December 7^th, 1998 – KGB headquarters, Moscow, Level 2 Debriefing Room

The swaying incandescent bulb lit up the thick haze of cigarette smoke floating through the room. It lent an otherworldly atmosphere to the proceedings. KGB Agent Sofiya Sokolov tried not to let her exhaustion show outwardly.

The door opened. An older man with a jacket full of military honours entered. Sofiya stood and saluted. He returned the gesture, then leaned in for a kiss with a GRU liaison officer sitting on the other side of the table, then another with one of the Generals. He turned to look at Sofiya.

“Chairman Tokarev,” Sofiya said. “It is an honour to meet you.”

The Chairman of the KGB had been engaged in a fighting retreat against male-pattern baldness, but was not prepared to surrender yet. A combover was valiantly making it’s last stand near his ears.

“If what I’m being told about your operation is true, tovarish Sokolov, the honour is all mine,” he said.

Behind the table of old men, a studious middle aged woman took notes on a typewriter.

“I have only performed that which was expected of me,” said Sofiya.

“Your humility does you great credit. Not many field agents could have made it back across the border with so many people hunting for you. I know that you’ve been here for a long time already, but if you’ll humour an old man like me, there are still some points I would like further clarification on.”

“Of course, Sir,” she said.

He was understating it. She’d sat through nine cumulative hours of debriefing and interrogation in the preceding eighteen hours.

“I am having trouble wrapping my head around some parts of the initial report. In particular, how the different parties in this foul plot against the proletariat of the world relate to one another.”

“I’d be happy to explain,” she said.

Sofiya took a very deep breath.

“Sometime around the 1760s, the British Crown – realising that it was making too many enemies around the world – fostered a revolutionary movement in their own colonies, which they secretly controlled. After briefly fighting a sham “war” against themselves, the American and British empires separately pursued plans to dominate more and more of the globe. They created the League of Nations and later the United Nations, whose institutions were used as tools to steer global financial policy and coordinate their vast conspiracy. The only thing standing in their way, of course, was the Soviet Union. Having first choked off revolutionary movements the world over, they then focused their attention on the states of Europe, secretly contacting counter-revolutionary nationalist movements and supporting them in their efforts to oust the universally beloved, democratically elected communist governments of Central, Eastern and Southern Europe. By using the IMF to transform these nations into exploitative capitalist economies based on free-trade and free-market principles, they seek to concentrate all power and wealth inside these nations in the hands of a small number of elites, who are in league with the Anglosaksy and loyal to the British Crown. Then, they would need to deal with the USSR itself. Since bourgeois nationalism does not exist in the enlightened, post-national USSR, they have been researching various methods of mind control and brainwashing to corrupt the faithful Marxist-Leninists citizens of the Union into betraying their own kind. Firstly, by encouraging the spread of Catholicism to undermine Russian Orthodox Christianity and Marxist Scientific Atheism. Secondly, by inventing and encouraging the spread of completely fake regional identities like “Ukrainian” through propaganda and corrupted Polish-Lithuanian blood. Thirdly, by creating alternatives to Communist Internationalism by inventing an entirely synthetic pan-European identity, a unified European currency, and expanding the eligibility criteria for participation in the ‘Eurovision’ Song Contest. Should their plans succeed and the USSR becomes weak enough, then they would pounce – shattering the sacred and inviolable territorial integrity of the birthplace of the Revolution by forcing all of the Soviet Socialist Republics to split apart from one another. This would greatly diminish the power of the central committee in Moscow, transforming the USSR from the largest country on Earth to still the largest country on earth but by a smaller margin. And then, most disturbingly, by overthrowing the government in Moscow directly, they could then restore the Romanov monarchy under the reign of Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, who is somehow still alive and who would enter into a patrilineal marriage with the heir to the throne of the United Kingdom, setting the stage for a personal union between the two countries with a single British monarch ruling over both once the thrones passed to their children.

The senior officials all nodded along with a horrified look on their faces. The stenographer strained to keep up.

“Thank you,” said Chairman Tokarev. “When you lay it all out like that, it makes perfect sense. I have no further questions on that subject.”

The GRU colonel exhaled a long drag of his cigarette, but remained silent.

“Will there be anything else, tovarish Chairman?”

He paused for a moment, then thumbed through some pages on the report.

“I was hoping that you could elaborate on the fates of Agents Nevsky and Abrasimov. You have extensively chronicled your stay inside the facility, but the section on your extraction is quite brief.”

Sofiya looked down at an empty spot on the table and tried to conceal her emotions. Images flashed through her mind, and she struggled not to think about them.

“You mentioned that they both perished during the escape,” he continued.

She nodded slowly. She had something in her eyes all of a sudden.

“Da,” she said.

“I understand this may be difficult. But it’s important for us to have a full record of the events. What exactly happened after the you rendezvoused with Agent Abrasimov and reached the surface?”

