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“Bravo-06 what’s your status?”
Captain Price’s voice rang out over the comms, static cracking through Soap’s earpiece as he slowly made his way through a London subway station. The sound bounced around the empty tunnels, swallowed by concrete and old stone, until it felt like the city itself was whispering back at him.
It wasn’t often the 141 had missions centered in England, so Soap was generally excited for the opportunity to work relatively close to home. There was something grounding about hearing his own accent echo off familiar infrastructure, about knowing that above his head was London—alive, loud, unaware.
A simple mission nonetheless, sweep the targeted station for any bugs or leftover intel from a Russian spy group that had previously occupied the tunnel.
Simple. Clean. In and out. The kind of job that should’ve felt like a breather.
He was even granted his own team to bring with him so they could “Divide and conquer” as Price had put it during the debrief. Soap had tried not to look too pleased at that. Tried not to let the pride show on his face when Price slid the mission file across the table to him instead of Gaz or Ghost.
His team.
His call.
He peered around a concrete, weight bearing, pillar, rifle raised but posture relaxed in that deceptively casual way he’d perfected over years of combat.
“Haven’t found anything yet, you sure they'd leave anything out in the open? Whole bunch’a haunless ejits I’ll tell you.”
“English MacTavish,”
Soap’s lips twitched into a shameless grin at Ghost’s familiar drawl. The reprimand was automatic, dry as dust, and it warmed something in his chest despite the cold of the tunnel. “Who’s the one doing the actual work here, LT? Might I remind’ya you’re out having a right ball in yer nice, air-conditioned, get-away truck, watching your little cameras, while I’m stuck down ‘ere-”
“Focus Sergeant, don’t get sloppy.”
“Aye,” He muttered, smile still pulling at the corners of his mouth as he advanced cautiously through the large, dusty tunnel.
LED overheads cast a sterile, eerie glow over the aged stones and rusted train tracks. The place felt frozen in time—abandoned coffee cups fossilized to benches, old advertisements peeling like shedding skin. It smelled faintly of damp concrete and iron.
His provided team of mostly rookies fanned out to either side of the tunnel. He could hear their breathing over the open channel, a little too fast, boots crunching unevenly against gravel. This was more of a training experience than it was an actual mission.
No real danger present in sweeping an abandoned subway.
Especially with Ghost tapped into the station's security system, watching his six like usual.
Ghost always watched his six.
Soap liked that more than he'd ever admit.
It was the distinct smell of motor oil that caused him to halt. It didn’t belong. Not in the stale, mineral air of an abandoned Underground station. It cut through the dust like a blade—fresh, sharp, wrong.
“Hold.” He muttered, holding a hand up to signal to the rookies, who immediately followed his command. He almost chuckled at how fast they froze. Good lads. Eager. Green.
The crunching of his boots against loose gravel was the only sound present in the station as he inched forward, eyes darting across the dusty expanse. Every shadow looked heavier now. Every corner seemed to lean inward. He slowly brought a hand up to his ear, pressing once on his receiver.
“Watcher-1? This is Bravo-06, how copy?”
“Solid copy, Soap. Find anything interesting?” Price responded almost instantly, and a cold feeling sank in Soap’s stomach. The smell of motor oil had no business in a London subway.
Unless their friends over at the Soviet Union decided to leave them a nice surprise.
C4. His jaw tightened.
Of course it would be C4. Subtle wasn’t exactly their style.
“Can Ghost see ‘round the west wall? Past track B?” He spoke softly, still inching forward as the pungent smell grew impossibly more noticeable. It coated the back of his throat now.
Checking over his shoulder, he was glad to see his squad remaining where he told them to, albeit a little confused. They held strong in following his orders. Good. They trusted him.
“Negative Sergeant, that central beam is blocking the cameras.”
“Copy. Keep an eye out, over.” Realistically, Soap knew he should tell his team about his concerns. Protocol would’ve demanded it.
But Price had entrusted him with one simple task—so simple he shouldn’t even need a team for it. He could practically hear the unspoken expectation: don’t overthink it, MacTavish. Don’t cry wolf.
There was no way in hell he was getting pulled out over a hunch. He turned back to his small group, letting out a near-imperceptible grunt before addressing them.
“Alright everybody, on me.” It was almost comical the way they snapped to attention, rushing to fall in behind Soap. He felt the weight of their eyes on him, waiting. Learning.
