I’ve only been to Russia a few times before, but there is one solid conclusion I can draw about the country: it’s one of the hardest place to complete contracts. The targets are usually hell to put down and my heart feels like it’s seconds away from detonating at all times. I do enjoy drinking over there, though.
I managed to get some sleep on the flight over. That would’ve been impossible had I not been tired to the point of delusion. Our ride came in the form of a clunky old cargo plane that only had sitting space for the pilots. I think I banged my head on about fifteen crates before I woke up.
“There’s no flights to Norilsk, and I can’t really take a government-owned aircraft without arousing suspicion so I had to call in a favor from an old friend,” the agent explained.
I’m sure he could see the trepidation on my face.
“Look, it’s the best I could do.”
I suppose it didn’t matter. The plane wasn’t the biggest issue. It was what we were bound to see once we got off that worried me the most.
Along with the agent and the pilots, there were two others on the plane with us: another SAC agent named Armin and a Green Beret named Luke. Four wasn’t exactly the biggest team, but the agent assured me that we’d rendezvousing with the rest once we got to our destination.
The flight was mostly silent and a bit awkward.
“So what do I call you?” I asked the agent in an attempt to make small talk. “You don’t have to tell me your real name… just give me something so it doesn’t get weird.”
The agent leaned his head back, as if he were thinking about it.
“It’s Colt. That’s my real name, by the way. I trust you enough.” He flashed a corny grin at me.
I nodded in response. “Colt it is.”
We landed on a small airstrip in the middle of what looked like a remote field. I was hit with freezing rain the moment I stepped out of the plane, which managed to wake me up a bit. I looked around, but there was quite literally nothing surrounding us.
“You sure we’re in the right place?” Luke asked. “Doesn’t look like there’s too much going on here.”
Colt looked at one of the pilots, an older, weary-looking gentleman, and nodded. The man lumbered out of the plane and began walking towards a nearby forest.
“This way,” he said in a thick accent. “It’s just short walk.”
I underestimated what he meant by “short”. We walked for about three hours into the middle of the forest, all while lugging around twenty pounds of gear and being drenched by the ice-cold precipitation.
At one point, we came across some kind of large, pill-shaped object stuck in the trees.
“It’ll make sense later,” Colt said, when he saw me looking up at it. “Just keep walking for now.”
After the arduous hike, the pilot finally stopped in a clearing and took out a metal detector. He scanned the ground for a bit before gesturing for the shovel that Colt was holding. After about a minute of digging, he uncovered something that looked like the entrance to a vault.
“Still there,” he said, chuckling. “Many bad memories here.”
He entered a code into the keypad and it opened, revealing a metal ladder leading down into oblivion.
He took a deep breath as he got up, before putting his hand on Colt’s shoulder. “I’ll be waiting in plane. Good luck my friend.”
Colt nodded. “Six PM. If we’re not back by then, just leave.”
The pilot gave him one last glance before walking out of the clearing and out of sight. He didn’t look so confident.
“Well,” Colt said, turning on his helmet flashlight. “Time to enter the belly of the beast.”
I couldn’t tell you how long the climb down was. I just knew that my arms were jelly by the end. There was also an indescribable smell lingering in the air. It wasn’t putrid per se. It just felt like something I wasn’t supposed to be breathing in. After scaling down the ladder, we found ourselves in some kind of underground military complex.
“It’s an old KGB base,” Colt explained. “Repurposed for modern-day Spetsnaz training.”
“Spetsnaz?” I asked. “Is it a good idea to show up unannounced?”
Colt looked down at his watch. “If everything’s gone according to plan, then we should be fine.”
“Well, how can I not be confident when you put it like that…” I muttered.
He started moving and we followed, passing through rooms that contained weight-lifting equipment, shooting ranges and mats for hand-to-hand training. Eventually, we came across the dining hall.
I’ll admit, I was a bit taken aback by what we found waiting for us.
“What the hell happened here?” Luke asked.
It was a bloodbath inside. Standing amongst the plates of spilt food and drink, there were about twenty soldiers and agents, with five more dead on the ground. I recognized roughly half as Spetsnaz, with the other half wearing generic tactical gear. I assumed the latter half were “our” guys. The ones who were dead were all Spetsnaz.
“Oh, jeez,” Colt muttered, as he stared at the grisly scene around him.
One of the non-Spetsnaz soldiers looked over at us. He was average height, and incredibly handsome, save for the gnarly scar running through one of his eyes.
“What the hell did you expect?” he said, with a slight Dutch accent. “We’re lucky it only got this bad.”
Saying that everybody looked on edge would have been an understatement.
“You showed them what the serum could do and they still didn’t believe you?” Colt said, stepping forward.
“Most did,” the soldier responded. “Not all. We should’ve expected that from the start.”
“Well do they believe you now?”
The solider looked over his shoulder at the group of angry Spetsnaz behind him. He nodded at them, a few nodded back, and a few cursed at him in Russian.
