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The first thing Johnny MacTavish learned about explosives was that they were never loud at the start.
Before the bang, there was always quiet.
There was the soft scrape of a knife shaving insulation from copper wire. The careful click of a blasting cap seated into putty gray compound. The faint breath of a man counting seconds he had not yet spent. The small, intimate patience of hands that understood destruction better than most men understood prayer. Soap had always liked that part best.
Not the fire. Not the roar. Not the way concrete leapt apart and glass turned to weather. Not even the look on the enemy’s face when something they believed permanent suddenly became dust. Did he get a kick out of it and become too awfully giddy at those things? Yes. Indeed he did.
But no. It was the stillness before. That fragile little pause where the world held itself together because John MacTavish had not yet decided otherwise.
“Soap.” Ghost’s voice came low through comms, rough with smoke and distance, breaking away through Johnny’s thoughts.
Johnny blinked sweat from his lashes and looked up from the open satchel at his knees. His gloves were slick with grime, blood dried black between the knuckles. He had a split lip, a ringing left ear, and three minutes to make a government archive vanish before half the city’s militia descended on them with rifles, drones, and bad intentions.
“Aye?”
“Tell me that’s nearly done, Sergeant."
Johnny grinned despite the blood in his mouth. “LT, ye wound me.”
“I’ll do more than wound you if that thing goes off while I’m standing here.”
“Then dinnae stand there.”
Ghost turned his skull mask toward him. Even in a gutted archive basement lit by one dying emergency strip and the red blink of a countdown on the far wall, Ghost managed to look unimpressed. Broad shoulders. Rifle low but ready. Balaclava torn at the jaw, showing a smear of blood beneath pale, scarred skin. One sleeve ripped open where shrapnel had kissed him. Still standing like he had been built by some humorless god out of shadow, kevlar, and spite. Johnny loved him a bit for that. Not that he’d ever say it. Not here. Not with C4 in his hands and a militia commander’s private server humming three meters away like a hornet nest full of war crimes.
“Need another thirty seconds,” Soap said.
“You said that thirty seconds ago.”
“Aye, and I needed them then too.”
Ghost huffed. It was not quite a laugh. With Ghost, you learned to take what you could get. Johnny turned back to his work. The charge was beautiful, in the way ugly things could be beautiful when they served a clean purpose. Plastic explosive tucked along the load bearing seams. Shaped placement, not brute force. Any idiot could blow a room. It took love and efficiency to make a building kneel exactly how you wanted.
He set the last detonator with two fingers and the gentleness of a man handling a bird with a broken wing. War had many languages. Bullets spoke bluntly. Knives whispered. Artillery shouted over everyone. Explosives sang. Johnny knew the notes. He knew how to make a door open like a flower. How to turn a convoy into wreckage without touching the civilians huddled two streets over. How to crack a wall without collapsing the hospital beside it. How to scare men out of hiding. How to bury them when they refused. He knew, better than most, that fire was only romantic to people far enough away not to smell the skin burning.
“Charges set,” he said.
Ghost stepped closer, boots crunching over glass and paper. “Timer?”
“Remote. I’m no’ trusting a clock in this shitehole.”
“Smart, lad."
“Careful, Ghost. Keep complimenting me and I’ll think ye fancy me.”
Ghost’s stare did not change. Somehow, that made it worse. “Move, MacTavish."
Johnny slung the satchel over his shoulder and rose too fast. The room tilted. His left knee barked pain up his leg where a bullet had grazed too close earlier. He caught himself on the server rack. Ghost’s hand was on him before he could swear. Firm. Gloved. Hooked under his arm. Just for a second. Then gone. Johnny looked at him, blinkly blankly, if not, almost mocking innocence.
Ghost looked away first. “Walk it off,” He said.
“There’s the tender bedside manner.”
“Didn’t shoot you, did I?”
“Bar’s in hell, that.”
“And yet you keep tripping over it.”
Johnny laughed, low and breathless. It hurt his ribs.
Above them, the building groaned. Dust sifted from the ceiling in fine gray curtains.Somewhere on the upper floors, men shouted in Russian and Arabic, boots hammering across broken tile.
Ghost raised his rifle. “Company.”
