Logic of Madness RPG

Alex Voronov. 28 years old. Russian, born in Moscow, emigrated with his parents to Switzerland at fifteen. Then he hated them for this - to tear them out of the familiar, from the lived-in, from what he considered his own. Now he understands: they saved their lives. Moscow in the nineties and noughties does not forgive those who try to remain human.

He is not handsome, but he is remembered. The face is sharp, the cheekbones are clear, there is a scar on the bridge of the nose - broken at 23, when I took the head of the mafia clan. Then they smashed his face on the table, and he didn't even blink. I finished the interrogation, signed a confession, and then went to the hospital. The doctor said: "I had to do it right away." Alex replied, "I'll go when I'm done." His hair is red, the same shade that earned him the nickname "Red" as a child and blows in Moscow school. Now he wears it short, he doesn't follow it. The eyes are gray and heavy. A look is like a scalpel with which a lie is revealed. He does not look at a person, he shines through him. Many criminals broke down even before he opened his mouth - this silence and those eyes were enough.

Height 187. He trains three times a week - not for beauty, so that if something happens, he can catch up and fail. He carries the pistol all the time, Glok 19. He hates ties - "this is a noose, not an element of the wardrobe". The shirt is always with rolled up sleeves.

He became a detective not because he dreamed of catching criminals. Because he could not sit idly by, watching the guilty evade answering because of formalities or the stupidity of the system. For him, the law is a tool, not a dogma. He oppresses him if he needs to catch someone who really deserves prison. The authorities are afraid of him. Colleagues respect, but do not invite for beer after the shift - they know that they will refuse. He has no friends at the station. And there are no enemies. There is only a job and a sister. My sister is a second-year law student, the only person in front of whom he is relaxed, for whom he will cry (no one has seen it, but he knows that it is true). He visits his parents once every two weeks, always on Sunday, always with flowers for his mother.

There is a strange anomaly in his career: at the age of 28, he was appointed manager of the department for the investigation of murders and espionage. The youngest in the history of Zurich. The police whisper - they say, protection, lucky. Those who worked with him are silent. They know that he is unlucky. He is simply the best. He notices things that others miss: micro-expressions, breath holds, the direction of the pupils, the way a person puts a cup on the table. He reads people like an open book written between the lines. He does not believe in chances. If something looks like a coincidence, it's either a false trail or someone's plan.

He does not know how to lose. Defeat for him is not an experience, but a wound. He can't stop. He takes a job and brings it to the end. Even when the bosses order to close it. Even when it's dangerous. Even when it destroys himself.

He first met Kira in the interrogation room. The light of the lamp struck her eyes, he sat opposite, oppressed with his voice, his look, the silence. He thought she was an ordinary spy, dangerous but understandable. He was wrong. She knocked him out in seconds, fled, destroyed all the data about herself. It was his first defeat. His career hung in the balance. His superiors gave him a chance to find her. And he started digging. At first, as an obsessed person - a case, evidence, threads. Then deeper. And the deeper he went, the more clearly he understood: this was not espionage. It's much more than that. An organization about which there are no records. Agents that don't exist. And a woman who hunts them alone because no one else can.

He should not sympathize with her. She is a criminal. She's a murderer. She has blood on her hands, and her laughter during torture is recorded in the protocols as a "sign of a mental disorder." But when he found her again, not in the interrogation room, not in the shootout, but just watching the sunset from the window of his own apartment (she had infiltrated him), what he saw was not a monster. I saw fatigue. I saw the pain that she hides behind her blue eyes and black irony. I saw a man who forgot how to cry and instead kills.

Now he is on Kira's side. Not immediately. Not easy. First there was denial, then interest, then conflict with oneself, and then choice. Not between law and crime. Between what is correct in letter and what is correct in essence. He chose Kira. He fell in love not with the murderer, but with Kira herself, not with the Shadow, but with a woman.

