Chapter Text
In the back streets of Prague, you watch through the scope of your rifle as your target—one of Makarov’s inner circle men, the man you’ve been tailing for two and a half weeks—gets his throat viciously slit from behind.
“Shit, shit, shit.” You quickly readjust your scope to catch sight of the assailant, who appeared out of seemingly fucking nowhere and nearly disappeared back into the shadows. Kuzmin’s jugular pumps out blood in high, arching spurts, and the figure has stepped off to the side to avoid the spray, their hand held up to their mouth piece. A comm. You can’t make out any other distinguishing factors on their person, aside from the fact that they’re dressed head to toe in heavy tactical gear, and they’ve just blown your entire mission to shit.
They move out of your line of sight. You cuss again, elbows digging into the concrete rooftop beneath as you heave yourself up and begin disassembling the scope and shoving gear into your backpack.
If you can’t interrogate your mark, you’ll have to settle for the next best thing: his killer.
Slinging your rifle across your back and strapping it tight, you hop down onto the nearest roof and take off running, parallel to the route you presume the assailant is taking. The pounding of your feet is so heavy that it reverberates up through your knees, and you brace yourself for the upcoming gap in the roofs. You make the jump, just barely, and then you’re sliding down the sloped side of a metal roof, your gear screeching in protest all the way until you land roughly on the pavement of the street.
You roll onto your back, your pack having taken the brunt of the fall, and allow yourself a mere moment to calm the adrenaline raging through your veins before you take off again.
The figure—and you’re fairly certain it’s a man, now that you can see more of their build—has clearly picked up on his tail, and you see him sprinting a distance ahead before cutting a sharp turn into a side alley. You’re willing to wager on the fact that you likely know these streets better than he does, and you slip behind the buildings, counting down the alleys until you step into the one he will presumably end up in. It’s a dead end, and he’ll likely try to hop the fence here into the yard of shipping containers; the perfect escape.
You hide just between the back of one of the buildings and the wire fence, shrouded in darkness, the space barely wide enough to fit your body, and you listen for his footsteps. They were being followed the second you fell from the rooftop, probably by some of Makarov’s lackeys, but you can’t be sure. Whatever their purpose, they’ve set the scene perfectly for you.
You were right. Moments later he bounds up to the fence. You can see him going to scale it, his thighs bent just so and head upturned, but you grab him by his pack before he can and yank him back into the alley with you. His momentary surprise allows you to muscle him into a position of submission that would otherwise be a hell of a lot harder to achieve.
He’s larger than you, both in height and in muscle, but you have the advantage of a knife to his throat and the sound of footsteps running down the street towards their direction. Whoever he is—and the thick backpack pressing into your chest and the tactical gear covering his impressive form told you really all you needed to know—he hopefully wouldn’t be dumb enough to risk them getting ambushed in a pitch-black, claustrophobic alleyway.
It isn’t hard to maintain your grip on him; one arm in a vice grip around his shoulders, pinning his arms to his sides, and the other pressing your knife right against his jugular. One of your ankles hooks so firmly around his calf that it makes your thigh ache, your other knee slotted uncomfortably given your height difference between his firm thighs, but it ensures that he won’t be able to step forward without getting caught up. You wrap around him like a snake, and he doesn’t move an inch, which you suppose makes it all the easier—you weren’t fully sure you’d be able to actually subdue him were it not for his yielding.
“Sh,” You hiss into his ear, the voices of the men getting clearer and clearer as they round the corner into the alleyway. “Don’t move, or I’ll cut your throat.”
He shifts against you, slightly, just enough to jostle your bodies a bit, and you strengthen your grasp until you’re squeezing him. Your knife pokes through the fabric of his balaclava. You’re sure he’s feeling its cool blade against the bare skin of his neck, now.