Johnny reached into his vest and touched the detonator, thumb resting beside the switch. The city outside had been burning since dusk. Their mission had started clean, as all dirty things did. Insertion after sundown. Retrieve proof of chemical stockpiles being moved through civilian districts. Destroy the archive. Extract before sunrise.
Simple. Simple meant nothing. Simple had died somewhere between the first ambush and the second drone strike, between Gaz going dark for twelve minutes and Price coughing blood over comms while insisting he was “perfectly fine.” Simple had burned with the convoy they had stolen, then abandoned, then stolen again after Johnny hotwired it with one hand while Ghost held off six men and a technical with a gun that sounded like some kind of higher being slamming a door.
Now the proof was secured. The archive was rigged. The others were metres west, limping toward extraction. Soap and Ghost were still in the belly of the beast because somebody had to make sure the beast stayed dead. That somebody, apparently, was a Scottish demolition expert with a headache and a skull masked lieutenant who acted like bleeding was an administrative inconvenience.
Ghost moved first. The stairwell door burst open and three militia fighters poured through. Ghost dropped the first two with cold efficiency. Johnny put a round through the third’s thigh, then another through his chest when he reached for a grenade.
“Thought ye liked them alive for questioning,” Johnny said.
“Not these.”
“Aye. Fair.”
They ran. Up the stairwell, through smoke and siren light, past walls sweating dust from old shell impacts. Johnny’s boots slipped on blood that was not his, then might have been his. Hard to tell at this point. Ghost covered every angle with a precision that made Johnny feel reckless by comparison, though Johnny knew he wasn’t. Not really. He was chaos with blueprints. Ghost was order with a knife.
Together, they were a bad day for anyone standing between them and the exit. At the second floor landing, the route collapsed. Literally. The corridor ahead was choked with fallen concrete, rebar bent like black ribs. A fire had started somewhere beyond it, orange light pulsing through gaps in the rubble. Ghost swore under his breath. Johnny was already looking. Not at the blockage. Through it.
He saw stress points. Weak seams. A cracked support column that had taken more punishment than it wanted to admit. Rebar tension. Concrete fatigue. Space. Shape. Force. The world became geometry.
Ghost knew that look. “No.”
Johnny blinked at him. “No what?”
“No explosives.”
“Didnae say anything.”
“You were thinking it.”
“I think lots of things.”
“Most of them get us shot at.”
“This one gets us out.”
Ghost stepped close enough that Johnny could see the soot in the pale lashes around his eyes.
“You bring this floor down, we’re buried with it.”
“No' if I’m right.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
Johnny smiled. “Then ye can haunt me.”
Ghost’s jaw worked behind the mask. For a moment, the war faded around them. No sirens. No gunfire. No men hunting them through a building already marked for death. Just Ghost staring at him like he wanted to shake him, or drag him out by the collar, or press his forehead against Johnny’s and breathe there for one human second.
Instead he said, “Make it small.”
Johnny’s smile softened. “Aye, LT.”
He worked fast. A strip charge, narrow and mean. Not enough to blow out the hall. Just enough to shear the cracked slab and open a crawlspace through the rubble. Surgical. Dirty surgery, but surgery all the same. His hands shook once. Ghost noticed. Of course he noticed. The bastard noticed everything.
“Soap.”
“I’ve got it.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“So are you.”
“Mine’s decorative.”
Johnny snorted, taping the charge along a fracture line. “That what we’re calling it?”
“Focus.”
“I am focused. You’re the one admiring me arse.”
“Hard not to. It’s in the way.”
“Tragic burden for ye.”
“Daily.”
Johnny paused. The word sat there between them, ridiculous and warm. Not a confession. Not even close. But from Ghost, it was practically a sonnet.
Johnny kept his eyes on the charge. “Fire in the hole,” he said quietly.
They ducked behind a half collapsed pillar. Ghost crowded close, one arm braced above Johnny’s head, shielding him from a blast Johnny had calculated not to reach them. The charge snapped. Not roared. Snapped. A sharp, violent crack like a giant bone breaking. Dust blew past them. Concrete shifted. Settled. Groaned. Then silence. Johnny looked. A gap had opened through the rubble, narrow but passable.
