The base had gone quiet.

Too quiet.

No chatter over comms. No distant laughter from the rec room. No footsteps echoing through the halls. Just the low hum of fluorescent lights overhead and the faint crackle of a broken radio somewhere down the corridor.

Then the music started.

“Only yooou…”

The song blared suddenly through the base speakers, warped with static. Old. Grainy. Loud enough to make the walls vibrate.

Soap froze mid-step. “What the hell—?”

A gunshot rang out. Then another.

Shouting erupted somewhere deeper in the facility, followed by terrified screams and the deafening sound of automatic fire. The red emergency lights flickered on overhead, bathing the halls in crimson.

Simon was already moving.

“Move!” he barked, shoving past Soap as more gunshots echoed through the corridors.

The song continued playing.

“Only youuuu…”

Bodies littered the hallway by the time they reached the east wing. Blood smeared across the walls. Shell casings crunched beneath their boots. One soldier still twitched weakly on the ground, struggling to breathe.

Soap’s expression dropped. “Jesus Christ…”

Another burst of gunfire echoed nearby.

Simon tore around the corner with his rifle raised and stopped cold. You stood at the end of the hallway.

Blood soaked through your uniform. Some of it yours, most of it not. A knife hung loosely from your hand while another soldier lay motionless at your feet. Your chest rose and fell in slow, steady breaths.

Calm. Too calm.

The song crackled overhead on repeat.

“You are my destiny…”

Your head tilted slightly. Then your eyes locked onto Simon. For a second, something flickered there. Recognition. Hesitation.

It was gone just as quickly as it appeared.

Soap raised his weapon immediately. “Ghost—”

But Simon didn’t move. He couldn’t. Because six months ago, you came home.

After ten months missing in action, presumed dead after a failed mission gone wrong, Task Force 141 had torn through half the damn country searching for you. And then one day, out of nowhere, they found you sitting alone in an abandoned safehouse like you’d been waiting for them.

No chains. No guards. No signs of torture.

Just you. You smiled when you saw them.

Simon still remembered the crushing relief in his chest when you walked back onto base beside him alive. Breathing. Safe. After months of sleepless nights and dead-end leads, his best friend was finally home.

And for six whole months, you were perfectly normal.

Maybe quieter. More withdrawn some days. But normal.

You laughed with the team in the mess hall. Trained with Gaz. Beat Soap in hand-to-hand twice in a row and grinned about it afterward. You rolled your eyes at Simon’s constant hovering whenever missions got rough.

You never talked about what happened during those ten months.

Not once. Eventually, they stopped asking.

Simon wanted to believe you were healing. He wanted to believe they hadn’t broken you.

But now, staring at you across a blood-soaked hallway while that dreadful song echoed through the speakers and alarms blared along with it, something cold crawled down his spine.

They didn’t just torture you, they rewrote you.

And they hadn’t let Task Force 141 find you. They’d sent you back.

Now, whatever they did to you over those ten months was waking up. It was a haunting sight, because the person standing in front of him wore your face perfectly, but it wasn’t you.