Six years passed in silence.
Not the silence of peace. The silence of moving between wars that weren't mine, of drifting across borders with no flag stitched to my arm. I lived by the knife, by the pistol, by the coin slid across tables in dimly lit bars where men with nervous eyes hired me to do what they were too afraid to.
But beneath it all, I felt it.
The Red Room's shadow. Always watching. Always waiting.
By twenty-five, my name had spread further than I ever intended. Sidorov's Shadow was whispered in languages I didn't even speak. And every whisper, every rumor, carried the same consequence: attention.
That night in the train yard, I knew the whispers had finally reached the wrong ears.
The place was deserted, long past midnight. Rusted locomotives squatted in rows like sleeping beasts, their iron bellies empty, their tracks overgrown with weeds. I had come chasing a lead — a weapons shipment that was supposed to be traded under the cover of night. But when I arrived, there was no deal. No smugglers.
Only silence.
And then… footsteps.
I froze, hand brushing the hilt of my blade. Shadows moved between the cars, too smooth, too disciplined. Not criminals. Not scavengers.
Operatives.
The Red Room had found me.
---
The first one came fast, leaping from the roof of a freight car, twin batons flashing silver under the moonlight. I rolled, his strike splitting the rusted metal where my head had been a heartbeat before. My knife was in my hand, a blur of steel in the dark.
He parried with a hiss of sparks, baton clashing against my blade. His eyes were cold. Empty. I'd seen that emptiness before — in the rumors. In the Red Room's graduates.
Widows.
I ducked low, kicked his legs out from under him, and drove my knife into his ribs. He didn't scream. He didn't even flinch. Just collapsed, lips parting as blood bubbled up his throat.
Another was already on me.
A woman this time, hair tied back, a pistol in her grip. She fired twice. The first shot clipped my shoulder, spinning me sideways, pain burning down my arm. The second missed as I slammed into her, knife flashing upward. The blade met flesh. She fell.
But more came. Always more.
Figures slipped between the train cars, black suits blending with shadows, boots silent on the gravel. They moved like water, like wolves, coordinated in a way mercenaries never were.
The Red Room had not underestimated me.
They'd come to erase me.
---
I fought like a cornered animal. My blade flickered, cutting through the dark. Blood sprayed across rusted steel. My breath came ragged, lungs burning, ribs screaming where a baton had struck.
One Widow came at me with claws strapped to her hands, her movements fast, precise, beautiful in a way only death could be. She slashed across my chest, fabric tearing, skin burning. I caught her wrist, twisted, broke bone. Her scream was the first sound any of them made.
I didn't have time to finish her before another was there. And another.
I was surrounded.
My knives dripped red. My arms trembled. The gravel crunched under my boots as I backed toward the shadows of the yard. For the first time in years, I felt it — that cold edge of inevitability.
I was going to die here.
But then… a shot cracked the night.
One of the Widows dropped, blood blossoming from her throat.
I spun. Across the yard, perched on the roof of a rusting locomotive, a figure stood with a rifle slung across her back, pistols blazing in her hands. Blonde hair caught the moonlight, sharp eyes scanning the chaos below.
She moved like them. Fast. Efficient. Ruthless.
But her guns weren't pointed at me.
They were pointed at them.
Yelena Belova.
-----------------------------------------------------------
The first time I saw her, she was a blur of muzzle flashes and precision.
Yelena moved like no mercenary I had ever fought beside. Her pistols barked in perfect rhythm, each shot snapping through the air with surgical accuracy. A Widow lunged toward me from the side, blade raised — and before I could react, her head snapped back, a neat hole punched clean through her skull. She crumpled at my feet.
I staggered, chest heaving, eyes locking on the blonde figure perched on the locomotive.
Who the hell was she?
No time to ask.
The Widows adapted instantly, turning their formation toward her. A hail of bullets tore across the train roof, sparks flying as metal shrieked under the impact. Yelena vaulted off the edge, landing light on the gravel, rolling smoothly to her feet. She advanced without hesitation, twin pistols spitting fire, her face calm — too calm.
She belonged to them. I could see it in her movements. Red Room training. Precise. Cold. Deadly.
And yet she was killing them.
Not me.
Them.
---
One charged her with a blade. She ducked under the slash, snapped a kick into the Widow's knee, then drove her pistol into the woman's chest and pulled the trigger. Point-blank. The shot echoed across the yard like thunder.
Another Widow came at me from the flank. I slashed upward, my knife slicing across her throat, blood spraying warm across my face. Yelena spun beside me, dropping two more with rapid shots.
For a heartbeat, we stood back to back. I could feel her breath, sharp and steady. She didn't glance at me. Didn't speak.
But in that moment, I knew.
Whoever she was, whatever her reasons — she wasn't here to kill me.
---
The fight became a blur of steel and gunfire.
A Widow lunged at Yelena, knocking her pistols from her hands. They clattered across the gravel, useless. The assassin swung a blade toward her throat. I didn't think — I just moved. My knife caught the strike mid-air, sparks snapping in the dark.
