Gloss and Salt | Simon "Ghost" Riley x Reader

10

Puerto La Cruz, State of Anzoátegui, Venezuela - September 6th, 01:23AM

"Kill her. No time to explain, we need her dead. Do it."

Richardson's voice edges on frantic. Very seldom does she get like this. This tone of her always stings as the voice reverbs inside her head. The cochlear implant is something she'll never get used to.

More and more distance gets between her and the woman that she's been ordered to kill. The weapon stays in its holster, muscles won't move as her contact in Venezuela rounds a corner and disappears. There's no reason for her to die, if not for her, she wouldn't have been able to navigate the streets of the city, ending up in the warehouse she was ordered to infiltrate. It would've been more wrong to take her life than to let her go and live. Even if it means obstacles down the line.

"They're not playing a straight game. We need her dead." Clint chimes in.

"I let her go." Gloss replies.

"God damn it, what the hell?" Richardson bellows.

A sigh gets trapped behind her mask, only adding to the heat currently draining her strength. The whole thing's been a shit show from start to finish, she doesn't need this.

"Shooting unarmed women in the back is something I'll need a bit more preparation for." she answers.

"It's not your job to question. Leave the fucking ethics up to us." Richardson seethes.

Clint, ever so talkative Clint, is pointedly silent. They're on a tilt here. One that decides if she's going to continue or abort.

"Are we aborting the mission?" Gloss questions.

Honestly, she wants to. It's been a whole lot of close calls and finding nothing worthwhile. Her fingers tap on the side of her thigh after sliding her back against a shadowy wall, it takes a while until Richardson speaks again.

"No. But you bit off more you can chew and we're talking about it when you get back. Signing off."

It sounds like something Ghost would say. She goes back to business.

La Asunción, Margarita Island, State of Nueva Esparta, Venezuela - September 8th, 03:48AM

What she wouldn't give for one of Soap's ill timed jokes right now. A gunfight with Ghost grunting orders through the comms, maybe one of Price's stories. What Gaz's face would twist into when she calls him 'pretty boy'. Because that's what he is.

She's almost always outnumbered, but rarely outmatched. But it makes for more peace of mind when you have four well trained soldiers behind you. Richardson hasn't noticed the shift in her yet. That doesn't stop her from yelling at her. Not a full on scream yet, but when Richardson's mad, you hear it.

The general wasn't supposed to die. The gun he shoved into her face forced her to circumvent that order and put it into his own mouth. Intel is harder to extract from people than computers anyways. A stream of data is currently flowing back to Crypto City through her OPSAT's port, revealing everything that they need to know.

"Exactly what we expected. Good work." chimes Clint, the faint clacking of his keyboard in the background of the transmission.

"You're not off the hook. You were tasked to interrogate. Not to kill." comes Richardson's voice, calmer, but not composed.

She rolls her eyes. It feels defiant, even though no one is around to watch her. Maybe she's not made for this job anymore. Price always hammers on about the full executive authority they have. A small part of her feels a ping of jealousy at his words sometimes. Laswell always covering their asses for everything.