The red lights throb like a heartbeat.
Klaxons scream down the corridor, urgent and inhuman. Above, a ceiling speaker bursts to life—crackling Russian: "Vnimaniye. Povyshennaya ugroza. Likvidirovatʹ na meste."
Translation's not needed. The tone says it all—kill on sight.
Ghost flattens to the wall, eyes locked on the slow pan of a security camera ahead. Its motor whirs as it sweeps right. Ghost waits, breath measured. The second it pivots away—
He moves.
Fast, quiet. Bare feet slipping across oil-slick tiles. He ducks under the lens, pressing against a row of pipes. Condensation beads on his mask.
A squad boots up behind the lockdown. He hears them—body armor clicking, radios squawking. They're close, but they don't know this floor like he does. Not yet.
He studies the next turn. One guard. Pacing. Rifle relaxed.
They still think they're hunting prey.
Ghost's fingers tighten on the rusted nail.
---
The guard rounds the corner, humming to himself. Kalashnikov slung low. No helmet. A mistake.
Ghost stays low behind an overturned cart, breath syncing with the red pulse of the emergency lights. He waits for the rhythm—four steps, pause, pivot.
Ghost moves.
He explodes from the dark like a snapped cable—one hand clamps the guard's mouth, the other drives the jagged nail just under the jawline, upward. Cartilage gives. Then blood.
The guard gurgles, kicks once, then folds.
Ghost eases the body down. No sound but the drip of blood onto tile.
He strips the sidearm—a Makarov, scratched but loaded—and checks the spare mag in the guard's pouch. Two total. Not enough for a war. Enough to start one.
Utility belt: a flashlight, folding blade, keycard, one smoke grenade. Ghost clips it all on, adjusts the strap, wipes his hands on the guard's vest.
---
Ghost flips the body with a grunt. Fingers slide into the inner pocket of the guard's jacket—paper crinkles.
He pulls it out. Crumpled. Sweat-stained. Hand-drawn schematic in blue ink, smudged but legible. Hallways, stairwells, a circled word at the edge: "гараж"—garage. A red line weaves from Containment to what looks like a loading dock. One route. Two checkpoints. Scribbled in the corner: "Shift ends 0430. Door jammed—pry it."
"Planning your own exit," Ghost mutters, eyes scanning the paper like a battlefield map. "Didn't get far."
A glance over his shoulder. No movement. No chatter. Just the distant whine of the alarm and the low hum of fluorescent lights fighting to stay alive.
He folds the map, tucks it into the webbing of the stolen belt.
The route's a risk. Open ground at checkpoint B. Cameras. Doors that might need a key he doesn't have.
But it's better than nothing. Better than wandering.
---
Fluorescent lights flicker above—white, sterile, humming. Ghost's boots glide over the tile, quiet as breath.
Voices echo around the bend. Russian. Clipped. Relaxed, but alert. Two guards. One lighting a cigarette, the other thumbing a radio. They haven't seen the blood yet.
Ghost spots a wall-mounted fusebox beside an old fire hose reel. No lock. Paint chipped. He pulls the crowbar from his belt, jams it under the panel, and levers up. Sparks spit.
The lights cut instantly.
"Что за черт?" one of them mutters.
Their radios squawk static. Footsteps shuffle. One guard flicks a flashlight. Ghost's shadow slips past it.
He rounds the corner low and fast—Makarov already raised. The first shot punches clean through a temple—suppressed, but still loud in the dark. The second guard flinches, turns, too slow. Ghost fires again.
Miss.
Bullet snaps past, ricochets off the concrete wall behind them with a metallic bark. The guard ducks, draws his weapon, but Ghost is already moving, using the ricochet as cover. He slams the crowbar into the man's wrist, sends the pistol skittering.
They grapple, feet sliding on blood and dust. The guard snarls, shoves—Ghost stumbles back, levels the gun—
Pop.
Chest shot. Dead center. The guard slumps against the wall, leaves a smear.
Then—
RRRRRRRREEEEEET!
The alarm shifts pitch. Louder now. The miss triggered motion sensors.
Ghost yanks one of the corpses into the shadows with him, hides behind a stack of old lockers. Another patrol will come. He can't stay long.
