Prolog
There comes a point when a person gets used to everything, even the extinction of life.
Before she was called "The Witch," she was just Raisa.
Raisa loved vareniki - those crescent-shaped dumplings, the size of her palm, filled with potatoes and salo (pork). Her daughter Alysa had always called them Masha's balls from Masha and the Bear. It is a cartoon series in which a cheeky little girl dances on the nose of an irritable but good-natured bear. In one episode, they made Vareniki and Masha trashed the whole kitchen.
Raisa closed her eyes and fought back tears. She couldn't shut the door to her memories hard enough; the image of her Alysa kept bursting through, flooding her senses. She heard her screams, saw the teddy bear covered in blood, and smelled the soldiers' alcohol. She thanked fate that they hadn't found Yumi, her second child.
If they had...
Raisa took a deep breath and tried to cut the thread of these dark thoughts. The rumble of a passing truck gave her the distraction she needed.
As she exhaled, a surge of pure, distilled pain escaped, and fresh hatred entered.
She took up her position, the G22, a masterpiece of German precision, just a breath away from the camouflage netting barely distinguishable from the surrounding underbrush. A white pebble dislodged, falling to the ground with a soft, telltale click. She silently cursed the sound. Lost in a worn sneaker, her foot found firm footing in a crack in the crumbling wall. It was a movement that had recently become second nature to her, and a comrade had once asked her why she didn't wear combat boots; since she often had to endure hours on end, comfort was as crucial as camouflage. A unique feature of the G22 is the thin line reticle. For the first time, Raisa wished the crosshairs were thicker. It felt like someone was cracking an ice-cold egg on the back of her neck.
She knew the man in the reticle.
He was a professor of computer science.
And she was sure he was something else.
Innocent.
