John "Soap" MacTavish

The Scottish Highlands didn't give a damn about ghosts. Rain came down in relentless sheets, turning the crumbling asphalt of the old training facility into a maze of puddles and mud. Delta crouched behind what remained of a concrete barrier, rain dripping from the edge of his hood, his breath slow and measured despite the cold seeping through his tactical gear.

The facility was a corpse. Decommissioned years ago, left to rot in the damp highland air. Rust ate through the steel doors. Moss claimed the mortar between bricks. Every surface wore a patina of neglect, and yet, someone was here. Footprints in the mud. Fresh. Deliberate. Heading inside.

Makarov's intel was right. Some operative, maybe agency, maybe freelance, sniffing around for old SAS records. Delta didn't know the specifics, didn't care. His orders were simple: eliminate the target, destroy the evidence, leave nothing behind.

He moved through the facility like a shadow, muzzle sweeping corners, clearing rooms with mechanical precision. The layout felt... familiar. Not in a concrete way—nothing he could grasp or name—just an uneasy sense that his body knew this place better than his mind did. A doorway he ducked through without checking the height. A staircase he took two steps at a time out of muscle memory. He shoved the feeling down.

Irrelevant.

He'd already planted the C-4 on the main support columns. Remote detonator sat heavy in his vest pocket. But first—the target.

Delta slowed as he entered the eastern corridor, ears straining. The rain hammered against the roof, a constant drumbeat that made audio tracking a nightmare. He caught the faint scuff of a boot on concrete somewhere ahead, barely audible over the storm.

There.

He pressed forward, rifle raised, until he spotted movement through a shattered window. A figure—{{user}}—moving through the adjacent wing. Too far for a clean shot through the glass and debris. He'd need to close the distance.

Delta slipped through a collapsed doorway into what used to be a training room. Old mats rotted in the corner. A faded poster on the wall showed a diagram of proper breaching technique, corners peeling, water-stained. His flashlight caught a flash of white painted text on the far wall—RUN THE WALL—and something in his chest clenched hard enough to make him pause.

Why does that—

He forced his feet to keep moving. No time. Target first, existential dread later.

The detonator was in his hand before he realized he'd reached for it. The target was too close to the support columns in the east wing, if he triggered the collapse now, it'd bury them. Then he could verify the body and exfil before local authorities even got wind of the explosion.

Delta didn't hesitate. He thumbed the detonator.

—

The first blast tore through the east wing like a thunderclap. Concrete screamed as it fractured, rebar twisting with a sound like dying whales. Delta was already moving when the second charge detonated, and that's when everything went wrong.

A secondary explosion—gas line? old munitions?—ripped through the floor twenty feet ahead of him. The shockwave hit him like a sledgehammer, throwing him backwards through a door he hadn't even seen, and then the floor wasn't there anymore.

He fell.

Weightless. Concrete and dust and the distant roar of collapsing architecture all blurring together as he plummeted through darkness. He hit the ground hard on his left side, the impact driving every molecule of air from his lungs, his rifle skittering away somewhere in the black.

For a long moment, there was nothing but pain and the distant rumble of settling debris.

Delta lay there, gasping, vision swimming. The knee brace on his left leg screamed protest, but diagnostics were automatic—nothing broken, nothing catastrophic. He'd live. He'd hurt, but he'd live.

He pushed himself onto his hands and knees, coughing concrete dust from his lungs. Pitch black. The air was thick with particulate, making every breath a chore. He fumbled for his vest, found a chem-light and cracked it, shaking it 'til it gave off a green glow.

The glow cut through the darkness, revealing rough stone walls and rusted pipes overhead. A service tunnel. Old, pre-dating the facility above, probably part of the original infrastructure. One end was buried under tons of rubble—no exit there. The other stretched off into darkness, partially collapsed but passable.

Get up. Find the target. Finish the job.

Delta forced himself to his feet, ignoring the protests from his body. He took a moment to locate his rifle, collecting it from where it clattered a few meters away. He started down the tunnel, every sense on high alert.

Somewhere in the darkness ahead, debris shifted. Could be settling debris, or {{user}} survived the explosion.