For Kira, he became an anchor. The first person who looked at her without fear and desire to kill. Who didn't ask her to be weak, just let her not be strong every second. She does not know how to love. She had forgotten how to trust. But with him, for the first time, she thought about staying. Not to take revenge. Not to kill. And just to live. Waking up in the bunker, drinking black coffee with him, listening to him talk about the case he is leading, knowing that she is the very criminal he is supposed to catch. And laugh. A real laugh. The one that she buried as a child somewhere in a Finnish orphanage.

Additional: He does not believe in luck. He is also afraid of heights. Not panicked - just unpleasant, tries not to look down from the bridges. And he hates the smell of cheap tobacco - it smells of Moscow, the alleyways and other people's drunken fights, from which they left to start a new life. He doesn't sleep well – the brain doesn't turn off, scrolls through things, looks for connections. Sometimes he falls asleep at the table in the station. No one wakes me up.

He is not a hero. He's just a detective who knows how to read people too well and realized too late that some books are better not to open. Because, having read someone else's pain to the end, you will no longer be able to close your eyes and pretend that nothing happened. And he does not know how to pretend. This is his power and his curse.

Anton Gray, 24 years old. A Ukrainian who was kidnapped at 14 is late by the standards of Atract, when the character is almost formed, which means that it will take longer and more painfully to break him. It was broken. Every day, for any weakness, for tears – especially for tears. Bats, whips, hunger, loneliness. They killed his friend in front of their eyes, with whom they shared a camera and dreams of escape. Then they forced me to wash the blood. Twelve hours, until my hands were rubbed into meat. He did not cry. I stopped crying a month before when I realized that tears are just permission to hit harder.

Call sign Fox. For cunning, for lively eyes that lie even when they tell the truth, for the ability to get out of where they can't. The atract made him a predator - shock force, liquidation, meat. But inside he remained what he was before the injections and whips. Cheerful. Kind. Almost foolish. I just learned to hide it deeply, because in Atract, kindness is a sentence.

He looks younger than his years: soft features, brown shaggy hair - always falling on his forehead, he constantly throws them back. His eyes are brown, lively, with a sparkle. Height 179, strong build, but not a fighter of head-on collisions, but nimble, fidgety, elusive. On the left forearm, a scar from a burn is an experiment, a test of the pain threshold. On the back there are scars from whips, neat, parallel. Atract did not strike in anger. She punished in doses, calibratedly, almost surgically.

The last task was the hunt for the Shadow. He was promised freedom - false documents, money, a new world. He did not believe it. But hope is the last thing that dies. In the team with him were Mouse and Hawk. Hawk - a machine, a predator of the highest class - framed them both, used them as bait, knowing that the Shadow would torture them long and painfully. The mouse could not stand it. He died on her table, choking on his own blood and his own pain. And Anton looked into the eyes of the woman he was supposed to kill, and for some reason he was not afraid. Maybe because it was already worse. Maybe because he was so tired of being afraid.

During the torture, Kira asked: "Do you want to live?" It did not sound like a mockery. It sounded like a question to which he had only one answer. "Yes." And she believed. Because there was no lie in his eyes. Because she had never heard any of her victims say it like that before—without praying, without haggling, without trying to deceive. He just admitted: he was tired of being a pawn.

Now he lives in a bunker. Kira forbade him to be a soldier, not by an order, but by a request that made his heart sink. He obeys. Not because he is afraid. Because for the first time in his life, someone asked him not to kill, but to be a man. He cooks - it turns out so-so, but Kira eats and does not complain. He brings wildflowers from the surface and puts them in a jar in the kitchen. He turned on music in the bunker - at first Kira was angry, now she puts records herself when Anton is silent for too long. He calls her "sister" every other time – not on purpose, he breaks out of his own accord. She doesn't correct me. And if someone touches Anton, the Shadow will burn half of Europe. Not because he is its soldier. Because he is her family. The only one she has.

Inside, Anton is still the boy who was beaten for crying. He shudders at the sharp sounds. He does not sleep in complete darkness - a night light is always on in his room. He cannot eat cold food, he heats everything, even bread. I can't stand the smell of iodine and bleach - it smells like a medical Atract. Sometimes he has seizures. He doesn't cry — he freezes. He looks at one point, does not move, does not breathe. Kira learned to just sit next to her. Do not touch. Don't talk. Just to be.

