Age 18 — Chernolesye, Rosalvya Border
Three Days After the Jungle Campaign
The forest had no name on any map.
Locals called it Chernolesye—the Black Woods. They said the trees grew too close together, that the canopy blocked out the sun even at noon, that the soil was dark with old blood. Hunters avoided it. Soldiers entered only in force.
Netoshka walked alone.
The message had come through channels that shouldn't exist anymore. A fragment of code. A set of coordinates. Nothing more. Krovka's last transmission.
She had been walking for two days.
The jungle had given way to old-growth temperate forest—towering pines, their needles carpeting the earth in a soft, muffling layer. The air was cool and damp, heavy with the smell of pine resin and decay. No birds sang. No animals moved. Only the wind through the branches, low and mournful.
She found the clearing at dusk.
---
The Clearing
The trees opened into a wide circle, as if the forest itself had recoiled from what was placed there.
Eight bodies hung from the branches.
Not arranged randomly. Positioned. Displayed.
They hung from ropes tied to the thickest limbs, their arms bound behind their backs, their feet dangling a meter above the ground. Their heads had been removed and placed on stakes in front of each corpse, facing outward, so that anyone entering the clearing would see their faces first.
Zimor.
Volna.
Kedr.
Sova.
Qi-7.
Yunyan.
Honglian.
Lotus.
The heads had been preserved somehow—embalmed, frozen, treated—their expressions frozen in whatever they had felt in their final moments. Zimor's face was calm, almost peaceful. Volna's was twisted in the same fury she had worn in life. Kedr looked impossibly young, younger than his nineteen years. Sova's emptiness had finally found stillness.
Qi-7's eyes were closed. Yunyan's were open, staring at nothing. Honglian's empty smile was gone, replaced by something that might have been fear. Lotus's face was the hardest to look at—she had been crying when they killed her.
Below the bodies, on the forest floor, a burlap sack.
Netoshka didn't want to open it.
She opened it.
Fingers.
Twenty-eight of them. Severed at the knuckles, collected and stuffed into the sack like broken twigs. Wedding rings still on some. Scars she recognized. A small tattoo on one—Kedr's, a snake coiled around his index finger.
Netoshka stood in the center of the clearing and stared.
She didn't scream. She didn't cry. She didn't fall to her knees.
She stood.
And something inside her—something she had thought dead, something she had buried beneath years of programming and betrayal and survival—cracked open.
Not grief.
Not sorrow.
Rage.
Pure, cold, absolute.
It filled her chest like ice water. It spread through her veins, her muscles, her bones. It was not the hot fury of battle or the desperate violence of survival. It was something else. Something she had never felt before.
She wanted to kill.
Not to survive. Not to complete a mission. Not to follow orders.
She wanted to find Kersnik and everyone who had ever served him and every person who had ever stood by while he built his empire of suffering—and she wanted to erase them from the world.
The Voice stirred.
Yes.
For once, Netoshka agreed.
---
The Burial
She cut the bodies down.
One by one, she lowered them to the forest floor. The ropes had bitten deep into their necks, leaving dark grooves. Their hands—what remained of them—were cold and stiff.
She arranged them side by side in the order they had sat during briefings. Zimor at the head, then Volna, Kedr, Sova. Across from them, Qi-7, Yunyan, Honglian, Lotus.
She reattached the heads as best she could. Placed the fingers in their hands, covered them with branches and ferns. It was crude. Inadequate. The best she could do alone in the dark.
She found the note pinned to Zimor's chest.
"Krovka Squad — Terminated for Treason against the Synarchy. By order of Supreme Commander Kersnik. Let this be a lesson to all who would betray the cause."
Netoshka folded the note and put it in her pocket.
She knelt beside Zimor's body and placed her hand on his forehead. His skin was cold, waxy.
"You were the first to follow me," she said quietly. "You never asked for anything. You just believed. I'm sorry I couldn't give you what you deserved."
She moved to Volna.
"You laughed when everyone else was serious. You trusted no one, but you trusted me. I'm sorry."
Kedr.
"You talked too much. You were too young. You should have had more time."
Sova.
"You were the silence I needed. You understood without words. I'm sorry I couldn't protect you."
Qi-7.
"You thought you were beyond redemption. You weren't. None of us are."
Yunyan.
"You listened when no one else would. The world needed more people like you."
Honglian.
"Your smile never reached your eyes. But I think, in the end, you were starting to find something real."
Lotus.
"You were the smartest of all of us. You knew this would happen. You came anyway."
She stood.
"I will find him. I will end him. I swear it on every one of you."
She walked out of the clearing and did not look back.
---
The Hunt — First Target
The Synarchy had facilities everywhere.
Netoshka knew because she had helped build them. Supply depots. Communications nodes. Training camps. Safe houses. She had mapped them, secured them, defended them.
Now she would burn them.
Her first target was a supply depot outside the town of Zelenogorsk. She had been there three months ago, helping to organize logistics for the jungle campaign. She knew the guard rotations. The alarm codes. The weak points in the perimeter.
She hit it at midnight.
Two guards at the gate. She took them silently, her knife finding throats with practiced efficiency. The depot was small—a warehouse, a fuel dump, a barracks for a dozen soldiers. She moved through it like the ghost they had always called her.
