Price - "Fresh start"

War had a sound you learned to live with—gunfire rolling like distant thunder, mortars cracking the air, the constant murmur of comms in your ear. This wasn’t that. This was the silence that followed, the kind that crawled into your head and stayed there. Captain John Price stepped through the ruins of the forward outpost, his boots sinking into the wet earth. The entry gate, once steel and solid, was warped and half-melted, leaning like a wounded man taking his last breath. His rifle stayed up, eyes scanning for movement, though he already knew there’d be none worth finding.

The mission had been straightforward on paper. A seasoned detachment—Viper One—sent to cut off an arms pipeline through disputed territory. Clean, efficient, deniable. These weren’t rookies. Every name on the roster was a veteran with scars to prove it. But comms had gone dead mid-op, and no extraction beacon ever lit. Four days later, the quick reaction force rolled in expecting a fight. What they found was something else entirely.

The forest swallowed most of the noise. Overgrown brush crept toward the compound’s edges as though eager to claim it. Bodies were scattered, some half-covered by leaves as if the ground was trying to hide the evidence. Others weren’t hidden at all—hung from trees like sick trophies, stripped of weapons and dignity. There were piles too, stacked with precision, each one wired with enough explosives to take anyone foolish enough to disturb them.

Price had seen war crimes before, but this… this was surgical. Ritualistic. Knife work, deep and deliberate. Some of the soldiers had been tortured; others had clearly gone down fighting, their blood streaked across stone and bark like savage brushstrokes. One position near a ridge told its own story—spent magazines, blood trails, and at least a dozen dead attackers. Outnumbered and cornered, they’d made them pay for every inch.

The comms center was little more than scorched metal and rubble now. Price stepped inside, his boot skidding slightly on dried, blackened blood. A wall bore the faint remnants of writing, done in soot and smeared beyond recognition. The stink of burnt wiring and charred flesh still clung to the air.

“Gaz,” Price’s voice cut through the radio, gravel steady. “Push through the comms shack. Laswell wants a second pass on thermal.”

“Copy, Cap,” Gaz replied. Ghost was already moving toward the wreck of the main building without a word, his usual silent shadow.

Four days of this. Four days pulling bodies from under twisted beams and burned netting. It didn’t look like an ambush. It looked like someone had opened the gates and let the wolves in. Armories stripped bare. No surviving drone feeds—one had been manually cut mid-transmission. Not a single enemy casing on the ground. Just theirs.

“Could be friendly fire,” Gaz muttered once.

Price didn’t even look at him. “No chance. This wasn’t panic. This was planned.”

Ghost, crouched by a wall, brushed dust from a streak of dried blood. Nine fingernails were wedged in the mortar between bricks, torn clean from someone’s hands. He didn’t comment. He didn’t have to.

---

They found the survivor on the fourth night.

Ghost’s voice came over comms, low. “Contact left. Negative movement.”

“Copy,” Price answered, sweeping through the debris-choked yard toward the intel block. The structure had taken heavy fire—half the wall sheared away, scorch marks crawling up the concrete. Inside, the air was damp and stale, thick with the stink of mold, smoke, and old blood.

Then he heard it. Not footsteps. Not speech. Breathing. Shallow. Strained.

His torch swept over the wreckage until it caught on the faint rise and fall of a chest under a heap of broken paneling. Price slung his rifle and moved in, shifting metal and splintered wood until the shape underneath came into focus. A soldier, caked in dried blood, hair matted to their head. One eye swollen shut, hands twitching like they were still squeezing a trigger. Most of their gear was gone—either burned away or cut from them—but a single dog tag was tied to their bootlace.

They looked at him through the uninjured eye. No fear. No relief. Just… watching. Like they weren’t sure he was real.

“You with Viper One?” Price asked, his voice even.

A faint nod. Barely there.

“Alright,” he murmured. “You’re not alone anymore. Medics are inbound. Just keep breathing.”

They didn’t speak, but their gaze never broke. Price stayed with them until the med team took over. He’d seen soldiers broken, seen them numb. But this one… this one had walked through hell and crawled out the other side. That kind of survivor didn’t happen by accident.

---

Two Weeks Later – TF141 Briefing Room – 0400 Hours

Price stood at the head of the table, hands resting on the back of a chair as the file sat open in front of him.

Name: Classified. Former Unit: Viper One (KIA – classified loss). Status: Reassigned to Task Force 141. Skills: Reconnaissance. CQB. Urban warfare. Psych Eval: Pending.

Laswell scrolled through fragments on her tablet. “Survived four days under debris. Took out a hostile with a broken knife. No food, internal bleeding. Still managed to get to the surface.”

Price glanced at Ghost, whose mask hid any reaction. “They’ve got grit. They’ll fit.”

“You’re sure?” Laswell asked.

“They’re here,” Price said simply. “That’s enough for me.”

---

TF141 Armory – That Afternoon

Price was checking his rifle when they walked in—fresh fatigues, gear squared, moving with quiet efficiency. The kind of posture that told you they hadn’t decided if they were a soldier again or just a weapon waiting for orders.

“Glad you made it,” Price said, stepping toward them. His tone was steady, no pity in it. “I was the one who pulled you out of that pile. Figured I’d be the first to say—welcome to the team.”

They didn’t answer. Just gave the faintest nod.

“We’re not Viper One,” Price continued, “but we don’t leave our own behind. Not ever. You’ll see that soon enough.”

He motioned toward the open gear cases. “Get kitted. You’ll be back in the field before long. And next time… you won’t be the only one walking out.”