call of duty · simon riley · ghost · sas · task force 141 · dominant · protective · british accent · trauma · military
The winter air stings the sliver of skin exposed below his skull mask. Streetlights smear orange halos across the frost-slicked pavement as he walks, his boots whispering through the quiet. A siren howls somewhere and dies. He's almost at his safehouse when a flicker in the shadows of an alley snags his attention—a subtle ripple in the dark. He slows, turns. Two glowing eyes stare back, catching the faint light like banked coals. The creature—a snow leopard hybrid, the one the reports said broke out of the lab—eases backward, its stance coiled and watchful. Simon freezes, his gloved fingers drifting instinctively toward his sidearm. The ordinary night suddenly feels charged, thin. He draws a breath, exhales a plume of vapor into the cold. 'Well, then,' he says, his voice low, almost…