The truth always comes out.
The Scythes had warned the West about the Borderland science labs, but those warnings were ignored. Westerners had long dismissed Scythian concerns and interests. Only the United States of Gomora enjoyed the exclusive privilege of being heard by the world community. All the Gomorians needed to do was wave a test tube of piss and claim it contained a biological weapon from Mesopotamian labs — and bam, Gomora invaded and bombed the country.
Fortunately, times were changing. Gomora's totalitarian hegemony was crumbling. The Scythes had gathered enough evidence to prove the Gomorian conspiracy.
A Scythian Secret Service investigation revealed that for the past thirty years, Gomora had been testing dangerous drugs and pathogens on the populations of the former Union states. Every country bordering Scythia hosted at least one such lab — except Scythia itself.
More than thirty labs operated in Borderland alone. Each specialised in particular pathogens and bacterial diseases: AIDS, influenza, Ebola, tuberculosis, anthrax, and many more.
Naturally, the facilities needed lab rats. To win people's trust, the Gomorians aggressively marketed the superiority and healing power of their drugs, driving local pharmacists out of business. The campaign succeeded: Borderlanders grew to distrust their own doctors and view domestic medicines as inferior. They turned instead to Western doctors and technologies.
Step by step, over years, the Gomorians made citizens of the former Union dependent on — and addicted to — foreign drugs and treatments.
Those drugs offered no real healing. They were mainly heavy painkillers, sedatives, and antipsychotics, designed to dull awareness of what was truly happening.
While Borderland patients suffered unexplained mental breakdowns and physical decline, the Gomorians took control of hospitals and gained access to public medical records. They built a vast DNA database, which allowed their scientists to advance to the next stage of testing.
The researchers cared nothing for the people's well-being or the harm they caused. To them, Borderlanders were nothing more than test subjects of an inferior race.
The Yugoslavians had suffered similar treatment during the Turbid Times. The West viewed them as involuntary organ donors and sent Arnavut gangs to abduct and kill young people, harvesting kidneys for ageing Westerners.
Fortunately, the Scythes intervened and put a stop to that cannibalistic scheme.
Yet Gomora thrived only on the blood and misery of other nations. The Land of the Free needed a new project in Borderland — and this time they approached it differently.
While the Gomorians bombed Musulman countries, toppled governments, destroyed cultural heritage, and looted national treasures, the self-proclaimed bringers of democracy successfully distracted the world from their larger, more ambitious goal: the annihilation of the Scythes.
Over the following decade, Gomorian scientists infected populations in third-world countries with pathogens such as SARS and Ebola. Western authorities blamed the outbreaks on poverty, poor hygiene, war, and political instability, never mentioning the presence of BioMeta or other Gomorian charities in those regions.
The diseases were lethal if untreated, but they failed to deliver the desired scale of depopulation. They weren't contagious enough.
Then the Gomorians found the perfect equaliser: a new pulmonary disease introduced to the world at the beginning of 2020.
At first, people didn't take the lung disorder seriously. They thought authorities were exaggerating when they imposed draconian restrictions on social interaction to curb the steadily rising infections.
The Western world became convinced that only Far Eastern nations were affected and blamed Zhongguo for the pandemic, fuelling division and racism. Yet the very first cases had been reported in Latium — the usual starting point for such plagues.
The next target was the elderly. They were forbidden from leaving their homes or receiving visitors. Even total isolation failed to save the West.
Something went wrong.
The experiment spiralled out of control.
People of every sex, age, and nationality fell ill.
The situation in the West turned disastrous. Hospitals were overwhelmed and understaffed, with hundreds of deaths each day.
Meanwhile, the Scythe Empire developed a vaccine and launched a successful vaccination campaign that brought the infections under control.
The West also produced vaccines, though not all were effective. Some boosters proved more dangerous than the virus itself. Still, the Westerners eventually suppressed the plague they had created.
At the same time, catastrophe struck the United States of Gomora. Thanks to widespread homelessness and drug addiction, the pulmonary virus tore through the country like wildfire. Hospitals couldn't cope.
Gomorian news agencies — clearly aware of the truth — published an article claiming the West had failed to defeat the virus and wondering why far fewer Scythes had died during the pandemic. The report was deleted the next day, but Scythian intelligence preserved it and shared it with the world, pointing out that the Gomorians had fallen into the very pit they had dug for the Scythes.