The men are alarmingly close. If they took a few steps forward, you’re sure the two of you would be caught, but the alley is hidden off to the side well enough and is so dark that they likely wouldn’t think to check it. They converse in Russian—you can pick out three distinct voices—and one of them spits onto the pavement, scuffing their shoe in agitation before they seem to come to a consensus and head back the way they came. Neither you nor the man pressed against your front dares to breathe too hard, and you strain your ears until you can no longer hear their distant, fading footsteps.
The man waits an extra five seconds for good measure before springing into action. He shoves out of your grasp and sends you falling back against the building roughly, and although you moved away with equal parts alarm and speed, he manages to clip you in the nose with his elbow. The blow is hard enough that you feel the immediate gush of warm blood drip from your nostrils. It all happens so fast that your head swims, but you don’t falter, because that would mean your life—you should’ve made a grab for the ACR hanging in his chest sling, but it’s too late. He moved faster than you were anticipating.
He’s already got a handgun pressed into your torso, right between the tiny gap of your black tactical vest and cargo pants. Practiced. All that separates the steel from your bare skin is the thin cotton layer of your thermal shirt. You don't know why he doesn’t immediately shoot; you certainly would’ve.
Instead, he looks at you with something akin to curiosity—an unsettling kind, like you’re a specimen under a microscope that he is about to take apart limb by limb, to poke and prod and torture information out of.
“Who the hell are you?” He asks. His voice is deep, rough with the strength of his accent, and his eyes seem impossibly black. Now that you face each other you can see his mask properly. It’s a scary thing, a hardened skull sewn into the fabric of his black balaclava, the eyes deepened and hollow. The black paint around his eyes makes the white of them stand out, stark in the darkness of the alley, and you can’t help but admit to yourself that he is intimidating, blocking you into the alley like this, gun pressed into the soft flesh of your stomach.
“That’s my line.”
It’s impossible to read any reaction from him. He doesn’t so much as blink; you aren’t even fully certain that he’s breathing. You really don’t know why you don’t have a bullet in you right now, left to bleed out in a matter of minutes, like you should be for getting tangled up in this. You bite the inside of your cheek and glare.
Silence stretches out between the two of you, long and awkward, until he speaks again.
“You didn’t kill me. You had the perfect opportunity.” He squints, his already lidded eyes going sharp. Anger is as evident in his tone as it is in his stare. The barrel of the gun presses harder into your gut. “Why?”
The blood trickling from your nostrils has stained your chin and seeped into the collar of your shirt, sticky and caked, quickly drying on your face. You swipe your tongue across your upper lip and wince at the tang of copper.
“I like to ask first, shoot later.” You affect a level of nonchalance you don’t feel. You want to strangle the daylights out of this guy for fucking up your entire plan so spectacularly. “Maybe you should take note.”
“Kuzmin was a dead end.”
You snarl. “He was mine.”
“No, he wasn’t.” He looks at you strangely. “What use did you have for him?”
You give him a blank look. He holds your gaze, hums, and tilts his head slightly. “Alright, new question: what use did MI6 have for him?”
There is positively nothing about your current appearance or situation that could have possibly given that away, so you’re left to presume that he has experience with SIS, in some capacity. The knowledge does nothing to soften the blow of your surprise at him having pinned you so easily, however.
No use in lying, now. The mission’s already been shot to hell. If he knows who you are, there’s a chance he knows a lot more, and if it comes down to it, you’ll just shoot this guy for busting your cover. “Same as you, I’d imagine, though I actually wanted to talk to the asshole.”
“You wanted to talk to Kuzmin?”
You smile. The movement pulls at the dried blood caking your lips and chin; you fight back the instinctual urge to scratch it away, worried that any sudden movement might cause this guy to blow a hole through your intestines. Which, speaking of; “Either shoot me or move the gun. It’s going to bruise.”
The dickhead digs the barrel in deeper than before, gives it a little twist for good measure, like he’s trying to remind you of its threat, before pulling away and clipping it onto his belt. You take an immediate step back, just enough for there to be a comfortable distance between the two of you and so that you can look at him at eye-level. You’re tall as is, but even then, your eyes only reach his black clad throat.