He gave Ghost a smug little glance. Ghost stared at the hole, then at him.
“Lucky.”
“Gifted. Knew what I was doin, unfortunately, LT.”
“Lucky.”
“Devastatingly handsome.”
“Concussed.”
“Aye, reckon.”
They crawled through. The far side was worse. The fire had eaten half the hall. Paint blistered on the walls. Smoke turned the air thick and bitter. Somewhere close, ammunition cooked off in frantic pops. Johnny’s radio crackled.
“Bravo Seven, this is Watcher. Status?” Laswell’s voice was tight with static.
Ghost touched his comm. “Archive rigged. Moving to exfil.”
“Negative. Enemy armor moving northbound. Your planned route is blocked.”
Johnny leaned against the wall, breathing through his teeth.
Ghost’s eyes flicked to him. “Alternate?”
“Stand by.”
Gunfire rattled below them. Johnny closed his eyes for half a second. The building’s map lived in his head now, stitched from drone footage, hallway signs, panic, and instinct. Basement archive. East stairwell compromised. Main entrance exposed. West wall faced service alley. Service alley opened toward the old tram road. Tram road overlooked the river. River bridge was likely watched. But under it—
He opened his eyes. “Storm drain.”
Ghost looked at him. “What?”
“There’s an old drainage culvert under the tram road. Saw the grates on approach. We breach the west wall, drop into the alley, cut south under the bridge.”
Laswell came back. “Satellite confirms drainage access. But the alley is covered by a technical.”
Johnny looked toward the burning window at the end of the hall. Beyond it, through smoke and broken glass, a mounted gun barked into the street.
He sighed. “Well. That’s bloody rude.”
Ghost checked his magazine. “Can you kill it?”
Johnny’s grin came back slowly. “LT, ye say the sweetest things.”
They reached the west wall under fire. Bullets chewed plaster around them as militia climbed the stairs behind. Ghost answered in controlled bursts, each shot economical, each movement brutal. Johnny slid behind a marble reception counter and pulled what remained of his kit from the satchel. Not much. Two blocks of C4. Det cord. A couple initiators. One smoke grenade. A half crushed packet of cigarettes he’d forgotten he had. No lighter. Tragedy, really.
The technical outside kept firing. The wall shuddered under impact. Johnny pressed his palm to it, feeling vibration, thickness, age. Old brick behind modern facade. Reinforced around the window, weaker beneath the radiator line. He could make a door. He could make a grave. He chose door. Mostly.
Ghost dropped beside him to reload, shoulder pressed briefly against Johnny’s. “How long?”
“Depends.”
“On?”
“Whether ye want elegant or loud.”
“Alive.”
“Loud, it is then."
Ghost’s eyes crinkled faintly. There it was again. Almost laughter. Almost something. Johnny planted the charge low. Angled it outward. A breach with enough bite to fling masonry into the alley and, with luck, pepper the technical’s gunner with brick shrapnel. Not clean. Not kind. But war rarely offered either.
The song came then. Faint. Tinny. Impossible. Mostly background noise. Johnny froze.
Through the wall, beneath gunfire and fire alarms, music drifted from somewhere outside. Old, warm harmonies floating through smoke. The Ink Spots, crackling from a radio in the stolen car they’d ditched two blocks away. The battery must have still been alive. The dashboard must have taken a round and woken the thing up.
'I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire.' Played hauntingly through the thick of war and chaos.
Johnny knew it at once. His mum had played it on rainy Sundays when he was small enough to think war was something in history books and men came home because they were supposed to. He remembered the kitchen window fogged with steam. Toast burning. Her humming off key while his father pretended not to smile into his mug.
The song had followed him into service somehow. Into barracks. Into bad nights. Into worse mornings. A joke at first. Soap the demolition man, fond of a song about not setting the world alight. The universe had a sick sense of humor, but damn him, Johnny loved it.
Ghost heard it too. His head tilted. “Your song.”
Johnny swallowed. “Aye.”
“Bit on the nose.”
“Says the man in the skull mask.”
“Branding matters.”
Johnny laughed, and something in his chest hurt that was not his ribs. The technical opened up again. Rounds punched through the wall above them, showering dust.
