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The neon green glow of Soap's breathing mask lights up the harsh lines of his face, shines sharply off the blue in his eyes. A dead giveaway even in the neon city, that hasn't seen starlight for an age.
Ghost narrows his eyes behind his scope, following Soap's movements as he guns down yet another freedom fighter. Anarchists, the lot of them, even though they wear the sovereign sigil marking them as agents of whatever's left of the planet's government.
As always, Ghost knows he could pull the trigger. Cut the head off the snake now. Without Soap, the maurading bands of sanctioned murderers would be lost and leaderless; a snake without its head.
As always, his finger trembles around the trigger. As always, he doesn't tighten it.
Above his head, high in the sky, the oval glow of the strange invaders' mothership bathes the city below in light like the dawn - deceptively welcoming and soft on the eyes. The time monitor on Ghost's console tells him it's four in the morning, but the sun will rise and set and that damned glow will never let night truly fall.
He sighs to himself, closes his eyes. Gunshots and shouting are the normal backdrop in this doomed city. Even high above it all, stationed like a bird of prey to watch the carnage, Ghost can hear it.
He opens his eyes again, and stiffens when he realizes he can no longer see Soap. He scours the alleyways and streets around him with tense shoulders and single-minded focus. Soap's cronies are around, dressed in their garish blue uniform; he cannot have gone far.
The door leading to the rooftop slams open. Ghost rolls onto his back, takes out his pistol and shoots, the bullet ricocheting off a lifted arm plate and burying itself harmlessly in concrete. Green lights spread fluid between the plates lining Soap's shoulders, down his arms, his power armor whirring quietly as he lowers his forearm and meets Ghost's eyes.
He takes a single step forward and Ghost levels his pistol right between those baby blues. As always, he doesn't shoot, and soon Soap's boots are knocking his apart, and Soap's dark silhouette is looming above him, blacker than the night sky could ever be, the glow of his mask catching on the wild gleam in his eyes.
Ghost swallows, and says, "Gonna kill me, Johnny?"
Soap blinks down at him. His mask covers enough of his face that Ghost cannot see his mouth when it moves, but the tone of his voice suggests a smile when he replies, "Not today, Simon."
Ghost lowers his gun and tilts his chin up. Soap's rifle is still gripped in his hand, aimed lazily at Ghost's chest. Soap steps forward, tucks the fire-hot muzzle under Ghost's chin, forces his head higher.
"Last night on Earth, darlin'," Soap murmurs. "Wanna spend it with me?"
Ghost shows his teeth, though it's hidden behind his own mask. "What makes you say that?"
Soap lowers his gun and steps away, fishes out a pack of cigarettes and carefully disengages his muzzle, revealing the mangled scar tissue at his temple, the long mottled line that curls around his jaw, up the soft hollow of his throat, and ends in a scar that splits his chin and bisects his lower lip. Like some creature tried to rip his skull in half.
Soap lights the cigarette with a single flick of flame from his lighter, which he pockets, then turns back to Ghost and offers it, the little stick dangling between his fingers. Ghost reaches for it but Soap grins, white teeth shining off the green glow, and tuts gently, shaking his head. "C'mere, then."
Huffing, Ghost sits up, and is rewarded by Soap letting him take the cigarette. He lights a second and, the box empty, tosses it over the rooftop to the streets below.
Ghost lifts the bottom of his mask enough that he can smoke, takes a drag of the shitty cigarette, stale and old and burning way too harsh. The cloud he exhales is wispy and does not linger even though there is no wind.
"Daddy Shepherd's takin' out his showstopper," Soap tells him, his eyes on the big alien ship hovering like the gallows above their heads. "Fuckers are sending in something big tomorrow; been intercepting their transmissions. If it doesn't kill us all, Shepherd's last resort will."
Ghost's eyes widen. There are close to one million people in this city alone, not to mention the vast suburbs and sprawling hovels that people have clung to in the wake of the new order.
He snarls to himself, flicking the cigarette away. "And here you are," he sneers, "gunning down people in the streets."
"Get off yer high horse, Simon," Soap scoffs, taking another drag. He winces when the motion tugs on his sore face; the compression of his mask helps with feeling like his skull is in danger of being sliced in half at any moment, and without it, his jaw and temple aches something fierce. "They're infected, y'know that. Nothin' for 'em."
