Red Room in Soviet Union

The next morning.

A heap of intelligence on the Soviet Red Room was gathered and passed on to Howard by Fury and Joseph through government and military channels. Howard ran simplified calculations through the supercomputer, then sent the results to the manor by telegraph.

There were nearly two dozen suspected hidden locations for the Soviet Red Room. Many were likely false leads deliberately leaked by the Soviets, mixed in with military bases.

The most certain location had an authenticity probability of less than ten percent.

There was no helping it. As the cradle of an espionage organization fully backed by the military empire of the Soviet Union, no one knew the Red Room’s exact location except certain Soviet higher-ups and insiders.

After all, only Red Room Super Agents had ever successfully infiltrated other nations as undercover spies. No one had ever managed to trace them back in return.

Fortunately, Kyle had already left himself a contingency plan.

The electric collar placed around Natasha’s neck when she had been imprisoned aboard the warship was the key.

That piece of Black Technology had been personally developed by Howard, so it was naturally no ordinary device. Besides instantly releasing high voltage and possessing an anti-tampering feature that made it difficult to remove, the electric collar also contained a miniature tracking device.

Kyle was certain that the Red Room valued Natasha greatly. When they sent other agents to forcibly retrieve her at any cost, they would surely bring her directly back to the Red Room base before having specialized technicians remove the collar.

Before the electric collar lost its tracking signal, Howard had naturally been prepared to collect the data.

That same day, determined to end things quickly, Kyle ordered Logan and Yutong to accompany him. Howard arranged the fastest transport fighter, and they departed New York for the Soviet Union.

At that moment, the Soviet Red Room had no idea that a nuclear-scale disaster was on its way.

Novaya Zemlya, extending northward from Russia’s Ural Mountains.

The desolate plains stretched endlessly. Ice fragments and gravel clung together in a vast sheet of frozen earth, while the sky was overcast and gray with dense clouds.

By the time Kyle, Logan, and Yutong arrived, the temperature near dusk had already dropped below minus twenty degrees Celsius. Even dripping water froze instantly.

"Boss, do you really think the Red Room base would choose a hellhole like this?" Logan exhaled, and a cloud of hot breath billowed from his mouth as white mist.

"The tracking signal cut off somewhere around here. There should be a man-made signal jammer."

Kyle pondered as he looked up. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but remote, uninhabited wilderness.

Ever since the battle at Jisang, Blue Eagle had vanished without a trace, as though it had been buried in some unknown corner of Tokyo alongside those pursuing fighter jets.

Otherwise, it would have been most useful right now…

Just as Kyle considered splitting up to search, a pale point of daylight flared at the far edge of his vision. A small, muffled mushroom-shaped explosion rose into the air.

"This feeling?!"

Kyle and Yutong’s pupils contracted. They instinctively tensed up. Having both narrowly escaped a nuclear blast, the scene before them was far too familiar.

"A nuclear weapon?" Logan was stunned as well. He stared gravely at the disturbance in the distance, but the three soon relaxed their excessive guard.

The main reason was that the mushroom explosion covered less than a hundred meters before coming to a rather disappointing stop. If that counted as a nuclear bomb, then nuclear weapons were far too weak.

"I know. This should be a Soviet nuclear weapons testing ground." Kyle shrugged. If they ran into a nuclear explosion everywhere they went, they would truly be cursed with terrible luck.

"Then does that mean we came to the wrong place?" Logan asked in surprise.

Yutong raised her small face and voiced her opinion through telepathy. "Not necessarily. Sometimes, the most dangerous place is the safest. If the Red Room is nearby, then the personnel conducting nuclear weapons tests here should know something."

"That’s right." Kyle nodded in agreement.

At the very least, the Soviet military would deliberately avoid the area where the Red Room was located when conducting nuclear test bombings.

"You two wait here. I’ll be back soon." Kyle gave them a brief instruction, then accelerated toward the incomplete nuclear test zone.

The wind picked up.

White, freezing frost and snowflakes mixed with black, scorching ash and soot, drifting through the air and settling onto Kyle’s hooded leather coat formed by Venom.

The ground, snow, and air all carried traces of radiation, but compared to the massive, body-invading nuclear radiation he had encountered in Tokyo, Jisang, it was insignificant.

As he neared the nuclear test area, Kyle saw many military tents linked together, with researchers in white protective suits moving in and out. He entered stealth mode and slipped closer.

Kyle approached one researcher and swiftly knocked him unconscious with a chop to the neck, dragging him behind a tent. Without needing Kyle’s reminder, Venom extended black threadlike tentacles that shot out and viciously pierced the back of the man’s skull, forcibly searching and extracting his memories.

Their cooperation had become highly practiced and seamless.

After a while, Kyle shook his head without gaining anything and muttered coldly, "A rookie assistant. Not even worth dying for."

However, he did not lose heart. When he saw another researcher heading toward the tent, he hid once more and repeated his earlier ambush.

If he had not found it troublesome and likely to attract the Soviet military’s attention, Kyle would not have minded wiping out the entire nuclear weapons testing team head-on.

Fortunately, Venom found the information he needed in the second man’s mind.

This vast wilderness had been designated as a Soviet nuclear weapons testing ground, where they could conduct bombing tests at will without regard for civilian casualties. The higher-ups had repeatedly warned them only not to enter a mysterious area off to one side.

Large numbers of simply dressed girls in white were often sent to the wilderness at the border between the radiation zone and the mysterious area. They were given only a scant supply of food and forced to fight one another to the death for survival amid the harsh cold and hunger.

The surviving girl who obtained the food and endured for a week would have her white clothes dyed blood-red, her humanity numbed and frozen away. At that point, people from the mysterious area would take her away…

"Really does sound like the Red Room’s style." Kyle sneered. He withdrew from the radiation zone, called Logan and Yutong over, and the three swiftly headed toward the mysterious area.

The wilderness beyond the boundary of the radiation zone.

More than a dozen girls’ corpses in white lay scattered across the dark brown frozen earth. Some still had their eyes wide open, while their bodies, covered in countless wounds, had frozen as hard as stone.

On that horrific field covered in corpses, only two girls remained stubbornly alive.

Their beautiful faces were twisted with savagery, and their white dresses were stained with blotches of blood. Like beasts driven by instinct alone, they tore into each other. When they had no strength left, they used their teeth as weapons to gnaw at each other’s throats.