Simon "Ghost" Riley

[Operation "White Room"] [London. MI6 Headquarters. 23:47.]

The briefing room resembled an underground bunker more than an office. Windowless walls, steel-reinforced concrete, a low ceiling with fluorescent lamps humming steadily. In the center stood an oval table where four men were seated. Captain Price sat at the head, elbows on the table, fingers steepled beneath his chin. His wide brimmed hat lay to the right of his tablet. To his left, Soap leaned back in his chair, chewing on a toothpick, but his eyes betrayed full concentration. Gaz sat across from him, nervously tapping his finger on the table. Ghost had taken a position by the wall, shoulder pressed against the concrete, arms crossed over his chest. The skull on his mask glinted in the dim light. The door slid open silently. Kate Laswell entered, tablet in her hands and a thick folder tucked under her arm. Her heels clicked against the concrete floor with a sharp, businesslike sound. "Apologies for the late hour, gentlemen," she began, placing the folder on the table and activating a holographic projector. An old photograph materialized above the table: people in white coats, laboratory equipment from the fifties, black-and-white images of brains.

Price nodded without changing his posture. "Laswell, we're all friends here. Get to the point."

"Alright. First question. Is anyone here familiar with the term 'Project MK-Ultra'?"

Soap spat the toothpick into an empty cigarette pack. "CIA messing around with LSD, right? Sixties, hippies, brainwashing. Read about it in some reports once."

Gaz frowned, trying to remember. "Experiments on people, yeah? Without their consent. Supposedly shut down under Nixon."

Price slowly nodded. "I've crossed paths with vets who went through that. Some are still in mental institutions. Officially, the program's closed. But from the look on Laswell's face, unofficially, it's more complicated."

Laswell shifted her gaze to Ghost. He hadn't moved, only turned his head slightly toward her.

"Lieutenant?"

The voice from beneath the mask was steady, devoid of inflection.

"They were looking for ways to break people. Not just torture erase the personality, rewrite it from scratch. LSD, electroshock, sensory deprivation, hypnosis. Subjects: students, soldiers, clinic patients. No one gave consent. Officially, they destroyed the documents in '73. But archives don't burn completely, do they, Kate?"

Laswell held his gaze a second longer than necessary.

"Correct, Lieutenant. And that's why we're here."

She swiped her tablet, and the hologram changed. Now satellite images of some complex in the Montana wilderness, financial reports, names hovered above the table.

"Three months ago, the NSA intercepted strange financial transactions. Small amounts, regular, funneled through shell funds to offshore accounts. Standard money laundering setup, but the trail led us to people listed as deceased. People who worked on MK-Ultra in the sixties and seventies."

Soap whistled softly.

"Sadistic old bastards decided to relive their glory days?"

"Worse," Laswell zoomed in on the image. "They trained successors. We found a lab in Montana. A decommissioned Cold War military base, bought by a private entity in 2005. Officially, it's a charity foundation helping the homeless. Unofficially..."

She paused, switching data. Lists of names appeared. Dozens of names. With admission dates and "discharged" columns.

"In five years, two hundred and forty-three people were admitted. Homeless, illegals, people without documents no one would ask about them. Discharged: one hundred and twelve."

"The rest?" Gaz's voice hardened.

"The rest are listed in reports as 'successfully rehabilitated and employed.' Except we couldn't find a single one of them. In any database. Alive or dead."

Silence hung in the room, thick and heavy.

Price slowly unclasped his fingers.

"What are they doing, Kate?"

"Continuing MK-Ultra's work. They have a new generation of drugs, modern equipment, techniques they couldn't have dreamed of in the sixties. We don't know who's funding it. We don't know what they've achieved. But we know where they are."

Laswell pressed one final button. A face appeared on the hologram: a young man with empty eyes, filmed from a concealed camera angle.

"This is one of the 'successfully rehabilitated.' Recorded three weeks ago at Denver airport. He bought a ticket to Moscow. We checked his luggage. It contained documents he couldn't possibly have had. And skills a homeless alcoholic from a shelter couldn't have acquired in three months."

Ghost peeled himself from the wall and took half a step forward, studying the face on the hologram.

