Year Four — Age 14
The Invasion of Southeast Dongba
The war had consumed two years by the time Riyue's forces pushed into Southeast Dongba.
Netoshka stood on the deck of a landing craft, watching the mangrove coastline burn. The air was thick with humidity and the acrid smell of scorched vegetation. Behind her, thousands of troops waited in silent anticipation. Above, aircraft painted with Riyue's crimson dragon circled like patient vultures.
Southeast Dongba was different from Higane.
Here, there were no warrior codes, no organized resistance. Just villages. Temples. Rice paddies. People who had never asked to be part of anyone's war.
The United Dongba Principalities had tried to remain neutral. Their emissaries had traveled to Lóngchéng bearing gifts and pleas. Supreme Director Wei Jianyu received them warmly, promised protection, and signed invasion orders the same night.
The official reason: preventing Higane from establishing proxy bases in the southern territories.
The real reason: resources.
The jungles of Southeast Dongba hid Verdant Crystal deposits—rare Erythium minerals essential for Riyue's war machines. Without them, the campaign against Higane would stall within a year.
Netoshka's mission was simple:
Identify local power structures, map resistance networks, and eliminate anyone who might organize opposition.
She did her job well.
---
The Village of Phong Dao
The landing craft ground against the muddy shore at dawn.
Netoshka waded through warm water, her uniform clinging to her skin, her senses extended outward like invisible antennae. The village ahead was still asleep, unaware that its world was about to end.
The Riyue battalion commander, a stocky veteran named General Huang Shi, gathered his officers in the tree line.
"We'll secure the village. No one leaves. And locate the headman and any outsiders. Anyone who resists—"
He made a cutting gesture.
Netoshka said nothing.
The soldiers moved in.
What followed was not a battle.
It was a collection.
Men dragged from their homes. Women separated from children. The elderly shoved to their knees in the village square. A young man who tried to run was shot in the back before he reached the treeline.
Netoshka walked through the chaos, cataloguing faces, listening to the psychic resonance of fear and confusion. No organized resistance. No hidden fighters. Just farmers.
She reported this to General Huang.
He nodded, unsurprised.
"Good. Means we can use them."
The able-bodied men were loaded onto transport vessels. Labor battalions, they were told. Work for the war effort, return home when it's over.
Netoshka knew they wouldn't return.
The women and children were left with nothing—their food stores confiscated, their homes requisitioned, their men gone.
As she boarded the vessel to leave, an old woman caught her eye.
The woman said nothing. Just stared.
Netoshka looked away.
---
The Political Earthquake
Three months into the Southeast Dongba campaign, the world shifted.
Averika declared war on Riyue.
The announcement crackled through every radio, every command post, every occupied village. Netoshka heard it in a forward operations base outside the captured city of Xian-Hai.
"The Averikan Commonwealth, in defense of its treaty obligations to the Higane Republic and in response to unprovoked aggression against sovereign territory, hereby enters a state of war with the Riyue Directorate..."
The room went silent.
Officers stared at the radio.
General Huang, present for a logistics review, slowly set down his cup.
"Well," he said quietly.
"That changes everything."
Netoshka felt something cold settle in her stomach.
Averika had been watching. Averika had been waiting. And now, with Higane on the brink of collapse and Riyue's forces stretched across half a continent, they had chosen their moment.
The war was no longer regional.
It was continental.
---
The Northern Strike
Averika's declaration was not symbolic.
Within weeks, Riyue's northern territories came under attack.
The Krai Islands, seized early in the war and converted into naval bases, were hit by carrier aircraft. The Severin Peninsula, where Riyue had established radar installations, burned under sustained bombardment.
But the worst came on a frozen morning in late autumn.
Operation Winter Thunder.
Averikan long-range bombers, launched from carriers in the Borealis Sea, struck the Riyue naval base at Port Vladimirsk.
The attack came without warning.
Fuel depots exploded. Docks collapsed. Ships still in harbor were torn apart by precision munitions. Two thousand Riyue sailors died in the first hour.
Netoshka watched the reports in Lóngchéng, recalled for strategic briefing.
The footage showed burning wreckage, oil slicks spreading across black water, bodies floating among debris.
"Unprovoked aggression," the announcer called it.
But Netoshka knew the truth.
This was retaliation. This was escalation. This was Averika finally showing its hand.
---
The Hidden String-Pullers
In the weeks following Port Vladimirsk, Netoshka was assigned to a new unit: Strategic Analysis Group-7.
Her official role:
assess enemy capabilities and predict future Averikan moves.
Her real role:
clean up intelligence failures.
The Directorate was scrambling. They hadn't expected Averika to intervene so directly. Their pre-war assessments had predicted economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, maybe naval posturing. Not this.
Netoshka reviewed the old intelligence files.
And found something disturbing.
The information that had guided Riyue's pre-war decisions—the assessments of Averikan resolve, the estimates of their military readiness, the predictions of their response timelines—had all come from a single source.
Source: ECHO.
There was no file on ECHO. No identity. No verification.
Just a series of reports that had shaped the entire strategic direction of the war.
