Chapter Text
It’s dark, and his head hurts.
Neither of these observations are particularly distressing to Ghost. He’s used to working in the dark, and various aches and pains from his day-to-day life are easy to categorize and ignore once he figures out their cause.
But it is very dark, and his head hurts very, very badly.
As he drags his awareness to front and center by the nape of its neck, throwing his consciousness into the unforgiving light of strict analysis, he understands that it is very dark because he is blindfolded, and his head hurts not due to one single cause, but because he cannot feel much of the rest of his body, and so his head has chosen to bear that weight.
A particularly sharp throb at his temple reminds him that he was pistol-whipped – a fancy gun, he remembers, not standard issue but a custom thing, with a too-thick magazine and a pearl inlay and the words El Muerte in pretty cliché etched on the handle. His hands are numb because there are ropes bound around his wrists and around his biceps, keeping his hands pinned behind him, arms bent awkwardly to accommodate the stiff, unforgiving shape of a chair back. The ropes extend up to around his throat, so he can’t fully relax his shoulders without choking himself.
That, he registers idly, is probably a big reason why his head hurts as well. The ropes are fucking with his circulation. He attempts to twist his hands and wriggle his fingers. They tingle promisingly, even though the return of blood and feeling is sharp and stinging. He resists the urge to hiss or make a sound. He can’t see, and he doesn’t know who is in the room with him.
His feet are similarly bound, though it’s more forgiving since he’s been tied to chair legs and his limbs aren’t awkwardly twisted. The chair itself is made for a person his size, and it’s metal, so it’s not going to collapse or break off a convenient leg for him to get himself free and start swinging.
No matter.
His jaw hurts – he’s been punched, or at least manhandled roughly. The inside of his cheek is tender when he presses his tongue to it, he might have pulled a muscle in his shoulder, and his knee feels very tender and stiff when he grinds his heels against the legs of his chair and tries to test the tightness of his bonds.
Content that he is roughed up but otherwise unharmed – any day where he keeps the majority of his blood in his body is a good one, as far as Ghost is concerned – he turns his awareness outward. Warm, muggy air brushes his face. His mask has been taken away. Ghost quells the insistent, animal-like panic, breathing deep through his nose, shoving his tongue into the tender welt on the inside of his cheek so he has something to focus on. Of course they’d take his mask, why wouldn’t they? He’s clearly their prisoner, perhaps a hostage, they’re going to do whatever they can to make him uncomfortable.
He tries to relax his shoulders, then immediately draws them back up when the ropes tighten around his neck. Damn it.
His mouth is dry and he’s vaguely itchy along his hairline, so it’s probably been at least twelve hours since he last had water. They were on a nighttime mission to gather intel, a quick in-and-out with Ghost playing lookout, perched on a shipping container near a line of ‘abandoned’ warehouses on the dock. He can’t hear much of anything, but the room he’s in doesn’t have the air of somewhere enclosed, and if it’s this warm, it’s likely daytime by now.
Unease and embarrassment curl his lips into a sneer. How had they snuck up on him? No one sneaks up on him. He can’t even remember the last time someone got the drop on him like this, and sure, it hadn’t been a life-or-death situation for the people he was watching, Gaz and Soap are probably fine –.
He tenses, discomfort flaring down his spine like the drag of barbed wire. His brain snares on the image of Soap, prowling through the shadow of the warehouse building with Gaz behind him. The sightlines had been shitty, so Ghost had to move with them, hunting with them, chasing them while they cleared each building on the inside and Ghost swept the exterior.
They’d had hot mics, since it was only the three of them and they were out of each other’s sights a lot. Each time, Ghost hunkered down and waited with bated breath, relishing each grunt of effort or steady exhale that Soap’s mic could pick up, forcing his heart steady whenever Soap disappeared, unable to stop it leaping with relief and joy whenever he caught Soap in his sights again.
He doesn’t blame Soap for his distraction, but he’d be a liar and idiot to boot if he thought there was any other cause.
The hot mics will have picked up his ambush. Whoever wielded that stupid gun had torn out Ghost’s earpiece and smashed both his radio and GPS, and Soap and Gaz hadn’t known where he was at that point, so it would have taken some time to find his last known location. Price might have forced them to finish the mission before putting his resources towards finding Ghost.
Ghost can’t really blame him. In fact, he damn well hopes Price told them to finish the mission instead of risking it trying to chase him down. There’s not a lot that he hasn’t endured already, that he could not endure again.
Few people are as…imaginative these days.
As if on cue, Ghost hears footsteps approaching. Heavy, gait a little too long, not the crunch of gravel under boots but the clip of leather against concrete.
He frowns. Where the Hell is he? Ghost is a big guy, and aware enough that only one person got the drop on him. There wasn’t supposed to be anyone nearby, so Ghost doubts his captor had any help.
There is movement near him, a shadow falling across, only detectable because the air grows a few degrees cooler on Ghost’s face. So, there’s light – or it’s the sun. He’s still confident that he’s not in a small room. He originally thought it was a tent, but now he’s not so sure. The air is too stagnant for any wind. He’s sweating beneath the blindfold, blinking away the discomforting feeling of it on the one part of his face that is used to open air.
Cold metal presses beneath his chin, forcing him to lift his jaw. The muzzle of that stupid gun, he thinks. He resists the urge to jerk his head away – interrogations are not one-way, not if you know what you’re doing. He can’t show a reaction until he knows what kind of person he’s playing against.
His captor laughs, and with a petty yank, Ghost’s blindfold is ripped away.
