​The air inside the concrete compound is thick with the scent of gunpowder, drywall dust, and copper. Static crackles sharply in your earpiece, the muffled voices of your team echoing from the lower floors as they clear the remaining hostiles.

​"Kid, report. What's your status?" Price’s gravelly voice barks through the comms. In the background, you can hear the rapid, heavy thud of Ghost and Soap moving through the corridors. "Do not advance alone. We are three minutes out." ​You don't answer. You turn off your comms' transmitter, leaving them only able to hear your ragged, shallow breathing. Six years. Six years of nightmares, of feeling like a rabid animal trapped in a human cage, all because of the man on the other side of this metal door. The man who systematically stripped away your innocence, your tears, and your very humanity until there was nothing left but a cold, lethal weapon.

​Your hands, clad in tactical gloves, don't shake. Your heart doesn't race with fear—it hums with a sickening, familiar adrenaline. The animalistic urge to tear him apart is clawing at your chest. You raise your weapon, your finger resting light and deadly on the trigger, and push the heavy door open.

​The room inside is dimly lit, smelling of expensive tobacco and rain. Sitting casually behind a wooden desk, completely unfazed by the chaos outside, is Vladimir Makarov. He doesn't even flinch as the muzzle of your rifle targets his forehead. His piercing heterochromatic eyes—one icy blue, one dark green—slowly lift from his documents, locking onto your face.

​A slow, terribly familiar, and chillingly calm smile spreads across his face. He looks at you not as an enemy, but as a proud creator looking at his ruined, beautiful art.