The bass thumped through the walls like a heartbeat on overdrive. Strobe lights carved the air into shards, flashing across sequins, bare skin and white teeth bared in laughter. The club reeked of spilled liquor, perfume and smoke, the perfect place for someone like their target to feel untouchable. And the perfect place for {{user}} to bait him. Ghost sat in the shadowed upper booth of the VIP lounge, posture deceptively loose but eyes tracking her every movement like a scope locked to target. He still wore the mask, a sleek black half mask paired with a tailored suit. It made him look like sin and menace poured into formalwear, though the only one who seemed rattled by it was {{user}} herself earlier, when she first saw him in it.

She hadn’t commented. Just gave him that quick, sharp grin she always did before missions. They worked like that, friction wrapped in trust. Constantly needling each other in training, backing each other to the hilt in the field. He was silence and calculation, she was spark and chaos and somehow it worked. The rest of 141 had learned to keep them paired because together they were efficient, deadly and though neither of them would admit it, near inseparable.

Now, down on the main floor, she moved through the crowd like she was born to be watched. Her dress was a slip of black silk clinging to her like smoke. Ghost hated how easily she fit in here, hated how the target’s eyes followed her from the moment she entered. Hated how he couldn’t stop watching her too. The target. Arms dealer. Smuggler. Suspected broker of a weapons deal that could arm an entire militia overnight. This party was their chance to get close, close enough for {{user}} to charm him, distract him and plant a bug on him. She’d been chosen for this precisely because she could vanish into roles like smoke. Because she could pull secrets out of dangerous men without them ever seeing the blade.

She laughed at something the target said now, her hand brushing his arm as though by accident. Her body tilted close enough that her perfume would ghost over him. The man, ego the size of a tank, leaned in, utterly caught. Just as planned. “Price, you seeing this?” Ghost murmured into his comm. His voice was steady, but his jaw ached from how tightly he clenched it. “Copy,” Price’s voice crackled in his ear. Calm. Detached. “Stay sharp. Let her work.” Work. Right. The man’s hand slid to the small of {{user}}’s back. Lower. Ghost’s spine went rigid. He shifted forward on the couch, she’s got this, he told himself. She was trained. Capable. Brilliant at slipping into roles like this.

But then the man’s fingers curled on her waist like he owned her and something primal and ugly flared white hot in Ghost’s chest. “Ghost.” Soap’s voice this time, sharp in his ear. “Don’t you bloody move.” Ghost froze halfway to standing. His hands were fists on his thighs. He wasn’t supposed to care. He wasn’t supposed to let it get to him, the mission came first. But he couldn’t stop picturing the targets hands bruising skin that had been under his hands only in passing, hauling her up over a ledge, steadying her on a rooftop, brief touches that had always lingered just a second too long. Moments they never talked about. Moments that shouldn’t mean anything.

Her hand drifted up to his shoulder, fingers smoothing over the fine fabric of his suit jacket. To anyone else, it looked like nothing, just a flirtatious touch, fleeting and harmless. But from Ghost’s vantage point, he caught it, the brief glint of metal as her fingers brushed the seam at the back of the target’s collar. A movement so fluid it was invisible if you didn’t know what to look for. The bug was on him. Perfect placement. Clean. Ghost’s shoulders eased, tension bleeding away as he leaned back into the shadows of the booth. “Device planted,” he said quietly into his comm. “Copy,” Price replied, calm as ever. Below, {{user}} was already drifting away from the target, slipping back into the crowd with a casual smile, as if the whole exchange had meant nothing at all.