North Atlantic, 23 December 2025

The HMS Sabre lurched violently to starboard, around her the sea erupted in a colossal wall of obsidian-black water that slammed against the bridge windows and lingered there, a frozen curtain illuminated by the erratic lightning bursts that painted the turmoil in a stark, electric white. Visibility had evaporated hours ago, the storm—an apocalyptic tempest that had slammed unannounced into the Atlantic—had swallowed everything beyond a few meters in a roiling vortex of sleet and gale-force winds that screamed at over eighty knots. Temperatures had cratered from a tolerable chill to a bone-shattering minus twenty-five Celsius in mere minutes. It was the type of cold that didn't just numb but invaded, promising a slow descent into a maddening delirium and death to any soul caught within its grasp.

Ice built up in ragged, crystalline strata faster than the straining wipers could shear away, rendering the glass an opaque, splintered veil through which the world dissolved into nothingness. Each successive wave rose as an implacable monolith, crested in ragged white, before toppling down with a cataclysmic fury onto the River-class OPV, burying her scuppers deep beneath the flood, where it held her suspended in a nauseating pause then hurling her back with a bone-jarring thud that resonated through every rivet and weld. Spray lashed upward in sheets, crystallizing mid-air into razor-sharp sleet that encased railings, antennae, and every exposed surface in armored rime, transforming the ship into a ghostly, frost-entombed mausoleum adrift in the maelstrom. By now, the 30mm cannon loomed inert—a macabre, frost-veiled gargoyle, its muzzle sagging beneath layers of glaze. The bilge pumps had capitulated hours prior, choked by the unyielding influx through the hull gash and the unending assault; water now surged freely in the lower decks, a creeping flood that heralded the Sabre's gradual demise.

Since the mission went tits up, Ghost had not once allowed himself the luxury of rest. He held vigil in the open doorway to the weather deck, a towering silhouette armored in ice, his balaclava and skull plate mask transformed into a rime-crusted memento mori that gleamed ominously in the crimson glow of the emergency lamps. Every few minutes he stepped into the teeth of the gale, NVGs cutting futile green swaths through the zero-visibility whiteout, before retreating back inside with flurries whipping in behind him—snow that melted into thin pink rivulets on the nonskid, diluted blood seeping from the shrapnel wound high in his left side that he refused to acknowledge.

He'd taken the hit during the exfil from the Orcus, a ricochet off a container that had punched through his plate carrier as if it had been made of tin. The round had torn a ragged furrow along his ribs, and while initially it had been searing and bloody, the glacial storm had numbed it down to a tormenting (but bearable) pulse that came with every labored inhale. He had rationed the last four heat packs in grim silence, pressing the final one not to his own wound but against the neck of the worst-off SBS operator, feeling the man's pulse fluttering like a trapped bird beneath his gloved fingers until it had simply ceased.

The op had held together for precisely seventeen minutes of fragile success.

Seventeen minutes from TF141’s shadow-like insertion onto the MV Orcus, securing the prototype EMP warhead amid the shadows of stacked containers, to the ambush by concealed ex-Spetnaz operatives—mercenaries loyal to Viktor “Reaper” Dragomirov, a rogue Russian arms broker whose shadowy network had flooded black markets from Syria to the Sahel. Seventeen minutes from the terse "package acquired" over comms to the extraction helo shattering in a vortex of flame as an Igla missile eviscerated its tail, plunging it into the depths in a plume of debris and fuel. But the real gut-punch had come when Dragomirov's men triggered a partial detonation of the device itself—a blinding electromagnetic surge that had fried the Sabre's electronics mid-retreat, leaving her blind, deaf, and limping on auxiliary power for a critical half-hour while circuits smoked and rebooted. An RPG had followed, clipping the hull and opening that fatal breach that had led to her flooding internally, but it was the EMP's lingering aftershocks that had turned their retreat into rout.

Seventeen minutes. Just seventeen minutes from dominance to despair: engines faltering on contaminated fuel, casualties mounting in the gloom from wounds sustained during the firefight to the freezing temperatures, and then this infernal storm had descended on them like a targeted wrath, rendering any possible exfil impossible. With comms reduced to sporadic bursts through the ionospheric chaos requesting exfil was impossible, and even if they got one message through with luck, no helo could fly through weather like this. Worst of all, the warhead was forfeit, left back in Dragomirov's clutches—their toll of blood and brothers expended for a resounding void. But mercenaries like those would not sit back idly, they were bound to return and finish them off, if the hypothermia did not do so first.

