Unknown location – 12 hours before execution

"If you submit, we will free you. You will be able to return to your comrades."

"So you can crush them using me. Never."

"You would benefit greatly. Perhaps you could spare them the fate that is to come."

"What does that mean?"

"Well, perhaps one of them can explain it better to you."

The Commander heard footsteps click down the corridor. On a screen installed in the door, he saw the face of Vahlen looking in. "Commander?" Her peculiar lilt was unmistakable. "What have zey done to you? Are you alright?"

"Vahlen! What are you doing here? Are you a prisoner too?"

"No, I'm not a prisoner. I heard that they had arrested some of the old XCOM. They said I couldn't see you until now. I'm sure this will all blow over. And if you just answer their questions I think they could let you out."

"Vahlen. Listen to me. The Advent. They're working with the aliens. They never left. They're still among us. I've been psychically probed multiple times. You have to warn the others."

"You have obviously lapsed too far, Commander. Maybe they should transfer you to the psych ward though. You need help." She disappeared from the door and he heard the clicking of her feet recede down the hallway.

Immediately the voice was back. "Submit. Even you friends no longer believe you. You have no one left. Submit."

"I'll die first."

"Then die you will. But publicly. Loudly enough to bring them out of the woodwork, your comrades. In a spectacle that they'll think to disrupt. But we know that of course. And we'll be ready. You are the perfect bait to tempt the last possible resistance against us. So when the fighting starts, know we're ready. Waiting for them to commit enough to spring the trap." The voice cut off. The Commander sat, worrying about the rescue mission he knew Kislewski would surely be coordinating.

Outskirts of Moscow, Thirty minutes to Execution

"Final checks completed Colonel. These bad boys will get us there at most four minutes after the signal is sent from the forward team. I think Dr. Shen's crew had a little too much fun with them." Max "Strike" Ratakashi signed off the radio with a click. Kislewski checked the other priorities she had on her list. Surprisingly, the boxes were checked. Everything was going about how she had expected.

The tension though, that she hadn't missed. The temporary camp practically crackled as the troops sat around waiting. The natural over-preparedness of the soldiers had left them with nothing to do but sit ready, in various positions around the camp. It was a classic case of what her drill instructors would have termed as "hurry up and wait," which had frustrated her to no end during training. There was so much potential for action, but there was no constructive outlet for it. The MEC troopers sat close to their combat frames, but hadn't harnessed up yet. The biological soldiers sat on boxes or the ground practically lounging. Van Doorn, his bald head gleaming slightly, polished a knife with repeated strokes of a whetstone. Kislewski turned away from it all, reviewing the plan in her head. It was perhaps one of the most fragile plans she had ever been a part of, excepting a few missions that had gotten completely out of control during the Invasion. The "ifs" were numerous and critical. If the rookies could create enough of a distraction, if the Commander was actually there and the whole plaza wasn't a trap, if the team could extract successfully. The necessity of the actions that XCOM had to take did not blind her to the fact that this was a last-ditch move which wouldn't actually resolve the situation. The enemy was entrenched and the Commander would have to grind out another war against an even more omnipresent foe in order to succeed.

Footsteps from behind her caught her attention. Van Doorn was jogging over to her, radio in hand. He extended it to her. "We've got problems," he said grimly. She took the radio from him and asked, "Who is this?"

"This is brevet Corporal Lily Desance." Her voice sounded stressed, on the verge of panic.

Safe House Bravo – 30 minutes earlier

Lily was pacing. The butterflies in her stomach felt like they had decided to have a dance party throughout the rest of her body, so she paced in the hopes that the movement would eject the dancers from the club. A few of her fellow rookies were restless too, but the vast majority stared at walls or at the ground, deep in contemplation. While she had accepted the Colonel's argument that sending any veteran soldiers with the rookies could have been identified by a scanner detecting genetic modifications, she was worried that the pre-battle fugue would impair their performance.

Her concentration on remembering the exact details of the plan, the firing positions and movement against the Advent forces already starting to fill the plaza below. A cordon had been established by the armored troopers, coordinated by officers with boxy communications devices on their backs. These things were manageable though – the rookies had enough armor piercing bullets that the Advent troopers would die quickly. More worrying were the armored trucks. Infrared scanners couldn't penetrate the walls of the trucks, so the team had had to plan for at least eight additional soldiers inside each of the trucks. The platform had been raised though, confirming at least some of the intelligence reports that there would be an execution. Lily kept her eyes intently trained on the square through the window as yet another officer hopped down from a truck and began tinkering with one of the speakers throughout the plaza. As a consequence of her intent focus through the window, she was blasted with glass shards as an Advent trooper kicked through the window and jumped in off of a rappel line, gun raised.

Lily collapsed, feeling hot blood running across her face. The world became a mixture of gunfire, shouts, and the telltale smell and heat of flashbang grenades. On her back she saw the door open to a portable ram, and more troopers come charging inside. The haze over her vision grew blurrier, but she saw three of her squad fall, almost certainly dead as Advent troops moved in.

The world snapped back into focus. She grabbed, loaded, and aimed a rifle at the back of the man who had kicked the window in. Fired. Hit. He fell. She turned, aimed at another window breacher, aimed, fired. His chestplate caved. On autopilot she dumped the rest of her magazine at the door. She moved reloaded, aimed. A quick double tap. More down. But the rookies were in disarray from the initial assault. Moving towards the door. She shouted, "Charge!" and bullrushed through. In the hallway stood several Advent troopers. No time to aim. She dumped the magazine into them and reloaded again. Everything was silent.

The silence persisted and Lily realized she had been deafened. As silence changed to ringing, she moved around the room, checking bodies and equipment. Jacobs was the most prominent among the fallen. She lay facedown, blood pooling under her. Lily heard vague noises and turned her head. Salazar, clutching his arm, was calling her name. He pulled out a notepad. Scribbling with a marker, he scribbled "Plan?" in messy letters. She grabbed her own notepad and wrote back, "Get out. Alleyway behind." She grabbed her gun and moved for the door. The rest of the uninjured squad members followed, swapping their guns for Advent rifles as they moved out. The last thing Lily saw before she closed the door was Jacobs, a reminder of her failure.

In an alleyway two blocks away, Lily's hearing had come back enough to call back to the Colonel at the camp. She had four healthy shooters, two more wounded, and a fraction of the arsenal that had been in the safe house.