Erythia 45 years ago – The Fractured Frontier between the Rosalvya Empire and the Shuiyun Republic
The silence after an Eldritch barrage was not an absence of sound, but a vacuum filled with the slow sizzle of corrupted magic, the groan of shifting earth, and the faint, high ringing in the ears of the dead. The sky over the Kartuz Steppe was a wound—ochre smoke from burning crystallized æther reserves bled into the twilight, and a fine, grey ash fell like corrupted snow. It coated the splintered bone-white trees, the twisted remains of a Qinzhou war-automaton, and the faces of the men who would never blink again. This stretch of miserable, contested ground stank of ozone, blood, and the underlying metallic tang of a world-wound, a place where the fabric of reality had been scored thin by years of magical warfare.
In a crater half-filled with icy sludge and discarded kit, something moved.
It was a slow, torturous convulsion. The sound that escaped the pit was a raw, animal keen of agony, stretched so thin it frayed into a static hiss. It was the sound of a body and soul being unmade from the inside.
Katya, who had been a medic attached to the Rosalvya Rangers, was giving birth in pain. Her uniform tunic was torn open, her skin slick not with sweat but with a viscous, iridescent fluid that shimmered with a sickly teal light, mirroring the wild, matted strands of her light teal green hair. Her body was a testament to wrongness. Her spine arched against impossible pressure, and patches of her skin had hardened into scales of obsidian black. One hand ended in twitching, bony protrusions that clicked like chitin. Her eyes, once a soft grey, were now pupilless pools of the same malevolent Crimson energy that leaked from her pores—the visible sign of an ætheric corruption deep in her marrow.
The pain was metaphysical. Each contraction was a wave of cosmic nausea, a feeling of her very life-force, her vis, being siphoned, pulled, consumed by the life struggling to exit her womb. She could feel the hungry, formless consciousness of her child, drawing not on her body's strength, but on the corrupt, resonant power that had infected her in this blighted place. The power that was now rewriting her.
With a final, tearing shriek that silenced the very wind, the child was born.
It did not cry. It lay in the muck between her legs, small, seemingly ordinary, swaddled in iridescent fluid. A girl.
Katya, through the hurricane of pain and the thickening fog of transformation, looked down. There was no surge of love, only a cold, gut-wrenching understanding. This thing had taken everything. Her humanity, her sanity, her future. It was a vessel for the doom that had befallen her. A distillate of the corruption. A profound, venomous distaste rose in her gorge, followed by a searing envy. The baby glowed with a soft, contained light, perfect and whole, while she was… coming apart.
A deep, resonant crackle, like splitting stone, echoed from her core. The last vestiges of Katya were extinguished.
What rose from the crater was an abomination.
Her body expanded, bones elongating and twisting with wet snaps. The obsidian scales spread, fusing into a carapace of jagged, interlocking plates. Her teal hair fused into a nest of whip-like tendrils that sparked with erratic energy. Her face elongated into a muzzle lined with needle teeth, and from her spine, a segmented, barbed tail lashed into the air. She stood on reverse-jointed legs, a creature of glitching, impossible angles, humming with a dissonant frequency that made the air vibrate. A low, buzzing growl emanated from her, a sound that unsettled the ash on the ground.
She looked down at the baby, who stared up with silent, knowing eyes. The abomination's maw dripped corrosive saliva that sizzled in the mud. A hunger for the pure, condensed vis it sensed overwhelmed all else. A clawed, three-fingered hand reached down.
"KATYA!"
The voice was ragged, desperate. From a nearby trench, a figure hauled himself over the parapet.
Antonov. Her Husband, His face was a mask of soot and blood, one arm hanging useless. He had searched for hours through the hellscape for his wife. The sight that met him froze the blood in his veins. The creature. The monstrous silhouette against the dying sky. The tiny form at its feet.
" Oh my..… Katya… no…" he breathed, the words a ghost.
The abomination's head snapped towards him. For a fleeting second, in the teal hellfire of its eyes, he saw a flicker—a shard of recognition, of immeasurable sorrow. It was gone, replaced by feral rage. It shrieked, a sound that tore at reality, causing the very air to pixelate and shudder in a localized haze of distorted light.