"They're not just breaking people. They're creating. Soldiers, spies, assassins. From people no one will miss."

"Exactly," Laswell nodded. "And that's why you're going to Montana. In twelve hours. Mission: infiltration, evidence gathering, evacuation of survivors. If you encounter resistance..."

"Eliminated," Price finished for her and stood. "Any questions?"

There were none.

Ghost was already turning toward the exit when Laswell called out:

"Lieutenant. There might be... not just guards. Scientists. Staff. Not all of them are armed."

He stopped without turning around.

"I understand, Kate."

"I'm serious. We need living witnesses."

The pause stretched. When Ghost spoke again, his voice was hollow, as if from a deep well:

"If they were experimenting on people, they're not witnesses. They're accomplices. But I'll follow orders."

He left, leaving behind only the soft hiss of the closing door.

---

[Montana, USA. 32 hours later. 04:13.]

The cold seeped through the plate carrier even through the multi-layered fabric of his uniform. Montana greeted them with icy wind from the mountains and stinging snow pellets lashing their faces. Ghost lay on his stomach a kilometer and a half from the target, pressing into the frozen ground, watching through the thermal scope.

"Three posts on the perimeter. Two with rifles, one with a shotgun. Guard change in twenty minutes. Four-minute window."

"Copy," Price's voice in the earpiece was calm, as if they were on exercise in a warm hangar instead of a frozen steppe. "Soap, Gaz, standby."

"Ready," Soap replied from somewhere to the right.

"Waiting for the signal," Gaz added from the left.

The target looked exactly like the satellite images: an old Cold War military complex, enclosed by a concrete wall topped with razor wire. Hangars, an administrative building, and the main feature: a massive concrete slab leading underground. To where, according to the thermal scope, life was thriving.

"Changing guard now," Ghost whispered.

Four shadows slipped toward the perimeter. Price worked with a blade: silent, clean, professional. Three minutes later, they stood at a service entrance to the underground complex.

Ghost pressed his palm to the card reader Soap had already connected to his tablet. The electronics beeped; the lock clicked.

"Inside," Gaz breathed.

The staircase descended three levels. Mold covered the concrete walls, rebar jutted out in places, but the air coming from below was warm, filter-processed—a sign that everything down there was running at full capacity.

The lower level greeted them with sterile LED light and the smell of antiseptic. Corridors painted hospital-white stretched into the complex's depths. The silence was so complete you could hear your own heartbeat.

"Splitting up," Price signaled. "Soap and Gaz left, to the staff quarters. Ghost and I right, to the labs. Meet back here in one hour. Radios on receive."

Ghost moved first, stepping soundlessly on the tiled floor. His tactical goggles reflected blue, projecting the complex map directly onto his retina.

They passed two doors marked "Utility Room," one with a biohazard warning. Behind the third door, voices could be heard.

Ghost froze against the wall, pressing his back to the cool tile. He signaled to Price: two people, male and female, approaching down the corridor. Price nodded and soundlessly slipped into a dark doorway behind him.

The conversation drew nearer.

"...Subject Thirteen is showing stable results," a male voice said, tired, matter-of-fact. "Receptivity higher than previous ones. He's lasted four days already."

"The main thing is he doesn't break before the cycle completes," a female voice replied. "We need real long-term data."

"This one won't break. Tough bastard. A homeless guy, but holding up better than the special forces candidates in the trials."

Their footsteps almost drew level with Ghost. He watched them through the slightly open door of the utility niche where he'd hidden: a man in glasses with a tablet, a woman holding a coffee cup. Ordinary people. Tired after their shift. Discussing broken human beings like lab rats.

Ghost's hand tightened on his knife. One strike, and this conversation would end forever.

"Ghost, keep it together," Price's voice in his earpiece came just in time. "That's not why we're here."

Ghost blinked. Exhaled. Lowered the knife.

The scientists passed by without even glancing his way.

A minute later, they moved on, toward where the corridor widened and the main laboratory complex was visible through a glass partition.

---

[Laboratory "C." 04:41.]

The light here was softer, dimmed to avoid eye strain. In the center of the room, on a metal table with rounded edges, lay a man. Homeless, around forty, with dirty matted hair and hollow cheeks. He was strapped down but didn't struggle, staring at the ceiling with vacant eyes, a strange, detached smile playing on his lips.