* * *

The gunfire had begun within seconds of the elevator doors opening. The same alarm she’d triggered the first day was blaring, probably the result of the explosions and fire raging on the lower levels. If they were lucky, the whole facility would be out of action – for a while at least.

Yevgeniy slid his Kalashnikov across the bottom of the elevator to Sofiya. It was a locally produced Polish copy – presumably pilfered from whomever he stole his guard disguise – but the basics were universally applicable.

“Three, two, one, covering!” she shouted. She fired two short, controlled bursts from a blind position, and hoped they would land close enough to force their heads down.

Agent Yevgeniy Abrasimov rolled out of the elevator and sought a more favourable position. Sofiya fired a few more times for good measure.

She heard his dart gun fire, and a body fell to the ground. The elevator doors started to shut, causing her to finger the ‘open door’ button like an electrically powered woodpecker. A second dart fired. A second body dropped.

“Clear!” he shouted.

She stepped out past the doors and performed a three-hundred and sixty degree spin, rifle at the ready, her razor sharp eyes scanning the perimeter like an insufficiently fat socialist bear in search of dangerous counterrevolutionary rifle-armed salmon.

Though it was the warmest part of the day, the winter air still gave her goosebumps. She ignored it, and looked out into the distance.

Her previous assessment had been correct – they were close enough to the airfield to actually see the small private jet on the runway. She couldn’t see any tall bearskin hats, nor was anybody loading anything into it yet. Were she a decadent westerner with a gambling addiction, she’d bet money that he hadn’t boarded yet. They might have fifteen or twenty minutes if they were lucky.

“That’s the Prince’s jet,” she said. “We have to stop him from escaping!”

“That is not our primary objective, Agent Sokolov. We must focus on extracting you safely with the information you’ve gathered.”

Sofiya closed the distance between their bodies, and looked up into his beautiful eyes – blue in colour, but red in spirit.

“You haven’t seen what I’ve seen here. You have to believe me – if he escapes, there’s no telling how much damage he could do to the motherland!”

Yevgeniy looked over to the airfield, then back at Sofiya, then back to the airfield, then to Sofiya, and so on, and so forth. Sofia realised that the primary objective of his eyes was to avoid looking down at her nude form and erect nipples each time his head returned.

“You must be freezing cold,” he finally said.

It suddenly occurred to Sofiya that it was not normal to feel so comfortable being completely naked in front her peers. Not even if they were as fetching as he was, and you were as normal and heterosexual as Sofiya was.

She ran back to the pile of clothes near the elevator.

“I apologise, let me just…” she said as she struggled to get back into the dress. “Could you help me with this?”

The strong and muscular new soviet man ran his hands along her back and helped guide the dress up over her curvy, supremely feminine form with all the strength, precision and delicacy of Stalin guiding a five year plan to fruition. Sofiya leaned into his body, unconsciously craving it’s warmth and the comfort of his touch. He lodged no formal objections with respect to what she was doing. In fact, she could feel the people rising up. She leaned backwards and met his gaze as they pressed together. He held her still, saying nothing. Sofiya’s hand –

* * *

“Leytenant Sokolov, perhaps the archives could do without a few of the details,” said the Chairman.

The stenographer had turned a patriotic shade of red.

“Um, of course, I apologise tovarish Chairman.”

* * *

Sofiya delivered another well timed judo chop to the second soldier, who had been baited out by Yevgeniy. The door to the armoury was now wide open.

Sofiya peeked her head around the door, then ducked back when she saw a figure standing back there with a weapon of her own.

“Stay back!” came a woman’s voice from within the room. “I have a gun!” Her voice was trembling with fear.

Sofiya signalled for Yevgeniy to come closer to the entrance.

“Do we have anything to flush her out with?” Sofiya said in a hushed voice.

He patted down the pockets on his uniform.

“I did not bring any grenades, nor would it would be wise to detonate one inside that room.”

“The counter-counter-revolutionary neutralisation darts won’t penetrate the window, will they?” she said.

“I don’t know. It’ll be safer just to shoot her with the Kalashnikov,” he said.

Sofiya felt terrible for the poor girl. From the glance she’d caught, she looked barely old enough to be in the army. A conscript – maybe even a trainee. She reached out and grabbed Yevgeniy’s shoulder.

“Wait,” she said. “I have an idea.”

Sofiya lowered her weapon to the ground, and slid it into the room.

“I am surrendering,” she said. “Please don’t shoot.”

She crept inside, toe and leg first to make sure if anything did get shot off it would be survivable.

The quaking cadet could barely hold the weapon. She was very pretty, and the other guards must have agreed. The room smelled of sex. Her hair was messed up and she’d put part of her uniform back on the wrong way.

“D-don’t come any closer!” she shouted.

Sofiya halted.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” said Sofiya. “I have no quarrel with you.”

“No quarrel?! You’ve killed my commanding officer!”

“Not killed. They’re just unconscious.”

The pretty Polish trainee wavered slightly. Sofiya noticed some light bruising around her neck.