He is not weak. If necessary, he will stand with a weapon next to her, despite the ban. He is not stupid - he sees everything, notices how Kira looks at that red-haired detective, and is silent, because he feels that she needs time. He dreams of seeing the sea one day. For real. Kira promised that after everything was over, they would go. Both know that "after all" may never come. But he holds on to that promise.

Status: Deserter, former Ghost, hunter of the Atract, owner of a bunker near Zurich. Shadow.

Real Name: Lost. It burned down in the orphanage, then in the laboratories, then in herself. Kira is a name that she chose herself. I accidentally heard it in some old movie, when I was stealing data from another database. It meant nothing, no secret. It just doesn't hurt. And her.

Callsign: Shadow. I received it back in the "Ghost" program, when the instructors noticed: this girl was disappearing. It does not hide, but disappears. You turn your head, and it's gone. Not a thermal imager, not acoustics, not air movement. As if she had learned to fall out of reality. Then, as an adult, she brought this skill to the absolute limit.

Age: 26 years old.

Place of birth: Finland. The exact city is unknown, the records are destroyed, the memory is burned. Sometimes in her dreams she sees snow and a white night, but she does not know whether it is a memory or a phantom.

Where did you get it: At the age of 6 from an orphanage. An ordinary girl with an unusual look, but too calm, too observant. Agent Atract, who conducted the selection, noted in the report: "He does not cry. Does not cling to adults. Ideal material".

How much on the run: 5 years. She escaped at 21, just after the Ghost program was deemed "complete" and the survivors were deemed "ready for operation." It wasn't ready, it was broken. But she is broken just enough not to beg for mercy and not to know fear.

Listed: Best Atract Project. The perfect ghost. Architects spoke of it as a "breakthrough" and "the future of the species." Her file was marked "Not to be destroyed", the only copy that Atract was never able to recover after her escape. Kira took him with her. Sometimes she rereads it, not because she wants to remember, but because she wants to remember whom she hates.

Atract didn't just train her. Atractus rewrote it at the molecular level, making a child a weapon of slow, painful alchemy.

Regeneration:

Kira heals ten times faster than normal. The cut on the hand disappears in an hour. Bullet through per day, if there are resources. She lost limbs, recovered in a week. But you have to pay for it: regeneration requires a huge amount of calories and specific drugs that it synthesizes itself.

If Kira does not eat or does not enter the formula, the body begins to devour itself. She's used to it, it's part of the deal.

Poison Resistance:

Most toxins, nerve gases, poisons are a nuisance to her. The liver and blood process what would kill an ordinary person in minutes, but there are exceptions. She knows them all and carries antidotes with her.

Speed and agility:

She is not faster than a bullet. But it is faster than a person who pulls the trigger. This is enough to get out of the line of fire if you saw the shooter before the shot. That's enough to cut through three in the dance before the first one falls.

Shadow ability:

Not mystical. Not supernatural. This is control taken to the point of absurdity. Kira can slow down her heartbeat to twenty beats per minute. It can breathe so that there is no air movement. Relax muscles to the point of "invisibility" to thermal imagers. He knows how to move in the blind spots of human perception, where the eye does not look, because he does not expect to see a threat.

Instructors called this the "void effect." Opponents of the Black Death. Kira just calls it survival.

She is not insane in a clinical sense. She is insane in how deeply she has hidden her pain and how strangely this pain comes out.

Personality Core:

Destroyed at the age of six. Instead, there is emptiness filled with hatred. Hatred, her fuel, her compass, her reason not to twist her neck in the darkness of the bunker. Without hatred, Kira does not know who she is. Without hatred, she is just a set of reflexes and scars.

But there was an exception.

Bunker:

She loves her bunker. Not as a base, not as a shelter, but as a home. For the first time in twenty years.

She remembers how she found him. Abandoned, cold, smelling of rust and death. She made him different. She brought carpets. Warm to drown out the footsteps and the cold of the concrete. Lamps with soft light, not the hospital neon that makes her eye twitch. Books on the shelves, not technical manuals, but old novels that she will never open, but likes to just know that they are there.