She killed nine men in seven minutes.
Then she planted explosives and walked away.
The fire lit the sky for hours.
---
The Hunt — Allies
Word spread.
The Synarchy had enemies. Everyone did. When those enemies heard that someone was hunting Kersnik's people, they reached out.
Netoshka met a man named Dimitri Volkov in a safe house outside the ruined city of Port Mirny. No relation to the Volna she had known. Just a common name. He was former Synarchy, like her. His squad had been terminated after a mission gone wrong. He had survived because he had been in the hospital when the kill order came.
He had been hunting Kersnik for six months.
"You're not the only one," he said. "There are dozens of us. Survivors. Deserters. People who saw what Kersnik was becoming and got out before he could kill them."
Netoshka studied him. "How many?"
"Thirty. Maybe forty. Scattered across the continent. We have safe houses. Supply caches. A network."
"What do you want?"
Volkov leaned forward. "The same thing you want. To burn the Synarchy to the ground."
---
The Band
Over the next three weeks, Netoshka met them.
Yakov. A former demolitions expert whose entire unit had been sacrificed to cover a Synarchy retreat. He spoke little and smiled less. His hands were always busy, building something, taking something apart.
Anya. A medic who had watched her patients be executed for "security reasons." She had stolen a truck full of medical supplies and driven into the wilderness. She joined the hunt because she had nowhere else to go.
Kozlov. A communications specialist who had intercepted Kersnik's orders and realized that the Synarchy was planning to betray every soldier who had ever served it. He had copied the files before fleeing.
Mira. A sniper who had been trained by Volna. She had heard about Krovka's execution and volunteered immediately. "Volna saved my life," she said. "I owe her."
Petrov. An old man, fifty at least, who had been with the Synarchy since the beginning. He had seen Kersnik change, watched the idealism curdle into something darker. He had been waiting for someone to lead the resistance.
They were not Krovka.
They were not soldiers who had trained together, fought together, bled together. They were fragments. Survivors. People who had lost everything and had nothing left but revenge.
Netoshka took them anyway.
---
The First Operation With the Band
The target was a Synarchy communications hub in the Ural Mountains.
Kozlov identified it from intercepted transmissions. Small, lightly guarded, but critical to Kersnik's northern operations. If they could take it out, they could blind him for weeks.
Netoshka planned the attack.
Yakov handled the explosives. Anya prepared for casualties. Mira found a sniper position overlooking the compound. Kozlov monitored enemy communications. Petrov provided intelligence on guard rotations.
Netoshka led the assault.
It was clean. Efficient. Brutal.
They killed sixteen Synarchy soldiers and destroyed the hub's main servers. Their own casualties: one wounded, none dead.
Afterward, standing in the burning wreckage, Netoshka felt something she hadn't expected.
Satisfaction.
Not joy. Not peace. But a small, cold confirmation that she was doing the right thing.
Kersnik had killed her squad. He had displayed their bodies like trophies. He had sent a message.
Now she was sending one back.
---
The Hunt Continues
The attacks continued.
A supply depot in the Karelian Isthmus. A training camp in the Valley of Mists. A convoy carrying weapons to Kersnik's allies in the southern Principalities.
Each operation made the news. Not the official news—Kersnik controlled most of that—but the underground networks, the whisper channels, the people who watched and waited and hoped.
"The Ghost is hunting the Synarchy."
"One woman, taking on Kersnik's entire organization."
"She used to be one of them. Now she's their executioner."
The stories grew. Exaggerated. Embellished. But the core was true.
Netoshka was killing Kersnik's people one by one.
And she was not done.
---
The Night
One night, in a safe house deep in the forests of the Northern Reaches, Netoshka sat alone on the roof, staring at the stars.
Mira found her there.
"You never talk about them," Mira said quietly. "Krovka. Your squad."
Netoshka didn't answer.
"I knew Volna. She trained me. She never talked about her past either. Just her skills. Her methods. Her rules." Mira paused. "But sometimes, late at night, she would mention you. The Ghost. The weapon who had no master."
Netoshka looked at her.
"She said you were the only person she trusted. The only one who made her believe that maybe, just maybe, there was something worth fighting for."
Mira sat beside her.
"I want you to know that. You gave her something she hadn't had in years. Hope."
Netoshka was silent for a long moment.
Then she spoke.
"Hope got her killed."
"No." Mira shook her head. "Kersnik got her killed. Hope just gave her a reason to fight."
She stood.
"Don't lose that. Whatever happens. Don't lose the reason."
She walked away.
Netoshka stared at the stars.
She thought about Volna's laugh. Kedr's chatter. Sova's silence. Zimor's steady presence.
She thought about Ruzina. About the Miau elder Chou Pao. About the sleepers in their tanks.
She thought about hope.
She didn't know if she still had it.
But she knew she still had rage.
And for now, that was enough.
---
The hunt continued.
Netoshka had found allies. Survivors. People who wanted the same thing she did.
But Kersnik was still alive. The Synarchy was still standing. And the sleepers were still waiting.
She would find him. She would end him.
Not for revenge. Not anymore.
For Krovka. For everyone he had used and discarded. For every weapon that had been told it could not choose.
She would choose.
And when the time came, she would make him pay.