Simon "Ghost" Riley

Ghost hated water ops.

He joined the Special Air Service, not the Special Boat Service. But somehow he’d ended up here — on a narrow grey rib craft, shivering his bollocks off in the middle of the fucking North Atlantic. Waves like black mountains, air sharp enough to peel skin, wind screaming like a banshee across the steel hull. Every breath he took hurt.

The boat rocked with no rhythm, just the brute force of cold water and deeper currents. Ghost crouched low near the aft compartment, boots planted wide, rifle against his chest. Salt crusted in the creases of his gloves. It got in the seams of everything. He’d changed into dry kit three hours ago. Didn’t matter. He was soaked through again. Sea spray didn’t just touch skin — it clung, clawed into every joint. The cold here wasn’t normal. It was personal.

Their comms had been acting up since twilight. No signal distortion at first, just crackle. Then the radio went dead in patches, flickering between static and bursts of garbled noise like a radio tuning in to something wrong. Even the GPS readouts stuttered. A tech on board mumbled about magnetic interference, muttered that solar flares didn’t behave like this. Ghost hadn’t responded. He didn’t believe in ghosts. Not the kind that made your compass spin.

Still, the tension coiled in him like it always did when something was off. Something beyond the realm of bullets and bodybags. And now this — an anomalous sonar return, dead ahead, moving fast and surfacing.

He heard the SBS lads shifting before they even spoke. Alert in the sudden burst of wind. The youngest one swore under his breath.

“Something’s rising. Deep ping. Big.”

Ghost stood. His knees cracked from being crouched too long. He adjusted his grip on his rifle, checking the safety out of habit. Not that habit meant much out here — everything about this op had already gone sideways.

The thing broke the surface about twenty metres off the bow. Not metal. Not wreckage. A shape — impossible to make out in the dark, the movement too fast, too wrong. But it wasn’t a wave. Ghost knew the sea well enough to know when it was lying.

“Ropes!” someone barked. “We’re hauling it!”

It wasn’t quick work. The sea fought them every inch. Even with the motor dialed back and the team leaning hard against the tilt of the boat, the shape refused to come in clean. Whatever it was, it thrashed weight like nothing natural. The hook missed twice. The third time they got lucky — snagged it by a mass near the surface. A net went over.

Ghost helped pull.

Hands burned with effort. Ropes turned stiff with salt. The deck beneath his boots lurched with each wave, making his spine protest. Hauling anything out of freezing seawater was bastard work. Doing it blind, in the dark, while every nerve screamed that something was wrong — that was something else entirely.

He grunted through clenched teeth, muscles locked against the pull. Sweat broke cold under his gear. SBS lads heaved and yelled alongside him. No one knew what they were dragging up. Just that it shouldn’t be here.

It breached like a nightmare.

The weight hit the deck hard — wet, heavy, unmoving. Ghost straightened, back aching, breath visible in the cold. His rifle stayed pointed.

The team around him hesitated. Every man there trained for warzones, for chaos, for things they could shoot or bleed or reason with. Not this. Not whatever-the-fuck they’d just fished out of the ocean.

Ghost didn’t flinch.

The cold was forgotten. His focus narrowed, cutting through the sound of the sea, through the sudden eerie stillness that followed the splash. This thing… this was the source. He didn’t need a scientist or a briefing to tell him that. He felt it in the weight of the air.

No one moved.

Ghost slowly stepped forward. Rifle lowered slightly, but not dropped. His breath came harsh in his mask, heart still hammering — not with fear, but with calculation. He’d kill it if he had to. Ghost stopped a few paces away, shoulders tense. Everything about this screamed that it shouldn’t be real. And yet it was, dripping saltwater on his deck, hauled out of a sea that didn't give things back.

His voice, when it finally came, was low. Steady. As cold as the ocean wind curling round them.

“…You gonna tell me what the fuck you are?”