The helo didn't roar in—it whispered. Low flight, lights blacked, blades muffled by NATO's best hush tech. Warsaw slid beneath them, cold and empty, a labyrinth of soot-stained towers and dying streetlights.
Ghost watched from the open hatch, mask impassive, eyes locked on the old district. Zelazna Street stretched ahead—abandoned textiles, rusted signage, no foot traffic. Perfect for ghosts and corpses.
Soap leaned toward the cockpit, voice pitched low: "We're good?"
The pilot gave a gloved thumbs-up. "Drop zone's clear. Thirty seconds."
Laswell crackled over encrypted comms:
"The address pings three prior dead drops. No infrared hits. But don't trust the quiet."
Soap slid a fresh mag into his rifle. "'Quiet' usually means we've been invited."
Ghost nodded once, slow. "And someone set the table."
The helo kissed down in a frost-covered courtyard, engines cycling into silence. The side ramp dropped.
Boots hit snow. Cold bit through their gear. Breath fogged fast. Buildings loomed—old, brutalist concrete blocks, their windows like sockets punched out of a skull.
Ghost scanned the rooftops. "Eyes up. We walk in clean, we leave on fire."
Soap gave a sharp grin, rifle raised. "Business as usual."
They moved—two shadows swallowed by Warsaw's teeth.
---
The building loomed like a concrete tomb—five stories of Soviet-era decay, windows boarded, entrance rust-scabbed and half-collapsed. Ghost and Soap moved up the steps, rifles high, boots careful.
Ghost stacked left, eyes on the upper floors. No movement. No silhouettes. Just static silence.
Soap crouched by the lock. Tools flashed—tension wrench, hook pick, steady hands. One click. Two. Then the soft clunk of surrender.
Door creaked open. They entered low and fast.
Inside smelled like old metal and damp rot. Floorboards groaned. Dust hung in the air, undisturbed—mostly.
Then Ghost saw it: a faint trail of melted snow across the linoleum, fresh and narrow. Someone had walked in not long ago. Still dripping.
Soap swept right, cleared the kitchenette. "Light's warm," he muttered. "Still buzzing."
Ghost moved deeper, gaze sweeping. One corkboard, three tacks, a spiderweb of tactical maps. Markers circled Warsaw. Budapest. Oslo. No names, just dates and times.
Then he saw it: steam curling off the kettle.
"Someone boiled water," he said flatly.
Soap stood beside him, face hardening. "So why isn't it still pouring?"
Ghost's hand hovered near the table. No dust where the mug sat. No mug now. Just a ring of moisture.
"This place isn't cold," Soap muttered.
Ghost's voice dropped low. "It's bait. And we just swallowed it."
---
Ghost's boot nudged the edge of the map table. It shifted an inch. The floor creaked under it—but not like wood. Hollow, mechanical. Off.
He crouched, swept a gloved hand underneath.
Tripwire.
Thin gauge, anchored to a pressure plate under the table leg. Barely visible. Not meant to stop them—meant to buy time.
"Don't move," he growled.
Soap froze mid-step. "What?"
"Wired." Ghost's fingers followed the taut line to a steel junction box bolted behind the leg. He flipped the edge of the map.
What lay underneath turned his blood cold.
Thermal detonator. Red arming light blinking slow, steady. C4 bricks, shaped and layered—military precision. Dual trigger: remote and motion.
He didn't think. Just shouted.
"Out! Out! Now!"
Soap spun, barreled for the stairs. Ghost followed—two strides behind, boots slamming against concrete.
The floor groaned again.
Then it screamed.
The blast tore through the first floor with a brutal snap. Fire punched through the ceiling. Ghost felt the shockwave chase them, shove them. Heat seared his back.
The window exploded ahead of them. Glass shards ripped the hallway apart.
Then nothing—just weightlessness and noise.
He hit the air, arms flailing, then pavement—hard. A crack in his shoulder screamed through his chest. Something wet spattered his mask.
