Blackridge Containment Facility
January 5, 2030
Just before the song begins,
In the control tower of Blackridge, silence reigned for exactly 1.5 seconds.
Then the lights failed.
Three sharp pulses—one from the EMP rig placed by Agent June—flickered through the subterranean systems like a strobe, and the world plunged into black.
Chaos bloomed like fire in oxygen.
The compound's perimeter fell into a dull red haze as auxiliary generators kicked in, too weak to power the full grid. Alarms screamed, but the surveillance feeds remained dead. Automated turrets locked into freeze mode. Emergency shutters sealed some corridors, others jammed half-open.
And from the dark, shadows moved.
They came from the snowfields, the tunnel shafts, the disused access pipes—twelve masked figures in black. A ballet of violence danced in silence across the Arctic stone.
Agent January breached the western wing first, a living weapon crashing through two guards like a kinetic hammer. His fists were fast, decisive. The hallway lit in staccato muzzle flashes as March and July followed, sweeping corners, neutralizing turrets.
In the east wing, Agent December led with precise shots, each bullet silencing a confused guard mid-command. April moved with uncanny poise. She knew every step to take. It had been rehearsed a thousand times in her head. Agent June, just behind, planted explosive snares to delay reinforcements.
The hostages were being moved. That had been anticipated.
One floor below, Agents October and August cleared the central shaft, dispatching riot troops with poison darts and knives slick with engineered neurotoxin. October didn't speak. He never did. But his presence was unmistakable: efficient, silent death.
The command staff inside Blackridge never had a chance.
Room by room, level by level, the assassins carved through resistance. Gas systems disabled. Data vaults breached. The hostages—twenty-one in all—were secured within eight minutes.
But the true prize was deeper.
Sub-Level Three.
A cell marked: 118-ALFA. Anne Ryker.
She was emaciated, pale, but alert. The moment the door slid open and she saw the masked figure reach for her—Agent April—her eyes widened. Fear first. Then confusion. Then... trust.
April's voice was quiet and calm. "You're going to be okay."
August injected the memory suppressant into Anne's neck with surgical precision. Anne's eyelids fluttered. She collapsed, caught in April's arms.
April placed her on the gurney just outside the cell. August activated the microgenerator that triggered the facial reconstruction reversal in April's skin-mask. The effect was slow but striking: April's features softened back into Ryker's bone structure. Hair color, cheekbones, voice modulation. Even iris pigmentation.
She lay down.
The med team waiting at the evac point would never know.
As August wheeled Anne Ryker out through the north corridor, April took her place. An oxygen mask. A blanket. The illusion of trauma. She didn't blink as the med team approached, loaded her into the chopper, and vanished into the sky.
Extraction: successful.
--
Meanwhile, Agent September had found what he came for.
Blackridge's core archive was buried in magnetic stone—a perfect vault against traditional scans. He cracked it in five minutes. What he saw inside made his blood slow.
He transmitted the files to December. "You need to see this. Now."
December looked down at the schematics, then the dossiers.
Not just dissidents. Not just spies.
Civilians.
Politicians. Scientists. Journalists.
People across Europe.
All marked as threats to one man: President Viktor Malenkov of the Russian Federation.
It wasn't just secrecy.
It was preparation for war.
A string of files unfolded a chilling vision. Project Raduga. Tactical occupation simulations for the Baltic States. Deployment of misinformation operations in Poland and Finland. Political destabilization plans for Hungary and Slovakia. Manufactured civil unrest. Propaganda injections in NATO member countries.
And the Black List.
A death squad.
Handpicked by Viktor himself. Trained to silence any voice that hinted at his endgame. Working alongside Blackridge, the List had removed over two hundred individuals in the last seven years. The deaths spanned six nations. Most were ruled as accidents. Fires. Suicides.
But the truth screamed.
And the final page?
Operation SNOWFALL.
A false-flag attack scheduled to take place in Warsaw, designed to look like a NATO black op. Casualties projected in the thousands. The political fallout would force Eastern Europe into chaos. And in that chaos, Viktor would strike.
Agent September stared at the blinking cursor on the final decrypted line:
"NATO will fall from within. War will be reaction—not decision."
He transmitted everything.
When Agent December read it, his face went still. "He's not hiding anymore," he said. "He's moving the board."
"WWIII?" Agent May asked behind him, only half-joking.
"Unless we burn him first," December replied.
He turned to the others.
"Get the data to Geneva. Leak it. Full exposure. Names, dates, execution logs. Bring the world into this. If NATO hesitates, Malenkov wins."
A stillness fell across the squad. No jokes. No music.
Just the low hum of dying generators, and the faint roar of an evac helicopter ascending toward a gray arctic sky.
The storm had begun.
And the world would never be the same again.