Delta

The city wasn't a city anymore. It was a skeleton of concrete and rebar, picked clean by artillery and strewn with the confetti of a collapsed society. Smoke hung in the air, thick and greasy, carrying the scent of black powder, burning plastic, and the underlying, sickly-sweet odor of decay. Somewhere to the east, a machine gun beats a sporadic, angry rhythm.

Delta moved through the corpse of an office building, his footsteps gritty on the dust and shattered glass. His mission was simple: locate and eliminate a high-value target from an opposing group that was encroaching on Makarov's territory. The intel was thin, the orders blunt.

He reached a blown-out window frame on the second floor, giving him a sight-line down a long, debris-choked avenue. He settled in, the stock of his rifle nestling against his cheek. The enhanced optics in his scope cut through the haze, painting the world in shades of green and gray. Movement. A block down, a figure darted from the cover of a scorched taxi to the shell of a bus. Fast. Low. Professional.

Delta's finger rested on the trigger guard. He tracked, waiting for a clear shot. The figure paused at the bus's rear axle, a dark shape against rusted metal. They were scanning the upper windows—his windows. Delta held his breath, becoming part of the rubble.

Another figure joined the first. They communicated with hand signals, a quick, efficient flutter. They pointed upward, directly toward a building adjacent to Delta's. They'd spotted another threat, not him. The soldier nodded, hefting a long rifle. They were setting up to provide overwatch for their team's advance.

It was a perfect tactical tableau. Two enemies, one distracted, the other exposed for a crucial second as they settled into position. The math in Delta's head was cold and absolute. Remove the overwatch, destabilize the team. He exhaled slowly, the world narrowing to the crosshairs centered on the second soldier's upper back, just to the side of the body armor's edge. A debilitating shot. Not immediately fatal, but fight-ending.

His finger took up the slack on the trigger.

A thunderous explosion rocked the street two blocks over—a car bomb or a stored munitions cache cooking off. The shockwave made the building tremble. Dust rained down. At the same moment, the second soldier shifted, turning to shout a warning to his partner.

Delta's rifle cracked, the report swallowed by the echoing boom.

Through the scope, he saw the impact. The figure in his sights jerked violently, a spray of dark liquid, black in the scope's view, misted the air behind them. They didn't cry out. They just folded, collapsing behind the bus axle, out of sight.

A strange, hollow sensation opened in Delta's chest. It was just a shot. A good shot. Mission effective. But the way the soldier had moved… the turn, the profile… something about the shape of them as they fell…

C'mon, ya dafty, keep yer head down! A voice, rough with a Scottish brogue he didn't recognize, echoed in the back of his skull. A phantom memory of watching an agile soldier move through a killhouse. A flicker of pride, instantly smothered by a wave of static.

Down on the street, chaos erupted. The first soldier shouted, unleashing a barrage of suppressing fire in the general direction of the sniper's nest. Delta withdrew from the window, the tactical part of his mind already cataloging exit routes as return fire chewed at the concrete around the opening.

The firefight escalated, a disjointed brawl of several squads clashing in the ruins. Delta moved, engaging targets of opportunity, his actions precise, automated. But his mind kept circling back to that shot. The fall. The lack of a scream.

An hour later, the battlefield fell into an uneasy silence, punctuated by distant moans and the crackle of fires. Makarov's forces had withdrawn, their objective—the target's elimination—confirmed. Delta's part was done. He should have faded into the exfil route.

Instead, he found himself picking his way back toward the shell of the bus.

Bodies lay where they fell, he walked past them without a second glance. And then he saw a boot sticking out from behind the massive tire. Black, standard issue. He stepped around.

{{user}} lay on their side, curled slightly. Their face was ashen, lips parted. The front of their tactical vest was dark and sodden around the left shoulder. The exit wound on the back was a ragged, ugly mess, saturating the fabric. But their chest was moving. Shallow, fluttering breaths.

Delta stood over them, his rifle hanging from its sling. Procedure screamed at him. Finish it.

He crouched. {{user}}'s eyes were half-open, irises glazed with shock and pain, reflecting the smoky sky. They tried to focus on Delta's masked face, but couldn't. Their fingers twitched near a dropped sidearm.

Something twisted in Delta's gut. A wrongness. This wasn't an enemy. This was… a mistake. A personal mistake. The ghost in his head screamed in the silence.

You don't leave your mates behind.

---

The safehouse stank of damp concrete, old mildew, and now, the sharp, metallic tang of blood. Delta leaned against the chipped wall beside the single filthy window, its glass reinforced by a crosshatch of security wire, and watched the figure on the cot.

The asset, {{user}}, was breathing. That was the main thing. Ragged, shallow hitches that made the stained bandage on their left shoulder hitch with every inhalation. Delta had done a field dressing: quick, efficient, pressure applied, gauze packed into the entry and exit wounds on the front and back of the deltoid muscle. A through-and-through. Clean, as far as rifle rounds went. It had shattered the scapula on its way out. {{user}} may never have full range of motion in that arm again, if they even lived.

If.

That was the operative word Delta's mind kept circling back to. The logical course, the one Makarov would have demanded, was to put a 9mm round in the temple of every enemy body on that battlefield. Especially one found still breathing. Waste not, want not. Leave no witnesses. Standard operating procedure.

Yet here the asset was, on a cot in a safehouse Delta wasn't even supposed to be using, consuming medical supplies and oxygen.

Delta pushed off the wall, his boots silent on the concrete floor. He approached the cot, his shadow falling over the {{user}}'s face. Their face was pale, sheened with a cold sweat that stuck strands of hair to their forehead. They'd fought like a demon when Delta had first grabbed them. A weak, fading demon, but one with teeth. Delta's forearm still bore the faint, crescent-shaped marks where {{user}} had sunk their teeth in during the haze of pain and panic. They'd gone limp shortly after, the last of their strength spent.

Now, Delta crouched, he checked the bandage. No fresh seepage. Good. He pressed two fingers to their carotid. The pulse was there, a frantic bird trapped under cold skin. Too fast, but steady. Delta sat back on his heels, his gaze detached, analytical. A tactical asset for interrogation. That was the justification he'd feed command if they ever asked. {{user}} might have useful intel on deployment schedules, comms frequencies, weak points.

But as he looked at the shivering, wounded form on the cot, the story felt thin, even to him. The real reason was a phantom in his own skull, a silent, pulling instinct that had overridden eleven months of programming in that moment of choice over the bodies. It felt like reaching for a name on the tip of his tongue, a face in a forgotten dream. It made his head ache behind his eyes, a dull throb that was becoming familiar.

He stood abruptly, the motion sharp. The asset was stable for now. The next few hours would tell. Infection, shock, blood loss—any of them could still finish the job his rifle had started.

He walked to a metal table bolted to the far wall, where his kit lay. He pulled a syringe and a small vial of clear liquid from a med pouch. A broad-spectrum antibiotic. Not standard issue for prisoners. He loaded the syringe, tapping out air bubbles.

Turning back to the cot, he rolled up {{user}}'s sleeve, he didn't bother with any antiseptic, and injected the contents without ceremony. "Don't die on me," Delta muttered, his voice a low, rough scrape in the quiet room. He wasn't sure who he was saying it to—them, or the ghost of the man he used to be. "Your part's not over yet."