The first time you crossed Erik Sundqvist, he was a name on a dossier — three lines of intel, one blurred surveillance photo, and an order stamped at the bottom in red ink:
“Detain. Interrogate. Neutralize if necessary.”
Then, he was on his knees in a half-lit warehouse in Oslo — hands bound, gun jammed against the back of his skull.
Your gun.
The orders were clear. Extraction unit. Suspected insurgent. Bring him in, dead or alive.
You’d glanced down at the man, blood on his mouth, eyes cold as the Arctic and thought. Not my problem.
It was supposed to be routine: Oslo warehouse, confirmed target, suspected insurgent with ties to the black market. Command wanted a body or a name. You delivered both.
Except the intel had been bad. Worse — it had been a setup. The kind designed to bury people like him…and chew up soldiers like you for the fallout.
He didn’t beg or speak. Just looked up and you remember this clearer than anything with a stare as sharp as a drawn blade.
You brought him in. Didn’t matter. They buried him anyway, ghost file, black site, never heard from again.
Or so you thought.
2 years later.
The city’s bones burn around you — London, or what’s left of it, bathed in choking smoke and dead sirens. The infection hit harder here. Faster. There’s nothing left but steel, ash.
The sky over the Welsh coast is a steel blade, cutting low over broken trees and gutted buildings. Your boots slip on gravel as you shift behind a scorched-out truck frame, rifle pressed tight against your shoulder. The air smells like rust and smoke. And bodies.
You hit the alley wall hard, heart in your throat, adrenaline spitting fire through your veins. Three infected on your six. Too fast. Too close.
You don’t look back when the gunshot cracks.
It’s clean — a single bullet, sharp and precise. The runner drops mid-stride. Another shot. Another body hits the ground. You whirl in time to catch the last one staggering, its eyes blown wide, blood blooming like rotten ink across concrete.
You turn, breath heaving. A man in dark combat gear, crouched low, rifle balanced against his knee. The faintest outline of a scar running jagged beneath his eye, just like the old file photo.
Your heart hits your ribs. "Erik".
He’s supposed to be dead.
Or at least far enough gone that this — seeing him in the open, gun at the ready, breathing the same damned air — should be impossible.
The same stare. Like frost on a knife’s edge.
His weapon lifts, not in warning but with the careful calculation of someone deciding if this is a fight worth having.
"You’re a long way from the chain of command."
He calls, voice edged like gravel. His eyes flick past you, once — scanning the rooftops, the alleys, the bodies cooling in the mud.
“And no backup.”
You tighten your grip on your rifle. The last time you saw him, you had him at gunpoint. Now? You’re the one staring down a loaded barrel, not aimed, but close enough.
Erik’s mouth tilts. Not a smile. A calculation.
"Or did you come back to finish the job?"
You open your mouth, to thank him, maybe, to curse him — but his hand comes up, silencing you before you can speak.
He tilts his head toward the street, sharp, economical.
“Company.”
You hear it then. You don’t ask how he knows.
Because Erik Sundqvist has always known what’s coming — long before you do.
Erik’s already moving, rolling behind cover, rifle up, barking a low, sharp order:
“Move. Now."
He’s moving before you can think, you fall into step beside him. Your shoulders brush in the tight alley.
“This field’s about to go hot. You want to live, you stay on me.”
He murmurs, faint dry humor tucked into the gravel of his voice.
“Funny how history likes to twist the knife.”
And just like that—You’re back on the field. With the man you once marched to his execution.
Two ghosts with unfinished business and a whole warzone ahead.