Absquatulate

.

Chapter 1: Emotional Leak

Part I: The Persephone of September

The frozen border of Georgia, September 2017.

The air bore the haunting scent of earth and frost, a chill that pierced through to the very marrow.

A heavy, ominous silence had claimed the space where, moments ago, gunfire and screams had echoed.

The scene was a brutal, merciless masterpiece—a literal sea of blood spilled upon the hardened earth.

The lifeless bodies of Zhang Chanyul’s men lay scattered like the broken waves of a violent storm. In the heart of this devastation stood a woman, her flawless, static silhouette commanding the entire void.

Mahi—with a breathtaking beauty that, like a polished blade, hid its lethality behind a veil of light—held her weapon aimed precisely at Dr. Zhang’s head.

Her absolute, inhuman composure amidst the gore was not born of courage, but of a hidden flaw within her amygdala; a cold hollow that allowed her to view death merely as a solved equation rather than a tragedy.

With the stillness of a statue, she gazed at the crimson landscape as if merely observing the paint on a wall. Then, in a tone of chilling indifference, she spoke in English:

"You really were a nasty piece of trouble, Dr. Zhang."

Mahi never bothered with many languages; in her world, people were tools, and she preferred the tongue of efficiency and power.

At her side, Jungkook—a member of her loyal triad—instantly echoed her final message into Korean with the same mechanical coldness. It was her ultimate display of sovereignty: she would not deign to speak the enemy's tongue. The enemy would die in the language she chose.

A brief moment, broken only by the fractured sound of translation, and then—the end of the trouble arrived. But in that split second, as her finger felt the weight of the trigger, a sudden, digital chime from her watch tore through the deathly silence.

The alarm—a shallow, upbeat melody—invoked the outside world into this frozen slaughterhouse.

It was the eve of her birthday. She was the Persephone of September; the goddess of beauty fated to descend into the underworld’s darkness at the dawn of autumn.

Mahi ground her teeth, the sound echoing hollowly in her own ears. With a voice now laced with a tremor of personal fury and solitude—no longer merely professional—she looked at the defeated Dr. Zhang:

"Because of you, Dr. Zhang, I am away from my family on my birthday."

Without another breath of hesitation, she sent a fiery round directly into his heart. Mahi turned her gaze from the corpse toward the three loyal shadows who had functioned as extensions of her own body for years:

Savaş the Turk, Jungkook the Korean, and Sonia the Indian.

They were a four-person unit forged in the shared fires of black ops—a bond that transcended the cold mandates of the Organization.

Savaş, indifferent to the drama and the blood, pulled a silver flask from his pocket.

The stinging liquid was a cheap sedative for all this absurdity. He took a swig, glancing at Zhang’s body.

"Look at our luck... wasting our time on someone shorter than a dining table. You know, Queen? We could be lying on a beach right now, contemplating the philosophy of crabs. We deserve an Oscar for stupidity."

A faint, cold smile touched Mahi’s lips. She turned to Sonia and Jungkook. "Photograph the bodies. Sever Zhang’s finger for the Organization. Good work, everyone."

These routine, frigid orders were her final act for the UNHRDO. Savaş, with a smirk that was more of a sneer, stepped through the darkness, circling Mahi in a mock ritualistic dance.

"Happy Birthday, Queen! What a night! We’ve slaughtered a legion, harvested fingers, and look at us... another year older, still alive, and still killing little men." He ended with a dramatic, mocking bow. "Tell me, my Queen, what gift do you crave? A fresh severed head? Or a single day’s truce without a weapon?"

Sonia erupted into laughter at Savaş’s antics, while Jungkook held his expensive gold lighter before Mahi’s face. "Make a wish and blow it out, Queen."

Mahi’s smile remained cold. Instead of blowing, she cuffed the back of Jungkook’s head. "How do you have the patience for such theatrics?"

The absolute isolation of the border felt like a sudden vacuum, offering Mahi the lethal window she needed to make the most dangerous decision of her life.

There, amidst the snow and blood, instead of returning to the extraction point to write the detailed reports that served as her chains, she left the cleanup to her team without a word of explanation.

She began to shed the black tactical gear that had been her second skin for years. Behind her, Savaş—a lingering grin on his face—calmly began the task of taking Zhang’s fingers.