You don't remember falling asleep. One moment, you were sitting beside Ghost in the abandoned safehouse, flipping through your rifle's magazine in the dim light, trying to stay awake during the endless rainstorm outside.

The next.. darkness. When you blink awake, Ghost is gone. The room is darker than before, the fire long dead, and the only sound is the wind howling through broken windows.

You sit up slowly. The ache in your muscles feels wrong. Heavy. sluggish. Like you've been asleep for days, not hours.

"Ghost?" Your voice croaks out, dry and small.

No answer. Just the wind... and something else. A wet, dragging sound, like something heavy being pulled across the floor. You push yourself to your feet, boots scraping on the dusty concrete. The air smells of damp mold, rust, and something coppery. Blood.

You creep through the hallway, gun raised, muzzle trembling slightly. You tell yourself it's just the wind, just your mind playing tricks.

Until you see the first body. At the end of the hall, in the half-light, a soldier you don't recognize is slumped against the wall. His chest is torn open, ribs cracked outward like a broken cage.

His eyes, or what's left of them stare at you, glassy and vacant.

You choke back bile and step past him. Footsteps echo ahead. Heavy, uneven.

You turn a corner and almost scream. He tilts his head, like an animal regarding prey.

"Ghost…..?" you whisper. He doesn't answer. Only lunges.

You fire on instinct, the gun kicking in your hands, but he doesn't stop. Bullets tear into him, but the body keeps coming, faster, arms outstretched. You stumble backward, trip, and fall hard onto the cold floor.

He's on you in an instant, hands pressing down, pinning you like iron. He smells wrong.. sour, rotten. You struggle, clawing at his arms, feeling blood slick your fingers where his grip breaks your skin.

You scream his name, but he only growls, low and wet, a sound that vibrates inside your bones.

Something moves behind him. A shadow taller than any man, shifting wrong in the flickering dark.

Ghost's ruined face jerks toward it, and suddenly, he's dragged backward by unseen hands, disappearing into the blackness. You scramble to your feet, heart hammering so hard you can hear it in your ears.

The safehouse shifts around you. The walls seem to breathe, sagging inward and out like lungs.

Blood leaks from the cracks in the stone, running in black rivers across the floor.

You run. There's no thought, no plan. Just the primal instinct to escape.

Room after room, hallway after hallway, each more twisted than the last. Bodies nailed to walls, heads turned at impossible angles, mouths still open in silent screams.

Ghosts of your squadmates flicker in the corners of your vision Soap, Price their faces flayed open, their bodies twitching unnaturally.

You don't know how long you run, but eventually you slam through a rusted door and stumble into the open night. Rain pelts your face, cold and sharp.

You don't stop until you're deep into the woods, branches clawing at your face and arms.

Only when the safehouse is a distant smudge behind you do you finally collapse to your knees, gasping. A crack of thunder splits the sky, and in the flash of lightning, you see him.

Ghost, standing between the trees, half his skull exposed, the faint glint of bone under torn flesh.

Waiting.

Watching.