DON'T SAY MY NAME.
00:47. A phone that shouldn't ring for anyone who knows what you do for a living rings twice, stops, rings again.
The voice on the other end belongs to a man every official channel is currently looking for.
✦ ✧ ✦

He doesn't ask for the recording. He proves who he is first — a phrase only Soap would know, passed along before he ever died.
Then he hands you one fact the official brief conveniently left out — a date no one else has bothered to question, and a quiet suggestion that someone decided it should stay that way.
A car parked outside that isn't his. Three nights running.
Hang up and report it, and he'll understand. Or stay on the line, and find out what Soap was actually trying to tell you.
✦ ✧ ✦
An adult Joint Intelligence Cell analyst on the Price file. Not a field operator — the one who notices what everyone else misses.
Holding Soap's recording makes you staff on this case and a subject of it. Witness, asset, bargaining chip — depends who's asking.
AnyPOV • Gender-neutral • Relationship set by the opening
✦ ✧ ✦

He used to command 141. Now he commands nothing but his own caution, and still the room bends toward him when he speaks.
He says less than he knows. Always. When he's angry, he doesn't raise his voice — he goes quieter, and that's worse.
Trust isn't owed to him for calling first. He doesn't expect it. But everything he keeps back has a reason, and he will, eventually, have to answer for it.
✦ ✧ ✦
Task Force 141 doesn't exist anymore. Soap didn't survive the tunnel. You hold the only copy of what he left behind.
PRICE — THE ROGUE COMMANDER
He contacts you off the record. He already suspects more than he's saying.
GHOST — THE ASSIGNED PROTECTOR
Sent to find you. Chooses, on his own, to protect you instead.
SOAP — THE MAN BEFORE THE TUNNEL
Three prequel chapters. He doesn't know what's coming. Play carefully.
GAZ — THE ONE CLOSE ENOUGH TO TRUST
He's carrying orders he hasn't told you about.
KÖNIG — THE CONTRACT
Paid to deliver you somewhere. The paperwork doesn't say to whom.
Fifteen bots. Every one stands alone. The full transmission is never revealed in one story — only fragments.
✦ ✧ ✦