Anya was hugging Dotti, and the two sat on the bed quietly sobbing.
They didn't dare to cry out loud, fearing it would draw the guards' attention.
"Dotti, your combat and shooting skills are the best, far better than mine. You should kill me and live on with my share too."
"No, if you're not going to kill me, then let's find a way to break out together, even if we're shot to pieces by machine guns."
"If that's the case, they won't shoot," Anya shook her head, wiping her tears. "They'll just send out the dogs and a sled at dawn, and find our frozen bodies miles away."
Dotti looked down. Yes, now even they, along with the guards inside the base, were wearing just thin clothes.
The guards outside, the base's defenses, the electric grid at the perimeter, all these have solutions, they have encountered similar challenges in their training.
But there's no course teaching them to fight against nature...
A dress isn't going to carry them far, Siberian winds would claim their lives.
They could save the bullets, for perhaps their bodies would be used as shooting targets for other girls, or dissected.
"If we could kill enough guards and layer on those clothes, maybe we could hold out until we got out of the snow," Dotti suggested again.
"But which direction should we go?" Anya asked her. "We don't even know where we are, having lived here since childhood. What's beyond the wilderness?"
"..."
Dotti didn't know what to say, but since they couldn't kill each other, they might as well think of a way to escape together.
.............
Su Ming was drinking at this moment.
Indeed, after more than half a month of staking out and a few mistakes in finding the right spot, he finally located the Red House.
This damned place is deadly. Not only is there no train access, but even transport relies on manpower sleds.
Flying high above the train station, the prisoners and laborers below looked like ants moving house, so slow. Once the direction was identified, Su Ming surpassed them.
He managed to find this place from the train station hundreds of kilometers away, thanks to Strangulation's scent and the cloak's aerial reconnaissance, along with Deathstroke's hunting experience.
If this were in DC, he could still use the divine artifact fused to the goggles, but in Marvel, that thing was useless too.
The Red House was an inconspicuous place, but Su Ming still spotted it.
A small shabby house not only had electric grids, but was certainly Siberia's deep rear area; was a tank necessary?
There weren't many patrols on the ground, a squad on each watchtower around the electric grid, a few people in the central house, and a squad with a dog below.
The two broken tanks were not running, presumably the crew wasn't on the ground.
These people were from Leviathan, and Su Ming felt no psychological burden. Just as he arrived at night, surrounded by darkness, it was the perfect time.
He gently landed on the top of the tower, hanging upside down from the eaves. The soldiers on fire watch didn't even react before being strangled to death by Strangulation.
After repeating this four times, aside from the military dogs on the ground seemingly smelling blood and becoming anxious, no one noticed Su Ming.
The soldiers were of mediocre quality, almost too scared to unlock their safeties seeing Deathstroke descend from the sky. By the time their fingers touched the trigger, their heads rolled onto the snow.
For dealing with people, Su Ming only needed the Owl Dagger, Strangulation dealt with the dogs. Facing the alien predator, the dogs were equally frightened silent.
Strangulation's speed was too fast, with a flicker of shadow, a few dogs had their necks twisted by the tentacles, which then morphed into a big mouth and swallowed them.
Su Ming originally wanted to taste dog meat, but now that chance was gone.
Strangulation gestured, suggesting the host could also enjoy human flesh, which was savory, had he tried it?
But Su Ming refused.
On second thought, these dogs might have eaten human flesh; Su Ming lost interest too.
Without the age of surveillance, it was truly the golden age for assassins, sneaking in without anyone noticing went smoothly.
Su Ming searched the corpses, scavenged the rubles and vodka, then entered the small house in the center of the compound.
Inside were only a few people, appearing to be junior officers, sleeping soundly.
Stinky boots and empty bottles were scattered everywhere, the room was a mess, and a few decks of playing cards strewn on the floor.
"Strangulation."
Su Ming had no interest in knowing how those guys would die; he started examining the rest of the room's contents.
In the corner on the floor was a huge iron door, leading downstairs, and a big red button, presumably an alarm, along with a communicator connecting to below, and some simple individual weapons.
Su Ming thought about it, to prevent the enemy from going rogue and silencing the little girls, it was better to sneak in.
The doors of the Brooklyn underground lab at the time of cutting SSR were opened silently; this one should be the same.
But before that, he needed a sip of vodka to warm up a bit.
Since he hadn't added any 'Magic Breath Technique' to the cloak, he inhaled a lot of cold air and felt chilled to the bone.
Although it looked quite similar, vodka wasn't Sprite, couldn't make his heart soar.
Opening a bottle of new wine, removing his helmet, he took a few gulps, exhaled a hot breath, put the helmet back on, and Su Ming drew the Nightfall Greatsword.
The black blade was dotted with stars.
