Face the Enemy - 2
We live in a world made possible by the impossible. Without Einstein's Chronosphere, our alliance might never have survived the war against Stalin. Teleportation, lightning weaponry, and atomic power were all once flights of fancy. But now they are facts of life.
Nonetheless, it does not follow that all fantasies are therefore facts. The Allies face threats from men and their weapons, not vampires and ghosts. We must always deal with the world as it is, and guide our security with sober, realistic analysis.
It is the finding of the Allied Scientific Committee that there is no substance to rumours of a so-called 'psychic corps' of telepathic soldiers operated by the Russian Special Projects division. Rather, these mystic super-troopers are merely the latest tall tale generated by Moscow's propaganda machine. Stalin's psychic legacy, like so much else of that madman's work, is a delusion.
Our recommendation is that no further resources be devoted to this matter.
-Internal memo circulated within Allied High Command
November 5th, 1995 - Isla de la Juventud, Cuba - 1000 hrs
The base was uncannily silent. No one was watching. It was time to go in.
Tanya and Juan moved into the Battle Lab, slipping through a side door. Naturally Juan had the key, and even a map in his pocket. He took the lead, holding a box in his hands and looking like he belonged there. Tanya followed close behind, watching their backs, hand never leaving her holster.
The inside of the lab was as unsettling as the outside. Tanya normally expected a certain amount of grime and wear in military installations, but the lab corridors were sterile and pristine, as if nothing human worked there. The air was uncomfortably cold, the white tile beneath her feet gleamed like polished bone, and the purplish walls of the hallway were ridged with arches that somehow reminded her of a throat.
"I hate this place already," she muttered.
Juan shifted his box to check the map, then pointed at a door to the left. It hissed open automatically, startling her. The elevator within was brightly lit.
"The prisoners are two levels down," he said softly. "Once we're finished, you can leave through the submarine pen. It's on the same level."
"The same level?" Tanya asked. "They aren't worried the prisoners could steal a boat or something?"
"Overconfidence, perhaps," said Juan. "They must think the inmates will never escape."
They entered the elevator, and she checked her guns a final time. Juan's face was still as the elevator dropped downwards, beneath the earth. Tanya knew he was as creeped out as she was.
The elevator opened onto a panopticon. The holding area was a circle, ringed on the outside by cells. The room was monitored by a single security post built into a central pillar that also held the elevator - but the post was empty.
Aside from the elevator, the only way out was a heavy, circular metal door that resembled a ship's hatch: the passage to the Sub Pen. The scene was lit by stark, harsh metal lamps hanging from the ceiling. As they stepped out of the elevator, Juan tucked his box under his arm, produced a small camera disguised as a deck of playing cards, and started photographing the area.
The cell doors were all glass, bulging outward slightly, similar to a bubble. Or the lens of an eye. Electronic control panels blinked next to each clear door. Everything except the white floor was painted in dark blue and purple hues that made Tanya think of veins and bruises.
The cell doors were open. There was no sign of any guard. A dozen men and women were moving about, pushing carts, carrying crates, working. The prisoners were all completely shaved. They all wore identical gray jumpsuits stamped with Cyrillic characters on their backs and over their hearts. All the prisoners were as quiet as ghosts.
Between the cells and the central pillar, the floor was crowded with scientific equipment on rolling steel tables and cabinets: computer banks, cameras on tripods, and snaking black cables. Someone was running an experiment.
Juan lowered his camera, frowning, then waved at one of the prisoners, a stocky dark-skinned woman with sharp features, carrying a wrench. She didn't blink. She walked right past Juan to tighten a bolt on one of the machines.
"Friend of yours?" Tanya said.
"Yes…" Juan fell silent, the only time she'd seen him at a loss for words. "And an ally. Isabella. We lost contact months ago. I volunteered for this mission, for her."
He shook his head. Isabella finished turning the bolt, then moved to another.
"She hates the regime," Juan said. "What have they done to her?"
Isabella kept at her work. All the prisoners kept at their work. No one even glanced at them.
Tanya understood now. There was no guard because there didn't need to be. There was no chance of these prisoners getting to the sub pen and escaping. They didn't want to. She'd heard stories of Communist brainwashing experiments before, but this was another level. This frightened her.