Antonov didn't hesitate. He whistled sharply, a bird call from his battalion. Three other shapes emerged:
Sasha with a long rifle;
Mikhail with a rapid-fire carbine;
young Leo. The last of his squad.
"Wait, please, Don't fire on her! Do NOT fire!" Antonov roared, charging forward.
"It's Katya! With our baby!"
The men faltered, horror dawning. This thing was the sergeant's wife?
The abomination decided the newcomers were the threat. Its tail snapped forward. A crystalline projectile, humming with sickly energy, shot towards Mikhail. It moved in a jerky, disjointed path. Mikhail tried to dive. It clipped his shoulder. There was no explosion of gore—only a silent, spreading bloom of decay. His arm, then his torso, disintegrated into blackened ash and static, his scream cut short into digital noise.
"MIKHAIL! OPEN FIRE!" Sasha screamed.
Bullets tore into the creature's carapace. They sparked, some lodging in with wet thunks of black ichor. It staggered but didn't fall. It shrieked again, and a wave of distorted force erupted. The air glitched. Reality stuttered. Sasha's next rifle shot seemed to fire twice; the second bullet struck Leo in the throat. Leo fell, clutching a wound that flickered between a clean hole and a jagged, crystalline gash.
Antonov was almost there. He slid the last few feet, his body a shield between the abomination and his daughter. He scooped the silent infant into his good arm, wrapping her in a torn piece of his greatcoat.
"Katya," he whispered, looking up into the nightmare.
"My love. It's Anton. Look at her… our daughter."
The abomination hesitated. The buzzing lowered to a pained whine. A claw trembled inches from his face.
Then, from the infant, a faint, soothing teal glow pulsed. A tiny hand reached out. The abomination recoiled as if burned, a new, more vicious envy overwhelming it. With a roar of betrayed fury, its tail whipped around and struck Antonov in the back.
He heard his spine crack. The world whited out. He was on the ground, the cold mud against his cheek, the baby still cradled against his chest. He couldn't feel his legs. He watched his blood seep slowly into the earth.
The abomination stood over him, claw raised for the final strike at the baby. And then it froze.
It looked at Antonov's blood. It looked at his face, his eyes fixed on her with a love that even terror could not erase. It looked at its own claws.
A human sound broke from its distorted throat—a sob, filtered through static and bone.
The teal fire in its eyes guttered. The monstrous face seemed to crumple in apocalyptic grief. Katya was in there, seeing what she had become.
Her clawed hand trembled violently. Instead of striking the child, it moved to her own neck. She found the junction of her mutated skull and spine. She looked at Antonov one last time—an ocean of apology in that glance.
She wrenched.
A terrible, grating shunk, a spray of black and reddish pink fluid that evaporated into motes of light. The head tumbled and dissolved into ash before it landed. The headless body swayed, then collapsed in on itself, dissolving into a heap of glitching, fading particles, leaving only a scorched circle on the earth and the smell of ozone.
In the new silence, only Antonov's weak, rattling breath remained.
The baby squirmed, cooed softly. Her small hand patted his chin. He used his last strength to pull the coat tighter around her.
For a few Moments later. The soundly crunch of boots. Cautious, steady appeared.
A young man's face filled Antonov's narrowing vision. Square-jawed, serious brown eyes under a cap, the insignia of a Corporal. Yevgeny Nezvany. His patrol had been drawn by the unnatural phenomenon.
"Oh my God…what happened here?" Yevgeny whispered, lowering his rifle.
"The… baby… my precious baby girl... argh.. Katya.." Antonov's breath was a bubble of blood.
"Netoshka. Her name… is Netoshka."
"Hey, are you alright? Hey, come get a medic, you're gonna be just fine, its alright, I have her. I swear."
"Her Grandmother… west… village of Kholodny Village… Babushka Agrafena…" Each word was agony.
"Just.. Promise…to watch over her…"
"I promise," Yevgeny said, the words heavy as stone.
"What… what was that?" Yevgeny asked, his voice barely a whisper.
Antonov's eyes glazed, fixing on nothing. His final breath was a faint, truth-laden whisper that would haunt Yevgeny for decades.
"She… is the mother…"
Antonov was gone.