“I guess. I mean, they’ve stopped trying to kill us at least. So we've stopped killing them.”
Colt sighed and shook his head. "Fuck's sake Visser," he muttered, before gesturing to Luke, Armin and I. “In any case, these are the new guys. All quite capable, if I do say so myself.”
“They’re on the serum?” The soldier, who's name was apparently Visser, asked. Colt nodded.
The soldier walked forward and extended his arm, shaking each of our hands in quick succession. “Like Colt mentioned, the name's Visser,” he said. “I’m glad you guys chose to be a part of this. We need all the help that we can get.”
He went on to fill us in on what was happening.
Similar to Colt, Visser was an SAC agent acting as a mole inside of Kane’s faction. After some lingering, he became privy to the time and location of Kane’s second attack. The first one was in the US, at a cult base. The second in Russia, at a Spetsnaz complex. If the Russian government were led to believe that aliens had landed on Earth and subsequently slaughtered an entire unit of their soldiers, Kane’s plan to make the world believe they were in imminent danger would become one step closer to a reality.
“That object in the forest,” I said. “That’s the supposed to be the UFO, isn’t it? It was planted there.”
Visser nodded. “You couldn’t be more correct. The man’s running an intricate operation. Which is why we’ve gotta put a wrench into it as fast and hard as we can.”
“So what happens next?” Luke asked.
“In about an hour, Kane’s forces are gonna storm the place.” Visser responded.
“They’re going to the same thing they did to your team,” Colt added. “Have his super-soldiers kill all the Spetsnaz and then inject them with the necrotic agent. The deadly aliens strike again, and nobody’s safe. Not even some of the most skilled soldiers in the world.”
“The US government will eventually find out and compare the incident to what happened in Montana,” Visser continued. “And it’s going to keep happening all around the world, until there’s only one conclusion left to draw.”
“We tried explaining the situation,” another non-Spetsnaz soldier added. “But like hell they were going to believe us. Our Russian’s also pretty rusty. I think some things got lost in translation.”
“We believe you now,” one of the Spetsnaz said in English, stepping towards us. “But only for now. If what you’re saying does not happen…” his face suddenly morphed into a vicious sneer. “Well, you’ve killed five of my men. I don’t care what drugs you’ve taken to become so strong… we will fight back.”
I heard one of the Spetsnaz in the back shout something to the effect of “And you couldn’t bring any for us?”
“Sounds good chief,” Visser replied, ignoring the outburst. “But I promise you, we’re saving lives here.”
The Russian soldier didn’t seem impressed. Nevertheless, he stepped back for the time being.
“So from what it sounds like, they won’t be expecting us, right?” Armin asked. I think it was the first time I’d ever heard him speak.
Visser nodded affirmatively.
“Good,” Armin responded. “Makes our jobs simpler.”
“What’s the size of the force coming for us?” I asked.
“That was something I couldn’t confirm,” Visser responded. “But we’ve got twelve guys on the serum here. We should be fine.”
I nearly forgot about that. The enemy was superhuman, but so were we.
“So what are these?” I said, holding up my rifle. “Decorations?”
Visser grinned. “We’re going old school baby.”
He rolled up his sleeves, showing off his wrapped wrists. “Hope you’ve kept up with your hand-to-hand training.”
The rest of the soldiers followed suit, dropping their weapons and beginning to stretch out their limbs.
There’s a reason I preferred assassinations from a distance. I wasn’t a fan of getting punched in the face and tossed into walls. But I suppose there was no getting out of this one.
Visser walked over and tossed me a set of hand wraps. “We might hit hard, but we’re hitting pretty hard targets as well. Don’t want a broken wrist.”
The Spetsnaz soldiers hung back as the rest of us moved to the front. I already knew I was going to be hurting like hell by the end, so I prepared myself mentally. I’d been pummeled to near-death a few times before, and I couldn’t really afford to lose any more brain cells.
Visser tapped his watch as the hour dwindled. Soon enough, we started hearing movement coming from the corridor up ahead.
I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and clenched my fists. I told myself that I was about to do something good. Something that would benefit humanity in the long run. For a moment, that made me feel better. That feeling faded quickly when I looked at what had appeared in front of us.
A horde of unfathomable creatures had gathered at the dining hall entrance. Their dark-grey bodies were centipede-like, with a sizeable stinger at the end of their tails. Their torsos were thick and slimy, with four veiny, beefy arms attached to the sides. Their fists were the size of bowling balls. They had two circular mouths lined with sharp teeth on either side of their face, with 3 sets of glowing, piercing eyes on top. Their “hairs” were wild and spiky, almost like blades jutting out from the top of their heads.
Of course, none of us knew how to react. I looked over, watching as Colt’s expression turned blank.
“What the fu-“
Before he could even finish the sentence, the creatures began charging at us, shrieking so loud it felt like my brain was shaking.
Safe to say, I don’t think this was part of the plan.
---
Credits
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