Ghost leaned over Johnny, returning fire through the broken window. “Any day, Johnny.”
Johnny set the detonator. “Breach ready.”
Ghost grabbed the back of his vest. “Do it.”
Johnny did. The wall became thunder. Brick and smoke exploded outward. The technical screamed metal. Someone outside shouted, then stopped. Hot air punched the breath from Johnny’s lungs and Ghost dragged him up before he could find it again.
They went through the hole together. The alley was hell with edges. Burning trash. Falling ash. The technical slewed sideways against a wall, gunner folded over the mount. The stolen car sat beyond it, battered to near unrecognizable, windshield spiderwebbed, hood dented, one door missing. Somehow, absurdly, the dashboard radio still played. The Ink Spots crooned through static while the city ate itself alive. Johnny and Ghost ran for the drain. Behind them, the archive loomed black against the firelit sky. Johnny clutched the remote detonator in one hand.
At the culvert entrance, Ghost dropped to one knee and covered him. “Blow it.”
Johnny turned back. For a heartbeat, he saw the building as it had been: full of files, secrets, orders signed by men who would never stand where their commands landed. Maps of neighborhoods marked for gas. Lists of names reduced to leverage. The machinery of war dressed up as paperwork. Then he saw it as it was now: cracked, burning, condemned. He pressed the switch. The archive did not explode all at once. It folded.
First the basement flashed white-orange. Then the ground kicked. Windows burst outward in glittering sheets. The center of the building dropped as if someone had put a thumb through its spine. Fire climbed through the floors, blooming room by room, devouring evidence after it had been copied, devouring weapons, devouring men still foolish enough to be inside. The shockwave rolled down the street and slapped Johnny in the face. Ghost caught him by the shoulder before he stumbled. Neither of them spoke.
For once, Johnny had no joke ready.
The end of the world, he thought, sounded sweet when someone else was singing over it. They disappeared into the drain. By the time they surfaced beyond the bridge, the city was a furnace behind them. Extraction was compromised. Of course it was.
Their ride took a rocket two minutes out, and Price’s voice over comms turned grim in the way that meant he was already improvising with a cigar between his teeth and blood on his boots. “Fallback point Charlie. Two klicks west. Can you move?”
Ghost looked at Johnny. Johnny was sitting on the curb beside a dead streetlamp, trying to decide if the dark spots in his vision were artistic or concerning.
“Aye,” Johnny said before Ghost could answer. “We can move.”
Ghost’s stare was flat.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Johnny muttered.
“You’re listing.”
“I’m charming.”
“You’re concussed.”
“Still charming.”
“You’re bleeding through your sleeve.”
“Still—”
“Johnny.”
He stopped. Ghost crouched in front of him.
The fire painted his skull mask gold at the edges. Made him look less like death and more like something death had failed to collect. His eyes were tired. Not just mission-tired. Bone-tired. Soul-tired. The kind of tired men carried when they had survived too many things and knew survival was not the same as being saved. Ghost reached out and tightened the strap around Johnny’s upper arm, above the cut he had been ignoring.
Johnny hissed. “Christ.”
“Hold still.”
“Yer bedside manner’s improving.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Aye. No, it is NOT, sir." Johnny chuckled.
Ghost tied the strap off and sat back on his heels. For a second his hand remained on Johnny’s arm. Not necessary. Not tactical. Just there. Johnny looked at it. Ghost took it away.
“Can you stand?”
“No.”
Ghost went very still.
Johnny grinned weakly. “But I’ll do it anyway.”
“Bloody idiot.”
“Yer idiot.”
The words escaped before Johnny could stop them. There it was. Hanging in the smoke. Bigger than a bomb. Smaller than a whisper. Ghost said nothing.
Johnny looked away first, face hot beneath soot and blood. “Figure of speech.”
“Mm.”
“Squad solidarity.”
“Mm.”
“Dinnae start with the ‘mm thang', Simon.”
Ghost stood and offered him a hand. Johnny stared at it. Then took it. Ghost hauled him up with careful strength, as if Johnny were something worth not breaking further.
