"Scour every inch! Leave no stone unturned!"
"Yes, sir!"
The research institute was a hollow shell, stripped of life.
The Branch Chief stared blankly at the desolate interior. The absence of researchers and civil servants—the usual bustling gears of the state—evoked a primal sense of wrongness, as if the very air had been vacuumed out.
Even amidst the chaotic tremors of the riots, their total absence felt orchestrated, an omen written in dust and silence.
His intuition screamed that the operation had already veered into the abyss.
Yet, he could not stop. For him and his men, this was the final, desperate sacrificial rite they could offer for the glory of their motherland.
"Nothing here, sir!"
"Lab Three is clear! Not a scrap of paper!"
"The design office is the same!"
Dread thickened in his throat like bile. The coveted firearm blueprints were nowhere to be found.
They had ransacked the laboratories, the testing chambers, the archives, even the pantries, but the technical schematics remained ghosts. The only thing left was a singular, nondescript room at the far end of the corridor—a space so cramped it could barely fit two people, its purpose unknown.
"Move in. Carefully now," the Branch Chief muttered.
"Yes, sir!"
He suppressed the alarms ringing in his mind and stepped forward into the gloom.
It was then that the trap sprang.
—Crack! Crack! Crack!
"Open fire!"
"Gah! Ambush! We have contact!"
A hail of gunfire erupted from the rear. Operatives who weren't instantly shredded by the leaden storm or managed to weave Arts barriers scrambled for cover. The window at the end of the corridor disintegrated into a cloud of lethal shards.
Simultaneously, OGPU operatives began pouring in, a flood of gray coats and cold steel. And leading them was the woman herself.
Feliksa pressed her back against the industrial masonry, soot and a trickle of blood staining the corner of her mouth.
"Engaging from the rear! Everyone without ballistic plating, get your heads down!" she barked.
The Gaulish spies released stifled whimpers of panic. The OGPU circle was tightening, sealing the corridors with surgical precision. Their objective was singular: the 'Head' of the Gaulish intelligence network.
The Branch Chief bit his lip until it bled, his voice rising in disbelief. "Surrounded? Impossible! This entire sector was supposed to be cordoned off by the riots—"
Before he could finish, the overhead lights in the center of the hall died. In that sudden, suffocating dark, a mechanical roar drowned out all thought.
—Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!!
A squad of soldiers frantically worked a crank. The door to the small room burst open, revealing the hungry orange flare of a machine gun. Each rotation of the mechanism unleashed a torrent of lead that scythed through the air.
The bullets tore into the walls and shredded the Gaulish agents like paper. It was over in seconds. Over a dozen men collapsed, their lifeblood pooling on the cold tiles.
"A machine gun! Damn it, that room was the kill zone!"
The Branch Chief dove into a roll, clutching his cane. Next to him, a subordinate's skull detonated under a direct hit, spraying a warm, iron-scented spray across his face.
"G-God... help us..."
"Pray later!"
He fumbled for a small, jagged Originium stimulant pill from his belt and swallowed it dry. He raised his cane. A sickly azure glow bloomed from the crystal tip, swelling into an explosive, searing heat.
—BOOM!
The walls buckled under the kinetic shock. Three machine gunners were vaporized instantly. The small room collapsed with a shriek of twisted metal. OGPU operatives were thrown backward, cries of pain echoing through the smoke.
"Arts user! Target the caster!"
Feliksa's reaction was instantaneous. "Left flank, breach and bypass. I'm going through the front."
She lunged into the darkness, pistol raised. Her high heels clicked rhythmically over the carpet of shattered glass—a steady, predatory sound. Her eyes were chips of ice, but her lips were curled into a faint, terrifying smile.
"This might end sooner than I anticipated."
The blood-spattered Branch Chief glared at her. "That OGPU bitch... I knew you'd crawl out of the shadows eventually." He gripped his cane with trembling, gory fingers. "The Crown of Gaul does not shatter easily. Certainly not to the likes of you.
The Originium crystal burned red, warping the air itself. A pressurized storm of heat swept down the corridor. Two OGPU agents were tossed into the air, their bodies slamming against the masonry with sickening thuds.