“Proceed wi’ caution, possible threat up around th’bend. Need all of ya’ on yer best behavior, aye?” There was a chorus of ‘yes sirs’ among other affirming statements. Soap threw a cautious smile their way before proceeding deeper through the tunnel.
He could feel the shift now—their nerves syncing with his own. He made a few steps toward the west end of the station before Ghost - ever perceptive - called out over the comms.
“Just lost eyes on you Johnny, gonna have’ta watch your own hide for a change?” The soft concern in his Lieutenant's voice was so subtle he could have imagined it.
Johnny. Not Sergeant. Not MacTavish. Not Soap.
Johnny.
Nodding once at his words, he promptly remembered he was no longer visible to the man and tapped his intercom with a minute chuckle. “Copy that, LT. Just like ol’ times, aye?”
“Affirmative.”
He found himself grinning once again. There was comfort in that. In knowing that no matter how dark the tunnel got, Ghost’s voice would cut through it.
His smile dropped almost instantly when he rounded the corner and found a charge large enough to take out half a city block.
“Steamin’ Jesus.” It dominated the space like a grotesque sculpture—blocks of C4 wired together in a meticulous, malicious lattice. Wires snaked across the wall and down toward the tracks. A blinking red light pulsed steadily, patiently.
His stomach dropped.
“Everyone fall back,” He barked out. “Whole place ‘s rigged to blow.” The small group of baby-faced noobies looked between each other, wide-eyed. Still. Frozen in that terrible space between understanding and action.
“You fucken heard me didn’t’cha?! Get the fuck out, now!” Thankfully, that seemed to shock them into gear, the group backing away clumsily from the particular tunnel. Soap tapped into his comms, heart slamming against his ribs hard enough to hurt.
“There’s a bomb, big one. Gonna try my best to defuse it, aye? Fucker’s got enough C4 to take down half the fuckin’ subway.”
“Negative, Sergeant. Get the fuck out’a there.” Ghost’s voice crackled through his earpiece, sharper now. Not teasing. Not subtle. He shook his head even though Ghost couldn’t see it.
“No can do, LT. Don’t know how or when she’s rigged to blow.” He pulled a tin kit from his chest rig, cautiously meandering towards the absolute abomination of C4, wires, and fuses. The smell of oil was suffocating up close. “Sending the rookies out to ya, don’ wan’t anybody getting hurt.”
“Copy,” Price’s voice was as solid as ever, something Soap had always admired about the man. Mission first, emotions later. “You’re the best soldier for the job, sunshine.” The words should’ve steadied him. Instead, they settled heavy in his chest.
Soap knelt before the bomb, eyes roaming over the unfamiliarity of the work, scanning for something, anything, that he could work with.
The wiring wasn’t standard.
The configuration was wrong. Deliberately wrong. After a gruelling few minutes—seconds? He wasn’t sure. Time stretched thin, distorted by the blinking red light—a realization settled deep in his gut.
He couldn't defuse it.
The fucking demolitions expert. The one thing he was completely sure of. The one thing he was useful for.
And he couldnt fucking defuse it.
Heat crept up his neck.
His hands trembled before he forced them still. He ran a shaky hand through his hair, a deep breath forcing it’s way out of his lungs. He could figure this out. He was Soap-Fucking-MacTavish for fucks sake. Wasn’t he?
Pulling a pair of needle-nosed pliers from his tin, he crouched over the main mechanism.
Completely unable to even tell what would signal the detonation of the damn thing. Sweat gathered at his temples despite the chill of the tunnel.
His pulse pounded in his ears, drowning out logic. “How copy, LT? Did everybody make it safely to ya’?”
“Negative, but I've got eyes on ‘em, they’re headed for the north side now. Any luck with your whole… bomb situation?”
Fuck.
The realization echoed louder than the blast ever could. This was really it.
Admitting his failure to disarm the explosive would essentially render him useless to the 141. No longer a valuable asset if he couldn’t do the one thing he was brought out to do.
He couldn’t even get his team to safety—the first time Price had trusted him with the lives of good soldiers, good men. He imagined the silence that would follow. The reassignment. The disappointment.
His only other option was to pull random wires out of the circuit board and hope he didn’t go ka-freaking-boom.
A small comfort was knowing Ghost wasn’t watching him, pacing and biting his fingernails like some scared little kid.
Which, he wasn’t scared.
Not of the bomb at least.
He was scared of being left behind. Of being the weak link. The looming threat of being discarded made the pliers in his hands feel like lead, dragging him down and away from the security of the 141, of Ghost.
