There had to be about three dozen hostiles clogging the lobby; waiting for them to come down from the second floor. Heatstroke and Scarab had no way to leave the way they came, not without extreme difficulty. Like mice, the two of them sprang the trap. That tiny stock of weapons was just bait. All they could do was stand on either sides of the doorway, out of their line of sight.

One of the men in the mass of militia called out in a heavy accent, "Come out, Americans! Surrender or die!"

Heatstroke met Scarab's startled look with one of her own. That accent was a far cry from an Afghan native. It sounded Russian. These guys had help.

"We know you are there! Let's not play this game."

Scarab gripped her assault rifle like a vice. "What now?" Just outside, the voice swapped to Russian and barked out what sounded like orders.

"I'm thinking..." Heatstroke glanced up the stairs. It was true, they couldn't leave through the lobby. The only way they could go was up, but what then? The best they chance they had was to hold their ground until back up came, if back up came.

As if in slow motion, a flashbang sailed through the threshold.

No...!

The flashbang hit the edge of a step, and at the very same moment, Scarab jumped to her side of the doorway to push her against the wall. The room went white, and all sound was lost to a harsh ringing. Robbed of her sense of balance, she wobbled and probably would've fallen if she wasn't temporarily wedged between the wall and Scarab. Her hand was squeezed and pulled. Without any sight to rely on, she blindly followed as she was yanked along up the stairs.

Five steps later, her vision came back as a blurring afterimage of the flash grenade hitting the stairs, fading steadily to the dragging and uneven sight of her feet rushing. Her ears continued to ring. If she spoke, her words were lost to the temporary deafness.

Scarab turned into one of the rooms and kicked the door shut behind them. She let go of her hand to throw open the window. "We're gonna have to jump!"

Jump? It was only the second story, but all it'd take was a twisted ankle to doom them. For that reason, Heatstroke hesitated.

When she didn't follow her to the windowsill, Scarab snapped her head back. "What are you waiting for? They'll be here any second!"

Just outside the door, the voices of the enemy were approaching.

Fuck it!

Heatstroke hurried over and they both leaped from the window to the street below. She landed and rolled on the asphalt, got up and grabbed Scarab by the back of her shirt to haul her to her feet. "We've got to get to the truck."

They parked around the corner from the building, but the window they jumped from was on the opposite side. In order to reach it, they had to loop around. This seemed to throw their pursuers off somewhat. Grossly out numbering them though, there were enough tangos readily available to stand around their vehicle. There were several other cars parked and left running. Probably drivers in them, ready to speed off. They wouldn't be getting out of here at this rate.

Scarab unhooked a flashbang from her tactical vest and hurled it. With the three enemies by their car stunned, they took them out and raced over. Heatstroke dove into the driver's seat and turned the key with so much force that the car gave an indignant sputter before it started up.

A bullet broke through their windshield. Heatstroke went into drive and slammed on the accelerator. "Scarab! Shoot these assholes!"

The Private grabbed her assault rifle and turned in her seat to shoot at the other cars. While Heatstroke couldn't watch, as she banked and weaved through the largely empty streets in a futile effort to shake them, she heard a tire pop behind them followed by the fading echos of a crash.

"Shit, we got more of them joining in off that side street!" Scarab exclaimed.

Heatstroke white knuckled the steering wheel. "They know the layout better than we do, I'm gonna try and get us out of the city."

Her knowledge of the city's streets was limited, but she was able to navigate her way to an exit that'd get them out of the city proper. The road they ended up on led to open flat lands with less obstacles to dodge but less places to turn behind for cover. All the while, Scarab was firing almost nonstop behind them. Bullets clipped and grazed their car.

The rear view mirror exploded with one of the shots. Heatstroke thanked her lucky stars that she had her goggles on as she felt a few pieces of glass cut into her cheek.

"India Team, we heard a few crashes from your general direction. What's the situation?" MacTavish asked.

It was too late, a last stand out here would be suicide. Scarab replied, practically screaming, "Captain! The mission was a trap! We've got-"

"Whoa, calm down! Your voice is blowing out your mic!" MacTavish interrupted. "What happened?"