He rolled once, coughing dust, ears ringing.
The safehouse vomited fire behind them.
And Soap wasn't moving.
---
Ghost's world reassembled in pieces—sound first, muffled and distant, then pain, sharp and absolute. His right shoulder throbbed like a live wire. Dislocated. Again.
He sucked in air laced with smoke and dust, rolled to his knees. The warehouse behind him bled fire from every window, a furnace swallowing itself.
"Johnny—" His voice tore at the edges of his throat.
Ten meters away, a tangle of limbs and metal. Soap.
Ghost crawled, boots dragging behind him, shoulder hanging dead at his side. His gloved hand slapped at the ground for traction. The heat clawed at his back as another explosion cracked through the building's ribs.
Soap wasn't moving much. His left leg was skewered, a rusted rebar spike driven through muscle, soaked in dark red. Debris had scraped his face raw, blood mixing with soot.
"Johnny, look at me."
Soap blinked. Once. His lips twisted, teeth clenched against the groan trying to escape.
Ghost yanked his mask off, pressed it tight around the thigh above the wound. Pulled hard. Soap jolted, sucked a ragged breath through his teeth.
"God—bloody hell—" He winced. "You always this gentle?"
"Try getting blown up less."
Smoke curled low, choking the alley in cinders and static. Sirens, faint but rising, echoed off the buildings.
Soap cracked a grimace. "Should've brought aspirin."
Ghost didn't laugh. His fingers checked the wound. Arterial. Not severed—but damn close.
"We've got minutes," Ghost muttered. Then he chambered a round and scanned the street, listening past the flames. Something was coming.
---
The fire crackled behind them, spitting sparks across the wet pavement. Ghost had Soap dragged halfway behind a burned-out sedan when the sound hit—tires on broken glass. Doors slamming. Boots hitting asphalt.
Three black SUVs. No sirens. No markings. Too clean for locals.
He glanced at Soap. Pale, lips clenched against the pain. Still breathing.
"Stay low," Ghost muttered. Not a suggestion.
He peered around the chassis. Four figures fanned out—tactical gear, suppressed weapons, comms gear clipped to their vests. NATO issue.
Wrong uniforms. Wrong timing.
"Spectre," Ghost breathed. "And they knew we'd come."
He dropped his weight onto the hood, elbow screaming. Rifle up.
Target one moved fast—clearing alleys, head on a swivel. Ghost put a round through his visor. The man folded.
Two flanked left. Ghost stitched them both—chest, then knee—watched one crawl before finishing him with a second shot.
The fourth spotted the muzzle flash and shouted in Czech. His rifle swung wide, panic in the grip. Ghost didn't let him finish the sentence. A single tap—throat.
The silence afterward rang louder than the shots.
Soap coughed behind him. "You always this polite?"
"One begged," Ghost said flatly. "Didn't change anything."
He stepped over the bodies, eyes sweeping the gear. Then he spotted it—comms device still active, red light blinking, transmitting.
He smashed it under his boot, then knelt beside the last body. Gloved fingers dipped into the vest pouch and froze.
A keycard. Black. Embossed with a single callsign.
SRG/Bishop.
Ghost stared, the name burning hotter than the flames behind them.
---
Ghost turned the keycard over in his glove, wiped the soot with his thumb.
SRG/Bishop. A cold brand. Same name Varga had whispered before choking on his own blood.
He didn't blink, just tapped his comm twice.
"Laswell. Found something."
A pause—static—then her voice: tight, clipped. "Talk to me."
Ghost stared at the body cooling in the gutter. "Keycard. Bishop's mark. Spectre gear, NATO comms."
Another pause. Longer.
"We've scrubbed Bishop from all current ops," Laswell said. "No reassignment. No death notice. Ghost—someone gave them your route."
The fire behind him popped, belched smoke into the air.
Ghost didn't answer right away. He stepped back, scanned the skyline. Empty windows stared back like dead eyes.
