The sirens did not sound like an alarm.
They sounded like permission.
A low, rolling wail spread across Helvetia at dawn, vibrating through steel walls, frozen ground, and the bones of everyone who heard it. The sound was too deep to be urgent, too calm to be merciful.
Leena opened her eyes before it finished.
Around her, the barracks stirred—boots scraping, curses muttered, the soft click of weapons being checked. No one asked questions. They never did. In Helvetia, questions were a liability.
A mechanical voice followed the siren, echoing from unseen speakers embedded throughout the compound.
"Attention all trainees. Camp-wide survival exercise will commence immediately."
A pause.
"Rules are suspended."
That single sentence sent a ripple through the room.
Leena sat up slowly, pulling on her jacket with deliberate movements. Across from her, Mara met her eyes. No words passed between them. They didn't need to.
Rules are suspended meant one thing in Helvetia.
Casualties were expected.
Encouraged.
"Zones will be assigned dynamically," the voice continued. "Supplies are limited. Command support is unavailable. Surveillance may be intermittent."
Another pause—this one almost theatrical.
"Survive."
The speakers went dead.
For half a second, the world held its breath.
Then chaos began.
Helvetia was not a camp.
It was a wound carved into a hostile land—concrete, steel, watchtowers, and underground sectors stitched together by corridors and kill zones. Snow and ice clung to its outer edges, while heat vents bled steam into the frozen air like the breath of a wounded beast.
Within minutes of the announcement, the compound fractured.
Teams formed and dissolved.
Alliances ignited and burned out just as fast.
Old grudges surfaced like corpses through thawing ice.
Leena and Mara moved without urgency.
They exited the barracks through a side corridor, bypassing the main routes where crowds would bottleneck and blood would spill first. Their steps were light, their breathing steady.
"Zone?" Mara asked quietly.
Leena glanced at the nearest tactical display still flickering on a wall. Static distorted most of it, but a rough overlay remained.
"Southern storage grid," she said. "Fuel. Rations. Ammunition."
Mara's lips pressed into a thin line.
"Someone will torch it."
"Yes," Leena replied. "That's why we're going there."
They weren't the only ones who understood the value of infrastructure—but they were among the few who understood timing.
As they moved deeper into the compound, the sounds grew louder.
Gunfire—short, panicked bursts.
Shouts.
The dull thud of bodies hitting concrete.
Leena didn't look toward the noise. She catalogued it instead. Distance. Direction. Frequency.
Behind one maintenance hub, a group of trainees had already turned on each other. One lay bleeding on the ground, clutching his leg. Another stood over him, weapon raised, hands shaking.
"Drop it," the standing one hissed.
Leena passed without slowing.
The man pulled the trigger.
The sound echoed once.
Then nothing.
Mara didn't flinch.
"First," she said quietly.
"Not today's last," Leena replied.
The southern storage grid was already compromised when they arrived.
Smoke crawled along the ceiling like a living thing. Emergency lights flickered, painting the corridor in red and shadow. Somewhere deeper inside, something burned—fuel or wiring or both.
Leena stopped at an intersection and raised a hand.
Mara froze instantly.
Footsteps.
Three. No—four.
Too heavy to be cautious. Too fast to be coordinated.
"Not subtle," Mara murmured.
Leena tilted her head slightly, listening.
"They think they're first," she said.
She stepped back into the shadow, pressing herself against the cold metal wall. Mara mirrored her on the opposite side.
The first trainee rounded the corner with his weapon up.
Leena moved.
She caught his wrist, twisted sharply, and used his momentum to slam him into the wall. The sound of bone against steel was muted by the smoke. His weapon clattered to the ground.
Before he could cry out, Mara struck—one clean blow to the throat. He dropped without a sound.
The second trainee barely had time to register what was happening before Leena stepped into his space and drove her elbow into his sternum. Air exploded from his lungs. He collapsed, gasping.
The third fired wildly.
The shot went wide.
Mara closed the distance in two steps and disarmed him with brutal efficiency. The fourth turned to run.
Leena let him take three steps.
Then she threw.
The knife buried itself between his shoulder blades.
He fell face-first into the smoke.
Silence returned.
Mara retrieved the fallen weapons, checking ammunition with practiced speed.
"No insignia," she said. "Free agents."
Leena nodded. "This is where it starts."
By midday, Helvetia was burning.
Not metaphorically.
