Moments later, the elevator moaned as steel ground to a halt. The G dial flashed red, then blinked. A distorted flat mechanical voice blared from the speakers: “Initiating decontamination,” as green smoke filled the room. The squad held their breath as the deadly gas sterilized every non-bioengineered lifeform that was not protected by a biohazard suit.

  “Ah! Finally! A breath of fresh air!” snapped Rain as he slapped Glass’s back. She gave him the middle finger. He coughed laughing and returned the gesture. Geiger giggled.

  Fans in the ceiling activated, sucking the gas from the compartment. The dial flashed green, and the mechanical voice announced, “Ground floor... Administration.” The heavy steel door groaned open.

  Blood was still holding on to Rain; the bleeding had almost stopped, but not the pain. Her arctic camo fatigues looked like a butcher’s apron after a very busy day. Her vision was still blurred, but her mind had stopped sinking into the past.

  Ahead lay a kill zone: 150 meters of open space with no cover, ending at an immensely armored door on the opposite wall. Rotary autocannon barrels protruded from multiple cutouts on the side walls, all zeroed on their position. Heavy machine gun (HMG) turrets, mounted on the ceiling, trained their muzzles on the squad. Remotely activated anti-tank mines, large enough to blast a hover tank to smithereens, littered every inch of the floor.

  The squad strode forth nonchalantly toward the far door. Blood’s eyes went wide; she stumbled a step as mines clicked underfoot.

  “You’d be dead if they wanted you dead,” Rain jabbed a fist forward. Blood shrugged.

  Geiger’s mind wandered. He remembered a month ago this place was jammed full of his brothers and sisters in full combat gear as they were about to storm Alaska. Each squad awaited their orders next to the door, and the rest... prepped for battle the gene warrior way: violent sex, fighting, competitions of all kinds, gallows humor, and any creative combination of the previous. Where are they now? Has everyone been transferred or..? He did not answer; he just held Glass’s hand tighter and exhaled.

  This is not our last... day he thought.

  Glass prickled his hand with her razor-sharp nails. “Eyes on the task, commander!” she tapped in Morse code. “Thank you, Glass,” he tapped back.

  They strode forth. Blood’s eyes bounced from one deadly threat to the other. One of the deadlier hissed at her ear, “Don’t do anything stupid.” Rain waved Glass away with a smile and held Blood steady. His 1.8-meter athletic frame was dwarfed completely by the 2.4-meter-tall gigantess.

  They stood in front of the door. Geiger and Glass held each other’s hands and took a deep breath. Rain whistled a march song; Blood stared at the door blankly. She remembered kissing a spectacled human in his late 20s in a dark room; she remembered his tender touch, his songs, his violin. She put on her glasses—his glasses. She exhaled, felt Rain’s hand touching hers; pain somehow lessened. She held on.

  Steel groaned; a recess gave way for a hologram projector. The gene warriors immediately snapped into attention and saluted. A lab-coat-clad short bald man in his 70s slumped with a cane materialized. Shivers ran up their spines; Geiger’s eyes went wide, his hand started shaking again. She squeezed, tapped “I am here” in Morse code; it stopped. He exhaled. Blood’s jaw trembled, her heart rate accelerated; she balled her fist. Rain tapped on her palm and leaned closer to her. “Imagine what his ass might look like.” Her body felt lighter; a tiny smile appeared on her face.

  “We serve the Soviet Union!” they shouted in unison. The scientist smiled through rotten teeth that barely hung on his shaking jaw.

  “It appears you’ve examined... 02... thoroughly, commander. How did it perform?” He pointed at Blood with his cane.

  “Exceptionally. Thank you for assigning 02 to Kinzhal, Professor Zadachin!” he rumbled, catching his hand to keep it away from his blade.

  “Good... good.” He smiled, rotten crooked teeth in plain sight.

