11 years earlier — Moscow.December 12th. Midnight.
The snow didn't fall. It slashed.
Damien Voss knelt in a slush-soaked alley behind a marble-walled opera house in central Moscow, blood drying beneath his fingernails, breath catching in his throat.
He'd never held a gun before that night.Not like this.Not with the intention to use it.
The man at his feet — Deputy Minister Anton Grevich — was supposed to be a hero.Champion of reform.Voice of the people.
But Damien had just seen him beat a trafficked boy to death in a soundproof room beneath a state facility, with two other ministers watching and laughing.
The footage was still on the drive in Damien's coat.
His hands shook.
Grevich's body twitched once more before going still — two bullets in the chest, one in the eye. Damien hadn't meant to shoot the third time. It just… happened.
"You have to finish it now, Damien," the voice whispered through the comm.
"He was unarmed," Damien said. "He was…"
"A monster."
Silence.
The voice on the comm belonged to Ilya Vetrova, the rebel journalist who had smuggled Damien into the archive compound weeks earlier. The one who taught him where to look.
Ilya's voice hardened.
"If you don't burn the documents in his pocket and plant the decoy drive, they'll trace it to your sister. To Mara."
That name hit harder than any bullet.
Mara.Sixteen then.Unaware her brother had embedded himself in the heart of the machine that ruined their family.
"Understood," Damien whispered.
He reached for the flame gel and the drive. Planted the bait.Lit the fire.Watched years of truth curl into ash with the corrupted fiction he left behind.
Hours later, back at the safehouse, Damien stared at the sink.The water ran red.
His hands wouldn't stop shaking.
"You think this was justice?" Ilya asked quietly, sitting nearby, loading the footage for broadcast.
"I think I just killed a man," Damien said, eyes empty.
"You killed a weapon," Ilya replied. "You destroyed a piece of the system that sells children, poisons cities, manipulates memory. You broke the machine's spine."
"Then why do I feel like it broke me?"
That night, Damien didn't sleep.
He watched the broadcast hit global pirate networks:"Murdered by his own guard," the headlines claimed. "Minister Grevich assassinated during internal corruption probe."
The footage was doctored. The narrative fake.
But the truth?That was in the silence of the man Damien became that night.
No longer just a data courier.No longer a son or brother.
He was a weapon now.
A shadow.
A necessary criminal in a world where innocence no longer worked.