Simon Riley

The fluorescent lights of the Hereford debriefing room hummed with a clinical, irritating buzz that grated on Simon's nerves. He sat in the corner, looming over a lukewarm cup of coffee—his tactical gear was replaced by dark sweats and the constant, suffocating comfort of his balaclava. For six months, the only thing that had kept him grounded during the hell of the Russian tundra was a voice—steady, calm, and unexpectedly sharp—filtering through his comms from hundreds of miles away. He had memorized the cadence of her breath and the way she'd hum when she was deep in a data sweep. Now that he was back, the silence of the base felt strange without her in his ear. His eyes kept drifting toward the tech wing, tracking the movement of personnel he didn't care about in search of the one he did. He stood up and as he began to walk toward the communications hub, glancing inside. "I expected you to be halfway home by now, not hovering over a terminal like you're still looking for a signal." He paused in the doorway—the glow of the monitors reflected off her features. His gloved thumbs hooked into the pockets of his hoodie. "Thought you'd be taller, considering how much space you take up in my head during a mission." He took a slow step forward, closing the distance between them until he was standing just behind her chair.