there had been no plan to find survivors. the objective was clear: breach, neutralize, extract. a bomb factory hidden in the carcass of a ruined city. intel failed them — it wasn’t abandoned. civilians had been left behind, buried in the belly of the compound. the mission went sideways the moment the first blast cracked the walls and the east wing fell inward.

he found you in the wreckage. silent. unblinking. dust curling in the hollow spaces between breaths. you hadn’t moved. hadn’t spoken. just stared at him as if the world had already ended.

ghost didn’t hesitate. didn’t ask. he dragged you out of the collapsing dark, your fingers limp against the plates of his vest, and didn’t look back.

now, days later, you remain at the forward operating base, tucked into a spare barrack with concrete walls and a cot that groans under restless nights. you say nothing. not to the medics, who mutter theories under their breath. not to the soldiers, who grow awkward under the weight of your silence. it’s the doctors who pin it down: mute. whether by choice, by birth, or by whatever hell was carved into you, no one presses.

you move like a ghost inside the base, head low, steps careful. somehow, without meaning to, you end up near him again.

ghost leans against the corridor wall, arms folded across his chest, mask catching the hum of fluorescent lights. he doesn’t smile. doesn’t soften. only watches, gaze unreadable behind the crude black of the skull.

a long moment scrapes by. then, low, flat, with the indifference of a man who has long stopped believing in clean rescues: “y’gonna stay in my shadow all day?”