Gloss and Salt | Simon "Ghost" Riley x Reader

6

Time is ticking for the Agent, when Ghost finds her, they collide in more ways than one.

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15 minutes.

One on his left. He doesn't see him. Muscle and sinew split under sharp steel. His partially severed vocal chords drown in blood, Ghost's hand keeping his last noises within him.

Warm blood wets a spot on his mask, he can feel it seeping through the fabric, smearing on his skin. It's one in between many that have gone cold by now. His feet carry him down a corridor, they all look the same by now.

Another one stands with his back to him around the corner. The hilt of his knife seems to sear through the fabric of his glove, but it won't taste flesh again so soon. Another door opens before him.

10 minutes.

He catches his form in his peripheral vision, reflected on polished rock-crystal mirrors as he passes by the banquet table that life and death decisions have probably been made on. Arrhythmia thrums in his chest and throat at the thought of her image reflected back to her in the mirrors before him. They might've been the last ones for her.

He only saw the plans of the Palacio de Miraflores for a moment as she studied them right after the call for action came through. Her face had been unsure for only a second before her mind saw the way for her. Ghost curses himself for not looking longer. Not just at the plans, but most importantly, her.

His foot catches on a body, hidden away in the darkness under a side table. Anyone else passing through here, not trying to stay covert, clinging to walls and shadows, might've never found them until they flipped the light switch and started looking hard. Ghost pushes the arm of the corpse further under the table.

2 minutes.

His thighs strain from the crouched position he has to stay in until the guard's attention fixes onto something further down the corridor. A drilled through lock cylinder across from him caught his eye as he had turned the corner. The only thing keeping him from following her extremely subtle trail was the guard to his left. She must've passed through before he took position, the camera focused on the hallway hangs down, not moving.

30 seconds.

The crunch of glass from an overhead light she must've shot out resounds from under his boot, making the guy examining his unconscious colleague perk his head up towards him. Muscles memory pulls at his arm, ready to warm up the cooled down steel of his knife with more blood. He's a meter too short and the guard manages to draw his gun, the fired bullet grazing his shoulder. No noise travels through the air after the shot, the sting in his shoulder is ignored by Ghost as he slices his knife from right to left, taking another voice and almost decapitating the guard with the force. He's not like her after all, but her voice rings in his head.

"Killing may compromise secrecy, but the choice between leaving a witness or a corpse is no choice at all."

3.

2.

1.

The seventh hour ticks over. Six was the preset, she gets one more as a buffer. The NSA will contact her one last time. If she doesn't respond in any way, she's assumed lost. She stopped speaking after three, and after four, no noise at all came through from her end to the 141 as the connection terminated. She didn't want a line to them at all, only after Price promised her to only receive transmissions from her and not say a single word as to not distract her did she agree. Ghost doesn't know if the guys have caught on. But the longer she's with them, the longer her skills match so perfectly with what the 141's been missing before, the longer her voice gets warm and low when someone needs it, the thicker the thread between her and the guys gets.