The corridor stretched out in a long, sterile curve, punctuated by heavy blast doors and security cameras. To the untrained eye, it was a fortress.
To Agent 47, it was a series of patterns to be exploited.
He walked with the purposeful stride of a man who belonged.
Head up, shoulders back, clipboard (taken from the lab) tucked under his arm.
His disguise—the lab coat and ID of Dr. Ivan Sikorsky—granted him visual anonymity, but his behavior was the true cloak.
He mimicked the tired, overworked posture of the facility's staff.
His enhanced senses were painting a map of the facility in his mind. He could hear the hum of a massive ventilation fan three floors up.
He could smell the faint, acrid scent of gunpowder coming from the east wing—a firing range.
And from the floor below, the rhythmic thuds of combat training.
The Red Room.
He had to understand the geopolitical landscape of this new reality before he could disappear into it.
He needed a terminal with high-level clearance.
He approached a checkpoint. Two guards, heavily armored, stood by a metal detector.
A camera swiveled to track him. 47 didn't slow down.
He didn't make eye contact, looking instead at his clipboard, muttering to himself in Russian about "incompetent logistics."
"Papers," the guard grunted, stepping in front of him.
47 stopped, looking up with a look of mild annoyance. "General Dreykov is waiting for the metabolic analysis of the Wolf Spider asset. Unless you want to explain to him why his pet project is delayed?"
He held up the keycard. The guard scanned it. The light turned green.
"Move along, Doctor."
"Keep your eyes open," 47 added, stepping through. "The ventilation system is acting up. We had a pressure leak."
He walked past them, his heart rate never rising above 60.
He found a server room on the third level. It was unguarded, relying on a keypad lock. 47 glanced at the keypad.
He noted the wear patterns on the buttons—2, 5, 8, 0 were slightly more polished than the others.
But it doesn't end with just 4 numbers, and it needs to be entered.
Guessing and running all permutations is impossible, given the little amount of time that he has.
He paused. He listened to the faint electronic hum of the lock. He pulled a small multi-tool he had swiped from a maintenance cart in the hallway and unscrewed the faceplate.
With the precision of a master watchmaker, he stripped the wires and bridged the connection.
The door clicked open.
Inside, rows of servers blinked in the dark. 47 sat at the main console. His fingers flew across the keyboard.
The operating system was archaic compared to ICA standards, a heavily modified version of Linux.
He accessed the external network. The internet.
Information flooded the screen. He absorbed it all.
The United States. Tony Stark had revealed himself as Iron Man. A suit of powered armor. 47 analyzed the footage of the suit in action.
Repulsor technology. Flight capability. High durability.
Threat Assessment: High. Avoid direct confrontation. Weakness: The man inside is narcissistic and unshielded socially.
He turned his attention to the internal network. He needed to know exactly where he was.
Facility: Red Room Northern Hub.
Commander: General Dreykov.
Head Researcher: Melina Vostokoff.
He pulled up the schematics of the building.
He was three floors underground. The hangar was on the surface level, heavily guarded.
There was a shipment of "Dolls"—young women—scheduled for transport in one hour.
Suddenly, a window popped up on his screen.
UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS DETECTED. TRACING...
47 didn't panic.
He had routed his connection through three different proxy servers within the facility before logging in.
He had thirty seconds before they pinpointed the physical terminal.
He typed one final command: Download Project 47 DNA Profile.
He needed to know what he was.
Was he a clone of the original Ort-Meyer subject? Did Ort-Meyer ever exists? Or something else?
The file opened.
[Subject Source: Frozen tissue sample recovered from wreckage in Romania, 2002. Sample matched no known genetic database on Earth. The subject exhibits pre-existing muscle memory and psychological formatting despite having no brain activity upon recovery.]
It was him, frozen by the snow. Looking at what he was wearing, it was also his suit, more specifically, the white requiem suit that he was wearing during the last mission that he remembered doing.
He had arrived here, frozen, and they had simply thawed him out and tried to claim him.
"Intruder!" A voice shouted from the hallway. The trace was faster than he anticipated.
47 pulled the hard drive from the tower, crushing the casing to destroy the rest of the data. He stood up. He couldn't go back the way he came.
He looked up at the ventilation grate.
Classic.
He stacked a chair on the desk, popped the grate, and hauled himself up just as the door burst open.
Bullets shredded the servers where he had been sitting seconds ago.
47 crawled through the vent. It was tight, dusty, and smelled of recycled air. His enhanced vision allowed him to see in the near-pitch blackness.
He navigated the maze of ducts, listening to the chaos below. Alarms were blaring now.
The facility was on lockdown.
He reached a junction that looked down into a large gymnasium.
He peered through the slats.
Below him, a group of women—Widows—were training. They moved with lethal grace, practicing takedowns on heavily padded instructors.
They were good. Fast. Ruthless.
But 47 saw the flaws. The telegraphing of a kick. The slight hesitation before a strike. They were weapons, but they were emotional.
He could see the fear in some, the anger in others.
Emotion was a weakness.
He continued crawling until he reached the vehicle depot's ventilation output. He kicked the grate out and dropped onto the top of a stacked crate.
The hangar was massive. Snowcats, trucks, and a large cargo plane were being prepped.
Guards were everywhere, setting up a perimeter.
47 needed a distraction. A big one.
He scanned the room. Fuel drums near the east wall. A forklift carrying a pallet of munitions. And there, near the main bay doors, a generator unit.
He checked his inventory. One Makarov (4 rounds left). One knife. A length of modified fiber wire.
It wasn't much. It was enough.
He dropped from the crate, landing silently behind a stack of tires. He grabbed a wrench from a workbench. He threw it across the room, hitting a metal railing.
Clang.
Three guards turned toward the noise. "Check it out!"
As they moved away, 47 sprinted—not to the exit, but toward the munitions. He moved like a shadow, sliding under the chassis of a truck.
He reached the forklift. The driver was looking toward the distraction.
47 reached up, grabbed the driver's ankle, and yanked.
The man hit the ground before he could shout. 47 silenced him with a heel stomp to the larynx.
He climbed into the forklift. He didn't drive it. He jammed the accelerator down with the dead driver's helmet and put it in gear, aiming it at the fuel drums.
Then he rolled out of the cabin, disappearing back into the shadows.
The forklift whined across the hangar floor.
"Stop that vehicle!" a commander shouted.
Guards opened fire on the forklift, but it was too late. The forks pierced the steel drums. Sparks from the bullets ignited the fumes.
BOOM.
The explosion was deafening. A fireball rolled across the east side of the hangar. The sprinkler system engaged, spraying foam and water, creating a chaotic fog.
In the confusion, 47 moved.
He didn't run.
He walked briskly, blending with the panicked mechanics fleeing the fire.
He grabbed a heavy winter parka from a rack near the door.
He reached the side door.
It was locked electronically.
The power flickered due to the explosion. 47 fired two rounds into the locking mechanism.
It sparked and released.
He kicked the door open and stepped out.
The wind hit him like a physical blow. A whiteout blizzard. Visibility was less than five meters.
The cold was absolute, instantly biting through the stolen lab coat.
He pulled the parka on, zipping it to his chin.
He was out. But he was in the middle of nowhere, miles from civilization, hunted by an army of elite militia.
47 looks ahead of him with his cold, calculating blue eyes
He began to walk into the white void.