A/n Chapter was already released today! Read that one first!
1984, November, Somewhere in Siberia:
The Prototype woke up to the sound of a boot grinding on the floor, and she held perfectly still for a moment, ears straining, eyes closed, pretending to be asleep. Then:
"Прототип. Up. Там есть миссия."
[Prototype. Up. There's a mission.]
She opened her eyes, and they landed on her handler, Dmitri, standing in the gloomy doorway, watching her cautiously. He was different from most of her handlers; he talked to her more, almost like she was a person, and he looked at her in a way that told her all she needed to know. She'd been trained to spot desire on a man's face, even desire as strange and out of place as his. How his superiors hadn't figured it out yet, she didn't know. He must have been careful.
She sat up, booted feet landing on the floor as she slid to the edge of the bare mattress. It was the best thing she'd slept on in a while, she thought. Normally, she didn't get the chance to sleep, but she'd been kept out of cryo longer than she suspected was usual. Her handler's influence, maybe. Almost three months, now. It didn't matter to her.
"Параметры?"
[Parameters?]
Dmitri smiled a little, apparently convinced that this was not the morning her programming would break. That was the risk, for handlers like him. A snap. A breach. A mood shift. It was well known what one of the Soldats could do to a man in the span of a few seconds. Step on the wrong side of an order, face being broken in ways you couldn't imagine. But the longer Soldats were kept out of cryo without another reset, the greater the threat of them lashing out against superiors. More than one handler, more than one scientist, had had backs broken, ribs smashed, skulls cracked. It didn't take much for the super strength of the Soldats. Enhanced as they were and trained under the whip into the best condition they could be in? For a Soldat, killing a man was as easy as tying your shoelaces.
"Наемное убийство. Нет свидетелей. Досье на стол на кухне."
[Assassination. No witnesses. Dossier on the table in the kitchen.]
She nodded and stood, posture rigid, tense in a way that anybody around her rarely was. It was the posture of a Soldat: a dangerous weapon, but a weapon used to being punished. There was no relaxation, not around people. In the wilderness, alone on a mission, a pack on her back and a rifle slung over her shoulder - that was the closest she came to relaxing. Away from the threat of a bullet to the back of her head, away from the cattle prods and the clubs and the Chair, her shoulders sagged, her head dipped. But never in front of her handlers, never in front of the men she reported to. They wanted acquiescence, not weakness. Weakness got you killed.
She walked past Dmitri and into the main room, boots louder than normal on the grit of the floor, and headed straight for the dilapidated kitchen table, picking up the mission dossier and starting to robotically scan through it, absorbing the information easily. Her ears picked up Dmitri following her into the room, but she kept her eyes on the paper, simply keeping a bead on his position with her hearing.
She was finishing the dossier when he approached her directly, and she looked up to find him approaching with a tin cup of black coffee, still steaming, and handed it to her. She took it automatically with her metal hand and then stared down at it blankly. He waited a moment for her to say something, then gestured to it a little with his hand.
"Это кофе. Для тебя."
[It's coffee. For you.]
She looked back up at him, eyes unreadable, though suspicion was bubbling up in her chest. This felt like a trap. Still, he looked back at her earnestly, though almost uncertainly. He was serious. She raised the cup up to sniff it cautiously, and found no trace of foreign chemicals. Sedatives had a smell to them, especially in the quantities it took to work on her, and the cup smelled of nothing but coffee. And poison? Wasn't much of a concern. She took a ginger sip of the hot liquid, and Dmitri smiled and nodded, and turned away again, apparently leaving her to it. The coffee was poor quality, but it was a rare luxury that she drained quickly, out of fear that he would change his mind and take it back.
When she set down the empty cup, he appeared back at her shoulder.
"Ты готов идти?"
[Are you ready to go?]
"Да."
[Yes.]
They walked out into the snow and the cold a few minutes later, both wrapped in several layers of coats. It was necessary for Dmitri - for the Prototype it was mostly to appear normal. They climbed into the waiting truck and waited a few minutes in silence for the engine to warm up before he shifted into gear and they set off.
The ride to the farm was nearly an hour, but time was nearly meaningless to her besides the memorization of dates for reporting later, and it passed quickly. He stopped the truck a half mile from the farm, pulling off the road as much as was possible with the snowdrifts from the plows piled up at the edges of the road. He nodded to her and got out into the freezing air again, and she followed, the sound of the truck doors closing muffled by the snow blanketing the ground. Dmitri dug under the tarp in the back of the truck, and tossed her a rifle and a handgun to supplement the knife in her belt that he allowed her to keep.
"Я буду следовать на расстоянии."
[I will follow at a distance.]
