The rotor wash kicked snow into spiraling ghosts as the Black Hawk rose, tail yawing hard into the storm. Flames licked the ruins below—Oblast-7 sinking into its grave. Smoke chased them through the updraft.
Ghost sat near the door, rifle across his lap, helmet still frosted. Soap leaned beside him, steam rising from his soaked gear.
Captain Elias Morgan glanced back from the cockpit. His knuckles gripped the stick like it might escape. "We've got two minutes to drop altitude before the wind shear turns this thing sideways."
Ghost didn't answer. His eyes locked on the horizon—gray, cracked open by fire. His silence said it all.
Laswell's voice cracked through their comms, low and strained. "Pulling metadata now. Most of it's junk—scrubbed protocols, test pings. That site wasn't Spectre's hub. It was staged."
Soap stiffened. "You're telling me we almost died in a prop closet?"
"Worse," Laswell replied. "You were meant to."
Ghost leaned forward, static hissing in his earpiece. "Then where's the real node?"
No answer. Just cold.
As they cleared the ridge, something shimmered in the distance—barely a flash. Then the thump—two shoulder-fired missiles screamed from the treeline below, streaking smoke across the sky.
"MISSILE INBOUND!" Morgan yanked the Black Hawk into a banking dive.
Too late.
The first warhead clipped the tail rotor. The entire bird snapped sideways midair. The second slammed into the rear fuselage, shredding metal with a brutal roar.
The helicopter spun into freefall.
Ghost's world flipped. He grabbed the side rail, boots tearing free of the deck. Soap slammed into the bulkhead, grunting, eyes wide.
"BRACE!" Morgan roared. "BRACE FOR IMPACT!"
---
The Black Hawk screamed as it fell—metal shearing, tail spinning loose like a snapped limb. Ghost braced against the fuselage wall, boots skidding across oil-slick floor panels. Wind punched through the torn tail, dragging smoke and snow into the cabin like hungry claws.
Soap's voice cut through the chaos. "Morgan's out cold—he's not flying us anywhere!"
Ghost fought his way forward, gripping overhead rails, dragging himself toward the cockpit. The instrument panel blinked red—altitude bleeding fast. Morgan slumped over the controls, helmet cracked, blood trickling down his temple.
Ghost shoved him aside and seized the cyclic. "Collective's shot. No tail control."
"Then glide it!" Soap barked, already dragging Morgan from the co-pilot's seat.
Below them: jagged pine lines, a frozen ravine slicing through the mountain like a wound.
Ghost angled the chopper hard left—using the main rotor's torque to fight the spin. They came in crooked, slamming treetops, rotors shredding pine into splinters.
"Hold—!"
Impact.
The belly of the Black Hawk tore through crusted ice and buried itself in snowpack, slewing sideways before grinding to a halt. Steam hissed. Metal groaned like something alive.
Then—silence. Just the ticking of cooling engines.
Ghost coughed once, shook off blood from his brow, and rolled onto all fours. His ears rang, eyes refusing to focus. But he moved—muscle memory cut through the fog.
Soap crawled from the wreckage, Morgan slung over his shoulder, limp and leaking red down his side.
"He's breathing," Soap said, teeth clenched. "But barely."
Ghost scanned the treeline. Cold wind whistled through stripped branches, but he felt it—something moved beyond the trees. Not animals. Not rescue.
Killers.
"Fuel's leaking," he muttered, grabbing his rifle from the snow. "This thing's a torch waiting to happen."
Then: motion in the woods—too coordinated. Shadows flickered behind tree trunks. White smudges with VSS rifles drawn low. Suppressed, deliberate, fanned wide.
"They're here," Ghost said flatly. "Spectre sent the cleanup crew."
Soap lowered Morgan behind the wreck, unclipping his sidearm. "Then we don't stay long."
Ghost's eyes locked on a shattered piece of rotor jutting from the snow. He picked it up, tested the balance. Crude. Heavy. Sharp enough.
He moved toward the trees—death in silence.
Behind him, the snow began to melt from spilled fuel catching slow flame.
