- } ghost { -

8.

Playing: Open Arms
1:44 |——————•————————-| 3:14
"Living without you, living alone."
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— } It had started like any other day—routine patrol, nothing out of the ordinary. The sky had been clear, the air still. She and Jay had been flying wingman, side by side, keeping their formation tight. Just another day in the cockpit, flying over familiar territory, a routine they knew too well. They joked over the comms, checked in with each other, and kept an eye out for any suspicious activity.

But then, out of nowhere, the warning alarms had blared.

"Ghost, what the hell was that?" Jay's voice had crackled through the comms, tense with confusion.

She didn't have time to respond. Her HUD lit up with incoming missile locks, and she jerked the stick to the left, banking hard, trying to break the lock.

"Ghost, they're on us!" Jay shouted. "I've got your six, stay sharp!"

But Chloe's heart was already racing. She'd barely seen them—just the flash of jets against the sky, moving too fast to track.

The first shot came from her left. She didn't have time to dodge. It slammed into her jet's wing, and the aircraft shook under the force of the multiple bullets. The cockpit lit up violently, alarms blaring.

"Ghost!" Jay's voice was frantic. "Where are you? Break left!"

She struggled to steady herself, her focus snapping back into the fight as she fought to regain control of her aircraft. "I'm on it, I'm on it!" she muttered through gritted teeth.

But as her eyes scanned the skies, she saw them—the enemy fighters, flanking them on both sides, no way out. She couldn't get a clean shot, couldn't evade fast enough.

"Ghost! We've got to get out of here!" Jay shouted again. "We're boxed in, we need to break!"

Chloe's pulse raced, but she was too late. Jay had been on her left wing when the first enemy pilot had moved in behind him. She had been too busy trying to get her plane under control, trying to stay alive, that she hadn't seen the lock on his jet. She hadn't been there when he needed her most.

"Jay, no!" she yelled into the comms, watching helplessly as the enemy fighter closed in, locking on to him. She couldn't get to him in time. His plane jerked violently as the missile hit, sending him spiraling toward the ground.

The static in her headset was deafening, then it was gone. The comms went silent.

Her stomach dropped, the realization hitting her like a brick wall. Jay was gone.

The fight continued around her, but she barely noticed. The air felt thick, suffocating, as she fought to keep her own jet from falling out of the sky. Her mind kept replaying the moment over and over again—the moment she lost him. The moment she failed him.

It didn't matter that she was still alive. Jay's death was on her hands. She wasn't there when he needed her, wasn't quick enough, wasn't focused enough. She had let him down.

Chloe blinked rapidly, shaking her head as if trying to dispel the memory that clung to her like a suffocating fog. Her heart raced, and her chest felt tight, but it wasn't from the adrenaline of the mission anymore—it was from the weight of her own guilt.

Her eyes were locked on the floor, hands still gripping the edge of the bench as if trying to hold herself together. She felt the burn in her throat, the all-too-familiar pressure behind her eyes that threatened to spill over.