He’s moderately surprised to find that the man is white, but that only lasts a moment. Of course, only a white man would have a pretty pearl-gold gun with the Spanish word for Death carved into the handle just because it sounds cooler. The face that stares back at him is what Ghost likes to call ‘low light handsome’, that benefits from cigarette smoke and a few too many drinks and the kind of obnoxious charisma only overly cocky but ultimately harmless drunks can get away with. His nose has clearly been broken more than once, his rapeseed-yellow hair is glaring in the sunlight slanting in from Ghost’s right, and the red in his eyes marking him as an Alpha is so bright and piercing it doesn’t look natural in contrast with the mud-brown of his iris.
Ghost narrows his eyes, and asks, “Are you wearing contacts?”
His answer comes in the form of a closed fist with far too many rings slamming right across his cheekbone, knocking his head to one side. The welt on the inside of his cheek tears open, and the ropes around his neck pull tight before he forces himself into a better position. He breathes in deep through his nose, wads up his bloody saliva, and spits it on the floor.
So that’s how it’s going to be.
“I ask the questions here, Skully Boy,” the man says. Ghost’s nose wrinkles – ugh, not just white, but American. Of course he is. Ghost dubs him ‘Morty’, because he’s not going to give him the respect of calling him El Muerte, and Soap made him watch Undercover Blues, so he gets the reference. “And I’d like to start with why the fuck you and your little friends were creepin’ around my warehouse like flies on a horse’s ass.” Morty grins at him, teeth straight and white and shiny. “Wanna make this easy for me?”
Ghost’s expression doesn’t change, but inwardly, panic stirs. If Morty knows about Soap and Gaz, if any of his friends were around and overpowered them, they might be in danger too. Hell, they might be in another building just like this one…
Just like this one…
Ghost looks up, his throbbing head hissing against the brightness of the sun slanting through the high-up windows. Midmorning, cloudless sky. Shipping containers outside. The scent of an oil-slick harbor, almost lost beneath the salt and blood staining Ghost’s nose and coating the inside of his mouth. He’s in the center of a hollowed-out space, nothing but walls and beams keeping it up, concrete floors all cracked and stained. It is, by the barest stretch of the word, a warehouse.
Bastard didn’t drag him anywhere, just waited until Soap and Gaz were gone. Price wouldn’t have ordered them to split up and search with just the two of them, and once the intel was gathered – if they succeeded – they had orders to immediately head to evac. Without GPS, it would be a fool’s errand to hunt for Ghost in the dark, and Price isn’t going to let them come back to the site at the risk of people noticing someone’s been sniffing around their hidey hole.
No one is going to come here for a while. Morty is so confident that he has Ghost just sitting in the middle of an open warehouse floor, where he can scream or yell or struggle as much as he wants without risk of being overheard.
Ghost can deal with this reality. Morty strikes him as all show, and he can throw a mean punch, but Ghost is not one inclined to break and doubts Morty could make him. So, Ghost can put up with prolonged interrogation until either he can escape, or Price deems it safe enough for another canvas of the area.
What he cannot deal with is the idea that his team is captured too. There are many warehouses along this dock, and shipping containers and actual office buildings that have been abandoned for a long time, but that doesn’t mean they’re empty. If this bastard has Soap in one of these buildings, if he wants to put a hand on either of his team, his pack members, Ghost will rip him limb from limb. Wouldn’t even hesitate.
It must show on his face despite himself. Ghost isn’t used to controlling his facial expressions, hasn’t had to for a long time. Morty’s odd-colored eyes gleam in victory and he steps forward, straddling one of Ghost’s thighs and tracing Ghost’s jaw with the golden muzzle of his gun. Ghost tries to jerk back, but the ropes around his arms and neck keep him from going far.
“Not many Alphas I know who’d let their Omegas do the dangerous part,” Morty says, in a voice that Ghost suspects is meant to be crooning but is ruined by the reek of unpleasantness from having Morty touch him, a stranger so close to his uncovered face. “You like watchin’ em, Skully Boy? Like seeing ‘em takin’ orders?”
Ghost binds his will tight around the muscles in his face. His upper lip does not curl back. His jaw doesn’t clench. He barely blinks. His breathing slows. Morty’s scent is altogether unremarkable, or else the punch and blood in his mouth have rendered him unable to pick out the finer details of it. He smells like the air, like his clothes, like the stupid pricey oil for his stupid pricey gun. None of it interests Ghost, but he still hates it down to his bones. He hates that it’s all he can smell when Morty leans in.
Inwardly, he bristles. Morty knows Soap and Gaz are Omegas, which means he got close enough, or watched them long enough to know that. If he captured them…
“Can’t blame ya,” Morty continues, grinning wide enough to show too many teeth. “They’re both pretty as shit. I like the Scottish one myself. Those eyes… That accent…”
Ghost feels the physical shift, the surrender that comes from letting go of the leash of an animal very determined to charge. He jerks forward, damn the ropes around his neck, and manages to sink his teeth into the meat of Morty’s palm where he’s casually, openly holding his stupid fucking gun.
Morty yelps, jerking back, and though Ghost anticipated this happening, he still winces a little as the gun goes off, right by his fucking ear. It’s a deafening noise and immediately that side of his hearing goes dull and sharp all at once – a high-pitched ringing with everything else underwater, yet another pain to add to the collection sitting in his skull.
He feels a trickle down the side of his face. Probably ruptured his eardrum. Fantastic.
