Chapter Text
Ghost
Ghost thought that he would never interact with kids again, or at least, the only interaction would be sending them off to the people who were actually supposed to take care of them. Like foster care, or child psychologists, or other things like that. But Sadie, she was the best damn kid he ever knew–next to Joseph–even if she was the only kid he’s ever had a prolonged interaction with. She followed him everywhere like those little baby ducks following the parent duck. She followed Soap too, just as much as she did Ghost. It was funny, seeing a small little girl follow around 2 giant military men. Sadie seemed to enjoy Price and Gaz too, going up to them when she saw them.
The second night she was there, the day after Soap had his panic attack, she nearly gave them both heart attacks. Ghost was sleeping in Soap’s room that night, being too tired to make the trek back to his own room. He awoke first, hearing a small sniffle outside the door and a tiny, barely heard knock. Being in the military allowed him to be a very light sleeper, but the same did not apply to Johnny, who was snoring away on his chest. Ghost paused, thinking that it was just a remnant of his dream, but the knock repeated and he knew that he wasn’t dreaming. He sighed and performed the tedious task of waking up the Sergeant, shaking him and receiving a tired grumble and a slap on the arm. When they were both standing, Soap opened the door and Ghost ducked into a corner, not knowing if he should make himself present. Turned out, seeing a small child clutching a stuffed animal startled a man who blows stuff up for a living. He quickly scooped her up and shut the door behind them. She apparently was scared after having a nightmare and smelled where Soap was, going to his room. She laid between them that night, curled into Johnny and clutching Ghost’s shirt. He quickly grew so much fonder of the little girl, feeling the overbearing need to protect her at any cost.
The next week or so was filled with the Captain trying to figure shit out about her, Gaz entertaining her when Soap and Ghost couldn’t, and Soap and Ghost going through the shitload of paperwork they needed to do. So when Soap, Ghost, and Gaz were called into the Captain’s office, it was a bit of a shock when they saw that Price and Laswell. That caused a decent amount of suspicion and he saw the same happen to Soap from the corner of his eye. Wondering about everything that could have happened seeing that Laswell was here, his mind went to Sadie.
Price, who seemed to read Ghost’s mind, raised his hand and spoke up. “Don’t worry, Sadie’s with one of the most trusted nurses in the medical wing. Safe and sound.”
That released some of the tension building in his shoulders, but he was still a bit skeptical. “It’s good to see you, Laswell, but why are you here? Has something happened?”
“Never one to beat around the bush. A good trait to have,” Laswell chuckled. “Well, to put it simply, we recovered what was found from the data you brought in. We sent the blood samples and test tubes to a research facility and in one of those tubes was Soap’s blood, and mixed in another tube, was the girl’s blood and his, combining them. Seeing that, we concluded that instead of converting already born shifters into mindless weapons, they were making their own shifters using shifter blood and performing tests to ensure the transformation happens.”
He registered Soap’s body tense up next to him and placed his gloved hand on the small of his back, trying to offer some comfort. He himself was fuming, absolutely raged at the idea of doing more experimenting on people as they did to Sadie. It was horrible, and if they continued this, another war would be on the horizon. When they went to the facility where they found Sadie, they later found that it was owned and run by an underground Russian organization. Big shocker there.
“The leader of these experiments is a former Russian government scientist, Alexei Yukovich. He was revoked of his license and kicked out when he tried to turn the grand admiral into a shifter, he went underground and I guess we now know where he ended up.”
“Do ah ‘ave permission to absolutely desecrate this bastard?” Soap spoke up, politely raising his hand.
It startled a chuckle out of Ghost, which he quickly covered up.
Price also chuckled and spoke up. “I won’t say otherwise. Alexei Yukovich is the head of the organization, cut off the head, and the whole thing goes down. Yukovich is a paranoid git, so much so that he doesn’t have a second in command, too paranoid that someone’s gonna stab him in the back. Too paranoid to realize that his plan is shit.”
It made sense. The Russian dude is worried about getting backstabbed and taken over. They needed to stop this organization and to prevent more of these facilities from getting set up. If other countries like Russia get their hands on this serum, then it could mean war. War against Shifters and humans, along with war against other countries. Shifters and humans already have a pretty rocky relationship, if civilization finds out about this, it could cause a bigger rift between the two groups.
Soap was the only shifter that Ghost knew personally. He’s met others before, but that was only for necessity. He didn’t know if he should consider Sadie to be a shifter, seeing as she was made to be one. But it probably doesn’t matter seeing as she can shift, so that probably means she’s a shifter. He’s sure that if he asks a psychologist or a biologist, they’ll have different answer. It doesn’t matter to Ghost whether she’s a shifter or not, the only thing that matters to him is her being alive and safe, as a child should be. Either way, born shifter or not, it’s still kinda fucked up. He doesn’t know firsthand and never will, but he’s heard and seen shifters go through tough times, especially in earlier years when it was a huge debate whether shifters should have the same rights as them. Luckily, being in the military kinda gave him an out for all that political stuff, but unluckily, it also meant that a lot of tensions were brewing between countries and groups about shifters.
Simon doesn’t know how many other of these facilities there are, how many other shifters were caught or were made. None of the need-to-know information was there to actually know, it was frustrating. He knew, rationally, that shit like this can happen. But now that Soap is in his life and now that Sadie, the little devil, has also managed to wiggle herself in too, it’s become a lot more difficult to just go about these issues with nonchalance. Having those two around make him realize just how much he cares about them, how much he cares about his team. It almost scares him how much he’s allowed himself to care, to want to care. With these facilities still growing and gaining ‘residents’, he can’t let them continue with people like Sadie in them. Ghost can’t let them continue at all.