The hotel room felt both claustrophobic and impossibly vast, its modern luxury an assault on England's displaced senses. The file photos scattered across the polished table created a collage of violence that was simultaneously familiar and alien. Modern weapons mixed with ancient grudges and new borders drawn over old wounds. Putin's face stared up from one photo as England found himself trying to reconcile this modern dictator with the ghosts of tyrants past. The man's cold eyes seemed to follow him as Moore spoke, her words echoing strangely in the over-air-conditioned space.
"I thought sending another operative with otherworldly abilities to neutralize Stalin would end the Union threat," Moore's casual mention of yet another secret operation made the room tilt slightly. How many other enhanced soldiers had she created and stored away? England tried to focus on the thought through his perpetual fog.
"And it did, along with us assisting the Mujahideen in Afghanistan," Moore continued, "But then remnants of the Union emerged: Former KGB agent now President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, and the rabid bitch under his thumb, Colonel Nikolina Averina. Codenamed 'Steel Lady' but our Ukrainian friends refer to her as Baba Yaga because...well...she's a real man-eater."
England's glare felt like the only solid thing in the room. Moore's attempt at humour made the unreality of the situation even more pronounced. As if the fate of the world wasn't in the balance at all, Moore casually pulled a pipe out out of her coat pocket and lit it up.
"Oh, do lighten up, Major," she spoke casually before taking a drag from her pipe, "If you don't have a sharp wit about you, you'll want to hang yourself."
"Is that how you live with yourself? Telling jokes?" His voice sounded distant, the words floating in the space between them.
"Hardly. I can wreck another man's life and sleep just fine," Moore replied, her casual cruelty kept consistent.
"In that case, you must have slept very well after putting me on ice," England dryly growled, the bitterness in his voice feeling like it belonged to another person.
Moore's chuckle seemed to ripple through the air. As she continued her briefing, the images of war-torn Ukraine blended with his memories of European battlefields, creating a nightmarish temporal overlap. Modern tanks rolled past Soviet-era buildings, drone footage showed destruction that could have been from any war in the last century. The sights and sounds of the videos felt wrong, like trying to tune into a station that was just out of frequency. The fog in his mind making it hard to tell where one era ended and another began.
"Major England, back from the dead," Moore concluded, her words hanging in the air like the smoke from her pipe.
The weight of history, both lived and missed, pressed down on him. He picked up Putin's photo again, studying the face of this new enemy who somehow managed to feel older than England himself. The texture of the photo paper was smoother than anything from his time and the image quality was so sharp it almost hurt his eyes.
"You want me to do with Putin what I did with Hitler?" England asked.
Moore glared incredulously at England, "Weren't you even listening? The International Criminal Court had issued a warrant for Putin's arrest. We need him brought to The Hague alive and in chains. As for his generals who also have arrest warrants, I will leave the option to summarily execute them at your discretion, should you encounter them. Besides, killing Putin would make him a martyr while I can easily have the deaths of those generals cleaned up."
England looked down at the images of Averina. They showed her in various combat situations. Something about her stance triggered England's enhanced instincts. There was something wrong about her movements. Something that reminded him uncomfortably of himself, like looking into a distorted mirror through the fog of time. And that was when she wasn't acting like the dog Moore described her as, with one image depicting her biting a soldier's nose off. Her angular but aged facial features, ashen hair, and pale skin made her look less like a soldier and more like a witch from a child's nightmare.
"And what about this 'Steel Lady'?" England spoke firmly, "Does she have ETT in her system?"
"Somewhat," Moore replied as she tapped one particular photo with a manicured nail, "They injected her with a refined version that, while it doesn't increase speed nor stamina the same way the original version did, does allow her to heal faster. It was only after they performed cybernetic surgery on her that she became a super-soldier on par with you if not higher."
England looked at a photo of Averina on an operating table, gutted like a fish as surgeons of the Oriental persuasion methodically replaced her lungs with what looked like two plastic bags connected together. England had seen his fair share of battlefield surgeries but this? This looked more like a grotesque art piece than an actual surgical procedure.
"And she's the only one, right?" England glared at Moore.
"Yes," Moore replied, "But since she's all the way in Ukraine, she is not our current priority."
"Let me guess," England spoke dryly, "You're saving her for a special occasion."
Moore gave a coy smile, "If you know any other method of restoring faith in British interventionism, I'd be bloody happy to hear it."
England just kept staring, barely surprised that the only reason Moore even bothered to rescue him from the Russian clutches that she handed him to in the first place was to make him into a political icon. A messianic figure for the government to puppeteer so they could convince the British people to once again lay down their lives for whatever games those in power were playing. Still, compared to his previous mission, bringing Putin in to face justice for his crimes seemed like child's play. All he had to do was walk into the Kremlin, drag Putin out of his office, call for evac, and arrive at The Hague for the press or whoever Moore wanted to take photographs of him and Putin, and head back home while leaving Putin to the mercy of the international courts.
How hard could it be?