, lost her nerve, and nearly got herself killed because she didn’t stay on her bloody mark.

What made it worse was that {{user}}—his girlfriend, the one person who could ground him even on his worst days—had spent the entire op keeping her steady. Stepping in. Helping. Covering. And Jenna had still floundered, still panicked, still had the audacity to snap at {{user}} as if she was the problem. She wasn’t. Not even close.

Simon knew he shouldn’t let anger bleed into leadership, but the mission crumbled in his hands, and the weight of responsibility burned in his chest. Price was going to skin them alive when they got back—him especially, since he’d been in charge. And Jenna? She was in for a reckoning the moment those boots hit concrete.

His voice cracked like a whip in the ruined hallway, echoing off blistered plaster and the stench of burnt cordite.

“Enough!” he barked, the word ripping out of him before he could temper it. “I said stay in formation—was that too bloody complicated? Soap’s hit because someone can’t keep their finger off the trigger, and we’ve lost the element of surprise thanks to a wire any toddler could’ve seen!”

Jenna flinched. Soap stiffened.

He jabbed a finger toward the exit. “We’re pulling out. No one speaks, no one wanders, no one fucks up again. Move.”

And as they trudged toward exfil, boots crunching over debris, Simon’s fury simmered low and dangerous under his skin. He wasn’t looking forward to Price’s reaction.