Chapter 1: The Final Breach and The Worst Way to Get Isekai’d

The night air over the outskirts of Tehran sat heavy thick with dust, heat, and the distant hum of a restless city that never fully slept. A half-finished concrete building loomed in the darkness, skeletal and hollow, its exposed steel bones cutting jagged silhouettes against the moonlight like the ribs of a dying giant.

Three figures moved toward it. Low. Silent. Precise.

Boots barely whispered against gravel.

“Command, this is Alpha-Three. Visual on structure,” Captain Jack "Cap" Morrison murmured into his comm. His voice was steady, almost casual tone.

(I wanna go home and watch the new episode of The Eminence in Shadow... sigh. Cid Kagenou would have found a much more dramatic way to approach this building. Probably with a long coat and some moonlight monologue about being the 'Power in the Shadows.')

Static crackled a sharp, digital rasp in his ear. “Copy, Alpha-Three. Intel confirms the target is inside. High-value individual. Extremely dangerous. Capture him alive.”

“Alive?” Sergeant First Class Mateo "Mat" Ruiz’s voice cut in, vibrating with barely contained disbelief. “I thought you said extremely dangerous, Command. That usually means we… y’know… don’t keep him breathing.”

Jack glanced back briefly, a faint smirk hidden beneath the shadow of his helmet.

"We need the information in his head, Mat. It's hard to get passwords out of a corpse" Jack replied, his eyes scanning the perimeter.

First Lieutenant Arthur Chen exhaled quietly through his nose, the sound of a man who had been the designated adult of the group for too long. He was already scanning the building’s angles through his high-powered optics, counting windows, marking exits, and identifying structural weak points with the clinical coldness of a mathematician.

“If you can talk to the dead, Mat, then you are welcome to take him down,” Arthur mocked, his voice a dry, tactical rasp.

Mat let out a sharp, theatrical shiver. "Yeah, I think I prefer him breathing."

Jack exhaled slowly, focusing his mind, then gave the hand signal. Three sets of gloved hands moved in perfect synchronization.

Click.

“Breach.”

They slipped inside like ghosts.

The interior was a graveyard of construction materials, lit only by flickering fluorescent lights that buzzed overhead like dying insects. The air smelled of stale dust, wet concrete, and the faintly metallic tang of gun oil.

“Alpha-One entering first floor,” Jack murmured. His rifle swept across the corners with practiced precision. Every step was silent, calculated. He wasn't just a soldier he was a predator in its natural habitat.

Suddenly, a shadow peeled away from a pillar.

“Hostile on sight.”

Pfft. Pfft. Pfft.

The suppressed gunfire was no louder than a cough. One, two, three, the targets went down before they even knew it.

“First floor clear” Jack reported. "If the information turns out to be fake again, I’m complaining to the higher-ups. I missed the local anime convention for this. There was a limited-edition 'Overlord' figurine with my name on it!"

Outside, perched in a vantage point that overlooked the rear exit, Arthur’s scope tracked a flurry of movement.

“I don't know why the higher-ups haven't fired you yet, Captain,” Arthur said, his voice a monotone anchor in the chaos. “Hostiles spotted outside. Clearing.”

A breath. A squeeze.

The crack of his sniper rifle echoed softly through the distance, a muffled thwip that ended a life hundreds of yards away.

“Target down.”

Jack clicked his comms twice. "Well, I guess I'm just very charming, Artie."

"I’m gonna follow you forever, sir!" Mat chipped in with enthusiastic, puppy-like energy.

Arthur let out a long, weary sigh that sounded like it cost him five years of his life. “Why do I have to deal with these two idiots? I should have gone into corporate law.”

Meanwhile, in the garage, Mat had just finished dropping two sentries with a fluid transition from rifle to sidearm. He crouched behind a rusted parked SUV, scanning the area lazily—until his eyes locked onto something yellow and jarringly bright on the grease stained floor.

“…Oh.”

He lowered his rifle slightly, his tactical discipline momentarily derailed by the sheer absurdity of the object. He walked over and picked it up. A small, yellow rubber duck sat in his palm, staring back with unblinking bead-like eyes.

Mat turned it in his hands like it was a priceless Ming dynasty artifact.

“…Ooooh, ducky.”

He grinned, a flash of white teeth in the dark, and tucked it securely into a pouch on his plate carrier like a sacred relic.

“Garage clear” he whispered into the comms. “Also… morale improved. I think you guys will like this.”

Jack’s voice came back instantly, sounding far too hopeful. "What? Did you find an anime figurine? Please tell me it’s a 1/7 scale."

"No, it's better" Mat whispered gleefully. "It's a rubber ducky..."

Silence. Absolute, crushing silence on the comms.

“…Tough crowd,” Mat grumbled. "at least ducky gets me"

The team regrouped at the central stairwell and began the ascent. Second floor. Clear. Too clear.

Jack moved ahead, his military instincts honed by years of Special Forces operations screaming at him. The lack of resistance on the upper floors felt like a trap springing shut. His eyes narrowed, scanning the ceiling for tripwires.

