Year: 2007
Location: SHIELD Blacksite 12-Bravo, Alaska
The time had come.
After nearly a year of recruiting, training, and rehearsals, Kraken's elite unit — Shadow Cell — was ready for its first real mission.
The target?
A single vial of something priceless: Super Soldier Serum.
The last usable sample.
Hidden in a remote SHIELD facility, disguised as a weather station deep in Alaska's frozen wilderness.
How It Started
Weeks before the op, Specter, Kraken's digital ghost, picked up a strange pattern. Every 18 days, a drone delivered cryogenic supplies to a so-called "climate station" in the middle of nowhere.
But why would a weather station need cryo-stabilizers?
Digging deeper, Specter found a shipping manifest:
Asset: SS-DELTA-23 – Level 7 Biohazard Clearance – Secure Transit Only
That was it.
The real deal.
The serum.
SHIELD Site 12-Bravo – The Target
Cover: Arctic Weather Research Station
True Purpose: Cryo-storage of dangerous bio-weapons
Security:
Built underground, beneath permafrost
Keycard and biometric access
2 rotating SHIELD contractor squads
Surveillance across all entry points
Only two ways in: a reinforced access shaft, and a narrow vent system
A fortress in the snow.
But even fortresses have blind spots.
The Team
Shadow Cell was built for this:
Echo – Stealth expert, ex-SAS. Climbs, infiltrates, disappears.
Ghostblade – Assassin. Silent and efficient. Kills like a whisper.
Rook – Retrieval and biotech. Former Navy diver, expert in containment.
Specter – The hacker, guiding everything remotely from Kraken HQ.
Mission Night
Date: December 19, 2007
Time: 01:13 AM (local)
Weather: Snowstorm, -14°C, 45 km/h winds — perfect cover
Echo and Ghostblade were dropped 4km from the site via stealth drone. No electronics. No traces.
By 2:27 AM, they reached the vent shaft. Visibility was near zero — ideal.
Specter looped the cameras for 9 minutes. That was their window.
They crawled 40 meters down an icy tunnel. Echo bypassed the heat sensors.
Just cold and silence.
They reached Level 2, just outside the main cryo vault.
Inside the Vault
Two guards. Same route. Every 90 seconds.
Ghostblade moved in.
One breath — and both guards were out, dragged into a storage room.
Echo unlocked the vault using a SHIELD passcode Specter had spoofed weeks ago.
Inside a cryo-safe pod:
1x Blue Vial – SS-DELTA-23
Rook moved fast. The vial was fragile. Any heat or shock — it would be lost.
She secured it inside a nitrogen-stabilized case.
Mission complete.
The Escape
03:04 AM — back into the vents. The storm had worsened. Perfect.
2km out, a Kraken drone hovered low, signal dark. It picked them up — thermal shields hiding their signatures.
By 3:21, they were airborne.
By 4:00, they were gone.
Ghosts in the snow.
SHIELD Notices — Too Late
December 20th — minor system errors. A looped camera feed. Nothing major.
December 26th — inventory check. That's when it hit:
❗ ALERT: SS-DELTA-23 MISSING
Vault untouched
Logs wiped
No alarms
No sign of entry
SHIELD had no leads. No suspects. No idea what hit them.
Back at Kraken
The serum arrived at Lab Zero on December 20th. Sealed. Untouched.
Rook and two top scientists began testing.
Not to copy it — to perfect it:
Less aggression
More stability
Slower decay
They called it: Project: Lotus Alpha
One mission. Zero deaths. A priceless weapon in Kraken's hands.
And SHIELD? Still chasing shadows.
More Than a Heist
For Kraken's founder, Alexander, this wasn't just a theft — it was a test.
Could his people go toe-to-toe with a global power and vanish without a trace?
Yes.
No trails. No bodies. No noise.
Watching the exfil footage, he told Cain quietly:
"Now I know they're ready. If they can pull this off, I can trust them with anything."
But the serum wasn't a trophy.
It was step one.
Alexander never wanted an army of super-soldiers.
He wanted something else.
Not brute force.
But a predator — sharp, fast, intelligent, invisible.
A new kind of power.