Groans. Pained, confused, involuntary groans. You heard them, not even realizing they were coming from you.
The world faded in. Your brain throbbed in your skull. You were cold and shivering all over again. The pounding in your skull didn't cease, worsening when your eyes opened up to be blinded by light bouncing off the snow. You squeezed them shut almost as soon as you opened them. You groaned again. Your arms moved to push yourself up off the ground, but they seemed to be stuck on something.
"What the hell?" Your eyes began to blink open. All you could see was white, at first. Then the shapes of the trees, standing tall over you. You tugged at your hands, willing them to move so you could just get up. You rolled to the side, trying to dislodge yourself from whatever you were stuck on.
The realization hit you like a brick.
You couldn't move because your wrists were bound.
A feeling of panic crept up your spine. Your head pounded and the trees before you began to wobble. You felt yourself losing grip on reality once again when a sharp, sudden kick at your back brought you back to life. You cried out in pain, unable to hold it in.
You heard voices chatting together in what sounded like Russian. Aching and groaning, you mustered up the strength to make use of your elbow, struggling to prop yourself up.
When you finally managed to sit up, hunched over your knees with your hands tied behind your back, you lifted your eyes to take a good look at your captors. Your sunglasses had disappeared, causing you to squint in order to see the outlines of their white snowsuits. You saw that they were facing you, looking down at you through eyes shielded by sunglasses of their own. Your heart pounded fast, terrified of what was coming next.
One of them stepped forward, grasping you by your bicep and yanking you up like a ragdoll. You stumbled to your feet, your head spinning and throbbing horribly. You swayed, barely able to keep standing as his hand held your arm bruisingly tight.
"Kto ty, chert voz'mi, takoy?" the man screamed in your face, muffled slightly by a thick white mask.
You stared past him, eyes completely unfocused, still dazed and unable to respond. He reached up and gripped your collar in his fist, bringing down his other hand hard and fast to slap you across the face. Your head swung to the side and your legs buckled beneath you. You fell limply down to your knees, swaying to the side until your butt met the snow. He held you up by your collar, crouching down and bringing his face even closer to yours. He crouched over you. Your vision swam with stars.
"Who the fuck are you?" He demanded in English this time.
You could only grumble a pained response as your head, back, and face all stung and throbbed. He shook you violently, only making it worse. "S-stop," you choked out. "I-I can't -" You were interrupted by another one of the group shouting something in their language. The man in front of you didn't respond, only stared down at you for a moment before releasing his grip and letting you fall back into the freezing snow.
"Pathetic," he spat over his shoulder as he plodded back to the group. You struggled to push yourself up to a seated position again, your breaths coming out heavy and strained. You saw one of the men hand something over to the one who had beaten you. He turned around to face you again, taking slow, deliberate steps oozing with authority, gazing down into his hand as he approached. He came intimidatingly close and held his closed fist out in front of you. His head raised to look at you. He tugged off his sunglasses and you stared into cold, icy blue eyes full of malice. A bolt of fear shot through your chest.
"You will not speak to me, ah?" He nodded his head down to his hand, gesturing for you to look there. His fingers uncurled to show you what was within them.
It was your earpiece. Your wire. Your communications device that connected you to the whole team.
"They will come looking," he sneered.
Finally sobering, you returned his icy stare. "You won't get anything from me."
You were sent crashing down into the snow for the third or fourth time by yet another vicious slap across the face. You coughed and groaned, feeling your strength siphoning away with the beating you were being forced to endure. But that didn't matter to you.
You would never give up your team.
You came to realize that didn't matter, though. These men hadn't kidnapped you to retrieve information.
They kidnapped you to lure out your teammates.
You had no idea where you were located now. Nothing looked familiar to the area you were in before. You were still out in the wilderness, but the forest was much thicker, and you could no longer see the clearing of trees you and the other members had camped at the night before. The enemies had their own camp set up here, and you wondered to yourself how long they had been expecting the team's arrival. How did they even know you were coming in the first place?
You looked around yourself as the men stared down at you, not saying a thing. Your eyes scanned the trees, praying to catch a glimpse of a skull-faced mask, or a mohawk, or a handlebar mustache. Your heart sank, seeing nothing. You cursed yourself for even thinking they might be there.
"What happened to my team?!" You shouted at the men, loud and furious. "How long was I out for?!"
No one responded to you. You didn't know what you had expected. They started speaking to each other in their language again. You wished you knew what they were saying. Until finally, the main man came forward with your earpiece in his hands once again. He pushed the thing into your ear.
"Call them. Tell them to come get you."