"God forbid that blasted antidote ever gets made if there's no one left to cure," Ghost snaps. It had been the first big push against the alien force - they were not, by anyone's best guess, physical beings. Instead, they infiltrated the mind. The air. Poisoned people who stared too long into the airship's glow. They started getting paranoid, then aggressive. Maybe it's a parasite, maybe it's because humans simply go crazy when they cannot see the stars, Ghost doesn't know. By some miracle, he's been spared the toxin and done what he can, but he only kills when he's certain, tries to arrange transport and supplies and help the people here.
Soap, and the sanctioned soldiers, have no such qualms. Infection is a crime, and the sentence is death.
"Can't cure crazy like this, Simon," Soap murmurs. If there is any guilt, it was beaten out of him long ago. Ghost will never forgive himself for leaving Johnny behind when he'd dragged him, raving and gushing blood from his skull where he'd tried to dig the parasite out of him, to one of the last hospitals left and demanded he be seen. Ghost had been sent away, barred entrance, and Soap had clearly survived. The cost has been seeing the man he loves become a stranger, but at least he survived.
Ghost's fingers curl, his throat tight as he closes his eyes and turns his head away. He could never regret saving Johnny's life, but at times like this the heartache and grief are so much… "What's coming?" he forces himself to ask.
Soap takes another drag, right down to the filter, sucks in a breath through his teeth and crushes the butt under his toe. "Laser on legs, from the schematics," he says. "Huge fucker. Could crush a building under one shoe. The only recourse is a warhead."
A bomb. Shepherd means to flatten the neon city to the ground.
Ghost is quiet for long enough that Soap shifts his weight, and their eyes meet again. "Run away with me, Simon," Soap whispers, coming to him and crouching down by Ghost's side. "If we leave now we'll be clear of the blast radius by dawn. Maybe. It's a chance."
Ghost shakes his head. "I can't leave all these people, Johnny," he whispers. "You shouldn't want to, either. You wouldn't have, before."
Soap's mouth twists, something dark flashing in his sharp eyes. "Aye," he agrees harshly, "I'd'a…what? Ended up on a rooftop with ye, begging ye to not make me watch ye die." He holds out his arms to either side of him. "Well would ya look at that? I'm here, on a rooftop with ye, beggin' ye anyway. What's the difference?"
Ghost shakes his head.
Soap grabs him, suddenly, shaking him hard enough to rattle Ghost's clenched teeth. "Don't make me see you die," Soap demands, scarred mouth twisting into a mean snarl. "I don't deserve that, Simon. I don't fuckin' deserve that."
Ghost closes his eyes, clutches at Soap's wrists. The fight bleeds out of Soap at the pressure, he sags against Ghost, the bare skin of his forehead pressing against the plate of Ghost's mask. Ghost doesn't fight Soap as he pushes back his hood, grips him by the exposed hinges of his jaw, and kisses him. It's a fierce thing, more teeth than tongue, makes Ghost's head spin and his lungs spasm as he fights for air.
Soap wrenches himself free like he's been burned, stumbling to his feet and reaffixing his mask with shaking hands. He turns and stares at Ghost, still prone on the ground, mouth bruised and flushed, panting for breath.
"Fuck you, Simon," he hisses, his voice tight. "Wasted my last bloody cigarette on ye, fuckin' bastard."
Ghost tugs his mask back down, turns his head away. Soap huffs and stomps towards the door. As always, Ghost lets him leave without further protest. As always, he curls around the ball of misery in his chest, burning and smarting like a never-healing wound. As always, the iron chain around his neck that holds, along with his identification tags, two plain wedding bands, weighs heavy on his heart. Chafes his skin and digs deep notches into his chest that feel like they never stop bleeding.
The airship's doors open for the first time since Ghost can remember it arriving, and through it drops the agent of their destruction. Tall as a skyscraper with a large round head that looks like a single eye, the mech dangles from the ship as it is lowered, and once the large metal feet touch the ground, the moorpoints drop and anchor themselves in the ground, the buildings, anything the ropes touch become hollow hooks for the ropes to burrow into and hold fast.
