Chapter Text
The air in the 141 common room was thick with the scent of stale coffee and gun oil, a familiar comfort zone before the chaos began. For Sergeant John “Soap” MacTavish, seven months into his tenure with Task Force 141, this preparatory peace was as vital as his gear. He stood fully kitted—plated vest, heavy assault rifle slung across his back, demolition charges secured—but his mind was still miles away, tracing the lines of a hostile compound on a digital schematic.
He had two hours left before he and his eighteen-man team lifted off.
Soap ran a hand over his freshly shaved head, the fatigue momentarily eclipsed by the adrenaline of command. He was the youngest soldier to pass selection and had earned his place through a combination of sheer grit and an instinctual genius for high-grade demolition. Price had seen that potential and molded it into a leader.
He peeled the wrapper from a protein bar, the sugary synthetic taste a necessary contrast to the dry data he’d been processing for the last twelve hours. Captain Price and Sergeant Gaz Garrick sat at the communal table, heads bent over maps detailing possible extraction routes. They were the immovable foundations of the 141.
Soap leaned down, pressing a quick, affectionate kiss to Price’s grizzled forehead, then to Gaz’s.
“You have less than two hours now, sunshine,” Price murmured, his eyes never leaving the grid lines, but the gruff tone softened by his customary nickname for the Scot.
“I know,” Soap replied, already half-gobbling the snack bar. “Just came to grab a quick refuel.” He tossed the wrapper into a bin, the small breach of protocol immediately shifting him back into mission focus. “I’ll see you two when we exfil at 0100.”
“Go get ’em, Soap.” Gaz nodded, raising a hand in salute.
The last stop was Lieutenant Simon “Ghost” Riley’s room. Soap knocked once—a crisp, recognizable rap. The door opened instantly, revealing the towering figure silhouetted against the dim light of his private quarters. Ghost, ever silent, gave no verbal goodbye, instead pulling Soap into a brief, tight hug, the heavy ceramic plates of their armor clicking together. A soft press of lips to Soap’s forehead followed, a signal of shared trust and concern that needed no words.
“Be careful, Johnny,” Ghost’s voice was a low, resonant rumble.
“Always am, Si.”
With that, Soap spun on his heel and headed toward the tarmac. As he walked, he mentally rehearsed the timeline: lift off at 1300 hours, infiltrate, eliminate, extract data, rendezvous at the safehouse, and exfil by 0100. Twelve hours of high-stakes precision.
The moment he stepped onto the tarmac, the mental shift was complete. Sergeant MacTavish was a commander now. Eighteen soldiers were already standing in rigid formation beside the waiting heavy transport helicopter.
“Alright, lads, lets head out.”
The group loaded quickly, the rhythmic thump-thump-thump of the rotor blades already vibrating through the airframe. The compound, nestled deep in remote woodland, was supposed to be a low-profile target—minimal surveillance, accessible only by air or difficult cross-country drive. High-value data, low-security defense.
As the helo descended toward the thick forest canopy, Soap reviewed the plan for the final time. Split entry. He would lead Group A (ten men) through the front double doors, focusing on clearing the lower two floors. Private Elijah Santos, experienced and reliable, would lead Group B (nine men) through the rear garage door, sweeping the upper floors and securing data extraction points.
The landing was rough, a quick drop and scatter. Soap led his group through the damp woods, the air growing heavy and unfamiliar with every step.
“Hold,” Soap ordered through the comms channel. He paused ten meters from the front entrance, lifting his mask slightly. “Anyone else smell that?”
It wasn’t the scent of gunpowder or diesel. It was metallic, acrid—a sharp, almost sweet odor that stung the nostrils. Some type of caustic chemical, unexpected and unsettling.
“Group B is in position. Ready on your mark, Sergeant,” Elijah’s voice crackled into his earpiece.
Soap pushed the bad feeling down. “Infiltrate in three, two, one.”
He kicked the double door inward, the breach immediate and aggressive. Soap’s customized assault rifle barked twice, dropping the two surprised guards standing inside. The ground floor was a massive, open space—just as the schematics indicated. Group A fanned out, clearing the perimeter, while Group B breached the rear garage fifty meters away.
Soap moved toward the center of the hall, ready to lead the charge toward the central staircase. That’s when he saw it.
There was a wall. A makeshift, reinforced interior wall where none should have existed, partitioning off a quarter of the vast ground floor. This wasn’t structural; this was a recent addition.
“Hold the stairs! Group A, secure that anomaly!” Soap barked, his voice tight with alarm. “Group B, proceed with caution on the upper floors. Something’s off down here.”
The chemical smell intensified as Group A cautiously approached the single metal door embedded in the new wall. Soap signaled Kenneth, the medic, and Beverly to cover him as he ran a hand over the cold steel.
He slammed his shoulder against the door—unlocked—and charged the room first. It was empty. A concrete box. No furniture, no weapons caches, just bare, filthy floor. The acrid smell was now overwhelming, burning the back of his throat.
“Check every crevice, there has to be something here,” he ordered. The ten soldiers spread out, weapons raised but confused, searching the sterile, featureless space.
Click.
The heavy metal door slammed shut behind them with a deafening finality.
Before Soap could react, the walls began to weep. Tiny circular holes opened at chest level, and small metal canisters dropped to the floor, venting thick, yellow-green smoke instantly. Simultaneously, a high-pitched, metallic shriek tore through their comms, a feedback loop so immediate and piercing it was designed to shred eardrums.
Soap reacted purely on instinct, years of training taking over. He tore his earpiece out, the ringing still echoing painfully in his inner ear. Around him, three of his men were slower; they clutched their helmets, already crippled by the sonic attack.
Then, a voice. Mechanical, distorted, yet instantly recognizable to anyone who had crossed professional lines with the American PMC formerly known as Shadow Company.
