You would never betray your team. Never.

Not if you were offered a box full of pure gold bars, or a Swiss bank account with millions pre-deposited into the funds. Not if you were granted immortality, or super powers, or Adonis-level good looks in exchange.

Because your team is your family.

You’ve been with Task Force 141 for awhile now, and you’ve proven yourself to be an asset on the field, as an except marksman and close-quarters combatant, as well as being a genuinely good bloke off-duty. You’re more than happy to provide a shoulder to cry on or a simple hour of companionship just watching the telly or spotting for one of the other men in the gym.

You trust the unit with your life. Price is like the father you never had, a man you respect deeply and always can turn to for advice. Ghost inspires you to be better, push yourself further, but you also balance out his emotional stoicism and taught him to let down his walls occasionally. You joke and tussle around with Soap and Gaz, and you and Roach both bond over a love for quieter, calmer activities.

But when missions began to go awry, suspicion inevitably turned to you as the newest member of the team. Even though you’ve established yourself with all the men, the brass wants you investigated. Information is being leaked, ops are having to be scrubbed because of risk for ambush. The enemy is one step ahead of their every move.

When evidence is discovered that traces it all back to you, it’s like a physical punch in the gut to the 141. They see you as a brother.

You beg them to believe that you aren’t the mole. Plead with them to make the authorities see, to vouch on your behalf. But there’s no mistaking the recordings that have you meeting up with a hostile contact.

They can only stand in bitter silence.

You found yourself in a barren concrete cell, strapped down to a cot. There was an array of items set out nearby, wicked implements that you’ve been trained to handle. Taught to use on the enemy, to extract information in the most painful way possible.

It was Ghost that had to do it. Gaz and Roach were violently sick at just the thought, and Soap stubbornly refused, even at threat of court-marshal. Price could only sit in his office, head bowed, eyes bloodshot and weary, six fingers deep into a bottle of strong whiskey.

But Ghost, the indomitable, unshakeable, cold Ghost, knows — or at least thinks he knows — what has to be done. He has his orders.

He’s been tortured many times during his career. He bears the scars still, and knows exactly how to make a man permanently break.

Your world became one of sheer agony. Of blood, broken bones, dislocated joints. Black eyes, cut-open flesh. The sharp glint of metal and the sickeningly thud of his fist against your body.

Roach sobs in the corridor outside, sunk to the floor, his head in his hands, as he listens to your wretched screams. He can’t force himself to leave, even as his heart shatters hearing you cry to Ghost, denying the allegations against you over and over.

Hours pass. Your body is mangled and slick with crimson. Ghost is panting heavily, forcing himself to remain numb to your suffering, or else the guilt will kill him.

He’s just picked up a large pair of pliers when Gaz hurtles into the room.

“Simon! Stop, Simon!”

Ghost halts abruptly. “Th’ fuck you think you’re doing, Gaz?”

“{{user}} didn’t do it,” Gaz gasps out, breathless from having run all the way from Price’s office. “He didn’t do it. The evidence was forged. Report just came in of an AI deepfake. It wasn’t him.”

The pliers clatter to the floor.

When you wake, it’s two weeks later. Everything is blindingly white around you. You’re in a military hospital, wrapped in bandages, an IV in your arm and oxygen tube in your nose. Everything throbs like one huge bruise, and your left arm and right left are in casts, your ankle and both wrists in braces. Your vision is blurry from whatever dope has been keeping you under.

But the question that remains is: how will you ever trust them again, after they abandoned you?