Feliksa shielded her face with an arm, forced back. Blood began to seep from a gash on her wrist. Her gaze turned glacial.
"Fine then, old man. If that's how you want to play it."
Her fingers carved a sigil in the air. Her Arts-conducting gloves flared with light. The atmospheric pressure shifted violently, and razor-thin blades of wind began to orbit the Branch Chief.
"I'll slice the very breath from your lungs."
She clenched her fist, and the gale collapsed inward. The Branch Chief stumbled, coughing up dark gouts of blood. Yet, he refused to fall.
"You think... this is the end?" he laughed hoarsely, crunching his final stimulant between his teeth. A burst of black light radiated from his skin—a final, desperate surge of thermal energy. He lunged with a fist.
—CRACK!
Feliksa's protective barrier shattered like glass. The force slammed her against the wall, and blood trickled from her mouth. But she didn't stop smiling. The crimson on her lips only heightened her predatory grace.
"You're quite the handful for an antique, old man. However..."
Her fingertips ignited. Arts detonated in the hollow space between them.
—Thwack!
The Branch Chief was hammered into the floor. Amidst the carnage of blood, debris, and cordite smoke, he gasped for air, his lungs whistling. Feliksa walked toward him, her leather gloves shimmering with fresh blood.
"Accept your defeat, Branch Chief."
He whispered through ruined lips, "Do you think... you've won? The Crown... has already..."
His strength failed. Feliksa raised her pistol, but her finger didn't find the trigger.
"Keep him alive," she commanded her subordinates. "This one has value. And besides..." Her smile widened slightly. "Once I'm done with him, he'll tell me exactly what this 'Crown' is."
As agents bound the unconscious man, black Originium residue drifted from his skin. Feliksa pressed a hand to her wounded arm, letting out a weary breath. "Hah... quite the exhausting day."
She brushed back her hair and turned toward the window. Outside, the flicking red light of the burning city bled through the cracks in the masonry. Her voice was low, carrying the weight of state-mandated conviction.
"For the survival of the Union, I would do far worse than this."
Silently, her boot brushed through a pool of blood, leaving a solitary red smudge on the white floor as she walked away.
"The theater is far from its final act."
****************************************************
—Bang! Bang! Bang!
"Enemy contact!"
Morning in Yorkshire arrived with the cloying stench of rot. Suppression trucks and infantry squads, moving under the precise directives of their officers, occupied a square drenched in fresh blood.
"Third floor of that building! Check for hostiles!" an officer barked.
As soldiers stormed the stairwell, a child appeared at a window, waving small, blackened hands. The child's face was masked in soot and terror.
"Get down here, kid! This way!" a soldier yelled.
Below them, a sea of cameras and reporters waited—International Daily, Huangu News, People's Daily, The Times, Voice of the Federation, Liberty News, Federation People's Press. Their equipment was polished, their faces a nauseating cocktail of curiosity and professional greed. They were carrion crows circling a fresh battlefield.
The officers, keenly aware of the lenses, straightened their uniforms. "We came here to save the citizens," the ranking officer declared to a cluster of microphones. "But the treacherous reactionaries fired upon us. They slaughtered and violated innocent civilians! We were forced to respond with an iron fist. Justice left us no other choice."
It was exactly the narrative the press wanted. The air was filled with the rhythmic, mechanical clicking of shutters.
The bullets of the Red Army had sowed chaos. In the center of the road, a handful of rebels fired from behind the threshold of a burning building. Those rounds bit into the suppression ranks, and a few unlucky soldiers collapsed, clutching their shattered legs.
"All units! Concentrate fire!"
Their gear wasn't the high-tech weaponry of the elite units, but reliable pistols and archaic rifles. Soldiers fumbled with shell casings according to the rigid rules of engagement, and many, having rushed to the front, found their ammunition pouches depressingly light.
The rebels, meanwhile, were a ragtag rabble. Their arsenal consisted of iron bars, lead pipes, and ancient revolvers. Only the fortunate few held modern rifles. There was no command structure; when someone roared "Forward!", the mass surged like a broken dam.