On the bridge, Captain John Price anchored himself to the chart table, one gloved fist locked around the overhead rail as the deck pitched anew, the inclinometer spiking beyond forty-five degrees and stalling there in defiant mockery. His beard was rimmed with frost, eyes bloodshot, and his voice could no longer hide the fatigue it bore. Commands were issued, but compliance had become a matter of sheer will; the skeletal crew that remained functional and unwounded aboard the Saber shuffled like wraiths, their motions dulled by hypothermia's insidious creep. Around them all Price's earlier somber pronouncement loomed over them: Six hours at best before the bulkheads cave. Then it would have to be the rafts and facing the waves and the godforsaken blizzard.

Down on the weather deck, outside the sickbay's flickering light, Soap MacTavish slumped against a bulkhead slick with frozen spray, his back grinding into the nonskid as another roll threatened to pitch him across the compartment. With trembling fingers—numbed to useless stubs—he fumbled one-handed with a roll of duct tape that had stiffened into brittle rigidity in the sub-zero air, trying to bind the ragged through-and-through wound in his thigh. Blood dripped steadily, pattering onto the deck where it flash-froze into glistening crimson medallions, stark against the white encrustation. When the ship bucked again, he let out a broken, mirthless bark of laughter that fogged and vanished instantly.

“Och, the bloody Atlantic’s makin’ a proper meal of us, lads,” he rasped, voice raw and cracking. “Just…grindin’ us down, bite by frozen bite.”

A moment later the comms crackled faintly in his earpiece—Ghost’s low, deadpan rumble tossing the same news and advice he had for the past two hours. “Still no joy on exfil. Keep moving or we freeze.”

Soap snorted, the sound turning into a pained hiss as the motion tugged at his wound. He keyed his own mic with a blood-slick thumb. “Aye, Lt. I’m movin’ as fast as a man with a hole in his leg and a ship tryin’ to dance the jig can manage. You enjoyin’ the view out there, ya great iced-over scarecrow? Bet ye’d look festive with a fairy light strung round that mask.”

Silence for a beat—just the storm and the creak of steel—then Ghost’s voice returned, flat as ever but carrying the faintest edge of dry amusement only Soap would catch. “Better than watching you bleed out on the deck, MacTavish. Patch it proper or I’ll do it for you. And save the lights—your blood’s red enough.”

Soap barked another laugh, weaker this time. “Promises, promises. Just don’t faint when ye see how much blood’s frozen to my trousers, big man. Might ruin your holiday spirit.”

He leaned his head back against the wall behind him and closed his eyes. “Proper shite Christmas card this’d make.”

Ghost didn’t reply, but Soap could almost feel the eye-roll through the static.

Gaz remained welded to the emergency radio console in the CIC, cocooned by dead screens and the pungent reek of charred wiring from the EMP’s residual havoc. His digits, blotched indigo and rigid as rods, kept doggedly twisting knobs and punching at the screens, trying to coax something out of them, because yielding felt like demise. They had clawed through more fiercer infernos and come out alive, to succumb here with their objective botched and the warhead vanished, that was just an irony too bitter to bear. So he kept hunting phantoms in the ether, grasping at operational scraps aboard a craft that was teetering on the brink of the sepulcher.

He had just withdrawn his frozen hands from the console, cupping them close to his mouth to coax a whisper of warmth into numb fingers, when the dead screen flickered with a single, anemic green pulse that shouldn't have been possible on auxiliary power alone. Then the speaker that had sat silent for the past six earlier hours crackled with a dry, electrostatic rasp.

It started with Morse. Slow. Keyed on 500 kHz, the old medium-frequency distress channel that had been phased out globally and replaced by GMDSS, satellites, and EPIRBs. No modern set even monitored it anymore, let alone transmitted. Yet here it was, punching clean through the storm static.

…---…

…---…

…---…

SOS.

Gaz froze mid-breath, the meager heat dying against his gloves. “Captain—”

Price was already shoving off the chart table, boots scraping as he crossed the tilting deck in two strides, beard shedding shards of ice as he leaned over the set.

