Age 18 — Disclosed Facility, Northern Reaches
Two Months After Krovka's Execution
The facility had no name.
It appeared on no map, no satellite image, no intelligence report. The Synarchy had built it in the hollowed-out core of a mountain, accessible only by a single road that wound through a valley so narrow that sunlight never reached the bottom.
Netoshka had been tracking rumors of this place for weeks. A research station. A weapons lab. Something Kersnik wanted kept hidden even from his inner circle.
Her informants—the scattered survivors who now made up her makeshift network—had pieced together fragments. Strange energy readings. Unusual supply shipments. Personnel transfers that led nowhere.
She went alone.
The valley was silent. Too silent. The kind of silence that meant someone was watching.
She moved through the darkness, her night vision goggles painting the world in shades of green. The facility entrance was a steel door set into the rock face, unguarded. That was wrong. Every Synarchy facility had guards.
She entered anyway.
───
The Corridors
Inside, the facility was a maze of concrete corridors and flickering fluorescent lights. The air was cold and dry, recycled too many times. The walls were bare. No signs, no markings, no indication of what this place was for.
Netoshka moved carefully, her rifle up, her senses extended.
She passed empty rooms. Laboratories with shattered equipment. Offices with papers scattered across floors. Whatever had happened here, it had happened recently. And violently.
The deeper she went, the stronger the feeling grew.
Someone was here.
Someone was waiting.
She found the central chamber at the end of a long corridor. A circular room, its walls lined with server racks and monitors. Most of the screens were dark, but one flickered with static, casting the room in an eerie, pulsing glow.
In the center of the room stood a figure.
Masked. Black tactical gear. No insignia. The same kind of suit the Synarchy agents had worn during the coup.
But something about the stance was familiar.
Netoshka raised her rifle.
"Turn around."
The figure didn't move.
"I said turn around."
Slowly, the figure turned.
The mask was featureless—a smooth, black surface that reflected nothing. But the way the figure held itself. The weight distribution. The angle of the shoulders.
Netoshka's blood went cold.
She knew that stance.
She had known it her entire life.
The figure reached up and removed the mask.
Yevgeny Nezvany.
───
The Face
He looked older than she remembered.
His hair had gone grey at the temples. Deep lines etched his face, carved by years of grief and guilt and the weight of choices he could never undo. But his eyes were the same. Steady. Sad. Watching her with the expression he had worn the day he carried her from the ashes of Kholodny.
"Netoshka," he said.
Her rifle didn't waver.
"You're working for Kersnik."
"No."
"Then what are you doing here?"
Yevgeny took a slow step forward. She didn't fire.
"This facility was Synarchy. I came to destroy it. Same as you."
"You're lying."
"I've done a lot of lying in my life. Not this time."
Netoshka's hands trembled. She forced them steady.
"Tell me why I shouldn't kill you."
Yevgeny was silent for a long moment. Then he spoke.
"Because I'm sorry."
───
The Confession
He sat on the edge of a broken console, his hands resting on his knees, his head bowed. He looked like a man who had been carrying a weight for too long.
"I was the one who signed the papers," he said quietly. "Zeta-9. The experiments. The conditioning. I signed them all."
Netoshka's finger tightened on the trigger.
"I thought I was protecting you. That's what I told myself. That if you were with them, they would keep you safe. That you would have training, resources, a future." He looked up. "I was wrong. I knew I was wrong the moment I signed the first form. But I kept signing. Because admitting I was wrong would mean admitting what I had done to you."
Netoshka's voice was barely a whisper.
"You gave me to them."
"Yes."
"You let them break me."
"Yes."
"You watched. You knew what they were doing. And you did nothing."
Yevgeny met her eyes.
"I did nothing. Because I was a coward. Because I convinced myself it was for the greater good. Because I told myself that you were strong enough to survive." He paused. "You were. You are. But that doesn't make it right."
He stood.
"I've spent years trying to atone. Destroying Synarchy facilities. Sabotaging Kersnik's operations. Helping people like you escape." He gestured at the empty room. "This is the sixth facility I've hit. It won't be the last."