“Soap, how copy?” He nearly jumped at the staticky voice in his ear, too lost in panic to realize he had neglected to respond to his CO’s previous question. Choosing to ignore the prior statement, he countered shakily.
“Where’re the rookies?”
“They’re almost out, about ten yards from the exit, why?”
He stared at the bomb, at a complete loss.
There was some reprieve in knowing the rookies were safe. They had whole lives ahead of them. Long, happy, lives. Lives that didn’t end in a forgotten tunnel beneath London.
He gently maneuvered a bundle of wires away from what he thought was the main circuit board. His brain moved slower than he would prefer as he took a moment to stare at the blinking red timer.
One blink.
Two.
He took half a second too late to realize what that meant.
Soap’s body kicked into overdrive, an immediate rush of adrenaline pumping through his veins as he leapt up and sprinted down the stone tunnel.
Blood roared in his ears, drowning out the sounds of Ghost and Price’s increasingly concerned shouts over the comms.
His lungs burned.
His boots pounded against the concrete.
He didn’t look back. He didn’t dare. —- All at once, a deafening boom sounded behind him—no, not just a sound, but a violent tearing of the tunnel’s infrastructure—and he felt the heat of the explosion rip against his back like the breath of some furious god.
It swallowed the subway in an instant, a concussive force that lifted him clean off his feet before he even understood he’d been hit.
For half a heartbeat he thought he’d outrun it—stupid, arrogant, Soap-Fucking-MacTavish thinking he could outrun a blast radius—but then it caught him, slammed into him, tore through him.
A flash of white-hot pain bloomed across his body, searing and absolute, as if every nerve had been stripped raw and set alight.
He couldn’t tell if he was screaming or if the ringing in his ears had simply replaced the concept of sound altogether. There was pressure—crushing, suffocating—followed by the sickening sensation of weightlessness, of being flung like discarded kit across unforgiving stone.
This is it, then, he thought dimly, not with fear but with a hollow sort of disbelief. Not like this. Not in the dark, under a city that would never know his name.
He wondered if the rookies had cleared the exit. Wondered if Ghost had seen the flash on the cameras. Wondered if Price would call him a bloody muppet with that fond, tired look in his eyes.
The heat vanished as quickly as it came, replaced by a creeping cold that seeped into his bones. The pain ebbed into something distant, muffled, like it belonged to someone else.
His last coherent thought flickered weakly through the smoke and static—he'd failed—before the light collapsed inward and then.
Nothing.
-----
Ghost leaned forward in his seat inside the getaway truck, gloved fingers tightening almost imperceptibly around the tablet mounted between him and Price.
The glow of the surveillance feeds painted the inside of his skull mask in pale blues and greys, flickering over the hard lines of concrete pillars and empty tracks.
Soap had been silent over the comms for the past several minutes, avoiding his questions and ignoring his orders to relay his status.
Ghost was worried- peevish, at the notion that he couldn't see or hear his Johnny.
Pushing any thoughts of disdain to the back of his mind, he remembered one simple thing- Soap was the bomb guy, he basically ate slept breathed explosives, chances are he was just really focused and getting that faraway sparkle that he always possessed in his eyes whenever he got the opportunity to show off what he loved.
He’d lost eyes on Soap a few minutes prior when the man had passed that damned central beam, but another camera further down the tunnel had picked him up just in time.
Just in time to see him sprinting full tilt toward the north exit. His heart sank to his stomach, his throat closed up. The first thing Ghost noticed was the way Johnny ran.
Not tactical. Not controlled. Not the precise, measured retreat of a seasoned sergeant who knew exactly how many seconds he had before detonation.
He ran like a man who knew his efforts would mean nothing. Desperate. Price swore under his breath beside him.
“Soap, report.” There was no answer.
Only the harsh sound of breath over the comms. Too fast. Too ragged. Ghost’s jaw clenched.
He knew that sound. He’d heard it in Mexico. In Urzikstan. In the tight, suffocating spaces where men realized they were seconds from death and still chose to move toward it anyway.
On the grainy black-and-white feed, Soap’s figure grew larger in frame, boots pounding against the stone platform. Even through the distortion, Ghost could see the slight hitch in his stride—adrenaline overriding pain that hadn’t even arrived yet.
“Get the fuck out of there, Johnny.” Ghost muttered, so low it barely counted as sound.