They moved west. The stolen car had no business still working. It waited where the alley opened into an abandoned market square, engine coughing like a dying smoker. One headlight remained. The hood was crumpled. The side panels were cratered with bullet holes. The rear bumper dragged along the road in a shower of sparks whenever it moved.
Johnny loved it immediately.
“Bonnie wee thing,” he said.
“It’s scrap.”
“She’s got character.”
“She’s got tetanus.”
“That’s character.”
Ghost checked the driver’s side, found no body, no trap, and no dignity. Johnny slid into the passenger seat with a groan so dramatic Ghost paused mid-motion to stare at him.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Say it.”
“You sound like Price getting out of a chair.”
Johnny gasped. “Take that back!"
“No.”
“That was cruel.”
“War is hell.”
The radio was still playing. Static, mostly. But beneath it, somehow, that song again as if it were stuck on repeat. Perhaps it was. It should have been impossible. Maybe the same station. Maybe a cassette jammed in the deck. Maybe the city had decided on a soundtrack for its own ruin and refused to change the tune. The Ink Spots filled the ruined car with soft harmonies and old-world longing, fitting the burning city arouns them.
Johnny looked at the dashboard. “Persistent bastard.”
Ghost started the engine. It turned over with a sound like cutlery in a blender. “Like you.”
“A compliment?”
“Observation.”
“Flirt.”
“Bleed quieter.”
They drove until they couldn’t. The car gave up on a rise overlooking the eastern districts. It coughed once, lurched, and died with all the grace of a shot horse. Ghost tried the ignition again..Nothing.
Johnny patted the dash then gave it a sympathetic rub. “She held as long as she could.”
“She was a piece of shite.”
“A heroic piece o' shite.”
The radio, in defiance of all mechanics and mercy, kept playing. Outside, the city burned. Not all of it. Never all. War liked to leave enough standing to ruin later. But the eastern quarter was flame and smoke, black columns twisting into the bruised dawn. The archive fire had spread to nearby militia fuel stores. Secondary explosions still popped in the distance, small bright blossoms against the skyline. The mission was done. The war was not. That was the trick of it. The cruelty. No matter what they destroyed, something always remained. Another order. Another convoy. Another room full of men moving pins across maps. Another child waking to the sound of the sky coming apart.
Johnny climbed out of the car and nearly fell on his arse. Ghost caught him again.
“Stop doing that,” Johnny muttered.
“Falling?”
“Catching me.”
“No.”
Johnny looked at him.
Ghost shut the car door with his hip. “Sit.”
“Bossy.”
“Alive.”
“Aye, aye.”
They ended up on the hood. The metal was warm from the dying engine and dented beneath them. Johnny sat with one boot on the bumper, one foot on the ground, shoulders slumped. Ghost sat beside him, rifle across his lap, mask pushed up only enough to expose his mouth. That felt more intimate than nudity somehow. Johnny pretended not to notice. He found the crushed cigarettes in his vest and held them up like treasure.
Ghost glanced over. “Thought you quit.”
“Thought you were dead twice tonight. We all suffer disappointments.”
“Got a light?”
Johnny patted his pockets then remembered. No lighter. Ghost sighed and produced one from somewhere.
Johnny stared. “You carry a lighter?”
“Prepared.”
“You don’t smoke.”
“You do... and I don't mind it at times."
The words were quiet. Almost lost under the song. Johnny looked down at the cigarette packet. His throat tightened in a way that had nothing to do with smoke. “Simon.."
“Light the damn bloody thing, Johnny.”
So he did. The flame trembled between them, small and stubborn in the ash laden wind. Johnny lit one cigarette and drew in carefully. His split lip stung. His lungs protested. He exhaled toward the burning city and watched smoke join smoke. Then he passed it to Ghost. Ghost took it. Their fingers brushed. Neither of them moved for half a second. Then Ghost brought the cigarette to his mouth and inhaled like a man who did not need the habit but understood the ritual. It unfortunately bringing him some sort of temporary, teasing comfort.
The song played from the ruined dashboard. Soft. Sweet. Absurd. Johnny watched the skyline burn and thought of the archive folding in on itself. Thought of his hands placing charges with reverence. Thought of every door he had opened by destroying it. Every bridge he had dropped. Every wall he had turned to powder. Every life saved by a blast placed right, and every life ended because that was the arithmetic they had been given.
