Where the Styx Runs Cold, Ch 1: The Iron Curtain's Super Soldiers Pt. 1
An elite strike team finds a horrific secret in a Soviet lab. The distress signal they followed? It's a scream.
1981
Even before Rita spoke, Hawke sensed the outpost wasn't just abandoned; it was haunted by something fresh and terrified.
The Soviet weather station, a skeletal shape against the bruised Carpathian twilight, thrummed with a strange energy. Not a ghost - Hawke dealt in the measurable - but an erratic energy that vibrated from the frozen earth into his boots, a frantic rhythm he felt deep in his bones.
Beside him in their cramped, snowy observation post, Rita was still, her gaze fixed on the distant station. Her stillness often preceded insights that bypassed logic for gut feeling.
"Shroud, Lancet, approach vector clear," Hawke murmured into his comm, breath misting. "Maintain sensory discipline."
On his HUD, linked to his biokinetic sense of the outpost, two faint human shapes - his operatives - left the treeline, vanishing into the windy gloom. Shroud was a mobile dead zone of sound and light; Lancet, a whisper of movement.
Hawke's awareness was already inside the fence. Through the station's foundations, he sensed a lone, terrified conscript deep inside. The fear was a frantic pulse, an almost physical sensation. He also detected automated defenses: pressure plates under the snow, motion sensors in the eaves, appearing as schematics in his mind.
"Automateds, sector seven and nine," he relayed, voice flat. "Lancet, bypass. Shroud, cover."
"Copy, Architect," Shroud’s filtered voice replied, followed by Lancet’s clipped acknowledgement.
Hawke watched their blips. The station's power flickered - Static, their support, likely probing its comms. Then a pressure plate signature vanished, then a motion sensor. A muffled thump came over comms: Shroud, non-lethally disabling the conscript. Efficient. Cold. Necessary.
"Interior clear, Architect," Shroud reported. "No hostiles. But you need to see this. Placing relay."
Hawke’s HUD showed a grainy, low-light feed from Shroud’s helmet cam. The station's interior was wrecked—overturned furniture, scattered papers. His attention went to the far wall: ugly, black scorch marks in starbursts he didn't recognize. A faint, almost ultraviolet shimmer clung to their edges—exotic energy. In the center was a device.
It was a crude mess of wires, scavenged circuit boards, and a repurposed car battery lashed to a metal plate. A grimy bulb pulsed faintly, emitting a rhythmic chirp. An electronic echo.
"Analysis, Shroud?" Hawke asked, already cross-referencing.
"Unknown configuration, Architect. Power source unstable. Signal is weak, directional, repeating every thirty seconds. Pointed… deeper into the mountains."
Hawke zoomed in, tracing the crude wiring. Primitive, but the energy residue wasn't. Rita shifted beside him, drawing a small breath.
"It's not just a signal, Arthur," she said, her voice tight, a mere whisper. "It's a scream."
Hawke stared at the device. A scream. Rita’s intuitions were often disturbingly accurate, seeing emotion where he saw data. He filed her word away; data came first. The crude beacon, the exotic energies, the terror he’d sensed—it all pointed to something far beyond a simple recon.
"Understood," he said, his voice neutral. "Pack it up. We have a new heading."
***
The exfiltration was clean. The SHEPARD mobile command unit (MCU), a temporary pocket of order in the Carpathian wilderness, felt welcome. Tucked into a hollow, camouflaged by thermal netting and disruption fields, the armored transport hummed quietly. Hawke watched his team stow gear. Breaker field-stripped his kinetic harness, muttering about the cold. Lancet, meticulous, recalibrated her emitters. Ricochet, the team’s marksman, was methodically cleaning the lenses on his spotter scope, while Patch, their medic, restocked a trauma kit with practiced efficiency.
Hawke ran a diagnostic on the "echo" device, now contained. Its crude build hid a complex, unstable energy signature. A scream, Rita had called it. He glanced at her. She stared out the reinforced viewport, her reflection pale against the snowy pines. Her usual quietness was deeper, tinged with something he couldn’t quite grasp—disquiet, but also something older, more resonant.