The rookies burst into view from the north corridor, scrambling up the stairs toward street level.
One of them glanced back. Ghost tracked the motion automatically, calculating distance, blast radius, structural weak points. He was already mapping casualties in his head.
Then the screen went white. Not black. Not static. White.
The explosion swallowed the camera feed whole, a violent bloom that overexposed everything in an instant.
Even inside the truck, insulated by steel and distance, the shockwave hit a half-second later—a low, concussive thud that rattled the windows and rolled through Ghost’s chest like a second heartbeat.
The comms erupted in a burst of distortion. Price flinched, just barely. Ghost didn’t move at all. He couldn’t. On the monitor, the white glare dissolved into chaos—sparks, falling debris, smoke billowing through the tunnel in thick, choking waves.
Then, nothing. The cameras in that section completely blown out, though not to anyone’s surprise.
“MacTavish.” Price’s voice was sharp now. Controlled. “Bravo-06, come in. What’s your status?” Ghost’s fingers dug harder into the edge of the console.
Through the settling haze, he pictured a body. Crumpled against the far wall near the tracks.
Motionless. For a fraction of a second, he rejected the thought. Refused to assign a name.
It was just a shape. A uniform.
A smear of soot against concrete.
Soap.
His Soap- his Johnny.
Something inside Ghost went very, very still. He had watched the blast frame by frame in real time.
Watched the exact moment Johnny realized. Watched him turn and run. Watched the fire catch him mid-stride and hurl him like he weighed nothing at all. And he hadn’t been able to do a damn thing.
“Johnny, how copy?” Ghost’s voice cut through the static, low and steady in a way that would’ve fooled anyone who didn’t know him. Silence answered. Not even breathing.
The rookies stumbled out onto the street-level camera, coughing but upright, alive. Ghost registered it distantly. Good. That’s what Johnny had wanted. That’s why he’d stayed.
Price was already reaching for the door handle. “Move out.”
Ghost was out of the truck before the words fully landed.
Cold London air hit him like a slap, sirens beginning to wail in the distance as civilians realized something catastrophic had just torn through the Underground.
Smoke poured from the station entrance, thick and oily. He ran toward it without hesitation.
He’d told Johnny to get out.
He’d heard the shake in his voice and let him stay anyway.
If Johnny died, it would be on him.
-----
Soap was distantly aware that the numbness in his body was undoubtedly bad.
It wasn't a pleasant numbness—the good kind soldiers joked about after a scrap, when adrenaline made you feel invincible. No, this was wrong. This was heavy. Thick. Like his blood had turned to lead and settled in his veins.
However, the sluggish thoughts and resistance of his limbs gave way that he may not want to feel whatever his body was blocking.
Somewhere beneath the cotton-wrapped silence of his nerves, he knew there was damage. Real damage. The type you don’t walk off with a grin and a smart remark. Grateful for the temporary reprieve, he tried—and failed—to take stock of his body.
His brain buzzed as if a whole hive of bees had taken purchase there, muting his thoughts and deafening his ears. Every attempt at clarity slipped through his fingers like smoke.
Opening his eyes was a herculean effort. Dust settled on his eyelashes, clinging to something hot and sticky that ran down the side of his face.
Blood.
It had to be.
He could taste copper at the back of his tongue, thick and nauseating. His lips felt dry as he let out a wet cough, pain settling deeply in his chest as he slowly began to regain feeling in his nerves.
Shame hit before the pain fully did.
He wheezed, chest constricted as he failed to pull in an acceptable amount of oxygen into his lungs. Black spots danced across his vision like taunting little stars.
His memory returned in fragments—the tunnel, the rookies, the bomb. The bomb that he failed to defuse. Fuck. The word echoed louder through his head than the explosion had.
A whine pulled itself out of his tight chest, against his permission.
Small.
Broken.
It felt humiliatingly loud in the confined space. He slowly tried to take stock of his surroundings.
He was laying on his stomach. Something heavy and unyielding pressed into his lower back, pinning him in place. Concrete? Debris? The station itself?
There was a tiny pocket of air around his head, enough to turn it a fraction of an inch to each side, but not nearly enough to breathe without the feeling of re-inhaling his spent carbon dioxide. Dust clogged his nostrils, mixed with smoke and blood.
Much to his dismay, he realized he couldn't feel his legs. Not even pain. Just a distant, tingling absence where white-hot agony should’ve been. His breathing quickened.