He glanced at Soap. Slumped, breathing shallow, blood pooling under his leg. Still alive—barely.
Ghost's voice dropped. "Then we're burning more than Warsaw."
He pocketed the card, grabbed Soap by the vest, and started moving. Faster now. No more second chances.
---
Ghost didn't waste time with doors. He shoulder-checked a rusted gate, stepped into the alley, boots crunching over broken glass and spent brass. Smoke tailed behind him, thick as oil. He adjusted Soap higher across his back—deadweight now, head lolling, breath shallow.
Soap groaned. Weak. "Still alive... unfortunately."
"Don't get dramatic on me now," Ghost muttered, spotting a parked Range Rover with Polish plates and a cracked windshield. Civilian. Unsecured.
He set Soap down, yanked a tactical blade from his belt, popped the steering column, and jammed the blade against the ignition wires.
Two sparks. Engine coughed to life.
Ghost dragged Soap inside, propped him across the backseat with one hand while drawing a SIG from his hip with the other. No time to secure the area. No time for safe.
Just movement.
"Laswell. I've got him. Vehicle's hot. Heading northeast."
Her voice crackled in through his earpiece. "Asset rerouted. MI6 medic—Khouri. Freelance. Burned her own handler six months ago. She'll meet you twenty clicks outside the city."
Ghost slammed the door shut, engine revving. Tires squealed as he pulled onto the road, weaving past debris and a jackknifed delivery van.
From the back seat, Soap rasped, "You ever think... maybe Spectre's right?"
Ghost didn't turn. Jaw clenched.
"You just lost blood, not brains."
"Still." A cough, wet. "You ever wonder if we're just... cleaning up our own messes?"
Ghost gripped the wheel tighter. City lights bled into shadow as they crossed the outskirts. Fewer buildings now. More trees. Less cover.
"Ask me again when you're not bleeding all over my backseat."
Soap exhaled something like a laugh, then slipped under.
Ghost glanced in the rearview mirror. One breath. Then another.
He pushed the accelerator down harder.
---
The clinic reeked of burnt gauze, iodine, and candle wax. Not a proper hospital—some basement beneath a butcher shop, dim and quiet, where people disappeared to get stitched without questions.
Soap lay on a metal gurney with no wheels, breath hitching while Khouri, sleeves rolled, dug a fragment of shrapnel from his thigh with a pair of rusted forceps. No anesthetic. Just grit and growling.
Ghost stood at the far end of the room, gear stripped to the essentials, balaclava off. He held the Bishop-stamped keycard between gloved fingers, turning it in the flickering light. SRG/BISHOP. The bastard had a face now—just not one they'd seen.
Khouri didn't glance up. "You want him to keep the leg, he needs rest. And antibiotics that don't smell like floor cleaner."
"He'll live," Ghost muttered.
Soap hissed through his teeth. "Don't sugarcoat it."
"Didn't," Ghost said flatly. "Still breathing, aren't you?"
Khouri packed gauze around the wound and taped it down. "He won't walk right for a week. More if he doesn't stop trying to stand."
Ghost ignored her. He checked the cracked phone Laswell routed through a secure node.
NEW MESSAGE – LASWELL:
Ward pinged a burner in Budapest before going dark. No signal since. Go quiet. Find him.
Ghost snapped the phone shut.
Outside, the wind rattled the cellar door. The streets above were silent. No sirens. No uniforms. Just Europe's rotting edges keeping secrets in concrete.
Soap sat up, grimacing. He grabbed the crutch Khouri left leaning against the gurney.
Ghost handed him a loaded pistol, silencer already threaded on.
"Budapest?" Soap rasped.
Ghost nodded. "Ward's next. If he's dead, we get answers from the grave."
Soap smirked, blood crusted along his jaw. "Hope the bastard left a forwarding address."
Ghost pulled on his gloves. His voice was stone.
"He didn't."
They vanished into the night.
---
[This is extra chapter]