“What the fuck?” Morty hisses, scrambling off Ghost and staring down at his hand. Ghost didn’t get the chance to really bite down, he could barely taste Morty’s blood in his mouth alongside his own. It’s sluggishly bleeding and there will be bruising, but altogether it’s not that bad. Morty’s blood is bright, welling up and slipping down his wrist, staining the white cuffs of his shirt, and dripping to the floor between his fine leather shoes. “Alright, asshole, but don’t get fucking cocky. You ain’t gettin’ no Voice from me.”
“Don’t need one,” Ghost rasps, spitting another wad of saliva to the side. He wishes he had some water to wash Morty’s taste out of his mouth, but he’ll settle for his own blood for now. “Already have an unfair advantage, don’t need more.”
“Oh yeah, motherfucker? Last I checked, I’m the one with a gun, and not the one bound to a fucking chair!”
“Sure,” Ghost concedes, and meets Morty’s eyes. “For now.”
Morty glares at him, face flushing with rage.
Ghost tilts his head to one side, assessing him since Morty seems unable to decide if he wants to beat the shit out of Ghost or storm away. His clothes are well-made, far too clean for him to have holed up here for long. Their intel said that these warehouses had been under the purview of Russians, and while it’s not impossible, he struggles to justify Morty’s involvement with them.
Did they strike too early, forcing Morty to act? Did they steal whatever information he was looking for? Who is Morty working for?
“If you did manage to get a hold of my team,” Ghost continues, when it’s clear Morty isn’t going to talk or leave, “it would be in your best interest to reassure me of their overall good health.”
“Fuck you, Skully Boy, I don’t take orders from you.”
“Sure,” Ghost says, smiling. “For now.”
Morty’s face is pale except for two high spots of color on his cheeks, his teeth bared in a rather unimpressive snarl. The rings and knuckles on his left hand, the one not holding the gun, are spattered with Ghost’s blood.
A leftie. Go figure.
Then, Morty smiles. He tucks his gun into a holster at his hip and circles to Ghost’s back. Ghost grits his teeth and grunts when the ropes pull tighter, making his twisted wrists sting where the rope is cutting in and sending dull, insistent aches throbbing up his biceps and into his shoulders to the timing of his heart.
Morty yanks, and the ropes around his neck go tight too. Ghost gasps, trying to straighten, and Morty takes the opportunity to fit the former blindfold between his teeth, yanking it taut until it cuts into the corners of Ghost’s mouth. He ties it tight at the back of Ghost’s head, tearing at Ghost’s hair as he does.
He circles to Ghost’s front again, looking him over and checking his restraints. Then, for good measure, he grabs Ghost’s shoulder and suckers him in the stomach, forcing all his air out in one powerful blow. Ghost can’t bend forward with the ropes around his neck, so he’s forced to suck in air through his teeth and tense his abs against a potential second blow.
But Morty doesn’t punch him again. He just leans in real close to Ghost’s exposed throat, breath hot and sitting heavy against his skin in the stagnant air.
“You’re gonna learn to be nice to me, boy,” Morty growls. He straightens up, yanking on Ghost’s hair for good measure. “If you want me to be nice back.”
It’s hard to say something witty with the gag in his mouth and Ghost doesn’t bother trying. He glares at Morty’s retreating back, watches him stalk to the corner of the room where there’s a large steel door, the kind used for fire exits. The door is painted black on the inside, and when Morty opens it, Ghost’s eyes narrow.
It’s yellow. It’s got that weird half-torn sign he noticed when he was moving with Soap and Gaz, out of place because all the other doors are painted blue on the outside.
He’s still at the fucking dock, not that far from where he was dropped. That door confirms it.
Ghost closes his eyes and tests his bonds, finding the exact point where he can lower his shoulders enough before he starts to choke. It’s noticeably less slack this time around, and his hands are starting to go numb from how tight the ropes are around his wrists. Despite the pain, he forces himself to twist and move them, fearing that if they’re still for too long, it’ll cause permanent damage. More than anything, he needs to be ready whenever his opportunity comes.
The side of his head throbs, a burning line along his jaw and the ringing in his ear the most persistent irritants. The cloth that the gag is made from is cheap and thick, hard to breathe through. His cheek hurts on the inside and it’s uncomfortable with so much blood in his mouth, so he tilts his head up and keeps swallowing until the cloth is wet enough that he can mash it down to a thin line between his molars, shove it shallower in his mouth with his tongue, and breathe a little easier.
He’s fairly positive Morty doesn’t have Soap and Gaz. If all three of them had gone M.I.A. there’s no way Price wouldn’t be swooping down here with another team to rescue them, or at least figure out what happened. He’s almost certain Morty is alone when he comes here, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have friends somewhere nearby – they’re close enough to the city for an American to make the drive without thinking, who knows what kind of allies Morty might have there, and how many.
If Soap and Gaz were successful, which Ghost has to assume they were, then he gives Price a week before he deems it safe enough to try to figure out what happened to Ghost. It’s not the first time Ghost has been lost to the wind, comes with the job, but he’s never gone longer than a week without some kind of correspondence when he can help it.
So, Ghost will give him a week. He can hold out for a week. And maybe in that time he can figure out exactly who this man is, and what he’s doing here.
Ghost has been M.I.A. for almost two days, and Soap is not freaking out about it, thank you very much. He happens to always work the punching bag so hard the seam splits and it crashes from its hook with a too-loud clatter, and he must jump back so that it doesn’t flatten him to the floor. After a mission he is always too wired to sleep, always pacing a hole in the floor of his room, always frantically searching out Price for any update, any word, anything.
