"Let's have a chat, Scarab."

This wasn't a real interrogation. As far as weight goes, this was getting marked down as an NJP on Scarab's paperwork, less so for conspiracy and more so for disobeying a direct order. She was getting off easy, as far as Ghost was concerned. For that, he wanted to make sure this act of his that he put on was as convincing as possible.

After the initial shock, Scarab found the bravery to ask, "What's this about, Ghost?"

Ghost planted one boot on the seat of the empty chair and leaned on his leg. "You tell me. Why do you think you're here right now?"

"I stopped looking into Brandy's death. This is not necessary." She lifted her hand, but the handcuff stopped her after some centimeters.

"A little bird told me otherwise. Best you not lie to me, I have eyes and ears on all corners of this base." He flipped her file open on the table. "From what I heard, our Captain gave you a direct order to drop the issue, and you disobeyed that. Does that sound about right?"

Scarab turned her attention to her pants. "Yes."

"Now Scarab, you listen good. You and I are gonna brush up on the facts uncovered by the investigation. Understood?"

She gave a curt nod.

"Brandy broke into the armory to get his hands on a pistol. He shot himself. The shot woke up half the people in the barracks, and you happened to get there first. Care to explain what you did while in that room?"

"I found the body, and quickly looked around for clues. That's when I saw the note. I didn't get a chance to read it, since I left right away to get Captain MacTavish." Scarab thumbed at the handcuff. "That's it. I didn't touch anything. I think I was only in there a minute tops."

"Do you remember there being any other papers on the counter?" Ghost asked.

There was a short pause before she reluctantly admitted, "There were."

"Then what made you think that the papers you saw were Brandy's suicide note?"

"..."

"Surely something made you think you saw it, right?"

Scarab sighed heavily. "I was tired at the time, Ghost. I don't remember why I thought I saw his suicide note, just that I thought I did. I was sure of it."

In terms of details, this sounded crucial if he wanted to crack her suspicions. If he could ride this line of questioning out, maybe that's all it'd take to get her to give up. "Your basis for doing all of this is that you thought you saw a note that mysteriously vanished sometime between you showing up on the scene and me getting there. Correct?"

"That's right."

"Alright. I'll put a pin in this and we'll address it later. You went and got MacTavish. In that time between you leaving and coming back, Heatstroke came on the scene. She fainted just outside the room, and never set foot inside the armory. Then the General was next to the scene where he found Heatstroke unconscious and Brandy dead. He claims that he entered the room to investigate before going back out into the hallway to aid Heatstroke. Shortly thereafter, Royce, Roach, and Meat came on the scene along with several other operators before you returned with MacTavish." Ghost rested his arm on his knee and continued, "The gunshot happened at 23:58. How long do you think it took you to arrive at the scene in that time?"

"A minute, two at most. The barracks aren't far from the armory and I was just outside, so I sprinted over," Scarab answered.

"Then we'll say you came on the scene at about midnight. You left within a minute of finding the scene. How long did it take you to run and get MacTavish?"

Scarab considered the question for several seconds. "I think it was about seven or eight minutes before I got him over there."

"That tracks. Heatstroke just barely missed you, according to the security camera in the hall. Two minutes after she got there, Shepherd arrived. While that sounds like he had a window of five minutes to get rid of a note, it's a lot less than that. Not only were the next people on the scene about three minutes after he was, but he was also in the room for two of those."

"Two minutes is plenty of time," Scarab remarked.

Ghost snorted. "I'd agree with you if it weren't for the wrinkle that this suicide note you described was apparently two pages. He would've needed to read the note before he decided to dispose of it, right?"

Scarab lifted her head and glowered at him. "He could've skimmed it. If there was something that Brandy wrote in his note that could've ruined him, then he could've made the impulse decision to burn it."

"If." Ghost went ahead and counted off on his fingers: "If there was a note. If Brandy wrote something nasty. If Shepherd skimmed it. If he burned it. Are you starting to see the problem here?"

"It's all I got to work with!" She snapped.

Before she could get on a tirade, Ghost kicked the metal folding chair over. The resounding clatter was more than enough to shut her up. "Don't raise your voice at me. I think I'm being pretty bloody reasonable right now. You've got a brain, so do me a favor and use it. Your entire argument is composed of assumptions."

Scarab grit her teeth and punched at the arm of the chair. Amazingly, she reeled her tone back from openly hostile to poorly contained aggression. "You're not giving me the chance to defend my reasoning."

Maybe he misjudged her. Maybe this entire thing was one big temper tantrum because nobody wanted to hear her outlandish theory. Ghost crossed his arms. "You want the chance to defend it to me? Fine. Give it your best shot."