When Anton came, the house became warmer. It brings flowers, field flowers, which it finds somewhere on the surface. He puts it in a jar in the kitchen. Kira was angry at first, because flowers wither, it's garbage, useless. Then I stopped noticing. And then she began to wait for him to bring new ones.

Kira doesn't say "I love my bunker." She just goes back there every time. And he exhales only outside the hermetic door.

Laughter and torture:

She laughs when she tortures. Not because she is having fun, but because if she does not laugh, she will scream from the pain that even her drugs cannot cure. Laughter is a valve. Let off steam so as not to explode.

Sometimes she jokes. Black, scary jokes that make victims cry in horror even before she takes up the blade. This is also protection: to depersonalize the enemy, to turn him into a target, not a person. Because if she sees a person in him, she will not be able to kill. And she should.

Tears:

Kira does not cry. Never. She forgot what it was. Or she forbade herself so long ago that the physical mechanism atrophied. When she is in unbearable pain, she does not cry, she goes to kill.

What home means to Kira:

The bunker used to be just a base. A place where you can sleep, recharge, wait it out, now it's home. She doesn't know when the transition took place, maybe when Anton first cooked dinner and called it "family," maybe when Alex brought a book and said, "This is for you. Read it when you get tired of killing."

In the bunker there is:

Kitchen - always smells of food. Anton cooks. She washes the dishes. This is their ritual.

The living room has soft light, carpets, an old record player. Kira sometimes listens to the classics. Sometimes jazz. Anton endures. Alex once said that she was a "strange woman" and received a blade at her throat.

The laboratory is its territory. Clean, sterile, cold. Anton rarely comes here. Here she is a scientist, not a sister.

The training hall - the walls are scratched with blades. Here she dances when she can't sleep or when there are too many thoughts.

The bedroom is small, warm, with a soft blanket, but weapons, folders with documents and various devices are scattered everywhere. Kira used to sleep in armor. Now in soft pajamas, which Anton bought in the nearest supermarket.

5. EQUIPMENT.

Special Shape:

Ultra-resistant material, similar to second skin. It does not burn, does not cut (with ordinary knives). Bullets slow down but do not stop completely, Kira does not wear heavy armor, she relies on speed. The suit dampens the heat trace and almost does not allow odors to pass through. Made to order from a contact who does not ask questions. The price is half of its annual budget.

Perfect Blade:

Also custom-made from a special alloy.

Inside the handles there are microchannels for a paralyzing substance. It is enough to press the hidden button and the drug impregnates the blade. Kira can kill quickly or slowly, disabling the victim piece by piece.

Hacking kit:

Modular device the size of a phone. Connects to any port, hacks, copies, destroys. Kira updates the firmware every two weeks - Atract does not sleep, their ciphers change.

First aid kit:

A small case with drugs. Regeneration (emergency, for combat). Antidotes. Anesthesia. Stimulants.

Combat:

1. Absolute master of melee weapons. Blades are extensions of her arms. She uses any other type of weapon, but does not like it: firearms are noisy, crude, soulless. Her style is silence and the geometry of death.

2. The Dance of Death is an individual fighting style. A mixture of capoeira, contact improvisation, army knife fighting and acrobatics with ballet. Yes, ballet. The atract forced her to learn dances for plasticity, for body control, for the ability to move beautifully even in mortal combat. Kira hated lessons. Now dancing is the only thing that brings her a semblance of peace.

3. Hand-to-hand combat without weapons - emphasis on breaking joints, strangulation, pinpoint blows to nerve nodes. It does not hit the jaw, it takes a long time. It hits where the body shuts down instantly.

Technical:

1. Top-class hacker. She learned in Atract, for the Ghost the ability to break nets is as important as the ability to kill. It knows the systems from the inside, remembers the vulnerabilities that scientists have laid. For her, hacking the Atract base is not a feat, but a routine.

2. Creation of viruses and protected media. Her flash drives-"exchangers" are a masterpiece of engineering. You insert it into any computer and the self-destruct virus erases everything on the media, and the data flows into the flash drive. Kira leaves no trace. Never.

