The mission had been simple: Take down Makarov at the hotel Lustig and put a permanent stop to this madness for good. However, it did not turn out that way. The mentally deranged man had always been known to be one step ahead of anything, including the spontaneous tactics of war. Soap realized this when he glimpsed that haunting flash of red light behind him and the sound of a timer clicking repeatedly. Although he could not recall the treacherous free fall off the church tower, he clearly remembered the bolt of agony that had shot through his whole body.

The pain did not end there. Soap did not have the wonderful luxury of passing out into an embracing darkness like he so desperately wished. Instead, he withstood being dragged what felt like miles by Price and Yuri as he slowly became dead weight with each drop of blood. Through his blurry vision, he could see the liquid crimson markings in a long streak along the road. That was when he acknowledged the fear that Captain John Mactavish might not make it out alive today.

Instead of accepting the wretched thought, he pulled out his sidearm and began taking down as many enemies as he could. He refused to die without a fight. While soldiers dropped like flies, Soap became increasingly lightheaded. Every limb ached and his muscles felt like they were being torn to pieces. He loathed that he was a disadvantage to the two men protecting him. He dared to ask Price to just leave him behind. The old man stubbornly refused and rejected the suggestion almost immediately.

When they had ultimately reached a safer house to hunker down in, Soap was barely conscious. He heard Price yelling at the resistance team assisting them, then a hard and cold surface pressed against his back. No matter how deeply he inhaled, there didn't seem to be enough air in the room to fill his lungs. His head pounded - he couldn't even hear feel own frantic heartbeat as Price yelled for a medic. His friend could not fully comprehend that Soap was dying right in front of him. If a medic could have even managed to make it through the war zone, it would have been too late.

Soap tasted the iron of blood boiling in his throat when Yuri put pressure against his wounds. With heavy eyelids and his comrade furiously shaking his feeble body, he recollected an urgent memory. He had to tell Price. He had to warn his friend about the Russian beside him.

Calling Price's name in a hoarse whisper, Soap grasped his collar and whispered, "You need to know," He coughed, blood dribbling from his cracked lips, "Makarov...knows...Yuri." The effort to speak sapped all his strength away in an instant.

His eyelids closed, and his mind was enveloped by a reassuring darkness. His hand fell away from Price as his body went limp. Although Soap could still feel himself being unwound bit by bit, he clearly heard Captain Price's cries of anguish. He was begging for him to come back.

I'm sorry, my friend. He thought solemnly, I will see you in another life.

Distantly, he wondered where that life may be; a world without war or famine, he hoped.

At last, his heart stopped beating. A buzz of complete silence filled his numb brain. His surroundings collapsed into shards of broken glass that faded to black. The glass sealed tightly together to create an opaque cave around his seemingly floating body. No longer was there a rough table pressing on him, nor the sound of voices. There was nothing but darkness. Soap was not accustomed to such sheer silence. He had grown familiar with blazing weapons in his hands and loud explosions echoing in the distance on a battlefield.

He found himself slightly disappointed. He was supposedly dead, yet there was not a single golden gate or puffy white cloud in sight. If he was able, Soap would have laughed.

Bloody hell, what am I thinking?

Maybe he was losing his mind. He had barely made it through the steel knife that Shepherd had jammed into his chest, directly between his ribs and an inch short from his heart. However, he had not lived through the unexpected blast on the church. He supposed that the fall had not helped the situation. At least he had saved Yuri when the bomb exploded. He did not know if that was a good or bad thing.

Suddenly, the darkness surrounding him shifted. Slowly, the room that he had passed in reformed right before him, piece-by-piece. He shut his eyes against the dizzying onslaught. When he reopened them a moment later, he was back inside of the musky tavern he had died in. His lungs filled with a great burst of air as he gasped. His headache came back all at once, along with the pain. Every nerve screamed in misery. Feeling returned to his limbs and his fingers twitched when blood continued to pump through his veins once again.

Soap felt like he had been hit by an oncoming train. Each tiny breath burned in his raw throat; he was unnaturally warm. Sweat began to bead on his forehead and run down his scratched cheeks. Through the agony, he could hear the unsettling screams of soldiers being obliterated by machine fire.

A man yelled, "Did the others get out alive?"

There was no response. The quietness that settled over the area told him that the remaining soldiers were all dead.

Black, fuzzy dots clouded his vision, but he blinked them back until his clarity returned. Soap realized that he had to do something to continue to survive. To return to that horrid darkness may be the end of his life, forever. He tried to scream, but all that he managed was a weak whimper. The crash of splintering wood broke the silence. An entry door had been knocked down. Dozens of boots echoed throughout the room as strangers gathered around him.

Price..?

A spark of hope filled his chest.

A single man spoke, his voice gruff as he spoke in a foreign tongue. In Soap's disorientated state of mind, he could not place the language.

There was a large sigh across the room, "They're out of Czech Republic by now."

Another man responded, his accent similar, but his words in rough English. Soap tried to be quiet, but it was quickly becoming harder to breathe again. The sour taste of blood rising in his throat gave way to a gruff cough. Soap's sore muscles protested to such a simple act, He shivered uncontrollably, although he felt extremely feverish. Did he alert the men to his presence? The sound of his labored breathing drowned out their strange voices.

Through hazy vision, he could make out the outline a tall man wearing brown battle armor. The man was studying him closely. The man motioned to his troops, having come to a decision. More garbled words were exchanged. Fading in and out of consciousness once again, Soap laid motionless as someone leaned over him with medical gauze.

A pinch on the underside of his arm made him flinch. His brain was foggy as a curtain seemed to slip over his thoughts and pain. Soap distantly registered these familiar feelings as the quick effects of morphine. A pair of men adorned in armor crouched at his head and feet. Foreign hands gripped his shoulders and ankles when they began to life him. The mere motion created when they moved him caused him to wince and grit his teeth against an onslaught of nausea.

He must have closed his eyes, because when he awoke, they had just finished sliding him into the back of a large vehicle. The door slammed closed. His muddled brain could not form a single coherent thought.

The man that had hovered above him slid into a seat right at the top of his head. He seemed to order the driver to move, as the movement of tires against gravel jostled him. The passenger turned to them to speak to the man. Again, Soap could not translate. The stranger barked out a short-lived laugh as he replied.

"Inform the Captain. Tell him that we have precious cargo."