Judging by the way she shrunk in that chair somewhat, she clearly didn't expect to get this far. "Alright. Well, first off, there had to be some reason I remember seeing that note. I think it had to be there."

He didn't expect to be back on this so soon, but it seemed she wanted to cover that. "You think so. Isn't it also true that you were also extremely sleep deprived at the time?"

"I was. You're gonna use that to cast doubt on my account. I saw it though, I know I did. Why the hell would I remember clearly seeing it?"

"Clearly? You don't though. You can't tell me why you thought you saw a suicide note, and you want to know why?" Ghost went ahead and picked back up the chair, snapping it open and setting it back where it was. "One side effect of extreme sleep deprivation is hallucinations. I can tell you from first hand experience that your brain's the biggest arsehole you can deal with."

"It could've been real," Scarab denied. "You don't know if I was hallucinating."

Ghost sighed, took a seat, and picked through Scarab's file. From it, he slipped Brandy's assessment out and laid it in front of her. "Hate to break it to you, but I do. Brandy was the one primarily taking care of you and he detailed several instances where you responded to sounds and voices that just weren't there, or completely misidentified him as someone or something else."

Scarab picked up the file with her free hand, her eyes flicking over the document and widening with increasing alarm. "B-but..."

"It's not what you want to hear, but that's just how it is," Ghost said. "It's entirely plausible that you thought you saw that note in the moment."

"This... this just isn't fair." Scarab dropped the file on the table and shook her head. "So now it's okay for you to assume shit?"

Ghost had to process that one. In some reversed, backwards logic, he supposed she did have a point. He did just tear into her for making assumptions, and his single argument against her so far was based on an assumption as well. Just as it was plausible for her to hallucinate and think she saw the note, it was also a possibility that she did genuinely see something that looked like Brandy's suicide note. It wasn't his fault though that she jumped straight to the only point that forced him to make such an assumption.

"You said there had to be a reason you remembered seeing that note. I'm merely pointing out that there could have been a different reason." Ghost folded his hands on the desk. "But, go on. What's your argument for Shepherd getting rid of the note? I want to hear exactly how and why this would happen."

Scarab narrowed her eyes at him. Clearly she knew he was talking her into a corner with this. "Fine. Here's my theory. Brandy and Shepherd seemed friendly on the surface, but something went down between them. Brandy's final act was an attempt to disparage the General's character in some way, by siting him as the cause for his suicide. Shepherd wouldn't need to read the full note. In those two minutes, he could have seen and read the most damning parts and burned it. With it gone, he could pretend it never existed."

"And what, pray tell, could Brandy possibly write that'd make him act that irrationally?" Ghost questioned.

"I don't know. Some crazy dark secret? Maybe Shepherd's some power hungry extremist and had an agenda that Brandy wanted to stop at all costs."

"By taking his own life?"

"Maybe he couldn't bring himself to confront him head on because Shepherd's like family, but still wanted to do the right thing."

Again, there was that thread of logic that he could see her following. "The only thing I have to say on that is that the General was the last person to speak with Brandy, however it was a trip to the infirmary."

"That could've been the trigger," Scarab asserted.

"Could have, if your theory held water." Ghost decided to move on to her next point. "There's a bigger issue here than you accounted for though. I don't know if you were made aware of this, but blood spatter covered the motion sensor of the armory's camera. Because of that, we only got photos of the room up to within thirty seconds of his death. In all those photos, no new papers are added to counter."

"He could've taken the note out of his pocket just before he killed himself."

"Even if that were true, there's an issue. Neither you nor Shepherd knew about the lack of security footage past Brandy's death. That was something we didn't learn until we reviewed it the following day and discovered it hadn't been taking any pictures since. At the time, Shepherd thought that the camera was functioning. Why would he even so much as pick up the note if he thought that he would've been seen?"

"He could've planned on covering it up and realized he didn't need to. It's not hard to have those photos deleted," Scarab retorted.

Props for tenacity. "Essentially, you're proposing that he burned the note, realizing that it could leave a trail, and then planned on just deleting the evidence later? Scarab, no offense, but let's think about what would've happened if blood hadn't gotten on that sensor and the note was there. Not only would Shepherd be caught burning the note, but we would've had photographic evidence that it existed from when you and Heatstroke both appeared before he did. He would've had to delete every picture up to before Brandy put it out. As soon as we checked that the camera worked fine and was snapping pictures like normal, we'd know that there was something being covered up. There's no way the General would do something that blatantly obvious."

Once he said this, Scarab clenched her hands and stewed. She didn't have an answer to that, clearly. Not a good one anyways. If she wanted to push her argument, then it became a question of sheer dumb luck. Shepherd couldn't have predicted anything, so they needed to assume that he would've acted in a way that made sense for someone without all the facts they had. Shepherd had to know where the camera was and how it worked as he received a tour of the base that day.

