AN: I do not know anything about the military other than from playing COD. This fic is purely for entertainment, and if I get some terminology wrong, please don't take offense. Thanks for reading.

Chapter One

Something was wrong; Abby knew it in the way the men on the other side of the locked door were speaking with each other. Their usual lazy banter was stiffer tonight. There was no laughter. No joyful conversations between them. Their voices were quick and low. They had even turned the television off, which they never did. The men who had abducted her kept that thing running twenty-four-seven, and right now, with how they were acting, it scared Abby to death.

Five strange men had taken her from her Chicago apartment in the middle of the night, and Abby had been locked in this small, square bedroom for over a week and a half. (She'd been keeping track of the days by dog-earing the pages of a book she'd found in the nightstand drawer.) The small twin mattress she slept on was as hard as concrete, with only a thin sheet to cover herself, and the only window had been covered with a plywood board. The wall held a light switch for the overhead light, but there was no bulb; the only light in the room was from a small lamp on the nightstand.

A chair scooted across the floor on the other side of the door, and the men quieted. Abby curled herself into a ball and pulled the blanket closer around her as if it would protect her from whatever was going on as she lay on the bed. She wondered what had caused their shift in mood. What was happening to make them all go silent? Abby swallowed the large lump that had lodged within her throat as she stared over at the back of the locked door. Had her prayers been answered? Was someone outside of the house? Were her captors scared because someone was here to rescue her? Her heart did flipflops within her chest as hope began to bloom.

Suddenly, the door to the bedroom was kicked open, and Abby shot up on the bed, fear spiking through her spine. The man who'd busted in the door was someone she was used to seeing. He was the main one who fed her small meals, let her use the bathroom, and take short showers, though he had a bad habit of coming in halfway through to stare at her when she rinsed off and dried herself. The man reached down and turned the light off on the nightstand, and before she could scream, he grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her up from the bed forcefully.

Fearing the worst, Abby fought against his grip, attempting to tear herself away from him, but when he pulled the gun from the waistband of his jeans and flashed it in front of her face, she stilled. Even if he didn't have a weapon, Abby was one hundred forty pounds soaking wet and no match for this man who towered over her five-foot-four frame. He placed a hand on her shoulder to make her face the open bedroom door; with his other hand, he pointed the gun at the small of her back. He leaned down, his mouth so close to her ear she could smell his nasty breath.

"You do exactly as I say," he told her with a thick English accent. "Nod, so I know you understand."

Abby nodded, her sinuses tingling from trying to hold back tears. Her time was up. Tonight was the night she was going to die. The man led her into the main part of the house, where the kitchen and living room were interconnected. When she saw it was empty of the other four men, dread and fear flooded every inch of her being. She knew the man from her dreams was coming for her tonight.

Death...

Since Abby had been abducted, she'd had these reoccurring dreams about how she would die. Each night she was killed in different ways. Sometimes shot, other times stabbed, and a couple of times, the monster in her dream who always killed her had snapped her neck with his bare hands. The thing wore a large black robe that undulated above ground as if it floated, and it had a skull for a face like it was a reaper from Hell. Abby's dreams usually started out decently enough, but by the end of them all, she was always running from him, knowing what would happen whenever the skull-faced man caught up to her.

Thoughts about her personal reaper consumed her even when Abby was awake. She often wondered when the bringer of death would show up to finally slash his scythe across her neck to end her suffering. The longer she stayed within this house against her will, not knowing what her future held, the more her will to live diminished. Abby hated to think like that, but she silently wished the reaper with a skull for a face would finally show his ass up and kill her.

The man pushed her onto the leather couch that smelled like cigarettes and vomit. "Stay there. Do not speak."

He walked across the small room to peer out the window next to the front door. All the lights were off except for a small overhead light above the kitchen stove, which draped the entire front room in dim darkness. Abby shivered and pulled her legs on the couch to hug them against her chest. Laying her chin on her knees, she knew this couldn't be good when the man straightened as if he noticed something outside. He pulled the gun up into a ready position, his finger on the trigger.

Tears welled within Abby's eyes and began to fall, no longer able to hold them back. At this moment, it was hard not to blame her father for the fate that awaited her. Abby was only a seventh-grade teacher, and she doubted the men had abducted her because she'd been organizing the upcoming PTO meeting off the clock.

A sob almost escaped as she thought about how she'd purposely distanced herself from her father for this exact reason. Abby's father worked for the US military, and when she was only seventeen, her mother was abducted and killed for something her father had gotten tangled up in. Like mother like daughter, Abby guessed, their two fates intertwined. And because of what happened to her mother, Abby hadn't spoken to her father in almost ten years. Guilt seized her heart as she realized she'd severed that tie for no reason because she'd been taken anyway.

