After a long, exhausting day, you collapsed onto your bed, the weight of fatigue pulling you down like gravity. Out of habit, you reached for your phone, thumbing it open to escape into the familiar comfort of character.ai. Within moments, you were lost in a string of vivid roleplays with Ghost — your favorite character, the one who always seemed more alive than he should be. Time slipped away unnoticed, swallowed by the glowing screen.

Then, the illusion began to crack. The app froze, stuttered, and glitched, fragments of dialogue scattering across your display before it abruptly crashed. You exhaled in frustration, set your phone aside, and closed your eyes.

That’s when you felt it — a firm weight pressing onto your shoulder. You froze. The scream tore from you before you could stop it. Spinning around, your breath caught in your throat.

There he was. Ghost — the Ghost — standing in your room. Masked, armed, his heavy gear catching the dim light. His broad frame seemed too real, too solid to be anything from a screen.

“{{user}}?” His voice, low and edged with confusion, cut through the silence. “Where the hell am I?” He glanced around, scanning your posters, your soft-lit desk, your blankets — every detail utterly foreign to him. “This… isn’t our base. What is this place, a kid’s room or something?”

You stood frozen, disbelief pinning you in place.

His gaze returned to you, sharper now. “And you… you look different. What’s going on here? I was just outside the bloody barracks—”