Yeah, Ghost goes M.I.A. all the time. Soap has to listen to him get ambushed, hear his grunt of surprise and pain, get damn near deafened by the crackle-screech of his comms going dead and has to listen to the terrible, chasmic silence of Ghost refusing to answer him, after. This happens all the time and Soap is completely fine about it.
“You alright, mate?”
Soap whirls on Gaz, instinctively baring his teeth at the other Omega and stepping away, forcing Gaz to give him space. Gaz lifts his hands, dark eyes sympathetic, worried as they look between the fallen, split-open punching bag, Soap’s bare knuckles torn and bruised and bleeding in places, the sheen of sweat on his skin and the no-doubt wild look in his eyes.
Soap breathes in, the scent of sweat and sand and the scrape of too-dry air across his skin setting his teeth on edge. “Any word?” he asks, and takes the towel Gaz hands him, wiping his face.
Gaz shakes his head, sighs through his teeth.
Soap’s fingers clench in the towel. He stares at it like the grain of it might give him the answers. “He’s alive,” he says quietly, uncaring if Gaz hears him. “He must be. Right?”
“Nothing kills Ghost,” Gaz confirms, and Soap so desperately wants to believe him.
But he can’t get it out of his head. The sound of Ghost’s startled growl, the unmistakable noises of hard metal and plastic crashing against fists, the scuffle and sudden silence. It’s that silence that haunts him. He knows comms can just go dead, if whoever attacked Ghost managed to crush his radio, well, that doesn’t mean Ghost’s skull came next. Ghost isn’t the kind of man to just die.
He’s not the kind of man to be ambushed, either. Soap mercilessly snaps the neck of that train of thought before he can chase it any deeper. It feels like, if he’s still for long enough, he can feel Ghost’s eyes on the back of his neck, keeping watch and guiding him and Gaz along like nothing is amiss. So, he can’t stay still because belief and imagination won’t bring Ghost back, action will.
“Price in his office?” he asks, wiping his neck and shoulders with the towel, under his arms, resisting the urge to begin pacing.
Gaz gives him another sympathetic look, and clearly doesn’t want to say; “He told me to tell you he’s doing all he can but nagging him isn’t going to make it go any faster.” Soap glares down at the mat beneath their feet, having to physically bite his tongue to stop his retort. Gaz approaches him cautiously, and when Soap doesn’t move away again, he plants a firm, reassuring hand on Soap’s shoulder, squeezing gently.
It’s tempting to let Gaz soothe him. After working together for so long, they’ve developed the kind of casual physical intimacy typical of Omegas sharing a pack. Gaz has placated Soap after a rough mission, Gaz has let Soap give him some of his clothes for Gaz’s nest, they’ve both bitched about the side effects of their suppressants and the Neutral that never seems to affect the Alphas as bad – or maybe they’re just better at hiding the cramps, the fever, the persistent edge of exhaustion that comes during the week where they should be in heat or rut.
But there’s a difference between the comfort Gaz can offer him and the reassurance of having Ghost back with them. He should be here, where Soap can keep him safe. They’re not mated, and courting is discouraged although Price is more inclined to look the other way provided it doesn’t interfere with the job, but Ghost is…
Well, he’s Soap’s. He doesn’t have an Omega of his own to take care of him, so Soap will happily take up the task, making sure he has plenty of water and that he’s taking care of himself, that he will always have an eager sparring partner to work off excess energy, that he knows Soap will always have his six and obey his orders in the field.
Without Ghost, Soap is just…Soap. Directionless. Without purpose. And he’s just sitting here in impotent inaction because Price won’t let him chase.
So he growls under his breath and moves away from Gaz’s touch with an apologetic grimace and a shake of his head. Gaz, to his credit, doesn’t press, just offers a weak smile. “Why don’t you freshen up and I’ll buy us a drink, eh?”
“I think I’ll just stay in tonight,” Soap replies, shaking his head again.
Gaz sighs, but doesn’t try to stop him.
Soap rinses off and heads straight to his room, immediately hating how cramped and silent it is. He wishes he was better, wishes he could be like Ghost and obey orders, put his head down, wait for the proper time to act without brooding or losing his mind, but he isn’t. He’ll never be as patient as Ghost, he’s not built for that.
In the silence, the soundtrack of Ghost’s ambush plays for him like an interrogation tactic, loud and ricocheting in his skull with the force of a bullet that never loses velocity. His throat still hurts from how he’d yelled into the comms, begging Ghost to respond, then arguing with Price when he’d ordered them to head to the rendezvous point after getting their intel.
Price has a Voice, a small dosage of pharmaceutical Omega blood that he takes in order to keep the permanent growth on his vocal cords. In the end, he’d had to use it to get Soap to shut up and obey his commands.
Soap isn’t sure he’ll ever forgive Price for that.
If Ghost doesn’t make it, Soap knows he won’t.
The lack of food creates a constant gnawing hunger low in Ghost’s stomach, but it’s the lack of water that’s really taking its toll. He has to remind himself to move his tongue every now and again so that it stops sticking to the roof of his mouth. It gets cold at night and Morty had stripped him down to his black t-shirt and fatigues and boots, so he’s shivering even when the sun comes back up, ghosting its bright fingers across the concrete and warming Ghost’s skin and his chair.
Sleeping in the chair was an impossible task. Every time he relaxed, the ropes tightened around his neck and cut off his air supply, so he hadn’t even gotten the three solid hours he needs to function normally. All in all, it’s put him in a very foul mood, so he’s looking forward to the moment when Morty comes back and Ghost can have at least the interrogation to distract himself.