“This is a message,” Graves said, the accent betraying him perfectly, overriding the painful ringing.
Another hole opened low on the wall, not venting gas, but fire. A white-hot plume of controlled napalm erupted, igniting the smoke-filled room in a catastrophic explosion. The blast wave hit Soap like a punch from a freight train, sending him bodily into the rear wall.
He heard the screams, the sickening thud of bodies hitting concrete, and the deafening roar of the upper floors giving way. The floor beneath them, structurally compromised by the blast, buckled. Soap felt himself falling, plummeting into darkness as concrete slabs, rebar, and support beams rained down.
A massive chunk of slab struck his helmeted head, stunning him into a dizzying vortex of white noise. Then came the unbearable, searing pain that ripped through the chaos—a thick steel beam, trailing a hunk of upper-level concrete, slammed down, pinning his left thigh to the rubble beneath. The world went white-hot, and Sergeant MacTavish knew nothing more.
When consciousness returned, it was not with a gentle fade, but with a jolt of pain that traveled directly from his leg to his brain. He groaned, a sound swallowed by the oppressive silence and the gritty smell of burnt drywall and pulverized concrete.
“-RGENT, Sir, please wake up.”
A voice, close and frantic. Soap’s eyes fluttered open against the darkness. The only light source was a thin, vertical sliver where two massive slabs didn’t quite meet, supplemented by the hungry, flickering orange of small residual fires nearby. He felt a body curled protectively over him.
He tried to sit up, but the weight on his thigh—the beam—shifted, triggering blinding agony.
“Sir, don’t move, you’re badly injured,” the voice insisted. It was Elijah Santos, his face illuminated by a small flicker of flame, streaked with dust and blood pooling from a gash on his temple.
“Sit-rep, Eli,” Soap gasped, reaching up to grip Elijah’s plate carrier.
Elijah’s assessment was delivered with clinical precision, overriding his obvious shock. “Sir, the building collapsed on us. I’ve checked through these hollows. It’s only us five. Everyone else is gone.”
Elijah held out a handful of heavy metal discs—fourteen dog tags, silent proof of the catastrophic loss. Grief, sharp and bitter, flooded Soap, a sickening realization that his first command-led mission had ended in an utter rout.
“Keep them with you. Who else is still here?” Soap’s voice was strained, thick.
“Kenneth, Beverly, Lynda, Myself, and you, Sergeant. We’re stuck down here with no comms. And I’m pretty sure that gas stuff had some acid or something in it—it’s caused nasty burns.”
Pushing a smaller piece of concrete away from his head, Soap slowly sat up, ignoring the tremor passing through his body. He looked at the four exhausted faces gathered in the gloom around him. Kenneth, the medic, was already wrapping Lynda’s arm. Beverly and Elijah leaned heavily against support beams, their breathing shallow. They were alive, but barely functional.
He felt the failure of command heavy on his shoulders, but there was no time for guilt. “Well, fuck.” It was a raw, honest assessment of their situation.
The rubble above them groaned, a sound like tearing metal and fractured stone. The structure was settling, threatening to crush them completely. The beam in his thigh felt like an anchor, welding him to the floor.
Lynda, despite the pain contorting her face, managed a small, encouraging smile and patted his shoulder, a small comfort in the suffocating darkness.
“Injuries?” Soap locked eyes with Kenneth.
Kenneth, the only one standing with any semblance of balance, responded immediately. “Lynda has a broken arm to her wrist, burns from neck to left wrist as well. Beverly has burns across the left side of her body, probable broken ribs. Elijah has a broken ankle, a few broken ribs, burns on his chest. I’m as fine as I can be—a few minor burns, a gash on my arm—but better than you lot.” He finished checking his own supply vest. “Otherwise, just a lot of burns, cuts, and scrapes, Sir.”
Beverly spoke up, her voice hoarse. “We tried looking for other survivors, but we were the only ones awake after the blast, aside from you, thankfully.”
Soap blinked, processing the brutal calculus: 5 survivors out of 19. “Alright then. Now, let’s find a way to get out of here.”
His determination was a palpable thing, cutting through the despair.
“Kenneth, you’re a medic, right?”
Kenneth nodded sharply.
“Alright, how many bandages and wraps you have left?”
Kenneth riffled through the limited contents of his remaining field pouch. “About three, sir. Maybe a tourniquet.”
“Not enough for what we need,” Soap assessed. “Beverly and Lynda, I need you to look for big rocks or any pieces of unbent rebar or beams that we could use as levers or to climb with. Elijah and Kenneth, I’m gonna need you two to lift this heap of junk off me when I tell you. After I get free, Kenneth, you’re gonna wrap my thigh up good enough for about a two-hour trek. We are gonna need to work quickly unless you wanna be under this rubble when it finally comes down.”
His eyes scanned the ceiling, finding the small stream of daylight. “We’re gonna have to climb out. So, Beverly will climb up first, then pull up Elijah. You’ll both help Lynda out, then Kenneth, and finally, me. We’ll head to the safehouse then and get fixed up, and wait for exfil—if we haven’t hit the deadline already.”
The plan was audacious, desperate, and the only path forward. They nodded, galvanized by the immediate task and Soap’s renewed authority.
Beverly and Lynda moved with pain and purpose, crouched low, searching the shifting debris for the necessary leverage. Elijah knelt beside Soap, his face pale, one hand gripping the beam, ready to heave. Kenneth mirrored him, placing a hand near Soap’s punctured thigh, bracing for the inevitable medic work.
Beverly and Lynda returned quickly, dragging two large, relatively straight beams and a dense, flat rock.
“Alright, Lynda, place those beams there, where the light is shining through,” Soap directed, pointing toward the gap. The breakout was about to begin. Every second of agony would now count toward survival.