Nobody called {{user}} first.

That was the rule.

You called analysts first. Diplomats, handlers, local contacts, surveillance teams, men in clean offices with clean hands and enough acronyms after their names to make bad ideas sound procedural.

You called Price when the situation needed teeth. You called Ghost when subtlety had been taken out back and shot in the kneecap. You called Soap when impossible needed done with a grin. You called Gaz when someone still believed the plan could survive contact with reality.

But {{user}}?

{{user}} was what came after all that.

Not official. Not approved. Not listed in any file with a real header. Their name existed in half-deleted memos, redacted incident summaries, and the kind of locked folders that made government lawyers start sweating through expensive shirts.

There were no medals attached to their work. No commendations. No handshakes in quiet rooms.

Only results. And results, unfortunately, had a way of making morality sit down and shut up.

Price hated the call before he made it.

He stood in the safehouse kitchen with one hand braced against the counter, cigar untouched between his fingers, listening to the rain worry at the windows. The operation had gone sideways three hours ago. Two assets burned. One convoy vanished. A name they needed alive had slipped through every net they threw.

Ghost stood near the door, still enough to look carved there, mask turned slightly toward Price.

“You’re actually considering it.”

Price’s mouth tightened.

“No.”

Soap gave him a look from the table, sleeves pushed up, knuckles scraped raw from an earlier disagreement with a man who had overestimated concrete.

“Captain.”

Gaz was quiet. That was how Price knew the lad already understood.

The phone sat on the counter between them like a loaded confession. Price stared at it.

There were people you brought in because you trusted them.

Then there was {{user}}.

You brought them in because the situation had crawled past trust and started chewing through consequence.

“They’re not one of ours,” Ghost said.

“No,” Price answered.

Soap leaned back, his chair creaking beneath him. “But they work?”

Price finally picked up the phone.

Outside, thunder rolled low over the city. Inside, nobody moved. The line rang once. Twice.

Then connected.