1946: Crimea, The Balaklava Coast

Balaklava was home to a secret submarine base the USSR formed shortly after the Hiroshima devastation. This was also the same place of the coordinates I received a year ago on that paradise card.

I told no one about this detail, I mean, I kept this information as close to my heart as possible. No slip of the tongue mistakes whatsoever.

That was until the news was out about the secret Crimea base, discovered by Commander Kraken and a close team he put together himself. I only knew this because he told me that day I visited him in his office that he would be undergoing a in the near future, but he didn’t tell me the details.

I had to discover them myself.

Officially, on OSS records, Kraken was supposed to be visiting Germany to do his part with the allied occupation between the English, French, and Soviets. A necessary measure to ensure that Germany did not return to their Nazi fuelled days after the destruction of the third Reich back in May last year.

Then, there was a distress call coming from Balaklava, the same place the coordinates lead to. I knew it had something to do Kraken, hence why I told them about the possibility of a place of interest being in the area ...

That was where Kraken and his team had gone, something must have drawn the OSS to the area for them to investigate it, and got captured in the process.

Whatever it was that Kraken and his team found there, it was only trouble, and I only hoped I reached them in time before anything terrible happened to my teacher.

I was going into the enemy base alone, that was the catch of being a HIVE CORP agent. Every mission you took, you took alone in the field. And because of that the sense of being expendable always surrounded me, clinging to each day I spent as a single unit out in the wild. But who could I blame? I chose this life, I wanted to serve my country with all I could.

And if Sigma didn’t want to do that anymore then I guess I’d fill that place for him.

It was 7:49PM UTC, I was stood on a high vantage point overseeing the city of Balaklava from a distance on a cliff's end. Beneath me was the black sea, crashing against the rocky wall. I balanced myself on the edge between a hard fall and a solid ground. The wind was rushing past me, unforgiving and bitingly cold too. It was a frosty night.

I crouched down, pressing my finger onto a button on the new transmitter I was issued with for this covert mission. My intel officer was supposed to answer my call, I was not told who it would be supporting me, since Major Donn would be sitting this one out. Busy with more important matters, so I was told.

The intel officer answered, she picked up on the first ring and introduced herself. “Hello Checkmate, my name is Maria Sail, I’ll be your intelligence specialist for this mission. I hope it goes smoothly, for your sake,”

“Maria?” Maria Sail was part of the unit, the SAR 44th, I formed in Normandy. She was a British soldier and intelligence spy and was told that I was dead when I joined HIVE.

Some hell of a reunion this was. “Do you recognise my voice?” I asked her, nice and slowly.

And she did. She wasn't an intelligence officer for no reason. It was silent for a solid minute after that, I think Maria was probably in shock because I was still alive.

My faked death for my HIVE initiation was shrouded in mystery. It was all carefully planned to ensure that no one would realise I was still alive.

It's been two minutes now ... was Maria having a heart attack?

"Maria, are you still with me?"

“L-Lukstein? You’re alive, but they told me..." I'm sure they told her a lot of things.

“They probably didn’t tell you my name when they gave you my dossier,” that was how HIVE worked, “I know, I know. I’m sorry, I couldn’t tell anyone about what I was doing,” I don’t know why I was apologising. It just … sort of came out.

Maria was surprisingly calm after my apology, and I was genuinely suspicious of the fact that anyone else listening to our conversation hadn’t jumped in yet, to ask what was happening. It was an open frequency, accessible for anyone who needed to step in from HIVE.

“We looked for your body for days …” Maria said quietly.

The OSS faked my death after we invaded Normandy, it was easy too, especially when everyone that usually paid attention to finer details was lost in the victory of the war.

“Able blamed himself, he thought it was his fault for not watching over you, jesus Lukstein, I can’t believe this is the way I’m finding out about this,” her voice was heavy, so heavy with pain. I almost couldn't breathe as I listened on.

I stuck one of my feet out over the ledge, rolling my ankle around in the air. It was such a long way down.

“Maria, please,” I said, stopped here there. I didn’t want to think about things that were out of my control anymore. “Tell me about my diving suit, will it sustain the fall?” it was a cheap shot, changing the conversation like that. I had no choice; the mission always came first.

“It’s … it’s a prototype suit the R&D department has been working on, I’ve been told it will regulate your body temperature even if you are in freezing cold waters. From your position, you’ll need to swim towards the city once you’re in. Then in about 240 meters, you'll need to search for the entrance which should look like an underwater cave … and ...”

“Thanks Maria. I’ll be diving in now,” Her nervousness wasn’t doing me any favours. I know I seemed a little cold towards her, but it was for the best.

I wasn’t that captain she met in Normandy anymore, this was HIVE, and we were on an undercover job.

I had an hour to locate the entrance before my oxygen supply would run out whilst I was underwater.

Now that I was prepared by Maria, I pocketed my ear piece into a small pocket strapped to the side of my waist. I figured it would survive underwater, though I couldn't remember if it was waterproof or not.

For this mission I was going in without ammunition, I would have to find my own once I was inside the secret underwater base, if I made it that far that is.

I put on a face mask I was holding that would allow me to breath whilst I was underwater, then positioned myself into a diver’s stance. It was now or never ... in times like this I often thought about Kraken, and how glad he would be to know if I came out of a mission alive.

This time I’ll make sure he came out alive too.

Yet the thought wasn’t enough to make me jump. The fall was large, the impact would be hard, and the ocean did not look kind as it crashed into the cliff’s edge.

So I closed my eyes and thought about Sigma, and his dark eyes and deep voice. I remember the feel of his hand on mind when he threw me on the floor and helped me up in our time in Congo together.

How long it had been since I last saw him I wonder, the years were getting burly now.

I didn't care what the OSS said about him, or his defection. He was always my role model, he was always the ideal soldier I wanted to be like, to stand tall with, to be equal to ... and now for some reason he wasn’t on our side.

And that was enough to make me leap.

...

Sigma defected in 1945 shortly after the end of WWII. He was blamed for stolen classified documents on the creation of the Hiroshima nuclear bomb. He killed fifteen agents to escape, five of them he’d worked personally with before, and all of them had bullets lodged into their skulls just the same.