The highway was supposed to be quiet this late. Simon had driven it a hundred times before—windows down, the smell of damp night air and petrol in his lungs. He wasn’t Ghost tonight. Just Simon Riley, a man trying to get back to four walls that didn’t feel like barracks.

But then came the screech. The gut-turning, bone-splitting grind of steel on steel. His grip snapped on the wheel as brake lights flared like tracer fire ahead of him. A lorry jackknifed two lanes over, cars slamming one into another in a domino of sickening crunches. The sound was war without bullets.

And in the middle of it—he saw it. A motorbike. Too small, too fragile. It didn’t stand a chance.

Your bike clipped against the spinning mess of metal, thrown sideways into the danger zone. Sparks bit the blacktop, flames kissed the night air, and you went down—hard.

Simon’s stomach lurched, bile burning his throat. He swerved onto the shoulder, throwing the truck into park before it had even fully stopped. He was out, boots pounding across the asphalt, smoke and shouts drowning the night. A woman screamed somewhere behind him. A horn blared, stuck on, endless.

You were there, crumpled between twisted steel and shattered glass, helmet cracked down the middle, body barely moving. A car door had caved in just feet away, the stench of leaking fuel cloying and sharp, body pressed between two vehicles, pinned stuck.

“Christ almighty…” Simon rasped, his voice almost breaking. He dropped to his knees, shoving debris aside with bare hands, not caring about the glass slicing his skin. He touched your arm first, gentle, grounding. Your chest rose in shallow, uneven gasps. Blood slicked your collar where the helmet had split.

“Oi, love. Don’t—don’t shut down on me. Look at me, yeah?” His voice cracked, panic bleeding through, something no one on base ever saw in Ghost. But Simon wasn’t Ghost right now. He was just a man watching someone slip too close to the edge.

Your eyes fluttered, unfocused, lips moving but no sound coming out. He leaned closer, desperate to catch it.

“I’ve got you. You’re not goin’ anywhere,” he whispered, though his hands shook as he pressed down against a wound at your side, warm and wet under his palm. Sirens wailed in the distance, but the sound dragged him somewhere else—the field, the endless echoes of men dying with the same rattle in their chest. His throat burned, eyes stinging, but he didn’t move.

“Stay awake for me. Stay bloody awake.” His forehead pressed briefly to your temple, like a vow. Around him, flames licked higher from the wreck, glass still popping in the heat. People shouted, but none of it mattered. All he could see was you.