The situation is already weird enough, so you figure asking a few questions of your own won’t hurt while he’s still standing in front of you, seemingly as put-off by the turn of events as you are. “Why did you kill him?”
His eyes roll to the side as he glances sidelong out of the fence bracketing the two of you into the alley. “That’s classified.”
“Special ops?” You take a stab in the dark. With the level of gear he has on, from the thick black jacket to the vest with innumerable clasps and hooks—not to mention the sheer amount of guns and various other weapons on his person—to his massive frame and his strength, special ops seems more likely than anything.
He levels you with the same blank look you’d given him moments ago, though it may not be intentional on his part. His eyes have a peculiar dullness to them that makes it hard to tell much of anything.
Either way, you take his resounding silence as a yes, which throws yet another wrench into the Makarov mission. Nothing has ever boded well when a special ops force is on a case. Especially not for you.
“Lovely.” You’d roll your eyes if you weren’t so irritated at the entire situation. Leave it to your handler to fail to inform you of the full extent of a mission—Williamson will certainly be hearing about this later. There is no way he did not know of this. “I should’ve killed you when I had the opportunity.”
Something like amusement, faint and barely there, dances across his eyes. “Yes, you should’ve.”
And with that, he’s pulling himself up and over the iron-wrought fence and disappearing into the maze of shipping containers beyond. You don’t linger; you take off down the alley and track along the backside of the streets until you make it into the city proper. Had things gone according to plan tonight, you’d be exfilling back to London with a wealth of new, crucial information on Makarov and the Inner Circle.
As it stands, you adjust course for a safe house you know is just on the outskirts of the city. You’ll be able to contact Williamson there; upon further inspection of your gear, your mouthpiece was crushed at some point during the night, most likely when you fell off the roof. Of fucking course.
You stop momentarily to wrestle a jacket out of your backpack to zip up over your vest and weapons. With a taxi flagged and you on your way to the safe house, you lean your head back against the headrest and close your eyes, trying not to linger too long on the anger brewing. A skull mask lingers in your mind, annoyingly, and the regret you feel at not shooting the bastard when he was in the crosshairs of your scope skyrockets.
Half an hour later, you shoulder open the rusted door, nose covered by the crook of your elbow against the cloud of dust and god knows what else. A quick sweep of your flashlight around the squat building to make sure nothing lurks in the darkness, and then you’re locking and bolting the door behind you, tossing your backpack onto the wooden card table to your right. The safehouse is the exact same as you left it three years ago the last time you were in Prague. It’s an unfathomably depressing sight.
The bed, which is more of a cot, really, lies pressed into the corner of two walls, with the tiny kitchen on one side and a lumpy couch on the other. If you remember correctly, there’ll be a M9 in the drawer, a burner phone along with it, and a working faucet.
You scrub dried blood off your face and use your jacket to dry off, grimacing at the tenderness of your nose. He didn’t break it, thankfully, but it was a near thing.
Williamson answers on the second ring. “Viper?”
“Special ops is on Makarov. Why didn’t you tell me?” Bothering with preambles was something you had run out of patience for long ago. You lean back against the counter and listen as your handler blows out a long sigh.
“Who’d you see?”
“Fuck if I know.” You scratch at your jaw. “Big dude with a skull mask. Does that ring any bells?”
Williamson is silent on the other end. You roll your eyes to the ceiling. “Listen, what I want to know is why I wasn’t made aware of this. It could’ve gotten me killed.”
“It shouldn’t have even been an issue. You running into him was a purely unlucky coincidence. I wasn’t going to tell you before because you were going to find out soon enough.”
His words make you frown. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Listen.” There’s some shuffling on his end, a drawer opening and closing. “I wanted to brief you on this when you were back, but we’re going to have to expedite the timeline.”