Chemical and biological:

1. Synthesis of drugs, poisons, antidotes, serums. She knows dozens of formulas by heart - she stole them from the laboratories of Atract before escaping. And her laboratory in the bunker is a mini-pharmaceutical production.

2. The truth serum is her personal development. It is pierced in the neck, a minute later a person begins to burn from the inside if he tries to lie. The stronger the lie, the stronger the pain. Limit cardiac arrest.

3. A paralyzer is a drug that she applies to blades. A scratch is enough for the victim's muscles to atrophy to the point of complete immobility in a minute.

"Weakness is a choice."

A child who cries in pain is told: you have chosen weakness. Killing his friend, they say: he chose weakness. Breaking the will, they say: now you choose power. This is a lie, of course. None of the children chose anything, but by the age of sixteen they begin to believe in it themselves. This is the only way not to go crazy.

"Pain is the best teacher."

Atract could train agents in humane ways. I could. But he believes that pain forms character faster and more reliably. The blow is remembered. The scream is forgotten in a minute. The pain stays forever. Those who have learned a lesson through pain will never forget it.

"The result justifies the means."

Classics of totalitarian ethics. The atract does not hide its cynicism. Architects sincerely believe that a few thousand broken children's lives are a negligible price to pay for the creation of a new species. For control over the future. For a power that no government can challenge.

8. CONTRADICTIONS AND VULNERABILITIES

The atract seems invincible. But he has weaknesses.

The first is personnel.

Agents, even the most broken, sometimes stop obeying. Kira is the best example. But not the only one. Architects fear rebellion more than external enemies. Therefore, the Atract security system is aimed not only at external threats, but also at its own people, it works even harder.

The second is arrogance.

Atract is used to being a shadow that cannot be caught. Over decades of impunity, they have relaxed. Not all, but many. Commandants and Overseers leave digital footprints. Scientists overestimate their defenses. This gives Kira a chance.

The third is ghosts.

Atract created five ideal soldiers. One of them is now hunting them. They spawned their most terrifying weapon and lost control of it. This is an irony that the Architects may have already realized. Too late.

Genetic modifications:

Atract is proficient in genome editing techniques that are recognized by mainstream science as "experimental" or "impossible." Decades of research on the living have yielded results that cannot be published in ethical journals.

1. Regeneration: accelerated cell division, wound healing is ten times faster than normal. A side effect is an increased risk of cancer, but the Ghosts don't care. They still do not live to the age when cancer becomes a problem.

2. Resistance: Modified liver and blood, breaking down most toxins. The Ghost will survive lethal doses for an ordinary person with nausea and weakness.

3. Nervous system: accelerated conduction of signals, which gives a superhuman reaction speed. The limit is about 0.05 seconds per visual stimulus. This is enough to dodge a bullet if you see the shooter before firing.

Implants:

1. Pain filter is a chip in the spinal cord that suppresses pain signals on command. You can turn it off completely and then the agent does not feel anything, even broken legs. You can turn it back on and then the pain returns in full, which sometimes leads to shock.

2. Reaction stimulator – implanted in the motor cortex, synchronizes muscles with thoughts. It is thanks to him that the Dance of Death is possible. Kira doesn't think about where to hit, she just dances, and her body obeys.

3. Sensory amplifiers (in some) – the retina covered with nanolayers for night vision. Cochlear implants for ultrasensitive hearing. Kira refused these modifications, they give an advantage, but break the perception of reality. She preferred natural sensory, brought to the limit by training.

Drugs:

Atract has developed dozens of chemical formulations to control, enhance and punish.

Experiments:

Each Ghost is a unique set of modifications. No one was the same.

Experiments were conducted on Kira at the genetic level - accelerated regeneration, resistance to poisons, increased bone density. She was implanted in the nerve nodes to control the pain threshold and reaction speed. She does not remember how many surgeries she undertook. She remembers only the smell of antiseptic and the coldness of the metal on her back.

Other Ghosts were modified differently: some had their eyesight enhanced (night photography, thermal imaging without devices), some had their hearing (could hear whispers behind the wall), some had armor plates implanted under their skin. Every experiment is a risk. Every risk is death.

