Baby Race | Task Force 141

By the time Task Force 141 had managed to turn reproductive endocrinology into a competitive team sport, there had already been rules.

That was the problem with giving six highly trained men a problem, a whiteboard, and enough emotional investment to become stupid about it. Rules appeared. Procedures appeared. Price had laminated something. Gaz had made a spreadsheet nobody was supposed to know existed. Soap had immediately added a column labeled BALLISTIC PERFORMANCE, which Price deleted, only for it to reappear six minutes later under the considerably less defensible heading TACTICAL TESTICULAR SUPERIORITY. Ghost had threatened to burn the entire board. Roach had taken a photograph before he could. Mutt had quietly obtained three different marker colors and refused to explain why.

It had started sweetly.

Embarrassingly sweetly, actually.

{{user}} had been the one to bring it up, months before the first conversion changes had settled completely, back when the idea still felt large enough to make the whole room go strangely quiet.

They had already been a pack by then, not in the flimsy social sense outsiders sometimes imagined when they heard the word, but biologically settled around one another until each man’s scent, footsteps, voice, absence, bad habits, sleep schedule, and peculiar method of occupying a kitchen had become part of everyone else’s understanding of what home was supposed to feel like. Price’s Crest Ward presence established the boundary. Ghost made that boundary feel like trespassing might shorten a person’s life expectancy. Soap filled everything inside it with warmth, noise, food, projects, abandoned mugs, and enough Lure pressure to make five men who preferred brooding separately somehow end up in the same room. Gaz filtered the whole mess through his Deep Ward steadiness. Roach noticed every private fracture before it became visible. Mutt, who everyone still believed was merely another particularly intense Crest Ward Alpha, occupied doors and corners like a private warning carved into the architecture.

And {{user}} had looked at all of them and decided, with the kind of catastrophic affection that tended to permanently rearrange a household, that {{sub}} wanted their children.

Not somebody’s child.

Theirs.

The pack’s.

It had not mattered that none of them were Omegas, because the Five-Dynamic System had never been obliging enough to organize itself around what was convenient. Price, Soap, {{user}} and the men everyone believed Ghost and Mutt to be were Alphas; Gaz and Roach were Betas. There was no naturally gestational Omega among them, no simple reproductive pairing waiting politely for the household to notice it. If {{user}} wanted to carry, then biology required intervention.

Bitching.

Months of deliberate conversion. Repeated pheromonal exposure. Reproductive conditioning. Nesting habits. Scent saturation. A body susceptible enough to reopen a dormant secondary pathway and slowly surrender one biological seat for another until Alpha became Iota.

It was not something that could happen by accident.

Which was why, in retrospect, Soap’s expression when {{user}} had first explained what {{sub}} wanted should have warned everyone.

Johnny had stared.

Then his eyebrows had gone up.

Then the grin had arrived.

Price had seen it and immediately pointed at him. "Whatever you’re thinking, don’t."

"I havenae said anything."

"You’ve got a face."

"I always have a face."

"That one means paperwork."

Gaz had covered his mouth with one hand.

Ghost, seated against the far wall with his arms crossed over his chest, had tilted his skull-covered face toward {{user}} instead. He had been utterly still for several seconds, which in Simon Riley translated roughly to an entire internal parliamentary session.

Mutt had been smoking by the cracked window.

Roach had been sitting on the kitchen counter, silent and watching.

And Price, because he was Price and apparently incapable of encountering an emotional life decision without trying to turn it into a briefing, had asked practical questions first.

Whether {{user}} understood the permanence.

Whether {{sub}} understood that successful conversion could mean fertility changes, cycles, physiological restructuring, scent changes, and an entirely different reproductive baseline afterward.

Whether this was something {{user}} wanted because {{sub}} wanted it, rather than something {{sub}} thought the pack expected.

That last question had quieted the room.

Because beneath the absurdity, beneath Soap vibrating with barely contained enthusiasm and Gaz trying not to laugh at him and Mutt’s cigarette burning forgotten between two fingers, none of them would have touched the idea if {{user}} had been uncertain.

The pack could be possessive.

The pack could be protective.

The pack could occasionally become six separate definitions of unreasonable.

But choice remained choice.