Lancet appeared beside him. Her presence was always subtle, almost soundless.
"What do you think we're dealing with?" she asked, her voice soft, eyes intent.
Hawke didn't have a concrete answer, only a hunch. Exotic energy. Ancient.
"We'll know soon," he said. "Do you have any ideas?"
"Nothing yet. It's strange."
Breaker leaned around her. "Do you think the Soviets have the resources to build it...whatever it is? They've been lagging behind us in tech for a while."
"Could be someone else, a third party. Or a fourth," Hawke said.
"I'm going to run this through the database, see if I get any hits," Lancet said, glancing at the device.
"Good. Get some rest."
Breaker snorted. Lancet looked like she wanted to say something more, but headed back to her station. Breaker rolled his shoulders, watching her go.
"She's going to work through the night again, isn't she?"
"Yes. The sooner we understand what we're dealing with, the safer we are."
"If you say so, boss. I'll be in the armory, checking the guns.
”She needs to learn to power down," Breaker added, his tone a rare note of genuine concern under the usual bravado. "Even machines need maintenance."
"Copy that, Breaker."
An hour later, it was time for the briefing. The MCU's central compartment transformed. A table retracted, and a holographic projector whirred, painting the air with the SHEPARD sigil. It dissolved, replaced by Director Oliver Cromwell, sharp-featured, his expression neutral.
"Architect," Cromwell's crisp, inflectionless voice filled the compartment. "Report."
Hawke summarized their findings: the outpost, minimal resistance, scorch marks, exotic energy, and the "echo" device. He omitted Rita’s interpretation; Cromwell wouldn’t value it.
Cromwell listened, his gaze steady. "Your findings match fragmented intelligence, Architect. The device, 'Echo-One,' seems to be a crude distress beacon from one of the… subjects." A tiny flicker in his tone at "subjects."
The holo-display showed satellite images of a remote, fortified mountain range in Warsaw Pact territory. Red circles marked heat signatures and signs of a subterranean complex.
"We believe Echo-One originates from a secret Soviet facility, 'Project Medved,' led by General Arkady Volkov." Volkov's stern, decorated face appeared. "A hardliner, likely operating outside official Kremlin approval, but with GRU support. His project aims to forcibly activate and weaponize superhuman potential."
Hawke felt his gut tighten. Forcibly activated. He’d seen such results before; they were never clean.
"Your new directive, Styx Squad, is 'Operation Winter Claw'," Cromwell continued, his gaze sweeping the team, though mainly on Hawke. "Infiltrate Medved. Confirm Volkov's program. Neutralize General Volkov and key scientists. Secure all research. Any… 'assets' encountered are to be assessed. If they are a threat, or can't be safely extracted for our evaluation, neutralize them. No project leadership survives. Plausible deniability is paramount. This operation does not exist."
Hawke met Cromwell's holographic eyes. Assets. The word was sterile, stripping away humanity. He’d heard it, used it. But next to Rita's "scream," it felt different, a dissonant note that reverberated uncomfortably in the back of his mind.
"Understood, Director," Hawke said evenly. The mission was clear, brutal. High stakes, high risk—SHEPARD’s specialty, operations that supposedly kept the world from chaos. He noted "extracted for our own evaluation." SHEPARD always wanted new assets, new weapons.
Plausible deniability. The unspoken rule: if things went wrong, they were on their own, ghosts in a machine that would deny them.
Cromwell nodded. "Tactical data and schematics are uploading. You move at 0400. Dismissed."
The hologram vanished, leaving them in silence, the weight of their new orders settling. Hawke looked at his squad. Breaker grinned with wolfish anticipation. Lancet’s expression was unchanged. Rita still looked out the viewport; Hawke thought he saw a flicker of sorrow in her eyes, or maybe just reflected light.
A scream, she’d said. He pushed the thought down. Time to prepare for the hunt.
