TIME WARP: One Last Time

[Evgeny Demidov]

The thing about Russia is that most citizens regret the fall of the Soviet Union. Inside the country is not uncommon to call its collapse a national tragedy of an enormous scale, and it was indeed. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or USRR, was a constitutionally socialist state of great power along Eurasia that officially existed since 1922 and ended in 1991, even though it was partially doomed since one of its greatest leaders, Leonid Brezhnev, in 1982. The real problem lies behind the fact that even though the USRR is no more, its biggest republic, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, or what is now the Russian Federation, has to still suffer of a terrible relationship with the western neighbors. More ex-soviet republic seek independence, and achieve it, to then seek more independence, creating a sea of more countries with bad relationships with each other that attempt to conquer territories that each feel is theirs initially.

It’s complicated.

The last of these wars over territory and political power, was the 2008 South Ossetia War, which ended being a highly analyzed international conflict due to the many international laws broken in the beginning and through the war by the three parties involved, Georgia, South Ossetia and Russia. The outcomes were the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and a diminished good relation with the outskirt regions of the Federation, which is why at all cost, Russia now attempts to prevent conflicts like these before they arrive.

February 28, 2010
1300 hours
Somewhere in the province of Girona, Spain

"Ok boys." The unit captain, codenamed Gray, spoke loudly in Russian to his team. "Debriefing is: It’s believed some rebel group in the Federation has started to spark up another international conflict among the republics. Intel says they’re getting help, or being fueled by, actually, by some party who happens to have a small base a click northeast from here." The sound of the helicopter the unit was traveling on was loud, but due to the fact that the unit was wearing headphones, everyone could clearly hear his voice with no trouble. "Why Spain, you ask? Well, don’t ask. This pity country, or kingdom or whatever it is, is not involved at all and if this goes public, neither is Russia. But this won’t go public and that’s why we’re here."Through the sides, it was now clear the air vehicle was descending. Below, a pretty empty and desert-like land expanded in all directions. Evgeny could already feel the heat rising from the ground. Accustomed to his cold Russia, he hated hot climates. "Intel says we’re are to find few to no resistance at all. We’re here only to find some paperwork on money transfers that can be linked to the culprits." Most team members sighed slightly with that, most were looking for some big fight. Evgeny didn’t, though, even though he was at Black Ops at his request, he enjoyed the calmed missions quite more than the loud ones. "Buckle your seatbelts, we’re here. Rendezvous point has been pinpointed to your GPS’s. Keep quiet, no shots until I say so. Half a click from destination we go into Alpha formation with Evgeny leading for extra intel in case we have surprises. I have a bad hunch. Until then, keep the chatter low, I don’t wanna know how you ate pussy yesterday."

That been said, Gray jumped off the helicopter, landing three meters below.

"Cap’n such a party pooper." Blizzard, a fellow comrade spoke as he looked outside. "Just because he didn’t get any, I bet." With a couple of laughs, he jumped off, followed by another unit member.

“And I bet he didn’t either." Evgeny said to the remaining comrade in the vehicle, and the only female one in this particular mission. “Come’on,” He pointed towards the exit by tilting his head. "You know I’m last."

[Yulia Sokolov]

Yulia fiddled absentmindedly with the strap of her helmet, not that it would lightly be unbuckled. She was only half listening to the chatter around her. She didn’t mind working in a unit which was all male save herself, except times like this. She personally believed that this was hardly the time to brag about what had gone on last night, but at the same time she appreciated the normality of it. It wasn’t that she had been particularly worried about this mission, but she did feel off kilter due purely to how hot it was in Spain. She was sweating, and that made her feel nervous.

They sat in pairs, as they always did, there was a general partner set up to the unit but that was suspended during missions like this. They were truly a unit. Then came the information about the mission that they were on. She did hate that part, she would have rather been briefed before being dropped off in a far too hot and foreign country. Still all the same she listened as they descended. She hoped that no one was watching, since she never had much faith in helicopters. She didn’t exactly find them to be the stealthiest sort of transportation, but for timing they simply could not be beat. Then again who was she to judge that? She was not the transportation expert here.

