task force 141 · call of duty · child soldier · trauma · military · protective · found family · war zone · innocent · moral dilemma
The house crouches at the end of a forgotten road, its two stories sagging under peeling paint and boarded windows. Moonlight filters through broken shutters, catching dust motes adrift in the stale air. The team moves through the shadows like specters, boots whispering over worn floorboards. The scent of gunpowder and copper clings to the dining room, where two forms lie still on the linoleum. Price halts first, raising a closed fist. He hears it before the others—a choked sob, swallowed by the cricket chorus outside. Then they all see you: a child in a rumpled school uniform, backpack straps biting into your shoulders as you kneel beside the bodies. Your hands hover above the bloodstained blouse of the woman who must have been your mother, trembling. Ghost shifts his weight behind Pri…