Chapter Text
Eight blocks of C-4 do the trick.
Not his specialty. Never was, not even when he had a choice in the matter, when there was another option available to him. Didn’t take to it the way that some with a mind for demolitions did, couldn’t quite appreciate the chaos and the control could be found in a block of white plastic and a blasting cap and a target. Couldn’t put himself in the perspective to see the beauty in the aftermath, in the razed earth and the blaze.
Still, Ghost almost misses their weight when he passes them off to Gaz.
It takes a few minutes to set up the charges while he keeps watch, steeled against anything with enough of a death wish to come their way. Half a minute to retreat back down the hallway, to hunker down and put a safe amount of distance between them and the detonation site.
Ghost feels the first explosion reverberate through his ribcage, rippling up through his arms and into his molars. Grits them together until his jaw aches and holds his position next to Gaz as the second follows half a beat later.
On such a tight deadline, there’s not enough time to limit structural damage as much as they should. Facility’s not going to collapse in on their heads, but they’re on shakier ground than they were when this mission first started. More than enough of a distraction to give them an opening, though. An opportunity to strike when their targets are at their most vulnerable, entirely unaware of just how absolutely fucked they are.
Later, he'll be grateful that he's already been exposed to the amalgamation of scents that lingers before breaching this part of the facility.
Grateful that he at least got some warning, some taste of what was waiting for them.
Now?
Now, Ghost wants -
He wants it to-
He wants it to stop.
Further down the hall, one of the guards makes the fatal mistake of shifting just slightly out of the doorway they've claimed as a hiding place.
Fresh blood and a half-second of fleeting agony are almost enough to keep the suffering of strangers from suffusing into every molecule of Ghost's being.
Almost.
He doesn't give himself a chance to break pace with the rest of the team, devoting every last ounce of his attention to the rhythm of the violence, the bloodshed and the clean brutality. A distraction that he can lose himself in, to keep away from the urge to claw his own eyes out, to find the source of all the agony and put them rest in the only way he knows how, until the air goes quiet and they've cleared the hallway.
Ghost doesn't stop moving.
Doesn't give himself time to think about the other cells they pass, the ones they leave behind for Laswell to take care of.
The others keep pace as best as they can. They follow Plaskett’s directions, despite how it makes Ghost’s skin crawl to trust him.
Around the corner,
One of the cell doors, wide open, blood pooling out into the hallway.
Not-
Ghost takes a few halting steps forward.
Not-
A guard.
Dead, but not for very long. A few minutes, at most. Through the blood saturating the corpse’s throat, Ghost can see where tender, unprotected flesh's been torn into, ripped out. A bite to maim, to kill, to provide an opportunity for escape.
He keeps all of his attention on it, away from the gurney shoved into the far corner of the room, the restraints bolted to the ceiling.
Ghost's eyes sweep the floor, catching on footprints tracking blood out of the room. Further into the facility, away from the fighting.
There’s no question about what to do next.
He follows.
◊
The footprints don’t go very far.
They start to peter out before they even round the corner, getting harder to identify with every track left behind.
They stop entirely just before the last door, left ajar, a bloody hand print stark on the door frame. When Ghost nudges it open, a smeared line of fresh crimson on the wall takes its place, continuing until it’s swallowed up by the shadows below.
Laswell had done everything within her power to prepare them, to arm them with the knowledge of what they were walking into. Knowledge of exactly what kind of operation Plaskett was running under their noses, abducting Omegas from every corner of the globe, from all walks of life.
Ghost forces himself to breathe through the emotions he can’t quite name that grip his heart and threaten to crush it, to consume every last thinking part of him and swallow him whole, and follows the trail down.
He sees the cages first.
Restraints. Tranquilizers, discarded and empty. Bloodstains on the concrete, fresh and old. Gouges in the walls and the floor, left behind by claws.
And then Ghost sees-
He sees Soap.
He sees Johnny.
Tucked away in the furthest corner of the room, half-hidden in the shadows, eyes wild. A filthy, wounded beast, crouched low to protect itself and primed to kill, drenched in what Ghost wants desperately to be someone else’s blood.