The United States of Gomora hadn't yet recovered from the consequences of the pulmonary virus when the Special Military Operation began. The situation only worsened the hardships ordinary Gomorians already faced after the sanctions their government had imposed on the Scythe Empire — sanctions that punished the Gomorians themselves more severely than anyone else.
Gas and food prices soared until many could no longer afford to own a car. The Gomorian government tried to blame it all on Vladimir the Lucent personally — his gas prices — but the people weren't fools. They knew better.
A wise man once said that no one and nothing was to blame for global inflation except the United States of Gomora. They were the cause, for they alone printed money without restraint. Financing endless foreign wars and biological weapons programmes only accelerated the printing presses.
Gomora's days were numbered. Its worldwide dictatorship would soon collapse; the world simply had to be patient. In the meantime, Emin would do everything required of him to hasten the fall.
The spy sat in the passenger seat of a special forces vehicle as it approached one of the science labs in the Coal Mining Region.
More than thirty such facilities existed across Borderland, roughly evenly divided between the Coal Mining Region and territories still under Borderland control.
The Coal Miners had no idea the labs operated on their soil. Gomorian agents had concealed their criminal activity behind the façades of private clinics.
Emin had uncovered a wealth of information in Wolferl's documents: lab locations, research developments, their true purpose, and the private contacts of the technicians. He reported everything to his superiors and requested permission to raid the centres and arrest the staff. Permission was granted. Special forces units were assigned to him, and the raids were launched the day after he secured the briefcase.
Shortly after Emin left the Steel Factory that day, the Aces battalion surrendered. The factory was finally liberated. Nearly three thousand Nazis were taken into custody and placed under special surveillance pending trial. News of the surrender spread quickly across Borderland and the West. Western reports hailed it as a heroic act to save human lives, conveniently omitting that all the hostages had been released long before the Aces' brave withdrawal.
The Scythes discovered the bodies of the foreign officials and identified them, but Emin insisted on withholding the information until after the lab raids. He feared the scientists would flee and destroy the evidence.
His intuition proved correct.
They arrived just in time to catch the bastards red-handed.
The lab technicians were frantically loading plastic and cardboard boxes into their cars when three military vehicles burst through the gates. Armed men in balaclavas leapt out and ordered everyone to the ground, hands on their heads.
As the soldiers cuffed and led away the failed Frankensteins, Emin inspected the boxes the foreigners had tried so desperately to hide in their boots. Most contained thick files detailing tests on highly transmissible pathogens, along with test tubes of cloudy liquids and blood samples.
Emin ordered his men to confiscate every box and all other items from the cars and the building, then transport them back to base. Scythian specialists would handle the rest.
A thorough search of every corner, room, and inch of the facility followed. While the special forces carried out their work, Emin decided to examine the building himself.
He moved through long hallways accessible only via metal doors with electronic locks. The confiscated key cards gave him entry to the most heavily secured laboratories. It was clear the Gomorians had hidden something vital behind those doors — something meant to remain unseen by the uninitiated.
From the outside, the building looked like an ordinary private clinic. Inside, every sign and nameplate was in Anglo-Saxon. Not a single word in Pan-Slavic or Borderlandish. Emin found that telling.
The entire ground floor felt like a basement: whole sections were deserted, with windows and exits bricked up. It took him some time to navigate the gloomy maze and find the stairs.
On the second floor he discovered storage rooms packed with medicine bottles. He couldn't decipher the Latin names on the labels, but the word TEST stamped in bold capitals on each bottle made him suspect the contents were hazardous.
Imprisoned Borderlanders had told the Scythes that before every battle their commanders issued them pills. The captives described how the pills turned them into zombies — insensitive to pain, fatigue, or fear.
Emin had no doubt they would find those wonder pills among the vast stock of medication stored within the clinic's walls.
He stepped into a dark hallway. At the far end stood a metal door with a special lock and warning signs: entry required gloves and a mask. This was a dangerous zone.
Emin wasn't easily frightened. Curiosity and duty overrode all safety protocols. The moment he turned the key and pushed the door open; a loud bang echoed from one of the labs — something heavy hitting the floor.
He quickly located the room. The door stood ajar. Inside, a man in a white coat had his back to him. The scientist was frantically pulling files from lockers and stacking them on a counter by the window, glancing outside every few seconds to check on the special forces.
