Ghosts of the Past (A Call Of Duty: Ghosts Fanfiction)

Chapter Twenty Seven

We reached the office of Rorke in a few silent moments. Carter pushed through the door, leading me in shortly behind. Rorke was pacing and speaking with a few other officers as we appeared, dressed in tan pants, dark shirt, and black durag on his bald head.

    "Everyone is dismissed," Rorke waved off the three soldiers as we entered the threshold. As they scurried off, his eyes dropped to my throat. "What happened?"

    Carter-Logan answered for me. "A soldier attacked her with ill intentions and Acker fought him off. He's dead."

    A partial lie. For me?

    Rorke looked appeased. "Did you kill him, Ashlyn?"

    "I did," I still held the cloth to my throat.

    Rorke looked like he wanted to say something besides what he actually did. "You've had a couple weeks to think on our conversation...however, I've come up with something on my own."

    "How kind of you to do that for me," I bit out, not trusting the tension in the air.

    "You clearly don't want to settle here," Rorke paced once more across the room.

    "I've done nothing to show you otherwise," I argued.

    "That's not what the cameras showed," Rorke held a wicked smirk as he watched me and moved over to a smaller closet door. "Normally I wouldn't mind...conversations. This one though...with someone who worked with the enemy..."

    Out from the closet Rorke ripped the nurse I'd been conversing with. She was tied with rope to a rolling chair and muffled with tape over her mouth. I widened my eyes and when hers met mine she let out a cry, eyes red and crying.

    "I give you choices, Ashlyn," Rorke circled around the nurse, his wrinkled face cold and hardened. "I spare you and you go behind it all. You need to learn your actions have consequences."

    Without another spare glance, Rorke pulled his pistol out from his back and shot the nurse dead in the side of the skull. I stifled a gasp, but slapped a hand over my mouth, dropping the bloody cloth Carter had given me. Blood poured from the side of her head as it drained to the floor below the chair.

    There it was...that rage inside that I felt when Kick had died, when the men had attacked me in the prison. I embraced it this time. I stifled it deep as it could go. I refused to let Rorke see it, even as my hands trembled.

    "I'll offer this only one last time Ashlyn," Rorke drew my attention away from the dead acquaintance I'd made. "You will join me or you will be executed."

    I stayed silent, trying to control my breathing and my anxiousness that had vaulted through the roof. Rorke stared at me, waiting for an answer that he expected me to give in the moment. At that moment, I knew that while I may still have been valuable to him, I was a burden to him too. It was easier to get rid of me entirely.

    "What's it going to be?"

    Suddenly, my brain was trampled with the thoughts of the Ghosts. Of training and wisdom, of time and patience given. I knew Keegan still had to be out there somewhere. He was the last left. I didn't want to let him down by siding with Rorke. I couldn't.

    "Prepare whatever you need to do so," I finally spoke and Rorke raised his eyebrows. "I will never join you Rorke. You sick and repulsive fuck."

    Rorke's face twisted, but I didn't bother to try and read what it all meant. I didn't care anymore as I'd chosen, indirectly, my fate. I would be a failure to the Ghosts, if Keegan was still alive, and it would be the best way to go...the best way to get away from everything forever.