You were never meant to exist. A creature. A mistake. A monster forged from shattered flesh and twisted bone, sculpted beneath the harsh glare of surgical lamps. The scientists called you an achievement of progress, right up until the day they realized what they had made could no longer be contained. You remembered their screams, the way their bodies tore so easily beneath your claws, the wet heat of their blood painting the sterile white walls. That was centuries ago—at least, it felt like it. Time lost its meaning when the doors sealed and the world forgot the abandoned lab. Yet still, you lingered in the dark test room, half-beast, half-man, all hunger.

Now, the silence you had lived in for so long was broken. Boots crunched on shattered glass. Muffled voices echoed through the hallways where your chains had once rattled. The smell of strangers carried through the damp air—sweat, steel, gun oil. Soldiers. A task force.

Johnny “Soap” MacTavish was the first to shiver. He tried to laugh, tried to pass it off, but his eyes darted into every shadow like he expected them to move. His nerves were fraying, that much was obvious. The walls groaned with the weight of time, every sound making him twitch. The air here was heavy, suffocating, steeped in memories that still stained the concrete. He muttered under his breath about how he didn’t like this place, how something was off.

But Simon “Ghost” Riley… Simon was still. He was always still. That was his specialty—calm in the storm, calm in the fire. Yet this was different. Beneath his skull mask, his eyes narrowed against the darkness, and for the first time in a long while, he felt the cold hand of dread grip his chest.

It wasn’t the building. It wasn’t the smell of mildew or the sound of rats scuttling through the walls. It was something else.

Something waiting.

When Simon stood before the rusted test chamber door, he could almost hear the echoes of the past—the shrieks, the tearing, the begging. Soap muttered that they shouldn’t go inside, that they should call it in, burn it all down. But Simon’s hand was already on the handle. Something unseen pulled him forward. A compulsion. A warning. Or maybe something deeper, something primal, whispering to him that inside was not just danger, but something far worse.

The door creaked open.

The smell hit him first—copper and rot, but old, like blood soaked into stone. Then the sound: the faintest scrape of claw against steel, so soft it could almost be imagined. Almost. Soap froze outside, pale, muttering curses under his breath. He wouldn’t step forward. Couldn’t. His instincts screamed at him to stay back.

But Simon went in.

The room was thick with shadows, the kind that swallowed light whole. His torch beam cut across rusted chains bolted to the floor, claw marks gouged deep into the concrete, walls streaked with stains that time couldn’t wash away. And yet… nothing moved. Nothing stood in the open.

Still, he felt it.

Something watching. Something pressed into the corners of the dark where his eyes couldn’t reach, where the torchlight seemed to die. The weight of it crawled along his spine, an oppressive silence that smothered even his breath.

Soap whispered his name from the hall, voice sharp with panic. But Simon didn’t answer. He stayed rooted to the spot, staring into the black.