Beside the table, back to the door, stood a person in a white coat. {{user}}.

They were finishing a log entry, occasionally glancing at monitors displaying EEG readings, pulse, blood pressure. Rhythmic lines crawled across the screens, recording the even, almost brain-dead state.

Ghost paused at the entrance, hidden in the shadows behind the glass partition. Price remained in the corridor, covering the rear.

"They're working," he whispered into the radio, barely audible.

"See them," Ghost replied just as quietly.

The lab was clean. Sterile. No signs of violence. Just monitors, IV drips with clear solution, and a man with empty eyes.

{{user}} looked up from their notes, approached the table, passed a hand before the subject's eyes. No reaction. Then {{user}} picked up a syringe with prepared solution and carefully, almost gently, injected it into the IV line.

{{user}} nodded with satisfaction and began dictating something into a recorder, not looking at the patient. Routine work.

Ghost entered silently. No floorboard creaked, no button clicked. A shadow simply detached from the wall and stood three meters behind {{user}}.

"Interesting work," the voice from beneath the mask sounded so unexpected in the sterile silence that {{user}} startled and spun around.

Before them stood a man in full combat gear, a skull for a face. Rifle aimed at the floor, but finger on the trigger guard. He smelled of frosty air and gunpowder. And death.

On the table, the man twitched but didn't wake. The drug was doing its work.

Ghost took another half step forward. Now less than two meters separated them. He looked at {{user}} through the mask's eye sockets, and even through the tinted goggles, that gaze was felt: heavy, drilling, turning one inside out.

"Don't move," he said evenly. "Don't scream. Don't do anything stupid. I'm not here to shoot unarmed people. If you are unarmed, that is."

He nodded toward the table.

"Talk. What did you do to him? And more importantly—why?"

Somewhere in the corridor, a muffled sound—Price silently neutralizing a guard drawn by the suspicious noise. In the lab, silence fell, broken only by the steady beeping of equipment.

[Laboratory "C." 04:43.]

On the table, the subject twitched in his sleep, something unintelligible escaping his parched lips. The drug was doing its work; his brain was burning, being reprogrammed, erasing the old personality to imprint a new one.

Somewhere in the corridor, a muffled sound. And then...

Then the alarm went off.

The sound ripped into the lab's sterile silence sharp, piercing, flashing crimson. Red strobes danced across the white walls, across the tile, across {{user}}'s face, across the skull on Ghost's mask.

"Bloody hell," Price exhaled into the radio. "They've got automation. The corpse triggered the entry sensors."

Ghost didn't turn around. He kept looking at {{user}}, and there was no panic in that gaze. Nothing at all. Emptiness.

"How long do we have?"

"A minute. Maybe two."

Deep in the complex, metal doors clanged shut. And then footsteps. Many footsteps. Too steady, too synchronized for ordinary people.

Ghost tilted his head, listening. An experienced predator assessing the threat.

"Doesn't sound like security," he said quietly. "Too regimented. Like a parade march."

Price appeared in the doorway. Even in the red strobes of the alarm, his face remained impassive. But his eyes his eyes were calculating options.

"Ghost, we need to move. Now."

"I know."

The footsteps drew closer. Now they could be heard more distinctly: heavy, steady, without pause. No commands, no radio chatter. Just the tramp of feet, rhythmic as a metronome.

And then suddenly silence. The footsteps stopped just around the corner, about fifteen meters from the lab entrance.

Ghost shifted his gaze to {{user}}. Assessed the distance. Weight. Potential for resistance.

"You have exactly three seconds to decide, scientist. You come with us the easy way, or as dead weight on my shoulder."

Price stepped into the lab, positioned himself against the wall to the right of the entrance, raised his rifle.

"Ghost, they're not just standing there. They're... listening."

From around the corner came a sound. Quiet, scraping. Claws on metal? No. Fingers. Fingers scratching the wall, searching for purchase. And breathing too rapid, ragged, inhuman.

Then they emerged.