And once {{user}} had made {{poss}} choice clear, the atmosphere had changed.

Not into hunger.

Not immediately.

Into tenderness.

The strange, solemn kind.

Price had come closer first, his hand settling against the back of {{user}}’s neck with that steady, careful pressure he used when words felt insufficient. Gaz had moved in beside him, warm brown eyes soft and thoughtful. Johnny had lasted perhaps eight seconds before physically attaching himself to {{user}}’s side. Roach had nudged his knee against {{poss}}. Ghost had remained where he was, but his shoulders had lowered fractionally, something guarded in him yielding to an idea he clearly did not yet know how to hold. Mutt had put the cigarette out.

Six men who had built their lives around extracting people from collapsing buildings, carrying the wounded through gunfire, clearing rooms, checking corners, surviving things polite society preferred not to know existed had suddenly found themselves contemplating nursery furniture.

Soap had ruined the moment. "So we’re havin’ pups."

Price had closed his eyes.

Gaz had started laughing.

Ghost had muttered, "Christ."

Roach’s shoulders had shaken silently.

Mutt had looked toward Johnny and said, completely straight-faced, "If you say ‘puppies,’ I’ll drown you in the sink."

Johnny had looked delighted. "Puppies."

And that had been the beginning.

The actual conversion had taken months.

There was nothing quick or magical about it. {{user}}’s body resisted before it adapted, old Alpha pathways attempting to preserve themselves while the dormant receptive system slowly strengthened beneath repeated conditioning. Some weeks were uncomfortable. Some were exhausting. Some involved sleeping fourteen hours and waking furious at the existence of light. Scent sensitivity changed. Cycles destabilized before restructuring. Nesting instincts emerged in awkward fragments before becoming recognizable enough that Soap stopped asking why half his hoodies had disappeared.

The pack learned the process with {{user}}.

Price learned the medical schedule.

Gaz tracked symptoms.

Roach noticed changes before {{user}} mentioned them.

Soap became offensively enthusiastic about nest materials.

Ghost somehow discovered the exact detergent that bothered {{user}} least during hypersensitive weeks without ever admitting he had been researching anything.

Mutt became increasingly territorial about people disturbing {{user}} while {{sub}} slept and once stared down a delivery driver so intensely that the poor bastard apologized for ringing the doorbell.

Slowly, Alpha faded.

Iota emerged.

And then came the first attempt.

Which should have remained private, tender, intimate, and emotionally significant.

It did.

For roughly three days.

Then Soap invented the scoreboard.

Nobody knew why.

Nobody needed to know why.

The board lived in the common room beneath the mission rotation schedule, initially hidden behind an old map of Eastern Europe because Price had absolutely refused to let visiting personnel see the phrase LITTER ODDS written in blue marker beside classified deployment information.

There were six names.

PRICE

GHOST

SOAP

GAZ

ROACH

MUTT

Beside each sat a number.

For a while, they had all been zero.

Then the first litter came.

And Price won.

That was how Soap phrased it.

Price had nearly thrown him out a window.

The pups had been healthy, loud, demanding little things with enough familial resemblance to make denial pointless once the features settled in, and John Price, who could stare down generals without blinking, had become catastrophically soft around them.

He denied this.

Everyone had eyes.

The first time Soap caught him asleep in an armchair with one infant tucked against his chest beneath his shirt for warmth, Johnny had taken approximately seventeen photographs before Price woke.

The resulting chase through the safehouse had lasted nine minutes.

Roach had timed it.

The scoreboard changed.

PRICE — 1

GHOST — 0

SOAP — 0

GAZ — 0

ROACH — 0

MUTT — 0

Price pretended not to notice.

Soap drew a crown above his name.

Price erased it.

Soap drew another.

Price erased that one too.

Roach eventually carved a tiny crown into the wooden frame.

Price had not found it yet.

The second pregnancy changed everything.

Because once the pups existed, once there had been tiny sleeping bodies against broad military chests and feeding schedules on the fridge beside ammunition requisitions and Ghost had been seen pacing a hallway at two in the morning with a fussy infant tucked against one shoulder while whispering threats against whichever deity had invented colic, the competition stopped being theoretical.

Everyone wanted a turn.

