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there's no fanfare, no warning. it happens like this: melina and four other girls in her age group are pulled out of breakfast one day.
the guards march them down one corridor, then another, and finally to a door with an empty slot for the occupant's name. the guards don't knock before pushing the girls through the door and into a tiny, windowless office.
melina looks around, taking in the new environment, the unfamiliar situation. there's a visibly broken filing cabinet, a clunky fax machine, and a desk.
the desk is groaning under the weight of disarray. the telephone is unplugged. there's a thick dog-eared paperback book peeking out from under a stack of files, as if it was shoved there by someone in a hurry.
behind the desk is a portly young man with a moustache, wearing an army uniform and large spectacles. he's unpacking things from a cardboard box onto the already overloaded desk. when melina first lays eyes on him, he's pushing a framed photograph to one side to make way for a holepunch.
when the door opens, he stops. he glances momentarily at the girls before looking up at the guards with a frown. "i thought pchelintsov said i'd be allowed to choose them myself."
"if you don't like them, shoot them," retorts one of the guards.
the young man bristles, but before he can say anything, the guards are gone, slamming the door behind them. he sighs. he goes back to unpacking his things.
the girls stand in silence and wait to be acknowledged. the minutes are measured loudly by a clock on the wall behind them. melina misses her unfinished breakfast, but she knows thinking of it will only make it more painful, so instead she takes the opportunity to study her surroundings in more detail this time.
like the rest of the academy, the air is cold and stale. there's mould on the ceiling. it's the clumsily-hidden paperback book that holds melina's attention. half of the spine is obscured, but she can see enough to tell that the title is in english.
finally the man finishes what he's doing and drops the empty box on the floor. he stands and looks at the girls with his hands on his hips, then moves them awkwardly to his pockets, then finally folds his arms across his chest.
melina finds his indecisiveness unimpressive.
"good morning," says the man. his voice is gruff but expensively educated. there's the slight suggestion of a foreign accent, but melina can't place it. "i'm lieutenant colonel dreykov. professor pchelintsov has hired me to do some preliminary work on a very special and very secret project. you have all been selected — i suppose — as the initial candidates for this project."
here he stops and looks down the line of girls, studying them one by one. he reaches melina last, and takes his time on her, raking his dark eyes up and down.
she perfects her posture and meets his gaze with her own, steady and unflinching, politely emotionless.
after a long silence, the lieutenant colonel sits down and says, "any questions?" the chair creaks under him. nobody talks. "come on, girls, you won't be punished for speaking. not when you've been given permission. how about you?" he leans back and stares at melina. "i can tell you've got something you want to ask."
melina's heart hammers against her ribs. she hears herself say, "with your permission, sir, what is that book, sir?"
dreykov squints at her from behind the thick lenses of his glasses. "what book?"
her little finger points to it like an accusing ghost. he pulls aside the stack of files and laughs a low, quiet laugh when he sees it lying there. instead of answering the question, he picks up the book and stuffs it his desk drawer, but melina is quick enough to read the words on the spine.
ENDURANCE: SHACKLETON'S INCREDIBLE VOYAGE
ALFRED LANSING
dreykov clears his throat. "any relevant questions?"
lyudmila pipes up. "with your permission, sir, what is the nature of this special project, sir?"
"now we're getting somewhere." he shoots melina a look, the faintest suggestion of a smirk, and she feels her face get hot without knowing why. he drums his fingers on the desk and explains:
"the exact purpose of my work here is confidential and, to be perfectly frank with you all, still somewhat ill-defined. what i can tell you is that from now on, until further notice, i am going to be seeing you girls for an hour every day. after breakfast you will be escorted here, and we will get to know each other a little better. i'll be assessing your intellectual and personal qualities," he picks up one of the files to gesture with it, "and keeping close tabs on your physical progress as well."
it's another test, another hoop to jump through. melina's whole life has been nothing but tests where failure means death, and success means survival.
but now she's a candidate. maybe for a candidate, success means something more substantial than mere survival. something better. (something worse.) a promotion, a recognition. a change. if she does well. if she outperforms all the other candidates.
if she impresses the lieutenant colonel.
she catches him looking at her again, that same miniscule smirk twitching at the corner of his moustache.
even such a restrained display of emotion, for a trainee widow, would be a battering offence.
hands trembling with fear of punishment and the effort of overcoming her training, melina succeeds in returning him a tiny, fleeting smile.
