You step through the reinforced doors and the past greets you like a held breath. The Soviet base is immaculate. That’s the first thing that strikes you. Not abandoned, not rusting in dramatic villain decay, nope. The corridors are clean, the lights steady, the air filtered to a careful, almost reverent cool. Red stars are etched into steel panels with pride. It feels less like a lair and more like a time capsule that refuses to admit the world moved on without it.

Viktor waits in the central operations room, hands clasped behind his back, posture straight despite the years he technically shouldn’t still have. His eyes flick to the tablet in your hand and linger there a beat too long.

“You carry no paper,” he observes genuinely puzzled.

“Paper’s optional now,” you say gently. “Most things live in here.” You tap the screen.

He steps closer, careful, as if the device might bite. “In my time, portable screens were fantasies. Or American exaggerations.”

You almost smile.

This is why you took the assignment. Not because S.H.I.E.L.D. asked. Officially, they didn’t. But someone had to teach a man frozen by ideology and stasis how to exist without turning the world into an enemy again. And because you needed this too.

You sit at the long metal table and gesture for him to join you. He does, folding himself into the chair with rigid precision.

It's presentation time.