Through the torrents of snowfall Alexi could barely make out the shop owner counting his paltry earnings for the day. Unfortunately, for the shop owner, flowers are not in high demand in Tselinograd during the winter months. One would think that people would pay any price to lighten the dreary months but winter is bleak for everyone in the union, luxuries like flowers often take a back seat to the necessities of food and heat. Alexi pulls his eyes away from the binoculars and rubs them, he’s been sitting at this position looking out those lenses for hours without a break. His partner, Gregori, is lying on the bed, hat pulled down over his eyes. With each snore from his mustached mouth he exhales a saturated cloud of alcohol, which is to be expected when you’ve been drinking vodka all day until you pass out. Alexi shakes his head and reflects on what brought him here, a momentary lapse in judgement in a moment of panic resulted in his placement. They had thought that putting him with a seasoned veteran would instill some kind of discipline in him that he would learn something from the many years of experience Gregori had under his sizeable belt. The only thing he was learning was how to pick up the entire responsibility of an assignment while his partner slept one off.
He lights a cigarette and returns the binoculars to his face. The shop owner is still sitting down behind the counter, fiddling around in his files until something draws his attention at the doorway to his store. Alexi scans around but the view is blocked by a street light, he moves around from window to window in the safehouse, trying to get a different angle but with each movement less and less of what is going on inside can be seen. Moving back to his initial position he refocuses on the shop owner, now standing, pressing his back further and further against the back wall behind the counter. He reaches out, in his hand a packet of papers bound together. In fear he offers it to the stranger at the doorway. Alexi thinks”This must be why we were sent here, somehow this innocent seeming flower man is trading secrets with the Americans”.
Usually, as a punishment, the commanders would give a blow off assignment, a tortuous tedious effort with no result, no action. Either they had made a mistake, or the one Alexi had made was not actually as egregious as he had thought. He knew that even prominent party members had been suspected of espionage, maybe his actions that day had actually deterred something or scared someone into pointing the finger at someone else. Whatever the case, the innocent flower shop owner seems to be into something more serious than wilting tulips. The owner is now yelling at the man, shaking the documents furiously at him, with every shake it seems he is demanding, begging, and pleading for the man to just take the packet.
“Gregori! You need to see this.” Gregori answers with a guttural snore prompting Alexi to snuff his cigarette and whip it towards the slumbering giant. The embers scatter across his dirty grey suit and onto his chin awaking him with a start. “What the hell man?” grumbles Gregori, still dazed from his earlier activities. “I think this is what we were sent here to see.” answers Alexi motioning out the window. Gregori reluctantly rises, the shoddy bed squeaks with relief as his considerable weight lifts off it. He ambles across the room and to the window and snatches the binoculars out of Alexi’s hands. He rubs his eyes and puts the binoculars to rest above his bulbous red nose. He glares through the lenses for a brief moment before dropping them to the table. “This is it, let’s go!” Gregori bellowed and in one single motion bolts from the room, grabbing his sidearm. Alexi follows suit, grabbing his weapon from the table and stumbling onto the icy street behind Gregori.
The two agents press themselves tightly against the cold bricks of the florist shop’s entryway. Alexi cranes his neck, trying to covertly catch a glimpse of what is transpiring inside. “Alexi,” Gregori whispers across the threshold “I’m going to get the car in case he tries to run, no one leaves this shop, understood?” Alexi nods, small beads of nervous sweat flick from his brow as he does. Usually, the cold nighttime air would prevent such perspiration but all Alexi can think of is of the last time he had to wield his weapon. “It can’t happen again, it won’t happen again.” he assures himself silently, not noticing that Gregori has already slipped away into the side alley. Alexi takes a breath and steadies his hand, he peeks around the doorway and catches a glimpse a man dressed in orange. The stranger in orange appears to wield no weapon yet from the look of fear in the shopkeeper’s eyes, the lack of a weapon does not make him any less imposing.
In what seems like an instant, the mysterious figure has made his way to the other side of the counter and effortlessly lifted the shopkeeper into the air. The confidence that Alexi had assured himself of previously is now quickly draining from him as he focuses on the strange sight before him. The orange man is not hoisting up the shopkeeper with hands, but rather what can only be described as moving shadows. A swirl of black, phasing in opacity, emanates from his chest and encircles the man’s neck as he gasps for air. The papers he had in his hand have fallen to the ground and swirl around the stranger like a storm is forming above him. As Alexi steps into the doorway the shopkeeper stares at him, his eyes now bulging with blood as well as fear. Alexi lifts his weapon and points it at the strange being before him, his unsteady hand trembles bouncing the barrel of his gun around.
The figure before him slowly turns his helmeted head, still all the while holding the suffocating man aloft. His body does not move but his helmet spins completely around and Alexi sees before him not a face, but more of the same shadowy matter, spinning chaotically within the confines of the helmet. The visor opens and a column of black smoke and soot fires out at Alexi striking him in the chest and propelling him through the shop window onto the icy street. Phased and stunned, Alexi scrambles across the ice to retrieve his firearm only to be struck by the body of the now deceased shopkeeper. Alexi’s head lands hard on the ice with a resounding thud, assisted in its descent by the airborne portly corpse. Dazed, he lifts his head to see the stranger crouched in the frame of the broken window. He sits motionless, staring at Alexi with his swirling black mass of a face before leaping across the street and clinging to a fire escape.