“The timeline?” You stand up a little straighter, the seriousness in his tone making your hackles rise. “Williamson, what the hell are you talking about?”
He sighs again. He sounds more irritated than before. “You’re being transferred.”
You blink at the blank wall directly across from you. “What?”
“It’s not—” Williamson cuts himself off. “You’re still with MI6. It isn’t anything like that. You’re just going to be working with a team who is also going after Makarov. The situation has grown out of hand; it’s become too large for any one organization to control. We need help.”
A team. The concept is as unfamiliar to you as the word itself is. You’ve been trained to act and fight alone from the onset of your MI6 career; it’s all you know. It’s all you’ve been told to expect. You’re alone. You have no allies here. Get the job done, Viper.
“A team?” You repeat, aloud, the echo of your voice odd. “What team?”
“Task Force 141. A multinational, special operations unit. They’re nearly as familiar with Makarov and the Inner Circle as you are. We need them now, and they need us.”
There’s too much going on for you to fully process it all. You bite the inside of your lip, gnawing, and the sudden wave of anxiety that washes over you is entirely unwelcome. “Williamson, I—you know I’ve never worked with a team. What the hell?”
“I know.” His voice is quiet, now, more somber, and you can almost see the old man’s expression, his white eyebrows furrowed with worry. “I know. But this isn’t our first time working with them, it’s just yours. They’re good men. Some of the best. They’re invaluable.”
“I’m not doubting how good they are at their jobs.” You bite out. “I just don’t understand. Was I not making enough progress? I almost had Kuzmin, but the fucker killed him—”
“This isn’t through any fault of your own. You’ve been spectacular. You know that. Were it not for you, we wouldn’t even know half of what we do about Makarov.”
He’s right, and you know it. Insecurity has never been something you’ve dealt with, but your mind scrambles to find some logical explanation for this sudden change, for you needing a team. It’d only make sense if you weren’t doing well enough on your own.
Williamson continues. “They’re struggling, too. Dead ends after dead ends. The trail is almost going cold, and nobody can afford to let that happen.”
Kuzmin was a dead end. You cuss beneath your breath.
Williamson’s logic makes sense. You know what he’s saying, and you know that it’s not unheard of for MI6 to seek external help, but it’s something you’ve never had to deal with personally. Each and every mission has been executed successfully by your own hands. You’ve never needed a team.
“How long has this been planned?” You ask the question you aren’t sure you want the answer to.
“Only a matter of weeks.” Williamson admits. To his credit, he sounds abashed. “Since you’ve been in Czechia. Captain Price reached out—it was him who made the request.”
Captain Price. The first of many names you’ll likely have to familiarize with over the next few days.
“They know?” You wonder. “The team. Task Force 141. Do they know?”
“I can’t say for sure. I’d assume not, since you had a run-in with their Lieutenant and he made no mention of it.”
The fucker’s a Lieutenant. You roll your eyes. “He was as surprised as I was. Asked what business MI6 had with Kuzmin.”
“They’ve been kept in the dark too, then,” Williamson murmurs. “Probably for the best. Formal introductions need to be made before any proper work together can be done.”
You sigh exaggeratedly, slumping back against the counter again, your shoulders sagging. “Fantastic. When?”
Williamson’s grimace is nearly palpable. “Tomorrow. A heli will pick you up. I’ll meet you at their base in London, as will the rest of the team. This is a good thing, Viper. A new beginning. We could use that right about now.”
A new beginning. You snort at the thought. If the rest of the team is anything like the man you encountered hours earlier, you wonder at the validity of Williamson’s words.
---
The nearly two hour helicopter ride from Prague to London is spent in silence. It’s not like you’d be able to talk, anyway, as loud as it is up here, but you’re so deep in thought that the possibility of conversation doesn’t even cross your mind.
You watch as the familiar cityscape of London comes into view beneath the murky gray clouds. The pilot—someone you don’t recognize from MI6—leads you beyond the city proper and into the smaller, sleepier outskirts of London, empty fields of grass before the base comes into view. It’s been a long while since you’ve spent any amount of time on a military base. The sight of it is an unneeded reminder of how bothersome you find this whole situation to be.
