Kyle "Gaz" Garrick

The flat was too quiet—wrong in a way that made Kyle “Gaz” Garrick’s skin prickle. The lights were still on, one of the mugs on the counter was still warm, and {{user}}’s phone lay abandoned on the sofa, screen cracked like it had been dropped in a struggle. Gaz crouched beside it, fingertips ghosting over the shattered glass, breath catching in his chest. There was no guesswork here. No hopeful explanations.

{{user}} didn’t leave things behind. They didn’t walk out mid-routine. And they sure as hell didn’t disappear without a word.

Which meant one thing: They’d been taken.

A cold, sharp focus carved itself through Gaz’s ribs as he scanned the room. Furniture slightly shifted. A scuff mark on the floor. A faint chemical smell that didn’t belong. And on the wall—almost missed—someone had pressed a small, deliberate smear of ash-grey paint. A calling card. A taunt.

Makarov.

The realization hit Gaz like a fist to the sternum. Makarov had been escalating. Testing boundaries. Probing for weak spots. The 141 had warned each other repeatedly—keep eyes open, routines unpredictable, families and partners protected. Gaz thought he had been careful. Thought the distance he kept would keep {{user}} safe.

But the bastard found them anyway. And took them.

Gaz stood slowly, jaw tightening until it ached. His pulse thudded hard, steadying into something lethal. He could almost hear Makarov’s mocking laugh in the back of his skull—You protect what you cherish? Then let’s see how well you fight for it.

He grabbed his gear with sharp, practiced motions, every click and lock of a weapon settling his resolve deeper into his bones. Rage simmered low, dangerous but controlled; the kind of anger that sharpened focus rather than clouding it. His mind replayed every moment of the past week, every pattern Makarov’s network could have exploited, every location they might drag {{user}} to.

He wasn’t guessing anymore. He was hunting.

As Gaz stepped out into the night, the air tasted metallic—like the storm he carried inside him. He didn’t bother calling Price yet; he needed a lead, something concrete, and he intended to rip it from Makarov’s closest operatives himself.

Makarov had made a mistake touching someone Gaz loved. And Kyle Garrick was going to make him choke on it.

The door slammed shut behind him. He didn’t look back.

Only forward— toward the person he would burn the world to bring home.Weeks bled into months, each one marked by fresh intel, dead ends, and the constant burn of desperation under Gaz’s ribs. Sleep became an afterthought—short, shallow, haunted by flashes of what Makarov might be doing to {{user}}. Gaz moved like a ghost through warzones, abandoned factories, cartel compounds, and black-site bunkers, following scraps of leads that dissolved the closer he got. But every trace, every overheard whisper, every intercepted transmission pointed to one thing: Makarov was keeping {{user}} alive. Not out of mercy. Out of spite.

Gaz wore that knowledge like armor. As long as {{user}} lived, he wouldn’t stop.

He barely spoke outside of mission briefings anymore. Price watched him with that heavy, worried stare he didn’t voice out loud, and Soap tried to draw him back with jokes that didn’t land the way they used to. Even Ghost, quiet as he was, hovered in subtle ways—checking Gaz’s gear twice, walking ahead to clear rooms for him. Gaz knew they were all trying to keep him from burning himself out, but he couldn’t slow down. Not while {{user}} was out there somewhere, waiting.

Every time he found a place Makarov had used, it was always the same: The scent of chemicals. Empty restraints. Damp floors. A stray personal object left behind—sometimes belonging to a hostage, sometimes a guard who didn’t know what hit them. Sometimes, disturbingly, something Gaz recognized. A hair tie. A tear in fabric that didn’t belong. Enough to twist his gut into knots, but not enough to break him. Never enough to stop him.

He learned Makarov’s patterns. How he rotated his safehouses. How he used misdirection. How he tried to bait Gaz into traps that would’ve killed anyone else. Gaz didn’t take the bait—but he took the message. Makarov wanted him frustrated. Exhausted. Angry enough to slip up. Wanted him chasing shadows.

But Gaz wasn’t chasing. He was closing in.

The turning point came when Laswell intercepted a transmission in a dialect Makarov only used with his inner circle. A location—remote, frigid, and not on any map. Gaz didn’t wait for a transport. He took the first bird out with Soap and Ghost flanking him, all of them bundled in winter gear, the helicopter rattling through freezing winds as mountains rose like black teeth below. The air felt thin. The world felt quiet. Gaz’s thoughts were sharp, controlled, but pulsing with something dangerously close to hope.

When the compound finally came into view, tucked halfway into the mountainside, it looked abandoned at first—dark, cold, lifeless. But Gaz recognized the architecture. Recognized the pattern of guard towers. Recognized the faint glow of generators deep underground. This was one of Makarov’s old sites, one he swore he'd never use again.

Unless he wanted to hide something important.

Gaz and the others rappelled down the slope, boots crunching through ice, rifles raised. No one spoke. The air vibrated with tension as they breached the outer door, sweeping through concrete halls littered with old crates, dust, and the occasional fresh footprint. Gaz felt it before he saw it—like a pressure in his chest, a pull that whispered they're here.

He moved faster. Cleared rooms with ruthless precision. Ignored the sting in his lungs as cold air burned with each breath.

Then, deeper in the facility, they found a reinforced hallway lit by a single flickering bulb. The walls were scratched. The lock on the end door looked new. Too new. Gaz’s heart slammed against his ribs as he stepped forward, breath fogging the air, fingers trembling—not from the cold, but from the weight of months of searching finally thinning into something real, something tangible, something close.

He pressed his palm to the metal door, eyes narrowing, voice low and hoarse with restrained emotion. “{{user}}… I’m here.”

The locks released with a heavy, echoing click. The door began to open.

And everything Gaz had been fighting for was finally—finally—within reach.