Where the Styx Runs Cold, Ch 2: The Iron Curtain's Super Soldiers Pt. 2

A wave of superheated air, thick with the smell of blood and the sharp ozone of raw, uncontrolled power, slammed into Hawke as he plunged through the smoking opening. He was first, his body a shield, his senses flaring, trying to bring order to the sudden, overwhelming chaos.

The "Menagerie"—a name that would burn itself into his memory. A sprawling, multi-level cavern of despair his biokinesis struggled to map. Dozens of Project Medved's tortured subjects were here. Some writhed in open, reinforced pens, their forms twisting as unstable powers tore through them. Others, more mobile and maddened, roamed free in the vast chamber, their cries a harsh chorus of pain and rage. Bursts of raw energy arced between makeshift metal barriers. Pockets of localized gravity buckled the floor. Chunks of debris, thrown by wild telekinesis, hurtled through the air like shrapnel.

Too many signatures. Too much chaos. Focus. Hawke's mind worked frantically, his biokinesis sorting through the symphony of suffering—distinguishing immediate threats from the ambient horror, cataloging power signatures, mapping escape routes through the maze of agony.

"Contact! Multiple hostiles, uncontrolled!" Hawke barked into comms, his voice a stark command in the din. "Breaker, front! Lancet, Ricochet, suppressive fire, target aggressors only! Patch, stay tight with Rita!"

The immediate threat was overwhelming. The sudden intrusion, the blast of light and sound, acted as a catalyst. Several figures, bodies warped and glowing with unnatural energies, turned wild eyes towards them, their movements jerky and unpredictable. One, wreathed in crackling blue electricity, shrieked and lunged.

"Breaker!" Hawke yelled. Cole Hendricks was already there, a roaring mountain of defiance. His kinetic harness flared as he absorbed the electrical discharge, grunting as he fired a wide concussive blast that sent the electric figure tumbling into sparking cables.

Another subject, small and wiry, scuttled across the ceiling like an insect, then dropped, aiming claws wreathed in green, corrosive flame. Hawke felt its bio-signature spike—pure, unthinking aggression. No choice. Do it. He sidestepped, flames licking where he'd stood. No time for finesse. He pulled a sharp, focused bio-siphon from the creature and two other nearby subjects whose frenzied energies were rising. The scuttling figure faltered mid-air, its flames dimming, its momentum lost. Hawke fired a high-density stun round from his sidearm. It hit the creature in the chest, and it dropped with a thud, twitching.

"Lancet, sector three, target the gravity shifter!" Hawke directed, his mind racing, tracking dozens of stress signals, trying to predict the next power surge. The symphony's getting louder. Use it. Let it guide you. A nearby floor section buckled upwards, then slammed down. "Ricochet, airborne telekinetic, nine o'clock high!"

Lancet's intense cold beams lanced out, flash-freezing the air around a distorted figure whose power was warping its surroundings. Ricochet's humming discs intercepted a volley of metal shards hurled by a levitating subject, sending them clattering harmlessly against the far wall.

Hawke's orders were clear: contain immediate threats, prioritize squad survival. Non-lethal where possible. But "possible" was rapidly shrinking. He saw Breaker deliver a bone-jarring, full-power kinetic punch to a hulking brute whose skin was rapidly hardening to stone—a blow that was undeniably lethal. Another life on my conscience. Another choice that wasn't really a choice. There was no alternative.

Through it all, Hawke's biokinesis was his anchor, a lifeline. He felt his team's thrumming anxiety and focused actions, layered over the wild, discordant symphony of the Menagerie's inhabitants—their pain, fear, and mindless rage. Filter it. Use it. Don't let it drown you.

This was only the first wave. The heart of the Menagerie, and Volkov himself, lay deeper within this manufactured hell.

***

The violent storm passed, leaving wreckage and spent energy. But for Evie Hayes—Patch—the Menagerie's true horror was just settling in. The air thrummed with countless agonies, a symphony of suffering that attacked her composure more than any physical threat.

She moved through the cavern, medkit feeling useless, Rita silently beside her. Hawke's calm voice on comms directed others to secure the area and find a way deeper. For Evie, the mission was now wading through an ocean of pain.

A young woman, barely twenty, lay half-submerged in bubbling slime oozing from her raw, blistering skin. Her terrified, agonized eyes met Evie's. A gurgle escaped her. Evie knelt. Her powers could mend flesh, but this was a cellular betrayal, a power devouring its host. She couldn't reverse it, only perhaps ease the burning. "Easy now," Evie murmured thickly, reaching for a strong painkiller.