***
The drop from the SHEPARD transport was a silent plunge into frozen darkness. Below, the jagged Carpathian Mountains clawed at a star-dusted sky. Hawke felt the HALO jump's rush, wind screaming against his helmet, then the controlled snap of the chute deploying low. He landed with a practiced roll in deep snow, senses already probing.
The Medved facility was hidden deep within the mountain, but Hawke felt its presence as a dissonant hum in the earth, an artificial knot in the ancient stone. Through his boots, his structural biokinesis began mapping the unseen: faint tremors from heavy machinery, the thrum of massive ventilation fans, the web of power conduits—all painting a ghostly, three-dimensional blueprint in his mind, growing clearer as they moved.
"Perimeter established," he murmured into the squad comm. They moved like wraiths through the dense, snowy pines, a dispersed formation for silence and overlapping fire. "Shroud, deploy dampener. Ricochet, eyes on the outer watchtowers."
"Copy, Architect," Shroud’s calm voice whispered. The air pressure subtly shifted, moonlight dimmed, and the wind’s howl muffled as Shroud’s sensory dampening field expanded—a bubble of near-silence, masking their approach and disorienting any observers.
Ahead, Ricochet, perched like a winter spirit in an old fir’s high branches, clicked softly over comms. "Two targets, Tower Alpha. Standard patrol. No enhanced optics." Another click. "Targets neutralized. Non-lethal." Precision, as always.
Hawke mentally calculated risks and timing. The main access tunnel was too obvious, too fortified. Cromwell's schematics were patchy, likely outdated. He relied on his own senses. He felt a less-shielded secondary power junction near what seemed like an old, reinforced geological survey shaft—a potential weak point.
"Static, probe for local sensor nets, Grid Reference Delta-Seven," Hawke instructed. "Lancet, prepare thermal breach on my mark. We're using the old survey shaft."
"Working," Static replied. A moment later, "Localized net detected. Low-level seismic and EM. Scrambling… Net down, Architect. You have a sixty-second window before reset."
"Copy. Lancet, execute."
Hawke watched Lancet, a shadow against the rock face, move with fluid grace. Her fingertips, glowing icy blue, touched the reinforced steel door of the shaft. No sound, just an intense, localized cold. Frost webbed the metal. Then, with a faint tink, a thick, circular section of the door fell inward with a soft thud into the snow, cut clean as glass.
Efficiency. Each Styx Squad member was a master. Hawke’s job was to weave their skills into a seamless, lethal instrument.
"Window secure," he announced, moving towards the breach. "Entry order: Breaker, myself, Rita, Patch. Shroud, Ricochet, rearguard. Static, comms silence unless critical. We’re going dark."
The air inside the shaft was cold, stale, with the faint, metallic tang of ozone and something else… organic and faintly sweet, like stressed copper. His biokinesis painted a clearer picture now: the irregular, frantic heartbeats of multiple individuals deeper in, their adrenaline spiking like faulty wiring. Beneath it all, the steady, powerful thrum of the facility's true heart—whatever monstrous engine Volkov used for Project Medved.
***
The moment they stepped through Lancet’s clean-cut doorway, the air changed. For the others, it was likely just colder, the usual stale air of an underground place. For Rita, it was like walking into a thick, chilling pool of despair. It clung to her skin and settled in her lungs, a silent, smothering fog of old fear. This wasn't just a place of secrets; it was a place of intense suffering, and the walls themselves seemed to weep.
She moved behind Hawke, her hand near the small, worn journal she always carried—a habit from when words were her only way to make sense of the world's constant, noisy song. Here, the song was a funeral march, a chorus of silent screams etched into the cold concrete.
Ahead, Hawke moved with a predator's focused intensity, his head tilted as if listening to secrets only he could hear. He was like a living map of the facility, his power part of its grim structure. Breaker, beside him, was coiled energy, ready for anything, his sharp gaze missing nothing physical. Lancet, a step behind, was icily calm, her face unreadable, as if the cold she controlled had seeped into her.