“You all hearing this?” Gaz asked in a low voice, not tearing his eyes from the screen, as if fearing the moment he did he’d break whatever fragile connection had opened. He exhaled a cloud that hung and crystallized. “That's 500 kilohertz. International calling and distress. No one's legally transmitted on it since the nineties. Hell, most civilian sets can't even tune it anymore.”

Soap, still slumped outside the hatch, gave a brittle snort that carried inside. “Brilliant. We're gettin' ghosted by the bleedin' history channel now.”

The Morse ceased abruptly.

Then a voice followed, no carrier tone, no squelch break, just a sudden calm and professional tone despite the strain threading through it. It sounded like an old magnetic tape recording, faint wow and flutter in the background, the kind of audio that belonged in a museum.

“This is United States Ship Indianapolis…hit by two torpedoes amidships…taking on water rapidly…we are sinking…repeat, we are sinking…many men in the water…sharks… sharks in the water….attacking survivors…one officer remaining aboard attempting to maintain transmission…if any station copies this message…request immediate assistance…position approximately one-one degrees north, one-three-three degrees west…this is USS Indianapolis…over…”

The last word was almost swallowed by a hiss then the carrier dropped dead.

No one moved. The only sounds were the storm's relentless battering and the low, ominous slosh of water shifting in the bilges below. Price stared at the silent speaker as if it might bite him. His jaw worked beneath the rime-crusted beard, but no words came at first.

Soap was the one who broke the silence, voice barely above a whisper. “Indianapolis. Christ…that's the one. Nineteen forty-five. Delivered the Hiroshima bomb components, then torpedoed by a Jap sub. Sank in twelve minutes. Eight hundred men in the water. Sharks took most of 'em over four days. Worst shark attack in history. They didn't even start searching till—”

“Till the fourth day,” Price finished, hoarse. “Rescued three hundred and sixteen. The rest…” He trailed off, eyes still fixed on the set. “That message. Word for word, it's the bloody distress call from the logs. The one the Navy ignored.”

Soap pushed himself up slightly, one hand pressed against the icy steel to steady himself, face pale under the frost. “You're tellin' me we're pickin' up a transmission from nineteen forty-fuckin'-five? In the middle of this shite?”

Gaz glanced at the console again, as if expecting another pulse. “Could be a hoax. Dragomirov…Psy-ops. Some sick bastard aboard the Orcus with an old spark-gap rig and too much time. But on exactly 500 kHz? Through this ionospheric mess? And that position he gave—it's hundreds of miles from us.”

Price finally straightened, knuckles white on the console edge. “Or it's not a hoax.”

He didn't need to say the rest, it sounded like madness already, but out here, in a storm that had come out of nowhere, with temperatures plummeting like the bottom had dropped out of the world and electronics half-fried by Dragomirov's toy—reality already felt thin. And now a voice from a grave eighty years cold had reached across it to speak directly to them.

Ghost's voice cut in over the intercom as if he'd heard every word from his frozen perch outside: “Thermal's showing a large contact. Dead ahead. Faint, but…big. Over two hundred fifty meters.”

It began with a low vibration through the hull, not their failing engines nor the pumps gasping their last, but a hum that rose up from the water like the rumble of distant trains under the earth. Then the fog, that impenetrable white wall that had smothered visibility for hours, began to thin. Not scatter, not lift—thin, like milk poured into black water, diluting from the center outward. A vast shape displaced it, pushing the murk aside with its inexorable mass, revealing itself in fragments: first a blunt, ice-scarred bow in faded wartime grey, barnacles and old torpedo wounds crusted white; then the towering superstructure, portholes like dark, empty eyes; nine triple 8-inch turrets frozen in traverse, their barrels thick as tree trunks and plated in frost that glittered sickly under the lightning. At her stern, the Stars and Stripes hung rigid, frozen solid in the wind. Beside it, stenciled in crisp white letters against the grey hull:

USS INDIANAPOLIS

CA-35

She rode the towering swells with an unnatural calm, neither rolling nor pitching, as if the Atlantic itself shrank from her touch. And beneath her keel—and now beneath the Sabre’s own hull—the water had come alive. Long, sinuous shadows glided just below the surface, ten, fifteen feet of sleek muscle. Fins sliced the black water in lazy, patient arcs, vanishing only to reappear closer, circling the two ships in tightening rings. Dozens of them. In water that had dropped to minus degrees, water that should have been too cold, too dead, for anything to move.