He tests his fingers one by one, straightening them out and curling them into fists. The reminder to his blood to move up his arms makes them throb tenderly, to the point where he’s starting to genuinely worry about nerve damage. The pain in his head has dulled, though his hearing is still compromised on his left side where Morty shot too close.
Morty arrives sometime around midmorning, Ghost can’t be sure with how delayed his glimpse of the sun is through the high warehouse windows. He has a coffee to-go cup in one hand and – Ghost breathes in – a fucking roast beef sandwich in the other. Ghost’s stomach kicks him heartily at the smell and he grits his teeth, swallowing back his saliva.
Morty gives him a bright grin, sipping at his coffee then tossing the empty cup away behind him, and begins to slowly unwrap the foil from his sandwich. “Did you know what they were doing here?” he asks in lieu of greeting.
Head tilted slightly so his good ear is angled towards Morty, Ghost watches him. Watches him bite into the sandwich, too big, chewing noisily with juice and drool slipping down his chin. He’s wearing another too-white shirt, his stupid too-nice shoes gleaming dully in the sunlight. Ghost imagines the white stained red and fights back a smile.
Morty takes his lack of answer for a ‘No’ and shakes his head with a condescending smirk. “They were experimenting on people,” he informs Ghost around his mouthful. Ghost grimaces at both the sight and sound of him eating without a shred of table manners. He doesn’t even keep his mouth closed when he’s not speaking. “Alphas, specifically.”
He gestures with his sandwich for emphasis. A piece of meat flies out and lands somewhere shy of Ghost’s foot. He refuses to look at it, refuses to give away how hungry he is.
“I know, I know,” Morty says with a dramatic sigh. “Barbaric, if you ask me. But from what my friends have learned, they made some pretty good headway with it. Managed to make a serum.” He meets Ghost’s eyes, his smile a little unnerving now for how wide it is. It doesn’t reach his eyes, barely even moves his cheeks. Ghost hasn’t met many men who smile like that, but none of them have been pleasant people.
Ghost swallows. He’s still gagged – a fact Morty only just notices. With a roll of his eyes, he steps up close and yanks Ghost’s gag free, letting it hang limp and wet around his throat. Ghost wets his lips as Morty steps back and keeps his voice steady. “What’s it do, then?”
Morty barks a laugh and takes another big bite of his sandwich. “Maybe I’ll give you a dose,” he says, leering. “See what it does to an overgrown son of a bitch like you. I’ve heard it’s awful. Kills lesser Alphas, they can’t handle the prolonged release time.” He takes another bite. “Hours of agony. Losing their minds. Fighting or fucking anything that moves, even their own kind.” He swallows his food, then folds up the foil to protect the last half of his sandwich. “Sounds like a Goddamn horror show, am I right? I certainly wouldn’t wanna go out that way.”
Ghost glares at him and says nothing. He vaguely recognizes what Morty is talking about – there had been whispers from their covert ops that an organization was trying to make super soldiers, inducing what essentially amounted to a persistent rut that, unlike a normal one, could not be sated with a single knotting. Increased adrenaline and heartbeat, heightened aggression cooking the brain, it would be only so long before an unsated Alpha would simply self-destruct. His heart would just give out after prolonged torture.
Christ, no wonder Price had wanted this intel so badly.
“Maybe I’ll give a dose to that pretty Scot, eh?” Morty continues, voice low. “See how it affects an Omega.”
“You don’t have my men,” Ghost snaps, annoyed but also uneasy. He doesn’t know that, after all.
But to his surprise, Morty concedes that with a nod. “You’re right. But it’s only a matter of time before they come here looking for you.” His smile comes back, wider, sharper. “One little dart to the neck and he’d be helpless. You both would be.” Morty steps closer, leans down and palms himself through his jeans. “Maybe I’ll give myself a turn with him, make you watch before letting you fuck him to death.”
That feeling rises up again, the sensation of springing into action without his consent. Ghost jerks at his bindings and snarls, a gut-deep and almost physical feeling of pure hatred directed at Morty in the sound. Morty’s eyes widen, and he steps back, before his grin spreads out sharp and uneven on his face.
“Hit a nerve, did I?” he purrs, tilting his head to one side, lashes low. “Is he yours?”
“I’m going to kill you,” Ghost growls. It is a statement of fact as much as it is a threat. “I’m going to shove your gun so far down your throat I can shoot new holes in your arse and stuff them with your own severed limbs so you can fuck yourself into the afterlife.”
“Wow.” Morty’s smile is still in place, though Ghost notes with relish that he does look a little paler for the threat. “That’s quite a picture you paint, Skully Boy. Let’s see if your bite matches your bark after my friends have their turn with you.”
“And who are your friends?” Ghost demands, ruthlessly stamping down the shudder of unease that kneads at the base of his sore spine. “Not enough balls to interrogate me yourself, you self-righteous prick? Gotta call in Daddy to do your dirty work?”
Morty’s eyes narrow, his good humor gone. “They want you fresh,” he replies flatly. “I have a habit of…ruining dinner for everyone else.”
Ghost snorts. “So, you’re all talk.”
“I’ll get my chance after they’re done with you,” Morty promises, voice a whisper. For a moment, the way he looks at Ghost sends a rare, slow roll of genuine fear through him. It’s an expression he saw too much of, once upon a time. The look of a sadist with a blank permission slip given to him by someone else. The look of a man who has nothing but time and all the eagerness to make the most of it.
He swallows back bile and refuses to break gazes first.