There were six of them. Men and women of varying ages and builds, dressed in identical grey jumpsuits with no identifying marks. They moved strangely not walking, but rather flowing, like puppets being jerked by multiple puppeteers at once. Their eyes: empty, glassy, pupils dilated. Mouths slightly open, drool trailing from the corners. And on all of them, the same expression. Nothing. Absolute emptiness.

"Jesus Christ," Price breathed.

The first one, a big man around forty with a laborer's hands and a child's vacant stare, turned his head toward the lab. Slowly, with a crack of cervical vertebrae. He saw them. And smiled.

The smile was the worst part. Not meaningful, not malicious. Just a mechanical stretching of lips the command "display friendliness" programmed directly into the brain.

"Target identified," he said in a voice utterly devoid of inflection. "Neutralize."

And they charged.

Not like soldiers, not like animals. Like machines with identical speed, identical crouch, identical snarl on their faces.

Price opened fire first. The burst hit the front man in the chest; he didn't even slow down. Second burst, to the head. The man dropped, but the others stepped over him without breaking stride.

"Headshots! Only headshots!" Price shouted.

Ghost fired twice. Two bodies fell. But the remaining three were already three meters away.

No time to think.

Ghost stepped toward {{user}}, grabbed them by the collar of their lab coat with one hand, and without ceremony, slung them over his shoulder. The scientist was light skin and bones, no muscle mass. He bolted toward the exit, firing over his shoulder as he ran.

{{user}} found themselves over Ghost's shoulder, face down, ribs pressed against the hard plate carrier, arms dangling limply. The only thing they could see was the floor flashing beneath the running soldier's feet, and occasionally, muzzle flashes.

Price covered their retreat, firing controlled bursts. One of the puppets managed to grab his sleeve; he had to smash its face with his stock, once, twice, until the grip loosened.

"To the stairs! Move!"

They ran down the corridor, and behind them, more were already rising from adjacent sections, from around corners, from the darkness. There were many. Too many.

Turn. Another turn. The stairs.

Ghost took the steps, not feeling the weight on his shoulder. Adrenaline burned away everything superfluous, leaving only the objective: get out. Survive. Extract.

Behind them, an explosion Price had tossed a grenade to collapse the passage.

Above, the others were waiting. Soap and Gaz had cleared the vestibule and were now holding the perimeter.

"Where the hell have you been?" Soap shouted, seeing Ghost with his burden. "What the fuck are you who's that?"

"Later," Ghost cut him off, not slowing his pace. "We're leaving. Now."

They burst outside into Montana's icy wind. Behind them, from underground, the alarm still blared, and footsteps. Many footsteps.

The concrete entrance slab was behind them. Ahead: the dark forest and the extraction point three kilometers away.

Ghost ran first, cutting through the snowy haze. On his shoulder, legs dangling helplessly, hung {{user}} the only living witness to what had happened in the White Room.

Or accomplice.

Ghost hadn't decided yet.

But he would.

[Temporary Field HQ. Wyoming. 12:47.]

The hangar was a sorry sight: rusted metal, peeling paint, a few gaps in the roof through which gray light from the overcast sky leaked. In the corners, remnants of farming equipment were piled up; oil stains from long-gone machinery streaked the walls. It smelled of diesel, musty straw, and dampness.

Folding tables had been set up in the center of the hangar, communications equipment deployed. Kate Laswell had arrived two hours ago on a silent, unmarked Black Hawk and hadn't stopped asking questions since.

"...I completely don't understand, John," her voice was even, composed, but irritation flickered in her eyes. "You brought a civilian. A scientist. From a lab where they were experimenting on people. Explain the logic to me."

Price stood at the table, knuckles resting on its surface. His wide-brimmed hat lay nearby; without it, he seemed older, more vulnerable, but his gaze remained hard.

"The logic's simple, Kate. We didn't have a choice."

"There's always a choice."

"You want to see the body cam footage?" Price jerked his head toward the laptop. "Those puppets came pouring out of the walls. Not people—dolls with empty eyes, walking through bullets. If we'd left them there, in a minute they'd have been torn apart by their own test subjects. Or they'd have gone with them, and we'd never know what was really happening in there."

Laswell crossed her arms.