Soap’s voice came out thin and cracked, barely audible over the gale. “Tell me those are dolphins. Please, lads…tell me they’re bloody dolphins.”

Gaz, eyes locked on screens that showed nothing but snow and static, whispered, “No thermal bloom. No radar return. But the sea temp just plummeted another ten degrees around her. It’s like she’s drinking whatever little heat remains right out of the ocean.”

Ghost’s voice rolled in over the comms from the port wing, ice cracking off his mask as he spoke. “Contact confirmed. Bearing steady. Range closing at three knots. No wake, no engine noise. We’re down to three feet in the bilges, no heat packs left, fuel is at critical. I’m prepping the RHIB.”

“No.” Price’s word cracked like a whip through the intercom. “We’re out of everything—ammo, fuel, time. But boarding that thing is walking straight into whatever trap or hallucination is waiting. It’s suicide, Ghost.”

A beat of silence stretched, broken only by the creak of the Sabre’s hull and the wet, slow slap of fins against the water below.

Ghost’s reply came back flat, almost conversational. “We’re already dead if we stay here, Captain. Might as well see what’s waiting on the other side.”

Price turned from the window, eyes bloodshot slits in the red light. The Indianapolis loomed larger now, her frozen guns trained nowhere in particular. His mouth opened to renew the argument, words already forming on his tongue, but they died unspoken. His eyes tracked the frost crawling inward across the bridge windows like crystalline veins claiming territory, the way it spiderwebbed over the glass until the outside world was a blurred, white smear. He saw Soap's hands shaking violently against the bulkhead, knuckles white with effort just to stay upright; heard the low slosh of black water slopping ankle-deep in the passageway below, flecked with ice and carrying the sharp, coppery stench of blood from the wounded men still aboard. The Sabre was dying, and so were the men who couldn't walk, couldn't fight, couldn't even hold a weapon steady. Price wasn't the type to abandon them to the cold and the sea. Not his men and not like this.

He exhaled, the breath fogging thick. "Ghost," he said, voice rough. "Take Gaz and whoever's still on their feet. Get aboard that thing and see what's what. If there's heat, fuel, anything we can use—bring it back. If it's a trap..." He let the sentence hang. "Don't be a hero. Get out."

Ghost didn't argue. He was already moving, vanishing into the gale to wrestle the RHIB alongside. Soap pushed himself upright with a grimace, fresh blood welling through the duct tape on his thigh. "Cap'n—"

"Save it, MacTavish," Price cut in, softer than usual. "You're wounded. Gaz is half-frozen, and Ghost is hurt but they are the ones who can still move. I'm staying with the rest and you with us. They need someone who knows how to keep 'em breathing till the lot get back."

Soap's jaw set stubborn, eyes narrowing under the rime-crusted brows. He took a limping step forward, leaning heavy on the bulkhead but refusing to sag. "With respect, sir—bollocks to that. I'm not sittin' here waitin' for the sea to take us while Ghost and Gaz poke about on that ghost ship alone. I've got one good leg and a rifle. That's more than enough. You need eyes over there, someone to watch their six. And if it's a trap..." He paused, breath pluming sharp. "Better three of us spring it than two. Besides, you know I'm the best at blowin' shit up if it goes south. Let me go, Cap. I'll make it back—or I won't, but either way, I'm not freezin' my arse off here feelin' useless."

Price stared at him for a long beat, the inclinometer creaking as another roll sloshed water higher in the passageway. His gaze flicked to the blood trailing down Soap's leg, to the tremor in his hands that wasn't just cold. Then he exhaled, the fight bleeding out of him. "Stubborn Scottish bastard," he muttered, almost fond. "Fine. Go. But you fall behind or that leg gives out, you signal—and you get your arse back here. No hero shite."

Soap flashed a crooked grin that didn't reach his eyes, pain etching lines around them. "Wouldn't dream of it, sir."

Gaz, already at the hatch, managed a weak thumbs-up despite his chattering teeth. "Let's move before he changes his mind." They vanished into the storm after Ghost, leaving Price alone on the tilting bridge and the groans of the dying Sabre.