She felt a twinge of irritation at his words - she hated being accompanied by handlers on missions - but said nothing, just turned and began trudging through the snow, heading off the road and into the woods, and she heard him begin following behind her. She forged ahead without looking back, the rifle he'd given her slung over her shoulder, the handgun tucked into her civilian trousers. She looked like a lost hunter, and that was exactly how she wanted to look.
She hit the perimeter of the farm without too much time passing and easily climbed through the wooden fence, heading for the shape of the farm house in the distance. She sharpened her gaze on it as she got closer, looking for signs of life, and found her eyes drawn to movement at the corner of the house - a water pump was there, a little ways out from the building, and a young woman was there, drawing water into a bucket. The Prototype kept trudging forward, and eventually the woman caught her out of the corner of her eye and stood, looking startled. The Prototype put a smile on her face, and lifted a hand to wave in a friendly manner. The woman looked a little less startled, but she picked up her bucket and heaved it with her back to the house in a hurry, disappearing inside a minute later as the Soldat kept advancing towards the house.
These people knew they were in danger from somebody - the Prototype could tell by the way the young woman had moved. They were expecting a bad visitor - they just had no idea what it would look like. That was all fine. She just needed to gather them all in one place.
If she strained her ears, she could hear Dmitri, far behind her. He would probably watch with binoculars.
She approached the house, finally, and walked around to find the front door, where she knocked four times. Behind it, she could hear voices, an argument, but it continued for only a moment before somebody cut the argument off and footsteps approached the door. A moment later, and the door opened to a middle-aged man with a rough beard and red hair, and she smiled. Her target.
He never got a word out. She pulled the handgun out of her pants and shot him point-blank in the face, and the young woman behind him screamed. His sister, she thought, judging by the similarities in their faces. It didn't matter. She stepped forward, over the body in the doorway, and shot her too, twice, just to be sure, and then shot her target again. Then she fell silent, standing in what looked like the living room, and she listened. Something upstairs moved. Snow crunched outside. She ignored the snow and headed for the stairs, intent on finishing the mission.
Her feet creaked on the stairs, and she paused for a moment, listening again, and this time her ears caught a hitched breath. Yes, someone was definitely up here. She took the last three steps in one, stepping carefully down the hall, a predator stalking her prey. Quietly, she opened the first door and swung it cautiously open. A bathroom. A quick glance into the bathtub and she moved on to the next door. A closet. Too small for a person, and packed with linens. She closed it again, moving on. A bedroom. She paused, listened. A heartbeat. She stepped into the room, checked behind the door, and stared at the bed. Slowly, deliberately, she leaned down, looked under the bed. A woman stared back. Older than the woman downstairs, but not by much. And she was pregnant. Very pregnant.
"Будьте добры."
[Please.]
The woman's words were a shaking whisper, her arms wrapped around her stomach. This was the wife of her target, she gathered. The dossier had not mentioned that she was pregnant. Maybe it hadn't known. Her fingers adjusted on the gun, and she realized that underneath her gloves her hand was sweating.
The stairs creaked.
The Prototype stood again, pivoting towards the door as Dmitri appeared in the hall, his footsteps soft on the floor, obviously trying not to give himself away. He met her eyes as he came around the corner, a gun in his own hand.
"Я видел тела внизу. Где третий?"
[I saw the bodies downstairs. Where's the third?]
"Я не знаю."
[I don't know.]
The woman under the bed whimpered. Barely, obviously into her hand, but too loud. Dmitri looked past her, at the space under the bed, and then back at the Prototype. Her face was blank, as if she had not just heard the woman under the bed. Dmitri's face hardened.
"Прототип. Завершите миссию. Нет свидетелей."
[Prototype. Finish the mission. No witnesses.]
She stood there for a long moment, unmoving, a blank slate, completely unreadable.
In the next moment, she stepped forward towards Dmitri, and he knew instantly what was happening, scrambling backwards with a swear. But there was no getting away. There was no escaping. He brought his gun up to shoot at her, but before he could get a bullet off she grabbed his hand, twisting upward, slipping her finger over his on the trigger, and then helped him blow his own brains out.
The woman under the bed began crying.
She stood there over Dmitri's body for a minute, then looked towards the bed.
"Покидать. Найдите кого-нибудь, кто сможет вас приютить. Не возвращайся сюда."
[Leave. Find someone to shelter you. Do not come back here.]
Without another word, she stepped over Dmitri and headed back down the stairs, tucking the gun into her pants again, stepping over her target in the doorway, and back out into the cold. Now to report back her success, and her handler's strange suicide.
A/n Last chapter for today!
A hint for a song today - ten points if you can guess how this connects :)
Vera Lynn - We'll Meet Again