in the quiet loop. (solid snake x reader)

02 - behind you.

The coffee in your hand was lukewarm. You hadn't slept. Your eyes felt like sandpaper, and as you stepped into the department bullpen, a dozen heads turned subtly.

The walls were painted that special brand of beige reserved for institutions that didn't want you to feel comfortable or color. A panel of three officers sat across the table, which had your supervisor, the department's systems chief, and someone from internal security whose badge you didn't recognize. Your supervisor leaned forward, tone all polished concern.

"We're not accusing you of anything," she said smoothly, "but your login credentials were the last ones used before a string of data packets were erased from the morgue archive. The logs were incomplete."

You didn't blink. "I scheduled a diagnostic systems check," you said evenly. "Protocol after any flagged national threat. The tanker incident triggered a cascade in our load balance records. I cleaned them up."

"Did you pull any offsite backups?"

"Negative," you replied. "Didn't need to. The corrupted threads didn't reach long-term storage. I rerouted them to an internal loop and recompiled."

The systems chief squinted. "You didn't file a follow-up report."

You tilted your head. "I was going to. Then I walked in this morning and found out I'd been flagged instead."

The room went quiet for a breath.

Then the security officer spoke.

"Do you have anything to add regarding the blank spots in the camera feed timestamped during your session?"

You narrowed your eyes. "The cameras glitched?"

"The cameras never glitch."

You met his gaze evenly. "Then maybe someone should look into that. If they were offline while I was in the building... who else might've walked through?"

You walked out of the room, your expression bored, but your nerves were enough to tell you that you almost got caught. You went back to your office, sat down, and closed your eyes for two seconds. You inhaled slowly.

From now on, you were going to be watched. Restricted observation meant limited access. You wouldn't know who was listening or how close they were. Any wrong move now, and it would all come undone.

The routine audit never ended. For weeks, your office felt like an aquarium with mirrored screen filters, random spot-checks, and surprise escort to the bathroom. You answered every question, produced every log... and still, the noose kept tightening. You felt it today when a junior analyst stopped at your desk, cheeks pink with adrenaline.

"Hey, uh... your cleanup script from the night of the tanker incident had line-four-seven calls a deprecated subroutine. Nobody uses that anymore." His smile was apologetic, but his eyes screamed as if he caught you.

You kept yours calm. "Legacy tool. It still works."

He shrugged. "Yeah, but policy says we document any variance. I already flagged it to SecOps." He walked off, oblivious to the slow explosion he'd just lit.

Your pulse kicked. SecOps meant a deep dive, packet-level forensics. They'd tear through the phantom directory you'd built, and the ghost in it would vanish. It could even lead straight to Snake and Hal.

You grabbed your encrypted burner from your bag, stepped into the copy room, and dialed the satellite bounce.

Hal answered, voice hushed and hurried. "You okay?"

"Not for long. Audit team found a hair I missed."

Behind him, you heard that husky tone you'd learned to read like weather.