It is clear to Ghost immediately that the construction is shoddy. The alien force is scared, perhaps, of humanity's willingness to gun down their own to rid the aliens of a potential host. Better to destroy the last bastion of freedom and firepower, and send a message to the rest of the world that resistance is futile.
But that rush means the mech is weak. Its movements are stiff as Ghost watches. The eye is slow to open and focus, many inward mechanisms turning as the white-hot glow of its canon tries to find a target. For all the months the aliens have spent observing, it's clear they still don't understand human centrilization. It does not understand things like Town Halls and government buildings; it does not know which targets to strike first.
Ghost has to act fast; there's simply no time. The ropes are holding the mech up - if enough of them are broken, perhaps it will collapse under its own weight and be rendered useless.
He has to try.
The first anchor is close to the building he was perched on to watch the show. He quickly shoulders his rifle and shoots a grappling anchor into the roof by his feet, grabs the rope and swings himself over the side of the buildings, his gloves zipping with heat as he slides quickly down to the street below. A woman, or what used to be one, shrieks and lunges for him and he darts out of the way, aiming a swift blow to her knee to knock her down for long enough that he can run past her.
There is nothing guarding the building - an apartment block from the looks of it. He shoves his way inside, hears screams of terror and hysteria from the tenants as he races up to the rooftop. He's panting by the time he gets to the roof, but there it is - one of the ropes. He races to it, gun out, and shoots until it snaps. The rope breaks free with a sharp, thudding twang, zipping like the worlds strongest elastic band up towards the robot, which sways suddenly, teetering on its toes.
The mech turns, it's eye-like canon whirring to a halt, aimed right at Ghost. Its center glows with a bright purple light, and before Ghost can react, it fires.
But it doesn't hit him. A figure appears in front of Ghost, a bright green shield covering them like a tidal wave and sinking into the concrete below them, so the laser beams passes over them like a wash of water, eating away at the building but leaving enough of where they're standing intact that they don't immediately plummet to their deaths.
Smoke surrounds them like a haze, but Ghost knows that green. "Johnny?" he rasps, disbelieving, as he looks up. Soap's power armor is glowing with energy, crackling with purple electricity as it safely absorbs and disappates the laser, the shield flickering before going inert as Soap lowers his arm.
The robot's eye narrows. Its laser starts to glow again, but much slower.
"It needs to recharge," Soap shouts to him, hauling Ghost to his feet. "What the fuck are ye playin' at? Are ye tryin' tae get yerself killed?"
"It's the ropes!" Ghost replies. "It can't balance."
Soap's sharp eyes glance back at the mech, at the dangling piece of rope Ghost severed, a shower of sparks falling from the mech's arm where the great band snapped against it and broke some of its casing. His eyes narrow in understanding.
"You take the left side, I'll take the right," he declares, and turns to Ghost. He clasps their forearms together and squeezes tightly. "Don't you dare fuckin' die on me."
"You too," Ghost manages, and then Soap is gone, jumping from the rooftop and landing hard enough to crack the asphalt below. Ghost is able to find a fire escape that survived the blast and throws himself onto it, scrabbling up to the next rooftop. He quickly loses sight of Soap, and the robot must as well, as it swings its laser eye back and forth in an effort to find both of them to shoot them down.
The rush job is apparent in another way - this seems to be the only weapon the mech has, and it clearly needs time to recharge, just as Soap said. A prickle in the air makes the hair on the back of Ghost's neck stand on end, he looks up towards the giant mech, finds it focused on him and powering up to shoot -.
But then, another rope snaps. The robot sways dangerously, like it's flinching as a second thick band smacks it across its knee, making it stumble. Ghost quickly throws himself onto the next rooftop, rolling to soften his fall as he darts for the next rope. It's buried deep in the building he's on, and if he snaps it the very ground might collapse beneath him, but there's so little time for sense, only for action.
He shoots the next rope free and watches it careen through the air and wrap around the robot's arm, snapping it off at the wrist so the mech's giant metal hand comes crashing down on a group of haphazard cars. Fire sparks to life, quickly gaining traction in the pools of leaking gasoline.
There's so much screaming, but there's no time to lose.
The robot reaches for him with its remaining hand and Ghost is forced to dive out of the way as it swipes the building he's on, breaking much of the roof and front facade in a shower of brick and mortar. Panting, Ghost hurries across a series of near-jutting balconies, frantically searching for a good jump spot to the next building.