Yulia rolled her eyes as the talk curved back to the activities of the previous night. She kept out of this kind of conversation as much as she possibly could. Also, she herself never slept with any of them for the sake of her own position here. She had barely even finished rolling her eyes at what Blizzard said when Evgeny’s quiet comment made her giggle. She glanced at him and there was that familiar pitter patter feeling in her chest. All the same a moment later she was hopping out of the helicopter after the others. She found her place in formation, near the front. After all who needed a positioned sniper when they had a meta like her. She focused then, pressing what buttons she needed before resuming the conversation from before quietly via the channel she had that went to him.

”You boys, you talk big, I’m used to it by now though. I am sure if he got any it was just one of the secretaries. Those women, they fall for the special agent ploy every time from what I have seen. You would never catch any of the comrades with their panties around their ankles.” She adjusted her gun a little so that it didn’t rub and chaff against her leg. ”So what do you think about all of this Ev. All the way to Spain to stop a group back in Russia? This does not seem good to me.”

[Evgeny Demidov]

"If you can't catch a comrade with their panties in their ankle, Yulia, is because you're not trying." Evgeny said through her private channel with her partner as soon as he took position and started walking with the unit towards their objective.

"Or because the comrade is the one servicing." Another voice stumbled into his hear via the headset. "The, tighty whities is what you will see in someone's ankles."

"Really Blizz? No better thing to do that spy on our conversation?" Evgeny looked west to see the man behind his voice signaling a V with his fingers in front of his mouth and his tongue between the fingers.

"Well it's not his fault, Eagle." The more serious voice of the other unit member, besides Gray, was heard. "You two do always use the same channel."

"Captain Gray. Are you there too?" Evgeny asked.

"Yeah." Gray answered just before a group laugh was heard among the headphones.

"Yulia, go to that other channel we discussed." Evgeny pushed the necesarry buttons to use the second, hopefully more private, channel between the two.

"Just remember your codenames, kids, we're in the field and no one wants a report out of this." Gray said telepathically to what Evgeny unconsciously nodded.

"Yeah I don't remember what we were talking about..." Ev was popping a smile even though most likely no one could see it. "Oh right. Yeah, I don't think things will go awry. Capitain Gray always have bad hunches. I've been actively scanning the area since we started walking and believe, besides some weird worms and other subterranean... shit, there's not a living thing around." Then again, there was a whole kilometer between their position and their objective, while Evgeny's power only covered a hundred meter around himself. "Well, yet, anyway."

[Yulia Sokolov]

Yulia rolled her eyes as another voice burst onto the channel. Of course she had just been about to reply o what he said when that interruption came. Still that was a bit of a blessing because if gave her a chance to think about what he might have really meant. Were they really that easy and she just was not aware? Was he sleeping with them? One of them? All of them? Yulia shook her head to clear it and continued to walk. Still the last little comment was more than she could bare in a silent fashion.

“Ah, no, you do not speak about your comrades like that,” she scolded. “Though I can imagine those tighty whiteys around ankles, but I think you’ll have to rely on your hands.” Then again what was she supposed to expect from Blizz.

Then naturally a plethora of voices chimed in, and she just kept on walking, half ignoring it. This heat was awful, but she wasn’t all that much of a sweater, so she was managing well. She could only guess how some of the more burly men in the unit were just dying of heat. She glanced back at the commander when he rang in on the channel too. She’d be surprised if Gray didn’t drop before they got there.

“Hmm? Yeah.” She then switched over the other channel. Still for a moment she did not say anything to him. She just kept walking, her mind wandering as she checked her location in.

She had said all she could say to all of them anyways, she was outnumbered here. She knew that it was more important to fit in than it was to assert any kind of feminism. Then again, most of the time it didn’t so much as phase her, she was just on edge today for some reason. Maybe it was because she was starting to get tired of all of this.

She imagined a life that wasn’t this, and wasn’t her home life before she had been taken away. Just something where she didn’t have to compromise herself, or kill anyone. Then it was Evgeny’s voice that broke her from her reverie.

“Oh, have you? That’s good at least.” His ability did come in handy, but her mind was in a million places right now. “So, which one of them did you sleep with last night?” she teased. “I bet it was Mariska, I think you have an eye out for her, am I right?” This was not an awkward conversation between the two of them, after all they had been partners for seven years, first scouting and then black ops. Her step picked up a little.