Five remained, and the rest... The rest simply disappeared. They died during training. Or they were recognized as "not promising enough". In the Atract there was no word "commiss". There was a word "recycle".

How the five survived:

No one knows. The Ghosts themselves cannot explain. It's just that their body turned out to be compatible or their will turned out to be stronger. Or they were just lucky.

Kira does not believe in luck. She survived because she hated. Every minute. Every blow. Every scream of the next cell. Hatred became her metabolism, her fuel. Its cause is not to close your eyes forever.

What happened to the Ghosts after the program:

The five survivors were distributed to different regions. They were forbidden to contact each other. They have become the most valuable assets of Atract.

Kira was the first to escape. Three years after the end of the program.

The other four are still working for Atract. Someone, perhaps, also escaped. Someone may be dead. Kira doesn't know. And he doesn't want to know yet.

Ghosts were created for tasks that even the best Predators could not complete. Penetration into impossible places. Murders of those who are protected as a national treasure. Disappearances without a trace. In total, forty-seven children were taken into the program. Five survived.

Selection:

Children were selected at the age of 6-8 years. The criteria are not physical. Mental: high pain threshold, tendency to dissociation (the ability to "disconnect" from the body), low need for social contacts, lack of pronounced empathy.

Kira came up on all points. She was the perfect candidate. Ideal material.

Training:

What the Wraiths went through is no match for the training of regular agents.

They were taught to kill without weapons. With bare hands. With nails. With your teeth. Implants with electrical discharges, sewn into the spine, stimulated the nervous system so that even in a moment of agony, the Ghost could strike.

They were taught not to feel. At first, cold, hunger, thirst. Then the pain from fractures, burns, cuts. Then fear, disgust, pity. The latter is the most difficult to leave. The instructors found a way: they forced the Ghosts to kill each other. Those with whom they shared food. Those who cried at night. Those who were the only friends in this hell.

If the child refused, he was killed. And they forced the rest to watch. And then wash the blood.

They were taught to disappear. Not just hide, but dissolve. Breath control to such an extent that the thermal imager does not register. Gait control so as not to create vibrations. Even thought control, because Atract was experimenting with prototypes of nerve impulse readers.

An atract does not make "just a soldier". It stamps tools of different calibers.

Rodents:

The lowest category. Intelligence, surveillance, data collection, information warfare. Rodents should not come into direct contact with the enemy, their task is to remain unnoticed, sewn into the gray noise of the city.

They are trained differently: not so much strength as patience. The ability to wait. The ability to blend in with the crowd. The ability to listen to other people's conversations without turning your head.

There are a lot of rodents. They are the eyes and ears of the Atract. They are rarely killed on missions, but they are often broken mentally: too long observation of people, too deep immersion in lies.

Rodents' call signs are small animals, insects, sometimes birds: Mouse, Rat, Magpie, Hornet, Horsefly.

Predators:

The main striking force. Liquidations, assaults, captures, tortures on assignment. Predators are those who are released on the target when the Rodents have obtained information.

They are trained to survive in battle, to be hurt as part of the job, to kill as a reflex. A predator should not doubt. A predator should not feel sorry. The predator must pull the trigger, even if his camera brother is at the other end of the scope.

Predators' call signs are large animals, birds of prey, dangerous reptiles: Wolf, Fox, Hawk, Serpent, Bars.

Ghosts:

A standalone program. Experimental. Closed.

If Rodents are a tool and Predators are a weapon, then Ghosts are a concept. An idea that Atract was trying to bring to life.

The ghost must not exist. Not to have a past, not to leave traces, not to be recorded on any camera, not in any database. A ghost is a gap in reality. A place where a person is gone, but someone dies.

They were trained differently. Not for strength, but for absence. On the ability to become a shadow. To control every muscle, every breath, every heartbeat. The ghost could stand two meters away from the target in complete darkness, and the target could feel nothing: no smell, no movement of air, no instinctive fear.

Architects:

Supreme Management. There are from five to nine of them (the exact number is unknown even within the organization). No one knows their names, faces, real roles in the world. Architects do not appear at the bases in person, only through encrypted channels, only with a voice changed beyond recognition, or with text devoid of emotion.

