The Ghost and the Prodigy

June 17th, 2019

U.S. Navy Human Resources Command, JSOC

This letter is intended to serve as my official resignation as a member of DEVGRU, formally known as SEAL Team Six. As per the recommendation of Colonel Reid, based on the injuries I have received I am requesting an honorable discharge, after more than two decades of dedicated service. I have completed all of the requirements for discharge, including but not limited to confidential debriefs of recent operations and have been cleared as mentally sound by Sgt. Spokes, the acting psychologist at HQ Seven. At this point, I would like to move on from military service, as I have been deemed unable to continue with grievous injury, and would like to apply for a civilian career.

It has been a pleasure to serve the United States Navy.

Sincerely Yours,

- OPERATOR’S NAME REDACTED

Chapter 1 – The Ghost

June 5th, 2019

3:51 AM

“I’ll ask you once more,” the man spoke in a thick Middle Eastern accent. He stood as a shadow in the basement.

“Where are the assets now?" the shimmer of the blade in his hand was tantalizing.

Ghost stayed quiet. He looked at the floor with which he was much acquainted at this point.

He seemed a broken man; months of torture rendered him little more than a pile of meat with a pulse. Yet his appearance deceived, as his mind remained sharp.

His term of confinement loaned him time to plan an escape. Only recently had his captor’s bound him to a chair. The previous month he had was hung from his feet and the probability of escape was slim from such a position.

Infected drill holes covered the man’s torso. Oil burns had started peeling, and ripped fingernails oozed. Whipping scars striped his back. They had healed in a way that made them look fake. They seemed as if his body was a plush and the tears were simply stitched together to prevent the stuffing from falling out.

Even after months of torture the man never spoke a word for he knew his silence kept him above ground.

“I know who you are,” The Interrogator whispered. He crouched down and lifted the Ghost's head with the tip of the shank. His accent was a thick Middle Eastern variant.

“I know why they call you Ghost,” he smiled, “and I know what you’ve done to my people. But you will pay.”

“Everyone talks, you know.” he released Ghost’s head, “But I guess I don't need to tell you that," he chuckled.

"You DEVGRU men are tough. Your government has raised you well, but has abandoned you at my doorstep," he grew even more serious. You will talk, and then I will end the suffering for you.”

“You can die,” the Interrogator continued with great enthuse, “I will let you to die. If you answer the questions you will have my permission.”

Ghost spat blood from his mouth and shook his head.

The Interrogator roared and backhanded the tied up man knocking the entire chair over.

“This is what your world is now,” he yelled, circling with his hands out, “nobody will find you. You may think you can rely on a rescue, but you are wrong!”

Ghost clenched his teeth to stop himself from speaking. Blood trickled from the holes in his gums and gushed from his lips

“I will see you later,” the torturer spoke, “but eat yes? You need strength!”

He fetched a tray from the slot in the metal door and placed it in front of Ghost. He stared at him.

“Here you are my friend,” he smiled.

Ghost looked away in disgust. The cockroaches and beetles that skittered across the floor made their way to the stale food.

“Ah, yes, of course. My mistake!” The Interrogator chuckled. He unzipped his pants and began to piss on the food. The rancid stench flooded the dank basement.

“I will be back later!” The lights turned off with a buzzing click.

Ghost begun to count under his breath, matching the Interrogator’s footsteps.

“One, two, three, four.”

He continued to focus through the burn of hunger. The only light in the room darkness was his memories of Emilia. The curves of her body. The way her red hair framed her face. The way her nose wrinkled when she laughed. He thought about how he didn’t tell her that he loved her enough.

He continued to shiver violently. The only warmth in the frigid cellar was the blood which pooled under him.

He knew the number of footsteps the Interrogator took to get to the break room. The break room was far enough that it was impossible to hear the soundings of the torture chamber.

He knew there were eighteen guards in the entire compound. He even knew the names of the guards’ children, their wives and which kinds of beer they preferred. He was tortured for three months, yet not for a second had his attention wavered.

“Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty.”

Immediately he stuttered back to the wall, hobbling like a crabwalk. He leaned against the wall for a second and tipped the chair back onto its legs.

Ghost rubbed his elbows against the speckled concrete wall, slowly at first. The sandpaper-like material made a shearing noise as he shaved skin away. The sound of wet rags tearing apart.

He continued going slowly as the skin grew slimy. The faster he went the more blood would lubricate the surface and the less friction there would be.

The serrated edges of the wall stung as he shaved away skin. Having been tied up for such a long time made the pain excruciating. His arms were already dying from lack of circulation, and the pain was like breaking a bone on a freezing cold day.

He stopped for a moment, and the idea of death overwhelmed him. He doubted his ability in such a frail state to escape. But he smelled Emilia. He could taste her.

Ghost howled with anger for doubting his own survival, even for a second.

Blood ran down his arms. The first drop of blood hitting the floor echoed throughout the room.

He thought about his unborn son. He thought of making love to his wife. Sweat poured from his face and dampened the gristle of his beard with a greasy lacquer. His shoulder length hair draped over his face.

He felt blood pouring, now, down his arms. There was enough lubrication to escape his bondage.

In one motion he pulled his thumb outwards and ripped it to the side. The sound of the pop was fleshy and sick and he quietly growled.

He clenched his teeth while he raked the handcuffs over his wrists. Back and forth, back and forth. The motion was like that of a saw. The drip-drop of blood of continued, while the floor gorged upon his fluid.

With a final tug he ripped free. The man was restrained with his hands behind the back of a chair for countless days. He attempted to move his arms but they were heavy. They were numb yet screeched in pain as blood circulated.

He forced his arms to move. They shook as he fought the fatigue of his body. Even lifting his hands above his waist felt as if he were swimming with cinder blocks.