[Evgeny Demidov]

"Mariska?" Evgeny couldn't avoid giggling a bit. "Have you seen her teeth? I will always wonder why the Federation doesn't adopt the same policy as other countries of having their soldiers be perfect inside out." Evgeny of course didn't think he was perfect, but he did think he was handsome. And his teeth were not nearly as crooked as Mariska's. "Then again Blizz over there wouldn't have a job now and what would we do without a clown in the group? You wouldn't make us laugh, I'm sure." He laughed a bit, hoping not get her in a bad mood with the comment and subtly leaving the hook-ups subject aside, Ev was not the sort of guy that kiss and tell. "God is so hot out here. Why can't we ever be sent to places closer to home or where I don't sweat this much? It's always tropical weathers... Guess bad guys don't like cold."

More worms, birds and animals Evgeny couldn't identify was all he could see via his ability besides, well, vegetation. It was as bored as it could get, but if there was something he had learned, was that it is usually only this calmed before a storm. They were closing into the first quarter of the walk when Evegeny's most recent scan showed something unusual.

"Captain." He said after changing to the main channel where Gray was. "About eighty meters in front of us there is a mass grave. About two dozen corpses. I'd say most are kids. It's straight under the path towards the enemy camp."

"People, be ready." Gray used telepathy to talk to his unit. "Eagle has clue that we may be nearing something. No resistance yet, though, but stay alert."

"There is a bunch of people buried in here." He said after changing into Yulia's channel. "I think this time his bad hunch was right. Are you ready for a big fight? O why do I ask, I know you are."

[Yulia Sokolov]

God she hated the army. Everything about this job made her feel sick once in a while. It was so frustrating, endlessly so, especially when it was impossible for her to quit. If she could just walk away from all of this and have somewhere to go that wasn’t a frozen over hell then she would, in a heartbeat. But then again she was not used to the think she wanted being unattainable. She was glad that he brushed off her question. She felt compelled to ask it but at the same time she really did not want to know the answer. She had fallen silent by this point, having nothing to say nor the spirit to really try. Instead her trudged along in formation with the rest of them. It was clear enough what he thought of her right now, so screw it all. She needed to focus anyways. “Yeah, I guess they don’t.” she said evenly, her voice flat. There was no point in trying to add animation. Yulia could feel some sweat beading on the back of her neck, making her hair a little damp.

Then she heard the crackle of him leaving the channel and she switched as well, listening to the report that he gave. After all he could see things that the rest of them could not. Still the news was grim in the extreme. The first part was ominous, but it was the second part that made her stomach clench. A mass grave, a mass grave of children. What in the world were they heading into? Well Yulia didn’t care now, she wanted to find the people responsible for that.

Gray’s orders made her head snap up. She was needed here. This was where she generally got to shine, as she could take someone out with a glimpse, if directed correctly. Still this was too much, dead children, she could not take that any more. She was going to try to get out of this once this mission was done.

She switched back to the other channel to catch what Ev had to say. “I don’t think I want to do this anymore.” And there it was, up ahead, that had to be the building. All the same she continued forward, only to be met by a hail of gunfire.

Yulia grabbed her own weapon and started to strike back. Still they would pop up and down, and while she could have sniped them off it was easier to use her ability a little. In total she took out four, killing two with her ability and two with bullets. It left her feeling woozy and a little bit sick.

EVERYONE CHECK IN IMMEDIATELY!! roared Gray’s voice in her head.

“I’m ok,” she responded somewhat weakly over the channel, it would take a few minutes for her to re-gear energy-wise, but she would be just fine in a few.

[Evgeny Demidov]

"Reporting." The silent Ghost spoke from his position.

"I'm fine too, Cap'n." Blizz said next.

"Reporting, sir." Evgeny focused his abilities to make sure everyone was taking a good enough cover with the small hill that was now allowing them to talk without needing them to avoid bullets.

"If you are, then I will have to ask you why the fuck you didn't see THAT coming?" Gray was rather angry.

"They're outside my range, sir." He tried, unsuccessfully to focus beyond the hundred meter range. "They have to be using snipers, don't ask me how Strike managed to take two with her gun."

"What? What did I say about no shots until I say so, Strike?" No one said anything. "Ghost?"