  “Specimens, this is your final test to prove you are reliable agents of our glorious republic. Succeed, and you will be formally recruited.” Saliva dripped on the ground as he tapped his cane.

  He pressed a button on a remote controller produced from his pocket. A global tactical map materialized, almost all of it blood red. It focused on North America: Alaska, Canada, and a large part of Mexico, all blood red. Most of the US, deep blue. Large overlapping red boxes labeled “Eugenic Guards 1st through 98th” with suffixes mechanized, armored, airborne, artillery, and many more aggregated north of the 49th parallel. Almost as numerous blue armies stood opposite them labeled “National Guard, USMC, US Army,” and so on. Mushroom clouds popped sporadically around the map, each labeled from 50 kiloton to 150 megaton.

  “Mushrooms grow well in the States...” Glass tapped. “Mushroom farm in Alabama after retirement?” Geiger tapped back. “Sounds sweet.” She smiled faster than the cockroach eye can see.

  With another tap, the hologram zoomed in on Utah, then the ruins of Salt Lake City, then due south at what used to be the “Ashley National Forest.” The hologram zoomed all the way at a mountainside of the Uinta range, then provided spy satellite video feed, complete with the classic three-second delay—the time required for light to reach the satellite lenses. The image resolved after a small delay, revealing a convoy of three M-299 Clark APCs and two M-88 Eisenhower heavy hovertanks. The heavy armor convoy halted in the desolate expanse. Suddenly, an enormous boulder slid aside, revealing a nuclear blast door built into the mountain face, which immediately rolled open.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  The feed then zoomed in on an APC positioned mid-convoy. Exosuit-clad Delta Force operatives rapidly exited and began escorting two figures: an NBC-masked redhead woman in a lab coat, and a shackled, gigantic female gene warrior. The camera feed zoomed in on the woman’s face to the maximum of its capability. Pixels resolved through AI assistance, and the image froze as a square formed around her masked visage, highlighting the translucent polycarbonate NBC respirator. The caption identified her: Director General Yelena Zharova, the world-famous mastermind of the gene warrior program. Her facial traits bore an unsettling resemblance to Geiger—and especially to Blood.

  The gene warrior next to her was chained and dressed in rags over a bloody labcoat. The feed zoomed on her face. She was completely indistinguishable from Blood. All except Blood froze. Her mind went blank; her eyes opened wide as far as they could go.

  “Glad I’m not Gen-7,” Glass tapped on Geiger’s arm.

  Blood’s hand shot at the hologram, wrapped around its ghostly neck, and squeezed. Her eyes radiated deep green.

  “Monster... Teufel... Demon! You will beg me to stop!” she spat at the hologram.

  Rain caught her hand. “Easy, strawberry,” he tapped on her arm.

  The old man let out a dry, rattling wheeze as he laughed.

  “Kinzhal squad, I command you to eliminate or capture the arch-traitor of our people.” He wheezed and coughed.

  “If you manage to bring her here alive, your mandatory service to humanity will be considered completed, and you will be awarded the status of Heroes of the Soviet Union... along with all the considerable benefits...”

  “Neutralizing the captured prototype will also net you 270 million rubles each.”

  “You will immediately transit to FOB-GR77. There you will meet the Molot platoon of the 16th Guards Spetsnaz GRU in Calgary. Major GW-109-975-449-G3MN, codenamed Havoc, will brief you further. All logistics have been arranged a priori. You have 399 hours to complete the task.”

  Their wristwatches all clicked. A sickening tingling sensation penetrated deep into their skulls; their final failsafe was activated electromagnetically. They felt the fuse prime.

  “If the target’s location changes, you will be notified. Dismissed,” he said nonchalantly.

  The hologram faded.

  Their eyes locked on the closest camera. “Death to capitalism!”

  In unison, they slammed their feet on the deck, faced right with millisecond precision, and marched in lockstep like a parade.

