January 15, 2030
They called it "The Leak."
A seismic upheaval reverberated through the global media, its epicenter traced to a hacked press conference in Moscow that aired images, documents, and undeniable footage of the Blackridge Containment Facility—an arctic prison buried beneath Franz Josef Land. It didn't matter how governments scrambled to spin it. The truth was out.
It started slowly, like a controlled detonation. A few foreign journalists whispered about the footage. Anonymous sources on encrypted forums confirmed the names. Faces. Coordinates. The details were too rich, too grotesquely accurate, to dismiss. Then came the eruption: major news outlets, stunned and uncertain, broke embargoes and flooded the airwaves with truth.
Blackridge was real.
The Black List death squad was real.
The Russian Federation had authorized illegal executions.
And then, the face of General Mikhail Stroganov, a man long considered a cold war relic, was plastered across every screen—the final moments of his life captured live during the Kremlin Media Annex press conference.
President Viktor Malenkov appeared on state television two hours later. Stone-faced. Steel-eyed. He denied everything. He condemned the attack as "foreign sabotage by rogue actors." He hailed Stroganov a patriot. But his voice shook once. Just once. The world noticed.
Across continents, protests erupted. In Berlin, a crowd of over two hundred thousand filled Alexanderplatz, waving digital banners reading "NO MORE SHADOWS." In London, Parliament was brought to a screeching halt when Member Lila Okonjo revealed documents connecting MI-7 liaisons to covert knowledge of Black List activities. In New York, Wall Street plunged 800 points before the circuit breakers kicked in. Panic. Then rage.
But nowhere was the spotlight brighter than on Anne Ryker.
She sat in a grey chair beneath hot studio lights, wearing a blazer two sizes too large—borrowed, because she hadn't gone home in weeks. The studio belonged to VICE International. The segment, live. Her name: Anne Ryker. CEO of HelixCross Logistics. Survivor of Blackridge.
"Ms. Ryker," the anchor said softly, "thank you for being here."
Anne swallowed, her lips dry, but her eyes razor-sharp. "I wasn't supposed to be."
The broadcast played segments of the leaked footage: her body being dragged down Blackridge corridors. Electrical nodes affixed to her skull. Screaming in the dark.
The audience held its breath.
"I was about to become part of an experiment," she said. "Not a prisoner. A test subject."
The anchor blinked. "For what purpose?"
"Cognitive suppression. Memory partitioning. They were trying to weaponize forgetting. If they could make someone forget they were human, they could make them do anything. Like a puppet working for them"
She described the others. Whistleblowers. Journalist. Those who spoke the truth. Some disappeared. Some changed. The clip of her testimony was viewed 94 million times in less than two hours.
The White House issued a formal statement: "The United States has no involvement in the events surrounding Blackridge or the group known as the Black List."
But whispers crept in. Someone had funded logistics. Someone had erased flight records. Someone had ensured certain names never made it into public documents.
Back in the shadows of the world, private servers lit up. The world's intelligence communities weren't quiet. They were panicking. Because if Black List fell, it meant the others might too.
On encrypted forums, conspiracy theorists and rogue analysts scrambled to find the one name that hadn't surfaced. The keystone. The orchestrator. The people behind these revelations. But all signs pointed to a ghost within the U.N. itself—a figure so deeply embedded no agency dared say the name aloud.
And somewhere, through the churning chaos, O.Y.A. watched from afar. Underground. Hidden. But not still.
Half a world away, behind lead-lined walls and retina-locked doors, a facility sat buried under several meters of reinforced concrete. The location wasn't marked on any satellite map. It didn't appear in heat signatures or seismic logs. Because it was older than those systems. Built in the final years of the Cold War, then scrubbed from every record.
Inside, the air was cold and sterile. Buzzing with electricity and whispers.
He was tied to a gurney. Thick, cold bands of steel across wrists and ankles. His body arched in pain. Tubes were threaded into his spine. Electrodes burned his skin. Muscles spasmed involuntarily. A steel collar embedded with blinking red lights circled his throat.
Red Koschei screamed.
His voice bounced off the chamber walls, half-animal, half-human. His eyes flickered between rage and confusion. Shadows moved beyond the glass walls. Scientists in protective suits. Silent. Unfeeling.
"Begin memory stabilization sequence," someone said.
The lights above him turned crimson.
And Red Koschei began to remember.
Not everything. Just flashes. A face like his. Cold. Determined. A name he almost recognized. A voice he almost understood. His own name. Or the one they used to call him. Alexander.
He screamed again.
The lights turned white.
"Increase neural density calibration," another voice said. "He's rejecting the protocol. Again."
"If he remembers who he is," a third voice whispered, "we won't be able to control him."
A hush fell over the room.
Red Koschei opened his eyes.
He smiled.
Then, he spoke.
"I remember everything."
The chamber alarms blared.
Fade to black.