*
the morning sessions in the small, damp office vary somewhat in their content. on a typical day, dreykov has the girls stand while he reads aloud the reports on their recent physical and academic progress, pausing frequently to challenge or berate them over a disappointing result.
sometimes he stops to praise them, or simply to ask questions: did you find this assignment difficult; do you enjoy such and such activity; what can you tell me about this or that subject. he encourages them to talk, and makes a lot of notes.
sometimes he leaves the reports aside entirely and does something he calls 'making conversation.' he complains about the weather, the traffic in moscow, his cat's kidney problems. he doesn't mention his family or friends, not ever. sometimes he talks — in appropriately respectful terms — of the party, the economy, the war. he invites the girls to comment, but initially they struggle to find anything to say.
melina doesn't know why he does this. surely, she thinks, he would be better off making conversation with other officers — other men — other adults of any kind. she wonders if it's all part of 'assessing their intellectual and personal qualities.'
he drinks a lot of coffee and smokes a lot of cigarettes, so within a few weeks, the office stinks overpoweringly of both. he's usually still eating breakfast when the girls arrive — sandwiches wrapped in paper, which he seems to bring from home.
he has an endless supply of store-bought snacks in his desk drawer, too, even when food shortages leave the trainee widows on the brink of starvation. melina cringes internally at the involuntary growling of her stomach as she stands to attention and watches him eat.
melina earns a lot of praise for her outstanding combat skills. however, it soon becomes apparent that the academic subjects at which she excels — science, information technology, medicine, engineering — are not subjects the lieutenant colonel finds particularly inspiring. he acknowledges the great ability reflected in her test scores and instructors' reports, but himself lacks the interest or understanding to appreciate the full extent of her talent. at best, her results might earn her a grunt of approval before moving on to the next page in the file.
frustrated but not defeated, melina makes a promise to herself that he will come to appreciate her genius, one day. all she needs in the meantime is an in, some way to get his attention focused on her.
her stolen glimpse of that dog-eared book is her best clue. endurance: shackleton's incredible voyage. she doesn't know who shackleton is, or what his voyage entails, but from the name she supposes him to be an american. so she applies herself furiously in western culture and history studies, as well as geography and english language studies.
she finds no mention of shackleton in any of her textbooks. she wonders if he is an invention of the american propaganda machine.
when she does well and feigns enthusiasm for his preferred subjects, dreykov praises her warmly. humans are quite easily operated machines, melina thinks, cheered by the success of her strategy.
still, it takes her a while to realise what the book really means. she doesn't realise it on her own, either.
about two months after their first meeting, there's a session that begins ominously. dreykov's got his face in his hands when the girls arrive, and he groans at them, shielding his eyes from the bare lightbulb overhead.
"let's get this over with," he mutters. he looks bad and smells even worse. melina's certain he's wearing the same shirt from yesterday, and it looks like he slept in it. "vostokova," he holds out a folder, "you lead the class today."
melina takes it quickly, eager to impress. "what would you like me to read, sir?"
"start from where we left off yesterday," he snaps. "use your brain, girl."
already off to a bad start, melina bows her head and opens the folder. internally, she's scrambling to remember where yesterday's session ended. she knows they covered lydumila's report — she flips past those pages — svetlana, alexandra, anna…
melina comes to a halt on the first page of her own report. underneath her name, there's a single handwritten word, underlined and circled.
she stops. her brain stalls as she reads and re-reads it, trying to make sense of it. she only comes back to reality when the folder is snatched from her hands and she hears dreykov's voice yelling, "— pull yourself together! standing there like a fencepost, are you retarded? you don't know how to read?"
