The Nazi commander sucked on his cigarette, the burning tip casting a hellish glare on his face, then blew smoke out of his nose, replacing the glare with a blue mist for a few seconds.
"You say you revealed nothing?" He spoke, softly, to the cuffed woman ahead.
Dasha nodded twice, hesitantly, "The boy freed me before my transfer to the Lubyanka, why else would I be here?"
It was the officer's turn to nod. He tapped the cigarette on the edge of an ashtray and pretended to be thinking hard about the situation. "Where is the boy now?" He finally asked, interest obvious in the man's tone.
"Dead." Was all she said.
"Did you love him?"
Her eyes snapped up, fixing him in his seat like Hellsing bolts, "No."
The officer had planned to push her harder, call her cold and try to make the girl snap, but this glare, this 'I own you' vibe she'd managed to throw at him, changed his mind. This woman was one of the Fuhrer's assistants and he reminded himself not to forget that again…
Then, the alarm bell began ringing frantically, the man hitting it obviously panicked beyond any reason.
The commander ran up to a rusted intercom, next to the rotten door.
"Report!" He roared, his .44 drawn uselessly.
The voice on the other end hardly made any sense through all the shooting and screaming. "The devil! It's burning us! We shoot it but it keeps coming! It wants the girl herr officer, we must give it the girl! Please, wait! I don't know wh… No!" Then, the words lost all coherent structure, replaced by mindless animal screams of pain and terror.
The screaming went on for what seemed like hours before melting away, replaced by a rasped breathing, a simple pump-like sound that carried so much hatred, the Nazi could only agree with his dead man. The devil himself was on the line.
"All units," He breathed over the intercom, "find the intruder and kill it."
No answer.
The breathing had ceased and there was nothing else to be heard, so the man retreated behind an old drawer, containing rotten police files, a grenade readied in his hand.
Dasha joined him, still cuffed. "Untie me!" She pleaded, hands held out toward him. He fumbled around his pockets for the key, but just as he found them, the NBC seal outside the door, the only thing that keeping the toxic atmosphere out, was breached and both Nazis began suffocating.
He managed to put his own gas mask on, but completely disregarded the choking woman in favour of chucking his grenade at the door.
The fuse sizzled and crackled for a few seconds before finally blasting smithereens outward and into whatever stood on the other side.
The thing did not flinch.
It walked through the smoke and dust, a massive shape, akin to a Librarian with shorter arms and a huge head.
As it stepped into the light, the commander noticed it had no fur, but instead wore the blue white and gray camo pattern of pre-war Russia.
He, not it, carried a military flame thrower, the blue ignition flame blending with the Explosive Ordinance Disposal suit's coloring. This was no monster, this was just a man with one of these massive suits EOD teams used before the war to disarm explosives, and carrying an old, barely functional flamethrower!
"You little fuck!" The officer roared as Andreï primed his flamethrower.
"Little might not be accurate…" He finally noticed Dasha, now almost purple, and swiftly unclipped a gas mask from his belt, throwing it at the girl.
Her extremities now numb and water filling her eyes, Dasha failed to catch the thing and the officer stomped on it the second it hit the floor, breaking the glass and rendering the mask useless.
"You can't win," The Nazi laughed, smugly, "She's as good as dead!"
The victorious smile on the man's face melted as Andreï dropped the flamer without a second thought.
Both knew exactly why Volkov decided not to fry the Nazi; there was still one gas mask left in the room…
Andreï charged like a bull, driving all of his mass into an outstretched elbow…
Except when he stepped over the overturned drawer , the officer swiftly kicked his legs form under him, sending Volkov to crush the desk beyond .
"You inbred shit," He laughed, .44 magnum back in hand, "You thought you could defeat a fourth reich officer because you found some fancy armor?"
On the ground, Dasha stopped twitching, her desperate gasps for breaths ceasing as well.
The revolver appeared in Andreï's visor and his hand snapped up. The shot scratched his helmet, but caused no damage beyond a serious migraine and ear bleeding.
"I will break you." Was all Andreï said, his grip tightening like a vice around the Nazi's wrist. The officer tried to squeeze out more shots, but tendons in his hand were too compressed to move the fingers.
Volkov got back on his massive boots, slowly twisting the man's arm in the process, until it reached the point where he could have licked his own elbow by simply sticking out his tongue.
"Fuck… You!" The Nazi choked out as Andreï tore his gas mask off.
Volkov kicked him in the balls twice then left the whimpering slab of meat to put the mask on his unmoving girlfriend.
"I told you I don't like tragedies," He growled when her chest failed to resume moving, "So fucking breathe," He punched he on the sternum once, "Would you kindly?"And she sat up, gasping desperately for air she thought she'd never breathe again. In one fluid motion, Dasha drew Andreï's knife from his boot, both hands still bound, shoved him aside and stabbed the officer repeatedly in the neck. The man had crept up behind Volkov, who hadn't thought of disarming the Nazi.
The only thing holding the officer's head in place, by the time she passed out, was his spine, completely stripped of meat…
Andreï, long since back on his feet, sat on the floor, leaning on the file cabinet, waiting for the guilt to settle. He'd just toasted eight men, roasting them alive like a pack of bothersome lurkers, their dying screams echoing in the tight confines of his helmet.
The cocktail of combat drugs in his blood supressed such emotions, however, and he was left feeling empty yet victorious.