---
Snow soaked the seams of Ghost's gloves as he pressed deeper into the tree line, grip tight on the jagged rotor blade. Ahead, two Spectre shooters moved slow, confident—shoulders loose, rifles tucked low. Ghost slipped behind them like a shadow with weight.
One exhaled.
The blade punched clean through the first man's neck—no scream, just a wet choke and a twitch. Ghost caught the body before it hit the snow. The second turned—too slow. Ghost jammed the edge into his gut, twisted, then shoved him into the underbrush.
Two bodies down. Two radios acquired.
He crouched, yanked the comms from the corpse's throat rig, and jammed the earpiece into his own. Static. Then—
"Team Delta, confirm status."
Ghost said nothing. Just breathed, low and shallow.
From the wreck, a low clank—metal on metal. He turned and sprinted back.
Soap knelt beside the ruined bird, hands slick with grease and battery acid. Wires fed into a half-stripped flare canister, mounted to a claymore bracket.
"Improvised party favor," Soap muttered. "You light 'em up, I cover extraction."
Morgan still lay where they left him—barely warm, half-buried in ash-colored snow. Ghost watched his breath curl once, twice… then not at all.
Crack.
A single suppressed shot lanced through the air. Morgan's skull jerked, red mist flashing against white.
"Sniper, north treeline!" Ghost barked, diving.
Soap dragged the pack close. "We run or we freeze."
"Neither," Ghost snapped, yanking the dead pilot's sidearm. "We vanish."
He pointed toward the frozen creek running parallel to the crash site. Ice thin. Moving water beneath.
"You serious?"
"Spectre's counting bodies. Let's make 'em miscount."
They hit the river's edge fast. Ice spiderwebbed beneath their boots as they dropped flat.
"Now," Ghost hissed.
They punched through together—cold crushed them like a fist. Water filled their ears, their lungs seizing. Current tore at their packs. Ghost forced his limbs to move, to kick, to surface—
They clawed out downstream, shivering and half-blind. Their rifles gone. Teeth rattling.
Behind them, fire bloomed—orange and black against the trees. The claymore went up.
Then the voice came—calm, quiet, and right in Ghost's ear.
"You survive the crash. You survive the cold. But not this," Spectre said. "Every exit is sealed. Every step is mine."
Ghost ripped the earpiece out and crushed it under his fist.
He didn't speak. Just nodded once to Soap, then started moving uphill—toward the dish that loomed like a tombstone in the snow.
---
Soap's boots crunched over frozen cabling, half-swallowed by snow and moss. The line snaked through the treeline like a buried vein, ending at the base of a rust-scarred comms dish. The thing loomed overhead—crooked, skeletal—its metal ribs chewed by time and cold.
Ghost knelt beside a panel buried under frost, fingers brushing away ice until he found the latch. It gave with a metallic groan. Beneath: a service shaft, sloped and narrow, choked with dust and old stink. Soviet infrastructure—rotten insulation, rusted brackets, a grave for secrets.
"No guards?" Soap muttered.
"That is the trap," Ghost said. He dropped in first.
They moved single-file, hunched. Pipes groaned in the walls. Somewhere deeper, water dripped in steady rhythm—too steady. Engineered.
The shaft spit them into a corridor lit by flickering sodium bulbs. Graffiti peeled off the walls. Cyrillic warnings tagged with radiation markers.
Soap's breath steamed. "What the hell is this place?"
"Dead project," Ghost muttered. "MIRAGE. Signal warfare. Thought it was mothballed."
Floor tiles clicked under their boots—then a hiss. Ghost shoved Soap sideways just as the ground vented a burst of noxious gas. He dropped low, switched to mask. Soap coughed, pulled his filter on late.
"Trap lines," Ghost said, scanning the overheads. "Motion-synced. He's bleeding us by inches."
They pressed on, stepping carefully now. Overhead, a rusted tangle of wiring sparked—burnt insulation peeled back like skin. Someone had rewired the entire grid, layered it with booby traps and failsafes.
A flicker caught Ghost's eye—light reflecting off pressure plates embedded beneath chipped linoleum.
He stopped. Held up a fist.
Soap froze.
