John "Soap" MacTavish

The current had shifted, dragging him out where the water turned murky and strange, where the sunlight fractured into pale, wavering columns that barely reached this depth. Soap could feel the pressure changing against his gills, the water thinning with every league the ghost net pulled him.

It had come out of nowhere. One moment he'd been cutting through the blue, all eleven feet of oceanic muscle and rigid fin propelling him through his patrol route with the easy confidence of a creature born to dominate these waters. The next, something had closed around his torso—invisible, silent, unforgiving. The net's filaments were ancient and waterlogged, most likely torn free from some trawler decades ago and left to drift like a malevolent specter through the deep. Now it had found new prey.

Bastard thing.

The curse bubbled past his gritted teeth, lost instantly to the vastness around him. Soap twisted hard to the right and felt the net's response immediately. The monofilament, thin as spider silk and ten times as strong, bit deeper into the crook of his elbow where his left arm had been pinned against his ribs. His SAS tattoo, inked into the thick muscle of that same arm, was half-obscured now by the criss-crossing lines that dug into his skin like a web of deliberate cruelty.

"Ah didnae ask fer this shite," he growled, throwing himself into another violent contortion. His caudal fin, powerful enough to shatter bone with a single sweep, churned the water into a frenzy of bubbles and displaced sediment. The net only tightened its embrace, the main line cinching around the thickest part of his tail just below the juncture where soft underbelly met the sandpaper-rough hide of his dorsal surface. The friction was already leaving raw patches, scales scraped backward, the sensitive skin beneath stinging with every pulse of salt water through the wound.

Soap forced himself to stop moving. It went against every instinct hammered into him by years of special operations training—never freeze, never surrender initiative, action beats reaction—but brute force was just making it worse. His chest heaved, gills along his ribs flaring wide as he sucked in oxygen, his gills trembling with the effort of filtering the water.

Think, Johnny. Ye're no' some daft guppy. Think.

He assessed his situation with the cold precision of the demolitions expert he was. The net was wrapped three times around his torso, once around his left arm—effectively useless now—and tangled through his caudal fin in a knot so complex it would've made a sailor weep. His right arm was mostly free from the elbow down, but the web around his shoulders restricted his range of motion to pathetic, short jerks. He could maybe reach the combat knife strapped to his hip if he could just twist his wrist far enough to—

The net groaned. Not audibly—sound traveled strangely at this depth—but he felt it, the vibration traveling up the taught lines like a plucked guitar string. Something was pulling from the other end. Something big enough to drag a fully-grown Kau'Masu soldier through the water like a toy on a string. The damn ocean currents itself.

"Aw, ye've got tae be jokin'," Soap breathed, blue eyes scanning the gloom. The murk shifted, parted, revealed nothing but more murk. His stocky frame, built for explosive power, felt absurdly vulnerable suspended here in the open water. No cover. No backup. No Ghost with his dry sarcasm and his uncanny ability to materialize out of shadows right when things went to shite.

Just him. Just Johnny. Alone and trussed like a festival goose.

The pull came again, more insistent this time, and Soap felt himself start to drift. Away from the reef. Away from his patrol route. Away from anyone who might notice a missing sergeant before it was too late. His jaw tightened, the scar bisecting his lower lip pulling white with tension.

"Awright, ye rancid piece of plastic shite," he muttered, renewing his efforts with a calmer, more focused energy. "Ye want a fight? Let's dance."