With a refined patience he untied his legs, calculating his next move. The Interrogator would be back in approximately thirteen minutes for their next session. Ghost recalled his height, his stature, and the way he moved. The Interrogator posed no challenge as a combatant. He was an extractor of information, a scholar of warfare. He was no soldier.

The man did not fear The Interrogator, for monsters in the night fear phantoms. Instead he respected The Interrogator. He had sold what made him human for his country, a contract which Ghost had once signed.

Through another pop he man re-located his thumb.

With a practiced creep he moved towards the left corner of the room. He noted The Interrogator was right-handed.

He sat as a Ghost in the dark. He waited motionlessly, perched in the corner, for seven hundred and eighty-six seconds.

Footsteps approached in the hallway.

The metal door clicked. The room flooded with light and The Interrogator walked in.

“Wakey, wa-”

Ghost cupped the man's mouth and punched the back of his neck. A sickening crack paralyzed The Interrogator as his knees buckled.

Still cupping his mouth Ghost smashed him into the wall, as if dragging a piece of luggage. He thrust his elbow into the man’s Adam’s Apple. He dropped his legs collapsed, yet his deadened hands remained tangled around Ghost’s face. His most primal reflex to survive had attempted to fight back, even half paralyzed.

Ghost looked away during the mauling. His hands knew accuracy even his eyes didn’t, but that wasn’t the reason that he refused to see the man’s eyes. He looked away for there was a difference between killing, and killing a man to him. Within a second the Interrogator had was erased.

Ghost released his hand from the mouth of the body.

He dug through the corpse’s pockets. He grabbed the compound’s key, and a 9mm pistol, before tucking it into his waistband.

Ghost switched off the hallway lights once more, for he knew darkness better than he did light.

Chapter Two – The Prodigy

September 16th, 2019

3:21 PM

The boy was declared a prodigy by the tender age of eight. By twelve he graduated high school, by thirteen his IQ announced as the third highest in the world, and by fifteen he was a graduate of an Ivy League university, having done so in a way that those even double his age struggled to do. Now at the age of seventeen he was in his last year of medical school, with aspirations of neurosurgery fueling his endeavor.

He lay sprawled out on a battered leather couch. The chapping material stuck to his face with layers of grease and drool, while his shirt clung to his chest soaked in a night sweat which bore excuse to the cool night air, as the curtains of his dormitory danced.

He slept on his side with an arm tucked awkwardly under his head, the other stretched out off of the sofa like the arm of a clock. The room was silent apart from the boy’s occasional twitch and seize. He lay there, twitching occasionally and whimpering in his sleep.

A computer suddenly buzzed to live, the screen flickering as notifications were pushed to his screen.

“Look at the fucking welfare kid,” one comment read, “I didn’t know mommy’s pension covered angel.”

The photo which was attached showed the boy the previous night, bent over a table with his nose plugged in a line of powder. Surrounded by people twice his size and undoubtedly twice his age, he was oblivious with his head down, of the mocking faces and gestures that were directed towards him.

The screen beeped again.

“Didn’t you know? Stripper moms give their kid’s drug allowance,” the next typed out. The attached image was another frame of the boy being ridiculed and berated, literally behind his back, as he shoved his face into the white sawdust-like powder.

Suddenly he awoke in a fit. His body shook, his throat swelled and he rolled from the couch to his knees while dry heaving; beads of sweat rolling down his face. He crawled forward, desperately probing a nearby table with a palm in search of his glasses.

The room flickered violently as the computer screen, the only source of light, switched on with message notifications, and off again. After a minute or two of scrambling he slapped the glasses onto his face, and sat down in a ratty office chair, panting as if he had run a marathon.

The computer screen had also calmed down; it hummed and buzzed as the toxic cathode rays of the ancient screen worked.

Sluggishly he flicked on the computer’s display, and smiled when he was greeted by sixty-three new messages, but his smile soon grew into the scowl with which he was more accustomed.

The light illuminated his face. His blonde hair was greasily matted in winding directions as if gelled, his heavily freckled face flinched violently as he clenched his teeth. With quivering brown eyes he hid behind the dirty speckled lens of thick rimmed glasses.

His eyes grew large, staring into the pixelated void. One-by-one he deleted the messages, flagging them for abusiveness, and hoping they’d be removed. Like locusts they flooded back, every message he deleted another birthed three more. He submitted to his own curiously as he shuffled between the attached photos, his confusion growing into anger with each click, as he pieced together the events of the night.

He bent under the desk and ripped out the computer’s power cable, sighing and leaning back in his chair. He felt his cell phone vibrate in his pocket. After a moment of hesitation he slid it out, succumbing to curiosity as he often did. He stared at the phone, holding it in two hands as if it were a precious and mysterious artifact. He lifted the top, and peered inside carefully to inspect the contents of Pandora’s Box.

“If you want more: Vanderblit Hall, room 1052.”

“So we’re going right Jayden?” a voice echoed out from the confines of the dark room.

The boy’s eyes shot up to greet the mysterious stranger.

“Who are you?” he asked, “how’d you get in here?” he jumped to his feet.

“You know who I am,” the stranger replied as he walked forward, and sat on the leather couch.

Jayden nodded as if he did in fact know who he was but simply had forgotten.

“How’d you get in here?” he asked.

“You said I could crash,” he said matter-of-factly, “you were really fucked up last night by the way.”

The boy huffed and crossed his arms.

“Don’t get me wrong though, you were the life of the party.” he corrected with a point of his finger.

“I felt outstanding,” Jayden said looking over the lenses of his glasses, clearly trying to hide his smile.

“Then what are we waiting for,” Jay prodded with a smile.