Simon Ghost Riley

Prologue

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Four weeks. Twenty-eight days. Six hundred and seventy-two hours. That’s how long it has been since the day he failed to return. The day when he lay on his side, blood poured from his ears, staining his balaclava as Price was forced to retreat without him. The stench of death intermingled with copper from his nose and ears. He couldn’t hear anything then, couldn’t move his limbs, but he saw Soap screaming his name as it took both Price and Gaz to pull him away. His body wouldn’t cooperate, couldn’t get up and shake it off like it usually could.

He messed up. Now he was paying the price.

The cell was empty except for a single cockroach skittering over his foot. A single ceiling lamp flickered lifelessly, barely covering a foot of his concrete prison. Cracks splintered the floor, with a lingering sweat, blood, and urine smell stifling the air. His chin rested on his knees, eyes heavy-lidded and heart pounding in his ears. He was surprised it was still beating. There were times in the last week when he wished it wouldn’t. That he would slip into a coma, away of what he's gone through in the last weeks and wake up forgetting it all.

Simon Ghost Riley didn’t make it home. The terrorists dragged his concussive body into a cell where they had spent the last weeks torturing him. They were trying to break him. But they didn’t know he'd already done this. Back when his worst enemy was Manuel Roba. The name, repeated excessively in his mind with no distractions to ward it off, made his nails drag against his skin just to feel the burn. To feel some control over the sensations. This terrorist cell just wanted to finish what Roba failed to. To break the legendary Ghost. They used the same tricks.

Back then he had not been Ghost. He had been Simon Riley. But after that, the mask was on and he distanced himself. He was unable to compartmentalize all the trauma Simon had, so he became Ghost to avoid it entirely. Therapy helped, drugs helped, his team helped... but what helped most of all was distraction. Soap and his jokes and late nights spent doing something ridiculous. Gaz with his silent offering of a shoulder, just sitting in Ghost's space so he wouldn’t be alone. Then Price...

The man who fought tooth and nail to find him and bring him home. Who accepted him despite knowing recovery would be rough, and he would never be the same again.

The therapy, the temper management issues, the late nights with a bottle in one hand and a pistol in the other. He didn’t forget those nights, they were just... out of sight. Always waiting for a bad day.

Well, he’s had more than one bad day in a row. Weeks. His ears were still ringing from the concussion, dried patches of blood on his nose. The mask that helped him distance himself was gone. He was Simon Riley again. The Simon Riley that suffered with no escape. Their fucking hands all over him. He had spent so long distancing himself from his trauma, from Simon, that being him so suddenly left his heart jackhammering against his chest. He needed to leave. Fuck. He needed to leave. He couldn’t stay here any longer, or he would bang his head against the bars until he blacked out.

When he’s out. He would kill them all. All the fucking men in this underground prison who looked on as he was strapped to the table. Burned, cut, fuck—

Get out, his mind slurred, get out before this kills you.

Simon didn’t raise his head when the bars to his cage rattled ominously, keys pressing into the lock. Two laser pointers trembled against his chest, telling him any quick movement would put a bullet into him. Not that I would mind, his mind whispered in the back. A slight but persistent thought that was slowly starting to win over his survival instinct.

“Still not broken yet, Riley?” The blonde on the left sneered, closing the distance before landing a kick against Simon's head. White light exploded his gaze before he collapsed on his side, breathing the oppressive scents of the cell deep in his rattling lungs with each lungful of breath. A heavy boot nudged him onto his back before resting on his chest enough to leave a print.

“Sooner or later, you will be. You are still a man after all.” A wad of spit hit his cheek, trailing down his jaw that made his stomach churn in revulsion. But Simon laid there, eyes cloudy with the concussion and lingering daze from the kick.

“Drag him. The boss says round twenty eight will do the trick.” Simon felt a pair of arms grab him, dragging him across the ground out of the cell. He blinked twice, but the heaviness was sinking into his limbs again. His head rolled onto his shoulder, ignoring his heart threatening to burst. He couldn’t do it again. His limits were usually difficult to reach, but without processing what happened with Vernon and Roba he couldn’t handle it again. His days in that coffin felt like yesterday sometimes.

