Act 1: Maturation
Prologue
Blood.
Snow.
The smell of rotting flesh.
All surrounded Nataliya as she wandered through the cold forest. She was cold, wearing nothing but a thin white nightgown. Corpses littered the area, all frozen, blood tainting the white snow they rested upon. She walked through, her feet going numb as she treaded through the light snow. The trees were barren and cold, no leaves, no life. There was a fog in the area, blocking view from more than about fifteen meters away, the tops of the trees were above the threshold of the fog, and were invisible to her.
She heard whispers around her, but could not distinguish from where they came, they seemed to encompass the entire area, either that or they were in her brain itself.
She lost feeling in her toes as she continued to walk through the field of bodies, each appeared to have been killed by multiple gunshots with no distinct pattern. The faces were all distinct and somewhat familiar, but she could not place them.
She slowly began to lose feeling in her legs as she continued walking.
The whispers began to get quieter, being replaced by familiar moans.
She began to run in the direction of the moans, slowly the fog revealed her loves, naked. Her sister, Lilia, her first girlfriend, Heidi, and her wife, Eva. Eva was lying on her back, her hands on Lilia's head, feeling at her hair as she buried her head deeper in between her legs. Lilia was on her hands and knees as Heidi caressed her labia gently. Heidi was fingering herself as she did this.
Nataliya smiled and tried to run towards them. She lost feeling in her legs after a single step and fell face first into the snow. She was in pain as she slowly rolled up to a sitting position. She looked at her legs, they were black from gangrene. She looked towards her loves and called out to them, only saying one word before her tongue fell out of her mouth. she picked it up and tried to scream, the sound not finding its way from her throat.
She looked around and found the one thing she couldn't live without. She slipped her hands around the cold steel, slowly removing it from the dead man's holster. The gun was gorgeous, it was an older model, black. It was colder than ice around her fingers, but she felt better. She looked at her hands, her left was turning black slowly, she didn't have much time.
With the last moments of life from her left hand, she pulled the slide back, loading a bullet into the chamber.
She took a deep breath as the moans began to get drowned out by the sound of an intense gust.
She took another deep breath as she raised the gun.
She pulled back the hammer.
And aimed.
She stopped feeling the cold in her right hand, she knew it had to be now.
The cold steel from the barrel nipped at her temple.
She smiled before pulling the trigger.
Nataliya rocketed out of bed, breathing heavily and sweating. She brushed a bit of her short black hair from her face, resting it behind her ear. She rubbed her temple, as her head was throbbing. She didn't need to look at a clock to know that the time was 4:37 AM exactly, as she had been waking up at that time every day for the past three months. She got out of bed, the cold nipping at her skin(as she was only wearing a tee shirt and panties).
Sighing she walked into her bathroom and used the toilet before turning on the shower. She slowly pulled off her shirt and threw it on the ground. She looked herself over in the mirror, the bullet wound in her left arm and right leg from Interpol, the scars were still very visible, marring the skin for the past sixteen years. Another gunshot wound on her right arm from Saban Xhakja, it happened the day before her and Eva became seriously involved with one another, they had been there for fourteen years. There were a few old knife wounds, but nothing major until her eyes moved down to her stomach... The gunshot from Veronica... the greatest reminder of how weak she truly was... She placed her hand on the scar on her stomach, feeling it for a moment, seeing Veronica's face in her mind.
She quelled the thought quickly before slipping off her panties and stepping into the shower. The warm water felt good against her cold skin, her mind was clear as she stood there, it was calming.
She left the shower after awhile then dried herself off. She got dressed, panties, a sports bra, black slacks and a grey tee-shirt. She walked downstairs and turned the heater on, as it was mid October and getting cold. She walked into the kitchen and made herself a cup of coffee, black and extremely strong. She poured a large amount of vodka into the cup before grapping some medicine for her head. She took it and washed the pills down with her coffee before slowly walking to the large window overlooking Lake Washington.
It was raining, as it so often did in Seattle, and the sun was nowhere to be seen. Through the darkness she could make out the dock across from the porch, and off in the distance she could make out the Lacy V. Murrow and the Horner M. Hadley Memorial Bridges stretching across the vast lake. They had remade the bridges using self-healing concrete a few years before, but they still kept the names. Technology had advanced far more than Nataliya was comfortable with, but the new generation was completely comfortable with it, even her nine-year-old daughter, Lilia.
She was only thirty-two, but Nataliya felt extremely old with all the new technology, including self-driving cars, robots, everything. She walked back upstairs to her study, she had bookshelves filled with actual books(seeing as twenty years before all books had been digitalized, they stopped printing books). She sat down at her desk and grabbed her computer-scroll. it was barely thicker than a piece of paper, light, but strong. She missed the feel of computer pads, they seemed more sturdy.
She looked at the news, as she did every morning, but unlike every morning, something caught her eye. She never looked at American new networks, they were all to focused on America alone, she was instead looking at BBC, which is when she saw it...
Natasha was dead.
It had taken nine years for her to finally fall, but it was done, Natasha was stronger than Nataliya thought, quickly amassing her forces in Russia, protecting herself from an onslaught of dissent from the rest of Europe. Five new families rose to power in Europe after the fall of Dmitri, and after six years of war, the entirety of Europe was split between three of them, Natasha, Andrzeja Salaski, a Pole, and Nicoletta Ventura, an Italian. After only a few short months of peace, Ventura quickly assimilated Salaski's territory, then moved on to Natasha's. It took two years, but Ventura finally took over the entirety of Europe.
And Nataliya's revenge was now complete, Natasha was no more, and Eva was avenged.
She set down the computer-scroll and placed a hand over her eyes. Tears fell down her cheeks as she remembered Eva... Lilia's mother... She took a deep breath and smiled a bit, she walked into the kitchen and began to cook a large breakfast for Lilia, who would be up in an hour.