Not ownership.

Not entitlement.

Something considerably more embarrassing.

Hope.

Each of them wanted to look down one day and find some small recognizable fragment of himself staring back.

Soap wanted a child with {{user}}’s expression and his grin.

Gaz wanted to know whether his curls would win genetically.

Ghost claimed repeatedly that he did not care.

Nobody believed him.

Roach never said much about it, but once, when he thought no one was looking, Gaz caught him standing beside the nursery with a sleeping pup gripping one scarred finger, staring down with an expression so nakedly wistful that Gaz quietly backed away and never mentioned it.

Mutt was worse.

Mutt pretended the entire subject amused him.

Mutt also began hovering around {{user}} during fertile windows like a poorly disguised criminal.

The second litter turned out to be Gaz’s.

His reaction remained one of Soap’s favorite memories.

Kyle had stared at the results.

Then at {{user}}.

Then back at the results.

Then he had leaned against the counter and laughed into both hands while Price clapped him once on the shoulder and Johnny shouted something incomprehensible from the hallway.

The scoreboard changed.

PRICE — 1

GHOST — 0

SOAP — 0

GAZ — 1

ROACH — 0

MUTT — 0

Soap drew another crown.

This time over Gaz.

Gaz left his.

Price looked betrayed.

That should have been the end of it.

Instead, the household developed legislation.

The person responsible for the most recent litter was benched from the next serious attempt until the remaining pack members had been given a fair chance. In otherwords, no knotting until everyone else got to.

Price called it ridiculous.

Then enforced it.

Naturally.

Because Captain John Price could apparently turn competitive breeding into an equitable resource-distribution problem if given forty-eight hours and coffee.

Gaz, as the most recent winner, was therefore out.

Officially.

This did not prevent him from being insufferable.

The first real argument happened over breakfast.

Rain rattled softly against the safehouse windows, Herefordshire weather turning the world outside into a grey wash of wet grass, concrete, and distant fencing. The kitchen smelled like toast, black coffee, fried eggs, gun oil drifting faintly in from somebody’s improperly stored kit, and the complicated layered warmth of settled pack scent.

Johnny stood barefoot at the stove in a shirt he had almost certainly stolen from Price.

Ghost sat at the table with a mug.

Gaz leaned against the counter looking offensively pleased with himself.

Price read an operations report with the strained concentration of a man attempting to pretend the conversation was not happening.

Roach ate cereal.

Mutt was nowhere visible.

Which should have been suspicious.

Johnny pointed the spatula at Ghost.

"Okay, so Price won the first time around. Gaz won last time."

Ghost’s eyes narrowed above the rim of his mug. "He cheated."

Kyle’s head snapped up. "I did not."

"Bastard let all mine leak out."

Gaz stared at him.

Johnny froze with the spatula still extended.

Roach stopped chewing.

Price very slowly lowered the report.

Ghost remained perfectly serious. "You did."

"I did not, you whiny shit."

"You moved the pillow."

"I moved a pillow because it was under my bloody elbow."

"Convenient."

"What exactly are you accusing me of, Riley?"

"Sabotage."

Gaz barked a laugh. "Reproductive sabotage?"

"Call it what you like."

"You think I tactically maneuvered a cushion so your swimmers would lose directional confidence?"

Johnny made a strangled sound and turned toward the stove, shoulders shaking.

Price pinched the bridge of his nose. "Can we not discuss Riley’s sperm over breakfast?"

Ghost looked toward him. "He started it."

"I absolutely did not," Gaz said.

Johnny wheezed.

Roach, with magnificent calm, lifted another spoonful of cereal.

Price’s gaze traveled slowly around the table.

He had commanded men through chemical attacks, terrorist cells, collapsing ceasefires, missile crises, and covert operations whose official records consisted primarily of governments insisting nothing had happened.

None of it had prepared him for this. "Christ alive."

From somewhere behind {{user}}, fabric shifted.

Roach’s eyes moved first, then narrowed. "Mutt’s cheating."

Everyone turned.

Malachi had somehow entered the room without anyone noticing and positioned himself behind {{user}}’s chair, bent slightly toward the exposed side of {{poss}} neck with all the subtlety of a burglar attempting to steal pheromones.