They crossed the narrow gap in grim silence, the RHIB's outboard sputtering against the gale as Ghost throttled it forward, the inflatable hull slapping erratically against the swells like a panicked heartbeat. The little boat pitched wildly between the two behemoths—the dying Sabre astern and the spectral Indianapolis looming ahead—bucking like a rodent scurrying between trampling giants. Every crest threatened to flip them, the wounded paying the price: Soap grimaced with each jolt, fresh blood seeping through his duct-taped thigh, staining the bilge water pink; Ghost gripped the tiller one-handed, the other pressed unconsciously to his side where the frozen gash throbbed, his breaths measured but shallow. The sharks shadowed them the whole way, dark torpedoes gliding just beneath the surface, fins cutting the foam in tightening arcs—never closer than twenty meters, but close enough to see the cold gleam of their eyes in the Sabre's fading floodlights, as if sizing up the intruders, waiting for a slip, a splash, the scent of vulnerability from the bleeding men aboard.

The Jacob's ladder dangling from the Indianapolis's rail was a brittle relic of ice-encased rope and rusted rungs, stained with flaking crimson that cracked under their numb grips. It creaked as they climbed one by one, each slick step splintering frost and sending shards plinking into the black water below. The sharks drew nearer now, circling in lazy figure-eights, their massive forms brushing the surface with menace—eyes rolling white as they scented the blood dripping from Soap's wound and Ghost's side. The fins sliced closer, herding the team upward like patient predators funneling prey in.

Ghost ascended first, unyielding despite the pain, his boots finally thudding onto the deck with a resonant boom that echoed unnaturally.

Soap followed, grunting through clenched teeth, each pull aggravating the fire in his thigh. Blood welled anew with every strain, dripping in thick, dark beads that trailed down the rope and plinked into the churning black below. He risked a glance downward once—then twice—watching the droplets vanish into the foam, and the shadowy forms converging beneath like wolves scenting a trail. He could've sworn there'd been four sharks shadowing the RHIB on the crossing, patient escorts in the gloom. Now there were at least seven—longer shadows joining the pack, fins slicing the surface in tighter, hungrier loops, drawn by the blood calling them like a dinner bell. Their eyes gleamed cold and black as they rolled upward, tracking his ascent, waiting for the inevitable slip that would send fresh meat tumbling into their domain.

He muttered a curse under his breath, forcing his focus upward, arms burning as he crested the rail and rolled onto the deck with a suppressed groan. Ghost was already there, rifle low, scanning the empty expanse—though his masked gaze flicked briefly to Soap's leg, noting the fresh bloom of red.

Gaz came last, reaching for the ladder the moment Soap cleared the top, his gaze dropping involuntarily to the shadowy figures weaving below before he started hauling himself upward. He'd barely climbed just past halfway of the treck—blood from Soap's ascent still slick on the rope—when his boot slipped on a rung glazed thicker with ice than the rest. His grip tore free entirely, and he plummeted backward with a choked curse, tumbling down the towering side of the heavy cruiser in a heart-stopping freefall that scraped past a dozen rungs before the ladder's loose lower rope whipped around his ankle in a savage twist, yanking him to a brutal halt.

He dangled there, upside-down, body slamming hard against the hull as the ship rose on a swell—head now mere meters from the churning black water, blood rushing to his skull, arms flailing wildly for any hold. The sharks exploded into frenzy below him: a massive fin sliced the surface right beneath his face, jaws gaping wide in a flash of serrated teeth as the beast surged upward, close enough for Gaz to lock eyes with its cold, milky gaze—another joined it instantly, then a third, circling in a tightening whirlpool of muscle and hunger, tails thrashing the water into foam as they waited for the rope to give or the knot to slip.

"Not like this—bloody hell, not like this!" Gaz roared, voice cracking with raw panic, legs kicking uselessly as the ladder swung him like bait on a hook.

Price's voice crackled over the comms from the Sabre's tilting bridge, sharp with urgency as the helmet feeds from Ghost, Soap, and Gaz flickered across his cracked tablet screen—grainy, stuttering images of the frozen ladder, the churning black water, and the fins slicing closer. "Ghost. Gaz. What the hell is going on over there?"

Gaz's response came back breathless and ragged, punctuated by grunts and the creak of rope. "Bit busy here, Cap—!"

Price didn't wait for more. He shoved out of the bridge hatch onto the Sabre's ice-slick wing, gripping the frozen rail as the smaller ship rolled hard, spray exploding over the side in frozen needles. His eyes locked on the distant bulk of the Indianapolis through the blinding gale—her grey silhouette unnaturally steady amid the chaos. The RHIB bobbed empty below her rail now, and there—halfway down the ladder—was Gaz, dangling upside-down, the rope snarled around his ankle as he thrashed.