The streets of Yorkshire were a furnace of carnage. The rebels, fueled by blood-soaked rage, charged with improvised spears and knives looted from homes and shops, and when those failed, they used their bare fists.
The suppression force attempted to move with organizational discipline, but they were hindered by outdated intelligence and logistical failures. Still, it didn't mean the rebels were winning. If a squad was wiped out, a company moved in to turn that entire block into a graveyard.
For every five soldiers who died, a dozen rebels fell. Soon, it was dozens of soldiers for hundreds of rebels. The arithmetic of the meat grinder was merciless.
Reporters squeezed through the gaps in the fighting. They hunted for the perfect frame: some focused on soldiers helping the wounded to manufacture heroism, while others sought to frame the military's 'bravery' against the 'illegal thugs.' Beneath this heroic veneer, the soldiers began to fracture.
"Bring that reactionary scum over here!"
A young man was dragged into the street. His only crime was a badge indicating affiliation with the Liberal Party. The soldiers began to 'paint' the picture the reporters wanted. Under the pressure of a looming audience, tension escalated into brutality.
A soldier brought his bayonet down on the man's arm. A wet, sickening sound followed, then a high-pitched scream. The cameras didn't blink. Click, click. In a few hours, this man would be branded a rapist, a murderer, and a terrorist in the morning editions.
As evening fell, the shadows grew longer and the field of execution darker. The soldiers were panting, their hands slick with sweat and tremors. Command was nebulous; orders came from on high, but specific protocols had evaporated in the heat of combat.
"Detain prisoners for interrogation!" the political commissars shouted.
In small units where the commissars were present, wholesale massacres were avoided. But in the fringes, emotion dictated the rules. Driven by a mix of fear and hatred, soldiers chose summary execution over bureaucracy.
The streets became a gallery of horrors. Prisoners were shot where they stood or stuffed into warehouses only to vanish forever. The city's People's Committee had already retreated to fortified zones, leaving order to be 'restored' by the gun, a call the military answered with terrifying fervor.
Mistakes snowballed into atrocities. Rumors scattered by the wind became the pretexts for violence. "The thugs are using children as human shields!" "The reactionaries have rigged the church with Originium explosives!" Every baseless whisper justified another volley of fire.
When the cold night finally settled over Yorkshire, the 'suppression' was deemed a success.
Thousands were arrested. Thousands were dead. Four thousand odd rebels, three hundred plus Militsiya, and roughly two hundred soldiers. And then there were the civilians—over nine thousand casualties at the hands of both sides. The echoes of a child's weeping still hung in the heavy, industrial air.
Officers addressed the broadcast cameras with practiced gravity. "We saved countless lives. Our actions were the unfortunate necessity of duty."
The statement was met with rapturous applause from the capital. The hawks in the military High Command masks their glee with solemnity, declaring a total political victory. Upon the smoldering ruins of Yorkshire, the Red Army claimed its triumph.
Yes. It was a victory.
*********************************************
["Earlier this morning, Deputy Wilhelm of the Liberty League addressed the Supreme Soviet, shouting, 'We cannot help but hold the Liberal Party and the Gaulish reactionaries behind them responsible for this appalling chaos!' This sentiment... "]
["When asked how to handle Gaul moving forward, Chief of Army Staff General Palmerton of STAVKA replied that Gaul is like a door made of rotten wood—one firm kick to the backside, and the whole thing will come crashing down."]
["Director Feliksa Dzerzhinskaya of the OGPU announced at noon today that investigations into the recent events are ongoing and she has no further comments, stating only that the OGPU is doing its utmost for the Union."]
["People! The end of Gaul is at hand! Let us go to war now! Let the thirty million citizens of the Union unite as one! Drive out the tyrant of Gaul and gift freedom to the Gaulish people—!"]
"How... are we going to clean up this mess?"
"Uncle, I think we're truly fucked this time."
"Haha... Alya, there must be a way to—"
"Husband, you stay quiet."
It was time for a purge. It was time to put the Union back in order.