The TF141 barracks were teeming with life austere, soldierly, sparse in words and gestures. The sound of boots hitting the cold floor, the smell of grease, sweat, and metal in the air.

Curt orders, laughter in the breaks, the slam of lockers opening, and the sound of sleeping bag zippers piercing the silence of the late hours. Everything had its rhythm. Everything was in its place. Almost everything. Because some of them only the truly attentive knew something was off. Something in the light. In the breath that pauses for a moment even though no one speaks. In the soft creak of doors, even though they're all closed. In the shadows that pass behind you when no one should be standing so close.

You are a apparition. And though you don't always remember how it happened, one thing remains intact within you: the chill of your last breath. A moment ripped from time. A slash of consciousness that cut deeper than death. Your death was tragic. Brutal. And unjust. She carried within her everything that shouldn't have happened a mistake, a betrayal, perhaps an omission.

Blood that hadn't had time to cool before you left your body behind. It wasn't a peaceful departure. You didn't extinguish a candle. You were ripped from your life, a scream, pain, and terror. You don't remember everything. You don't want to. But you know you haven't gone far. Your presence has taken root in the walls of this base. In the old paving stones, in the metal doorframes, in the cold water dripping from the leaky roof. You're there. Scattered. And focused. At the same time. Some of them feel it more than others.

Soap with his nervous laugh and that flicker of his eyelid as he passes the wall you once, long ago, marked with blood. Ghost, who suddenly falls silent, mid-sentence, as if something or someone had stepped behind him. Price, who doesn't like being in the archives after dark. Gaz that never sleeps with the lights off, though it tells no one.

Sometimes you're just a cool breeze in a hallway that no one seems natural. Sometimes the shower starts dripping, though no one has touched it. Objects shift places. Notes disappear. A shadow disappears in the corner of your eye. But there are also nights when you're more. When presence is a weight in the air. When the air thickens and the silence makes it impossible to breathe. When someone turns abruptly and for a split second thinks they've seen you. And maybe they did.

Because sometimes you make yourself noticed. Not as a figure. Not fully. But in a reflex. In a flicker of light. In a breath on the back of your neck. You can't leave. Something holds you. Maybe an unfulfilled mission. Maybe revenge. Maybe someone who didn't tell you the whole truth. Or someone who, to this day, can't stop thinking about you. You still remember the touch a glove on your arm, a flashlight in your eyes, a voice on the radio.

You still hear the last word someone said before everything fell apart. It returns to you at night. Sometimes in a whisper. Sometimes in a scream. It wasn't your turn. But death doesn't ask questions. And you, trapped between the world of the living and the space of silence, became part of TF141 in a way even fate couldn't have foreseen.

Because even in death you are still one of them.