His fingers flexed before squeezing. It was weak, but it should work. He had to try to escape one more time. His ragdoll state convinced the terrorists enough to not have guns aimed at him this time. Or maybe they thought he was still too drugged to fight. Either way, Simon waited until his heel reached the doorway of the torture room before he put all his energy into his legs. He held the doorway and pushed himself upward, turning around and slamming the door shut with him on the other side.

“Hey, what’s going on?” Loud, angry voices came from inside as Simon locked the door from outside. Then he ran. Or, that’s what he thought his body would do. Instead, he dragged each step as if a ball and chain were tied to his ankle. Like a shambling zombie, with one hand pressed into the wall. Any moment now, one of the terrorists would shoot the lock and escape. He would go back to the cell and die there. Either by his hand or theirs.

The thought shot some adrenaline through him, and instead of the zombie walk, he limped forward quicker. The prison was an asylum of stairs and empty cells. Each of the rooms he was tortured in passed by him, and more than once he had to pause to make sure he didn’t vomit. But eventually, he found the exit.

Two guards were outside when he summoned his energy to kick the door. The guard on the left was hit by it, startled and immediately shooting into the sky while Simon tackled the one on the right. He wrestled the gun and shot the guard in the face with no hesitation, blood spraying his face before he turned and shot the other guard. Then he stole the guards' uniforms and ran into the desert with no direction in mind. All he could focus on was escape.

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Simon trudged for hours until the lightheadedness made him see pools of water in the sand. His stolen bloodied boots left stains on the sand he wasn’t interested in covering up. He couldn’t give anything the amount of precision he used to. His mind was both racing and numb, and he felt no hunger or thirst despite not drinking since yesterday. The hot, humid air dried his skin and the blood of the guards smeared on it. A part of him wanted to go and get his mask back. Reclaim a part of that distance. But he couldn’t. His feet were moving, and he had no control again to where it led him.

Over the sandy hill, there were some shadowy silhouettes in the distance. Tense, Simon drew his pistol. But it wasn’t the silhouette of any human. It was... shelter. Abandoned, hopefully. He quickened his lopsided run until he was under the roof. He didn’t bother to check if it was empty, he was too tired. Instead, he collapsed in the corner. Simon didn’t look at himself. He didn’t want to see what they did to him. He knew he was heavily injured, knew that if he didn’t find water, food, or anything he would die there. But he didn’t find himself... scared at all by that. He wanted to seep into the ground like single specks of sand and disappear where no one could see him.

No one could hurt him.

No one could touch him.

He closed his eyes briefly, and regretted ever doing it. Images flashed through his mind in no order of what they did to him. Vernon. Roba. This terrorist faction. Every pain, every unwanted touch, every hour spent under their gaze with no control. His nails dug into his palm until he drew more blood, slamming it into the wall as he hunched forward.

“Fuck!” Simon yells hoarsely, his voice slurred around the edges. A warm, wet sensation trailed down his cheeks as he slammed his fist repeatedly into the ground until it hurt. But the pain didn’t stop the images, didn’t stop the pain, didn’t stop the overwhelming desire to just get it over with. To stop feeling like this. He didn’t have his team. He didn’t have meds. Not even a drink.

The cold weight of the pistol in his other hand felt heavier than usual when Simon raised his head to stare at it. He checked the ammo absently. One bullet left. One bullet... he leaned back against the wall of the abandoned building, chest rising and falling heavily as his hand trembled. PTSD. This was something his therapist tried to help him process. But back then he didn’t want to revisit what it felt like to only feel solace in the heavy pistol in one's hand. When the overwhelming sensation was too much for him to cope with that he felt like there was only one way out.

Simon wiped away the tears from his face, but they kept coming. His hand trembled now with the pistol in it, and he ignored the raw agony from his other hand. Broken probably, bleeding definitely. He was spiraling. But what was out here to distract him from it? He had nothing. He had no one. The half-assed therapy sessions didn’t prepare him to do this again. His SSRI’s wore out when he was captured, leaving him suffering withdrawals in that fucking cell.

The sound of footsteps in the building made him draw his pistol quickly. Though his mind yelled at him to not waste the bullet. He was fraying, and he didn’t think he could handle seeing another fucking person after what he'd been through.