“Funny, innit?” he said.
Ghost passed the cigarette back. “What?”
“Song like this. Here.”
Ghost looked toward the fire. “Not funny.”
“No.” Johnny took a drag. “No, 'pose not.”
The end of the world sounded sweet. It sounded like a love song playing through blown speakers while two soldiers sat on a stolen car with blood drying under their collars. It sounded like Ghost breathing beside him. It sounded like no one shooting at them for the first time in hours. It sounded like a city burning because men with clean hands had made dirty choices, and men with dirty hands had been sent to answer.
Johnny’s eyes burned. Smoke, probably. He wasn't sure and didn't care.
“Did good tonight,” Ghost said lowly, but his voice didn't seem so thick edged.
Johnny laughed softly. “That your professional assessment?”
“Yes.”
“Demolitions review, aye?”
“Five stars.”
“Only five?”
“Don’t push it, Johnny."
Johnny leaned back on one hand. His shoulder brushed Ghost’s. Ghost did not move away.
That was another kind of quiet. A better one.
“You were right,” Ghost said after a while.
Johnny blinked. “Christ. Say that again. Got a concussion, member?"
“About the wall.”
“Which one?”
“All of them.”
Johnny smiled faintly. “Aye, well. Walls are honest.”
Ghost glanced at him.
“They tell ye where they’re weak,” Johnny continued. “People try to hide it. Buildings cannae. Everything’s got pressure points. Fault lines. Ya just have to ken where to touch.”
Ghost was silent for a long moment, mostly silently surprised Johnny was saying something as such. Then, low, “And people?”
Johnny looked at him. The skull mask hid most of Ghost’s face, but not enough. Never enough, not anymore. Johnny knew the tension in his jaw. The careful distance. The exhaustion sitting behind his eyes like a locked door. “People too,” Johnny said. “But ye don’t always breach 'em."
Ghost’s gaze held his. “No?”
Johnny shook his head. “Sometimes ye just sit outside. Keep watch. Wait for them to open.”
The cigarette burned low between his fingers. Ghost looked away first, toward the fire. But his shoulder pressed more firmly against Johnny’s. A small thing. A detonation, in its own way. Johnny passed him the cigarette. Ghost took the last drag, then flicked it onto the cracked road below. The ember glowed once, twice, then died. The song kept playing, almost to the end.
Johnny tipped his head back and closed his eyes. His body hurt everywhere. His ears rang. His hands smelled of explosive residue and blood. There was dirt under his nails, ash in his hair, and a bruise blooming along his ribs in the shape of somebody’s rifle stock.
Beside him, Ghost was warm. Still alive. Still there. That was enough to make a ruined world feel briefly survivable.
“You fall asleep on me,” Ghost murmured, “I’m leaving you here, Sergeant."
“Liar.”
“Try me.”
“Ye carried me six blocks in Las Almas.”
“You were unconscious.”
“Ye tucked me in after.”
“I threw a tarp over you.”
“Romantic.”
“Practical.”
“Practically romantic.”
Ghost made that almost-laugh again. Johnny opened one eye. There was the city, burning in the distance. There was the stolen car, dead beneath them. There was the song, sweet as a memory and twice as cruel.
There was Simon Riley, sitting close enough that their shoulders touched, mask lifted just enough to prove he was human, blood drying at his temple, eyes fixed on a horizon that had done nothing to deserve forgiveness. Johnny wanted to say something. Something clever, maybe. Something brave. Something that could survive the morning. But war had taken most of his words and spent them on coordinates, countdowns, and warnings. So he said nothing. Ghost said nothing back.
The silence settled around them, not empty but full. Full of smoke. Full of pain. Full of all the things they would not name because naming them might make them fragile. Johnny let his head tilt, just barely, until it rested against Ghost’s shoulder. Ghost went still. Then, slowly, his hand came up and rested against Johnny’s knee. Not gripping. Not claiming. Just there. A hand on a pressure point. A charge placed with care. The city burned. The world did not end, not exactly. Not yet.
But if it had, Johnny thought, eyes closing to the sound of old harmonies crackling through a ruined dashboard, at least it had learned how to sound sweet.