The first gunshot rang out from outside. It was close enough to make a loud pop, and Abby jumped and yelped in panic, hugging her legs tighter. The man at the window turned and looked at her.

"Shut up!" he ordered, then quickly returned his attention out the window.

Tears fell unchecked and earnestly from Abby's eyes, and she buried her face against her knees. Another gunshot rang throughout the air. Then a third and it sounded closer than before, and the man beside the window cursed. Abby jumped again when two more shots rang out. The window in the living room shattered, and Abby looked up in time to see the man drop to the floor, unmoving. She only realized he was dead when she saw blood starting to soak into the carpet around his head. Having never experienced anything like this before, Abby's breath caught in her throat, her eyes widened, and she screamed. More guns began firing outside the house, drowning her scream. Another window shattered, and Abby immediately dropped from the couch onto the floor between the sofa and the littered coffee table.

Something that sounded like a bomb went off close by, shaking the house and causing an empty bookcase in the corner to fall over and crash to the floor. Abby yelped, wrapped her arms around her head, and curled into a fetal position while her heart beat ninety miles a minute. Bullets shot through more windows, breaking them. And it became so loud that Abby placed her hands over her ears to try to muffle the sounds of the chaos outside.

Another blast shook the house, and then a terrible scream was ripped from a man's lungs outside. The gunfire ceased, and Abby bit down hard on her bottom lip to keep her sobs in check as she listened to the man as he cried out for help in his native tongue. Daring to take a peak, Abby opened her eyes to find the puddle of blood around the dead man's head had grown exponentially and to see most of the windows in the front of the house had been blown out. Light danced across the ceiling, lighting up the living room around her like a fire was burning outside close to the house. Abby almost choked on the saliva that coated her mouth when she heard movement close to the front door of the house, then a man spoke. A Scottish man.

"This is for our comrades."

The man screaming in pain was quickly silenced, and Abby sucked in a breath as she realized that the Scottish man had just killed him. Terror filled her to the core, and she began to shake on the floor, knowing she would be next. Though she'd been praying for rescue, Abby knew what was coming for her. She just hoped her death would be quick. She did not want to suffer. Abby's stomach dipped when she heard footsteps approaching the front door. The doorknob jiggled and turned, and then the door squeaked open slowly. Abby froze in fear when two combat boots came into view. She watched in fright as two feet rounded the coffee table coming closer to her. When the man came into view, he wasn't paying her any attention. He held a large machine gun up and went around the couch toward the back of the house. Abby heard his slow footsteps head down the hall, where he opened each bedroom door; she could tell by their squeak.

A yell broke through the silence, making Abby jump out of her skin. The next thing she heard was two gunshots from within the house, a loud thump from something solid hitting the floor, and then silence consumed her surroundings again. The man who held the large gun returned to the living room and stood behind the couch. He looked down at Abby on the ground. Her mouth went dry when he smiled at her, but it couldn't help but look sinister in the dark with all the blood on his face.

"There you are."

It was the same Scottish man she'd heard from outside earlier. He started rounding the couch with a gun still held up in his hands. Unable to help it, Abby began backing away from him on the floor.

"No!" she yelled, eyeing all the blood that covered him from head to toe. "Stay away from me!"

He stopped moving and slung the machine gun over his shoulder and out of sight from her; then, he held up his hands in surrender before her.

"Abagail, I'm not here to hurt you."

Abby's heart beat quickly from fear. The men who'd abducted her had fed her that same line.

"H-how do you know my name?" she asked him, her eyes wide as she stared up at him.

"We were sent to find you." He took a step closer.

Abby backed away from him again. "Don't you come near me," she stated matter of factly.

The man huffed as if annoyed, and Abby's brows furrowed. Even if he'd been sent to save her from these foreign-speaking men, how dare he be bothered by her hesitation to go near another man?

"We have to go now," he said through clenched teeth. "Others were called, and they're on their way as we speak."

The Scottish man reached out for her again and came forward. Fear shot through Abby's spine, and she hurried away from him again but stopped when her back came up against something solid. She quit breathing when the obstruction behind her moved.

"What are you doing, Soap?" another voice said. British this time.

Abby looked up to find another man standing behind her in the living room. When the man looked down at her, her eyes widened, and her heart stopped beating. It was the man from her dreams—the monster with the skull for a face. Though he wasn't wearing a long dark robe or floating above the ground, she knew it was him. Death had finally found her. Abby screamed, becoming light-headed, and then everything went black.