"I'm on it Captain" After making himself invisible, to anyone but Ev, of course, the man stood up from his position and walked up the hill. After a few seconds, he reported. "Two snipers in the roof. Three guards in the front gate. Four corpses are being taken inside by civilians. There are now four guards."

"We can take 'em Cap'n." Blizz shouted excited, of the unit, he was perhaps the one that loved warfare the most. "Just say the words."

"I know what we can and can't do." Gray mumbled. "Strike and Eagle take the front. Blizzard, you will provide cover and then join them in the gate. Ghost and I will flank from behind. Report when you three meet and noone, and I mean noone, enters until I give orders." Everybody nodded in silence to the orders. "Now Ghost, do your magic."

Words said, the comrade walked back to the unit position and patted everyone in their shoulder, making each team member invisible for the time being.

"I would say you have five minutes cloaked." The original invisible man said seriously.

"Then use them well. Now, Out." Gray and Ghost left immediately.

From his position, and only to Evgeny's eyes, Blizzard signaled that he was ready to cover.

"Come'on Strike." Ev stood up and readied his gun. "You lead."

[Yulia Sokolov]

Yulia had hunkered down with the rest to wait out what might be a storm of fire. She had simply acted back there, and her instincts tended to be right. After all wasn’t that why she had been drafted into this unit. She was somewhat miserable after all of that, which was totally understandable. Then came the discussion she expected.

She did have an answer for all of this though as the accusations started to fly through the wires at her. She sighed before pressing in and answering on the channel.

“First of all I have the riffle and very good aim, secondly you know I would not Gray, not if I didn’t think there was not another option. It isn’t like I fired first.” She knew that this attack was unexpected so Gray had to be stressed. Then again that was always Danil, completely different person from base to mission.

Ghost’s notes were grim to say the least. They hadn’t been told that the building would be guarded. This was going to be a mess, there was no way it wasn’t going to be.

Soon enough she was out of crouch position and back on her feet. She felt Ghost’s familiar tap. She knew that she was invisible now, and that was a comfort. Still she was nervous about it because this was something that she could not control herself.

As such she was slightly tense as she felt into the new formation, moving her way forward.

Yulia took the lead now. She took a good breath and then went in for the sprint. If they only had five minutes then she wanted to get close and have plenty of time to sneak in. This was simply closing distance. She had the riffle between her hands. On a mission like this it was her weapon of choice, she had a lot of range.

As she headed in she flipped channels. “Eagle, don’t let me get shot because I swear to God this is going to be my last mission.” She could not help that feeling, but honestly it was an empty threat. It was not like they would let her leave, and what did she have to stay for short of him?

Yulia managed to slip through the gate and then rang in on her radio again.

“I’m through Gray. What is the next move here?”

[Evgeny Demidov]

As they approached the building, Ev maintained his carefully timed focused scans of the area, he didn't want to start getting headaches for overusing and even less loss of vision, but he had to keep scanning to have an intelligence advantage.

[/i]Crap.[/i] He cursed as the entirety of the building came in range. It was times like these when having a telepath unit leader came in handy, home command would say, since what Ev was seeing through his abilities was not something that he should be saying out loud for other members to hear, and so, he yelled it in his mind, knowing that Gray had to be passively listening to all the team's minds. Gray? Gray! It's a trap. It has to be a trap. There are at least three dozen armed people in the building. Civilian counts go higher than fifty, and some are even being armed.

Silence. He and Yulia had arrived at the Gate and they were meters away from the four guards guarding it. They could be killed within seconds but then what. The mission seemed like a suicide mission now.

"Change of plans, team." Gray announced telepathically to the team. "We can afford making a mess and we will not. Eagle, infiltrate the building and complete the mission. Blizzard, join Strike and enter behind Eagle, covering him, but don't advance beyond the lobby. Ghost, you stay with me, we'll infiltrate through the back, join Eagle and then go out through the front with Blizz's and Strike's cover. While cloak is on, keep the stealth, no shots. After is off, just don't call too much attention. Expect heavy resistance. Radio silence. Now, off!"

"Gues is YOU don't let me get shot." Evgeny whispered to Yulia. "See you at regroup, then!"