A tapping noise. Tanya saw that she had been wrong earlier. One of the cells was still closed. Its inhabitant was pressing himself against the glass.
The man in the cell was small, bony, and twitchy, seeming to fold in on himself like discarded laundry. His faded gray jumpsuit hung loose around his narrow frame, clashing with the shining metal cap attached to his head. The metal cap was alive with coils and wires and blinking red lights.
He wrung his manacled hands, and whispered to them in perfect English. His voice was thin and reedy.
"Please… please. Please."
Juan murmured in Tanya's ear.
"Remember, the pictures."
She ignored him, and stepped closer. The captive's body was pale and sweaty, and he seemed to wince at every noise.
"Who are you?" Tanya asked. "What the hell happened to you?"
"Who am I?" The prisoner blinked for a moment, staring past Tanya.
"It's okay," Tanya said. Behind her, Juan quietly snapped a picture of the contraption on his head. "You can tell us."
"I… can?" His mouth pulled downward as though yanked by steel wire. "I… G-Grigori. I was Grigori. But I f-failed the Master - in Italy. Now I'm no one."
Italy? She thought. That mess at FutureTech?
"You're someone," Tanya assured him. "Can you walk? Maybe we can-"
"Too late." Grigori shuddered, and curled himself into a fetal ball on the floor. "It's too late. He watches. He knows. The Master always knows!"
Tanya fought the urge to punch the glass. Instead she turned to Juan.
"This guy can't help. Maybe we can reach Isabella."
"Too late," Grigori whispered. "Too late. He is here."
As one body, the other prisoners halted their work, set down their tools, and rose to their feet in blank, docile unison, smooth and synchronized like a school of fish. They shuffled back into their cells, and the doors closed.
Then the soldiers came. The elevator doors and the hatch to the Sub Pen opened in perfect concert. Russian troops stormed in, submachine guns at the ready, faceless behind filter masks, wearing the long gray-green coats that were standard for Russian conscripts, even in the Caribbean.
Tanya bared her teeth and quick-drew her pistols, fast as a magic trick. Beside her, Juan dropped his box and raised his own weapon, cover blown.
No one fired. A standoff.
"Your mind is weak, Agent. You must realize you can't win."
A whisper that filled the room. A soft, rasping voice that demanded complete attention. Piercing ice-blue eyes that never wavered. A Lenin-style goatee, and a bald head crowned with an arc of steel, with cables running down his neck. The man that stepped out from behind his troops wore a long brown coat with red shoulder boards and a red collar, different from any Commie uniform Tanya had ever seen.
"And just who the hell are you?" Tanya shifted her right-hand gun to point at the whisperer, aiming dead-center at the strange symbol marking his forehead.
"I am in control. For now, that is all you need to know."
"Oh yeah? Wanna bet?"
Motors whirred softly. She saw the cameras on their tripods turning to watch her. Recording everything. Ice slipped down her spine.
Am I the experiment? She thought. Is this whole thing a setup for me?
Juan lowered his weapon and stepped forward, flashing his most ingratiating smile, turning on his charm. "Sir, this is all a misunderstanding. Please, let me ex-"
"Stop talking."
Juan's mouth closed. Tanya could hear his teeth click together, like a door being locked.
The bald man stepped closer to her, ignoring the gun still pointed at his brain. His eyes bored into hers, filling her. She felt stripped, raw, fragile, prey instinct scratching in her guts.
"I knew the real Tanya Adams." he remarked, with the air of confiding a secret. "A long time ago. And I must say… you are the palest imitation yet. But you will still suffice for our demonstration."
Tanya wanted to tell him where to shove his demonstration. But somehow her voice wouldn't work. Her tongue felt wooden in her mouth.
"The loss of Comrade Boris was most unfortunate," he continued. "But also an opportunity. Why mourn the loss of a single soldier… when our enemy's best agents can be ours to command, any time I wish?"
The shock of his words shook something loose in her mind.
"I'll never work for you, Commie."
"No?" The man Grigori called the Master did not blink. "Let's test that theory, shall we? Agent Tanya, would you kindly look deep into my eyes… and shoot Mister Paesa in the head."