He lightly jabbed at the door as if piercing through a sheet of paper, smoothly cutting out a circle.
He had Strangulation help hold this large iron disc and gently placed it on the ground.
Silent and soundless.
A slope leading downward appeared, and it was quite spacious.
Su Ming nodded in satisfaction as the red light point slowly sank into the darkness.
The structure here is like an inverted skyscraper; the upper floors near the exit are either military barracks or weapons warehouses.
He found Leviathan to be quite ruthless, as the soldiers below were still wearing short sleeves. It seemed only those on duty outside could rotate wearing those few dozen cotton coats.
They were severely lacking in food; the soldiers mainly lived on canned borscht, and the black bread was as dry as a rock, with essential supplies practically nonexistent.
Except for alcohol, vodka was provided in abundance.
However, Su Ming wouldn't sympathize with these folks; being stationed here undoubtedly meant they were die-hard supporters of Leviathan and must die.
Leviathan isn't like Hydra, which brainwashes, nor like SSR, which deceives with righteousness; their principle is "gaining our place in the world."
God knows what it means.
Su Ming calmly ordered Strangulation to quickly kill the sleeping soldiers, while he went around collecting rubles or gold watches from the corpses.
He planned to rescue all the little girls in the Red House, but couldn't ensure everyone would want to follow him.
Though most of them were orphans, some were sent by their own parents.
Like Natasha, she had relatives. She was picked up on the battlefield by a soldier named Ivan and raised; Ivan was like her family.
But Ivan deeply believed in the leaders' decisions, choosing to have Natasha contribute to the motherland, obeying orders to hand her to the master spy Taras Romanov as his adopted daughter.
However, Taras was a member of Leviathan; it was not the motherland nor Comrade Steel that needed Natasha, but Leviathan required girls like Natasha.
He taught Natasha many assassin techniques, using her childhood status to target assassinations.
At the age of ten, Natasha was dispatched to Japan to assassinate a pedophile leader of the Hand Union.
Of course, she failed, but luckily Wolverine happened to be wandering in Japan and accidentally saved her.
But Logan didn't know how to take care of a child; he sent Natasha back to the Soviet Union to Ivan, and casually killed Taras.
"Sending a 10-year-old adopted daughter to assassinate the leader of the Hand Union, must be crazy, hmm... killed."
That was Logan's thought, and then he felt the issue was resolved, ending nicely, so he traveled alone across the Soviet Union to Europe to find his brother Vic.
However, the waters were too deep here, and everything was far from over.
Leviathan contacted Ivan again, recruited Natasha, and threw her into the Red House.
This year Natasha happened to be 14, but in reality, her assassination skills were the best among her peers.
Given this, Su Ming didn't want to be the bad guy forcing people to separate from their families; having more or fewer students didn't matter.
Someone might remember their parents and want to go home, even though it's indeed dangerous, but Su Ming still hoped to let them decide for themselves.
If they want to go home, some money as travel fare will do; these rubles would, although perhaps not much, at least enough for a ticket and some food.
Su Ming had US Dollars, but it wouldn't be spent if given to them since USD wasn't circulating within the Soviet civilian sphere at the moment.
Once he collected a large bag of money, there wasn't a single soldier alive in the dozens of dormitories.
Strangulation was quite satisfied; human brains were sweet.
The upper floors had been completely cleared, and no one noticed that the deadly assassin had already entered the depths of the base. Su Ming kicked a headless corpse off the bed and sat on the blood-soaked mattress smoking.
Picking up money was really annoying... Ugh, that's the downside of acting alone, no one to lend a hand.
The lower levels should be experimental institutions; there would be brainwashing machines and hypnosis labs, of course, the Leech Potion Su Ming wanted would likely also be there.
These soldiers weren't the instructors for the girls; big-headed soldiers can't train elite special agents, especially since these barracks looked like bandit hideouts, military discipline was even more out of the question.
After smoking a cigarette, Su Ming continued in the darkness, with corpses of previous Sentinels lying everywhere in the corridors, having died before they saw the shadow of Deathstroke.
Su Ming descended successfully, indeed as he thought, this whole level was filled with laboratories and research institutions, but Su Ming first opened the door to find a mortuary there.
Some broken bodies of young girls lay there, faces full of agony, all died with open eyes, and human bite marks were on them.
The incinerator next door was still running; the smell of bones burning was familiar to mercenaries; it seemed that was their destiny.
Su Ming sighed, tugged a bed sheet to cover them.
Leviathan and Hydra alike cannot be completely wiped out at present; even if Su Ming rescues people and destroys this location, they'll still build a Green House or Black House somewhere else.
Fretting over that is useless; all Su Ming could do was rescue the living and have them serve him, they'd surely live better.
At least as long as they were loyal, wanting to stop learning to kill wouldn't be a problem, they could still learn to be chefs.