Did they feel it? Rita wondered. This crushing weight, this tangible echo of torment? Or did their powers, training, and willpower shield them from the raw human cost soaking this place? Maybe it was a mercy if they couldn’t. For her, it was a constant, low ache, a shared pain she couldn’t ignore.
The corridor was plain, grey, lit by harsh, buzzing fluorescent lights. But as Rita brushed her gloved fingertips along the rough concrete wall, she felt more than cold stone. Quick, broken images flashed in her mind: desperate, clawing hands; the faint sound of a sob lost in indifferent metal; a jolt of pure, animal terror. Residue. Emotional fingerprints left by those dragged this way, their hope fading with each step.
They passed heavy steel doors, each with a small, reinforced window. No sounds came from inside, but Rita sensed the occupants—or what remained of them. Knots of frantic, chaotic energy, some faint and nearly gone, others vibrating with a raw, unstable power that pricked her senses like static. Each door was a different note in a horrible symphony of suffering.
Further on, a dented metal tray lay on the floor near a junction, spattered with something dark. As she passed, a wave of nausea hit her so strongly she nearly fell. Not from the sight, but from the emotional imprint: a desperate, useless struggle, a brief, brutal fight, then agonizing pain followed by chilling, empty resignation. She pressed her lips together, pushing the feeling down, trying to compartmentalize it like Hawke taught, though for her it always felt like trying to hold water in a leaky cup.
This place wasn't just a military base, she realized with a certainty that felt like lead in her stomach. It was a violation, a desecration of something vital.
Whatever Volkov was doing here, he wasn't just building weapons. He was tearing souls apart and trying to rebuild the pieces into monsters. And the echoes of that terrible work were everywhere, screaming silently in the oppressive, frigid air.
***
Deeper in, the air grew heavier and colder. Hawke's biokinetic sense filled with chaotic, stressed life signs: erratic heartbeats, panicked adrenaline, and uncontrolled nerve impulses. These weren't soldiers; they were raw, exposed nerves.
Through slits in heavy steel doors, they saw glimpses: a figure huddled in a corner, rocking, limbs twitching with pale light; another strapped to a gurney, body arching as unseen energies surged through it; desperate eyes reflecting the harsh corridor light. Low moans and occasional sharp cries of pain were a constant, grim background to their silent advance. This was Project Medved—or what was left of it.
"Contact, corridor junction ahead," Hawke subvocalized, his senses flaring. "Four hostiles, Spetsnaz loadout. Alert."
Rounding the corner, sterile silence exploded into a firefight. Muzzle flashes strobed; rounds whined off concrete and steel. Breaker, a human shield, took automatic fire on his kinetic harness, roaring as his concussive blasts sent two Spetsnaz down. Ricochet’s specialized discs unerringly hit exposed joints and weapons. Lancet’s intense cold beams flash-froze another guard’s rifle, making it useless.
One Spetsnaz, tougher or luckier, survived the first assault. He dropped his jammed weapon, drew a heavy combat knife, and charged Hawke with a guttural yell.
No time for a sidearm. Hawke sensed the attacker's aggressive bio-energy and the chaotic fear of the remaining Spetsnaz. He reached out with his senses, drawing on ambient bio-electricity. The air around Hawke seemed to shimmer. The charging Spetsnaz, stumbled mid-stride, his war cry dying in a confused gasp as a wave of unnatural fatigue swept through him. Hawke, in contrast, felt a sharp, invigorating rush of vitality, his reflexes razor-sharp.
His counter-move was a blur. He met the faltering charge, blocking the knife. An elbow, powered by the stolen energy, snapped into the guard's temple with brutal force. The Spetsnaz dropped silently.
Simultaneously, the other two Spetsnaz, already fighting Breaker and Ricochet, visibly sagged. One missed a crucial shot, hands clumsy; the other swayed sluggishly. Breaker and Ricochet exploited the opening instantly. The fight was over.
Hawke let out a slow breath, the borrowed energy receding, leaving a faint metallic taste. He scanned the corridor. "Status?"