“I have to ask you, did these men hurt you?” Sofiya continued.

The important thing was to keep her distracted and off balance.

“No… but…” she mumbled.

Sofiya noticed the crucifix around her neck. Think like a Catholic, she thought.

“Did they… use protection?” said Sofiya.

“Yes,” said the troubled trainee. “It was horrible.” She sobbed. “I begged them not to, I begged them to knock me up, but they said they weren’t prepared to be fathers.”

Sofiya was torn. She understood the woman’s feelings completely. Sex should be for the sole purpose of procreation. It was part of what made lesbianism so sinful, and why Sofiya had absolutely no proclivities in that direction whatsoever. But no matter how sympathetic she was, she needed to neutralise her as a threat. She looked around the room. There were locked cabinets full of guns. There were piles of ammunition, sorted neatly into boxes. A long length of rope was on the floor near the girl.

Sofiya reached inside her dress and into her bra.

“What in the name of Piłsudski are you doing?!”’ the cadet said.

Sofiya found what she was searching for. She held up the strange, warbling bank note where the cadet could see it clearly.

“I’d like to make a fair trade. What if I gave you this beautiful, valuable five Europe-Dollar note, in exchange for that rope there?”

She stared at it, completely transfixed. Her eyes were tinged green with an envious shimmer.

“I… I’ve never seen money like that before…”

“It’s incredible, isn’t it? Now what do you say? This money for that rope there. I need you to bring it to me.”

“I don’t know…” said the girl. But it was too late for her to resist. Her hands were already moving to put the rifle on the ground. “Wait, what am I doing?” she said, now panicking again.

She picked up the rope, and brought it over to Sofiya, who smiled and held out the note. The girl snatched it out of her hand.

“And I’ll give you another one if you sit completely still while we tie you up with it.”

Sofiya held out the next note, a twenty. She waved it all around and watched as the petrified Pole’s eyes tracked it like a small, non-threatening yet sexually attractive hungry animal who needed money for some reason.

“Please don’t,” she said. “Why… why can’t I stop you?”

“The money is special. Very special. People will do almost anything for it,” Sofiya whispered into her ear as she stuffed the note into her clothes. “Spend it wisely.”

The woman bit her lip and looked suggestively at the unconscious officers on the ground just outside the door.

“So if I offered it to them, they might…” she trailed off, daydreaming about the possibilities.

“Yes. They’ll give you whatever you want. Whatever you need,” she whispered huskily to the pious Polish pervert. A jolt of excitement flashed across the cadet’s face. “But for now, sit still.”

Sofiya saw an Order of Maternal Glory in that girl’s future – then wondered if they’d abolished those in the Merchant Republic.

Yevgeniy came in right on cue and began his work with the rope. Sofiya joined in, and before long the captive cadet was suspended from a large wooden beam, hands tied fast behind her back and legs partitioned.

* * *

“I guess it’s true what they say,” said the GRU colonel. “The capitalists really will sell you the rope you use to hang them.”

“These… Europe-Dollars, you called them,” said Chairman Tokarev. “Did you manage to bring a sample in for analysis?”

“She had nothing like that on her person when we picked her up,” said one of the Generals.

“A shame,” the Chairman replied. “Alright, continue.”

* * *

“Blyat,” said Sofiya. “This is all old crap. They don’t have anything heat seeking. We’ll have to do this manually.”

Sofiya retrieved the RPG-7W from the wall while Yevgeniy took a pair of reloads. Sofiya looked out the window.

“They haven’t started taxiing yet. We still have time,” she said.

Sofiya hid behind a bush while Yevgeniy, still in disguise, flagged down a passing truck.

“Please, I need a lift!” he shouted to the driver.

The driver wound the window down.

“Get out of the way, we are transporting important cargo!” the driver shouted back. “Clear the road immediately!”

Sofiya dove out of cover and trained the rocket launcher at the cab. The driver panicked and started reversing, but it was too late – Yevgeniy had jumped up and grasped onto him through the open window. He lifted the driver up with just one of his impressively sculpted arms and pulled the man out.

“The People have need of this vehicle,” he said, then tossed him into the outer wall of the armoury.

Sofiya ran to the rear of the truck and looked inside. Her heart stopped.

It was Hanna. She was bound in place, blindfolded, ears covered with headphones connected to a tape player that was fastened to her bindings. There was a lot of that going around lately. It didn’t seem like there was anybody else onboard.

Sofiya reached up and placed the RPG inside as gently as she could, then hopped up into the covered tray. Sofiya could only faintly make out what her former tovarish was saying above the idling engine.

“Russia… destroy… Poland… obey…”

She unhooked the headphones and stopped the tape player. She hoped she’d stay sleeping for at least a little while longer. The engine revved up and the vehicle began to move.

Sofiya’s vengeance was almost at hand. She was going to pick up where Yakov Yurovsky had left off sixty years earlier. She was going to take down that aircraft with both of the royals onboard.