melina flinches. "i'm sorry, sir —"
"shut up," he barks, "i'll deal with you later. you," he thrusts the folder at anna instead, "i assume you can handle a simple task, unlike miss vostokova, yes?"
melina spends the rest of the session with her eyes lowered, studying a stain on the carpet. she can barely hear anna's faltering voice over the noise of her own shame and fear roaring in her ears.
the lieutenant colonel has lost his temper before, a few times. snapped and yelled and called them names. it seems to have a lot more to do with his own mood than the girls' behaviour, since the trainee widows are always equally polite and obedient.
but this time, melina blames herself. how could she not? she lost concentration. she's supposed to be the very model of efficiency, ruthless and smart and emotionless. she's not supposed to get distracted by…
… that word, scrawled on her report. she has a vague idea of what it means. a suspicion that it is related to sex.
melina has never had sex. she has no idea what she has done to earn this label, whether it is a good or bad thing, or what it might mean for her future.
what she does know is that none of the other girls have that word on their reports.
when the session is over, dreykov dismisses the girls without looking at them, and melina wonders whether her disgrace has been forgotten already. she returns to her regular training and finds a measure of peace in the violence, in the pain of her combat instructor's cane pressing into her back. by the time she's sitting down in the canteen for her evening meal, she certainly feels that she has been punished enough.
as soon as that thought enters her mind, a guard arrives to yank her away from the table. melina gives her bowl of thin stew, barely touched, one last mournful look before she's marched down the corridor back to dreykov's office.
it's her first time visiting this room outside of the regular morning sessions. it's also her first time alone with dreykov. he seems to have recovered a lot since the morning. he leans back in his chair and waves a hand to welcome her. "melina vostokova. good of you to join me." he has the air of a king welcoming vassals to his palace, and melina doesn't doubt that is how he sees himself.
she keeps her gaze lowered, waiting for her punishment. she can hear the rhythmic beating of dreykov's fingers on the desk before he sighs and says, "what threw you off your game this morning, my dear? you're normally so focused."
that wrongfoots her. instead of being immediately punished, she's been given an opportunity to make excuses. she feels as if she is being toyed with. carefully hiding her discomfort, she looks up and says, "sir, something on my report made me lose concentration, sir."
"oh? what was that?"
"there was a word written there, sir. it said кокетка, sir, and i was confused because i didn't know what it meant, sir."
dreykov regards her with that same tiny smirk he wore on the first day they met. "you don't know what a coquette is, melina?"
"i — no, sir."
"it's another word for a flirt. a girl who smiles at men, looks pretty to get their attention, that sort of thing."
melina nods stiffly. so she has been a flirt all this time without realising it. she did smile at him, once. and people do sometimes call her pretty, though that's something she can't exactly help. "i'm sorry, sir," she intones, "i'll be better, sir."
"i hope not," dreykov grins. "i was just starting to like you. come here."
melina slowly rounds the desk and comes to a halt beside the lieutenant colonel's chair. from here, the stench of smoke and booze and stale sweat and cologne is really bad. she has to fight not to wrinkle her nose in disgust.
he gestures to his lap and says, "i think this time i can let you off with a light spanking, hm? just as a formality."
melina lays herself carefully across his knees, with her face down, staring once again at the carpet. there's another stain over here. she can feel his paunch pressing into her side, rising and falling with every breath.
a hand clamps down on her thigh and slides its way upwards, over her backside, pushing her dress out of the way. the fabric bunches around her waist (not that she really has a waist yet, or any curves at all), leaving her covered only by the thin synthetic fabric of her underwear.
to her relief, he doesn't strip her any further. he lets his big, warm hand rest there for a while. squeezing her left buttock, ever so slightly.
he tells her, "be patient with me. this is my first time."
then he spanks her. she's used to being beaten with implements or fists, so an open hand really does feel like being let off easy. still, he keeps hitting the same spot, so after ten blows it is starting to sting quite badly.
she can feel his breath getting laboured, and he squirms a little in the seat, forcing her to grip the fabric of his trousers to keep her position. the material is thick and rough against her fingers.
ten more blows.
finally he gives her a little pat and tells her to get up. she does so, gratefully tugging her dress back down around her thighs. she stands still beside his chair, waiting to be dismissed.
instead, dreykov takes out a cigarette. he lights it and blows a cloud of smoke over melina, making her eyes water. "there," he rumbles, "that wasn't so bad, was it?"