Alexi rolls over and pushes himself off the ground and with a squeal of tires against the ice finds himself face to face with the headlights of Gregori’s car. His ears still ringing from the impact he can’t quite make out what Gregori is screaming about but with a point of Gregori’s sausage like finger he knows what he’s saying. Across the rooftops the stranger leaps, propelled by the black smoke that seems to both surround and permeate from within him. Gregori, impatient and still half drunk, can no longer wait for his fallen comrade to find his footing and takes off down the frozen street in pursuit. The stranger leaps from windowsill to rooftop effortlessly as Gregori screams down the roadway, he jumps from the corner tenement to a church and makes a quick turn down a side street with a precision that Gregori is not able to match, hopping the curb and striking a light pole and a woman carrying groceries. She hits the hard iron fence of the church which rings like a tuning fork with the impact. Her bags spill to the sidewalk and are promptly ground into a frozen paste beneath the spinning tires of Gregori’s car as he continues his pursuit.
Alexi runs to the fallen woman, her raven hair is mussed about her face as she lies still on the cold sidewalk. She’s unresponsive and not breathing, Alexi begins considering how best to sweep the incident under the rug, a robbery gone wrong perhaps, but the noise has drawn a few onlookers from the surrounding apartment windows. Points of light become visible as more and more people peer from their curtains and with each opening window his plans to potentially remove himself, Gregori, and the KGB from the situation become more and more slim. The ability to make an incident like this disappear is waning by the second. Then, she coughs, spittle pocked with blood splatters onto the pavement. Alexi, relieved, assists the woman to her feet, dispersing the majority of the crowd with a wave of his hand.
“Thank you” she breathlessly says “I don’t know what happened.”
“There was an accident miss, you are OK? Yes?”
“I’ll be fine I’m sure.”
Alexi’s gaze meets her, her emerald eyes lock to his, she grabs his hand and takes an unsteady step forward.
“I don’t think I’ll be able to walk home from here.”
Alexi leans down and drapes her arm over his shoulder, he places his other hand behind the nape of her knee and lifts her up, cradling her against himself. Her body’s warmth insulates him from the cold air that swirls across the stony streets. He can feel the gun in his holster digging into his chest as he grips her tightly and he’s sure that she can as well.
“I have a place close, you can rest there.” He says stoically, purposefully avoiding her eyeline. Alexi steps carefully across the stony ice laden street towards the safehouse, he knows that Gregori will not be pleased that he has brought a civilian to a facility but she won’t be around long enough to tell anyone. Who knows how far or for how long he’s going to chase that thing. That thing. It moved so fluidly, like it was swimming through the air, like every atom of it’s being were weightless but with such force that each time it landed the impact would rattle the window panes across the street. Alexi had never seen anything like it before and was fairly certain that no other man, woman, or living thing in this world had either.
Alexi carried the injured woman down the street towards the safehouse, dismissing onlookers and passersby with a simple “Official business, return to your homes”. The citizens of Tselinograd know to do as he says, the power of the Kremlin is long reaching and the possibility that they may meet the same fate that they believe the woman in his arms will is at the forefront of their minds. People disappear all the time with no explanation, this situation can only be seen as no different. Alexi knows what must ultimately be done here, this woman was in the wrong place at the wrong time and her fate has been determined by her own bad luck. He carries her up the stairs and places her on the bed. Her eyes are now closed, the shock of what had transpired or her injuries must have caused her to black out, there is a large bruise stretching across her neck and a wound on her head is stippled with blood. She wasn’t going to be a pretty corpse but it’s not like anyone would ever be seeing her again. Alexi pulls a small briefcase out from under the bed and de-holsters his weapon, his heart beats like a drum as he pulls the suppressor from the foam and screws it into the barrel. Before his current station with the agency he served in the Red Army and battled combatants during the invasion of Czechoslovakia, but hasn’t covertly had to silence anyone in the line of service yet. Sirens begin to fill the air as the police finally make their way to the flower shop. Alexi turns the final thread of the suppressor and puts it to the woman, the skin on her forehead tightens, reacting to the sensation of cold steel pressed firmly against it. Her eyes flutter open and stare panicked at Alexi, her mouth opens and a soft whimper trickles out as his finger moves towards the trigger
At that instant, Gregori slams through the door to the safehouse clutching his left arm. Alexi’s drops his pistol on the bedside and jumps up to assist the howling Gregori. Imbedded in the fleshy part of his bicep is a wriggling smoky tendril, like the ones that he had seen radiating from the creature earlier. Gregori screams “Give me a knife!” and Alexi hurries to retrieve one from the briefcase. In the turmoil, the woman tries to run for the now open door, and the safety of the hallway and what lies beyond. Gregori grabs her with his good arm and tosses her against a table in the corner, splintering wood across the flat. Gregori shouts “Toss me the knife and fucking shoot her!” and Alexi hastily throws the blade to Gregori’s feet and dives for his pistol. He pulls the gun up to a firing position as Gregori shoves the blade into his arm to dig out the wiry barb. As the knife penetrates his flesh the tendril shoots out a bright green light and with an ear piercing screech explodes with the force of a grenade into a flash of black and green matter, destroying the safehouse and leaving the three strewn across the remnants. Through the ringing in his ears Alexi can hear cars pulling up outside and sirens turning off. He blinks a few times before he plunges into darkness but not before seeing the silhouette of the woman scrambling away.