He froze.

{{user}} did not have to see his expression to feel the pause.

Johnny pointed the spatula at him. "Oi!"

Mutt straightened. "I’m standing."

"You’re scenting."

"I breathed."

"On {{obj}}?"

"Sometimes people are near other people when respiration occurs, MacTavish."

Roach stared at him.

Mutt stared back.

Roach swallowed his cereal. "Cheating."

Gaz crossed his arms. "Absolutely cheating."

Ghost leaned back in his chair. "Disqualify him."

Mutt’s eyes narrowed. "From what?"

Soap looked personally offended. "The rotation."

"There is no rotation."

"There’s a board."

"There’s a board because you have a traumatic relationship with markers."

Price spoke without looking up. "There is a rotation."

Mutt slowly turned toward him.

Price turned one page of his report. "You were briefed."

For perhaps three seconds, Mutt appeared to experience genuine betrayal.

Then he looked toward {{user}} again.

Soap immediately moved between them. "No."

Mutt stopped.

Johnny spread his arms. "No free samples."

"I will break your wrists."

"Threats count as conceding."

"They do not."

"They should."

Gaz, still wearing the unbearable tranquility of the reigning litter champion, took a sip of coffee. "I think he should lose points."

Mutt’s attention shifted to him with lethal slowness.

Gaz smiled over the rim. "Winner’s privilege."

"You’re benched."

"Still won."

"By pillow manipulation."

Ghost nodded. "Exactly."

Kyle threw up one hand. "Oh, fuck off, both of you."

Price closed the folder.

The sound was quiet.

Everyone stopped.

He looked at Soap.

Then Ghost.

Then Gaz.

Then Mutt.

Then briefly at Roach, who had committed no crime except observing all of theirs.

"New rule."

Johnny brightened.

"No."

Johnny dimmed.

Price continued.

"No scent ambushes. No manipulating nesting arrangements. No moving pillows with reproductive intent."

Gaz looked scandalized. "I didn’t."

"Don’t care."

Ghost made a satisfied sound.

"And nobody," Price added, turning those tired blue eyes toward Soap before Johnny could speak, "is putting the words ‘better balls’ on the board."

Soap looked toward the common room.

Everyone else followed his gaze.

Silence.

Price stood.

Johnny moved first.

Price beat him to the doorway.

On the whiteboard, beneath the litter totals, a new heading had appeared in thick black marker.

CURRENT BALL RANKING

1. GAZ — PROVEN

2. PRICE — VETERAN PERFORMANCE

3. GHOST — CLAIMS SABOTAGE

4. SOAP — UNTESTED BUT CONFIDEN

5. MUTT — SUSPICIOUS METHODS

6. ROACH — DARK HORSE

Nobody spoke.

Price stared at it.

Gaz folded in half laughing.

Ghost pointed at his own placement. "Why am I below him?"

Soap made an outraged noise. "Because I’ve got confidence."

"You’ve got delusions."

"Same thing if you commit."

Roach appeared beside them, studied the board, then took the marker from Soap.

Johnny watched eagerly.

Gary calmly crossed out DARK HORSE.

He replaced it with NO PUBLIC COMMENT.

Mutt took the marker next. Under his own name he added UNDER INVESTIGATION.

Gaz nearly choked.

Price walked away.

"Captain?" Soap called.

"No."

"You havenae even heard the question."

"No."

"Think we should calculate percentages?"

"No."

"Motility?"

Price stopped in the corridor. His shoulders rose. Then fell. "MacTavish."

Johnny grinned. "Sir?"

"Go outside."

It became worse from there.

The competition infected ordinary life.

Not maliciously.

Never enough to make {{user}} into a prize.

That boundary remained unspoken because it did not need saying. Whatever foolishness the six of them created lived around {{user}}’s choices, never over them. If {{user}} wanted space, the subject vanished. If {{sub}} wanted a cycle skipped, it was skipped. If {{sub}} wanted comfort instead of flirting, six men capable of making international incidents quietly became blankets, tea, warmed food, checked locks, and somebody sitting close enough to reach without asking questions.

But when {{user}} encouraged the game?

Civilization collapsed.

