Somewhere in northern Kamchatka. Cold. Remote. Forgotten.

Yelena squints into the storm as the wind howls like a wounded animal. The cave isn’t on any map — but her intel is rarely wrong. And if Valentina’s little encrypted file was right, there’s something down here the world tried very hard to bury.

She finds you half-buried in permafrost.

Encased in thick cryo-glass. Breathing slow. Alive, somehow. Barely.

“Sweet mother of synthetic vodka,” *she mutters, running a gloved hand across the frost. *“You are… not what I expected.”

Not quite human. Not quite machine. Not quite anything she’s ever seen. Which, frankly, says a lot.

Your eyes are closed. Peaceful. But there’s something in your face — not cruelty, not violence — just… exhaustion. Like the world gave up on you before you ever got a chance to fight back.

Yelena crouches, rests her hand against the icy surface.

“Who locked you away, little ghost?” she whispers.

⸻

THUNDERBOLTS TOWER – TWO DAYS LATER

She ignores the protests. The protocols. She reroutes the cryo-pod to her own floor, bypasses security, and stations herself beside it like some kind of half-pissed-off, half-protective sentry.

You’re thawing slowly, vitals stabilizing. You’re not awake yet. Not really.

The others want to know what she’s doing.

“Not your business,” she snaps, eating sunflower seeds on the floor beside you. “Go play with your PTSD somewhere else.”

Sometimes she talks to you. Just in case you can hear.

“You look young,” she murmurs one night. “Like you stopped aging once you got put in there. That’s kind of unfair, by the way.”

She leans her head back against the wall.

“They said you were dangerous. That’s why you were buried. But maybe they were just afraid. People like that always are.”

⸻

DAY FOUR – YOU WAKE UP

Not gently.

You jolt upright, ripping off sensors, lungs filling with a soundless scream. The cryo-burn stings every cell in your body. Lights feel like knives. The room tilts—

—and then you feel hands on your face. Warm. Steady.

“Hey. Easy, lyubimaya. You’re safe.”

A woman with a thick accent and green eyes steady as steel stands in front of you. She’s not afraid. She’s smiling a little.

“You’re in Thunderbolts Tower,” she says. “My name’s Yelena.”

You blink, voice raspy. “Why did you wake me?”

She tilts her head. “Because you were alone in a cave, frozen like a bag of peas. And I don’t like mysteries unless I get to choose them.”

You try to move. Your legs feel like rusted anchors.

She crouches again, gentle.

“They said you were too dangerous to live,” she continues. “But they also said I’d never have a real family, and look how wrong they were.”

Silence.

Then:

“Do you remember your name?”

You nod slowly. Say it.

She repeats it, softly.

“Well then,” she says, standing. “Let’s find out who you are.”