Scarab took a breath and reined in her volume. That was replaced with seething frustration. "We've got twenty plus tangos riding our asses. They were waiting for us. Heatstroke and I are trying to outrun them in the truck but we can't shake 'em."

"Activate your emergency transponder and we'll come to assist," the Captain ordered.

Another bullet pinged off the front column of the car. It was at that moment that a burst of pressure and then burning ripped from the back of Heatstroke's shoulder through and out below her collarbone. In her singular experience getting shot in the past, she learned one thing: don't look at the wound. Her ear was hot, and it was only then that she realized that blood was leaking down the side of her neck.

How many bullets hit her? She wasn't sure anymore. From the corner of her eye, she noticed Scarab gawking. Heatstroke gripped the wheel tighter, but the tension brought a tingling sensation down her arm that felt worse than the wound itself. "Fire on those trucks, Scarab!"

"R-right!" Scarab turned and continued to lay down covering fire that was met with more gunshots to their already pock marked car. Heatstroke's foot pressed down on the accelerator, letting their speed climb in a last ditch hope that they could outrun these guys.

Next thing she knew, the truck was stopped and she was draped over the steering wheel. They must've run off road into a ditch, because in front of them was a wall of dirt. Hands tugged at her seat belt, but that wasn't coming off. From the corner of her eye, she watched as Scarab gave up and kicked the passenger door open. She climbed out and ran...

As Heatstroke watched her childhood friend's retreating back, her blood ran cold. She couldn't feel a thing, but she knew her injures must've been serious if Scarab couldn't take her along. If Scarab stayed to save her, they'd both die. For the good of both of them, one man had to get left behind.

The faint piddle of tears hit the dashboard, mixing with a forming puddle of blood, and Heatstroke wheezed and choked as her body convulsed from her sobs. It was noisy, and although she wanted to stay silent and play possum until help found her, the spasmodic whining was beyond her control. The enemy would hear her. They'd finish her off. She'll die.

She had six months left before she could go home. Six months! Her dad would've picked her up from the airport; she would've been back for New Years and they would've celebrated Christmas late together. Her mom even promised to keep the tree up for her. She would've caught up with her old buddies back before she even joined the Rangers, in the regular Army. Probably go to that Thai place Harris was always raving about with him.

She didn't even get a chance to tell Scarab -to tell Alex- just how she felt about her. For years and years, she harbored this persistent crush, stuck by her side the only way she ever knew how, and this was the pay off? She really kept this to herself and now she didn't even get to spout it off as some final words? If this was a movie, she was robbed.

How long Heatstroke spent in that car was unclear. Long enough that blood loss from her cumulative injuries left her edging on the brink of unconsciousness. It came to a point where she was too exhausted to cry anymore. Cheek pressed to the wheel and dazed, she had no choice but to wonder what would happen after this. Eventually her teammates would find her, if not dead then very damn close to it. Captain MacTavish would have to make a condolence call to her parents. The last time he had to, he harbored an air of mourning for days after. Even though he didn't shed a tear, he clearly wanted to. Would it be the same for her? Her body would be packed in a bag and shipped home. She'd get a military funeral: stars and stripes on her coffin and punctuated by gunshots. Twenty-six and killed in action. She'd become another statistic. Her parents would sort through her things, probably read her old diaries that she kept in a shoe box. Maybe she'd be awarded another Purple Heart posthumously.

Distantly, she caught voices approaching the car. With great difficulty, she focused on them in hopes that she'd recognize the people speaking.

She didn't.

Her heart sank. Did that mean that Scarab died? Was she next? Heatstroke made one effort after another to move, to escape, but her arm lost all strength and refused to lift her off the steering column. In the process, more of her blood spattered on the dusty plastic of the console.

Dari. They were speaking Dari, from what few words she recognized. They were probably local militia.

Boots appeared just outside the open passenger door. Three people. One crouched to peer inside. His face was covered, but the words he spoke next made her freeze with terror. She didn't know much of any Dari, but she knew a lick of Russian.

"[Get this one out of the car.]" He said.