Williamson comes into sight before you’ve even landed, his white hair blown about by the helicopter’s choppers, and he talks to a man you would be willing to bet is Captain Price. The only features you can make out are a dark beard and a boonie hat before your attention is stolen away by the landing and the pilot sliding the door open.
It’s a cold September in London, the gust of wind prickling your bare arms, and you wish you would’ve had the foresight to bring a coat. You have no idea how to dress for these sorts of things—formal introductions, Williamson had called it—so you’re wearing a more civilian outfit, a plain black shirt and matching black jeans. Your boots thud against the landing pad as you hop down from the helicopter and swing your backpack on.
Captain Price—you’ve already made your mind up that this is him—smiles at you, offering a curt nod that you return with some hesitance, and you walk forward as Williamson beckons you.
“Glad to see you made it in one piece.” Williamson waves off the pilot, and the three of you duck and watch as he takes off again, disappearing into the thick, overcast clouds above. The silence afterwards is jarring in its wake. “Let's meet the team, shall we?”
As you make your way into the base, Williamson introduces the man on your left as Captain John Price, and you bite back a smile at being right. He’s British, a sniper, and so welcoming that it makes your skin crawl.
He’s nice enough, though, and you can appreciate his willingness to bring on an entirely new person to his team. It won’t be easy regardless; you’ve never even worked with an actual team before, and these men have only worked with one another. At least things won’t be boring.
They lead you to a large meeting room, filled with an extravagantly large conference table that two men are already seated at, and a number of computers and projection screens line the walls. You take note of everything in the room as best you can just because that is what you’re used to, and then one of the men sitting with his back to you spins around in his chair.
Blue eyes and a mohawk greet you, accompanied by a wide, lopsided grin. “Aye, Captain.”
“Soap,” Price responds in greeting, though the man’s—Soap’s—eyes are on you. He tilts his head in evident curiosity, but before he can say anything else, Price grabs a stack of manila folders from a nearby desk and throws them onto the table.
The sight of your name in black, bold letters, along with a paperclip attaching your passport photo to the front, sends a trickle of anxiety down your spine. It’s all so foreign that you don’t know how to feel, but one thing for certain is you hate the sight of a file on you. You know what information will be blacked out, what will be omitted, and what will be there, and the thought of these people—these complete strangers, these military men—reading it makes you want to vomit.
“Where’s Ghost?” Price asks. It’s not hard to guess who that is. Williamson sits next to the other man at the table, and you take a hesitant seat next to Soap, who shrugs up at his Captain.
“Coming, I think.” Soap’s Scottish accent is thick and heavy, so much so that you’re unsure if he’s revving it up or not. He leans forward and grabs one of the copies of your file, shooting you a smile and a quirked eyebrow as he does so. You return the gesture—minus the smile—and Price calling your name grabs your attention.
“This is Kyle Garrick.” He gestures to the man next to Williamson, who nods at you in the same way Price had, a slight smile curling his lips. “Otherwise known as Gaz. And next to you is John MacTavish.”
“Otherwise known as Soap,” Soap finishes for him. Before you can think of anything else to say, a door on the far side of the room opens, and a man steps through.
You want to roll your eyes, or sneer, or flip him off, but all three would be wildly unprofessional and not set a good precedent for your participation in this team, so you keep your hands in your lap beneath the table and meet familiar dark, lidded eyes.
He wears the same skull mask but without the headset, which makes it worse, somehow, scarier looking in the broad daylight. He’s dressed more casually than he was previously, though still with a tactical vest over his black hoodie, and he’s swapped cargo pants for dark wash jeans. He meets your stare immediately and only holds it for a moment or two before sliding over to Price, who stands at the head of the table.