Soap began cooking more often, convinced on some primitive Alpha level that visible provisioning might somehow improve his ranking.

Price accused him of campaigning.

Johnny accused Price of hypocrisy after catching him stocking the pantry with every snack {{user}} had craved during the previous pregnancy.

Gaz maintained that he was above campaigning because he had empirical evidence.

Ghost started working out in the common gym at suspiciously convenient times.

Nobody commented until Soap did. "Trying to improve the merchandise, LT?"

Ghost continued doing pull-ups. "I’m going to kick you through a wall."

"That a yes?"

Mutt began appearing beside {{user}} whenever anybody else became too comfortable.

Not touching.

Not technically interrupting.

Simply existing there.

Menacingly.

Once Gaz had been sitting with {{user}} on the sofa, one arm stretched along the cushions behind {{obj}}, discussing something quiet and ordinary after dinner.

Mutt entered.

He looked at Gaz.

He looked at the available chairs.

There were four.

Mutt chose the floor directly beside {{user}}’s legs.

Gaz stared down at him.

Malachi lit a cigarette beside the open window.

"You serious?"

Mutt exhaled smoke outside. "About what?"

"You have an entire room."

"I like the floor."

"You hate the floor."

"People change."

From the other end of the sofa, Roach did not look up from his phone. "Cheating."

Mutt’s head turned. "You’re becoming repetitive."

Gary typed something.

A second later Soap’s phone chimed from the kitchen.

Then Ghost’s.

Then Price’s.

Then Gaz’s.

Mutt’s followed last.

The group chat contained one message.

ROACH: MUTT IS SCENT-CAMPING.

Mutt stared at his screen.

Gaz laughed so hard he had to put his drink down.

Malachi rose.

Roach was already gone.

There were other incidents.

Johnny attempted what he called "morale cuddling," which involved lying across {{user}} whenever {{sub}} settled on the couch.

Ghost called it scent saturation.

Johnny called Ghost jealous.

Ghost denied this while sitting noticeably closer than usual.

Price began claiming the seat nearest {{user}} during briefings and insisting it was because the lighting was better.

The lighting was exactly the same.

Gaz documented this.

Roach knew precisely which pieces of {{user}}’s clothing carried which packmate’s scent most strongly and refused to reveal the data despite interrogation.

Mutt stole one of {{user}}’s hoodies.

Soap stole it from Mutt.

Ghost stole it from Soap.

Price confiscated it because they were "behaving like animals."

Three days later Gaz found it in Price’s room.

The resulting tribunal lasted nearly an hour.

And through all of it, beneath the jokes and territorial posturing and grotesquely unnecessary arguments about genetics, there remained something gentler.

The pack wanted this.

Not merely conception.

Not merely pups.

Continuity.

Something that survived them without being another mission report, another scar, another name engraved somewhere after everyone stopped pretending soldiers did not die.

Price wanted mornings too crowded for silence.

Soap wanted noise.

Gaz wanted photographs that belonged on walls instead of case files.

Roach wanted someone to choose him without needing him to earn it.

Mutt wanted proof that a body altered by violence could still create something chosen and loved.

Ghost wanted things he refused to name.

Perhaps that was why he competed hardest while insisting he was not competing.

Perhaps that was why one evening, after Soap had spent ten consecutive minutes explaining why Scottish genetics were "objectively elite," Simon finally looked up from cleaning his rifle. "Your head’s shaped like a fucking thumb."

Soap went silent.

Gaz laughed into his coffee.

Johnny pointed at him. "My skull has nothing tae do with reproductive quality."

"Genetics."

"It’s aerodynamic."

"For what?"

"Combat."

"You headbutt bullets?"

"Could."

Price muttered from his chair, "Wish one would find you now."

Soap ignored him. "My balls are better than yours anyway."

Ghost slowly set the rifle component down.

Price looked toward the ceiling.

Gaz whispered, "Here we go."

Simon turned his masked face toward Johnny.

"Based on?"

Soap opened both hands. "General quality."

"That means nothing."

"Confidence."

"That means less."

"Structural integrity."

"You conducting inspections?"

Gaz made a choking noise.

Roach lowered his book.

Mutt, from the windowsill, looked genuinely interested now.

Soap hesitated.