Tanya tilted her head. Was he serious? What was he thinking?
And why were his eyes so big? His eyes… they seemed to be the only thing in the room. In the world. They swallowed her.
She blinked, focused on keeping her gun steady, pointed right at his forehead. All she needed was one bullet.
"In the head, Agent."
"Fuck you," she hissed, and squeezed the trigger.
The gunshot echoed off the prison walls. The bullet slammed right into the Master's face and seemed to smash it like a mask.
But behind the mask was Juan's face, Juan dying with his eyes wide and betrayed, Juan falling limp to the floor. Smoke drifted from the barrel of Tanya's pistol, suddenly pointing the wrong way as though jerked around by a puppeteer's strings.
The thud of Juan's body was echoed by the bastard clapping, a slow and rhythmic tolling.
"Good, Agent. Good. Just as planned."
"No," she whispered. "Not as planned."
Whatever he said to her next, whatever order or insinuation or bullshit, she drowned it out in gunfire.
She was surrounded by twelve men and women armed with submachine guns capable of spitting out hundreds of bullets a minute. She had two Colt M1911 pistols, the same kind that Tanyas had been using since the 1950s. In terms of positioning, numbers, and firepower, she had no chance.
But Tanya Adams hadn't had a chance either, in the Second Great War. She had adapted dual pistols not for style but out of necessity: because sidearms were easier to smuggle behind enemy lines for close-quarters guerilla action. She had proven that a single commando with two pistols could turn entire platoons of enemy infantry into corpses if she was very lucky and very, very good.
Decades later, this Tanya was not lucky. But she was very, very good.
The Russians hesitated for a fatal moment. She could see the shock in their eyes, that someone commanded by the Master could still move. Could still act. Could still fight back. Yet Tanya could, and she did.
She hurled herself to the left, a full-body sideways leap through the air, guns blazing in both fists. The world seemed to slow down around her. She saw and heard everything: the bald bastard's startled, frightened eyes, her pistol sights marking enemy skulls and throats, the banging of her guns and the chatter of theirs, brass flinging itself upward, recoil bucking in her palms, enemy bullets rippling the air as they cut towards her, snapping at her wake.
Tanya fired four times and killed four soldiers, the enemy falling to the ground alongside the dinging of spent cartridges.
She landed hard on her shoulder, combat-rolling across the floor as enemy fire chewed the ground around her, shooting, shooting, shooting for three long seconds, driving the enemy to duck and dodge, before she rolled into cover behind a sturdy steel cabinet.
The computer atop the cabinet blew apart in a blaze of sparks as the remaining Russians raked her position. But the table itself held up to the fusillade.
"Agent Tanya, stop! Stop this instant!"
The Master called to her. His words echoed in her ears, filling her head. She ignored them, shut him out, focused on nothing except training, tactics, and rage.
Never again, you bastard, she thought, building a mental wall with her will. Never, ever again.
"Brosaju granatu!"
She heard a Russian call out, and she smiled sweetly as she popped out of cover, spotted the grenade leaving the enemy soldier's hand, and shot it neatly out of the air so that it fell among their position.
Tanya dropped back behind cover as return fire scythed over her head. She crouched, ready to sprint, and listened. She heard a yell of alarm, a few seconds of fumbling. Then the grenade's detonation, booming through the room.
She was already moving, bolting out of cover. Fragments and flame ripped apart three Russians at point-blank range and distracted the rest, leaving them staggered and exposed so she could pop bullets into two more heads as she dashed to a new position. The cameras recording the experiment clattered as they fell over, broken by the blast.
As the explosion faded, Tanya turned her momentum into a power-slide across the floor, slipping neatly behind the protection of the central pillar like a baseball runner stealing third. Enemy fire plastered itself uselessly against the concrete in front of her, smacking up dust and chips.
Three Russians left. Peeking out of cover, she saw the Master glare balefully at her, then turn, his long coat swirling around his legs, and storm out of the room through the hatch to the sub pen. It swung closed behind him, responding to some invisible command.
That's my way out, she thought.