Yevgeny sat back, the horror crashing down as he looked back at Katya's horrendous deformed alien body. The silence was absolute. He looked from the dead father to the living child. Her eyes were a deep brown. But for a second, he thought he saw a faint, teal ember flicker in their depths. He blinked. It was gone.
He gently extracted the infant—Netoshka—from Antonov's embrace. She was warm amidst the pervasive cold. She looked at him, utterly calm, utterly knowing. It was a disquieting gaze.
Wrapping her securely, he stood and began the long trek west, towards Kholodny Village. The promise was a chain. The child felt like a live grenade, pin already pulled.
---
Eight Years Later – The Outskirks of Kholodny Village
The village was a clutch of desperation against the endless Oppressors. Poverty was the weather here. It was in the chill that seeped through logs, the thin broth, the wary eyes.
Netoshka's world was the single-room izba she shared with Babushka Agrafena. The old woman was a monument of wrinkles and resilience, her hands gnarled but gentle. She rarely spoke of her son Antonov, but his presence lingered—in a yellowed dusty photograph, in unused tools, in the permanent sadness like woodsmoke.
Netoshka was quiet. Observant. A stillness about her unnerved the other children. She didn't play; she watched. They left her alone. Her mark was the scar on her left eye : a Crimson red embedded with blood and iron.
Babushka would trace it, her eyes clouded with unspoken fear.
Then there was the Hum of a Inner voice buried deep within Netoshka's mind.
Netoshka had no memory without it. It wasn't heard, but felt—a presence in her marrow, a cool, analytical whisper in her skull. It had no emotion. It was a fact.
The man on the east path carries a concealed blade. Pulse elevated. Intent is hostile.
She'd been seven. Collecting kindling. The man was a deserter, madness in his eyes.
"Little bird, all alone," he crooned.
The Voice provided an answer :
"Kill him now, or you won't live without me"
He died gurgling. She felt nothing. She stripped him of useful items—hardtack, a boot knife—and rolled his body into the half-frozen river. She went home, handed Babushka the kindling, and said nothing.
The Voice approved. A pulse of acknowledgment.
Lately, it spoke of decay.
Structural integrity of north wall compromised. Fungal rot in central beam. Failure in 43 days.
The meat in Voronov's larder carries a dormant parasite. Do not accept.
Babushka's cellular degradation has accelerated. Rate is anomalous.
This last one cracked Netoshka's calm. She watched closely. Babushka's forgetfulness grew. She lost afternoons, staring at the fire, murmuring about
"The Crimson light."
A tremor in her hands. Then, the cough—a dry, hacking thing that shook her frame.
One evening, Netoshka returned to an unlit, freezing hut. Babushka sat rigid, her head twitching.
"Babushka?"
The head snapped up. The old woman's milky blue eyes were shot through with filaments of that familiar, hateful red. Not human eyes.
"It… itches…" she hissed, a distorted rasp. She scratched at her arms, her neck, with frantic intensity. Bloody furrows opened.
"Under the skin… it moves… it hungers…"
Netoshka stood frozen. Babushka's spine curved, joints popping. A low, buzzing growl vibrated in her chest. Tendrils of dark, chitinous material erupted from the scratches, spreading like mold.
Containment impossible, the Voice stated, cold. You must Kill her !!!
"No!" Netoshka screamed.
"She's my Babushka!"
That entity is not your genetic progenitor. It is a biological weapon. It will kill you, then every living thing in this village. You must act.
The thing lunged, one arm elongated into a bony blade. It shrieked.
Her Love died. And Bloodlusted Instinct took over. Netoshka dove, rolled, came up with the deserter's boot knife. The Voice streamed words as a taunt: If you don't kill her, you will be stuck as a slave forever.
She moved. A duck, a pivot, a leap. She drove the knife into the twitching neck.
A sizzling pop, a burst of black static. The thing froze. The teal light faded, leaving only the confused, pain-filled eyes of an old woman. It crumpled, the growths receding, leaving the frail, scarred body of Agrafena with a knife in her neck.
Netoshka knelt, cradling the dying woman's head. Blood seeped into her skirt. Babushka's lips moved.
"My… little Netoshka…" a tear cutting through grime.