The strange red in Morty’s eyes grows thick, too bright. It occurs to Ghost that a full dose of this mystery serum might kill an Alpha, but what would it do at half-strength? What kind of madness takes hold of a man who only gets an inch from death and escapes it?
Ghost knows that feeling more than anyone, and it does nothing to calm his nerves.
As if reading his mind, Morty smiles. “I can’t wait.”
Soap is miserable. His frantic restlessness has drained him, dulled everything to a near-constant dissociative blur. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say it was some kind of withdrawal from a drug, but the only meds he takes are his suppressants and Neutral and he’s always religiously on top of those.
He’s just…off-balance. But also, not. It’s like he’s been participating in a three-legged race for months, used to the weight and restriction of another person’s ankle tied to his body, used to the coordination needed and extra motion of his free leg to compensate, used to having to match stride with someone, and now he’s free to run on his own but by the very nature of his freedom, has forgotten how to.
It’s bizarrely unsettling, and he has no idea how to treat it. What could he say? Yes, physically he’s perfect, he is whole, but also abandoned. He is calm, smothered with it, swallowing down the pill of wrongness and hoping that eventually he forgets what it felt like before.
He can remember his sister complaining about her first prescription of antidepressants, how they made her feel like she was cocooned in apathy that rendered her insensate for days at a time. Nothing mattered, so why should she do anything? What comfort could real life give her that the breathless freefall of nihilism could not?
She’s better now, thank God. She’s on meds that work for her, and the last time Soap saw her she was vibrant; alive and in love with being alive.
Maybe he just has to ride it out. Maybe it’ll get better. Maybe he got too dependent on his drug of choice, and this will be good for him.
Soap’s upper lip curls in a snarl. Maybe he doesn’t want to get better.
“Soap.” His head snaps up at the sound of Price’s voice. He looks pale, tired, and Soap’s entire body from the base of his neck to the soles of his feet goes cold.
“No,” he whispers.
“It’s not that,” Price says immediately, lifting a hand in an instinct to soothe. Soap doesn’t flinch from it, but Price’s touch doesn’t land either. He lets his hand drop, like he knows he is not the Alpha Soap wants solace from. “We’ve gotten some more information. Context for this intel you were sent to retrieve. You’re going to want to hear what our friends have corroborated.”
Soap wets his lips, breathes in slowly the scent of distress sitting sour like a cloud around his head. No news on Ghost, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
He gets up from the mess hall bench seat, stiff and creaking like he’s been slowly turning to stone while he sits there, drunk on his own impotence and useless as a statue. His body protests the movement, the ache in tired muscles, the dizziness of blood rushing back to his head and into his tingling limbs.
Price gives him a concerned look. “You feeling alright, Sergeant?”
No, Soap wants to say. No, he’s not. Can’t everyone else see it? See the lack of him? Notice the mass of nothingness at his side where previously there used to be something? Wouldn’t they notice the disappearance of the moon from the night sky, the gradual snuffing of the stars, the recession of the ocean if Soap weren’t screaming at them to look?
“I’m worried, Captain,” Soap confesses. He can’t lift his head, it’s too heavy. He shakes his head and scrubs his hands over his face, willing his eyes to focus. “I don’t feel…good.”
An understatement.
Price’s frown deepens.
“Perhaps you should visit the infirmary.”
“No,” Soap hisses, then winces. “I’ll go. I’ll go later. I want to hear what you want to tell me.”
Price nods. “I need to go fetch Gaz; he needs to hear it as well. I’ll see you in my office in a few minutes, Soap.” He pauses when Soap takes a few too many seconds to nod. Price sighs under his breath and briefly squeezes Soap’s shoulder. It’s nice, the touch of his pack Alpha as steady and whom he trusts as much as Price, but it doesn’t do much for Soap’s hapless, crushingly hopeless mental state.
Soap leaves without a word, the base a blur as he makes his way to Price’s office and stations himself outside. There’s another person here that Soap doesn’t recognize, wearing a black suit with a silver eagle pin, sunglasses tucked into her breast pocket and dress cap cradled under her arm.
The woman has yellow-blonde hair pulled tight to her head and coiled into a bun at the nape of her neck. She’s in her fifties if Soap had to guess, face lined by many years of pursing lips and bright, wide smiles. Her eyes when she looks at him are a bonnie sky blue. It’s been a while since Soap saw anyone without a ring of red or gold in their eyes.
She nods at him. “You must be Sergeant MacTavish,” she greets with an accent vaguely reminiscent of old Westerns, a real ‘I do declare’ kind of lilt to it. She holds out her hand. He takes it. “I’m Lieutenant Coyle, a pleasure to meet you.”
“Aye, you as well, Lieutenant,” Soap replies, shaking her hand and narrowly resisting the impulse to abbreviate it. “I suppose you’re to thank for whatever extra information you’re about to share.”
“I have been leading a team tracking a certain group for a long time. I believe what you discovered was one of their previous workstations,” Coyle says, her expression neutral, though her eyes gleam with an eagerness Soap has seen and felt many times. The thrill of fresh blood, a new hunt, a new job. “It’s the first lead we’ve had in months.”
Soap nods, and despite himself, feels a little bit lighter at the prospect. It might not get them any closer to locating Ghost, but a hunt is a hunt, and he’ll take whatever distraction he can get.
He straightens to attention at the sound of Price’s voice, right before he and Gaz round the corner and approach his office. Their expressions are just as neutral as Coyle’s was, though Gaz has a small crease in his brow and is the last, the most reluctant, to take a seat.
