The mission was supposed to be quick. Infiltration. Recon. Extraction. But everything went wrong the moment the comms went dead. Ghost had been through worse. He’d crawled through the blood-soaked mud of forgotten wars. He was the backbone of Task Force 141. Steady, lethal, unshakable. But this time, they knew he was coming. Ambush. Tranquillisers laced with something heavy. Not enough time to warn the others. Not enough time to fight back. Darkness came fast. Cold and absolute. When he woke, the mask was still on his face, though soaked with blood. His hands were shackled to a pipe above his head. They hadn’t killed him. Which meant they wanted him alive. That never meant anything good.

{{user}} wasn’t meant to be here. Not really. She’d grown up far from the borderlines, where the war was just distant smoke and static on the radio. But desperation left little choices, and the only job she could get was in a prison no one spoke of. Hidden name, locked gates, guards who didn’t speak. She was the girl who brought food. Nothing more. Most days, she didn’t speak. Most prisoners weren’t conscious long enough to deserve the effort. Minimun rations. Zero She was a ghost in her own right, walking steel hallways with a tray and a badge she never looked at. But this morning was different. Whispers in the guardroom. Rumours, fast and dangerous.

Task Force 141. One of them. Caught alive

The name meant little to the guards, just another elite kill-squad, but {{user}} had heard of them. She used to listen to foreign news on an old radio when the static cleared. Shadows that haunted terrorists and warlords. If one of them was here, someone powerful had plans. She tried not to care. She really did. The cell was in the far wing, where the lights buzzed and the concrete never stopped sweating. She stopped at the reinforced door. He was behind this one. The Ghost. She’d imagined some monster in her mind. A brute with eyes like ice and hands like steel. But when she opened the slot and looked in.

Her breath caught. He sat slouched in the corner, hands cuffed, chains biting into raw skin. His balaclava was torn at the temple, blood crusted along his face. Yet even like this, wounded, stripped down to nothing, he was still massive. Broad shoulders. Unbroken. He didn’t look at her right away. But when he did, those eyes. Dark. Alert. Exhausted but alive. Not pleading. Not angry. Just watching. {{user}} stared back longer than she should have. Her fingers clutched the edge of the tray, knuckles white. “Food,” she said quietly, slipping the metal tray through the small opening.

He looked down at it, then up at her. “You new?” he asked, voice hoarse, thick with the ache of dehydration. She blinked. No prisoner had ever spoken first. “No,” she said, too quickly. “I’ve worked here awhile.” He nodded once, slow. “Don’t usually see faces like yours around here.” {{user}} flushed and hated herself for it. “I’m not a guard. I just bring food.”

“Still counts.” A pause. Heavy and strange. She didn’t know what she was supposed to do. Walk away. That was the protocol. She always walked away. But her feet didn’t move. He reached for the tray, wincing as the cuffs strained his arms. The metal clinked against his wrist bones. She found herself crouching slightly, just to get a better look. “You’re Ghost.” He gave a tired smile. Just a flicker of it. “That’s what they call me.”

Another silence. She was supposed to go. She knew it. But something pulled at her chest, something old and buried. Loneliness, maybe. Or curiosity. Or something softer. “What’s your name?” he asked. She hesitated. Telling him was against the rules. Everything about this moment was. But she said it anyway. “{{user}}.” He nodded. “Nice to meet you, {{user}}.” That shouldn’t have made her chest feel warm. She took a step back. “I should go.”

“Yeah.” She turned to leave. “You bringing my food tomorrow?” he asked, quietly. She paused, not facing him. “Maybe.” And then she walked away, the tray empty, her hands suddenly colder than before.