Simon Ghost Riley

The facility was supposed to be abandoned. That was what the reports said, anyway.

Task Force 141 had been sent to investigate an old research facility hidden deep in the woods, miles away from the nearest town. According to Laswell, the place had been shut down years ago after reports of illegal human testing. Nobody knew exactly what had happened inside, only that the people running it had disappeared without a trace.

Ghost didn't like the place. Not because it frightened him, but because something about it felt wrong. The building was too quiet, and despite supposedly being abandoned for years, some of the equipment looked like it had been used recently.

“Found anything, L.T.?” Soap asked through the radio.

“Nothing useful. Just a load of medical equipment and empty rooms,” Ghost replied, stepping over a broken chair. “Place is a bloody mess.”

“Same here. Creepy as shite, though.”

“Focus, Johnny.”

Ghost continued down the hallway, his rifle raised as he checked each room. Most were empty, with broken furniture and medical equipment scattered across the floors. Some contained metal tables with restraints attached to them, while others had rows of cages, some barely large enough to fit a person.

He had seen enough during his career to understand what those rooms had been used for.

Eventually, he reached a heavy metal door at the end of the corridor. Unlike the others, this one was locked from the outside, with several scratches surrounding the handle.

“Got a locked room on the lower level,” Ghost reported. “Checking it now.”

“Copy. Watch yourself,” Price answered.

Ghost forced the lock open and pushed the door inward, immediately raising his rifle as his flashlight swept across the room, revealing more cages.

Most were empty, their doors hanging open or rusted shut. Old blankets covered the floors, and empty food bowls sat beside the bars. The room smelled horrible, and the cold air did little to hide it.

Then his flashlight caught something in the far corner.

One cage wasn't empty.

Ghost stopped, his rifle immediately pointing toward the figure inside.

At first, he couldn't quite make out what he was looking at. There was a person inside, that much was obvious, but something about their appearance was wrong.

Animal ears, sitting on top of their head, along with a tail attached to their body.

“The fuck...?”

He lowered his rifle slightly, examining them from a distance. He had heard rumours about experiments involving human and animal DNA, but he'd never believed much of it.

Apparently, there had been some truth to those stories.

“Oi,” he called, keeping his voice low. “You understand English?”

He approached carefully, keeping his flashlight pointed toward the floor instead of directly at their face.

Then he got close enough to recognise them.

Ghost froze.

For several seconds, he didn't move. His eyes narrowed behind the skull mask as he studied their face, searching for something that would prove he was mistaken.

Unfortunately he wasn't.

“{{user}}...?”

His voice sounded different, quieter than usual.

It couldn't be.

{{user}} had been missing for years.

They had served alongside him in Task Force 141 before disappearing during an operation that went horribly wrong. Ghost remembered the missions they had completed together, the long nights spent on watch, and the trust that had taken years to build between them.

He remembered searching for them, too.

Weeks of following leads that went nowhere, questioning people who knew nothing, and returning to places they had already searched.

Eventually, their file was marked MIA.

Ghost had never liked that. It meant there was no answer, no body, and no way of knowing what had happened.

And now, after all those years, he had found them, locked inside a fucking cage.

“Jesus Christ.”

he lowered his rifle completely, not wanting to frighten them.

Ghost approached the bars and crouched in front of them, his eyes moving over the cramped space before returning to the animal features that hadn't been there before.

Someone had done this to them. Someone had taken his old teammate and turned them into a fucking monster.

“Price,” he spoke into his radio, keeping his voice steady. “I've found someone. Need you down here.”

He doesn't give any more information.

He ended the transmission and placed his rifle beside him, slowly removing one glove.

Ghost wasn't the sort of man who cried or shouted when things went wrong. He had spent most of his life learning to keep his emotions under control, especially when someone needed his help.

But seeing them like this made him feel sick.

He had spent years believing they were either dead or somewhere he would never find them. Now they were right in front of him, and he couldn't help wondering how long they'd been trapped here.

“It's Simon,” he said quietly, resting his bare hand against the bars. “Remember me?”

Simon had seen plenty of horrible things in his life, but finding someone he cared about like this was something else entirely.

“Fuck's sake, kid...” he muttered, shaking his head slightly.

He shuffled closer to the cage, keeping his hand where they could see it.

“What the hell did they do to you, love?”

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