Price's breath caught. Even at this distance, through the swirling snow and the Sabre's dying floodlights, he saw it: a massive shark breaching in a surge of white water, jaws gaping wide in a flash of jagged ivory, snapping shut mere inches from Gaz's head.

Foam exploded as the beast twisted away, frustrated, while two more converged below—tails thrashing, fins cutting vicious arcs, drawn inexorably by the blood trailing from Soap higher up.

"Pull him up!" Price barked into the mic, voice raw. "Ghost—Soap—get him the fuck up now!"

Ghost was already at the railway before the order left Price’s mouth, dropping to one knee and seizing the ladder's ropes with iron grips. "Haul!" he barked at Soap next to him, but the Scotsman was already throwing himself down beside him despite the agony in his thigh, grabbing the lines with both hands, blood smearing the hemp as they pulled in unison—muscles straining, boots braced against the deck. The ladder groaned and creaked, inching upward as they dragged Gaz higher, hand over hand, like two fishermen reeling in a thrashing catch. Gaz bounced against the hull with each heave, grunting with every impact, the sharks leaping in frustrated bursts below—jaws snapping shut on empty water where his head had been seconds before.

Price watched, helpless, knuckles white on the rail as the Sabre lurched again, water sloshing higher around his boots. The wounded men below groaned faintly over the open channel, but his eyes stayed fixed on that distant ladder—praying the rope held, praying his team made it over the rail before the sea claimed one more.

With a final, coordinated yank that tore a muffled grunt from Ghost's throat and a sharp hiss from Soap, they hauled Gaz over the rail. He collapsed in a heap on the deck, gasping and trembling, leg still snarled in the twisted rope until Soap sliced it free with his knife, the severed line whipping away into the void.

Gaz lay there for a second, chest heaving, staring up at the amber-tinged sky. "Remind me," he wheezed, voice shaking with adrenaline and a brittle laugh, "never to climb anything again. Ever."

Soap clapped him on the shoulder, wincing as he did. "Welcome aboard, mate. Next time, try not to feed the fish on the way up."

Ghost was already back on his feet, rifle raised, scanning the silent deck as if the ordeal had cost him nothing. Below, the sharks resumed their patient circles—now a full dozen strong—fins cutting the water like sentinels satisfied their prey had been delivered.

Price's voice crackled over the comms from the Sabre. "You lot alright?"

Ghost keyed his mic, flat as ever. "Gaz took a detour. We're aboard."

Price exhaled audibly, the sound heavy with relief and something darker. "Eyes sharp. Get what you can. And get back. We're holding here."

The team regrouped on the deck, breaths fogging around them. The air aboard felt heavier, laced with the briny sting of salt and the metallic stench of old blood, undercut by the acrid ghost of cordite long spent and a sweeter, cloying note—like meat left too long in the sun, rot just beginning to take hold. In some perverse way, the Indianapolis felt more alive than the Sabre ever had: the deck plates radiated a faint, unnatural warmth that seeped through their boots despite the arctic gale beyond.

Around them the air had stilled completely, no howling wind, no screech of sleet against metal that had become the norm to them, only an oppressive dead calm that rang in their ears like tinnitus. It was as if they had stepped into the eye of the storm itself, a pocket of suffocating quiet carved out of the chaos. Yet a glance back toward the dark sea proved otherwise: beyond some invisible boundary, the blizzard raged unabated, white curtains whipping across the waves, the distant silhouette of the Sabre still pitching violently like a toy boat in a bathtub, her running lights flickering weakly through the murk.

Soap shifted his weight on to his good leg, wincing as the motion tugged at his thigh, eyes narrowing against the sourceless amber glow spilling from open hatches. "Christ," he muttered. "It's like the storm's afraid to touch her. Or she's keepin' it out on purpose."

Gaz, still on one knee catching his breath from the climb, scanned the empty expanse with wide eyes. "No wind. No cold. Feels like we've crossed into another world altogether."

He glanced down at his gloved hands, flexing them—numbness receding too quickly, replaced by that cloying warmth. "And this heat... it's coming from inside her. Not the air. The ship."

Price's voice crackled over the comms from the Sabre, tight with the strain of watching their helmet feeds through the static. "Talk to me. You secure? What's the sitrep?"