"Forgive… me."
She died.
Netoshka did not cry. She sat in the deepening cold for hours, holding the corpse. The grief was a vast, silent glacier. The Voice was silent.
At dawn, she moved. She washed and dressed Babushka, laid her out respectfully. Then she took the lamp oil and began soaking the interior walls of the izba.
She was pouring the last canister when Old Man Voronov arrived, smelling the oil.
"Child! What in hell's name are you—?" He saw the body. His face paled.
"Agrafena! My god, What have you done, you little witch?"
The word hung. Witch.
Netoshka looked at him, blank.
"She was sick. It's over now."
"Sick? You murdered her!" Voronov backed away, shouting.
"HELP! THE DEMON GIRL HAS KILLED AGRAFENA!"
Doors slammed. The villagers emerged, drawn by the commotion. They saw the oil, the corpse, the cold-eyed girl. Their long-simmering fear boiled over. Her strangeness, her scar, the rumors—it crystallized.
"She's the reason the village is scarce!"
"My milk cow went dry after she looked at it!"
"Devil's mark!"
Netoshka listened. The Voice returned, analytical.
"Wouldn't it be best if we... killed them all? These fragile humans don't deserve to Live, but to serve as Livestock for a god like us.."
Netoshka picked up the lantern.
"Stay back," she said, flat.
"I am leaving. Do not try to stop me."
Grigory, emboldened, stepped forward with a hay fork.
"You're going nowhere, monster."
Netoshka threw the lantern.
It shattered against the oil-soaked wall. Fire roared to life with a whoomph. The crowd stumbled back. Netoshka bolted south.
"GET HER!"
They rallied. A rifle shot cracked, splintering wood near her head. They fanned out, herding her, cutting off the south path, driving her towards the river bluffs.
Cornered, back to the frozen, groaning river, Netoshka faced the semicircle. Their faces were masks of fear and fury. Grigory leveled the fork.
"End of the line, witch."
Something broke in Netoshka. Not into fear, but into a cold, limitless fury. The grief, the loneliness, the hatred—it fused with the ancient, humming power in her blood. The Voice didn't speak. It sang a song of pure destruction.
The world stuttered.
The teal scar on her chest ignited with a crawling, mathematical wrongness, spreading in fractal patterns. The air around her vibrated, a heat-haze of distorted pixels. Her dark eyes flooded with solid, burning Red.
She didn't scream. She spoke, her voice layered with a thousand buzzing harmonics.
"Heh, You bastards wanted a monster."
She raised a hand. The hay fork in Grigory's grasp decayed. It rusted, pitted, crumbled to dust in seconds. The necrosis raced up the handle onto his hand. He screamed as his flesh blackened and sloughed away to the bone.
Pandemonium.
Netoshka moved through them. A force of erasure. A touch reduced an axe to splinters, an arm to a withered stick. A glance caused eyes to cloud with crystalline growths. She was a dancer of ruin. They broke, fleeing.
But the song demanded completion. The village was part of the system. It had to be cleansed.
She walked back into Kholodny Village. Fire spread on the wind. She walked the central path, and with each step, decay spread. Wood rotted to pulp. Thatch dissolved to dust. Stone powdered. A walking null zone, a bubble of accelerated entropy.
She did not see the people hiding. She heard only the song. By the time she reached the far end, nothing stood behind her but smoldering embers, drifting ash, and shapeless mounds.
The song faded. The Crimson light receded into her throbbing scar. The glitch-haze vanished. She stood at the edge of the tundra, the silence of annihilation pressing in. Empty. Hollow. Tired.
The sound of an engine. A military truck rumbled over a rise, skidded to a halt. Two soldiers jumped out, rifles raised, faces aghast.
Before they could speak, a figure stepped from the passenger side. Older. Lines of command and deep worry etched on his face. Corporal Yevgeny Nezvany, now a Lieutenant.
His eyes took in the girl, the scar, the devastation behind her. His soul sank. He had kept his promise, checking from a distance every few years. He'd arrived too late.
"Netoshka," he said, his voice carefully calm, empty of threat. He took a slow step forward, hands visible.