  The blast door groaned open—three APCs could fit side by side. A single path forward once again: another armored door 200 meters twelve o’clock, small armored doors for the disgusting humans left and right. The gene warriors marched in lockstep with precision that would make the most elite cockroach unit look green. They slammed their feet on every step loud enough to sound like frags going off. Blood’s wounds reopened; she soldiered on.

  Glass’s sight glanced at a lab-coat-wearing vermin enjoying her coffee through an armored window. “Your day will come... it will not be fast,” she grit her teeth.

  “Last time I kill! I can do this! She is here!” Geiger clenched the hilt of his sword.

  “399, my lucky number,” Rain smiled.

  “Demon... I will rip out your spine.” Blood’s pain was drowned in fury.

  They stood in front of the immense nuclear blast door. A nuclear siren blared as a much thinner door slammed behind them.

  The blast door began to roll open as radioactive air burst into the compartment.

  Suddenly, a cockroach appeared from its seams—a literal one.

  The Gen-7s paid no attention to the critter.

  Rain gave it a double middle finger.

  Glass’s tongue shot out like a frog’s and retreated with her unimpressive prey. She spat venom on it and smiled as it smoked, bubbled, and dissolved in her hand. She wiped away what little remained of the unlucky insect and then stomped on it for good measure.

  The blast door opened. The dead planet lay ahead.

  They stepped outside their prison. They were met by the perpetual greenish-yellow overcast sky. They had no idea that the sky was once blue at ground level and the clouds were once pure white or angry gray. Black snow fell on them, thick with radioactive ash—radioactive ash, the end product of an undead civilization. Deadly to anything that wasn’t bioengineered for nuclear war. This was their natural habitat; they were manufactured to finish the job.

  The wind moaned like the sigh of a long-dead goddess forced to remain aware by the vilest curse. The wind screamed, a vain protest to the ultimate betrayal. It fell on deaf ears. The gene warriors strode forth, trampling her frozen corpse, unaware she had ever existed. A thunder erupted somewhere in the distance, a whimper compared to nuclear explosions. Then the dead goddess fell silent; they were not her creations after all. Not her children, not her responsibility.

  The nuclear siren blared in her mockery; the blast door shut her wails from her fallen children. They had devolved into cockroaches and buried their dead souls deep in her frozen corpse. In the distance across the rusty barbed wire, minefields, and turrets, further ahead the corpses of trees—black, frozen, and leafless—stood as eternal witnesses to the gravest of crimes.

  The VTOL turned on its engines on the black frozen helipad. It was the only thing that wasn’t rusted or dead around them; it made sense since it had function... like them. Geiger took a sharp turn to the right; all of them followed him like they always had. He stopped by a small mound, a frozen skeletal hand protruding.

  He knelt and buried it in radioactive dirt. They closed their eyes and held hands.

  “Fallen brothers, fallen sisters-in-war, may we emerge victorious or join you,” in unison.

  They aimed at the sky with their pistols, right in the goddess’s heart—without ever knowing.

  “Victory or death!”

  Gunshots echoed in the dead expanse. Brass slumped in the radioactive mud. Ash shuddered. Death was all.

  “Retribution!” Blood shouted as she fired once more.

  They stood. They marched. They didn’t look behind. The aircraft’s doors slammed shut behind them.

  They flicked the safety on, cleared and secured their weapons, then their backpacks, and strapped on.

  The Yakovlev-76 light cargo craft had space for a platoon and their gear. It held two rows of harness seats opposite each other. There was plenty of space for all... except for Geiger, who needed two and a half seats and had to lean heavily on his side to avoid hitting the ceiling. Blood’s blood-soaked hair was centimeters below the ceiling, Rain next to her.

  Geiger tapped the pilot’s seat three times; he turned and nodded. The turbines came to life.

  “Condor 1 cleared for takeoff,” they overheard the radio.

  The deafening sound of the turbines dominated their hearing. The black facility looked smaller and smaller from their window as they ascended. Soon all was yellow-green.