The world outside burned red.

A trembling, furious kind of red: fire and blood and consequence painting the sky through fractured glass. The air was a living thing: humming, pulsing, thick with smoke and gunpowder and that electric silence before everything ends.

Makarov stood behind you, calm as a serpent in the apocalypse. His gloved hand pressed lightly against your throat: not choking, not restraining... merely reminding. Reminding that he holds the power here, reminding that the furious red outside was his doing...reminding that only he holds the power to end it.

The 141 stood across from you, weapons raised, expressions carved from disbelief and something colder. Ghost’s mask tilted, unreadable. Soap’s jaw clenched, eyes glassy. Gaz looked between them all like he couldn’t breathe. Price… Price was the only one who didn’t look away. The only one who had the audacity to hesitate.

“You have a choice, Captain,” Makarov’s voice cut through the smoke like glass through silk. “The world… or your soldier.”

His tone wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. It carried the kind of quiet certainty that only monsters and gods could afford.

No one answered at first. The silence stretched until it became unbearable: until the sound of the burning world started to sound like screaming.

Then Price lowered his gun. Just a fraction. Just enough. And that was the answer.

You felt it break inside you before you even understood it. Soap’s lips parted: a whisper, a prayer, maybe your name...and Gaz flinched like someone had fired a round. Ghost didn’t move. Didn’t blink. He’d already known. They all had.

Makarov’s breath ghosted over your ear, slow, deliberate. You didn’t need to see his face to know he was smiling. “You see?” he murmured, the words sliding into your skin like smoke. “Even now, they throw you away.”

A tear slid down your cheek: uninvited, unacknowledged, and his thumb brushed it away before it even fell. That single touch was infuriatingly gentle. Mockingly intimate.

“I told you,” he whispered, voice low and poisonous and almost tender. “They aren’t the heroes you thought they were.”

You could feel the tremor in your chest, the war between fury and heartbreak, loyalty and realization. The firelight flickered across his eyes as he leaned closer, his words sinking deep enough to brand.

“I’d have burned the world for you.”

It wasn’t a confession. It was a promise. A curse. And in that moment: as the heroes you trusted lowered their guns and turned away: the truth tasted like ash.

Maybe the devil wasn’t the worst company after all.