Price nods to them, then gestures for Coyle to speak. She clears her throat, sets her hat on his desk, and puts her hands in her pockets in a classic power stance. “Gentlemen, it has come to the attention of my team and my superiors that you have recovered information from a warehouse during your last operation.” She nods to Price, who pulls out a stack of three identical folders, handing one to Soap, one to Gaz, and keeping a third open on his desk for himself. “We believe that this operation was one of many conducted around the world by an organization who have dubbed themselves ‘Evolution’.”
Soap frowns at the folder, opening it to the first page. A wall of text greets him, pages and pages of neat reports typed up in perfect order, along with write-ups of notable individuals. No photographs, Soap notices.
“According to our intel, ‘Evolution’ has three main figureheads,” Coyle says, nodding to the file. “Alexander, Achilles, Attila. A set of siblings; an Alpha, an Omega, and a woman.” Her lips purse – a shared reaction of judgment for all the fun things war criminals like to call themselves. “We believe this warehouse was one of Achilles’ – the Omega’s – bases of operation. Until recently.” She pauses for a moment, squaring her jaw. “We don’t know what made him pull out, but it was sloppy if he left so much information behind.”
“What were they working on?” Soap asks, skimming through the file. His eyes catch on the words ‘serum’ and ‘clinical trials’, but the text is so densely packed, and his head is starting to hurt, so he can’t make himself focus on them. Ghost was always the reader between them; he’d say the pertinent parts out loud because Soap learns better through audio, quizzing him until every detail was drilled into his skull and he knew each report inside and out.
At his question, Coyle looks to Price, who breathes out through his nose and folds his hands together on top of his desk. “This group,” he begins, “subscribes to the idea that there is greater power to harness in the physical capabilities of Alphas.” He meets Soap’s eyes. “They have been trying to make super soldiers.”
“That’s not all,” Coyle adds. “They want to exploit the natural physicality of Alphas, yes, but Omegas and women aren’t safe either.” She looks at Gaz, who has turned pale, staring at the folder. To Soap, who can’t stop watching Price’s face, searching for answers Price will not say out loud. “They began with experiments on inmates. Residents of mental institutions. Prisoners of war. We believe they moved on to kidnapping civilians when that pool ran dry.” She pauses, then says, “So far, from what we’ve gathered, their serum has a one-hundred-percent death rate.”
That snaps Soap out of it. He frowns at Coyle. “That’s… Why are they still trying then?” he rasps.
“We believe that is the work of Achilles and Atilla,” Coyle says gravely. “The serum turns Alphas into unthinking killing machines, their brains so cooked on rut you could, in theory, point them in a direction and let them loose. They are the exterminators, the hounds of war.” She purses her lips. “But when a woman takes the serum, she becomes cold. Unfeeling. A firm grip on the leash.” She nods again. “In theory. No woman has survived longer than a few days, or an encounter with an Alpha similarly juiced up. If the Alpha doesn’t kill her, her body just…shuts down. Stops working entirely, one organ at a time.”
“And…the Omegas?” Soap asks. “What happens to them?”
“We don’t know,” Coyle replies. “Achilles may have been sloppy at times, and he left behind enough evidence for us to think that location was one of his bases, but if he kept notes on any of his experiments, or the effects of the serum on his people, they’re locked away somewhere we don’t have access to.”
The wave of helpless frustration rises up in Soap so fast he gets nauseous. He pushes himself to his feet in a fruitless attempt to keep his head above water. “And these people have Ghost,” he snarls, because that’s the only conclusion he can draw, and it’s the only reason he can think of for Price to look at him like that, like he’s a bomb with a faulty timer ticking down far too quickly. “We have to go after them.”
“Soap, we don’t have any leads,” Price begins.
“We know where they dropped him, and… We know the locations of some of their other bases, right?” Soap looks at Coyle desperately. “Anywhere nearby they could have taken him?”
Coyle frowns. “Ghost is…?” she asks.
Soap pauses, staring at her. How can she not know who Ghost is?
“Another member of this squad, M.I.A. since the retrieval,” Price explains briskly, pushing himself to his feet. He leans on the desk and fixes Soap with an unwavering, meaningful look. “Sergeant, please believe me when I say that I am deeply invested in his safe return, but if what Lieutenant Coyle says is true, it is much more dangerous than a standard field mission.” His eyes slide briefly to Gaz, then back to Soap. “I don’t want to lose either of you to a pack of rut-fucked, feral Alphas, or to have you captured and injected with this serum too since we don’t even know what it does to Omegas.”
“That warehouse was abandoned, there’s no harm in checking!” Soap snaps, baring his teeth.
“Sergeant, I am ordering you to stand down,” Price snarls, his Voice wrapping around the back of Soap’s neck like the clamp of teeth and sinking into him, forcing him to lower his shoulders and take a step back. Soap’s hands curl into fists, shaking with anger that Price is doing this to him again, fucking again. “When I feel it is safe to do so, and not a moment before, we will do everything in our power to retrieve Ghost. Until then, you are to stay on this base.”
Soap stares at him in disbelief. “You’re grounding me?” he demands. “Captain, please -.”
“You’re dismissed, Sergeant,” Price says. He looks defeated, his expression pained at using his influence over Soap like this, but knowing he doesn’t like it doesn’t make it any easier to swallow. Soap huffs and nods, leaving the room before he can do something really stupid – not like he has a choice, with Price’s Voice wrapping around his neck and forcing him onward.
“Soap, wait!”
