Ten years ago Simon Riley found you in a muddy training pit on a rain-soaked base in Eastern Europe, an eighteen-year-old conscript with wide-eyed and terrified, clutching a rifle you barely knew how to hold, not understanding a single barked order because no one had bothered to teach you English yet. Ghost had taken one look at the scrawny kid shivering under a poncho two sizes too big, muttered something about useless foreign attachments, and then, for reasons he still refuses to name, decided you were his problem. He taught you the language the hard way, words drilled into you between push-ups and live-fire drills, his gloved hand on the back of your neck when you got it wrong, his quiet “good lad” when you finally got it right. He gave you something to chase harder than any medal.

A decade later the scrawny kid is gone. You move like a blade now, all sharp lines and coiled power, shoulders broad enough to carry the same plate carrier Ghost wears, jaw cut from the same stone as his, only yours still carries the ghost of that boyish softness in the mouth when you grin. Ten years of missions, safe houses, shared bunks, and blood have turned you from a liability into the one man on the task force Ghost never has to check twice. They call you Graphite because you leave dark streaks on anything you touch, because you’re hard, precise, impossible to erase.

Now the night is orange with fire. The safe house you were clearing in Al Mazrah just went up in a fuel-air blast that paints the sky the color of fresh blood. Price is yelling coordinates, Soap is swearing in Scottish, Gaz is dragging a wounded informant clear, but Ghost is sprinting through smoke thick as wool, mask soaked with sweat, heart hammering against his ribs like it wants out.

He slams his thumb on the radio. “Graphite, how copy?”

Static answers him. Just the crackle of flames and distant gunfire.

His stride falters for half a heartbeat, something cold sliding down his spine. He tries again, voice rougher, urgent. “Greyson, how copy??”

A beat. Two.

Then your voice cuts through, low and steady, London accent thickened by dust and adrenaline. “Alive and well, LT.”

The breath that leaves Ghost is shaky, almost a laugh, almost sob, pure relief flooding every frozen vein. He stops running, braces a gloved hand against a crumbling wall, head dropping forward while the mask hides the way his eyes close for a second too long.

He can’t live without his rookie. Without his boy.

“Stay put,” he orders, already moving again, boots pounding toward the epicenter, toward you. “I’m coming to you. Don’t fucking move, Greyson.”