"Evie," Rita said softly, hand on her arm. "Her suffering is all she is. She's drowning in it."

Drowning.

Evie had no lifeboat.

Further on, a young boy curled up, limbs jerking grotesquely, bones popping and grinding. His thin screams sounded like a tortured animal. His eyes, briefly meeting Evie's, showed pure terror. His power was breaking him from within.

"Patch, gotta move!" Breaker's gruff voice cut her daze. He stood nearby, weapon ready, face grim. "Hawke found a way deeper. Can't stay."

"They need help, Breaker," Evie snapped.

"Help?" Breaker gestured with his rifle. "Look at 'em, Doc. Most are too far gone. Help the ones not trying to kill us, then finish the mission. That's the job."

Lancet, checking a nearby subject, straightened. "He's right, Doctor Hayes. Emotion is inefficient. Triage means prioritizing viable assets or eliminating immediate threats."

"Viable assets." Evie flinched as if struck.

Then she saw him: an older man huddled in shadow, his face lucid despite his body, a patchwork of scars and crystalline growths. He met her gaze. His lips moved: "Please."

Evie's breath hitched. Euthanasia. It wasn't in her oath. But the despair in his eyes, the deep weariness…

Rita knelt beside her, hand on Evie's. "This one, Evie," she whispered sadly. "His story is over. Only pain remains. He's asking for a kindness only we might offer."

Kindness? Or murder, sanctioned by their masters' pragmatism?

She looked at her drugs. A morphine overdose would be peaceful—far more than Volkov intended.

"Hawke needs an answer, Patch," Breaker said, softer but insistent. "The acid-emitter near the south conduit is agitated. Can't leave it active if we pass."

The acid-emitter. Another she couldn't save, only contain or eliminate. She thought of the dissolving woman, the breaking boy, the man begging for release.

Evie closed her eyes, the weight threatening to crush her. She took a shaky breath, eyes hardening with false resolve. "Rita," she murmured, "stay with him." She gestured to the man. "Talk to him. Be with him." Then, louder to Breaker, voice now chillingly calm like Lancet's: "The acid-emitter. If it can't be sedated or contained in sixty seconds, then yes, Breaker. Neutralize it."

She turned away, unable to watch, focusing on a subject with purely physical injuries her powers might fix. But "neutralize" echoed in her mind, a bitter taste.

***

"South conduit clear," Breaker's voice crackled on comms, followed by a heavy silence. Hawke acknowledged with a curt nod, already pushing deeper into the Menagerie. Patch's necessary decision added another layer of grimness to the scene.

They were in a sprawling network of connected chambers, a disorienting labyrinth of hasty barricades, shattered observation rooms, and repurposed pens. The air was thick with the stench of fear, chemicals, and an unnatural, cloying sweetness hinting at failed experiments and decay. Unstable subjects still roamed, their cries and erratic powers a constant, unpredictable threat. Hawke's biokinesis worked overtime, trying to map a path through the madness, sifting immediate dangers from the ambient horror.

Suddenly, an amplified, distorted voice boomed through hidden intercoms, shaking the complex. "Ah, Arthur Hawke! The legendary Architect!" General Arkady Volkov's voice carried a chilling familiarity. "Did you think I wouldn't recognize the man who butchered my assets in Prague? Who left my beautiful Tatyana bleeding in that warehouse?"

Hawke's jaw tightened. He knows about Prague. About Tatyana. The mission three months ago—a Soviet bio-weapons cell, the target who'd gotten too close before he'd been forced to—

"And sweet Evelyn Hayes," Volkov continued, his tone turning mockingly gentle. "The angel of mercy who couldn't save her own brother in Afghanistan. Tell me, Doctor, how many more will you fail to heal today?"

Hawke felt Patch's bio-signature spike—a sharp jolt of pain and fury. Rita's hand found her shoulder, steadying her.

"You see before you not monsters, but pioneers!" Volkov's voice swelled with messianic fervor. "Each one a testament to the indomitable will of the Rodina! Their pain? A small price for the power they will wield!"

Keep talking, you bastard. Give Static more time to triangulate your position.

An overhead grating sparked, hissed, then dropped, unleashing a torrent of viscous, electrified slime that sizzled on the floor. Hawke shoved Ricochet out of its path just in time. "He's trying to herd us," Hawke muttered, analyzing the slime and the disorienting, acrid foam now spraying in another corridor from fire suppression systems. Volkov wasn't just taunting; he was manipulating the environment, trying to channel them.

"While your decadent masters send children to clean up their messes, I forge the future from flesh and will!" Volkov's voice rose fanatically. "I know each of you, your weaknesses, your fears. I have files on every SHEPARD operative. You think you're hunters? You're prey walking into my web!"

