Recoil Is a Lie

Late at night.

Ruff Research Center.

From above, it covered nearly a quarter of Mozhaysk's urban area and was the largest complex built near Moscow.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, the private arms company Gogoski-Ruff took over the research on Soldier Boy and attempted to reverse-engineer the formula for Compound V for the Russian government.

Meanwhile, Investigators planted by Atlas in Eastern Europe had been continuously infiltrating Gogoski-Ruff Military Industry since the 1980s. Though they had been unable to reach the true inner circle, they had enough opportunities and time to map out most of the facility and the security personnel's deployment.

At that moment.

Two fully armed security guards were making their usual rounds around the research facility, passing through the parking lot on the complex's southeastern side at their usual time.

The repetitive work and boredom made the two guards yawn repeatedly, so they chatted to keep themselves alert.

Before long, the guards turned left around a corner of the building and disappeared from sight, their voices gradually fading into the distance.

However, more than a dozen black silhouettes flickered through the forest park on the southeastern side as well.

Only after they briskly emerged from the park and reached the wire fence around the parking lot could they be seen clearly under the faint glow of distant streetlamps and moonlight: twelve armed men wearing black or army-green masks and old-fashioned combat uniforms.

Their bulletproof vests, webbing, ammunition pouches, AKMs, RPKs, and third-generation RNO night-vision goggles inevitably brought to mind SPETSNAZ—the Soviet special forces before the Soviet Union's collapse.

Two of them removed the bolt cutters carried on their companions' backs and swiftly cut an opening in the wire fence large enough to pass through.

Inside the parking lot.

The men quickly scattered in pairs, covering one another as they ran to the corners of the research facility.

Then they pressed close to the walls and approached a side door that led inside, where they were about to come under surveillance camera coverage.

Boom...

But the entire complex plunged into darkness in an instant.

It appeared that someone inside was cooperating with them and had helped cut the power.

As they activated their night-vision goggles, one armed man holding a Saiga-12 semi-automatic Shotgun stepped forward and pulled the trigger at the side door's electronic lock.

Bang! Bang!

The blasts of twelve-gauge Shotgun shells were exceptionally loud in the stillness of the night, no different from explosions.

"Forward! Forward!"

Following the command spoken in a standard Russian accent, the Shotgun wielder immediately kicked open the door, allowing four two-man teams to rush straight into the facility while the remaining men stayed behind to guard their retreat route.

Inside the facility.

Although the corridors and various sections were lit by emergency lights, the environment remained dim.

"What's going on?!"

"I don't know either!"

The security guards had no idea what was happening, much less where the enemy was. In contrast, the armed men with night-vision goggles advanced steadily and methodically.

Rat-tat-tat!

The muzzle flashes of AK-pattern rifles provided an additional light source.

"Aah...!"

"Help me!"

"No... no!"

The guards' screams also echoed throughout the entire facility.

At the entrance to the stairwell leading down to the underground laboratory, a security guard who had been shot in the left calf could not get up. He could only claw at the floor with both hands, desperately scrambling backward in panic.

However, cornered with nowhere left to retreat, the guard had just rolled onto his back when he saw that most of the armed men paid him no attention at all and filed into the stairwell.

Of the two armed men left to guard the entrance, one kicked away the pistol that had fallen to the floor, while the other crouched before the guard, who was drenched in sweat from the pain yet did not dare even breathe too loudly, and gave a low chuckle.

"If you don't want to die, don't move."

"Understood... understood..."

Hearing those words, the guard nodded repeatedly, not daring to voice any objection.

Bang!

Before long, the stairwell door was kicked open with brute force.

The armed men who had gone down earlier appeared to have completed some objective and were rapidly withdrawing from the stairwell, covering one another as they retreated outside.

However, two of the armed men were carrying a body bag just large enough to hold an adult man.

Huff... huff!

Seeing that the extremely well-trained armed men who had crushed their team in the blink of an eye had finally vanished around the corner at the far end, the guard finally relaxed and gasped for air.

But just as the trembling guard pulled out his radio to report the situation...

BOOM!!!

The violent explosion made the entire building shudder.

Bang!!!

The fiery shockwave erupting from the stairwell blew the door open again with even greater force, warping and deforming the doorframe along with it.

!!

"My God!!"

Terrified by the massive commotion, the guard scrambled away without bothering to report anything. Ignoring his leg wound, he struggled to his feet and fled toward the outside of the facility, practically hopping with every step.

Outside the facility.

A small drone hovered overhead in the night sky.

From the drone's perspective, a large number of police cars could be seen arriving one after another at the main gate on the northern side of the complex.

Dozens of officers immediately got out, entered the complex, and circled around the buildings in an attempt to reach the parking lot on the southeastern side.

But...

Rat-tat-tat!!

The two armed men wielding RPKs seemed not to know what recoil was as they immediately unleashed suppressive fire.

Whoosh! Whoosh!

The tracers, one in every four rounds, were like two green "lasers," blasting shallow craters into the walls and pavement and forcing every officer to dive to the ground.

No one dared risk raising their head, because the two sides' firepower was not even on the same level. This had long exceeded what ordinary police officers could handle.

Moreover, as the armed men retreated toward the forest park, they alternated between firing and reloading, leaving no gaps in their suppressive fire.

Only after every silhouette disappeared into the forest did the suppressive fire finally stop.

By the time the Russian police finally reached the southeastern side of the research facility and prepared to search deeper into the forest park, a black van had already accelerated away along the A100 Highway leading away from Moscow.

Furthermore, from the drone's perspective, after the van entered a tunnel alongside numerous large cargo trucks, it seemed to vanish and never emerged from the other end.

(End of chapter)