He reloads in the dark, breath shallow, listening to boots thunder from somewhere above.
---
The infirmary door creaks on warped hinges as Ghost shoulders his way inside. The stink of antiseptic hits first—chemical, sharp, desperate. Metal cots line the wall, one of them rusted clean through.
He bolts the door behind him. No time for clean.
Blood seeps through his side, dark and sticky. The ribs burned all fight, but now it's worse—hot and wet under the uniform. He rips it open. The gash runs jagged from flank to hip. Deep.
Drawers clatter. Gauze. Isopropyl. A staple gun. Combat field kit shoved behind a rack of syringes.
He pours the alcohol straight into the wound. Skin jumps. He doesn't scream—just breathes hard through his teeth, staring at the floor until his vision tunnels. One hand braces against the sink. The other lines up the staple gun.
Chk-CHK.
First staple bites. He nearly blacks out.
Second. Third.
By the fourth, his knuckles are white and slick. Breath shallow. Sweat cutting rivers through ash and dried blood on his face.
He wraps gauze tight, pins it down with duct tape from the drawer. Not clean. Not smart. Just fast.
A voice on the loudspeaker, distant and metallic, issues commands in Russian.
"Sector 4—clear and sweep. Do not engage alone."
They're closing the net.
Ghost grabs a fresh syringe—morphine, unlabeled. Hesitates. Then pockets it instead.
He limps to the sink, splashes water on his face. His reflection stares back—mask on, cracked at the cheek. The eyes behind it are just shadows.
No time to bleed. No time to doubt.
He checks the mag, wipes blood from the grip, and slips out the infirmary door.
---
Ghost moves like vapor through dim service corridors—quiet, quick, bleeding just enough to know he's still here. At the end of a narrow hall, he finds the door labeled COMMUNICATIONS. It's ajar. No sign of life.
He slips in.
Outdated equipment lines the room—analog panels, busted CRT monitors, and a wall-mounted PA system humming faintly. One desk light flickers. There's a dying console in the corner, headset still warm.
He jacks in.
Static. Just static.
He spins the dial.
A dead channel breaks open—brief Russian chatter, scrambled codes, panic. He catches two words repeated: "Sector Delta… intruder…"
Ghost leans forward, presses the PA override.
"Shut it down," a voice snaps through the radio. "Seal every level."
Ghost doesn't flinch. He taps the mic once. Lets the silence speak.
Then he whispers, low and calm:
"You're locking this place down, but you don't know who you're locking it down with."
He kills the lights. Pulls a jackknife from the utility belt and carves into the console's power board. Sparks. He shunts the PA to a feedback loop—grinding static, intermittent screeching.
The noise floods the base. Echoes like metal on bone. Every hallway now carries that howl.
He leans back, watches the chaos begin from the camera feed monitor. Guards barking into radios, weapons drawn, but eyes twitching toward the ceiling. One man drops his rifle, glancing around like the walls might breathe.
They're trained soldiers. But fear's a tide. And Ghost just punched a hole in the dam.
He mutters through the hiss:
"Start counting your exits, boys."
---
The vent shaft breathes warm air laced with rust and ozone. Ghost wipes his bloody palm across the edge of the maintenance hatch and pries it open. Hinges groan. Dust cascades down the lip.
A breath. Then he drops.
The shaft is narrow, lined in sweat-soaked steel, thick with decades of grime. His boots scrape against rungs half-eaten by corrosion. Below, the thrum of machinery vibrates like a heartbeat—off-tempo, dying.
He lands hard on a service catwalk. Below him: twin turbine fans spin inside grated cages, their blades slicing the dark with hypnotic rhythm. One slip, he's meat.
He shoulders the crowbar again, wedges it into the closest fan's housing. Metal screams. Sparks burst from the casing. The blades seize mid-rotation with a final choking lurch.
He slithers through.
The gap is tight—wires snag on his belt, tear at the bandage on his ribs. Somewhere in the descent, his arm brushes a strip of jagged conduit. It bites deep. Fresh blood wells and paints his forearm red. He exhales hard, short.
Just keep moving.
The tunnel beyond stinks of oil and mold. Pipes hiss, dripping condensation. Red emergency bulbs flicker in a dying rhythm. No signage. No maps. Just Ghost and the breathing dark.