“Captain.” He greets, brusquely, and he strides across the room and takes the seat directly opposite from you. Now that you can see him uncovered by gear and the darkness of the night, you’re struck by his largeness and the inherent confidence he carries himself with. It’s a wonder you were able to subdue him at all.
Price hands out the remaining files, handing you one for good measure, and you flick it open to have something to do with your hands. Nervousness is so uncharacteristic of you that you nearly don’t recognize it for what it is. Your eyes scan the information within, glancing over your name, your age, other biographical data alongside the blacked out sections of your hometown and your previous duty stations. All of your experience and qualifications are listed plainly in front of you, bullet point format, and it’s unusual to see them laid out so.
“Alright, team.” Price begins. You glance up from your own passport photo at him. “As you may have guessed, we have a new recruit.”
He makes a round of quick introductions. Ghost—apt name, you almost want to joke, but you still don’t feel like your voice would be solid enough to speak just yet—nods at you in perfunctory greeting, as though you didn’t nearly slit his throat and he didn’t nearly shoot you through the stomach not even twenty-four hours earlier. You don’t bother returning it.
It’s Williamson’s turn to speak. The familiar tune of his voice allows you to drift off, your eyes going unfocused on your file, your mind wandering. It hasn’t fully sunk in that you’ll be expected to work alongside these men for however long it takes to bring Makarov down. The thought makes bile rise in the back of your throat, for no reason other than it’s something entirely new to you, and you’d long since thought you were done with sudden changes. Your position within MI6 was stable, and the work you were doing was good, and clean, and being made to work with a team was the last thing you could’ve possibly expected.
“She has invaluable experience with Makarov.” Price says, the unexpectedness of his voice snapping you back into the present. Invaluable. The same word Williamson used to describe the very men seated around you. He taps your file with his index finger. “Not to mention extensive training and a damn near flawless track record. Her skillset will be a turning point for us.”
You feel like Price is attempting to sell you to these men, to convince them of your usefulness and make them more willing to accept you into their team, and you can’t help the wince that crosses your face. Annoyance settles deep in your gut, even though it’s unwarranted, and you slant Williamson a look that he acknowledges with a slight smile.
Your eyes stray to Ghost, the dark, hulking figure in your peripheral, and you find his gaze already on you. Lazy, half-lidded eyes meet your own, and he leans back into his chair and crosses his arms over his chest. Something shifts in his expression the longer you hold his stare. You look away before you can figure out what it is.
All in all, the meeting is over fairly quickly. No actual work will be done on the mission until tomorrow, you’re told, which will be your first official day working with them. Task Force 141. A special operations unit. The thought doesn’t bode well.
Price and Williamson lead you to the room that will serve as your private quarters for the duration of your partnership. A military dorm is the exact level of barren and depressing as you had imagined it would be. The men leave you to your devices after a back thump and a thanks from Price, and you set your backpack onto the cot, settling down onto the stiff mattress next to it.
The only comfort from this entire situation is the certainty you have that Williamson would not leave you in the hands of anyone other than the absolute best. You were given a stack of files of your own, thankfully, and you glance at the stack of manila folders piled atop the desk. You’ve got your own homework to do, which leaves you with little time to brood, and you dig for Ghost’s in the stack, your curiosity winning over.
It’s an impressive file. He’s impressive, regrettably, though you had already surmised that based off your brief encounter with him. He’s got more blacked out information than you, and the lack of an identification photo is striking, though not necessarily surprising. You snap the file closed with an irritated huff and toss it aside. If luck will be on your side for once, your interactions with him from here on out will be minimal. You’d work with Soap, whose personality has already made its mark, the entire time if it meant you’d be able to keep your distance from Ghost.
The rest of your day passes blessedly uneventfully. You eat in the mess hall with Soap, you take a lengthy, scalding shower, and as you’re falling asleep, you try not to let your last thoughts be of an eerie skull mask and the chill of a steel muzzle against your skin.
You don’t succeed. Predictably.