She realised she’d been mistaken. They weren’t alone. Something struck the regicidal revolutionary from behind, knocking her forward onto her hands and knees.

She heard a metal clanking sound as a figure that had been concealing itself rose to stand – or at least to almost stand, as it’s 180.34 centimetre stature was a little too tall to fit fully upright inside the back of a Ural-4320.

Oh no, she thought. She spun around and crawled backwards.

“I see you have come to visit my patient again, Agent Sokolov,” said a familiar Polish voice.

The Polish doctor had detached his wings for transport, but was no less intimidating by their absence. On the other hand, he was also no more intimidating than before. The level of intimidation was in effect the same as always.

“You!”

The hateful Hussar kicked at her. She dodged to the side just in time to avoid getting her shins permanently damaged, tugged on the sling, raised her Kalashnikov and let off three rounds, centre-mass.

The bullets ricocheted off his gleaming gilded armour and one of them almost struck Sofiya. He laughed as he brought down his fists together and slammed the floor where Sofiya had been just been.

The Lanceless Polish Lancer pulled the front down on his helmet and delivered another blow, this time partially catching Sofiya. She gasped as the wind was knocked out of her. She banged against the window to the front compartment.

The man grabbed Sofiya but the neck and lifted her up. Her eyes watered as she began to choke.

“You should have given up by now, like your friend here. Look at her. Content. Obedient. A perfect, loyal tool of my revenge. She will obey, and she will be rewarded for it.”

“Any… guh… reward you offer… would be… stained… with the blood…”

“Oh shut up,” he said, and squeezed a little harder. Her hands struggled against his metal gauntlets uselessly.

Suddenly, the brakes on the truck engaged. The ignoble noble lost his grip, and Sofiya gasped for air. His head bounced off the wall, the metal on metal sound reverberating through the vehicle. Sofiya pushed herself to move to the end of the truck and unlatched the back. Several items fell out, but she managed to catch the RPG-7W before it dropped to the ground.

The remaining Europe-Dollar notes she had on her person spilled out and were caught by a gust of wind, scattering them far out of reach.

“Blyat!”

She hopped out, and her polished Polish pursuer was not far behind. She was midway through shouldering the launcher when she had to dodge again.

“And what do you think that’s going to do,” he said, laughing. “The warhead doesn’t arm until the booster kicks in, you stupid woman.”

He went in for another blow, but Sofiya had much more room to manoeuvre outside.

Yevgeniy had rounded the corner. He raised his gun to fire. Sofiya rolled away as the bullets bounced off Stanisław’s shining armour. He simply kept moving straight towards Sofiya, who was now getting dangerously close to the edge of the hill they were parked on.

“Hey!” shouted Agent Abrasimov. “Maria Salomea Skłodowska-Curie sucks cocks in Orthodox Hell!”

The Hussar stopped in his tracks and turned to him.

“I will destroy you!” he said, seeing red and preparing to charge.

Sofiya needed to focus. This was her chance. She raised the launcher to her shoulder and aimed.

According to the manual, a standard issue RPG-7 warhead needed five meters to arm, but six was safer. She hoped the Polish licensed copy had not made any alterations to the fuse. But if she fired too late, he would be close enough to Yevgeniy for the explosion to injure him – or worse. He was currently 12.192 meters away.

She breathed in.

She pulled the heavy trigger.

The primary charge ignited and the rocket shot out of the barrel. The motor kicked into gear a fraction of a second before it struck the man. But the explosion she was expecting never happened.

The warhead jammed it’s way between two armoured plates on the back of his armour. The rocket motor lifted him up into the air for a brief moment and propelled him off the side of the hill. A loud crash was heard a few seconds later.

“Huh,” said Sofiya, standing and looking out over the edge into the pile of rubbish below. “It seems he didn’t need his wings to fly.”

* * *

“The warhead was defective?” asked the Colonel. He let out another drag. Sofiya waved her hand to clear the air a little.

“Da. The auto-destruct timer should have set it off if nothing else.”

“And then you proceeded to the airfield?”

She nodded.

“This is around when Agent Abrasimov got in contact, correct?” the Chairman said to one of the other men.

They responded in the affirmative.

Sofiya took a long sip of soviet water.

* * *

“Untie me at once!” Hanna snarled. She struggled against her bindings.

Her eyes had that same fire once more – all the rage and fury of a Crimean Khan in an outer suburb of Moscow. Her command of Russian had been mostly restored it seemed. All the better to conduct covert sabotage operations, Sofiya reflected.

The vehicle had not just carried her and her Polish handler. It was also full of gear for what looked like a mission. There were several demolition charges, a sledgehammer, fabric, a roll of tape and a flaregun. There was cold weather climbing gear – a thick jacket, goggles, pitons, a harness and a pickaxe. Sofiya was relieved that they’d stopped her insidious task before it began.

“You know I can’t let you go,” Sofiya replied. “But if they’re still brainwashing you now, that must mean there’s something left inside you they’re trying to eliminate.”