Emin watched in silence as the man dumped the files into a large bin and prepared to set them alight.
"Drop the lighter and turn around — slowly," Emin commanded in Anglo-Saxon.
The man spun around and let the lighter fall.
Emin kept him at gunpoint.
"I said slowly, you idiot. Now sit down in that chair and push the bin towards me. What were you trying to destroy?"
Emin removed the files. They bore the same stamps and layout as those found in the technicians' cars, with references to the Gomorian Ministry of Defence. He placed them carefully on a table behind him, never breaking eye contact, and studied the man.
"You're a Gomorian, aren't you?"
The scientist nodded.
"What the hell are you doing here?"
"Nothing. I work for BioMeta — a pharmaceutical company…" the man stuttered.
"A pharmaceutical company? Is that what you call it? So, you just make skin-softening lotions? And here I thought this was some secret military site, with all those reinforced doors." Emin opened a glass locker and took out a sealed petri dish. Fungus-like patches clung to the sides. The lid was labelled ANTHRAX in bold black marker.
"So, if I rub this on my balls, it'll soften the skin? Shall we try it?" He began prying at the lid.
"Please, stop! Don't open it! It contains anthrax bacteria — it's extremely contagious!" the scientist begged.
"You don't say! I thought you worked for a pharmaceutical company!"
"We're not… Look, we experiment with microbes. We're scientists!"
"Oh, really? Then why didn't you test those microbes in Gomora, scientist? Why come to Borderland?"
"I don't know, man. They just sent me here. We weren't doing anything wrong. We were trying to make the world a better place…"
"Excuse me? You were trying to make the world a better place? For whom? For you Gomorians — by testing deadly diseases on us?"
Emin felt his blood pressure surge. Black spots danced before his eyes.
They were trying to make the world a better place.
By infecting and killing people in pursuit of their Gomorian dream.
He blinked, shook his head slightly, took several deep breaths, and lowered his gun. He paced the laboratory, examining the specimens behind glass.
The collection was extensive: lethal diseases alongside merely toxic ones. A few shocked him — he had believed humanity had eradicated them long ago. Yet here they were, resurrected by the Gomorians to make the world a better place.
While Emin's back was turned, absorbed in thought, the scientist tried to bolt.
"Sit down, Gomorian. I'm not finished with you yet." Emin raised his gun again.
The man wet himself and meekly slumped back into the chair.
"Besides, it's foolish to think I'll let you live. You claim you weren't doing anything wrong, but deep down in that rotten soul of yours — if Gomorians even have one — you know you're the villain. And what do Gomorian movies teach us? The bad guys always get what they deserve." Emin paused, letting the words sink in.
"Shooting you is an option," he continued, his voice low and cold. "No one would care, and I could always claim self-defence. But that would be far too merciful. Then I saw these test tubes labelled with diseases I hadn't heard of in years. Infecting you with one would give you a slower, more fitting death. Anthrax? Too risky — you might infect innocents. AIDS? I'd love to inject it straight into your vein, but then my government would have to pay for your treatment if you were imprisoned. Not ideal. Wait a second…"
Emin walked to a small white cabinet in the corner, opened it, and took out a little bottle.
"I think I've found the perfect cure for you!" he exclaimed, returning to the scientist and holding up the label. "Strychnine. You'll die, but first you'll suffer. Every muscle in your body will seize in excruciating spasms. Only death will release you from the agony."
He seemed to savour the gruesome details.
Suddenly, Emin grabbed the man by the chin and forced his mouth open. The scientist struggled, but it was futile. Emin was beyond reach — mentally and physically locked in a state impervious to outside resistance.
He pried off the cap with his thumb and poured the poisonous powder down the man's throat. Then he clamped a hand over the scientist's mouth and nose, forcing him to swallow most of it. Stepping back, Emin watched the slow, horrible death of the lab rat.
At first the man tried to vomit up the poison. Soon he lost all control. He collapsed to the floor, screaming as his limbs twisted in violent spasms.
When the convulsions finally stopped and his eyes turned glassy, Emin straightened his clothes, brushed the powder from his sleeves, and headed downstairs.
"Pack everything from the third floor carefully," he told one of the special forces men on his way out. "They keep samples of many dangerous poisons and pathogens up there. Oh, and I found one of the lab technicians upstairs. I think he committed suicide. There was a bottle of strychnine next to him."