One of the fuel depots detonated with a thunderous roar that shook the ground and sent a column of black smoke spiraling into the pale sky. Shockwaves shattered windows and threw bodies across open yards.
Fire alarms wailed uselessly, competing with the earlier sirens in a dissonant chorus.
From a control tower high above the compound, Viktor Kane watched it all unfold.
His expression did not change.
Around him, officers shouted into headsets, barking orders that went unanswered. Surveillance screens flickered between live feeds and static. Entire sections of the camp had gone dark.
"Casualty count?" Viktor asked calmly.
A technician swallowed. "Higher than projections."
Viktor's eyes narrowed slightly.
"Where?"
The technician hesitated, then highlighted several zones on the display.
Southern grid.
Transit tunnels.
Secondary barracks.
The same areas.
Again.
Viktor leaned forward, resting his hands on the console.
"Pull the data," he said. "Every engagement. Every kill."
The technician's fingers flew.
Patterns began to emerge.
Clean engagements.
Minimal noise.
No wasted movement.
Two signatures overlapped repeatedly.
Viktor's gaze sharpened.
"Who are they?" he asked.
The technician checked the roster. "Leena Ash—" He stopped.
The name flickered.
Then vanished.
Viktor's lips twitched.
"Interesting," he murmured.
Leena and Mara emerged onto an open service yard as ash drifted down like black snow.
The yard was chaos.
A group of trainees had barricaded themselves behind supply crates, firing at shadows they couldn't see. Another group lay dead near the perimeter fence, torn apart by an explosion that had gone off too early.
In the center of it all, a storage building burned fiercely, flames licking up its sides.
Mara scanned the area. "Too open."
"Yes," Leena agreed. "And too obvious."
A scream cut through the noise.
They both turned.
Near the burning building, a young trainee—barely older than Leena—had been pinned beneath debris. Fire crept closer with every second. He reached out blindly, coughing, his skin already blistering.
No one moved to help.
Helping was not efficient.
Helping was not rewarded.
Leena felt something tighten in her chest.
She didn't hesitate.
"Cover me," she said.
Mara swore under her breath but raised her weapon without argument.
Leena sprinted.
Bullets snapped past her, some fired by panicked trainees, others by opportunists looking to thin the field. She slid to her knees beside the trapped boy and braced herself.
The debris was heavy.
Heavier than it should have been.
She gritted her teeth and lifted.
Her muscles screamed, but the weight shifted.
Enough.
The boy scrambled free, sobbing.
"Run," Leena snapped.
He didn't need to be told twice.
Leena rolled away just as a section of the building collapsed inward, flames roaring.
When she regrouped with Mara behind cover, Mara's expression was unreadable.
"That was unnecessary," she said quietly.
"Yes," Leena replied.
They shared a look.
Neither apologized.
By nightfall, Helvetia was unrecognizable.
Sections of the camp were reduced to charred skeletons. Smoke hung thick in the air, blurring the stars. Fires burned unchecked where suppression systems had failed—or been sabotaged.
The death count was no longer being announced.
Leena and Mara moved through the shadows, avoiding large confrontations, striking only when necessary. They weren't hunting.
They were surviving.
At one point, they passed a body sprawled against a wall—eyes open, frozen in shock. The insignia on his jacket marked him as a squad leader.
Mara stopped.
"He was close to you," she said.
Leena nodded once.
"I know."
They moved on.
High above, Viktor Kane stood alone at the observation window.
Helvetia was supposed to break them.
It was supposed to strip away weakness until only obedience remained.
Instead, it had revealed something else.
Adaptation.
Not reckless.
Not desperate.
Precise.
Controlled.
Viktor replayed footage in his mind—the clean strikes, the impossible timing, the way chaos bent around two figures instead of consuming them.
Helvetia was burning.
But not because of failure.
Because of evolution.
He turned away from the window.
"End the exercise at dawn," he ordered softly into his comm.
A pause.
"And flag Leena and Mara."
The response came immediately. "For punishment?"
Viktor smiled faintly.
"No," he said. "For observation."
Outside, embers drifted across the ruined camp.
Leena stood at the edge of a darkened corridor, watching the fires burn.
She felt no triumph.
No guilt.
Only clarity.
Hell had tried to consume her.
Instead, it had fed her.
And somewhere deep within the system she carried—silent, unseen—a counter ticked forward.
Survival was no longer the goal.
Control was.
The camp burned on.
And nothing would ever be the same again.