“Fuck,” he wheezed out, the sound dry and splintered as it left his lips. He choked, a mouthful of blood dripping from between his teeth.
“P-please,” he whispered into the suffocating darkness.
“Help me— fuck please. G-get me out of here Jesus- f-fuck.” The words felt childish. Desperate. Except no one was coming. He was alone. Who knew how many tonnes of stone lay over what was quickly becoming his grave.
No one was coming to help him. He’d seen the blast. He knew how bad it had been. He was going to die alone in a fucking London subway, buried under the city he’d never been proud to serve.
No comforting voice present to tell him it would all be okay. No hands turning him over to check his injuries. No rough gauze shoved against his bleeding, broken body. No whispers in his ear, reassuring him that “he was going to be just fine.”
No one.
No Simon.
His eyes snapped wider, panic cutting through the fog like a blade. His comms. How could he be so dense as to forget something so fucking simple?
He struggled to maneuver a numb arm up to his earpiece, shoulder screaming at the unwelcome movement as his bones ground together in a way that made bile rise in his throat. With a pitiful cry of pain, he managed to press a weak finger against the receiver.
“P-Price?” His voice sounded weak and slurred to his own ears, like someone else had borrowed it and broken it before giving it back.
“H-how copy?” Silence. The kind of silence that eats you. “Ghost? S-Si please, come in.” Static.
They weren’t coming. Maybe they’d evacuated. Took the rookies and got clear before secondary collapse.
Maybe Price had made the call—cut losses, secure survivors. Maybe he was already drafting the report in his head: Sergeant John MacTavish, KIA. Mission compromised but casualties minimized.
Maybe Gaz wouldn’t miss the noise.
Maybe Ghost wouldn’t miss the headache of babysitting some reckless, arrogant, snot-nosed sergeant who thought he was invincible.
Before he even realized, tears burned at the corners of his eyes, cutting clean lines through the dust on his cheeks. A gut-wrenching sob tore from his throat, raw and ugly.
He didn’t want to die.
Did they want him to die?
He couldn’t even defuse the bomb. The one thing he was meant to be good at.
Why would they keep him after that?
Why would they want him back?
His breathing spiraled into high-pitched gasps, hyperventilation echoing in the too-tight pocket of air. The walls felt closer. The weight heavier.
Fuck he had to get out.
Get me out, get me out, get me out, getmeoutgetmeoutgetmeout—
He thrashed instinctively, ignoring the way his limbs screamed in protest. Something shifted above him. The pressure worsened. A broken sob escaped him, terror clawing up his spine.
Then— “Johnny?” The voice cut through everything. At first, he thought he’d imagined it. Some oxygen-deprived hallucination conjured by a brain desperate for comfort.
Lieutenant Simon Fucking Riley.
He could cry.
He was crying.
His body stilled instantly at the sound, as if every cell recognized it before his mind did.
“Soap? Johnny, are you there? Talk to me.”
“Simon.” He choked the name out, voice breaking, breath stuttering painfully between gasps.
“I’m here Johnny, I’m right here. We’re gonna get you out’a there, right? Price is here too, just hang tight.”
Soap could hear it—the almost imperceptible thread of fear woven through Ghost’s voice. Most wouldn’t catch it.
But Soap knew him.
Knew the cadence. Knew the difference between command and concern. Even through static, his heartbeat began to steady.
Simon was here. Simon was going to get him out.
“How copy? Give me a sitrep, son.” Price. Steady as stone. The kind of voice that had pulled men back from the edge of their demise more times than Soap could count. Commanding, strong, reassuring.
He gasped as the crushing weight above him seemed to register in his delayed brain.
“C-cannae feel m’legs, head’s mince too— c-concussion I’d guess. Breathing’s not too easy, c-can’t move.” He hated how small he sounded.
“That’s alright, we’re coming to get you just hold out a little longer, yeah? What’s your 20? What’s the last thing you saw?”
He tried to get control of his breathing, but the tightness in his chest made every inhale feel wrong—like something inside wasn’t sitting where it should.
“I can’t fucken—” he gasped, choking on another glob of blood. “Dinnae ken— fuck, cannae see anythin’— can’t fucken move.” He knew he was panicking. He’d trained for entrapment. Oxygen control. Tactical calm. He could recite the procedures in his sleep.
None of it mattered when he couldn’t feel his legs. When the world was pressing him into the ground. Suddenly every bit of useful information he'd ever retained had disappeared to the depths of his foggy mind.