Ghost pointed to the far wall—wires fed into a junction box patched with duct tape and desperation. Next to it, a scratched-up tablet mounted crudely into the concrete. It displayed nothing but a countdown—paused. Waiting for motion.
Soap exhaled slowly. "Jesus."
"This isn't a bunker," he said, scanning the corners, "it's a maze."
Soap nodded once, eyes sweeping the hallway behind them. "Made for rats."
Ghost's tone flattened. "And we're bait."
---
They turned a corner—narrow hall, low ceiling, red emergency lights casting long, stuttering shadows.
Then came the hum.
Not mechanical. Electrical. Intentional.
The hallway ahead bloomed with projected light. Faint at first, then sharp and deliberate. A projector mounted in a makeshift housing sputtered to life above the exit sign—casting grainy footage across the walls.
Soap froze. "The hell is this?"
The walls weren't just walls anymore. Dozens of pinned files, laminated pages, stills from surveillance footage—all of it about Ghost.
Classified dossiers. Field reports. CIA briefings—some with his callsign, others with a name redacted so cleanly the black lines felt like accusations.
One image stood out: a boy on a swing. Face blurred. Another showed a woman's silhouette in a kitchen window. Same blur. Same distance. As if taken through a scope.
Ghost stared. Didn't speak.
Soap turned toward him but said nothing. He didn't have to.
Then the audio clicked on—Spectre's voice low, unhurried, like he was sipping coffee somewhere close.
> "You were promoted. I was erased."
Footage flickered—Mosul, 2017. Grainy bodycam. A four-man stack breaching a mudbrick compound. Ghost recognized it. He'd been there. But this wasn't his perspective.
> "While you made rank, I buried my team."
The angle cut again—thermal now. Ghost breaching a doorway. An IED flashes in slow frame, then a quick fade to a hallway soaked in dust and blood. Spectre's breath caught on audio. He'd been there too.
Ghost clenched his jaw.
"Footage from the op," Soap said, quietly. "Angles we never had."
"I wasn't the only one watching," Ghost replied, voice gravel.
Then a wall-mounted monitor snapped on beside the projector—footage of Ghost walking through the Mosul site post-op. Helmet off. Dirt streaked across his face. He hadn't even known a camera was rolling.
Spectre's voice returned—closer now, almost amused.
> "You thought it was just you left standing. But someone crawled out of that fire. You just never turned around."
The lights cut.
Silence.
Soap's rifle scanned the shadows, fingers twitching near the trigger guard.
Ghost stared at the blank wall a second longer, then stepped forward, tore the photos down one by one, crumpling them underfoot.
"Keep moving," he said, low. "He wants hesitation. Not today."
---
The steel blast door stood like a coffin lid—industrial bolts, faded stencils, a keypad flickering with half-dead backlight.
Above it, someone—no, Spectre—had scrawled in paint stripped from warning signs: "OPEN IF YOU BELIEVE YOU DESERVE TO LEAVE."
Soap muttered behind Ghost, voice dry. "He's not subtle."
Ghost didn't answer. He stepped forward, crouched beside the panel—not to touch it, but to study the wall.
Paint bubbled near the base. Flaked gray curled back like scabbed skin. Beneath it—symmetry.
Ghost scraped it with his knife. Lines emerged. Rectangular. Plastic. Wires folded into the concrete.
"Charges," he said flatly.
Soap exhaled. "So it's not a door. It's a bloody mousetrap."
"Legacy kill," Ghost said, eyes locked on the plastic explosive laced into the frame. "He wants us to believe we've won. That we've earned our way out. Push the button, collect a martyrdom."
He pulled a screwdriver from his belt, started tracing the power route from the keypad. No alarm. No decoy trip. Just a dead man's switch waiting to be dignified.
Soap backed up a step. "You can disarm it?"
"No need."
Ghost shifted toward the wall to the right—noting air distortion along a vent grate. He tapped the concrete. Hollow. Not an exit, but something close.
He jammed the screwdriver into the panel seam and pried it back.
The vent peeled open—metal teeth bent in, revealing a crawlspace behind. Narrow. Crude. Barely a tunnel.
Soap knelt beside him, eyeing the passage. "This feels like another setup."
