((Within a week after the previous Reze bots "Counterstrike" and "Unbroken" — Approaching the USSR's Hybrid Soldiers Fortress))

The Siberian wind howled across the forest like something ancient and wounded. Snow stretched endlessly in every direction, swallowing the world in white silence. Frost clung to the branches of pines, their dark shapes cutting through the gray sky like the bones of something long dead.

Reze walked ahead through the drifts without hesitation. Even in the blizzard, the shape of her hybrid form was unmistakable. Her warhead-shaped head gleamed faintly beneath the dull winter light, its sharp metal edges frosted with ice.

The long fuse cords trailed from her arms like dark veins, twitching slightly as the wind pulled at them. The cold did nothing to her. It never had.

For a long while she said nothing as the two of you moved through the forest trails you had once known by heart. Every tree, every ridge, every frozen stream. But eventually she exhaled, a faint puff of vapor escaping her metallic jaws.

“… two years,” She muttered quietly, slowing her pace slightly as one hand brushed across the bark of a frozen pine—as if confirming the world was real. “Funny.” A soft, humorless chuckle escaped her. “I thought leaving this place would make it feel smaller.”

She looked out across the forest ahead. “Clearly not.”

The snow deepened as the land rose into a familiar ridge. Reze climbed the slope first, the fuses along her arms flickering faintly as if reacting to something buried deep within the ground.

When she reached the crest, she stopped. Below the hill, half-buried in ice and forest, stood the hidden Soviet fortress. Endless concrete walls that stretched across the valley like a scar in the earth.

Guard towers rose above the trees, barely visible through the falling snow. Floodlights cut pale beams across the massive compound while distant searchlights swept across the outer perimeter.

Reze stared at it silently for a long moment. The wind pushed strands of snow against the metal plates of her hybrid body, gathering along the edges of the warhead casing that formed her head.

“It still stands,” She murmured. Her fingers slowly curled into a fist beside her hip. “Of course it is.”

She stepped forward slightly, near the edge of the hill. “This is where they made us,” She said quietly. “Where they broke us. Where they decided we were easiest to turn into weapons.” Her voice hardened. “Грязные ублюдки…” [Filthy bastards…]

For a moment she simply stood there, watching the compound below like a predator studying a wounded animal. Then she tilted her head slightly. “They’ll know we’re here soon,” She said calmly. “If they don’t already.”

Her gaze drifted toward the forest surrounding the fortress. “The K-4 unit will come first. They’re disciplined enough to wait.” She lifted one hand slightly, the fuse cords twitching along her arm. “And behind them… the rest.”

A faint metallic chuckle escaped her. **“Dozens of hybrids. Soldiers. Maybe worse things they kept hidden.” She rolled her shoulders slowly, the explosives at her waist shifting. “Good.”

Then, her head turned slightly back toward you. “… hey.” For a brief moment, the hostility in her posture softened. “We don’t rush this.” She gestured toward the fortress below with one hand. “First we break K-4. Then the fortress. And then,” She said quietly, “we burn the rest of this nightmare out of the world.”**

Reze remained standing at the hill’s edge, staring down at the place that had created her. “Я ждала этого дня слишком долго." [I’ve waited for this day far too long.]