Hanna smiled with a gleeful menace.

“Yes. They’ve been eliminating the last of my pathetic weakness. I begged them to do it. But I’m all better now, I promise. And when all this is over, once we’ve destroyed the USSR and brought Russia to it’s knees, I’ll spend the rest of my days serving my Lord and Master on my knees. He’s promised me.”

She spoke with such certain that Sofiya almost believed her. Almost.

“Fignya! The Anna I knew would never give up. She would never betray the Proletariat. She would never submit to the likes of… of Poland, of all nations! I think there’s still a little trace of the revolution, buried deep inside your heart that nothing could ever stamp out.”

“There is no Anna!” she said, and spat in Sofiya’s face.

Sofiya wiped her eye and stuffed a makeshift gag of loose fabric into Hanna’s mouth.

“Well I just thought you might like to know – while you were in a trance repeating your mantras, we killed your precious Polish master,” she said.

Shock and denial passed across Hanna’s eyes. She began to flail again as Sofiya taped the gag down.

She had no idea if she’d actually killed the man, but she could tell she’d struck a nerve. She opened the window to the front compartment.

“How is she?” Yevgeniy asked.

“Not so good, but I’m still working on it. Did you manage to get in contact with command?” she replied.

Hanna sat there trying to murder Sofiya with her beautiful eyes.

“Da,” he replied. “They know we’re in pursuit of a high value target and that Agent Nevsky has been compromised.”

Sofiya’s heart sank. She’d hoped he wouldn’t mention her condition to headquarters until she’d had a little more time.

“Well, it’s now or never,” she replied.

The aircraft was moving. Sofiya grabbed the rocket launcher and loaded the next round in.

“I’ll try to keep it steady,” he shouted.

Sofiya leaned out the back of the truck, one hand on the grip and the other holding on for socialist life. She brought the aircraft into the sight picture. It had just lifted off the ground, but she couldn’t get a clear shot.

She kept her focus steady. The window of opportunity was closing fast. If it got more than a few hundred meters away, the chance of landing a hit was negligible.

She pulled the trigger.

The rocket flew out. The motor ignited.

It missed by a mere 2.54 centimetres.

“Blyat!”, she said as she loaded in the final shot.

Even if she’d had another reload, there wouldn’t be enough time. Acting on her finely tuned Soviet instincts, she fired the moment she saw the target come into view.

She held her breath.

It detonated – right on one of the engines.

“Direct hit!” she shouted euphorically.

Even without that engine, the aircraft had more than enough momentum to carry it down into the valley below, but it would not be making the journey to London.

* * *

“It was an incredibly brave thing to do, going back like that,” said the Chairman. “Brave, but foolish. Did the thought ever occur to you that you might start a war, doing something like that?”

Sofiya re-positioned herself in the chair.

“Da, tovarish Chairman. But with deference to your enlightened socialist judgement, we are already at war, whether we know it or not.”

“You may be interested to know that our satellites confirmed an aircraft went down shortly after,” he said. “But ten parachutes were spotted deploying out from it.”

He slid the photographs across the table. They were a bit grainy, but you could make them out. Eight were perfectly normal white parachutes, but one had a Union Jack, and another bore a Russian Imperial eagle.

“Blyat,” Sofiya mouthed silently.

* * *

Sofiya swayed back and forth with the motion of the vehicle. The base had been on alert since the initial explosion, but now the disorientation and panic had given way to an organised response. They were being chased.

The rocket launcher was empty. Sofiya fired a few 7.62x39mm rounds at the pursuing light vehicles, which caused them to hang back briefly.

They weren’t far from the perimeter of the base, but the gates were not going to be open for them.

“Hang on tight,” said Yevgeniy.

The vehicle ploughed into a medical tent. Sofiya almost fell over.

Several people inside the tent screamed and ran for cover as tables and chairs were knocked aside by the large six-wheeled vehicle moving through them in low gear. The tent above was ripping and tearing as it went.

Sofiya looked out back and saw a man in one of the beds with one arm in a plaster cast. He was smoking three cigarettes at the same time. Catching a glimpse of Hanna, his face lit up with joy and blew a kiss to the receding rope-tied reeducated revolutionary.

Out the other side of the tent, they blew through the fence and got onto the open road.

The little shortcut had bought them some space. They’d need it.

Hanna had calmed down substantially. Sofiya removed the gag.

“If you start yelling again, this goes straight back on,” she said.

Hanna cast her eyes low. She’d been crying. She’d been crying quite a lot.

“I… I loved him…” she said. “Or I thought I did. I don’t know anymore.”

Hope welled up inside Sofiya.

