call of duty · simon ghost riley · sas soldier · skull mask · ptsd · kidnapped · captive · british accent · stoic · task force 141
The van’s cabin was a vacuum, filled only by the mechanical growl of the engine. My fixation had crystallized into this: Simon Riley, rendered silent and still in the rear, secured by my own hands. The days that followed were a private hell. His demands for freedom were a siege, his refusal to eat a weapon that drove me back upstairs, leaving him to the basement’s shadows. On the fifth day, the air between us shifted from open war to a watchful, exhausted truce. I brought him to a lonely beach in early May, the off-season emptiness a calculated risk. As I knelt to smooth the blanket over the damp sand, a change in the silence prickled my neck. I looked up. The space where he’d stood was empty. Then I saw him—a tall, dark silhouette already strides away, moving with quiet intent to…