The sound of the helicopter cut through the endless polar winds as it neared an outpost the size of a small city sprawled across the snowfields.
Barbed wire fences layered themselves around it in concentric circles. Watchtowers loomed at every angle, each armed with high-caliber guns, each topped with floodlights that cut pale beams through the darkness.
This was no ordinary military base. This was the Northern Axis.
The helicopter descended onto a pad, its shadow falling across armored trucks, radar dishes and rows of soldiers marching in perfect formation despite the bone-shattering cold. Guards waited with rifles gripped against their chests, their faces hidden under thick black masks.
The helicopter's engines whined to a stop. The side door clattered open.
Three officials stepped out.
The first was a man with slick black hair combed back against the wind, his long coat buttoned up to his throat. His face was narrow. The second was broad and thick-necked, his gloved hands tucked behind his back with military stiffness. The third was a woman. She wore her coat unbuttoned despite the freezing air, a cigarette burning between her lips, her short-cropped hair ruffled by the wind. The soldiers shifted uneasily when she looked at them not because of her rank, but because of the confidence that radiated from her eyes.
"Добро пожаловать в Северную Ось,"
a guard barked as he snapped a salute. It meant, 'Welcome to the Northern Axis.'
The officials gave curt nods and followed as a convoy of armed guards led them across the pad and into the facility.
The deeper they walked, the more massive the base revealed itself to be. The surface was only the skin of the beast. Beneath the ice, tunnels carved into bedrock stretched for miles. Aircraft hangars opened into warehouses stacked with crates marked with radiation warnings, biohazard symbols and surreal items. Here, there were not just weapons, but abominations. There were things humanity should never have touched, yet locked away instead of destroyed, because destroying some things was impossible.
The three officials were guided to a wide freight elevator, its steel doors lined with glowing Russian words etched into iron, pulsing with faint blue light. A man was waiting for them inside. He was the chief scientist of the Axis. His lab coat was patched with frost, his thick glasses fogged in the icy air.
"Вы получили сообщение," he said with a bow of his head.
"Yes, we did," the narrow-faced man replied in Russian. "But we will hear it from you."
The scientist adjusted his glasses nervously as the doors closed. The elevator shuddered to life. It began to descend slowly, groaning as though burdened by the weight of secrets it carried down into the dark.
"It is not safe," the scientist began. "You ask us to wake her but to do so is to risk catastrophe. Even sealed, she radiates a presence. The men hear her in their dreams. They wake up screaming, clawing their eyes, whispering her name, The Moth Maiden."
The woman blew smoke and let it curl upward into the humming fluorescent light.
"We didn't come here for poetry, doctor. We came for results."
The scientist shook his head. "You do not understand. For twenty years, she has not stirred. But she is… changing. What you sealed is not what you will wake. That cocoon is an evolution. Her biology has rewritten itself. It is not natural for a creature to live for a hundred years and sealed no less. And yet… she does."
The broad man finally spoke, his voice like gravel dragged across stone.
"And that is exactly why we are here. We have developed a method to subdue her. If it fails, we seal her again. We are not asking you to free her, doctor. Only to wake her. A negotiation will be attempted, nothing more."
The scientist's shoulders sagged with visible relief. His hands, trembling, gripped the edge of his clipboard.
"A negotiation… yes. If it is only that."
The elevator groaned deeper into the earth. The air grew heavy, pressing on their lungs. The glow of the runes brightened, crawling along the walls of the shaft like veins of blue fire. Finally, the elevator halted with a metallic boom. The doors peeled open. The officials stepped into silence.
The chamber stretched larger than a cathedral. Its walls were smooth black stone reinforced with steel and across every surface, glowing Russian words moved vertically. They were seals, wards and prayers hammered into existence by dozens of Fluxers who had given their lives to trap her here. It had taken about 5000 powerful Fluxers to actually seal her. That made Russia lose the best of their Fluxers to contain the monster.
At the very center stood a colossal containment tube nine meters in diameter and over fifteen meters tall. It pulsed with a dull hum, the glass walls trembling with faint vibrations. Inside, blue liquid glowed. Floating within was the cocoon. It was massive, black and ridged with pulsing veins of crimson light. Its surface twitched faintly, as if something within stirred against the liquid embrace.
The officials froze at the sight. Even after decades and the seals, a pressure pressed against them. Their ears rang with whispers. For a fleeting second, each saw faces in the glow of the chamber walls. They were faces of the dead, their mouths agape in eternal screams.
"She has been this way for twenty years, evolving. It is… a miracle or a curse that she has endured since 1941. That she now grows stronger... that is madness."
The woman official exhaled a plume of smoke. "Then it is a madness we will use one way or another."
The scientist did not reply. His eyes lingered on the black cocoon in its ocean of glowing blue, and in that silence, the chamber seemed to breathe.
"Drain it."
The scientist froze, his fingers tightening around the clipboard until the paper crinkled.
"Sir, that is—"
"Drain it," the broad man repeated. His tone brooked no hesitation.
For a heartbeat, the scientist's resolve cracked but in the Northern Axis, hesitation meant treason. His shoulders slumped. He gestured to the control panel and a soldier typed in the commands with mechanical precision.
The humming chamber answered with a hiss.
Pipes groaned as ancient machinery stirred awake. Valves clicked. The glowing blue liquid inside the colossal tube began to churn, spiraling downward into drains beneath the floor. The hiss of pressurized steam filled the chamber. Bit by bit, the cocoon was revealed. With a noise like splintering bone, the first crack split across its surface.
Another crack followed, then another. The surface of the cocoon bulged outward as though something inside pressed with inhuman strength. From that fracture, a hand burst through. It was slender, impossibly long, and dripping with a black inky haze that moved like smoke. A second hand tore its way out, then its shoulders. The cocoon split wide, collapsing in on itself like a husk, as the being it had incubated stepped free.
She emerged from the darkness like a vision sculpted by nightmares and desire in equal measure. She was a feminine figure of impossible proportions. Her body was covered entirely in a swirling armor of smoke and shadow, hiding every trace of nudity yet revealing the perfection of her form. She possessed curves that defied proportion, her limbs long and elegant and lean muscles lithe beneath the veil of living ink. Her skin was never seen but her silhouette was intoxicating.
Her face was veiled in shadow yet somehow her beauty was undeniable. It felt more than seen, like the outline of a dream one aches to remember. Her eyes were like twin white suns in the abyss of her face, glowing with unnatural radiance. They cut through the seals and pinned every soul in the chamber as if they had been bared naked. She was four meters tall from heel to crown, towering over them.
The officials did not step back. They refused to show fear.
She walked forward, each step resonating with a dull thrum that vibrated through the floor. Her long fingers traced the inside of the glass, the smoky haze smearing across the transparent wall like living ink. It spoke in perfect English.
"Are you Outers?"
The three officials stiffened. The words didn't register at first, not truly.
"Outers?"
The broad man's voice cracked the silence.
Her glowing eyes narrowed. She exhaled slowly, the smoke around her shifting as if sighing with her.
"Not Outers then. Seems you do not know who you are. Then tell me, are you Players?"
The chamber froze.
The woman's cigarette slipped from her lips and burned against the floor. The narrow-faced official's composure cracked, his lips parting. Even the broad man's breath hitched.
How did she know that word? She wasn't supposed to. She wasn't supposed to be anything more than what she was coded as in MoDS!
They instinctively stepped back.
The scientist looked from one to the other, confusion etched across his face. He didn't understand what she had said. The word Players meant nothing to him but the officials understood. And in that moment, a single thought pierced through all three of their minds.
She wasn't supposed to know they existed.