“Johnny, breathe.”
He let out a hysterical half-laugh that, more accurately, could be described as a horrified sob. “That an order, LT?”
“Only if I have to make it one.”
Even now. Even buried alive. He tried. God, he tried. But his chest shifted wrong with every attempt, sharp pain lancing through his ribs. Still.
If Simon told him to breathe, he would breathe. If Simon told him to crawl through broken glass, he’d drag himself over it with a smile. To hell with it if it was the last thing he ever did.
“P-passed tunnel B, I think,” he forced out. Nausea crept up his throat. “Was headin’ north but dinnae get very far— fuck ‘m gonna throw up.”
The idea of vomiting face-down in rubble nearly sent him spiraling again. He swallowed thickly. The rushing blood in his ears drowned out parts of their response.
He felt guilty. First he screws up the simplest mission imaginable. Then he gets himself blown to bits. Now he can’t even keep his head straight long enough to give a coherent location.
Fucking useless.
“You’re not useless, Johnny.” The words cut clean through the noise.
Did he say that out loud?
“You’re the toughest soldier I know, just hang tight, yeah? You made it through Las Almas with nothing but a gunshot wound and a piece’a rope. You’re getting out’a this too.” Soap squeezed his eyes shut, tears slipping free again. Las Almas. The betrayal. The gunshot tearing through him. The moment he thought it was over.
And Simon had come.
Simon was the reason the manifestations of death and gore didn't hurt so bad at night, the only constant that he could rest assured knowing: Ghost was here, he would make everything okay. He could fix everything.
He clung to that now, to the sound of Ghost’s voice in his ear, to the steady undercurrent of Price coordinating somewhere above him.
They were here. They hadn’t left him.
He was not alone in the dark.
His breathing hitched again, but this time he forced it slower. In through the dust. Out through the blood.
If Simon said he was getting out— Then he would.
He had to.
-----
He must’ve fallen asleep at some point, because he soon found himself blinking his eyes open, lashes clearing the dust from his lids.
The dark wasn’t just an absence of light. It pressed in. As Soap lay pinned in it, the weight of the collapsed subway—tonnes of stone and twisted metal crushing the world down to a space barely bigger than a coffin, he waited.
The air tasted stale and dusty, thick enough that every breath scraped on the way in. Somewhere beyond the rubble Price and Ghost were trying to reach him.
They’d said Laswell had a crew coming. That meant time. Time he wasn’t sure he had.
His patience was hanging by a thread.
He shifted his head a fraction and instantly regretted it. The world doubled, splitting into two crooked versions of the same darkness.
Dizziness washed through him like cold water through a cracked hull, spreading along his nerves until his stomach twisted violently. Closing his eyes only made it worse.
Soap pressed his forehead down against the stone floor, clinging to the cool surface like it was the only stable thing left in the universe.
He dragged in a slow breath through his nose.
Then another.
The nausea rolled again. Christ—don’t you dare. The last thing he needed was to vomit in a hole barely big enough to breathe in.
Drowning in his own sick while waiting for rescue would be a hell of a way to go. Not exactly the heroic end the SAS brochures promised. Just thinking it made his spine ripple with pain. A shudder ran through him.
“Steamin’ Jesus,” he muttered into the stone. His breathing came rough and uneven, the kind that scraped your throat raw. Saliva pooled in his mouth, slipping from his parted lips onto the rock beneath him.
His fingers trembled as he reached up, fumbling for the earpiece wedged against his ear. It took two tries before he managed to press the switch.
“LT, how copy?” For a moment there was nothing. Then static.
“…Signal—no… stable—h…ang tight, yeah Johnny?” Ghost’s voice—thin and shredded by interference.
“Fuck—” The word died halfway out of his mouth as his stomach lurched violently. A gag clawed up his throat, sudden and brutal. He choked on bile as it forced its way upward. Soap coughed hard. Pink-tinged vomit splattered across the subway stone beneath him.
“—ah, fuckin’ brilliant…”
His brain lagged behind the moment, slow and foggy, but even in its current state he could piece together the situation well enough. Face down in his own vomit. Possibly hundreds of tonnes of rubble overhead.
Patchy comms. Aye. Properly fucked.
He tried to shift his head—just a little.
Big mistake.
The world tilted sideways like someone had grabbed the whole bloody planet and spun it. Motion sickness slammed into him so hard his vision blurred. Another wave of vomit surged up his throat, cutting off his air as he gagged helplessly. His lungs burned. Eventually the spasm passed, leaving him gasping.