He limps forward, dripping crimson in his wake, vanishing into the gut of the facility like a wound refusing to clot.
---
The hum of electricity dies.
Sublevel 2 plunges into a choking half-dark. Red emergency strobes pulse behind fogged pipes, barely cutting through the steam hissing from ruptured lines. Ghost blends into it—silent, bleeding, breath shallow against his cracked mask.
Footsteps. Voices. Russian. Tense.
He crouches beneath an overhead valve, dripping condensation onto his back. A broken pipe lies nearby. He grips it, raises it, then pivots—throws it down the opposite hallway. It clangs like a dropped rifle.
The bait works. Two guards break formation and sweep toward the noise, rifles up, flashlights jittering across metal walls.
Ghost moves.
No orders barked. No warning. Just the whisper of boots and the fast blur of motion as he rounds the corner behind them. The first guard doesn't even get a sound off—Ghost's arm snakes around his throat, drags him back into the dark. The body slumps. Dead weight.
The second turns, confused. Too late.
The suppressed Makarov coughs once. Blood sprays the corridor wall like punctuation.
Then silence again.
Another team is coming. Radios crackle. They're getting nervous.
Ghost backtracks, dragging one of the corpses into a supply closet. He leaves the second slumped across the doorway—trap bait.
They find it minutes later. Shouts echo down the corridor. Flashlights flick back and forth, slicing the dark. One guard kneels to check for a pulse.
Ghost drops from the overhead pipe. Boot to the back of the man's neck, elbow to the other's jaw. Bones snap. A scream—half-born—dies under Ghost's blade.
Steam swallows the sound.
He breathes in metal and heat. Bleeding still, but moving. Always moving.
---
The old armory door groans as Ghost forces it open with the crowbar, hinges shrieking before settling into silence. Dust clouds billow in the flashlight's beam. Racks stripped bare. Cabinets open. But not useless.
He scans the shelves, zeroes in on a rusted locker marked "ДЕАКТИВИРОВАНО." Inside: an IED kit—wires, timers, plastic explosive bricks wrapped in greasy foil. Jackpot.
He sets to work on a scarred steel table under a hanging bulb that flickers with a dying buzz. Pulls the C4 apart with gloved fingers, plants shaped charges into a plastic meal tray, wires it to a stolen kitchen timer and a segment of det cord. Sloppy, fast, but enough to make noise.
On the far shelf—an EMP grenade in a cracked foam case. Still viable. He pockets it.
Steps back. Blood dots the floor beneath him—his own, soaking through the bandaged side. He exhales hard through the mask and cracks his knuckles.
He grabs one more item from the kit: a pressure plate rig. Quick assembly. He snaps it into the threshold of the barracks corridor, just past the main junction. Buries it under a stray jacket.
Then he turns, kneels beside the intercom wire hub—PA system still hijacked. Sets a countdown to match the static's peak distortion cycle. When it screeches, the charges will go.
He mutters under his breath, voice low, steady, cruel:
"Let them run toward the fire."
A final check of his watch. Then he slips out, vanishing into the blind corner as the building ticks toward detonation.
---
The mess hall windows flash white.
A split-second later—BOOM. The floor jumps. Steel groans. Plaster cracks. Fire belches out from a side corridor as the blast hurls scorched trays and fragments of cafeteria benches through the air.
Then the screaming starts.
Ghost watches from the shadows near the maintenance crawlspace, eyes flicking over guards spilling into the hallway. Confused shouting. Radios crackle. Someone yells "FIRE IN SECTOR FIVE!" in panicked Russian.
Perfect.
He moves low and fast, past bodies running toward the wrong battle. Smoke pours from the kitchen vents. Sprinklers engage with a hiss, raining dirty water onto scorched tile. Red lights spin overhead, casting everything in stuttering crimson.
One of the fire response teams barrels past him, too focused to notice the figure in the stolen uniform, face half-covered in ash and blood.
He doesn't look back. Doesn't need to.
Another explosion thumps somewhere near the barracks—a secondary trap. A scream chokes short. The pressure plate worked.