“I have these urges, inside me,” the brainwashed beauty continued. “These urges to serve. These urges to destroy,” she said, that intense hate creeping back into her voice for a moment. “But then I think about my life before all this. I can’t… I don’t think… I don’t think I want to destroy Russia? Do I? But I feel their blood flowing through me. I feel proud of my babusya’s culture. I want Ukraine to be free. I’m so confused, Sofiya…”

It was so sad to see her like this, beaten and broken, struggling with the core of her very being. She had become so confused and muddled that she didn’t understand that what she was asking for would undermine the entire Soviet Union. It was tantamount to the highest treason. The idea of “fully independent” SSRs was simply absurd – not to mention twisted and amoral. They were too primitive to govern themselves. But defusing her anger and planting seeds of doubt was a necessary first step. The authorities could see to her full Russification and stamp out all traces of dissent from her mind once she was back home in Moscow, safe and sound.

“This Promethean institute – that’s what they do,” said Sofiya. “They get inside your head, they deceive and confuse you. But it’s all behind us now. They can’t fill your head with these counterrevolutionary thoughts anymore.

She held her hand through the bindings.

“No matter what happens,” Sofiya continued, “I want you to know that I will always be here for you. I will never give up on you.”

Their gaze met, and time stood still. Even with that decadent western mascara running down her face, Sofiya marvelled at how pretty she looked. But not in a homosexual way; she admired it in the way one admires a beautiful painting.

Could this be it? Was she really looking at her Anna? She looked so lost, so desperate to grab onto anything or anyone that could give her meaning or guidance through the storm of conflicting beliefs and emotions.

The breathtaking, bound and brainwashed belle leaned forwards and kissed Sofiya, whose eyes lit up with surprise. A moment later, she began to reciprocate – in the way one might return the kiss of a beautiful painting. Passionately, and for a long time.

“I wish I could untie you. I really do,” said Sofiya. “But I can’t. Not until we get to Kaliningrad.”

Anna nodded.

“I understand. But please – Sofiya – please hold me. Hold me and tell me everything’s going to be alright,” she said.

Sofiya embraced her. Both of them were crying now.

“Everything’s going to be alright. We’re almost home.”

* * *

“It was ingenious of you to combat her reprogramming by appealing to those very deviant urges that they implanted into her. An unorthodox strategy – but most effective.”

“Thank you, Tovarish Chairman,” Sofiya replied.

The stenographer coughed. The Colonel leaned forward and shifted his posture to minimise the visibility on the erection he had developed.

“At this point in the timeline,” he began, “we started picking up slow moving aircraft on AWACS. Helicopters?”

“Da. They began pursuing us, and we had no choice but to make a dash for the forest.”

The Chairman lit up.

“Just like the partisans of old,” he said.

* * *

After a small bout of off-roading, they found themselves moving into the outer layers of forest. There were still some dirt roads here, but they would no longer be visible from the sky unless somebody flew quite close. Sofiya knew they were going to have to abandon the vehicle soon if they wanted to proceed into the truly dense parts of the forest. It might take them a few hours of hiking to reach the border, but it was doable. To guard against another change of heart, she might have to keep Anna on a leash – a concept which was purely pragmatic and in no way appealing to her.

Sofiya had made her way to the passenger seat.

“Maybe try to scan the radio,” Yegveniy said. “If they have our position, I’d like to know.”

Sofiya nodded and started flipping through the military frequencies that were programmed into it. If they were smart they would have channel hopped once their vehicle was stolen – but if it was anything like the Polish People’s Army Sofiya was familiar with, then they had pretty good odds of breaking into their comms.

The first few channels were all silent. Then, on the fourth, she heard something.

“Eight. Seven. Nine. Three. The West Sun Rises. Sixteen. Eight. Seven. Nine. Three. The West Sun Rises.”

“A numbers station? That doesn’t make any sense for a military frequency,” he said, flicking it off.

But it made perfect sense to Sofiya.

The West Sun Rises.

Her orders were clear. She leaned to one side and raised the assault rifle.

“Pull over,” she said, as calm and emotionless as a Finn on their wedding day.

“Agent Sokolov, what in Siberia are you doing?”

“Pull over immediately.”

He brought the vehicle to a halt, then raised his hands.

“Sofiya, they’ve gotten to you too. I don’t know how, but you need to come to your senses,” said the hunky hostage. “Snap out of it!”

But she had come to her senses. She’d never seen things so clearly before. The revolution demanded her unquestioning obedience. She forced Yevgeniy out of the vehicle, disarmed him, then grabbed the flare gun from the rear.

“No!” he shouted as she fired a bright red flare up into the sky. “Sofiya… what have you done?”

“This is necessary, Comrade,” she replied. “Some day, you’ll understand.”

The helicopters grew louder and louder. Why had she slipped into English for that last sentence? It was probably nothing to worry about.

Soon, the Polish authorities would return them to the base, where they could all be properly educated in how to serve the interests of the revolution. They would be taught the proper way to interpret the doctrines of Marx and Lenin. First, the USSR would need to be destroyed. Russia would need to be brought to it’s knees, serving only the interests of the British Royal Family.

Wait. Was that right? Sofiya felt like it was. But something nagged at her.

“Sofiya, what’s going on out there?” Anna shouted.