She was technically still outnumbered, but the three enemies left knew that the tide had turned, and wasted precious seconds muttering to each other as they cowered behind their hastily-chosen cover. They'd also made the mistake of hiding behind a table directly underneath one of those big metal lamps, dangling from the ceiling on a slender cable.
Tanya popped out from behind the pillar and put two bullets into the cable. The lamp blew out a halo of sparks and fell, plummeting straight onto the heads of the last Russians.
Two of them fell down and didn't get back up. The third crawled weakly from beneath the wreckage, moaning but still clutching her weapon. Tanya shot her in the head. Then she reloaded each handgun one-handed, spent magazines clattering to the floor and fresh ammo gliding into the guns from her belt, guided by her hands with the trained, reflexive grace of a Vegas card shark shuffling the deck.
The prison was silent. She was surrounded by thirteen bodies of people she'd killed. Twelve of them were enemies. One was not.
Tanya looked at Juan, his handsome face erased, blood pooling around his ruined head, his camera smashed beneath his body, and gritted her teeth. Then she started stalking around the room, pumping bullets into the control panels next to each cell.
More sparks. Sputtering and smoke from ruined electronics, doors opening as hidden failsafes engaged. The people inside blinked slowly at the world beyond their cells.
Grigori was the only one who stepped out. Slowly, gingerly, as though expecting an electric shock at any moment. The rest of the prisoners didn't move. Tanya pointed at him.
"Hey! Can't you snap them out of it?" Her finger moved to Isabella, who was staring at Juan's body without a flicker of reaction.
Grigori carefully eased the metal cap off his skull, and dropped it on the ground like it burned him. Then he shook his head.
"They are Dominated. There's no help for them. The Master…" he boggled at the fallen cap, disbelieving his own work. "He'll know. He'll punish us!"
Tanya took one last look at Juan's body, and at the other prisoners, still standing dull and silent in front of their cells. Then she holstered her guns, stormed forward, and grabbed Grigori's sleeve to haul him towards the hatch.
"No he won't. You know why?"
She slapped a cylindrical thermite charge, rigged with adhesive wax, onto the hatch to the sub pen.
"Because," she continued, "he'll be too busy dealing with this place catching fire behind us. And you're coming with me, pal. You're my proof."
'B-but-"
"Move, asshole!"
She dragged Grigori away from the hatch, then hit the detonator. A blinding white flash burned and hissed through the metal, melting through solid steel to destroy the hatch lock.
The door swung open. Beyond was another of those creepy purple hallways - and the sound of water lapping at an underwater dock. Boats. Freedom. Tanya let go of Grigori and drew her pistols again. She would kill as many Commies as it took to get out of here with her life and her mind intact.
"Follow me. We're outta here."
As Tanya stormed forward, part of her mind was calculating the exact specifications and placement of C4 plastic explosive to create a good distraction for her escape. With the right timing and location, she could blow the sub pen to Hell behind her without endangering the prisoners she was abandoning.
And the prisoners could still be saved, she knew it. If she could break free of whatever creepy hypnosis crap the Russians had discovered, so could they. If she gave up, the Master won.
But the other part of her mind was thinking about what would happen once she got back to Allied territory. Juan was dead with her bullet in his skull. Their photographs were gone. Her only proof of mind control was the shivering, muttering wreck of a man trudging along behind her, balanced against the full weight of Allied science and intelligence declaring psychic soldiers impossible. And her 'simple' recon mission was about to end with blowing up a Russian lab, leaving dozens of bodies behind.
She could hear the lecture from Colonel Locke now. 'Disobeying orders.' 'Wild theories.' 'Unreliable defector.' 'Major diplomatic incident.' 'Lost a fellow agent.' Killed a fellow agent.
Failed mission. Failed Tanya.
If she was lucky, they'd never deploy her again. They might even arrest her. Tanyas were expendable.
She had to escape. But after that, she had to clear her name, and prove that the nightmare she'd discovered here was real. Somehow, somewhere in the world, there had to be someone who could help her.
But who would ever be crazy enough to believe a story like hers?
A/N: Grigori and the Psi-Corps previously appeared in Chapter 4: Rain in the Night. Tanya's iconic dual pistols were originally inspired by the balletic 'heroic bloodshed' gunfights of John Woo movies, which informs her combat style in this story.