"...What if he placed that blood so that the camera appeared to have gotten hit by blood spatter?" Scarab finally responded.

... Somehow, someway, she was still gonna argue this. Ghost heaved a sighed. "Where the spatter is on the wall and the camera lines up with the exit wound. So, no. I doubt he planted that blood."

"But could he have?"

Technically speaking, yes, but Ghost wasn't about to let her yank this argument another direction. "If he dabbed the blood on, it would've left an impression of either his skin, cloth, or whatever material he used to do that. If he flicked the blood, it'd make a secondary spatter and it wouldn't necessarily hit the sensor. So no. Probably not. Remarkable as it is, the initial blood spatter did just happen to hit the sensor."

Scarab sighed heavily and sank in the seat. "Alright... I give up. I can't explain it. My theory's reliant on guesswork and some stupid amount of luck to make sense."

Finally... Fucking. Finally. Ghost took off his sunglasses and nursed the steady throbbing behind his eyes. "I'll be honest with you, I could care less whether or not you like the General. But if you plan on pulling this bollocks again, you'd better have a watertight case to back it up."

"Understood." Scarab lightly tugged at the handcuffs again. "We done here?"

"About. Just so you know, this isn't on record as anything more than an NJP. Don't discuss this with anyone." Ghost stood up and went to undo the handcuffs when he realized with an indescribable amount of shame that he never got the key from Heatstroke. He forgot to ask.

Well. This was awkward.

Scarab noticed his pause and sat back up. "What's the matter?"

Oh yeah. They should've thought this one through. "Eh heh heh heh... Funny story. I don't have the key..."

...

... "You're kidding..."

"I'm not..." Ghost rubbed the back of his head. "You know, just sit tight. I'm gonna get them. I'll be right back." With that he retreated from the office and made a mad dash to find Heatstroke.

It must've been ten minutes before he did eventually come across her in the gym with Meat. As one can expect, she was no longer in full gear, having changed into a pair of basketball shorts and a tank top. She turned her uniform pockets inside out in the locker room, swearing up and down that she put it somewhere. When nothing turned up, they were left in dumb silence.

In a weird stroke of negligence, Scarab was locked to a chair in an office and it'd take hours to search for the tactical vest Heatstroke was wearing to find that key. Especially since Heatstroke wasn't totally sure anymore what pocket she put them in. Honestly, it was comical, and Ghost struggled mask the amusement in his tone.

"Mind if I borrow a couple of bobby pins?" Ghost asked.

Heatstroke nodded and picked a couple from her bun, which instantly loosened with the loss of support. "Don't tell her I forgot..."

"I don't think she knows, mate. Don't worry about it." Ghost rushed back to the office. Sure enough, Scarab was still there vegetating. He avoided eye contact while fumbling around with the lock.

This fumbling continued for a lot longer than he cared to admit. It got to the point where Scarab bitterly asked, "Do you have any idea what you're doing?"

Ghost glared at the stubborn lock. He was pretty sure he was doing this right. This wouldn't be the first time he'd been asked to pick a pair of standard issue handcuffs. He wasn't totally sure why this wasn't working. "The lock's just being tricky." Just as he said this, the bobby pin snapped in half. "Well, fuck."

Scarab clicked her tongue and her cheeks strained with a tight, fake smile. "Nice work."

At this point, he was tempted to give up and get the bolt cutters. These stupid things weren't unlatching. Hell, now there was a piece of metal stuck in the lock and he was pretty sure it wasn't coming out with any persuasion. He'd figure this out. Somehow.

{—To Be Continued—

Summary of Plan B Chapters 18 and 19

18. Ghost is here to interrogate Scarab via mind skimmer. Sees her memories, realizes she was right. Shepherd bursts in to do clear up. Neither remember this bullshit. [Rewrite completely so it's a basic interrogation]
19. Shepherd's cleaning house. Gets to Soap, spills the beans, deletes memories. [REDACTED]

A/N: It's amazing how much Shepherd was allowed to bungle things in Plan B on account of him having this bullshit plot device that made cover up work hassle free.

I will say, this is probably going to be the most changes that I do to any single arc of the story solely because of how off the rails it goes before everything suddenly becoming relatively normal again. From here on, we start to follow the narrative of Plan B a little more closely again.

When I was outlining Plan B on paper so we could shuffle Plan B's tiny chapters together into longer ones, I had three full pages worth of notes written out. We're one chapter away from hitting the bottom of the first page and I'm hype. We're about a third of the way in!