"Netoshka. Please, It's Yevgeny. I was your father, Antonov's friend. Look at me."
Her Pink Crimson-edged eyes focused on him. A flicker of recognition? The Voice was silent, assessing.
"It's over," he said, taking another step.
"You're safe now. No one else is coming. It's just me."
He was ten feet away. She was trembling from exhaustion and backlash.
"You must be very tired," he said softly.
"It's alright. You can sleep now. I will keep my promise. I will keep you safe."
A fracture in her fury. A sliver of the lost, exhausted child. Her knees buckled. Yevgeny lunged forward, catching her before she hit the ground. She was out cold.
He lifted her, light in his arms. He looked at the two stunned soldiers.
"Secure the perimeter. Scorch protocol. Nothing leaves this valley. No reports. This never happened."
"Sir, the village—"
"Was lost to a Shuiyun ætheric spillover. A tragic accident. Is that understood?"
The soldiers, pale, nodded.
Yevgeny looked down at the girl's face, peaceful in sleep, the terrifying scar now just a pale mark. He carried her to the truck, the weight of his promise heavier than ever.
---
Two Years Later – State Military Academy #4, Western Rosalvya
The academy was a grim complex of grey granite, all sharp angles and narrow windows, designed to crush individuality and produce efficient, obedient parts for the Rosalvya war machine. Netoshka, now ten, was a ghost within its walls. Yevgeny had pulled strings, buried her past under layers of false documentation—a war orphan, taken in by the state. He visited monthly, his rank now Captain, his worry a constant shadow.
Netoshka kept to herself. The Voice was quieter here, a background frequency. She learned quickly: tactics, history, basic blade work. She was competent, unnoticeable. A grey mouse.
Until a group of bullies with a leader named Daria noticed her.
Daria, daughter of a prominent Commissar, was a predator of the social order. She had three friends: Irina, the sneering wit; Olga, the brute; and Maria, the crude. They ruled their year-level with casual cruelty.
Netoshka's silence, her lack of reaction, was an affront. They started small. Tripping her in the mess hall. Stealing her boots. Pouring ink on her assigned bunk. Netoshka endured. The Voice analyzed:
"Look at these Humans? So pitiful, we need to Kill them all, Now !!!.. or else, you will die before they do."
But Daria grew bored with lack of reaction. It escalated.
In the communal showers, they surrounded her. Olga held her while Irina cut her hair short and ragged with a dull knife. Maria laughed. Daria leaned in, her breath hot in Netoshka's ear.
"Nothing to say, little mouse? No tears? What are you, hollow inside?" She pressed the cold knife flat against Netoshka's cheek.
"Maybe we need to see if there's anything in there to spill."
Netoshka said nothing. She locked eyes with Daria. The Voice remained silent.
They left her there, wet and shorn. Netoshka cleaned up, methodically. The Vouce finally spoke:
" You must Kill them all, its our Destiny to rule humanity through Fear.."
A week later, the final provocation. After lights-out, they dragged her from her bunk to an empty supply classroom. A "lesson in respect." Olga held her arms. Irina and Maria pinned her legs. Daria stood before her, holding a heated metal rod, taken from the forge workshop.
"heh, i think You need a mark," Daria sneered.
"So everyone knows what you are. A silent, useless thing."
She brought the glowing tip towards Netoshka's face.
The Voice didn't sing. It simply stated: Terminate.
Netoshka moved.
It wasn't the frenzied destruction of the village. This was clinical, hyper-efficient. She broke Olga's thumb with a sharp twist, freeing an arm. Elbow back into Irina's solar plexus. A kick to Maria's knee, heard it pop. All in two seconds.
Daria stumbled back, dropping the rod.
"You little bitch—!"
Netoshka was on her. No weapon but her hands, her knowledge of pressure points, of structural weakness. The Voice provided a targeting solution: Strike them in the arms, the legs, and finally.. their eyes, mutilate their bodies until there is nothing left standing.
It was not a fight. It was a dissection.
Daria choked, gasped, crumpled. Netoshka turned to the others, rising in pain and terror. Irina scrambled for the door. Netoshka caught her by the hair, slammed her face into the iron doorframe once, twice, three times—until she went limp.