A thought surfaced through the fog of his mind, simple and blunt.
Don’t move your head.
Right. That seemed manageable. He focused on breathing instead.
Slow pulls of air that never felt like enough. The pocket he was trapped in had to be full of carbon dioxide by now, along with whatever fumes the bomb had belched into the tunnel.
Each breath felt thinner than the last. Concussion, maybe. Would explain the spinning. The nausea. The way his thoughts drifted like loose papers in the wind.
Another gag crawled up his throat. He tried to cough it down, teeth clenched tight against the inevitable.
“Soap? Come in son, we’ve got a reading on a heat signature. Can’t start digging ’till you confirm it’s you, sunshine.” Price. The relief was there—but buried under a mountain of misery.
Just the idea of answering made his whole body tremble.
Speaking meant moving his jaw, his throat, his head—every tiny shift sending fresh waves of dizziness through him.
How long had it been since Price called? Seconds? Minutes? His sense of time had dissolved completely. For all he knew he’d been lying here five minutes or fifty.
“P-Price?” Even to his own ears the word sounded mangled, his Scottish lilt thick with exhaustion. He coughed hard afterward, chest heaving.
“Good to hear your voice, soldier. Can you move at all?” Soap swallowed, immediately regretting it as his stomach flipped again.
“N-nae… negative.” The word rattled his skull like a loose bolt. A miserable whine slipped out between breaths before he could stop it.
Brilliant, Johnny. Real professional.
“That’s not an option, Johnny.”
Another cry escaped through his teeth.
Ghost.
The bastard knew exactly what that tone did to him. He knew that when he spoke, Soap listened.
Like some mangy stray.
Soap squeezed his eyes shut, bracing himself against the spinning chaos in his skull.
Slowly—very slowly—he forced his head to turn. The moment his forehead lifted from the cold stone he missed it immediately. The loss of that cool anchor made his stomach roll all over again. His brain lagged behind the movement.
For a second the world didn’t register the change at all.
Then panic hit him like a freight train. White-hot and slow, flooding through his veins like thick syrup.
“Ghost—Simon… dinnae—can’t tell what’s happenin’, it’s all wrong— I can’t—” His words came out broken, breath hitching.
“Breathe, sergeant. We’ve got eyes on you.” Ghost’s voice cut through the chaos like a blade. Somewhere above him, muffled through layers of debris, Price was shouting orders.
Or maybe Soap was imagining it.
Hard to tell what was real anymore.
Stone shifted nearby. Gravel trickled down. Soap tensed instinctively, a scream ripping up his throat—and that was enough to trigger another violent wave of vomiting.
His airways closed.
His lungs seized. Fuck.
He couldn’t breathe.
His body locked into a miserable cycle—gasping, coughing, gagging—each desperate attempt for air making the dizziness worse. The darkness spun around him, thick and endless, swallowing his sense of direction whole.
And somewhere through the fog in his head, one frantic thought kept repeating.
“Stay awake, Johnny.”
Just stay awake.
-----
Time stopped meaning anything in the dark. Soap had tried counting breaths at some point—something to anchor himself—but the numbers slipped away almost as soon as they formed. His head throbbed too hard to hold onto thoughts for long.
Everything blurred together into nausea, pressure, and the endless roar of blood in his ears.
Then— Light. A thin blade of it cut through the darkness. Soap flinched hard, eyes snapping shut as the sudden brightness stabbed straight through his skull.
Even through his eyelids the white glare burned like a flare going off inches from his face. A headlamp, maybe.
Someone above him. Finally. Voices drifted down through the rubble, warped and distant, like he was hearing them underwater.
Stone scraped against stone. Debris shifted. Something inside his chest made a broken sound. It took him a moment to realize it had come from him.
Another slab lifted away somewhere near his back, and with it came a rush of air—cold, clean, and glorious. The breeze rolled over his sweat-soaked skin, cutting through the suffocating heat trapped beneath the rubble.
Soap sucked in a shaky breath. The chill soothed the fire in his nerves just enough that a quiet sigh escaped him before he could stop it.
He didn’t dare move, though. Not even a twitch. The dizziness still lurked just under the surface, waiting to slam back the moment he made the wrong motion.
Then the hands came. All at once. They were everywhere—grabbing his arms, his shoulders, his legs, his ribs.
Too many.
Too fast.
