January 8, 2030
Moscow, Russian Federation
Kremlin Command Level – Subterranean Security Complex
The screens played in silence, frame by frame.
Footage from the Blackridge Containment Facility—captured from its now-defunct surveillance systems—flickered across the main tactical wall in hues of pale green and thermal red. Bodies moved like shadows through the chaos. Masked figures. Precision. Silence. Death. The images slowed to a clip: Someone crashing through reinforced steel like a ghost wearing gravity, veil of gunfire, bypassing biometric locks as if it was the architect of the system.
President Viktor Malenkov watched with an air of unshakable calm. His tailored suit bore not a wrinkle, his silver hair combed with dictatorial style. He stood with his arms clasped behind his back, expression carved from the stone of old Moscow monuments. Before him, General Mikhail Stroganov—the Chief of the General Staff—shifted uneasily.
"They were inside for six minutes and twenty-six seconds," the general said, voice taut. "Long enough to extract thigh-value targets, erase a digital archive, neutralize all of our guards, and vanish without leaving a single trace of who they are."
"And yet you confirmed the site is sanitized?" Malenkov asked.
"Yes, President," Stroganov replied, clearing his throat. "Blackridge is now fully decommissioned. What remains was buried under a controlled avalanche and two high-altitude detonations. There's no longer an entryway. No footage outside what we recovered. The facility is a myth once again."
Malenkov gave a slow, deliberate nod. "Good."
He walked to the center console and tapped the embedded screen. A hologram rose—a digital map of global data traffic, pulsing red over Europe, blue across North America. White spikes flickered intermittently.
"What you just described was not a breach, General," Malenkov said calmly. "It was a declaration. A chess move."
Stroganov's eyes tightened. "You believe it was Western intelligence?"
Malenkov raised a single eyebrow. "What I believe is irrelevant. What matters is that the world believes what we tell them."
He turned toward his press liaison, a woman in a steel-gray dress suit who had stood silently throughout the briefing.
"You will prepare an immediate press conference. My speech will be brief, authoritative, and carefully misleading."
"Yes, sir," she replied, tapping notes onto her tablet.
Malenkov moved to the camera array now projecting onto the room's secondary wall. Live feeds of RT Global, BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera. The media world braced for the next ripple in the geopolitical pond. He tapped again.
"Frame this as a domestic counterintelligence operation. Terrorism from a rogue cell. Speak of cyberattacks. Disinformation campaigns. Make the Americans sweat. Make the Europeans whisper about sleeper agents."
"And the footage, sir?" the liaison asked.
"A fabrication," Malenkov said without pause. "Western actors with advanced AI capabilities, creating digital fictions to incite panic. Our intelligence services were intercepting a cyberterrorism threat. We acted swiftly. We contained it."
Stroganov, who had served through four decades of covert warfare, shifted again. "And the woman?"
"Anne Ryker will be discredited quietly," Malenkov said. "A defector. Mentally compromised. Possibly radicalized. Whatever suits the narrative of the moment. We will bury her again—this time beneath the noise."
Stroganov remained silent, though something burned behind his eyes.
Malenkov turned from the screens and faced the general directly. "You look uneasy, Mikhail."
"Sir," Stroganov said carefully, "Blackridge was built as a fortress of silence. If these people reached its core, it means they had insider-level clearance. If they extracted Ryker and took the files, then they have everything. Names. Protocols. Funding routes. Possibly even... the directive."
A heavy pause.
Malenkov moved to a different terminal, opened a secure file with a voice command. The screen displayed a singular file name:
RED KOSCHEI
"They will come for us," Stroganov said.
Malenkov nodded once. "And we will give them a war."
The room fell to silence as the President tapped the final key. The order would be sent to the remnants of the Black List—those who had not been uncovered, still hidden like needles in NATO's haystack.
The game had begun again. And this time, the world would feel it.
Later that evening, across the skyline of Moscow, media outlets broke into emergency coverage. The President of the Russian Federation would address the nation and the world.
Behind him, the lies had already begun their march.