The driver side door flew open and, after a flick of a knife that split the seat belt, a pair of hands yanked her sideways and out of the wreck with very little regard for her injuries. While she couldn't muster the strength to fight with her arm, she kicked and twisted in a last ditch effort to break their grip. Her efforts were rewarded with a boot to the ribs that sent her rolling on her stomach to cough and choke on the sand. In all the chaos, her bun came loose and strands of hair hung over her face. A hand gripped the sagging coil of hair and pulled her head back so its owner could study her face.

"It's your lucky day," the Russian mused, silvery eyes crinkling in the corners. "We will be keeping you alive. Makarov can find some use for you."

Makarov. He said Makarov. Currently the most wanted man on the globe for his terrorist acts, with a body count well in the hundreds and a casualty count that hit a thousand just this year. That Makarov. Heatstroke's whole body began to shake.

Would he torture her for information? She was a Special Forces Operative. Her clearances granted her a wealth of knowledge concerning the counter terrorism operations in the works, especially where tracking his madman ass down and eliminating him was concerned. Odds were she'd never see home again.

The emergency transponder was never activated. For that reason, the Task Force needed to search the surrounding city and roads until their satellite spotted the wreckage that was left of the truck, driven off into a ditch and abandoned. By then, it'd been close to an hour since the last time Scarab had frantically contacted them.

Roach helped comb the surrounding area, but as far as he could tell, the girls were nowhere in sight. He returned to the group, and when the Captain looked to him with that unspoken question of if he found any sign of them, he could only shake his head.

While he'd been circling the area, Ghost worked near the truck, crouched by the open door and studying the interior. He stood up and sighed. "Whichever one of them was driving must've gotten shot, there's blood all over the seat and dashboard. Seemed like they were dragged to the road."

"Someone must've come by and claimed 'em," MacTavish concluded. "Odds are, it was the local militia."

"If it was, then we could scan the zone and look, Sir," Roach suggested.

Like so many times before, MacTavish and Ghost shared one of those unguarded looks reserved for only each other. Somehow, someway, those two were on the same brain frequency. With just that look, a subtle shift in weight from one foot to the other and Ghost uncrossing his arms, the two of them seemed to have a full conversation without a word uttered between the two. Whatever it was, they came to the same conclusion.

"Odds are the General will be calling us back to base any minute, but we can search a while longer until that happens," MacTavish replied (finally) to Roach. "If they died in the crash, the militia wouldn't have bothered to pull them out. Until we see a body, the possibility remains that they're alive and potentially in danger."

Ghost reequipped his ACR and patted Roach on the shoulder as he passed. "Come on, Roach. We'll check the area again. Think you can stall, Captain?"

Without a speck of humor to be found in his features, MacTavish stated, "Stalling's one of my specialties."

The lieutenant snorted.

Could these two get any more confusing?

Roach hurried to catch up and the pair of them scanned the surrounding area once more for any signs of where Heatstroke or Scarab went off to. The best bet was to work from the wreck outward, trace a mental map based on the scene. This much was simple. the car took a number of bullets before crashing in a ditch just off the road. Miraculously, those two must have survived. Along with drag marks and blood stained sand that ended on the road, there were tracks from several people going all around the car. Tire tracks on the very edge of the road indicated that another vehicle had parked a few dozen meters away and left. There was another set of footprints that went up and out of the ditch before converging with the road, only they were spaced wide. Whoever made them was running.

Whoever made them also had little feet. Roach pointedly set his boot beside one of the clearer prints just to compare, since he was pretty average in that regard. "Either this is from one of them or there's a guy running around with tiny feet."

"Looks like Scarab went this way," Ghost said.

Roach blinked and looked between the Second and then the footprints. "How can you tell?"

"It doesn't make sense for one of the enemy militia to run this way unless they were chasing something, and the length of the stride's too wide for Heatstroke to make." He rattled these off flippantly as he followed the tracks up to the road. "Judging by the marks, she tripped and hurt herself getting out of the ditch. She starts limping here, three steps before hitting the pavement."