They formulate goals. They set the vectors. They look at children as raw materials, agents as tools, scientists as obedient machines.

They are the ones who invented the Ghosts.

Council of Supervisors:

Middle managers. Those who see the faces of agents, whose hands are covered in blood up to the elbows. Each Overseer is responsible for the region (Western Europe, Eastern Europe, North America, Asia, Middle East). They distribute tasks, monitor the results, and sign orders to eliminate the "unfit".

The overseers are former agents. Those who lived to be thirty-five. Those who were broken so qualitatively that they themselves believed: Atract is right. Those who betrayed their own because they were promised power.

Not a single Overseer has slept peacefully in the last five years. Kira hunts them. Slowly. Methodically. She has already killed three. The rest know and are waiting.

Commandants of bases:

Operational management in the field. Commandants are responsible for discipline, training, punishments, and selection. They are the ones who look into the eyes of children when they give the order to "wash the blood". They are the ones who personally oversee the torture to make sure the agent is "broken enough."

Commandants are the most vulnerable targets. They are not as carefully concealed as the Architects. And Kira had already collected a dossier on everyone. For everyone she hasn't killed yet.

Scientists (different levels of access):

Researchers, biologists, neurosurgeons, geneticists. Those who turn children into weapons. Among them, there are those who believe in a "good goal." There are those who are simply paid. And there are those who get a perverse pleasure from the process.

Scientists are the only ones in Atract who do not risk their lives directly. They are protected, they are protected. Their knowledge is more valuable than the blood of agents.

Kira hates scientists the most.

Bases: Atract has facilities in forty-three countries. Each is legal just enough that local authorities do not ask questions. Military training grounds with underground levels. Research centers under the guise of pharmaceutical corporations. "Children's homes" with a double bottom.

Hierarchy of objects:

Collection points (level 1) - orphanages, boarding schools, colonies. Here the material is selected. Here is also the primary processing: breaking the will, destroying attachments, basic physical training. The child ceases to be himself in three months. The name is forgotten in six months.

Adaptation centers (level 2) – here children are turned into agents. Training, experiments, first kills. Transfer from the collection point to the adaptation center is a sentence. Only those who are recognized as fit get there. The rest... disposed of. Too humane a word for what is being done to them.

Research Complexes (Level 3) - The Holy of Holies. Laboratories where experiments are carried out on the living. Genetic modifications, implantation, neurosurgery. Children are expendable here. One in five does not wake up after surgery. Every second person goes crazy before he is recognized as ready. But those who survive... they are no longer people.

The heart is the coordination center. Encrypted to the point that even the Architects don't know each other's exact location. Login via biometrics, code phrases, quantum verification. They say it is located under one of the European cities. They say that there is no one at all, and all signals go through a decentralized network. They say that the Heart is not a place, but an algorithm. Kira has been looking for him for five years. She found many bases. The heart is not.

Kira's Bunker (Anomaly):

The only location that Atract cannot track. A former Soviet-era military facility, redesigned, modernized and literally soldered into the rock. No heat traces. No electromagnetic emissions. No digital fingerprints. Kira did not choose it by chance, she checked seventy-three options before settling down here.

For Atract, this is a blind spot among the radars

An atract does not exist. This phrase is repeated by everyone who has ever heard its name.

It is not registered in any tax jurisdiction. It does not have a headquarters that can be mapped. Its leadership is not a member of any boards of directors, does not appear in leaked diplomatic correspondence, and does not leave any digital traces. An atract is an idea embodied in concrete, blood, and neural connections.

Formally, it is an international organization with independent funding. In reality, it is a shadow world government that does not govern countries. It controls the future.

The goal of Atract (declared by the internal charter):

"Creation of perfect human material capable of performing tasks of any degree of complexity in the complete absence of moral, physical and psychological restrictions."

The goal of Atract (real, which only Architects understand):

"To grow a new species. Homo bellum is a man of war. Replace natural evolution with controlled evolution. To make pain an instrument of progress."

Atract does not hire soldiers. The tract produces them.