You pursed your lips, staring him in the eyes. Trying to pretend you weren't afraid of him.
"You speak English, yes?" He spat. He crouched down, his large frame shadowing over your smaller one. "Tell them your life depends on it."
You grimaced. You imagined being shot point blank in the head, execution style. Or worse, beaten to death and left to freeze in the snow. You imagined your mates stumbling upon your dead, frozen body. You knew they would come searching at some point. Just had no clue when.
You imagined Price's fatherly frown, his eyebrows knitting together in shame. He would feel like it's his fault.
Soap's head falling into his hands. You figured he would be angry at first, and then maybe he would even shed a tear.
And Ghost. You had no idea what his response would be. But you figured it would be quiet, emotions concealed behind the mask. You wondered if he would grieve alone.
The man fiercely drew you from your thoughts once again. His fist was once again grasped tightly around your collar, shaking you back and forth like an abusive parent to an unruly child. Your head swung back and forth dizzyingly.
"Hello?!" He yelled into your face once again.
You didn't respond. Couldn't respond. He didn't care. The aggressor's gloved hand suddenly gripped tightly around your throat, cutting off your airways. "Worthless," the man spat. Your hands pulled desperately at the restraints as you choked, trying to free themselves and save you from this violent abuse. You heard the sound of yourself gurgling as your vision began going dark.
Before you faded off into sleep once again, a vision appeared in your mind. You weren't staring into icy blue eyes anymore. You saw deep brown eyes and a furrowed, concerned brow barely visible through the holes of a skull-faced mask. Looking at you with some emotion you couldn't put a finger on. Then you heard his voice, and nearly felt his breath whisper into your ear.
Come back, love.
Your eyes flew open.
Your head spun around, eyes searching wildly everywhere to find the source of that gruff, breathy whisper. Your vision glanced wildly about, flickering upon snow, trees and rocks. Where was he?! You just heard his voice. Just felt him whisper in your ear. But your eyes darted quickly about, and he just wasn't there.
The dizziness in your head began to subside. With a sinking feeling the realization settled in. It was dark outside. The moon had now risen high up in the sky, partially visible through the lifeless branches of frozen trees. You were still stuck at the enemy encampment. …How had Ghost's voice come through so clear? It felt as if he were right next to you the whole time… but here you were, and he was not.
Your team was still nowhere to be seen.
As you fought your way back to reality, you came to realize that you'd been moved on top of a plastic tarp and wrapped up in some kind of a blanket, presumably to keep you from freezing to death. You did your best to control your frightened breaths, wrapped up like a cold, frozen burrito and feeling completely trapped. You shuffled quietly in an attempt to escape the wrapping, slightly dislodging the blanket from your body. Your eyes darted about before falling on the faint outline of one of the masked men standing with his back to you, staring down at something in his hands.
Excitement and nervousness filled your heart. You had an idea.
Trying your best to keep quiet, you kept shuffling lightly until the blanket was no longer wrapped so tightly around your body. Trying to keep your now-awakened breaths quiet, you pulled your knees up to your chest, rolling back and forth in an attempt to bring your bound wrists down far enough that you could pull your feet over. With a little jostling you finally managed to pull your wrists to the front side of your body.
You laid there still, taking a moment to settle your heavy, fearful breathing. You glanced down at the man, glad to see that he still had his back to you, standing next to the tent you presumed the two other men were sleeping in. You could hear faint snores and heavy breathing coming from it.
You stilled your breath once again before emerging from your sleeping bag. You cringed hard every time the tarp crinkled, eyes boring into the back of the man's head, silently begging him not to hear you. Thankfully, he seemed engrossed in something, his head bent downward and staring into his hands, completely unfocused on the world around him. You crept up quickly, fully aware of the sound of your feet crunching quietly in the snow - his head finally snapped up and turned suspiciously to the side, but it was too late. Within moments your hands were wrapped around his neck, pulling the rope that bound your wrists tight against his throat, the same way he had strangled you earlier. You heard him gag and cough, feeling brief satisfaction at the sound of him struggling to keep himself alive at the mercy of your hands.
You pulled tighter as the man grasped and pulled at his neck, desperately struggling to yank the ropes away. Then his hands left his neck and began flailing backwards to you, grasping at your hair and yanking at it. Undeterred, you squeezed the rope tighter around his neck, tighter and tighter until his arms flailed hopelessly, his body eventually weakening and crumbling beneath you.