Netoshka's rifle lowered. Just slightly.
"You could have come to me. After Sombiro. After everything. You could have told me the truth."
"I know." Yevgeny's voice cracked. "I wanted to. Every day. But every time I thought about facing you, I remembered the look on your face when they took you away. And I couldn't."
───
The Trap
Netoshka dropped her rifle.
It clattered against the concrete floor, the sound echoing through the empty chamber. She didn't pick it up.
She stood there, staring at the man who had saved her, who had raised her, who had handed her over to be broken.
"Why?" she asked. "Why did you do it?"
Yevgeny's face crumpled.
"Because I loved you."
She laughed. A broken, hollow sound.
"You loved me. So you sent me to be tortured. To be programmed. To be turned into a weapon."
"I thought—"
"You thought wrong."
She walked toward him. Each step was heavy, deliberate. He didn't back away.
"You were the only person I trusted. The only one who ever showed me kindness. And you gave me away like I was nothing."
"Not nothing." His voice was barely audible. "I gave you away because I thought it was the only way to keep you alive. The state would have taken you anyway. Zeta-9 was already watching. I thought if I cooperated, I could stay close. Protect you from the inside."
"Did you? Protect me?"
Yevgeny's silence was answer enough.
Then the lights went out.
───
The Ambush
Emergency lights flickered on, bathing the chamber in bloody red.
Figures emerged from hidden panels in the walls. Synarchy Sleeper agents. A dozen of them. Weapons raised.
Kersnik's voice echoed from speakers hidden somewhere in the ceiling.
"Well done, Yevgeny. You brought her right to us."
Netoshka spun, grabbing for her rifle, but Yevgeny was faster. He stepped between her and the nearest agents, his arms spread wide.
"NO! I didn't— I didn't betray her!"
Kersnik laughed. It was a cold, empty sound.
"You didn't have to. We've been tracking you for weeks. Every facility you destroyed, every message you sent—it all led us here. To her. To the final loose end."
Yevgeny turned to Netoshka, his face white.
"I swear to you. I didn't know. I didn't—"
A gunshot.
Yevgeny staggered.
His hand went to his chest. Blood seeped through his fingers, dark and thick.
He looked at Netoshka. His eyes were wide, confused, afraid.
Not of death.
Of her.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm so sorry."
He fell.
───
The Death
Netoshka caught him before he hit the ground.
She knelt beside him, her hands pressing against his chest, trying to stop the bleeding. But there was too much blood. Too fast.
"Stay with me," she said. Her voice was strange—not commanding, not cold. Desperate. "Yevgeny.. Papa.. Stay with me."
He reached up with a bloody hand and touched her face.
"You were never a weapon," he said. His voice was fading. "You were always... my daughter. I just... forgot."
"Don't talk. Save your strength."
"No." He smiled. It was a sad, gentle smile. "I've said too little for too long. Let me say this."
His hand trembled against her cheek.
"I should have run with you. When I had the chance. Should have taken you and disappeared. Somewhere they couldn't find us. I thought about it. Every day. But I was afraid. Afraid of what they would do to us. Afraid of failing you."
"You didn't fail me."
"I did." His eyes glistened. "I failed you from the beginning. But you... you survived. You became something incredible. Something they couldn't control."
His hand fell.
"Find them. The sleepers. The children like you. Give them what I couldn't give you."
"Yevgeny—"
"A home."
His eyes closed.
His chest stopped moving.
Netoshka knelt beside his body, her hands covered in his blood, and the world went silent.
───
The Breaking
She did not cry but only shed a silent tear.
The tears had come when she found Krovka. When she faced Ruzina's ghost. When she heard Kersnik's ultimatum.
Now there was nothing left.
Just cold. Just emptiness. Just the knowledge that the only person who had ever truly loved her—the only one who had tried, even if he failed—was gone.
She stood.
The Synarchy agents surrounded her, weapons raised. Kersnik's voice crackled overhead.
"Take her alive. She's still useful."
Netoshka looked at Yevgeny's body.
Then she looked at the agents.
The Voice stirred.
Kill them all.