“Something’s off…” he muttered.

Mat followed, unusually quiet for once, his fingers subconsciously brushing the rubber duck tucked in his gear for luck. They approached the third floor.

Arthur’s voice suddenly cut through the comms, no longer mocking, but sharp with a sudden, jagged urgency.

“Captain, I have no visual at your location. Be careful!”

Through his thermal scope, Arthur saw silhouettes moving—not toward the Captain, but away. At the ground floor, he saw a group of men sprinting toward a getaway vehicle, but they weren't taking the HVI with them.

“Hostile movement at the front of the building! Do not proceed—repeat, do not proceed! It’s a setup! Do you copy?”

Static.

Nothing but the hollow hiss of a dead frequency.

Arthur’s eyes narrowed behind his glasses. His heart hammered against his ribs. “…Damn it.”

He stood immediately, slinging the long-range rifle over his shoulder and drawing his carbine. “They’re not responding. Comms are jammed.”

Without hesitation, he abandoned his post and sprinted toward the skeletal building.

Inside, Jack paused at the top of the stairs, his hand hovering near his ear.

“…Comms are dead.”

Mat tilted his head, the humor finally draining from his face. “That’s never a good sign. Like, 'horror movie before the jump-scare level bad.”

Jack didn’t respond. They proceeded to the fourth floor, moving slow and steady, their shadows stretching long and thin against the raw concrete walls. His eyes were locked on a single heavy steel door at the end of the hallway.

“…Target’s there.”

Step by step. Slow. Controlled. Every instinct Jack had was screaming danger, but the mission was the mission. They reached the door.

Mat leaned in slightly, his weapon leveled. "Want me to do the honors, or—"

"I’ve got it. Cover my six," Jack said, reaching for the iron handle.

“DON’T OPEN THAT—!”

Arthur’s voice echoed from the stairwell as he burst onto the floor, his face pale, lungs burning.

Too late.

Click.

The world didn't just end; it turned inside out.

BOOOM!

A massive thermobaric charge detonated on the first floor, instantly followed by secondary charges rigged to the structural supports. The explosion tore through the floor beneath them, ripping the building apart from the inside. Concrete shattered into dust. Steel screamed as it twisted like taffy. The entire structure groaned as if it were a living thing, and it was dying.

The world collapsed into a roar of fire and falling stone.

Beneath layers of suffocating rubble, three figures lay broken among the ruins. The air was thick with the grey fog of pulverized concrete and the acrid scent of smoke.

Jack coughed weakly, a wet rattling sound. He stared upward at a sliver of the night sky barely visible through the jagged teeth of the debris. He couldn't feel his legs. He couldn't feel much of anything except a cold creeping numbness.

“…Heh…” His voice was a faint thread. “…Guess… this is it for us boys…”

Mat lay a few feet away, pinned by a massive slab. He was barely conscious, one hand still clutching the rubber duck, the yellow plastic now stained with dark wet crimson.

“…Yeah…” he wheezed, a ghost of a smirk on his blood-streaked face. “Not exactly… how I planned my night. I didn't even... get to clear my browser history... The guys at the precinct are gonna judge me so hard..."

Arthur lay pinned nearby, his glasses cracked across one lens but still clinging stubbornly to his face. His chest rose and fell in shallow, agonizing hitches. He looked at his brothers, the two idiots he’d spent his life protecting.

Jack let out a weak, bubbling chuckle.

“…You know… I always thought…” he struggled to draw air, his vision blurring at the edges “…I’d get isekai’d or something… wake up in another world… with overpowered skills… and I'd save a beautiful lady and she'd fall in love with me... then the villain would use her as my weakness, but I'd be two steps ahead... plan everything to defeat him..."

A faint, rattling laugh escaped him. Even at the end, the nerd in him refused to die quietly.

Mat let out a dry, breathless scoff. “…Sir…”

Jack turned his head slightly, the movement costing him everything. “Yeah…?”

“…Can I say something?”

“…Go ahead… soldier…”

Mat smirked faintly, his eyes losing focus. “…I think that’s total anime BS.”

A weak, genuine laugh escaped all three of them. It was a quiet sound, barely audible over the settling dust and creaking metal but it was real. It was them.

"...Yeah..." Jack whispered, his eyelids feeling like lead weights. "...It is."

Mat’s voice dropped even softer, a mere breath in the dark. “…But… if it is real…”

A pause.

“…I’d wanna see you guys there.”

Arthur exhaled slowly, his hand reaching out through the rubble to find a piece of Jack’s tactical vest. “I know it sounds ridiculous… but I Agree.”

Jack closed his eyes for a moment. He felt the weight of the world fading, the pain receding into a vast, calm ocean of black. He opened them one last time, looking at the stars.

“…It’s been… an honor… serving with you guys…”

The building groaned one final time, a deep tectonic shudder and collapsed completely.

Darkness swallowed them whole.