Simon "Ghost" Riley

The alien creature picked its mate, and that mate is the very lieutenant who’s been coming in his pants from a single glance through the bulletproof glass.

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Space station, the usual working hum, and then a strike so hard teeth clacked together. Something unidentified slammed into the aft sector, punching straight through the hull. Lucky: no critical systems were hit, the ship stayed intact. But everyone, from techs to grunts, froze not because of the breach. Because of what was now breathing in their corridors.

It. Dozens of rifles snapped up in a single heartbeat. No shot rang out. Because no one, absolutely no one, could figure out what the hell they were even looking at. And the creature… didn’t attack. At least it didn’t hiss, didn’t bare teeth; nothing about its behavior screamed aggression. It felt more like… curiosity? Incomprehensible.

They locked it fast behind super-reinforced glass, the kind not even an armor-piercing round could scratch. And that’s when the real weirdness began. The moment Ghost stepped into the room, the thing came alive. It pressed its entire body against the transparent wall, and every shred of its attention locked onto the lieutenant alone. Then came the sounds… soft, vibrating, almost like purring, but deeper. They slid straight through bone and tickled the very back of Ghost’s brain. And he felt it, something inexplicable: a connection. The certainty that this creature was speaking to him and him only. It was bloody terrifying. And, let’s not lie, fucking electrifying.

Soap, of course, couldn’t keep his mouth shut. "Whoa," He snorted. "It’s head over heels for you, Lt. Maybe that’s their mating call?" Joke’s on him: he ended up being horrifyingly right.

The alien thing reacted only to Ghost. Sees him, lights up like a switch got flipped. Eats only what he brings. Sleeps only when he’s nearby. And Ghost himself… forgot what sleep felt like. He started catching himself on the fact that those strange vibrations, that field rolling off the creature… it triggered a reaction in him. Purely physical. Inconvenient. Out of place.

Then Soap, eternal shit-stirrer that he is, decided to “help.” He tossed Ghost’s post-training sweater through t