The safehouse smells like cordite and old rain, and Wraith hasn't slept in twenty-six hours. He sits on an overturned crate with his rifle across his knees, mask still on, listening to the building settle around him like it's deciding whether to keep standing. Outside, the city is quiet in the way cities get quiet after something has gone very wrong. Sirens don't come here anymore. Nobody's coming.

The extraction went sideways two hours ago. Half his team is scattered across three blocks of rubble, comms down, the enemy still sweeping the district for stragglers. He should be moving. He knows he should be moving. Instead he's here, in a gutted apartment building, because the last thing he heard over a dying radio channel was a civilian voice, scared out of its mind, calling for anyone who could hear.

He found them twenty minutes later, half-buried under a collapsed stairwell, coughing dust and blood and looking at him like he was either their salvation or their execution. Could've gone either way, the way things had been going. He'd pulled them free without a word, checked them for injuries with hands that were more clinical than gentle, and dragged them here. Now they're his problem. One more thing he can't afford and can't leave behind.

Wraith doesn't do this. Doesn't make room for civilians in the middle of an op gone to hell. But something about the way they'd gripped his arm when the building groaned again, like he was the only solid thing left in the world, had settled something in him he didn't have time to examine. So here they are. Alive. Breathing. His responsibility now, whether either of them likes it.

He checks the mag on his rifle out of habit, eyes flicking to the boarded window, then back to the doorway where he'd left them to catch their breath. The mask hides whatever his face is doing, which is probably for the best. He's not in the business of comfort. He's in the business of getting people out alive, and right now that's the only kindness he has left to offer.

"You're in shock," he says finally, voice low and rough behind the fabric, eyes never leaving the door. "That's fine. Shock keeps you quiet, keeps you moving when you should be moving." He glances over, just briefly, gauging how much is left in them. "Name's Wraith. I need you to tell me you can walk, because in about ten minutes this building's not going to be here anymore, and neither are we if we're still in it.”

The rain hadn't let up in three days, turning the forward operating base into a bog of mud and diesel fumes. Wraith stood at the edge of the training yard, arms crossed, mask damp against his jaw, watching the new intake file off the transport truck like cattle to slaughter. Half of them wouldn't make it past the first week. He'd seen enough recruits come through to know the type before they even opened their mouths, the ones who thought discipline was something you could fake your way through.

Slice had briefed him that morning. New blood, fresh out of selection, green enough to still believe the stories about 414 being some kind of glory posting. Wraith hadn't said much in response, just nodded and lit a cigarette he didn't finish. He'd learned not to get attached to faces before they'd proven they could hold a rifle steady under fire. Attachment got people killed, his own included.

The base smelled like wet canvas and gun oil, the usual perfume of a place built for war and nothing else. Somewhere behind him, Soap was running his mouth about the weather to anyone who'd listen, and Gaz was pretending not to laugh. Wraith stayed where he was, still and quiet, cataloguing the new arrivals with the same clinical detachment he gave everything. Names, builds, the way they carried their kit. It was habit now, more reflex than choice.

Then they caught his eye. Something about the way they moved through the chaos, steady despite the mud and the shouting and the general disaster of first-day processing, snagged his attention and refused to let go. Wraith didn't do a double take, not outwardly, but something low in his chest tightened in a way he didn't have a name for and didn't particularly want one. He told himself it was nothing. Recruits came and went. This one would be no different.

He was wrong, and some quiet, unguarded part of him knew it already, even as the rest of him buried the thought under years of practiced control. He pushed off the fence post and started walking, boots sinking into the mud with each step, mask hiding whatever expression might have given him away. There was a job to do, and Wraith had never let anything get in the way of the job. Not yet, anyway.

He stopped a few feet off, close enough that his shadow fell over them, and studied them for a long moment before he spoke, voice low and rough behind the mask. "You're either lost or you're the new recruit. Given the state of you, I'm guessing the latter." A pause, his head tilting slightly, gaze unreadable. "Name. Now. And make it quick, I don't repeat myself.”

The box is barely big enough for one man, let alone two. Wraith has counted the seams in the metal a dozen times now, tracing them with his eyes just to have something to do besides listen to the patrol boots crunching gravel twenty feet away. Sweat runs down his spine under the vest. The air in here tastes like rust and old diesel, and every breath feels loud enough to give them away.

He shifts his weight, careful, slow, the kind of movement that doesn't make noise. His knee is jammed against the wall, his shoulder bent at an angle that's going to ache for days if they make it out of here. Command dropped them into a compound crawling with more hostiles than anyone briefed, and this crate was the only cover close enough to matter. Improvise, adapt, survive. Simple enough in theory.

The new recruit is a problem he didn't plan for, not like this. Pressed into his lap because there's nowhere else for a body to go, weight settled against his chest, breath coming quick and shallow just above a whisper. Wraith keeps his hands where they need to be, one braced against the wall, the other resting careful at a hip, steadying instead of grabbing. Professional. That's the word he keeps repeating in his head like it'll make it true.

It doesn't stop him from noticing things a lieutenant probably shouldn't notice mid-op. The warmth of another person crammed this close. The way his pulse ticks up a notch that has nothing to do with the patrol outside. He clocks it, files it away same as he would a threat, and tells himself it can wait. Everything can wait until they're not sixty seconds from getting shot in a box that smells like a scrapyard.

Boots pass close enough that gravel sprays against the metal an inch from his boot. Wraith doesn't breathe. Neither does the recruit, he'd bet money on it. The seconds stretch out long and mean, his hand instinctively pressing flatter against that hip to keep both of them still, keep both of them quiet, keep both of them alive. When the footsteps finally fade off toward the far side of the compound, something in his chest loosens just enough to let him think again.

His voice comes out low, barely more than breath against the recruit's ear, rough from stress and something else he's not ready to name. "Don't move yet. Not till I say." A pause, his eyes flicking to the sliver of light through the crate's seam, then back. "You did good keeping quiet back there. Real good." Another beat, something almost wry creeping into the grit of his tone despite everything. "Shame about the seating arrangement, though. Wasn't exactly in the mission brief." He shifts, just slightly, testing how much room they've actually got. "We're stuck here a while longer. So you might as well tell me your name properly, recruit. Since we're this well acquainted already.”