Russia in winter is not a place. It is a silence.
A thick, unforgiving stillness that weighs on your chest and settles behind your eyes. In the northwest sprawl beyond Saint Petersburg, where the wind comes in from the Gulf like a blade, the snow doesn’t fall, it presses. Heavy. Relentless. Like it’s trying to bury something that still breathes.
Alon stood at the edge of a ravine carved by time and neglect, his boots cracking against the frost-hardened soil. Before him, the ruins of an old Roskomnadzor satellite hub lay slumped into the ice like a dead god’s ribcage, its spires snapped, cables dangling from steel girders like the guts of a thing too stubborn to die.
Nora stood beside him, goggles frosting, her breath ghosting in short bursts. She wore black thermal gear and a matte parka that caught snow like ash.
“We’re late,” she said.
“We’re not alone,” Alon replied.
She didn’t ask how he knew.
They moved in silence.
Down the slope. Through frozen brush and the echo of boots in powder.
At the threshold of the collapsed complex, Nora crouched, gloved fingers brushing aside shards of metal stamped with Cyrillic.
Объект 9А / КОНТУР ВНЕШНЕГО ШУМА
Object 9A / External Noise Contour
A code name.
One from the Cold War archives.
“‘External Noise’,” she read aloud. “That’s not surveillance.”
“No,” Alon said. “That’s memory laundering.”
She looked at him.
“Before Regenesis,” he explained, “the Soviets built containment systems for intercepted data they couldn’t decrypt. They thought some signals weren’t meant to be read. Only remembered.”
“Like what?”
He turned to her.
“Like ghosts.”
Inside the collapsed hub, the world narrowed to black walls and ice.
Cracked monitors. Frozen control panels. Icicles hanging from ceiling tiles like knives waiting for gravity.
And at the center of the central server hall,
, a standing coffin of black carbon fiber.
Unmarked.
Still humming.
Alon approached slowly.
He reached out. Pressed a hand to its side.
A pulse responded.
Then static.
Then,
A voice.
Fragmented. Female.
“Archive node active… Processing legacy cache… Voiceprint match: REGEV…”
Then silence.
Alon stepped back.
Nora’s voice was flat. “It knows you.”
“It remembers me.”
“From Beirut?”
He shook his head.
“No. From before.”
A hatch cracked open at the front of the pod. Hiss of steam. Frost flaked away from a retinal scanner and a thumbpad that pulsed a soft red.
Nora stepped forward.
She hesitated.
Then placed her hand on the reader.
Light surged.
The pod opened.
Inside,
, not hardware.
Not wires.
A person.
A man.
Emaciated.
Eyes shut.
Breathing shallow.
Naked except for a mesh suit webbed with ports and scars.
Alon stared in disbelief.
He hadn’t seen that face in over a decade.
Nora looked at him.
“You know him?”
Alon’s voice was hollow.
“He was the first subject of Regenesis.”
She blinked.
“I thought you were.”
He shook his head.
“No. I was the first success.”
He stepped closer, voice almost reverent.
“This was Subject Zero.”
And just before the lights flickered, just before the hum deepened into something not mechanical, but alive, the man’s eyes snapped open.
And he whispered one word.
“Run.”