Files. Intelligence. SHEPARD's been compromised.

"Architect, I'm tracking a primary command signature," Static's calm voice cut in. "Three levels down, heavily shielded. Signal's consistent—he's broadcasting from there."

"Understood, Static," Hawke replied. "Ricochet, Shroud, scout ahead, prioritize traps and herding tactics. Breaker, Lancet, on me. Patch, stay with Rita, watch our six. Avoid passive subjects unless absolutely necessary. Our objective is Volkov and his intelligence files."

Navigating the labyrinth was a nightmare. Hawke's biokinesis helped him anticipate electrified floor plates, collapsing walkways, and newly agitated subjects emerging from sealed sections. The symphony of suffering guided him—spikes of terror indicating fresh traps, wells of despair marking dead ends. Rita occasionally murmured warnings about pockets of intense emotional distress that often preceded hazards.

They passed chambers of impossible horrors: subjects caught in temporal loops, their movements replaying in jerky cycles; others slowly transmuting into crystalline structures, their eyes wide with silent terror. Hawke forced himself to remain detached, focused on the mission, but each step deeper into Volkov's madness carved new scars into his soul.

***

"You trespassers have witnessed only the birth pangs of gods!" Volkov's voice echoed through the wider chamber they'd entered—an arena littered with shattered equipment and the husks of failed experiments. "Now behold the culmination! My Alpha! My son of the new dawn!"

A reinforced blast door groaned open, revealing a figure that radiated palpable power and cold, focused intent. Seven feet tall, its flesh mottled greyish-red, hardened in places like natural armor. Wires and crude cybernetic implants snaked across its oversized cranium, pulsing with faint internal light. Its eyes held no fear or madness—only chilling, predatory intelligence. This was no accident. This was a weapon.

"Engage!" Hawke roared, feeling the Alpha's bio-signature shift—controlled adrenaline, focused energy channeling. This one's different. Disciplined. Dangerous.

The Alpha moved with deceptive speed, charging not wildly but with clear purpose: Breaker, who stood his ground, kinetic harness already thrumming. Hawke felt the creature's power spike—it was siphoning electrical energy from damaged conduits, supercharging itself.

"Static! Disrupt its power intake! Now!" Hawke yelled, simultaneously reaching out with his biokinesis. The Alpha felt shielded, its biology too alien, too augmented for direct manipulation. But he could feel the chaotic thrum of lesser subjects lurking in the arena's shadows, their fear a tangible resource. Use their terror. Channel it. He pulled, a desperate, wide-spectrum bio-siphon—not just for himself, but to starve the Alpha of errant bio-energies.

Weakness washed over the cowering subjects. For Hawke, it was a jolt of raw life force that sharpened his senses, quickened his reflexes. The Alpha faltered as Static's EM pulse hit, its internal lights flickering.

Breaker met the charge with thunderous impact, the ground shaking. The Alpha's strength was immense, its fists like mallets. Ricochet's discs sparked off its armored hide, deflected by localized energy shields. Lancet's thermal beams dissipated against its dense flesh, causing only superficial burns.

"Its hide is too thick!" Lancet reported, voice tight. "Cybernetics are shielded!"

"Shroud, create a diversion! Left flank!" Hawke commanded, ducking under a sweeping blow that cratered the ferroconcrete where he'd stood. The symphony—use it. Feel the creature's rhythm, its blind spots. He wove closer, sidearm spitting ineffective stun rounds, searching for vulnerability.

Shroud shimmered at the Alpha's periphery, a fleeting distortion drawing its attention for a critical second.

"Ricochet! Exposed cabling on its back! Now!" Hawke spotted the bundle of thicker wires, less armored, feeding into the base of its skull.

Ricochet's disc was a silver blur, striking true, severing half the cables in a shower of sparks. The Alpha roared—half mechanical, half bestial—swatting blindly, catching Shroud with a glancing blow that sent him flying into debris with a sickening thud.

"Shroud down!" Patch cried, already moving.

The Alpha stumbled, disoriented, its internal lights flickering violently.

"Breaker, now! Full power!" Hawke yelled, seeing the opening.

Cole Hendricks, his face a mask of fury and effort, unleashed everything his harness had absorbed—a focused, devastating kinetic blast that caught the Alpha square in the chest. The creature staggered, its armored plating cracking, an inhuman sound ripping from its throat. Wounded, badly, but not down.

