The surgeon's stitches itched as Viktor dreamed of Gorman's corpse grabbing him.
"You led us there," the dead man hissed.
Viktor woke up choking. He stood up and grabbed a slender blunt of marijuana from the bedside table. It sizzled as Drey lighted it and exhaled.
His fingers—still calloused from GROM rifle drills—brushed the unfamiliar landscape of his face: Viktor Petrov's jawline, beardless and sharp, the surgeon's stitches long dissolved.
Not as handsome as Drey. But not bad.
The mirror reflected a ghost with a gym-built body and a smoker's lazy grin.
FLASHBACK:
Kabul, Afghanistan – 2 AM on a dust-choked rooftop. Heat still radiated from the day's sun-baked concrete.
Drey took a slow drag off the joint—Afghan-grown, harsh as a sandstorm—and passed it to Rook, who grinned like a man who'd just won the lottery.
ROOK exhaling a plume "Girl at the bar last night—Polish aid worker, freckles, killer ass—slid this into my pocket. Said it'd 'help me relax.'"
KASIA their medic, sharpening her knife "Translation: She wanted you to shut the fuck up after your third whiskey."
Laughter rippled through the team. Even Captain Gorman, usually a stone-faced statue, smirked as he scanned the city through his binoculars.
DREY snatching the joint back "You're lucky she didn't slip you anthrax. Last time you 'relaxed,' you tried to arm-wrestle a Delta sniper."
ROOK clutching his heart "And I almost won—"
BAM!
A distant mortar explosion rattled the rooftop. The team didn't even flinch.
KASIA deadpan "Ah. The Taliban's lullaby."
Rook took another hit, then offered it to Gorman.
The captain raised an eyebrow.
"I'd rather chew glass."
ROOK shrugged "Your loss. This shit's smoother than your ex-wife's alimony payments."
More laughter. Drey leaned back, watching the stars blur through the smoke, the weight of his rifle familiar against his thigh.
KASIA quietly, to Drey "You ever think about after? When we're not… this?"
Drey flicked ash over the rooftop edge. "Nope."
ROOK grinning "Good. 'Cause this is life, brother. Guns, glory, and gratitude from a grateful nation—"
KASIA: throwing an empty water bottle at him "—who'll disavow us if this op goes tits-up."
DREY smirking "Then let's not fuck it up."
The joint burned down to the filter.
Somewhere in the city, another mortar fired.
None of them knew this would be their last deployment together.
THREE MONTHS OF "Viktor"
Eating like a bear—six meals a day, muscles swelling under forced bulk.
At a roadside kiosk in Łódź, Viktor hunched over a folding table, grease-stained hands tearing into his third serving of bigos—a steaming heap of sauerkraut, sausage, and pork fat that stank like a bog.
The vendor, a squat man with a cigarette dangling from his lip, stared as Viktor shoveled it down, then ordered two more plates, a loaf of rye bread, and a jar of pickles.
"You feeding a squad?" the man grunted. Viktor wiped his mouth with his sleeve, farting loud enough to rattle the plastic chair. "Just me," he said, grinning as the stench cleared the line behind him.
In a basement gym—air thick with rust and desperation—Viktor gripped a barbell loaded past sane limits, veins bulging like cables under his skin. His shoulders burned, his knees buckled, but he snarled through another rep, then another, sweat pooling on cracked concrete.
A junkie in the corner muttered, "You're gonna snap, man." Viktor dropped the weight with a clang that echoed like a gunshot, panting, "Not yet," as his body begged for mercy.
Letting the weed soften the edges—so he didn't put a bullet in every Bratva foot soldier he passed.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Drey—no, Viktor—flicked the safety off his Makarov before cracking the door. His landlady, Zoya Petrovna, stood there, a wrinkled specter in a moth-eaten sweater, clutching a grease-stained package. Her milky left eye (lost to a KGB interrogation in '89) fixed on him like a shotgun sight.
"For you, tovarisch," she rasped, thrusting the package at him. "Smells like a whorehouse in there… khujóva," she muttered.
Viktor peeled back the tape. Inside Two fake passports—one German, one Russian.
Vials of Russian steroids.
A note: "We're square. I owe you no more favors. —K"
He smirked. Krylov. The ex-FSB forger who'd "retired" after Drey took a bullet extracting him from a Chechen arms deal gone wrong. The bullet had been meant for Krylov's skull—Drey's shoulder still ached in the cold—but the bastard had paid him back in paper and lies ever since.
Zoya sniffed. "Are you going to thank me, or just stand there like a defrosted Stalin?"
Viktor tossed her a wrinkled 500-ruble note. "Buy yourself a new eye."
She pocketed the cash. "Buy yourself a soul."
The door slammed.
TITAN GYM
Titan Gym stank of sweat, ammonia, and Soviet-era machismo, a concrete bunker where men forged themselves into weapons. Rusted barbells clanged, mirrors cracked from years of fists and egos.
Viktor spotted them instantly: Bratva enforcers, necks thicker than their skulls, grunting over bench presses like bulls in rut.
He played dumb, overloading his barbell with plates, then "accidentally" dropping it—crash—the floor shuddering, weights rattling like a bomb's echo.
A Bratva thug, face like a slab of beef, sneered. "You lift like my babushka."
Viktor grinned, eyes glinting. "She must be jacked as hell."
Laughter rumbled, a truce sealed in sweat and testosterone.