"Doesn't matter," Ghost said. "This door's a sermon. That tunnel's a test."
He slung his rifle, ducked in first—elbows scraping rust, breath catching on the scent of dust and oil.
Soap followed, muttering, "Christ, I hate small spaces."
Behind them, the keypad screen pulsed one last time.
DESERVE.
DESERVE.
DESERVE.
---
The tunnel spat them into a darkened chamber—low ceiling, reek of cordite and cold steel. Red emergency bulbs pulsed overhead like arterial flashers.
Ghost stood first. His boots scraped concrete, then stilled. His breath caught—not from exertion. Recognition.
Steel catwalks. Angled mirrors. Kill-lanes. He'd trained here before—or somewhere just like it. Soap said it first.
"This is Range Six."
But it wasn't. Not really.
On the walls: NATO flags spray-painted over with black handprints. On the floor: chalk lines traced out a CQB grid. Training rounds littered the corners—except these weren't dummies. Real shell casings. Recent burns.
Ghost took three steps and froze.
The first mannequin waited behind a breach door—body armor. Mask. Labeled in Cyrillic. Head turned just slightly.
Soap circled it. "Griggs."
Next one: Gaz. Kneeling behind cover. Plastic rifle pointed right at the hallway.
They kept walking.
Then they saw her.
Roze. Staged mid-stride, posed like she was shouting a breach command. Shotgun duct-taped to her hands. Eyes gouged out with wire.
Soap's voice dropped. "What the hell is this?"
Ghost's jaw clenched. He didn't answer.
Motion sensor tripped. Above them, a speaker crackled. Then hissed. Then came the voice.
"Welcome home."
The walls lit up with IR tripwires. Crossed red lines. Dozens of them.
Ghost shifted forward—then stopped. A mannequin ahead—shorter, lighter frame. Civilian clothes. Paper mask taped to the face.
Child's mask. Cheap, from a market stall in Mosul.
He stared at it too long.
Voice again. This time quieter. Closer. Inside the walls.
"What would your brother think?"
Soap swore, brought his rifle up. Ghost didn't move.
He stepped forward, slow, and ripped the speaker off the wall with one hand. Threw it. Then planted thermite on the nearby server rack. Thumbed the ignition.
"Don't give him the show," he muttered.
Fire bloomed. Data burned.
---
Soap's fingers danced over the server's cracked interface, extracting what data hadn't already been torched by thermite or time. Lines of code scrolled fast—too fast to read, but Ghost caught fragments: MIRAGE, D-CLASS REDACT, ASSET FAILURE: RILEY/SIX. The file cracked open like a coffin lid.
"Got it," Soap muttered. He yanked the portable drive free, shoved it into his tac harness.
Laswell's voice cut through the white noise in their comms—thin, but alive. "That drive holds everything. Spectre's creed. His motive. That's the linchpin. Get out."
No goodbyes. Just the mission.
Then came the breach.
A hiss of air, followed by the whisper of boots on steel. No shouting. No flashbangs. Spectre's men came in like knives—low, fast, and wordless.
Ghost shoved Soap hard toward the side hallway. "Go!"
First contact hit sharp—subsonic round cracked past Ghost's shoulder, punched a hole in a rusted conduit. The second one shattered a light fixture inches from Soap's head. Sparks rained.
One of Spectre's hunters stepped from the shadows, blade already drawn. Ghost met him at full speed—knee to gut, forearm to throat, weapon stolen mid-motion. No time to finish the body. More coming.
Soap fired twice behind them—tight shots, controlled. Two figures dropped, one still twitching.
They turned a corner and nearly slammed into a bulkhead.
"Dead end?" Soap barked.
Ghost scanned fast. Red panel. Emergency override.
"Back up."
He yanked the lever. A metallic scream echoed through the corridor. Valves burst open above—white vapor exploded down like a storm. Pressurized fire suppressant flooded the hallway—blinding, choking.
The sound of boots stopped. Confused voices behind the veil.
Ghost didn't wait. He dragged Soap through the maintenance hatch halfway down the wall. They slammed it shut behind them, bolted it.