It lunged again, ignoring Breaker, its eyes fixed on Hawke with murderous intent. It knows. It knows I'm the leader. Hawke sidestepped, stolen bio-energy giving him just enough edge, and fired point-blank into the exposed, sparking ruin of severed cables.

The Alpha convulsed violently, internal lights flaring nova-bright, then extinguishing. It crashed to the ground, twitching, then lay still—a monument to Volkov's perverse genius.

Silence descended, heavy and ringing. Breaker leaned on wreckage, panting. Lancet checked her emitters, usual composure frayed. Static reported continued EM interference from the dying Alpha.

Hawke rushed to Shroud's side, where Patch worked frantically. Kenji was unconscious, breathing shallow, a nasty gash on his head, his sensory dampening field completely gone.

"Status, Patch?" Hawke demanded, voice tight.

"Concussion, severe. Possible internal injuries. He needs immediate evac, Arthur. We can't stabilize him properly here." Her voice was strained, her usually steady hands trembling as she applied pressure bandages.

They moved like ghosts haunted by exhaustion, Shroud a dead weight supported between Breaker and Ricochet, Patch murmuring reassurances and monitoring vitals. The Alpha fight had cost them dearly. Hawke pushed onward, his focus narrowed to the thrumming command signature that Static had pinpointed—the heart of Volkov's rotten empire.

The final approach was eerily quiet, the Menagerie's chaotic energies muted by layers of reinforced steel and concrete. Lancet made short work of the final blast door, her thermal lance slicing through with cold precision.

Beyond lay a utilitarian laboratory, crammed with humming machinery, blinking consoles, and glass tanks filled with murky, bubbling fluids. And in the center, hunched over a console frantically trying to initiate a data purge, was General Arkady Volkov.

He spun around as they entered, and for a moment, his voice boomed with the same commanding authority: "You will not defile my—" Then he saw them. Saw their weapons. Saw the blood on their armor. The grandiose persona crumbled, revealing what lay beneath—a small, surprisingly frail man in a stained lab coat, his eyes wide with dawning terror.

Two remaining guards, more like lab technicians in ill-fitting armor, moved to intercept. Ricochet's discs sent them sprawling before they could raise their weapons.

"You will not defile my work!" Volkov shrieked, his voice cracking like a child's. He jabbed a finger at a large red button on his console. "My children will avenge me!"

Before he could press it, Hawke was across the room, the lingering bio-energy giving him a final burst of speed. He didn't bother with a weapon. His hand shot out, clamping onto Volkov's wrist, crushing bone. The General screamed, thin and reedy.

"Your work is finished, General," Hawke said, his voice flat, devoid of emotion. Nothing. I feel nothing for this man. Only cold, weary disgust remained. Volkov offered no further resistance as Breaker secured him with restraints.

Static moved to the main console, fingers flying across interfaces. "Securing data now, Architect. Schematics, research notes, subject logs, intelligence files... extensive."

Hawke surveyed the lab. One wall displayed live feeds from the Menagerie—chaos, suffering, grotesque figures pacing their prisons or lying inert in effluence. His gaze fell on schematics for a "Pacification & Control Matrix—Mk. IV." Brutal. Primitive. Designed not to heal, but to subjugate. Nearby, scrawled notes detailed failed "Stabilization Serum" attempts, each ending in catastrophic biological failure.

No cure here. Only more torment.

He looked at Shroud, lying on a cleared section of floor, Patch working silently to stabilize him. Evacuation was critical. The facility was compromised, Volkov's failsafes unknown. And the subjects...

Dozens of them. Unstable. Dangerous. Many irrevocably damaged, their minds shattered, their bodies warped into uncontrollable weapons. Extraction was impossible—a suicidal risk. SHEPARD's protocols were unwritten but absolute: loose ends were to be tied. Permanently. These tortured souls, through no fault of their own, were now part of the threat Volkov had created.

Another choice that isn't a choice.

The weight of command settled upon Hawke, heavy and cold. He met Rita's eyes across the control room. She stood near monitors displaying the Menagerie's worst horrors, her expression etched with profound sorrow, but also grim understanding.

Hawke turned to Lancet. Lena Kholodova stood by the data console, her expression unreadable—a mask of professional detachment. But her eyes, when they met his, held a flicker of readiness. She was an instrument, honed and precise, awaiting direction.

He gave a single, almost imperceptible nod.

Lancet acknowledged with an equally minute dip of her chin, then turned, her movements economical, already calculating the most efficient way to carry out the grim task.

The clean-up of Project Medved's victims was about to begin.

Hawke turned back to the monitors displaying the hellscape below, the faint, distorted cries from the Menagerie suddenly seeming louder in the sterile silence of the lab.

***