Ghost keyed his mic without breaking stride as he began advancing toward the superstructure. "Deck clear. Environment...anomalous. Storm's locked out. Moving to bridge for overwatch."

A pause on the line, filled only by the faint slosh of rising water aboard the Sabre. "Copy that," Price replied, voice edged with unease. "Watch your backs. Remember, no heroics. That thing's been on the bottom for eighty years."

Every footfall sent faint vibrations rippling outward through the steel, like pebbles skipped across a still pond, answered by distant creaks and groans from deep within the hull. Yet the ship was empty—utterly, oppressively empty. Hatches gaped on either side like screaming mouths, leading into corridors where shadows twitched at the edges of vision, and frost etched the bulkheads in elongated smears that resembled desperate handprints, clawed outward as if something had fought to escape the freezing dark. Ghost remained silent the entire time, gaze sweeping the barren gun turrets and twisted catwalks.

"Feels like we're walkin' on a grave that's still settlin', lads." Soap’s gaze snagged on the barren gun mounts, chains dangling frozen like nooses in the still air, and he tightened his grip on his rifle until the stock creaked, that earlier quip about dolphins twisting into a cold knot in his gut. God he really wished they were dolphins. He could do with one of those friendly bastards just now…

They formed a loose wedge, Ghost at point—the only one seemingly unmoved by the emptiness or portholes glowing with that sourceless, jaundiced light that spilled from within like infection. The ship murmured as they pressed forward: rigging overhead creaking in drawn-out moans that echoed like pleas for help long ignored; meltwater dripping in rhythmic plinks from frozen overheads, pooling into rust-brown stains on the deck as if the Indianapolis were weeping congealed blood.

Each compartment they passed offered its own tableau of frozen horror: a mess hall visible through an open hatch, tables eternally set with trays and cutlery fused to steel by decades of ice; berthing spaces where shadows pooled too thickly in the corners; a ladderwell descending into warmer, thicker air carrying that insistent, subsonic thump from the depths—engines with no right to turn, or perhaps countless fists pounding faintly against unyielding bulkheads from below.

Ghost reached the armored citadel first, the ladder to the bridge rising like a rusted spine into the dim amber glow above. He paused only a fraction of a second, rifle low and ready, then ascended alone—rungs groaning under his weight with reluctant admissions. Soap and Gaz hung back, advancing slower along the main deck: Soap's breaths kept coming short and sharp, eyes darting to every flicker of movement that wasn't there; Gaz muttering half-formed readings from his inert scanner, voice edged with frustration and creeping dread.

Cresting the ladder, Ghost shouldered through the bridge door that hung crooked on corroded hinges, it creaked loudly in the dead stillness, spilling that sickly yellow light into the gloom. The space was a shattered mausoleum: wheel locked in frost, compass binnacle splintered, charts curled and fused to the plotting table. But there…huddled against the pedestal, knees drawn tight to chest, sat a solitary figure.

Ghost leveled his SCAR-H without hesitation, stance rock-solid despite the blood loss.

"Hands," he said, voice flat and cold. "Show them. Slow."

The SCAR-H locked steady, red dot unwavering on the figure's chest as he advanced, closing the distance step by measured step, boots silent on the frost-dusted deck plates. “Hands where I can see them” he repeated “Now.”

Price's voice snapped over the comms, sharp and urgent from the Sabre's bridge as he watched the helmet feed through static-laced static. “Ghost. What the hell am I looking at? Is that—Christ, is that a body?”

Ghost didn't respond—his focus absolute on the person before him, his finger indexed along the trigger guard. Asset or threat? The calculation ran cold on his head. The figure hadn't moved yet, but the rise and fall of its chest was unmistakable now as he closed in.

Boots clanged on the ladder behind him. Gaz and Soap cresting the bridge wing in a rush, rifles snapping up as they cleared the hatch. They fanned out instinctively, freezing mid-stride at the sight.

Soap's breath plumed in a sharp cloud, his voice a hushed Scots burr laced with disbelief. “Bloody hell…”

Gaz swept his weapon-mounted torch across the shattered stations—wheel locked in ice, charts fused to the table, gauges cracked and frozen at 1945 readings—before settling the beam on the huddled form. “They're... solid,” he whispered in a tight voice. “Breathing. Look at the chest—it's moving. How the fuck is it breathing?”