Trusting in Yulia's ability to kill with her power, Ev proceeded to enter the building without anyone noticing him. Inside, he focused his power and started to look for the mission's objective: paperwork. They most likely had to be in the most secure place in the building, and by the amounts of guards, it had to be master bedroom in the third story. He continued to his infiltration, still having a minute and a half before invisibility wears off.[/justify]

[Yulia Sokolov]

Yulia stood still at the gate, ready to head inside. Of course she didn’t hear the specifics of the building, as Ev had told that mentally to Gray. This was making her nervous all the same. She didn’t want to stay in one place while Ghost’s effects ran out. She furrowed her brow, anxious, extremely anxious. This was already clearly a bad situation but she was going to do what she would. Then came the orders from Gray, and that didn’t make things any easier. She wondered what was going on, and exactly why they didn’t have the whole scope of it, but then again she guessed that they really didn’t have to know. She could follow orders as well as the next, though she tended to be built a bit more for leadership. There was a reason she often led in.

They had a matter of minutes so she was well aware how crucial this all was. She fell into formation given the new orders of how all of this was to be approached. They entered the building easily enough, and she and Blizz held back downstairs. There they waited in the lobby where it was all eerily quiet. Yulia was used to that though, the quiet before the storm that they would hopefully be able to wholly avoid. They had done it many a time before and they could do it now. After a few moments the cloaking went down on her and Blizz, just in time to be seen.

There he was on the stairs, he could not have been more than eight. The boy was clearly terrified as he looked at them. Yulia glanced at Blizz, standing there with his weapon out just like her. She thought back, she didn’t know all that much Spanish but she knew enough for this. She smiled comfortingly at the child. “Hello, I need you to get your friends and your family and leave. Do you understand me?” She radioed through to Gray and Ghost as the child ran upstairs. “I need you to create a distraction while I evacuate civilians.” Then the boy came back down, with other with him.

They were all wide eyed and frightened people, practically creeping down the stairs. Yulia opened the door and motioned them out as Blizz covered. She hear the sound of some gunfire coming from the back, good, they were doing just what she requested. Still that caused some of the civilians to stop in their tracks. “No, no its ok, keep going. Head west and we will do what we can to evacuate you further.” They kept moving and then, once outside, she saw them run. Satisfied by that at least she turned to Blizz, speaking softly. “Check the bathrooms here for anyone, I’ll cover you.” He nodded and headed into the first, and she stood there with riffle at the ready.

[Evgeny Demidov]

The reason why Evgeny was sent alone to complete the mission was an easy one: with his ability, he was the only one who could just go straight to the objective instead of looking in every room like any other soldier would. Now, someone like Ghost with invisibility was a good idea too, but this mission needed speed rather than stealth, so an invisible soldier was better off covering his team's asses by the method of surprise than infiltrating. Invisibility is not the only way to be unseen, Evgeny was taught once, you can just stay out of sight, and knowing every soldier's position in the building, where they were looking and their FOV, It wasn't hard for him to do it this time, specially when most were being entertained by gunfight in the lower story and he was still cloaked.

Invisibility wore off just after he entered the master bedroom. Fortunately, all guards were guarding the place from outside and none were inside, so all he did was close the door before someone noticed he was there and then hide from the subsequent bullets flying through the door. They started shouting in Spanish, ordering him to open the door, moment Evgeny took advantage of to run towards the desk and open it. It was the only place with sheets of paper in the whole building, so these had to be the papers they were looking for. As he started examining them, however, the resistance outside started to kick the door to open it, prompting Ev to assume these were the correct papers, shoot a bullet through the window to break it and then hide under the king size bed.

Gray! Gray! He yelled in his mind again, knowing if he talked he'd be discovered. I need extraction. I'm in the third story, right corridor, last door in the left. ASAP, I'd appreciate. No answer. He imagined the worse, was the captain hurt? He would have answered otherwise. He scanned the place through his powers to look for them, but something that called his attention. In a room not far from his, people were taking small cubic shaped objects of some sort and started placing what he clearly identified as detonators in them. Timed detonators. C4. They've got C4. They're blowing this place up. The bomb men were now going towards the stairs as Evgeny faced a decision.

The soldiers in his room, even though believing Ev had escaped through the window, were still there deciding their next steps. They were fat better armed and too many without an escape plan being too risky, but if he didn't warn the others, his team would be bombed. He had radio, yes, but talking in there would just scream to all others that he was hiding under the bed. It's all or nothing.