Netoshka sat in the archive room, the reports spread before her, and felt the first flicker of something she hadn't experienced since RedBird.
Suspicion.
Someone had fed Riyue exactly what they wanted to believe.
Someone had wanted this war to happen.
---
The Island Mission
Before she could investigate further, Netoshka received new orders.
A remote island in the Eastern Sea—Kaito Island—had been identified as a potential Averikan intelligence hub. Signals intelligence suggested high-volume encrypted transmissions. Satellite imagery showed unusual construction.
Her mission: infiltrate, confirm the facility's purpose, and retrieve any actionable intelligence.
She departed within the week, traveling by submarine to avoid Averikan patrols.
The island was smaller than she expected. A single hill covered in jungle, surrounded by coral reefs. The facility was hidden beneath the hill—a network of tunnels and chambers carved into volcanic rock.
Netoshka spent three days observing.
She watched Averikan personnel come and go. She noted their routines, their security protocols, their supply deliveries. She recorded everything.
On the fourth night, she moved.
---
The Research Facility
The tunnels extended deeper than expected.
Netoshka moved through them like a shadow, her senses extended, cataloguing every guard, every camera, every locked door. The facility was not a military base.
It was a research station.
Laboratories. Medical bays. Rows of computer servers.
She found the central archive and began copying data.
The files told a story she was not prepared to read.
Project Second Genesis.
Subject Behavioral Engineering.
Cognitive Reassignment Protocols.
Operational Asset Calibration.
Names. Photographs. Dossiers.
Children. Teenagers. Young adults.
All of them taken from conflict zones. All of them processed through facilities exactly like the one on Kuroshima. All of them being turned into weapons.
Her own photograph appeared on screen.
Asset N-07. Status: Active. Current Location: Hostile Territory. Behavioral Stability: Questionable. Recommended Action: Continue Monitoring.
The room spun.
Averika hadn't just known about her.
Averika had planned for her.
Everything—Zeta-9, Sokolov, RedBird, the White Dragons, the war—all of it was part of a design she had never seen.
She was not a sleeper agent.
She was an experiment.
And the experiment was still running.
---
The Revelation
Netoshka sat in the darkness of the archive, the data crystal clutched in her hand, and felt the architecture of her reality begin to crack.
She had believed she was serving Riyue out of conviction—the Curator's philosophy, the logic of order, the necessity of control.
But that conviction had been implanted.
Just like Sokolov's patriotism.
Just like everything.
She was a puppet. Always had been. The only question was whose hand was currently pulling the strings.
Averika had orchestrated this war.
They had fed Riyue intelligence designed to provoke invasion. They had let Higane burn to justify intervention. They had positioned themselves as the righteous defenders while secretly manufacturing the very weapons that would fight the next war.
And Netoshka?
She was a proof of concept. A test case. A prototype for the children in the tanks.
The realization should have broken her.
Instead, something else happened.
For the first time since Kholodny, the Voice stirred.
Not the Curator. Not the Directive.
The original Voice.
You see now, it whispered. You are not theirs. You were never theirs. You are ours.
Netoshka pushed it down.
Not yet.
She wasn't ready.
---
The Escape
The alarm sounded before she reached the exit.
Averikan security personnel flooded the corridors. Netoshka moved through them like a blade—shooting, stabbing, running. She killed seven people in four minutes and didn't remember any of their faces.
She reached the surface as dawn broke over the Eastern Sea.
The submarine was waiting beyond the reef.
She swam through cold water, the data crystal pressed against her chest, her mind a chaos of fragments.
Behind her, the island burned.
---
The Futility of War
The submarine took her back to Lóngchéng.
Netoshka sat in her cabin, staring at the bulkhead, and tried to process what she had learned.
The war was not about territory. It was not about resources. It was not about national honor or historical grievance.
It was about control.
Averika wanted a weakened continent. They wanted nations dependent on their support. They wanted a perpetual conflict that justified perpetual intervention.
And Riyue?
Riyue was a tool. A useful idiot. A dragon that believed it was flying while someone else held the strings.
Netoshka thought about the children in the tanks. The villages burned. The soldiers dead on both sides. The civilians starving in occupied zones.
For what?
For nothing.
The war was futile.
But she continued the mission.
Because what else was there?
---
End of Year Four
By winter, the war had expanded beyond anyone's control.
Riyue fought Higane in the east. Averika fought Riyue in the north. The Dongba principalities fought everyone in the south. Supply lines collapsed. Casualty reports became abstractions. Civilians died in numbers too large to comprehend.
Netoshka continued her work.
She gathered intelligence. She identified threats. She eliminated obstacles.
But something had changed.
She no longer believed.
She simply... existed.
Waiting.
For what, she didn't know.
Perhaps the war to end.
Perhaps herself to end.
Perhaps something else entirely.
---
The war had become a machine that consumed everything—land, lives, meaning.
Netoshka had seen behind the curtain. She knew who was pulling the strings. She understood that her entire existence was an experiment designed by people she had never met.
But knowing was not freedom.
The war continued.
The mission continued.
And somewhere deep inside her, the original Voice waited.
Patient.
Hungry.
Watching for the moment when the puppet would finally cut her own strings.