But thought feels slow, squeezed by the physical reality of her grip and the psychological weight of the battlefield moving on without him. The momentum he had built—the careful, grinding advance—has left him behind.
The forest feels smaller.
The soundscape narrows.
Gunfire becomes a distant roar, like water rushing through a sealed door. The immediate world compresses into breath, pressure, and the woman's voice still echoing in his ears.
She does not repeat the demand.
She waits.
Waiting is the real chokehold.
Aldo swallows, throat dry.
He is confused—not because he does not understand the situation, but because every option fractures into loss. Command requires distance. Survival requires compliance. Resistance risks everything collapsing at once.
[I was supposed to control this.]
His fingers twitch, restrained, useless.
The battlefield does not pause.
But for Aldo, time has narrowed to the space between her arm and his ribs, between surrender and annihilation, tightening with every second she holds him there.
"Excuse me…" Aldo murmurs.
His voice is low, carefully moderated, barely loud enough to carry past the bark pressed against his shoulder. The tree at his back is old and rigid, its trunk ridged like a spine. He can feel the cold of it through his uniform, the forest pressing him forward even as the woman in front of him holds him in place.
The gunfire has thinned here. Not stopped—never stopped—but stretched, pulled taut across distance. Shots crack and echo deeper in the forest, irregular now, as if the battlefield has learned to breathe between heartbeats.
The woman does not mirror his softness.
"I need confirmation of your surrender."
Her words land cleanly. No heat. No threat layered in tone. Just procedure. Aldo notices that immediately—how she speaks like someone checking a box rather than winning a fight.
His fingers flex once at his side, then still. His shoulders remain squared, posture controlled, even as his pulse hammers too fast against his ribs.
[Confirm. She wants finality.]
"I'm sure I intend to defect," Aldo says carefully, shaping the sentence as if it is a courtesy rather than a wedge, "but could you give me some information about yourself? I'm curious about you…"
The words tumble out more quickly than he intends. He hears it himself—the faint edge of haste, the misalignment between tone and intent. His jaw tightens a fraction too late.
The woman's gaze sharpens.
"I will answer any personal questions about me from you after I confirm your surrender."
Confidence radiates from her, unforced. She does not shift her footing. Does not tighten her grip. She is not threatened by curiosity; she is irritated by inefficiency.
Aldo swallows.
"What may I call you?"
It is a small question. Human. Almost polite enough to be disarming.
Her lips thin.
"Irina Sokolova."
A pause. Just long enough to be intentional.
"Or by the nickname the feudal Mikhs call me—Snow Valkyrie."
The title hangs between them, absurd and heavy at the same time, like something borrowed from a legend and forced into reality.
Her patience snaps.
"NOW I REALLY NEED YOUR SURRENDER!!!"
She slams him back against the tree.
The impact is controlled, but decisive. Bark digs into his shoulder blades. Her forearm presses across his chest, cutting his breath short. Snow shakes loose from the branches above, cascading down in a fine, whispering veil.
Irina frowns. Her fist rises, knuckles whitening, teeth clenched—not in rage, but in restrained force, as if holding back a strike that would cost her more than it would give.
Aldo nods.
Once.
Immediately.
Her fist lowers.
She exhales through her nose, sharp and contained. Her hand slides up, fingers gripping his chin with surprising gentleness and absolute authority, forcing his face upward until their eyes meet. He can see the reflection of the forest in hers—dark trunks, pale snow, no hesitation.
Her musket remains behind her back. Bayonet angled down, forgotten only because it does not need to be remembered.
"So…" she says quietly, "tell me all the information… about you… and…"
She presses something into his chest.
Paper.
Old. Creased. The edges are soft with wear, the surface smudged with graphite and moisture.
"…your plan to attack my group on this paper."
Aldo looks down.
Russian.
Dense, angular script he does not recognize beyond scattered symbols. A pen is pushed into his hand, cold metal biting into his fingers.
His breath stutters—not from fear, but from the sudden realization of what this is.
Documentation.
[She's turning surrender into record.]
"Irina, this… is in Russian. I don't understand a single word…" he stammers, glancing between the paper, the pen, and her face.
Irina sighs.
It is the sound of someone inconvenienced, not surprised.
She leans in and points, tapping the paper with a gloved finger.
She reads aloud, her accent thick but precise.
"Имя." She taps again. "is Given name."
Another word.
"Настоящее имя." A pause. "is Real name."
Her finger moves down the page, methodical.
"Гражданство. Nationality."
"Место призыва. Summoned place."
"Роль. Role."
"Звание. Rank."
"Сведения о владельце. Information of the master."
She does not slow for him. She urges him with tone alone, eyes flicking between his face and the paper.
For Aldo, it is not learning Russian.
It is survival indexing.
He memorizes shapes. Positions. The meaning she assigns. Nothing more. The sounds slide past him, ungraspable, but the written forms burn into his awareness.
His hand moves.
He writes.
The forest feels quieter as he does.
Then—without planning it, without intention fully catching up—Aldo speaks.
He tells her everything.
Not in fragments. Not in deflection.