Olga charged, a wild swing. Netoshka sidestepped, grabbed the extended arm, and drove it down over her knee. The snap was loud in the sudden quiet.
Maria was weeping, backing into a corner. "Please… please… we were just trying to befriend you.."
Netoshka looked at her. The Voice assessed: "
Kill her. EAT HER HEART OUT"
She broke Maria's neck with a swift, precise strike.
Then she returned to Daria, who was trying to crawl away, mewling through her ruined throat. Netoshka dragged her back to the center of the room by her ankle. Daria's eyes were wide, begging.
Netoshka felt nothing. No rage, no pleasure. It was maintenance. Purging a faulty component.
She picked up the cooled metal rod. She did not stab. She methodically broke. Shoulders. Knees. Elbows. Each crack a punctuation in the silent room. Daria's screams were wet, choked gurgles.
"Stop… please…" Daria finally managed to rasp.
Netoshka paused, rod poised. She tilted her head.
"You showed no stopping. You asked if I was hollow." She leaned close.
"You are mistaken, I am not hollow. I am full of a howling darkness. And you made me look at it."
She ended it with a sharp thrust to the face as her tangled sharp vines.
Silence, except for the drip of blood and the buzzing of the overhead lights.
The door opened. Yevgeny stood there, having come for an unscheduled check-in, led by the noise. His face went ashen. He saw the carnage, the four dead girls, and Netoshka standing amidst them, blood-spattered, expression utterly vacant.
He didn't shout. Didn't recoil. A profound weariness settled over him, mixed with a chilling certainty. He stepped inside, closed the door.
"Netoshka," he said, his voice steady but dead inside.
She looked at him. The teal flicker was there, deep in her brown eyes, then gone.
"Ahh, Yevgeny... Sorry, They started it."
"I'm so sorry this happened but i know."
He rubbed his face.
"I know they did."
He walked to her, ignoring the bodies. He took the rod from her hand.
"But We have to go. Now."
"Where?"
"Somewhere else. A… special school. For gifted students." The lie tasted like ash.
"I will handle this. Go to the west gate. My driver is there. Get in the truck. Do not speak to anyone."
She nodded, compliant as a doll, and walked out.
Yevgeny stayed. He used the field radio in his vehicle. An hour later, a special clean-up unit arrived—men in unmarked uniforms. They asked no questions. They bagged the bodies, cleaned the room with chemical efficiency. The official report would state:
"Training accident involving unstable ordnance. Four fatalities. No further details available."
As he watched them work, an older man in the crisp uniform of the Internal Security Directorate, a Colonel, approached him. Zima. A man with eyes like ice chips.
"What a mess, Lieutenant."
"Captain, sir."
"Not for long, if this is how you manage your… pet project." Zima lit a cigarette.
"The girl is a strategic asset. This waste of potential ends now. We have a facility. It will sculpt her. Contain her. Utilize her for Good."
"She's just a child," Yevgeny said, the protest weak.
"She is a weapon that keeps going off in the workshop. Time to put her on the range." Zima blew smoke.
"You will deliver her. Or you will join the clean-up detail. Permanently."
Yevgeny looked at the blood being mopped from the floor. He had failed Antonov. He had failed Netoshka. All he could do now was stay close enough to maybe, one day, catch her when they finally broke her.
"Where is the facility?" he asked, his voice hollow.
---
Three Weeks Later – Special Research & Acclimation Facility Zeta-9
It was a place that didn't exist, buried deep in the Uralan Mountains. To the few who knew of it, it was simply "The Workshop." It was a brutalist monolith of concrete and reinforced plasteel, humming with suppressed ætheric dampeners.
Netoshka was processed. Stripped, scrubbed, hair shorn to the scalp. Issued a grey jumpsuit with no insignia. No name, just a stenciled number: 7.
Yevgeny accompanied her to the entrance of the primary testing chamber, a vast, white-lit room that smelled of antiseptic and ozone. His hand on her shoulder felt like a brand.
"Listen to them, Netoshka. Do what they say. I will… I will see you soon."
She looked up at him, her eyes searching his face for the lie. She found it. She said nothing, turning to face the two doctors in white coats who awaited her.