The thugs went back to their reps, and Viktor's scars—jagged shrapnel tears, blade cuts, a map of violence—burned under the flickering fluorescents.
Then she walked in. A nurse, sharp-tongued, with a body honed to break weak men and eyes that promised trouble. Her gym gear clung tight, curves a weapon she wielded like a blade. She raked her gaze over Viktor's scars, lingering, unafraid.
"Military?" she asked, voice low, a challenge.
"Prison," he lied, watching her pupils flare, danger of her drug of choice.
She smirked, tossing her braid, and turned to her workout—deadlifts, form flawless, each rep a taunt.
Viktor's pulse kicked, Lev's shadow fading in the haze of her defiance.
They traded glances, electric, a silent deal struck in the gym's gritty air.
That night, his apartment was a war zone of peeling plaster and cheap vodka.
She shoved him against the door, lips crashing into his, tasting of salt and reckless hunger. Her nails raked his back, voice raw, dragging him to the mattress.
Viktor pinned her down, hands rough, her wrists trapped above her head. She arched, gasping, thighs clamping his hips, urging him deeper into her heat.
She pulled him in like a storm, hungry and fearless, her moans bouncing off the walls, sharp as gunfire. She flipped him, straddling, riding him with a savage grin, hair a dark cascade, her skin slick against his scars. The room spun, heat and pain blurring, their bodies a collision of violence and need.
She shoved him off, dragging him into the shower, scalding water searing their skin, her lips chasing it, tongue tracing his chest, then lower, teasing until he growled and pinned her to the tiles.
Her legs hooked his waist, water pounding, their gasps drowned in steam and primal rhythm. She clawed his back, a scream tearing from her throat, pleasure and pain fused.
The landlady's fist hammered the floor below, her voice a shrill bark. "Pigs in heat! I'll gut you!" Viktor ignored her, lost in the nurse's grip, her body shuddering against his, a fleeting hour where Lev's shadow dissolved in blood and steam.
His burner phone buzzed, a cold jolt. She was gone by dawn—no names, no promises, just a raw bruise on his neck, a reopened scar, and a memory he'd shove into the dark.
The phone buzzed again, Lev's world clawing him back.
Three weeks of tailing Lev's men taught Viktor two things: they were greedy, and they were predictable. The barista slipped envelopes to thugs at 9 a.m.
Viktor memorized faces—pockmarked, sneering—counting the cash-stuffed bags they hauled like vultures with carrion.
By noon, he lurked outside the Solntsevskaya HQ, counting guards—leaning against a dumpster, reeking of piss and rot, pretending to nurse a bottle of Żubrówka while clocking the AK-47s slung over shoulders, the steel-toed boots kicking stray dogs.
One thug spat in his direction; Viktor spat back, earning a glare but no bullet—yet.
Friday nights: The shooting range. Lev's sacred ritual. Viktor learned it from a loose-lipped enforcer at the gym, bragging over vodka shots about "the boss and his pup" blasting targets every week.
Viktor staked it out, lurking in the parking lot, noting Lev's blacked-out Mercedes and Dmitri's reckless Uzi sprays through a busted fence.
Tonight, Viktor blended into the range's shadows, sipping shitty coffee as Lev and his eldest son, Dmitri, shredded paper targets.
Lev's shot groupings: Tight. Military-trained.
Dmitri's: Wild. Entitled.
Viktor waited. Then—casually—fired three rounds.
Bullseye. Bullseye. Bullseye.
Silence.
A woman's stare caught him first—sharp, fleeting, her silhouette vanishing into the crowd before he could lock eyes. Dark hair, a glint of steel at her hip.
Then Lev's voice, behind him: "Who taught you to shoot?"
Viktor turned, exhaling smoke. "The Afghan War."—A lie. GROM trained him in Kabul.
Lev's smile didn't reach his eyes. "Come work for me."
Viktor's first task was to deliver a "package"—a screaming man in a trunk to a rival's doorstep.
Viktor hauled the sedan down a dirt track, the man's muffled pleas thumping against the lid like a trapped animal.
He stopped by a frozen lake, ice glinting under moonlight, and popped the trunk. The guy—wild-eyed, duct-taped—starred up, piss staining his pants.
Viktor cut the ties, tossed him a knife. "Swim or die." The man scrambled out, slipped on the ice, then dove in, splashing toward freedom.
Viktor sank the car with a brick on the gas, watching bubbles burst as it drowned. Reported back: "Target eliminated."
Then another test "Kill this cop."—A photo of a grizzled face slid across Lev's desk—some corrupt Warsaw beat-walker, just a pawn in Lev's game.
Viktor's blood iced over. "When?"
"Tonight."
Viktor stalked the cop's apartment, gun heavy in his hand. This was the test. Fail, and his cover blew. Succeed, and he'd cross a line even Drey couldn't uncross.
Viktor's finger hovered over the trigger.
Through the window, Yevgeni flipped a photo frame facedown—a woman with auburn hair, two gap-toothed kids. The cop's hands shook as he straightened his badge, like he knew death was coming.
For a heartbeat, Viktor saw his father's funeral: the closed casket… too much facial damage for viewing, his mother's hollow sobs, the Bratva lieutenant smirking in the back row.
Nastya's gun pressed into his spine. "Lower it."
Viktor exhaled. "He's got kids."
Nastya laughed. "Since when do you care?"
Since I became the thing I hate, he didn't say anything.