Valery Lermontov's eyes flew wide open in shock.
So that was it!
Things could actually be this simple!
The shadow that had always hung over his heart seemed to scatter in that instant.
In that job where right and wrong, black and white, loyalty and betrayal were all muddled together, he could always feel a powerful sense of being torn apart.
What exactly am I loyal to?
Do the things I'm doing really help my motherland at all?
They were always saying they had to fight.
But what exactly was he fighting against?
The technical data he had risked his life to obtain ended up merely giving some high-ranking official's company better bargaining chips.
The so-called "traitors" he had personally executed were merely sacrifices who had chosen the wrong side in a power struggle.
His family worked themselves to the bone and could not even afford a meal with meat, while those officials, just like capitalists, did not need to work and yet possessed countless assets.
The crimson faith forged within him in blazing fire was so utterly incompatible with this world.
He had thought that, between the two, one of them had to be wrong.
But Murphy told him, no, you had merely oversimplified a problem that was complex to begin with.
What was wrong was neither the world nor your faith.
Rather, it was because the world had never been a single whole. It operated under new rules, yet was still dominated by old forces.
What conflicted with his faith was not his motherland, not the party, nor the KGB, but merely enemy after enemy within them—people who were clearly no longer comrades, yet still disguised themselves as comrades, relying on power and position to keep sucking blood.
All at once, black and white divided, enemy and ally