You pulled him down into the snow, laying his body down with barely a sound. You struggled to reach your hand into his pocket in search of a knife or anything sharp. Your fingers brushed across a metallic handle. You pulled it out and relief washed over you to see that it was indeed a knife. Your hands trembled as you grabbed the handle and turned it towards yourself, carefully shimmying the blade between your wrists and the rope. You sawed the blade back and forth the best you could until it finally came loose and your hands were free. You shook the restraints from around your wrists, blood flow finally returning to your fingers as you panted with exhilaration at your possible escape. You bent down and retrieved the pistol holstered onto the enemy's right leg.
You gripped the ice-cold weapon in your hands, the rough texture of its handle scraping across your palm. Blood pumped deafeningly in your ears as you gripped it in your hands. You couldn't hear anything else going on around you now. Didn't notice that your breathing had become increasingly heavier, coming out in angry, animalistic huffs. Your vision blurred and shook. Your limbs buzzed uncontrollably.
Something stirred inside the tent. You felt your instincts take over and without a moment's notice, you began spraying the tent with bullets. You heard the men scream inside, one of them standing and pressing into the doorway of the tent before collapsing back down when you spattered his shadow with bullets.
As quickly as the chaos had broken out, it ended. All movements and sounds had ceased from inside the tent. You found your hands shaking violently with the pistol in front of you, in awe that you had actually managed to kill the three captors all by yourself. You desperately willed for your breaths to keep quiet but they came out in exhilarated, adrenaline-fueled puffs. Your mind faltered for a moment, flickering this way and that - what now? Where do I go? How do I find the rest of my team?
Trying to keep the fear at bay, you yanked open the zipper to the tent and saw the bloody corpses of the two men lying inside of it. As brutal as it looked, you felt good that you had managed to take control of the situation on your own.
Suddenly you remembered your communications device the men had been playing with earlier. You stumbled backward, nearly losing your balance as you flew frantically to retrieve it.
You fell to your knees in the snow, patting your hands around desperately to find it. You'd seen the man fumbling around with it just before you strangled him - wouldn't it be just near his body?
You cried out in anguish as your hands kept plodding into soft snow, turning up nothing. Until you finally looked over at the man's lifeless body, hooking your hands beneath him and rolling him over onto his belly.
There it was.
Your ticket out of this snowy graveyard.
Your fingers snatched it up from beneath his body, seeing the crumpled wire and disconnected port. With furrowed eyebrows and a serious frown, you did your best to put it all back together, praying to anything that would listen for your communications device to work.
You tried to remain calm, but couldn't help yourself. You screamed into the microphone. "I'm here!"
You paused for a moment, waiting for a response, or feedback, or anything.
Your fingers mashed down on the button once again. "Soap! Price, Ghost! Do you hear me?!"
Your heart skipped a beat when you heard crinkly static coming through. You thought you could hear Soap coming through the other end, but couldn't fully tell. The words were impossible to discern through the static. When the words stopped, you mashed the button and yelled into the device once again.
"Guys, where are you?" You paused when the static came through for a brief moment and then stopped. Anguish gripped your heart.
Am I going to freeze out here?
"141! My captors are dead!" You gulped. "Please, come get me!"
You nearly fell to the ground when the voice finally came through, clear as day. It was Soap. "I'm coming for you now, Y/N. Sit tight. Don't freeze."
A huge sigh of relief escaped your chest. Tears pricked at your eyes as the emotions of the day finally washed over you. You thought back on the beating you endured and tears began streaming down your cheeks like a waterfall. You heard yourself sobbing, staring down at the body of the man you'd strangled to death.
"Fucking prick!" You screamed at him, kicking his lifeless body hard. You huffed, staring down at him. Tears continued streaming down your cheeks. You glared at the lifeless body for a few moments, before turning back to the tarp and wrapping yourself up to wait for Soap.
Soap arrived what felt like hours later.
You sat there on the tarp, trembling and shaking as your body struggled not to freeze within the ruthless weather.
You had been hunched over, hugging your knees to your chest as you struggled to keep any heat from escaping your body. You were nearly in tears again by the time you finally heard the sound of some kind of a vehicle approaching.
Just in case, you hid yourself behind a tree until he came closer. As soon as you were sure it was him, you flew out from behind the tree, jumping and waving your hands in the air in pure relief. He came up on a snowmobile, but you were too relieved to see his face to even wonder where he got it from.
He pulled up next to you, beckoning for you to hop on.
You climbed on behind him, wrapping your arms around his waist and squeezing him tightly from behind. You rubbed your face into his back and called out over the sound of the vehicle, your voice cracking with emotion. "I'm so happy you found me!"
"Likewise, Y/N. Hold on tight, we have to get out of here."
The vehicle revved up once again, and you both flew through the snow to escape from Russia.