Rough and unfamiliar and painfully warm against skin that had gotten used to the cold stone. A strangled cry forced its way through his teeth.
They didn’t stop.
Relentless hands rolled him onto his back. The movement detonated inside his skull. Soap coughed violently as another retch clawed up his throat, body folding in on itself as bile burned its way up again.
“Get’cha fucken hands off'a me,” he rasped. It barely came out louder than a breath.
Anyone not leaning right over him probably wouldn’t have heard a thing. The rescue crew certainly didn’t. They hauled at him again. Suddenly the stone beneath his face—his one steady anchor—was gone.
His body lifted into the air, weightless and horribly unstable. The cold breeze that had felt so good seconds ago now knifed down his throat as he struggled to drag oxygen into his lungs.
His head pounded harder. The dizziness surged back with a vengeance. Soap made the mistake of opening his eyes. The world lurched sideways. Instantly he gagged.
His stomach clenched hard enough to hurt, trying to expel something that simply wasn’t there anymore. He was fairly certain the last three rounds had emptied him out completely—nothing left but bloody bile and dry heaves. Didn’t stop his body from trying.
He convulsed with another retch, coughing through the empty spasms as pain flared across his abdomen. Each dry heave sent sharp bursts of agony tearing through his torso. Soap squeezed his eyes shut again.
Somehow the spinning got worse.
Fantastic.
A moment later the hands lowered him onto something rough and narrow. A stretcher, his foggy brain eventually supplied. The heat disappeared as quickly as it had come, replaced again by the cool air brushing across his skin.
Soap sagged into the litter, too exhausted to care about much else. Then the delay hit. That awful lag between movement and understanding.
His body began to shiver violently before his mind even caught up with why. The voices were gone. Or maybe they were still there and he just couldn’t hear them anymore.
All he could make out was the thunder of blood in his ears and his own ragged breathing echoing inside his skull. Panic crept in.
A strangled cry caught in his throat—and with it came the warm slide of blood running down the back of his mouth. Soap choked. He tried to turn his head.
Too slow.
The blood slipped down his throat before he managed it. Fuck. His chest seized as he coughed violently, trying to clear it. Would anyone notice? He couldn’t even hear himself. For all he knew he was lying here silently choking like some rookie who didn’t know better.
Brilliant way to go, MacTavish.
“Johnny.” The voice rumbled close to his ear. Close enough that warm breath ghosted across his cheek. Real.
Strong gloved hands cupped either side of his face, steady and careful—nothing like the frantic grabbing from earlier. Slowly, deliberately, they tilted his head to the side. Soap coughed again, and this time the blood spilled out of his mouth instead of back into his throat. Sticky. Metallic. Fresh.
A sound cracked somewhere nearby. It took him a moment to realize it was a sob. He decided very firmly not to think about that.
“At ease, Johnny. You’re alright, I’ve got’cha now, yeah?” Soap forced his eyes open a sliver, though everything was still smeared and spinning.
“A-aye… LT…” His voice sounded wrecked—nothing but a shredded whisper dragged over broken glass. His throat burned from stomach acid, blood, and too much coughing.
Ghost’s hands stayed where they were, steady against his face. One thumb brushed sweat from his forehead before sliding into his hair, holding it back whenever another wave of dry heaving shook through him.
Somewhere nearby another familiar voice joined Simon’s. Price.
Soap couldn’t make out the words, but he felt another pair of hands—cooler, rougher—press briefly against his temples and cheekbones. Grounding. If he weakly shoved at them once or twice, that was between him and whatever pride he had left.
A moment later something plastic pressed over his nose and mouth.
Oxygen. Soap didn’t even try to fight it. He let the mask settle into place, letting the steady flow of air fill his lungs while one of the gloved hands rested over his arm. It squeezed gently each time his body jerked with another heave.
The stretcher lifted. The motion was slow this time, careful. Metal clanged somewhere as they loaded him into a vehicle. Through the haze, Ghost’s voice rumbled again—low and unusually soft.
“Rest, Soap. It’s going to be okay, Johnny. I’ve got you.” Soap tried to grin. It probably came out more like a grimace.
“A-always got… m’ six, yeah LT?” The words slurred together as sleep dragged at the edges of his consciousness. Embarrassment didn’t even have the energy to show up anymore.
For a second there was only the steady hiss of oxygen and the rumble of the engine starting. Then Simon answered.
“Always, Johnny.”
That was the last thing Soap heard before the darkness finally pulled him under.