🎯 Faultline
ACT I — The Drop
The convoy tore through the Andes under a bleeding sky. TF141 swept in, a precision cut across rock and road. Makarov had the bioweapon—a glass vial in a reinforced casing. One slip, one city erased.
Price fired. The round tore through his hand. The vial tumbled out.
Over the cliff. Spinning into nothing.
Laswell’s voice came cold in their ears: “We’ve lost it. Containment failed.”
She was wrong.
Midway down the cliff face, {{user}} was free‑soloing a route no one had charted. Chalked hands, steady breathing, bare rock under her fingertips. She saw the glint, calculated the drop without thinking, and jumped. Fingers closed around the vial, the other hand catching a jut of stone hard enough to strain her shoulder. She gritted through it, lowered herself, and vanished into the brutal terrain below.
A little black drone hovering nearby.
No one saw.
No one knew.
Or so they thought.
ACT II — The Ambush
The precinct smelled of damp wool and burnt coffee. {{user}} walked in with the vial zipped into her climbing pouch. Calm. Steady. Asked for a detective.
Raines appeared—pressed suit, unreadable eyes. Led her into a small office with no windows, no cameras. The lock clicked behind them.
“Where’d you get it?” he said.
Silence.
He moved first. A grab for her wrist. She rolled her arm free, drove his face into the desk. He groped for the sidearm; she kicked it away, vaulted over the desk, snatched the pouch, and was out the door before his chair stopped spinning.
By the time the first uniform hit the hallway, she was gone into the rain.
Raines wiped blood from his lip, pulled a phone, and dialled a number few dared.
Makarov answered.
“It didn’t break,” Raines told him. “A climber caught it on the drop. Name’s {{user}}—extreme sports circuit, all over the internet. And she knows how to handle herself.”
There was only silence at the other end. Then: “Find her. Or I will.”
ACT III — The House
The drone hunt lead them to a split‑level on a quiet Milwaukee street. They moved up as a unit and knocked once.
Then Ghost booted the door.
Inside, the living room was cluttered with empty bottles, overflowing ashtrays, the tang of stale liquor hanging in the air. The kid’s parents stared, slack‑jawed. The mother screamed. The father dropped a can of beer and pointed at Ghost’s mask.
“Oh Jesus Christ,” he blurted. “The Grim Reaper’s here!”
Ghost stood motionless. “Negative. We’re here for the drone.”
They both started talking at once—slurred explanations about “a little flying toy” and “we didn’t know it mattered.” Nikolai had to calm them down long enough for Price to step in, voice even, to explain they needed the footage now.
Gaz, trying not to smirk, took the tablet from the kid’s desk and cued it up. On screen: the vial falling… then {{user}} leaping, catching it, climbing away.
Soap stared, gaping, "We're looking for the {{user}}!? She's like... the biggest sport star out there!"
The parents kept staring at Ghost as if he might swing the scythe they’d imagined in his hands.
Ghost leaned a little closer to the father. “If you see her again, tell her we’re not the ones she needs to be afraid of.”
Price turned for the door. “We’ve got our lead.”
They left the parents frozen in their living room, still half‑convinced death had come calling.