He stumbles to a halt, catching himself on the railing as the robot hurls a chuck of building at his destination, making the facade crumble. Ghost swallows, looking up to find the laser sights set on him once again, the glow much, much brighter.
But then, another rope - this one connected to the robot's shoulder. It snaps with such force that the entire structure reels back, and the laser fires, but the robot is already falling backwards. Purple light cuts through the street, Ghost flinches back to avoid the beam and watches as it arcs up, up, up…
Straight through the alien arkship. The robot falls onto its back, twitching and spasming as its connection to the mothership is cut, rendering it inert.
Above his head, the airship groans.
"Oh, fuck," he whispers, and jumps down as quickly as he can to the street, no thought in him but Soap, get to Soap. "Johnny! Johnny, where are you?"
People are screaming, flooding the streets. It's impossible to tell who is infected and who isn't - they all rush away from the falling airship as fast as they're able, trampling each other in their wake, gunning down those who run too slowly. Ghost snarls to himself, jumps onto the roof of a car so that he can see above the throng, desperately searching for a telltale flash of green.
He doesn't see anything. But he can't be - no. Ghost refuses to believe it. The mech was focused on him, Soap shouldn't have caught any heat from it. The rope broke clean, he wasn't attached to it, there's no way he… There's no way…
The ship splinters into halves, debris falling down like stars. A building crumbles under a piece of metal sheeting bigger than a cruise liner. Another, the size of a building, falls into the ocean. Tidal waves will come. The city will be buried in debris and water and -.
"Simon!"
Ghost turns, weak with relief when he sees Soap. He stands behind the flood of fleeing citizens, the street remarkably clear around him. Ghost climbs down and rushes to him, and Soap meets him, their foreheads knocking together hard enough to rattle Ghost's skull as he clutches at Soap's shoulders.
"Ye fuckin' bampot," Soap grunts, tears in his eyes. "Now I hafta watch ye die."
The airship groans again, splintering, cracking. Ghost closes his eyes, lowers his hood.
"The mask," Soap whispers. "Take it off."
"I will if you will."
Soap huffs, but obeys, disengaging the cling of his muzzle as Ghost pulls his own mask free. He lets it drop and cups Soap's cheeks, rubbed smooth by his mask, pets his thumbs over the lines dug into Soap's cheekbones.
More debris falls around them. Dust kicks up, turning their skin and uniforms white.
"Thank you," Ghost whispers. "For staying with me."
Soap sucks in a breath, chokes on a weak laugh. "'Til death do us part, I said. And I meant it."
Ghost bares his teeth, clenches his eyes tightly shut against the wave of emotion - sorrow for all the time lost, guilt, so much guilt it hurts to think about.
Above them, the airship coughs through its death throes. The glow dims, and disappears.
"Simon," Soap whispers, tilting his chin up. "Look. The stars are back."
Ghost opens his eyes, but he doesn't look up. He keeps his gaze on Soap, through the sting of dust in his eyes, through the bright flashes of buildings and cars bursting into flame. He takes in the soft, awed smile on Soap's face, the dim glow of neon green and starlight reflected in his eyes.
He swallows, and says, "We should try to take shelter. Pretend we'll survive."
Soap huffs, meets his eyes, his smile turning fond.
"Saved one last cigarette for ya, Johnny," Ghost says. He takes the box out of his pocket, opens it and offers it to Soap. Soap takes it, his eyes shining. Ghost lights it for him as Soap lifts his arm above their heads, his shield blanketing them like a bubble of safety. Ghost does not know what its limits are, but he supposes now is as good a time to test them as any.
The ground rumbles with many impacts, continuous and far too close.
Soap huffs a lungful of smoke, blows out a weak cloud, and coughs. "In the next life," he mutters, "don't let me smoke this shite, yeah? These things'll kill ye, ye know."
Ghost means to say, "I know", but what comes out instead is, "I love you."
Soap's smile softens. He throws the cigarette away so that he can cup Ghost's cheek. "Love ye more, Simon," he whispers. "'Til ma dyin' day."
Ghost kisses him, and together they hunker down beneath Soap's bright green shield. As always, the sun will rise. As always, the living will see it. Together, they wait, and brace themselves, to see if they will be counted among them.