The plan spills out in clean structure: probe forces, flanking pressure, ammunition expectations, withdrawal contingencies, the logic behind the feigned retreat. He hears himself speak as if he is briefing an officer, not a captor. Words align into systems. Systems become inevitabilities.
Irina listens.
Her pen moves fast, scratching against the paper with sharp, efficient strokes. Her expression does not change—but something behind her eyes recalibrates. Calculation deepens.
Too sophisticated !
She knows it.
This is not the language of a peasant levy. Not the instinctive chaos she expects from slave-soldiers. This is layered, anticipatory, designed by someone who understands both terrain and institution.
When he finishes, silence folds in around them.
Irina takes the paper back.
She glances at it once.
Five times.
Her mouth twists.
"Your handwriting," she says flatly, "is mono."
She flips the paper.
"Soulless."
Aldo is confused…
She stuffs it into her pocket without folding it, the paper vanishing in a sharp, careless motion, as if even the smallest crease would count as indulgence, as if pausing long enough to be neat would betray a weakness she refuses to acknowledge.
Then she turns and walks.
Fast.
Her hand closes around Aldo's wrist, grip firm and unhesitating, pulling him forward with her. Not dragging—never dragging—but directing, decisive and absolute. The message is clear: keep up. He stumbles once as the ground dips beneath his boot, breath hitching, then forces himself into her rhythm. Snow cracks underfoot. Dead leaves snap and crumble, brittle with cold, scattering beneath their steps as the forest gives way just enough to let them pass.
She does not release him.
She does not slow.
At some point—without looking at her, without any sign or ceremony—Aldo activates the Locationary Orb. The motion is small, practiced, almost invisible even to himself. A subtle pulse follows. Almost nothing. No sound, no light worth noticing.
Far away, the battalion on the march feels it. The shift ripples through them, quiet and precise. Direction changes. Movement reorients, boots turning, lines adjusting as one.
Irina does not notice.
Or she notices and does not care.
She walks as if tireless, shoulders squared, stride even and unbroken. The cold seems to orbit her rather than touch her, as though it recognizes her and yields. Snow brushes her coat and slides away, unable to cling. Aldo hates that—hates the ease of it, the way she belongs to this place, the way the forest does not resist her presence or question her passing.
Through the trees, flashes of motion—brief, uncertain, half-seen—flicker at the edge of his vision, swallowed again by shadow and snow as they move relentlessly forward.
Comtois.
Mid-fight, caught in the thick of it, smoke clinging to his hair and collar as if it has chosen him specifically. The air around him is loud and broken, filled with the crack of gunfire and the sharp echo of shouted commands. His coat is torn at the shoulder, fabric ripped open where something came too close, close enough to leave a mark but not stop him. He barely seems to notice it now.
Then he sees them.
Not clearly. Just a glimpse through drifting smoke and fractured movement. A woman, moving fast, purposeful. Her hand locked around Aldo's wrist. Pulling him away.
His eyes widen.
For half a second—no more than that—he stops firing. The pause is so brief it might be mistaken for nothing, but it is there. In that instant, everything sharpens. His head turns. His attention fixes. He gestures sharply, a quick, precise motion born of habit rather than thought. A team peels off at once, responding without question, without hesitation. They melt into cover, bodies lowering, movements tight and efficient, slipping away low and fast as if swallowed by the terrain itself.
Then Comtois turns back to the fight.
The noise rushes back in. The chaos closes around him again. His weapon comes up, steady, familiar. His stance resets. On his face, worry shows—only briefly, only as a flicker that threatens to surface.
Then discipline clamps down.
The expression vanishes. The moment is sealed away. He re-enters the chaos fully, giving the battle everything it demands, as if nothing at all had broken through his focus.
Irina speaks again, her voice drifting down to Aldo as if commenting on the weather.
"Are you feeling uneasy?"
She does not look at him.
"You shouldn't. In difficult times, be decisive. Stand on the side of the virtuous proletariat against the evil."
They stop.
Stable footing. A rise in the ground, roots exposed like veins.
Irina releases his wrist just long enough to pat his head.
Once.
A gesture that is not unkind—and that somehow makes Aldo's stomach knot tighter than violence ever did.
"You're young. I understand…"
He stops listening.
Because the bushes ahead shift.
Subtle. Controlled. Human.
Comtois's team is close now. Too close to ignore. Too close to conceal for long.
Aldo's chest tightens.
[She'll think I planned this.]
If they move now—if the ambush springs too early—Irina will see it as betrayal, proof that he never surrendered, that every word was a lie meant to buy time.
And she will react.
Fast.
In the forest behind them, the PPF counterattacks. Gunfire surges again, pushing back against Joon-soo, against the 204th and 205th. Lines stall. Pressure mounts.
The world narrows.
In the heat of it—heart pounding, breath shallow—something impulsive flares in Aldo.
Not courage.
Not ideology.
Calculation sharpened by fear.
[I have to live first.]
The path is already set in his mind. He has weighed it before, measured it with colder hands. Freed Citizen. Recognition. Stability. A morally gray ascent through systems that demand sacrifice.
There was never a clean path.
Only results.
[I'll remind my future self…]
The bushes tremble.
Comtois's team waits.
Aldo lifts his head.
He understands.
And he is ready to gamble.