The static on the PA shrieks again, warping like a dying machine. Ghost slips through a shattered glass door into the loading dock, now almost deserted. A single body slumped by the security gate—burned uniform, no pulse.
He crouches beside the control panel. Manual override fried, power rerouted somewhere else. Doesn't matter. He pries the latch with his crowbar, grits his teeth as his stapled wound pulls, and shoves the steel door halfway open.
Cold air knifes in.
He steps through into the bitter dark.
---
Ghost drops into a crouch behind a stack of ice-crusted barrels as headlights sweep the snowy courtyard.
The UAZ blocks the only open gate. Engine humming low. Tires half-buried in slush. A squad of six—maybe more—fan out, disciplined, tight formation. No wasted steps. Not guards. Not anymore. These were soldiers once. Spetsnaz, by the look of it. Now private muscle.
The EMP sits cold in Ghost's hand. Thumb brushes the trigger.
Now or never.
He tosses it sidearm. It clatters across the concrete.
Whummp—a deep pulse. Lights snap off. The UAZ dies mid-idle with a mechanical groan. Comms drop to static.
Ghost charges through the swirling smoke of his own making, dragging a length of chain and his stolen shotgun.
First two don't hear him coming—focused on restoring power. He clubs one in the side of the head, drops him like meat. Racks the shotgun. Fires point-blank into the second's chest.
The squad snaps to action. Muzzle flashes spark in the dark. Bullets zing past. One punches through his coat, burns a line across his ribs. Ghost barrels through, firing blind.
He ducks under a punch, shoves the chain into another man's legs—yanks hard. The man hits the ground wrong, neck bending with a wet crack.
Another soldier rushes in with a knife. Ghost catches the wrist, twists. The blade drops. He buries it into the man's thigh, then again in the side.
A round clips his mask. The crack spiderwebs across the skull-white plate. Blood trickles from his temple. He doesn't stop.
Last one tries to run.
Ghost fires. The man folds mid-step, sprawls twitching in red snow.
Silence returns in pulses. His own breathing loud in the mask. Shallow. Wet.
He stares at the UAZ. Dead vehicle. Open road beyond it.
He stumbles forward, dragging the chain behind him like a tail.
One more step. Then another.
---
Ghost limps across the icy road past the burning wreck of the UAZ. His boots crunch through broken glass and shell casings. Smoke coils around him like a cloak, thick with oil and blood and burned flesh. The alarm sirens fade behind him—still wailing, still blind.
He doesn't look back.
Snow starts falling in clumps, fat and quiet. The trees ahead stretch tall and dark, bare limbs like antlers against the sky. He hits the treeline and disappears inside it.
Each step stabs through bone. His ribs scream. The staple job's unraveling. He feels warmth spread under the gauze—bad sign. Blood loss makes the world flicker.
He keeps moving.
Through bramble. Over frozen roots. The wind punches through his stolen jacket, howling in the gaps. Somewhere far off, a dog barks. Then silence.
He spots a fallen tree and collapses behind it, half-buried in snow. The cold seeps in instantly. But it's quiet. No more boots. No more radio clicks. No more voices.
He pulls the stolen comms device from his belt, fumbles with gloved fingers. Static spits through. Then—
"…Warsaw… contact… alive?"
Ghost exhales through his teeth. Frost curls from the slit in his cracked mask.
---
Ghost props himself against the frozen trunk, fingers numb as he scrolls through the stolen comms device. The interface flickers—Soviet-era coding and patchwork firmware, clunky but functional. He digs deeper, bypasses junk directories.
Then he sees it.
A folder labeled /ghost/.
He opens it.
Inside, a single entry:
MARKOV // WAW // 48.3N
Ghost stares at the name for a moment. The snow melts on his brow, mixes with the dried blood along his cheek.
"Still breathing," he mutters. His voice cracks. "Barely."
He closes the comms unit, tucks it inside his jacket. Every joint aches. His ribs feel like glass shards grinding beneath skin. But there's movement in his shoulders now. Purpose. Direction.
He rolls to his knees, pushes himself upright. The tree groans under his weight. The forest stirs around him—owls, frost-laced wind, the distant echo of burning diesel and panic.
Ghost turns north.
Toward Warsaw.
He limps forward, disappearing into the trees.