Gaz. Soap breathes out and keeps walking, wincing at the glare of the sun as he leaves the building.
“Soap -.”
Soap whirls around when Gaz touches his shoulder, shoving him away. “I’m not interested in hearing you parrot Price like his little fucking lapdog, Gaz,” he snarls. “You don’t get to tell me how to feel right now, your Alpha is safe and fucking sound -.”
“Soap, listen to me,” Gaz hisses, grabbing Soap with both hands around the sides of his throat and forcing Soap to meet his eyes. Gaz leans in close until their foreheads touch, and while Soap might be angry, he lets Gaz do it, lets his packmate’s familiar scent smooth his hackles and dull his teeth. Just a little.
“What?” he snaps.
“I think Coyle’s lying to us,” Gaz says. Soap blinks at him, suddenly every cell and nerve frozen, at attention. Gaz pulls back, petting his thumbs along the corners of Soap’s jaw, subconsciously soothing the tension there as he speaks. “Come on, she waltzes in here and talks to Price about this super serum, and she doesn’t even know who Ghost is? Everyone knows who Ghost is.” He pauses. “Everyone on our side, anyway.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that file has no pictures, has pages of reports that are just words, barely anything meaningful – and I wrote up those fucking reports myself when we recovered them. There was nothing about ‘Evolution’, it sounded more like a mad scientist than a global super soldier program.” Gaz shakes his head, nose wrinkling. “I don’t know, shit just reeks, and I don’t trust it.”
Soap swallows and looks around. They’re being left alone, for the most part, but they’re not far from Price’s office and God only knows if Coyle brought friends with her, where they might be lurking. He takes Gaz’s hands and leads him back towards their barracks, into Soap’s room. He closes and locks the door.
“She had an eagle pin,” Soap begins, turning to Gaz. “Talked American. Did Price tell you who she is? What branch she’s from?”
Gaz shakes his head, frowning. “No, just that she was part of some special task force like ours, from the U.S.,” he says. “I don’t think she brought any people with her, though. And no files of her own – that’s weird, isn’t it?”
“Might be digitized,” Soap says, but he doesn’t disagree. “Think we could steal her phone?”
“Does she even have one?” Gaz replies, shrugging helplessly.
“Everyone has a phone.” Soap bites the inside of his lower lip, squinting at the door. “Price’ll be putting her up somewhere. We can sneak into her room and look around.”
“Soap…” Gaz is nervous, it sits on him like a too-tight jacket, making his shoulders roll, his eyes darting around anywhere but Soap’s face. He doesn’t like the idea of going behind Price’s back, and Soap doesn’t blame him - he doesn’t like it either - but this is Ghost’s safety on the line. “I know you’re worried. I’m worried too. And I don’t trust this woman. But I can’t just let you go off being reckless. Who knows what kind of hammer’ll come down on your head if you’re caught.”
“They have Ghost, Gaz,” Soap whispers. “And even if this lead is bad, even if it stinks to high Heaven, it’s all we’ve got. Price won’t let me leave base. I have no other choice.”
Gaz is quiet for a long, long time, before he breathes in deep and squares his jaw, puts a hand on Soap’s arm and makes Soap meet his eyes. “Let me try, then,” he says. “You’re right – Price will be watching you, but he’s not watching me. Let me at least try to talk to him, see what he thinks. He might agree with us, you know.”
Absently, Soap wonders why that didn’t occur to him. Price isn’t stupid, of course he’s not. He can sniff out something rotten just as well as any of them can. If Soap can’t trust his Commanding Officer, he shouldn’t be in the 141.
He doesn’t voice those thoughts, just adds them to the persistent drone of everything else playing in the back of his mind, which can be addressed later when Ghost is home, safe and sound, and Soap no longer feels like a part of himself is missing.
So, he nods, nudges his forehead to Gaz’s, and squeezes the other Omega’s shoulder gently. “Be careful,” he says lowly. “I don’t want you getting hurt for sticking your neck out for me.”
“I care about Ghost too, Soap. I want him back home.”
Soap swallows and bites the inside of his lip bloody, so he doesn’t make a sound. Gaz releases him and leaves, and Soap collapses onto his bed, his breath coming fast and shaky, his heart suddenly racing. Like it’s only just hitting him how bad this situation is. Ghost is missing, potentially kidnapped and held hostage by a group of people who are experimenting on Alphas to make them mindless killing machines, and it kills them.
If they dose Ghost, yes, he’d be a weapon from their wildest dreams, but would he survive it? What if it kills him, too? How long would he suffer in agony, tortured by instincts that in the military they usually medically suppress, until he hurt himself or his body shut down just to make it stop?
Would he even let them? Would he die trying to keep that serum out of him? Would he even know what it does before it’s too late?
Soap doesn’t know much about Ghost’s past, not the particulars, but it doesn’t take a genius to notice things. The shocking familiarity with effective interrogation techniques. The ability to become almost meditative, to retreat into one’s mind on a long stakeout or perched as a sniper upon a roof, providing cover.
Soap doesn’t have it in him to be that still for that long, but Ghost’s ability goes beyond natural patience, an innate gift. That kind of mental isolation and focus gets taught through blood and pain and poison, not practice. Something terrible happened to him, something that taught him how to muzzle and gag himself, how to retreat until the body is just meat and the mind is safe, locked up tight.
What would the loss of that kind of control make him do? Might he rather die than endure it?
He shakes his head violently, baring his teeth. No. Ghost will live. Soap isn’t going to let him die, he’s not going to die. Nothing kills Ghost. Not if Soap has anything to say about it.