Yelena didn't waste the opening. She slammed her elbow into the woman's face, snapping bone, then snatched one of my spare knives from my belt without asking. The blade flashed once, and the Widow dropped.
She tossed the knife back to me like it was nothing.
"Not bad," she muttered in accented Russian, eyes already scanning for the next target.
I didn't answer. There wasn't time.
---
They kept coming. Shadows slipping between the rusted train cars, teeth bared, weapons flashing. For every one we cut down, two more seemed to appear.
I felt a baton smash into my ribs. Pain lanced white-hot through my chest. I staggered, barely ducking another strike. My knife tore through fabric, flesh, blood. Another down.
Beside me, Yelena had reclaimed her pistols, unloading round after round with mechanical efficiency. When she ran dry, she reloaded faster than I could blink, magazines snapping in place with a practiced flick.
At one point, three Widows circled us at once, blades gleaming.
Yelena dropped to a knee, sweeping fire across their legs. They stumbled, and I surged forward, knives flashing. Steel kissed flesh. Blood painted gravel. The last Widow gurgled as my blade carved across her throat.
Silence fell, broken only by my ragged breathing and the faint hiss of blood soaking into the dirt.
---
Bodies littered the train yard.
The smell of iron hung thick in the night air.
I turned, knife still raised, eyes locked on her.
Yelena Belova.
She stood over the corpse of the final Widow, chest rising and falling evenly, pistols still in her hands. She looked at me for the first time then — really looked.
Her gaze was sharp, assessing. Measuring me.
Not an enemy. Not an ally.
Something in between.
"You fight like them," she said flatly, Russian accent curling around the words.
"And you don't," I replied, voice low.
For the first time, something flickered in her expression. A shadow of emotion — anger? Regret? I couldn't tell.
She holstered her pistols, wiped blood from her cheek with the back of her hand, and said only:
"They won't stop coming."
I already knew that.
-----------------------------------------------------------
The train yard was a graveyard now.
Steel hulks groaned in the wind, moonlight glinting off bodies sprawled in the gravel. The air stank of gunpowder and blood.
I stood among the dead, chest heaving, every muscle trembling with exhaustion. My knives dripped red, hands shaking. Adrenaline was all that kept me upright.
Across from me, Yelena wiped her pistols clean with a rag she pulled from her jacket, movements precise, unbothered. She wasn't even breathing hard. That disturbed me more than the corpses.
I broke the silence first.
"Why are you here?"
She glanced up, green eyes sharp, unreadable.
"To make sure you don't die."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one you'll get."
Her tone was flat, final. She holstered her pistols and started moving, stepping over bodies without looking down. She moved like someone used to death. Like someone who had accepted it long ago.
I didn't follow at first. I just stood there, staring at the trail of corpses, trying to process what had just happened. The Red Room had finally made its move. And this woman—this Widow—had saved me.
Why?
---
She stopped a few yards away and glanced back, impatience flickering across her face.
"Well? Are you coming, or do you want to wait here for the next wave?"
I tightened my grip on my knives.
"I don't trust you."
Her lips curved, not into a smile exactly, but something close. Dry. Bitter.
"Good. Then we understand each other."
---
We left the yard together, our boots crunching over gravel, slipping into the shadowed streets beyond. Every sound felt amplified in the silence after battle—the drip of water from a leaking pipe, the distant hum of traffic, the whisper of the wind.
I stayed a pace behind her, knives still in my hands. She didn't seem to care. She walked with her head high, shoulders squared, as if she had nothing to fear.
Finally, I asked the question burning in my chest.
"You're one of them. A Widow."
"I was." Her answer was sharp, immediate.
"And now?"
She didn't look back.
"Now I'm what they fear."
Her words hung in the night like smoke.
---
We reached the edge of the yard, where the rusted chain-link fence sagged against the dark. She crouched, pulling a small pack from beneath her coat, and produced a pair of wire cutters. The motion was efficient, practiced. She clipped through the links in seconds, creating a hole big enough for us to slip through.
As she worked, I asked, "Why help me?"
This time, she did look at me. Her eyes glinted in the moonlight, colder than steel.
"Because tonight, their target was you. Tomorrow, it will be me. Either we fight alone and die… or we fight together and maybe live long enough to see them burn."
Her words struck something in me—something I had buried for years. Rage. Defiance. The memory of being a boy under the Red Room's boot, of being told I was nothing but a weapon.
She was right. They would never stop. Not until we were ash.
---
We slipped through the fence and into the woods beyond. The city lights glowed faintly in the distance, but the trees swallowed us, shadows wrapping around our shoulders.
For the first time that night, I allowed myself to breathe.
But it wasn't relief.
It was resolve.
Because Yelena Belova was right.
The Red Room had declared war on me. On us.
And I was going to return the favor.
---
End of Prologue Part 3. This closes the 13k-word prologue arc: Nikolai's childhood, teenage years, and finally his alliance with Yelena. Next step is Chapter One: The Defector, where they begin navigating the aftermath and the bigger world conflict