The air was heavy with heat, thick with smoke.
A car blazed in the distance, its metal frame shrieking as it warped.
He ran toward it, every step pounding in his chest.
The girl was there — trapped, coughing, her hands clawing at the seatbelt.
He pulled hard, dragging her free. Her weight collapsed into his arms.
Her face was impossible to see — blurred like smeared paint.
Her lips moved, but the sounds were gibberish, sharp and broken.
The heat pressed closer, almost swallowing them whole—
Black.
"Cap. Cap. Hey, Cap!"
Captain Elias Ward's eyes snapped open to the cold sting of ocean air. Darkness hung thick around them, broken only by the faint red glow of the boat's deck light. The low hum of the engine was gone — they had cut it ten minutes ago to avoid sonar detection.
Ward exhaled slow, clearing the last of the dream from his head. Third time this month. Same girl. Same burning car. Same whisper he couldn't understand.
"Thought you were gonna nap through the op," Lopez joked from the bench across from him. He was the youngest in the squad, barely twenty-four, with a grin that looked too clean for the things they'd seen.
"Kid," Hale muttered, adjusting the strap on his rifle, "when you've been doing this as long as the Cap, you learn to catch sleep when you can."
Hale was Ward's second-in-command. Stocky, scarred, and the kind of man you'd follow into hell without thinking twice. He didn't smile much, but Ward trusted him more than anyone.
On the far side, Carter was humming under his breath — the same old blues riff he always did before a mission. "Keeps me steady," he'd once said.
"Quiet," Ward said, not sharply, just enough to remind them. His eyes swept the group. Lopez, Hale, Carter, plus Briggs, Sykes, and Morrow — each one geared up in black tactical wetsuits, rifles slung tight.
The island ahead was just a jagged smear in the fog. Somewhere on it, beneath an abandoned warehouse facade, was a facility running illegal experiments — whispers of human trials that never made it to the public. Their orders: get in, get proof, get out.
Ward lifted a hand. "Gear check."
In unison, the squad tapped chest plates, checked sidearms, tightened mask straps. Silencers. Combat knives. Waterproof comms. Every movement rehearsed.
The boat slowed to a crawl. Ward's palm went up, fingers spread. "Engines off."
The hum died completely, replaced by the slap of waves against the hull.
"All right, boys," Ward said, sliding his mask over his face. "From here on out, we're ghosts."
They slipped into the water one by one, the cold hitting like knives. Ward felt it bite through the wetsuit, but he kept his breathing steady. The black sea pressed around them, no sound except the faint hiss of air in their regulators.
They swam in wedge formation, each man's movements smooth, disciplined. A few minutes later, the dock rose out of the fog above them.
Ward surfaced slowly — just his eyes and mask breaking the waterline. Two guards stood at the far end, smoking, silhouettes against the mist.
Ward tapped his wrist twice. Hale and Briggs went under. Thirty seconds later, both guards vanished into the water without a sound. The cigarettes rolled away, their embers dying against damp wood.
The squad climbed up, boots hitting the dock in silence. Rifles out, eyes sharp.
Inside the perimeter, they hugged walls, sweeping corners. The place smelled wrong — sharp disinfectant over something rotten.
Lopez whispered in Ward's ear, "Guess the rumors were true."
"Keep moving," Ward said.
They passed empty rooms with rusted machinery, crates marked with fake shipping codes.
The main building loomed ahead, a block of steel and shadow. Lopez knelt at the door lock. "Thirty seconds," he murmured.
Carter chuckled softly. "You said thirty last time, took you forty-five."
"Yeah, well, I wasn't showing off for company then," Lopez shot back, fingers dancing over the tumblers. The door clicked open.
Ward entered first. The pale blue glow of computer screens washed over the room. Glass walls revealed another chamber — rows of cages just tall enough for a person to stand in.
Hale stepped closer, his voice low. "Jesus…"
Carter grabbed a file from the desk. The cover read: Subject Trials – Phase III. Inside was a photograph of a human figure strapped to a chair, tubes running into its skull and arms.
Ward's jaw tightened. "Get everything. Photos, files, drives. Move fast."
Hale began snapping pictures. Lopez ripped hard drives from towers. Briggs swept through drawers for anything portable.
That's when Ward heard it — a faint, steady beep.
Hale froze mid-shot. "Cap… you hearing that?"
The sound was everywhere — walls, floor, even the air vents.
Ward's eyes locked on a small red light under the desk. Not an alarm. A timer.
His voice went sharp. "Drop it! Out, now—"
The floor exploded before the sentence ended. Heat and steel tore through the room, hurling Ward into the wall.
His ears rang. The world became fire and smoke. Through the haze, he saw Lopez crawling toward the exit — then disappearing as the ceiling caved in.
Another blast tore the far wall apart, flames curling into the cages. The smell hit — burning flesh, acrid and final.
Ward tried to move, but his body refused. His vision tunneled, edges blackening.
And there — in the chaos — he saw her.
The girl from the dream. Standing in the doorway, face still blurred. Lips moving in that same nonsense whisper.
The heat pressed in, the world closing to a single, impossible image—
Black.