He shot one guard on the ankle, rolled out of the bed, and shot a second guard in his shooting arm. Running while avoiding bullets, and firing at any target he could to create the commotion that he was a threat and not only an escapee, he arrived at the stairs just in time to stop the guys carrying the C4, which he shot to prevent them from executing their plans. The men fell indeed, bombs still in hand, but due to him stopping, the ones chasing Ev managed to land a couple of shots at his shoulder. Bleeding, he continued running through the hall, however.

People seemed to forget, though, that the bombs were timed to explode any second, and as the guards walked closer to Ev to deliver the killing shots in a very dramatic way, the C4 exploded causing tremors around the building as it started collapsing.

Evgeny opened his eyes to see himself in a room locked by debris and listen to screams of pain and anger outside. He checked his watch, he had been out for about ten minutes. He worried about his team and after noting that his radio was damaged, he focused his Spatial Awareness. Much of the upper stories had collapsed into the firsts where the rest of them were. He examined every single body in the building but none of them had the Russian Black Ops uniforms. They were safe.

[Yulia Sokolov]

Yulia held her position in the lobby of the building, waiting for Blizz to come back out or to say anything. He wasuseful, no doubt about it but she doubted how much his freezing ability could do to in a hot place like this. Her brow was furrowed as she waited there anxiously. In the meantime she started trying to read some of the plaques and shields on the wall. Of course most just held names and nothing more. Naturally they didn’t want to display that sort of information so prominently and easily. Still what the heck kind of group was this? It made her feel sick that they would hold civilians in a place like this. Then again, the world was not a fair or a nice place, so there was really no surprise.

She heard the bathroom door open and she glanced over at Blizz. He shook his head at her and headed into the next bathroom to check that. She half wanted to ask him what the hell had taken him so long in there, but that smart comment would have to wait, they needed to be quiet right now. However something disturbed that quiet. She heard shots coming from upstairs. She took a step forward, but no more than that, she had her orders. Then it came over the radio.

“Strike! Go cover Eagle, make sure he gets out of there!” Yulia took a few steps towards the stairs, and then the C4 went off.

It was pain like Yulia had never felt before. She lay sprawled on the floor in the midst of the rubble, somehow miraculously still conscious. She had been thrown back almost to the door by the blast, and while her uniform had held up well she was smoking. There were burns on her bare hands and her helmet shield had shattered on her face. Still that was not the problem. There was something strange going on. What was that laying next to her in the rubble? Oh right, it was her leg… She blacked out.

Blizz had felt some of the effect of the explosion but due to the fact that he had been checking in the reinforced bathroom in one of the stalls it was mostly just shock and rubble dust along with minor injury. He managed to exit the bathroom in a bit of a rush to find the scene that Yulia had been left in. There she was on the floor, badly injured. However the most worrying piece was her leg. One of the shields had evidently flown off of the wall and nearly severed her right leg. She was loosing a lot of blood very quickly. Blizz approached carefully and started to do what he could. Given his ability, he started trying to freeze her as best he could, lower the body temperature and therefore slow the pulse and blood flow.

He radioed Gray and Ghost, and it was amazing how quickly his commander and comrade got there. He was in a panic by then, but Ghost was on top of things. He put a tourniquet on the leg as Gray called the chopper. It arrived quickly and picked them up, though Yulia was dangerously pale as she was brought up into the helicopter. Ghost, Blizz, and Strike were up and on their way back to a base.

Gray stayed behind.

A little while later, when the screams had faded and the survivors were running away Gray reached out telepathically, finding Evgeny’s consciousness out there. That lucky bastard had survived then, and he was very glad of it. He followed his senses to the blocked off room and started to move rubble. Though gray might have been in his forties he was strong as an ox. Finally he uncovered the door and pulled it open. Immediately he was speaking.

“Eagle, I’m glad you are alive.” He debated giving him any new on the team. Two injured, one possibly fatally so. “I need you to complete this mission, however things for you have changed. You are now dead to the world. Everyone you know will be informed that you were a casualty of this mission. You are no longer Evgeny Yegor and you never will be again. Your next step will be to complete this mission on your own. Do not contact anyone, do not fail. Do you understand me?” He figured that Eagle would.