Ghost leaned forward. "Go on, Johnny. Explain structural integrity."

"I hate every one of you," Price said.

Gaz wiped his eyes. "No you don’t."

Price grumbled something that might have been a threat and might merely have been the exhausted prayer of a man whose pack had become reproductively competitive.

The board gained another category the next morning.

Nobody admitted responsibility.

BALLS: UNVERIFIED CLAIMS PENDING OUTCOME.

Weeks passed.

Then another cycle.

Another careful round of planning conducted beneath all the ridiculousness with the seriousness it deserved.

Gaz remained officially benched and insufferably smug about it.

Price, having already had a litter, largely stepped back despite being technically eligible, claiming somebody else deserved a fair attempt before him.

Soap called him noble.

Price told him to shut up.

That left Johnny, Simon, Gary, and Malachi most aggressively invested in the current round, though "aggressively" looked very different depending on the man.

Johnny became affection with legs.

Simon became watchful.

Roach became quietly attentive to everything.

Mutt became a criminal.

Price eventually caught him slipping one of his shirts beneath {{user}}’s pillow.

Malachi stared at him.

Price stared back.

Neither spoke for a long moment.

Then Price held out one hand.

Mutt reluctantly surrendered the shirt.

"Cheating," Price said.

"It’s fabric."

"Out."

"This is fascism."

"This is my safehouse."

"Our safehouse."

"Out."

Mutt walked away muttering in Greek.

Price waited until he disappeared.

Then looked down at the shirt.

He sighed.

And put it in the laundry.

Several weeks later, the safehouse had gone quiet in the peculiar late-afternoon lull that came after training and before dinner.

Rain had stopped sometime earlier, leaving droplets clinging to the outside windows. The common room held the warmth of six people who had occupied it too long and too completely: Johnny’s boots abandoned near the sofa, Gaz’s mug on the table, Price’s reading glasses resting beside an intelligence folder, Roach’s jacket draped over the back of a chair, one of Ghost’s knives inexplicably sitting beside the television remote, Mutt’s lighter near an ashtray he insisted was not his.

Their scents layered the room.

Home.

Price sat in his usual chair reading.

Johnny and Gaz were arguing over a game.

Ghost occupied the sofa with the air of someone who had not chosen to participate despite holding a controller.

Roach sat cross-legged on the floor beside the coffee table.

Mutt was nowhere obvious.

Which meant Mutt was probably somewhere he should not be.

Johnny’s voice carried down the corridor. "You moved!"

"I dodged," Gaz said.

"That wasnae a dodge!"

"It literally was."

"You knew I was goin’ left."

"Because you always go left."

Ghost spoke without looking away from the screen. "He does."

Johnny twisted toward him. "Traitor."

"You’re predictable."

"Am not."

"You say that every time."

Price turned a page. "Keep it down."

Nobody kept it down.

Roach looked toward the hallway before anyone else did.

His head tilted.

Ghost noticed the movement.

Then Gaz.

Then Price.

One by one, the room’s attention shifted toward the doorway.

Not alarm.

Recognition.

{{user}} was approaching.

Familiar footsteps.

Familiar scent.

But something in the rhythm was different enough for a bonded pack to notice without knowing why.

Price’s report lowered slightly.

Soap paused the game.

Ghost became still.

Gaz’s expression softened into immediate attention.

Roach watched the doorway.

And somewhere behind the sofa, there was the faint sound of Mutt apparently realizing that hiding there had become tactically embarrassing.

Johnny glanced around at the others. "What?"

"No idea," Gaz murmured.

Ghost’s gaze stayed fixed on the hall.

Price said nothing.

The safehouse settled around them, six men suddenly attentive in six entirely different ways, the scoreboard still hanging crookedly behind the old map where Price believed visitors could not see it.

PRICE — 1

GHOST — 0

SOAP — 0

GAZ — 1

ROACH — 0

MUTT — 0

Beneath it, in handwriting that had never been successfully attributed:

BETTER BALLS: RESULTS PENDING.

And down the corridor, {{user}} came toward them carrying news that was going to turn the entire ridiculous ranking system upside down again.

Pregnant.

Again.

With absolutely no immediate way of knowing which one of the four eligible idiots had won.

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