Yes.
───
The Rampage
She moved before the first agent could fire.
Her hand shot out, fingers finding his throat. She crushed his windpipe, took his weapon, spun. Three shots. Three bodies.
The others opened fire.
She was already moving—rolling, diving, flowing through the chamber like water. The rifle in her hands spoke in short, controlled bursts. Each shot found a target.
An agent lunged at her from the side. She broke his arm, took his knife, buried it in his chest.
Another tried to flee. She shot him in the back.
Another begged. She didn't hear the words.
When it was over, twelve agents lay dead on the floor of the chamber.
Netoshka stood in the center of the carnage, breathing hard, her uniform soaked with blood.
Kersnik's voice returned.
"Impressive. But pointless. There are more where they came from. There are always more."
Netoshka looked up at the speaker.
"I'm coming for you, Kersnik."
"I know." His voice was almost amused. "That's what makes this interesting."
The speakers went silent.
Netoshka knelt beside Yevgeny one last time. She closed his eyes. Pressed her forehead to his.
"I'll find them," she whispered. "The sleepers. The children. I'll give them what you couldn't give me."
She stood.
She walked out of the facility.
Behind her, the mountain burned.
───
The Road — The Rampage Continues
She didn't sleep for three days.
She moved from Synarchy target to Synarchy target—supply depots, training camps, communications hubs. She killed without hesitation, without mercy, without thought.
The allies who had joined her after Krovka's death tried to keep up. They couldn't. She moved too fast, struck too hard, left too much destruction in her wake.
Yakov tried to talk to her.
"Netoshka—"
She walked past him.
Mira tried to reach her.
"He wouldn't want this—"
She didn't answer.
Petrov finally grabbed her arm.
"You're going to get yourself killed."
Netoshka looked at him. Her eyes were empty.
"That's the point."
She pulled away and walked into the darkness.
───
The Body Count
Seven facilities in five days.
Forty-three Synarchy agents.
Twelve officers.
Three supply depots.
Two armories.
One communications hub.
The underground networks called it a rampage. Kersnik's people called it a massacre. Netoshka called it nothing.
She didn't keep count. Didn't care. She just moved from one target to the next, killing, burning, destroying.
The Voice was silent.
The grief was silent.
Everything was silent.
───
The Exhaustion
On the sixth day, her body gave out.
She collapsed in a field outside a burned-out village, staring at the grey sky, too tired to move. Her hands were raw. Her muscles screamed. Her mind was a blank wall.
Mira found her.
"You're going to die out here."
Netoshka didn't answer.
"The sleepers need you. The children. The ones Yevgeny asked you to save. You can't help them if you're dead."
Netoshka closed her eyes.
"I don't know how to stop."
Mira knelt beside her.
"Then let someone else help you. Just for a while. Just until you can breathe again."
Netoshka was silent for a long moment.
Then she nodded.
Just barely.
Mira helped her to her feet.
They walked into the forest together.
───
The Aftermath
The rampage ended.
Not because Netoshka chose to stop. Because her body forced her to. Wounds that had gone untreated, exhaustion that had been ignored, grief that had been buried—all of it caught up with her at once.
She slept for two days.
When she woke, Yakov was there. Anya. Kozlov. Mira. Petrov. The band of survivors who had chosen to follow her.
They looked at her differently now. Not with fear. With something else. Something she didn't have a name for.
"You're still alive," Yakov said.
"I'm still alive."
"Good." He handed her a plate of food. "Eat. We have work to do."
Netoshka ate.
She thought about Yevgeny. About his last words. About the promise she had made.
Give them what I couldn't give you.
A home.
She didn't know how to give that. She had never had one herself.
But she could try.
That was what Yevgeny had done. Tried. Failed. Tried again.
Maybe that was enough.
Maybe it had to be.
───
The hunt continued.
But something had changed.
Yevgeny was dead. The last link to her childhood, to the person she might have been, was gone.
She carried his memory now. Not as a weight. As a purpose.
The sleepers were waiting. Kersnik was still alive. The war was still raging.
But she was still choosing.
And for now, that was enough.