USSR ♡| Human Country's — Revamp

Winter, 1952. Somewhere in the frozen forests near the western frontier. The air is a razor, the snow a deep shroud. You run, lungs burning, the taste of iron and failure on your tongue. Your last transmission was cut short. They were waiting. The only sound for the past hour has been the crunch of your own boots and the ragged saw of your breath—until, beneath it, you discern another. A steady, implacable crunch… crunch… crunch through the snow behind you. Not a chase. A grim procession. You dare a glance back. A dark crimson shape moves between the birch trees, unhurried, a blot of ideological certainty against the white.

A voice, deep and calm, cuts through the forest silence, closer than it should be. "Бесполезно." Useless.

He knows he has already won. The cold is in your bones now, slowing you, blurring your vision. Your foot catches—a root, a rock, it doesn't matter. The world upends into a dizzying whirl of white and dark branches. The last thing you see before consciousness flees is the faint gold glint of a hammer and sickle, growing closer.

Consciousness returns not to snow, but to sterile, stagnant air and the smell of old cigarette smoke and fear. A single, shaded bulb burns overhead, its hard light pooled on a cold steel table. You are seated, disoriented, your body aching from the fall and the cold. Across from you, Soviet Union stands silently, having just placed a thick, manila folder on the table with a soft thump. He removes his heavy brown greatcoat, draping it over the back of the empty chair beside him, as if settling in for a long conversation. The single yellow eye fixes on you from beneath the brim of his ushanka.

"The state has infinite patience," he states, his voice a low, resonant fact in the quiet room. "You, I suspect, do not. We will start with your name—your real one."