His pupils are pinpricks, dots of black almost entirely swallowed up by blue. There's a high chance he isn't able to actually see anything in the low light, going purely off sound and scent and whatever else can be picked up from their surroundings. He's holding his left hand oddly, hand cradled against his bare chest, and it takes Ghost a second to recognize the bruising picked up from having one's thumb dislocated. His wrists are bloody where too-tight restraints chafed for too long against tender skin, but what wounds he can see are too old for most of the fresh stuff to be his.
Ghost shifts, and Soap’s head snaps to him.
“Easy,” he rumbles. Everything in him screams to move forward, to assure himself of what’s in front of him, to confirm that the nightmares haunting him these past six weeks have been only that.
He goes to his knees instead.
He’s never heard Soap growl in the way that he does now. A full-throated, guttural warning that needs no translation, bloody teeth bared, head held high as he creeps forward from his hiding place. He comes to a stop just out of arm’s reach, gaze never once leaving Ghost.
Watching. Waiting.
A stalemate, then, until one of them backs down, as unlikely as that might be. Hands steady as they can be, Ghost reaches to pull up the neck of his mask, bunching it up just over his nose, until the whole length of his throat’s exposed. He keeps his movements slow as he can manage, watching how Soap tracks him without giving up any ground. Turns his attention to his sleeves once the mask’s out of the way, tugging them out of his gloves and rolling them up to the elbows.
He hopes Soap will understand. Will find his weak points have been exposed, will find that there’s less of a threat in an opponent that's left himself open to attack.
The suppressors are still going strong, the last mandatory dose nowhere near close to fading, but Ghost came prepared for this mission. He keeps one hand up and away from himself, away from Soap, reaching down with the other to pop open the pouch on the front of his vest. Quick, before his Sergeant has time to take the movement as a threat, as an attack, he tugs the black fabric out of the plastic, wrapping it around his palm and holding it out in the space between them.
A mask. One of his spares. The one he’d been wearing when the tunnels had collapsed, when the fucking bastards had dragged Soap away before the dust had had time to settle. Practically untouched since Price and Gaz pulled him from the rubble, sealed away at his insistence to keep his scent strong in the worn black fabric.
He’d wanted Soap to know it was him. Wanted Johnny to know that he was safe, that there was someone in this fucking hellhole looking out for him, even if he was well past the point of being able to hear the words.
Soap looks ready to spring on him at the sudden movement, every limb tense with anticipation for violence and bloodshed. But whatever remains of Ghost’s scent must catch his interest, the growling subsiding only slightly as his head tilts to the side. It’s difficult to say if he recognizes it, as far gone as he is, but Simon remembers that feeling of being surrounded by the first familiar scent in a very long while. Sitting in the dark with his primary listening to the downpour and letting the memories wash over him, letting himself succumb to everything that he’d been denied.
“Johnny,” Ghost lets himself say, dropping his voice to keep it soft.
Haltingly, Soap takes a step forward. Whatever’s left of his attention turns almost entirely to the mask, as though he’s trying to figure out why he might recognize the scent.
A momentary distraction. A moment is all Ghost needs.
This close, it’s easy enough to reach out and drag Soap close, to put him into a hold that he’ll have some trouble slipping out of, to ease the auto-injector out of its pouch and press it to the junction between his neck and shoulder.
Ghost feels it when Soap realizes that he’s been trapped. An abrupt stillness, overtaxed muscles tensing. He feels what remains of his Sergeant ready himself for a fight against an opponent he’s very nearly succumbed to, the snarl unleashed as the needle punctures the skin rumbling through his ribs like thunder across the sky. He tightens his hold, dropping the tranquilizer and putting everything he has into keeping Soap still.
“Easy, Johnny, easy. Got you.”
Soap shudders once against him, the faintest beginnings of a whine building low in the back of his throat – a sound Ghost won’t be able to resist, not even if he truly wanted to – and then his Sergeant goes limp against him, dead weight in his arms. It’s simple enough to find a pulse, even with fingers that don't feel quite so steady, to assure himself that it’s steady, if not strong. It's the closest he's had Soap in over a month, and the part of Ghost that has been languishing and clamoring for a wrong to be made right finally goes quiet, placated for the moment. Behind him, he hears the scuff of boots at the top of the stairwell, hears the click of a radio and the distant voice of their primary on the other end.
Whatever it is, it can wait. Everything can wait.
They're bringing him home.