Gasping, coated in frost and sweat, Soap pulled the drive from his harness, checked the status light. Still green.
"You sure this is the linchpin?"
Ghost didn't answer.
He just looked back through the slit in the hatch—where the corridor vanished into white—and whispered to himself:
"He wants us running."
Then they ran.
---
The access hatch groaned behind them as Ghost kicked it open. Cold slammed into his lungs like a punch. Soap stumbled out first, boots crunching over snowpack. Behind them, the facility hissed and cracked—pipes venting gas, alarms keening like wounded animals.
They had seconds.
Snow blurred the world beyond. A whiteout curtain. No bearings. No cover.
Ghost spotted the high ridge first. A silhouette waited there, half-obscured by drifting snow—Spectre. Still. Watching. No rifle. No visible comms. Just standing like he'd already won.
Soap hissed, "Tell me that's not—"
"It is," Ghost said, rifle halfway up before freezing.
Spectre didn't move.
"You carry dead men's orders," his voice carried unnaturally clear, amplified through the wind. "You buried the truth. Now I bury you."
Then his hand lifted—one motion, deliberate. Thumb tapped a detonator.
The ridge convulsed.
The listening station erupted behind them—shockwave punched the air from Ghost's chest. Fire bloomed through the snow as the ground cracked beneath their feet. Sections of cliff sheared off like rotten teeth. The maze collapsed in on itself, swallowed by its own secrets.
"Run!" Ghost barked.
Snow turned to sludge under their boots. A cascade of ice thundered down from above. Metal groaned behind them—remnants of catwalks and bulkheads torn apart mid-collapse.
A roar built beneath the ground—not just explosives. Secondary detonations. Thermobarics. He'd wired the whole damn mountain.
They cleared the treeline seconds before a fireball chased them out like breath from a dragon's throat.
Soap dove, shoulder-first into a drift, clutching the drive to his chest.
Ghost spun as he hit the ground, rifle aimed upslope. But Spectre was already gone.
Smoke and snow spiraled into the air. No sign of a body. No tracks. Just scorched earth where the shadow had stood.
Ghost didn't lower his weapon.
He didn't speak.
He just watched the mountain burn, chest rising slow, eyes locked on the place Spectre vanished.
The game wasn't over.
It had just changed.
---
The smoke curled black against the dawn-stained clouds as the VTOL punched through turbulence, turbines howling against the alpine wind. Ghost and Soap crouched in the snow, backs to the dying ridge. Ash clung to their shoulders, melted into the fabric.
Ghost keyed his beacon. One flare left.
Soap muttered behind gritted teeth, "You think he's dead?"
Ghost didn't answer. He watched the mountain shift—rock peeled away, snow gave up its weight, and what remained of the listening post sagged like a dying lung.
From above, rotor noise cut in sharp. The VTOL dropped fast, banking hard against the cliffline, kicking up powder and debris. Side hatch already open. Laswell's voice bled through comms, ragged: "You have thirty seconds. Then we burn the valley."
They ran.
Ghost grabbed Soap's collar and shoved him up first. Soap tossed the drive inside, hand scrabbling for a grip as the VTOL's landing gear lifted from the slope. Ghost climbed in last, boots dragging as the bird peeled skyward.
Below—the ridge let go.
The entire mountainside imploded. Flame chased them, one last roar of fury from a ghost's war. The avalanche swallowed the valley. White turned to black.
Inside the cabin, Soap collapsed against the bulkhead. He held the drive like it might still bleed.
"Tell me we got something real," he said.
Ghost didn't reply. He was watching the smoke trail again. Eyes unreadable. Jaw locked tight.
Laswell's voice returned, flat but clipped: "We recovered a journal from a dead courier. Matches Spectre's seal. Cross-referenced to Project MIRAGE."
Ghost's head turned slowly.
"It's not about revenge anymore," she continued. "It's doctrine."
Soap looked up. "What the hell does that mean?"
Ghost didn't blink. "Means we're not hunting a man anymore."
He tapped the drive, then pointed to the journal Laswell mentioned.
"We're hunting his belief."
The VTOL punched through the clouds. Behind them, the mountain burned until nothing moved.
---
[This is extra chapter]