"Damn. Didn't know you could tell all that. Did you ever consider being a detective?"

Ghost didn't so much as give him a passing glance. He walked along the road, eyes to the ground. "I took a few courses in forensics a long time ago." That was all he said on the subject before swapping to, "Roach, get on the other side of the road. We need to see if she ran off the road somewhere."

Doing as he was told, Roach darted across the deserted highway and kept an eye to the ground. They must've gone about a kilometer out in that direction before Roach noticed two very important things. First, the tracks resumed, and they were accompanied by a swarm of other boot prints in the dry top soil. Second, there was something glinting in the dirt.

"Ghost! Over here!" Roach rushed over to the glinting and uncovered a pair of dog tags. He felt his forehead crease as he read the name. "Alexander Macey...?"

Ghost read the tags over his shoulder and hummed. "US Navy. Pretty sure these aren't Scarab's tags."

"No shit, Sherlock..." Roach pocketed the tags and stood up. "It's not a coincidence, that's for sure."

The lieutenant murmured some faint agreement and paced along the tracks. They led to a spattering of rocks and a small drop. On the far side of one of the larger boulders, they found a sizable blood stain but no body.

Maybe then the militia made off with Scarab too...

"Ghost, do you see anything?"

The tension in his jaw was visible, even beneath his mask. "She wasn't dragged away. Someone else came and picked her up."

Roach traced his line of sight. Sure enough, there was ANOTHER set of tracks. Along with them were the lines of wheels. "W-wait. This is getting a little too weird."

"You're telling me."

Those tracks went as far as out of the rocky area, where they immediately vanished without a trace. Ghost cursed under his breath and turned on his heels. "Bollocks. Seems like whoever got her came in on a helicopter."

If that was the case, then there was no telling where she could be by now. She could've been carted off hundreds of kilometers away by now and in any direction! They'd have an easier time tracking Heatstroke down than trying to find where Scarab ended up, and that'd require them to go back and march the opposite direction back into the town. From there, there was no telling where she could have ended up.

"MacTavish, this is Ghost, Roach and I have reached a dead end. We're making our way back to you."

{—To Be Continued—

Summary of Plan B Chapters 23, 24, and 25

23. Scarab and Heatstroke are going to leave, encounter terrorists. Scarab remembers! They make a get away. Scarab calls Soap. Shepherd cuts in, they walk, Soap remembers.
24. Heatstroke dies. Shepherd beats Soap up. "Unless..." and then erases memories. Scarab still escaping.
25. Makarov encounter. Shepherd is suddenly there too. Bit of a tussle. Shepherd doesn't confirm the kill, he and Makarov bicker like a married couple. Scarab calls Nikolai. Shepherd fakes a bear attack on Soap. Ghost is a concerned boyfriend.

A/N: In terms of scope, this is the final chapter of Act 1 of 3. It's wild to think that I've gotten this rewrite this far. That's even considering the fact that I cut the final sequence out from Plan B and chucked it in the Non Canon bin.

Let's discuss a couple of things here:
The summary says that Heatstroke dies. Plan B's narrator, Scarab, believes she did and makes her escape alone. When I was a kid and wrote this, Heatstroke was killed by a singular shot to the head. My sister, whom the character was originally based off, threw a fit when she learned I killed her character so Younger Me brought Heatstroke back later with a half assed explanation that she was captured and didn't actually die. Because this time I know that she'll be back later, I was able to rewrite the scene to make it clear that she lives.
Originally, Shepherd was somehow bouncing between being on the base (the base in the UK, specifically) and in Afghanistan to help murder Scarab despite the fact that a helicopter trip to get there would take a whole day. It makes no sense, so he's staying in Fire Base Phoenix. Now technically, one could pose the same argument with Nikolai in this since he's somehow got to fly from Ukraine to Afghanistan, and that's half as long but still 13ish hours of flying. 4 and a half if we're talking from the Loyalist hideout we see in MW3 located in India. No wonder pilots are constantly dropping the "we're at bingo fuel" line in these games. I've got a litter of Loyalists I can also play with, so I can figure some explanation that'll make sense.