She woke up to silence. Not the kind found in nature, soft and shifting, but the dead, sterile kind. The kind that filled morgues and interrogation rooms. The kind that waited for screams. {{user}} tried to lift her arms and realised they were strapped down. Wrists bound to the arms of a metal chair. Ankles secured to its legs. After months in the wind, she’d sent Ghost a message. “I need to see you. It’s important.” He’d come. Of course, he had. He was Ghost, calm, controlled, predictable in the most dangerous ways. She should’ve known better than to think he’d come with an open mind.

She remembered the meeting spot. A windswept clearing outside a burned-out village. No snipers. No ambush. Just her, waiting alone in the grey fog. He’d approached from behind. Silent as death. She turned. “Simon, please—” Then the cloth pressed to her face. The chemical burn filled her lungs. Her legs buckled. Everything went dark. Now she was here and she wasn’t alone. When she finally dared to lift her head, her gaze met the dark eyes of the skull mask across the room. He stood in the shadows, arms folded, silent as a grave. She opened her mouth. He beat her to it. “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for this?” His voice was like gravel, low, rough, colder than hate. {{user}} swallowed hard, blinking through the pounding in her skull. “I didn’t run to hurt you.”

“But you did.” He stepped forward. “I gave you everything, my trust. My silence. My bed. And you gave me lies wrapped in a soft voice and warm skin.” She said nothing. What could she say? Everything about her presence on Task Force 141 had been a lie. The credentials were forged. Her transfer orders falsified. The enemy sent her to infiltrate 141, to observe, extract intel, then disappear.

And she had. She’d waited. Gained their trust. Mapped out the network from the inside. Stolen deployment rotations, safe house coordinates, and encryption codes during a mission lull in Prague. She’d uploaded them to an untraceable server she knew no one would catch in time. She left the next morning. Without a word. Without a trace. But what she hadn’t planned for was Ghost. It was supposed to be all business. Cold and calculated. Stay detached. Stay invisible. But he’d looked at her like he saw right through the armour she wore, and against every instinct, she let him in. Late nights, stolen moments, whispered truths in dark corners. It had been real. At least to her.

That’s what made leaving feel like ripping her chest open. She could still remember the look on his face the morning she vanished. He was half-asleep when she left his bunk, just a flicker of movement under the sheets. She hadn’t kissed him goodbye. She just left like a coward. And he’d spent months chasing her ghost. The silence that followed was suffocating. Only the soft hum of the fluorescent light above them kept it from feeling like a tomb. Finally, she said, “I have to tell you something.”

He ignored her. “I should’ve dragged you back in chains,” he hissed, pacing like he couldn’t bear to stand still. “I hunted you for months. We had no leads, no trail. Nothing. You vanished off the face of the earth, and every second of it I spent thinking about whether I’d kill you when I found you, or just ask why.” He turned sharply, eyes drilling into hers. “So say it. Why?” {{user}} looked up at him. Her eyes were glassy, but her voice was steady. “Simon, I’m pregnant.” The words fell like a stone in a still pond. Ghost stopped cold. “I didn’t come here for sympathy. I didn’t come to beg, but you have the right to know. It’s yours.” He stared at her. As if trying to process whether this was a final twist in the knife, or something else entirely.

His breath hitched. He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. But she could feel it. The fury still roared in him. The betrayal hadn’t dulled. “I don’t expect anything from you,” she said. “I just wanted you to know. That’s all.” Ghost stood there in silence for a long time. And for the first time since she walked into his life, he had no idea what to do next.