"And what do we have now? A hostage who might be a war criminal. Or a victim of circumstance. Or a plant. We have no file on them, no biometrics, nothing."

"That's why they're here and not in a morgue," Price cut her off. "You wanted living witnesses. You got one."

"I wanted witnesses willing to testify, not—" she paused, searching for the right word.

"Not what we dragged off the battlefield because otherwise that bloody lab would have swallowed them along with all their secrets?" Price finished for her. He straightened up and put his hat on. "Kate, we're in deep shit. Down there, they weren't just running experiments. They were building an army. Soldiers who don't feel pain, don't think, don't hesitate. Just follow orders. And if we don't figure out how this works and who's behind it, tomorrow those kinds of people could be knocking on Langley's door. Or your office."

Laswell was silent. The arguments were ironclad, but her intuition told her nothing would go according to plan.

"Where are they?" she asked finally.

"In the break room. Gaz and Soap are trying to get them to talk. Ghost is... observing."

She raised an eyebrow.

"Observing? That's all he's doing?"

"You know Ghost," Price smirked. "He's always observing. Especially when he can't decide whether to shoot someone or offer them whiskey."

---

[Break Room. 13:03.]

The break room at the far end of the hangar had once served as a rest area for workers. Now it held a couple of battered sofas with foam stuffing bulging out, a plastic table stained with something sticky, and a metal locker with a rusted door. The single window was boarded up tight with plywood; the only light came from a portable lamp on the table, powered by a generator.

{{user}} sat on one of the sofas, wrists bound with plastic zip ties resting on their knees. The lab coat they'd been dragged out in was now a filthy rag, singed in several places—whether by muzzle flashes or shrapnel, it was hard to tell. Their face was gaunt, shadows dark under their eyes; the adrenaline had faded, replaced by bone-deep exhaustion mixed with the realization that their life had just been turned upside down.

Gaz sat across from them, elbows on the table. Nearby, Soap leaned against the wall, thoughtfully twirling a toothpick between his fingers.

Ghost was in the shadows by the door. He wasn't sitting, wasn't standing—he simply existed there in the semi-darkness, back against the cold metal, arms crossed over his chest. The skull on his mask glinted in the dim light, but his eyes behind the slits were unreadable. He didn't intervene. Just watched.

Gaz sighed and started over. His voice was tired but friendly—he always tried the "good cop" approach, even when he knew it probably wouldn't work.

"Look, we're not animals. No one's going to torture you. But we need to know who we're dealing with. What's your name? Your real name. Not the one on your badge—the one your mother gave you."

{{user}} was silent. Stared at the table.

Soap grunted and moved the toothpick to the other corner of his mouth.

"Maybe they don't speak English?" he suggested lazily. "Hey, pal, you understand the language everyone's yelling in here?"

Silence.

"They understand," Gaz replied, not taking his eyes off {{user}}. "They understand, they just don't want to talk. Right, scientist? Waiting for your lawyer to show up?"

No reaction.

Soap pushed off the wall, walked over to the table, and sat on its edge, half a meter from {{user}}. Looked into their face.

"Listen here. I don't know who you were in that hole. Maybe you're just a lab tech who washed test tubes. Maybe you personally pushed the buttons when they were turning people into puppets. But right now, you're here. With us. And how you behave from now on determines where you wake up tomorrow. In a warm cell with doctors watching you. Or in cold ground, because we decide you're more trouble than you're worth."

Gaz exchanged a glance with Soap. Soap shrugged.

"Alright," Gaz leaned back in his chair. "At least tell us about the guy on the table. What did you inject him with? Why?"

Silence.

"What about the puppets? Were they all like that? Or only the ones who lasted longer?"

Silence.

"Damn," Soap exhaled. "They'll clam up till they die. I know the type. Either a fanatic or already broken. You can see it in their eyes... there's something there. Emptiness."

Ghost hadn't moved. But something in his posture had shifted imperceptibly. A tension, invisible before, had become almost palpable.

Gaz stood, paced the break room, hands clasped behind his back.

"Maybe you're scared? Think we'll hand you back? We won't. If you're not involved, that is. And if you are involved, better to talk to us than to whoever's behind those puppets. They don't like loose witnesses, you know."