“I…” she replied. What was going on out there? She was holding a flaregun in one hand while pointing an assault rifle at the man who’d come to rescue her.

“Sofiya, put the weapon down. Please. It’s not too late,” he said.

Her hands shook. She needed to obey. Didn’t she? The voices in her head told her that she did. But whose voices were they?

She lowered her rifle and engaged the safety.

* * *

“I am impressed,” said the Colonel. “Many have fallen victim to this new capitalist brainwashing – but few have overcome it.”

“It was very difficult, but I have built up something of an immunity after my stay in the facility.”

“We will need you to see a psychiatrist, to be fully confident that there is no trace of disloyalty remaining in you,” said the Chairman.

She nodded.

“Of course, tovarish Chairman.”

“But if this is all true, we may need to enlist your help in training our operatives to resist these new methods of subversion that the West has developed.”

“It would be my honour,” she said.

“Now,” he said. “What happened next?”

Sofiya took another long sip of water. Her hand shook as she placed it back down, and her voice began to tremble.

“That’s when he arrived.”

* * *

The helicopter’s small cargo container fell to the ground only a few meters away from the Ural-4320. Her instincts told her to make a run for it. She could still disappear into the forest. But to do so would be to leave Anna behind. She wasn’t going to give up on her – not after all this.

The door on the container exploded outwards. A loud thumping sound sent a chill up her spine. She aimed her rifle, steeling herself for whatever was to come.

The figure that strode out was not at all what she expected. He was 1.76 meters tall, with wild, untamed hair, a moustache and a goatee. One half of his body was purely mechanical. His right arm had been replaced with a belt fed Gatling-type gun. His left eye was that of a machine, glowing a bright, menacing red. It flashed and scanned around with inhuman speed.

“Stalinists detected,” said the murderous mechanical man’s voice. The barrels spun up and began firing. Sofiya retreated into cover behind a tree, and the ground kicked up dirt all around her.

There was something familiar about the figure. She’d seen that face before – sans mechanical replacement parts, of course. But where?

“It’s Trotsky! It’s Leon fucking Trotsky!” shouted Yevgeniy.

Oh my Stalin.

Somehow, Trotsky had returned. Stalin’s long nightmare was manifest before Sofiya’s very eyes. The ultimate betrayer of the Soviet Union. The fiendish, furtive factionalist, forever fighting.

“I am not interested in fighting you,” said Yevgeniy.

“But fighting is interested in you”, Mecha-Trotsky’s cold, mechanical voice replied. He sprayed more gunfire where Yevegeniy was taking cover behind the cab of the truck.

“You were killed! How can you still be alive?” Sofiya shouted.

“In cold steel, I was born again. And so long as I live there is hope… for permanent revolution!”

Sofiya tried to snake her way back to the Ural, darting from cover to cover. The barrels of the robotic reanimated revolutionary’s rotary machine-gun were glowing hot in the cold air. Yevgeniy unloaded the remainder of his magazine into Trotsky. The flesh that remained on his torso bled, but the machine kept coming.

“That fool Stalin thought to build Socialism in one country. He could only conceive of a single revolution, one that would serve his own selfish whims. Now you will behold the power of two-thousand revolutions per minute!”

The Gatling gun spun up to full speed and unleashed a hail of bullets all across the field. Sofiya was almost hit. Splinters flew past her face. The wheels on the vehicle were all punctured. The side of the chassis had been shot up.

“The Fourth international will be victorious!” he continued.

Yevgeniy jumped out from behind truck, sledgehammer in hand, and struck hard. He didn’t even flinch. The evil electro-mechanical exile grabbed Yevgeniy with his remaining hand and lifted him into the air.

“Fool. Sledgehammers break glass – but they forge steel.”

Sofiya grasped around over the rear tray for something – anything. Her hand caught onto the pickaxe. She ran over to the distracted cyborg, and leapt into the air.

The rotary weapon began to spin.

She put all of her weight into the blow. It landed right on the back of his head – the small part that was still human. The pickaxe penetrated through his skull and lodged itself in the whirring servos and computers beneath.

He fell to his knees, systems seizing up and sparking. He dropped Yevgeniy to the ground.

“There will be revolution in no countries for you, tovarish,” she said.

She kicked the short-circuiting socialist away, and began checking on Agent Abrasimov.

It was too late. He’d taken several bullets before he even swung the hammer. He must have been in immense pain.

“Sofiya… you were incredible…” he said, coughing. He smiled up at her Sovietly. “I’m sorry I won’t… I won’t be able to take you the rest of the way.”

She wanted to say something like “it doesn’t look so bad,” or “don’t give up”, but they both knew better. He had seconds. She did the only thing she could – she held him and looked into his eyes as he faded away.

“You will be avenged, Tovarish,” she said tearfully.

She ran back to the truck to see if there were any blankets she could use to cover him. That was when the thought struck her. She’d been so focused on shutting down that Machiavellian monster, she hadn’t checked on Anna.