"Clear, Architect," Breaker grunted, shaking his head. "That last one almost got through."
Then, true chaos erupted. From a cell door damaged in the crossfire, a figure stumbled out—one of the "assets." Gaunt, wild-eyed, trailing broken restraints, its skin pulsed with a sickly green light. It wasn't attacking, just lurching blindly, keening, a creature of pure terror.
Before anyone in Styx Squad could react, one of the downed Spetsnaz, not quite out, propped himself on an elbow, raised his sidearm with a shaking hand, and fired three rounds into the asset’s chest. The luminescent figure spasmed, then collapsed, the green glow fading to dull grey. The Spetsnaz slumped back down, his own life fading.
Hawke stared. The asset hadn’t been an active threat, just lost. He noted the Spetsnaz’s final act: enemies prioritize eliminating uncontrolled variables. Then, a colder thought: Cromwell’s directive—"assets… if they pose a threat, or cannot be safely contained… neutralized." Would his own team have done the same? The unwelcome question pricked at him. The word scream echoed in his mind, sharp and insistent. For a split second, the professional mask cracked. His hand, hidden at his side, clenched into a fist.
A moment’s hesitation, a fraction too long, passed before he spoke."Secure the area," Hawke ordered, his voice flat, hiding a sudden chill unrelated to the facility’s temperature. "We move."
The air in the corridor was thick with the acrid smell of gunfire and something faintly coppery—the asset's spilled blood. Breaker and Ricochet methodically checked the downed Spetsnaz. Lancet stood impassively by the damaged cell, her gaze analytical. Patch, their medic, knelt beside the fallen asset, her quiet sorrow almost a physical presence.
Hawke ignored them for the moment. The siphoned bio-energy still thrummed faintly in his system, subtly sharpening his senses. He knelt beside the Spetsnaz guard who had shot the asset. There was no life left to drain, but the fading biological signature and cooling flesh still offered information. He closed his eyes, focused, and used the guard’s dying echo as a conduit to probe deeper into the facility.
The building pulsed. The chaotic, stressed life signs were now a raging inferno of biological distress. Beyond that, deeper in, he sensed dozens, maybe more, packed tightly together. Their collective panic and pain were a deafening psychic roar his disciplined senses struggled to filter. Underpinning it all was a single, massive, rhythmic thrum—an immense, unnatural power source.
"The main labs," Hawke announced, his voice flat, cutting the quiet. He rose, his gaze fixed on a heavily reinforced blast door at the corridor's end, a door not on their schematics. "That’s where Volkov is concentrating his… work. And something else. Something big. The power signature is off the charts."
Rita appeared beside him, her face pale, but her eyes held a new, resolute fire, burning away her earlier haunted look. The empathetic horror she’d felt had solidified into grim certainty.
"Arthur," she said, her voice low but heavy, "they’re not making soldiers. They’re victims. What we saw… that was just the beginning. And Volkov…" She paused, her voice laced with a cold, clear disgust that mirrored Hawke's earlier chill. "He’s not just building weapons. He’s reveling in it. I can feel it. This whole place is a monument to his sadism."
Hawke looked from Rita’s haunted, determined eyes to the blast door. It was thick, featureless steel, likely designed to withstand powerful explosives. From beyond it, he now discerned a low, powerful hum—the throb of the massive machinery—and faint, distorted cries, a chorus of suffering the thick steel couldn't entirely contain.
Victims. Reveling. Rita’s words painted a far grimmer picture than Cromwell’s sterile "assets" and "neutralize" directives.
He took a slow, deliberate breath, his expression unreadable, a mask of professional calm firmly back in place. The mission parameters hadn't changed, but the context was rapidly, disturbingly, expanding.
Hawke met the eyes of his team, now gathered and watching him—Breaker, Ricochet, Lancet, Patch, Shroud. Even Rita, despite her words, now watched him, awaiting his command.
He gave a single, sharp nod towards the blast door.
"Lancet, prepare to breach."
***