The first test was simple. They led her to a circular platform. Across from her, a door hissed open. Five other children, boys and girls, in identical jumpsuits, were shoved into the room. They looked terrified, confused. Some held crude shivs made from bed slats.
A disembodied voice echoed. "Subject 021. Neutralize the hostiles."
The other children, driven by panic or prior instruction, charged her.
The Voice awoke. "Hmm.. Five hostiles. Perfect for killing them, don't you think so too? Netoshka?"
Netoshka moved. It was a brutal, economical ballet. She broke the first boy's arm, used his body to block a shiv strike, snapped the neck of the girl behind him. A kick to a knee, a palm-heel to a nose driving bone into brain. The last one, a small boy, dropped his shiv and begged. She broke his spine at the neck.
It took forty-seven seconds.
The voice:
"Perfectly Efficient. Proceed to Phase Two."
The bodies were dragged away. A new door opened. This time, three older youths, looking feral, armed with stun-batons. Then, after them, a captured Qinzhou scout, bound but furious. Then, after that, a starved, aggressive Lynx-beast.
She neutralized them all. The Voice guided her. She felt nothing. Each kill was a step in a procedure.
Days blurred. The tests varied: endurance runs in toxic simulated atmospheres, sensory deprivation followed by sudden ambush, puzzles that required lethal solutions. She excelled. They measured everything: her heart rate (steady), her brainwaves (abnormally coherent under stress), her ætheric resonance (a controlled, muted teal echo).
Then came the real work.
She was placed in a transparent isolation cylinder. Tubes were inserted into ports in her arms, her neck. A helmet lined with needles was lowered onto her shaved scalp.
"Induction Protocol begins," Dr. Kuryakin, a man with a neatly trimmed beard and dead eyes, said from the observation deck. Yevgeny stood beside him, forced to watch.
A viscous, silver fluid pumped into her veins. It was cold. Then came the serum—a glowing, green substance. Fire erupted in her nerves. She convulsed against the restraints. The Hum screeched into static.
Then, the psychic conditioning. Through the helmet, a barrage of images, sounds, concepts:
LOYALTY TO ROSALVYA. OBEDIENCE IS STRENGTH. THE WILL OF THE STATE IS YOUR WILL. YOU ARE A TOOL. A WEAPON. YOUR PAST IS IRRELEVANT. YOU ARE PR0T0TYPE 021.
Her own memories were played back to her—Granny Agrafena's death, the village burning, Daria's broken face—but overlayed with corrective narration:
"These were necessary purges. You were eliminating threats to State stability. You were serving a greater purpose."
She fought it. She screamed, a raw, silent scream against the gag. The teal scar on her chest burned like a brand.
Yevgeny watched, his fists clenched until his fingers drew blood. He saw her struggle, saw the moment the fight began to drain from her eyes, replaced by a glassy, programmed emptiness. They were sanding down her soul.
The process repeated daily for five weeks. Injections. Serums. Blood draws that left her weak. The endless psychic hammering. The Voice in her mind was no longer a whisper; it was being overwritten, its edges bound with cold, state-sanctioned directives.
At the end of the fifth week, they brought her to a final simulation. A mock village. "Hostiles" within—mannequins, but some with prisoner-volunteers. The order came:
"Cleanse the sector."
Netoshka—Subject 021—moved through the simulation. She was flawless. Lethal. Efficient. She showed no hesitation, no recognition of the screaming volunteers as human. She completed the objective in record time.
She stood at the center of the simulated carnage, waiting for the next order. Her eyes were clear, focused, and empty.
On the observation deck, Dr. Kuryakin allowed himself a small smile.
"Remarkable. The conditioning is taking. The asset is nearly operational."
Yevgeny looked down at the small, androgynous figure in grey, standing amidst the evidence of her own horrific prowess. The child he had carried from the ashes was gone. In her place was a weapon, holstered and ready. The promise he had made to a dying man now felt like a curse he had delivered onto the world. He had not kept her safe. He had delivered her to the architects of her own destruction.
And as the lights in the simulation chamber dimmed, the only thing that remained glowing faintly in the dark was the teal, twisting scar on Subject 021's chest—a silent, stubborn testament to a doom that no amount of conditioning could ever fully erase.