She raced around back and pulled herself up.

There were holes all along the fabric. There was blood on the ground.

“No!”

* * *

“I’m sorry. I think I just need a moment to gather myself,” said Sofiya, sniffing loudly.

The room had fallen silent.

“That’s quite alright, Agent Sokolov,” the Chairman began. “I think we all understand what happened next.”

He raised his hand in a salute, and a single masculine tear rolled down his cheek. It was the blood red tear of the worker.

“Their heroism under extraordinary circumstances has set an example for the entire Soviet Union.”

She met the salute.

“Except for the parts where Agent Nevsky wanted to destroy Russia and everything it stood for. Those parts were not heroic. Yelena, please make a note for the record that the posthumous commendation only applies to the parts of Agent Nevsky that were not treasonous, Ukraino-nationalist and generally reactionary.”

“Da, tovarish Chairman” the stenographer replied.

“In fact, make a note to keep tabs on her relatives and known associates for any signs of counterrevolutionary sympathies.”

The typewriter clacked loudly once more.

“Agent Abrasimov did not die in vain,” the chairman continued. “He ensured that your vital intelligence about these devilish foreign plots was brought safely home.”

Sofiya didn’t feel heroic. She felt numb. Only her devotion to the socialist ideal kept her breathing. That and her autonomic nervous system.

“Thank you for your time today. You have demonstrated courage, clear thinking and good judgement under extreme adversity. You’ve proven yourself a master of operational craft. I will be recommending you for an immediate promotion.”

“Thank you, tovarish Chairman,” she said.

* * *

Sofiya sat down at her desk and collapsed into it. She didn’t want a promotion. She wanted to sleep for a year. She wanted to leave this line of work and never return.

Most of all, she wanted her Anna back.

Having quietened down and taken a few deep breaths, Sofiya became alert to her surroundings and noticed a very faint whimpering sound coming from the corner of her office, just behind the boxes of paperwork she’d generated while she was gone.

Sofiya stood and crept over quietly. It was a woman’s voice. It didn’t sound like she was in pain. Quite the opposite, in fact. Sofiya’s anxiety continued to climb. There was something familiar about all this.

The interloper finally came into view.

“Tatiana!” Sofiya exclaimed. “No!”

The red-haired resident psychiatrist was seated on a small stool, her body pressed up against the wall, with a vibrating untethered penile surrogate inside her vagina. One hand was tweaking a nipple, while the other played with her clitoris. Her eyes were distant. Her lips mouthed silent words in time with whatever was playing on the earphones wrapped around her head, wires leading to a tape recorder nearby.

They were just like the ones she’d pulled off Anna only two days ago.

Sofiya stumbled backwards, knocking one of the cardboard boxes over. A ream of unfilled forms spilled out over the ground.

No! No no no no no! That’s impossible! How can the capitalists be here?

There was another, better question forming in her mind.

How could I not have noticed her before?

She ran through the day’s events in her head. She’d slept in a KGB hospital bed overnight. They’d served her an especially generous ration of semolina porridge for breakfast. She got into her office just before seven-thirty. There was a package waiting for her, delivered via the KGB’s secure internal mail. She’d opened it and…

Her expression went blank.

“I must follow the orders of Marx and Lenin,” Sofiya said to the empty air.

She remembered now. She remembered her most secret and important mission. The mission that would finally safeguard the world for communism.

She unlocked her safe and rummaged around inside for the next magnetic tape. She swapped the recording for the one that was already in the machine. She checked the wires were firmly in place and inspected the woman. She’d need water soon.

As a psychiatrist in residence, Tatiana had access to powerful drugs. She was trusted, and her ability to get people alone and away from prying eyes would be invaluable.

She restored the upturned box from the floor. Until she could secure a better location, it was important that nobody walked past and noticed the pretty, pulsating psychiatrist sitting there.

She walked over to the phone and dialled.

“Hello,” said a voice. “Moscow is very beautiful this time of year.”

She knew the voice. It was the voice of the great theorist himself. The father of all communism.

“Yes,” she replied. “But Leningrad is more beautiful still.”

“Is this line secure?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Did they believe your story about the final encounter in the woods?”

“Even I believed it.”

Images and feelings flashed through her mind.

The sense of overwhelming clarity when she turned on the radio in the forest.

The look of confusion on Yevgeniy’s face as she rendered him unconscious with a single perfectly aimed strike.

The look of complete dejection and surrender as she placed the headphones back over a tearful bound Anna and restarted her conditioning cycle.

It was not Sofiya’s place in history to question. It was her place to facilitate it. Hers was not the domain of theory, but of praxis. She was the sword and the shield of the revolution.

“We will have another mission for you soon. I thought I might reunite you with a fellow believer, one you’ll be very happy to see. You’ve worked very well with her in the past. But continue as planned for now, Comrade,” said Karl Marx. “You must spread my will as quietly as possible.”

Sofiya smiled.

“Yes, Comrade. It has already begun.”