"no, sir," melina agrees, struggling not to cough. her flesh stings a little, but she's had much worse before, over smaller infractions; she really does feel like she got off easy. she adds, "thank you, sir."
"thank you," dreykov counters, "it's been a pleasure." he looks her up and down, eyes gleaming. "you know, you mustn't take it as an insult. coquette, i mean."
"really, sir?"
"sure. some men might find the whole precocious thing annoying. inappropriate. but not me. i think it's… endearing."
melina may have stumbled into this flirting thing by accident, but now that she has it, she's going to use it. this is her in, she realises, the thing that's going to make her stand out from the other candidates.
she gives dreykov her best smile and says, "thank you, sir."
he grins at her between drags. he says, "i like you, melina."
she steels herself to take it further. with only a moment's hesitation, she says: "i like you too, sir."
his smile is dark and ugly as he sends her on her way.
now melina understands that book, half-hidden underneath the red room paperwork. it was a message sent to warn her that lieutenant colonel dreykov wants what he is not allowed to have.
*
he starts summoning her in the evenings, about once a week. he's usually reading when she comes in, and though he hides the books on her arrival, she gets glimpses of the titles.
ORDEAL BY HUNGER
GEORGE R. STEWART
he makes up thin excuses for these meetings, but all he ever does is talk. melina makes an effort to talk back, to ask insightful questions.
more importantly, she expresses sympathy whenever he complains, which is often. this seems to please him immensely. i'm so sorry to hear that, sir. no, sir, that's not fair. it sounds like you were in the right, sir. you deserve better, sir.
melina has always had an impulse to nurture, to take care of weak things, like animals and smaller girls. she has always had to crush this impulse in order to get by in the red room. but now she has found an outlet — a weak thing that desperately wants her care and her pity.
she couldn't be more thrilled. she's never been anyone's favourite before. she continues to flirt with dreykov as best she knows how, but that doesn't extend far beyond smiling and being nice to him.
she is getting very good at that, but she knows it's not very much on its own. sooner or later, she will need to add more weapons to her arsenal.
one evening she arrives weak with hunger, clutching the doorframe just to keep upright. the latest food shortage is a bad one, and it's been days since any of the trainees had a proper meal.
dreykov stands and approaches her quickly. at first melina thinks he's coming to hit her, but instead he puts a hand under her armpit and helps her over to his chair. she sits while he kneels at her side.
"alright?" he asks, looking up at her. he seems genuinely concerned. melina nods her head carefully. "hungry, yeah?"
"yes, sir," melina squeaks. she feels sick. "hungry."
the desk drawer makes a soft grinding noise when it slides open. dreykov brings out a packet of crisps and a candy bar, pressing one into each of melina's trembling hands. “i know it’s not exactly caviar and champagne, but it’s something."
"i can't," she whispers. "we're not allowed to…"
"shh," he interrupts her. quietly. "i'm not going to tell anyone. are you going to tell anyone?"
she looks down at the food. her stomach growls loudly and she says, "no, sir."
"good girl," he murmurs. "it can be our little secret."
melina nods her head. her insides convulse with hunger and nausea and — something else. something she doesn't have a word for. all she can say is: "thank you, sir."
"don't mention it." he smiles. "we can have a barter system, hm? that's how this country really works, you know. forget to each according to her need, it's all about getting favours from the right people. i'm happy to sneak you food as often as you need it, provided there's something in it for me."
her heart sinks. "i'm sorry, sir. but i don't have anything to give you."
he looks at her and licks his lips. "well. how about a kiss?"
she stares down at the lieutenant colonel, at her own pale face reflected twice in his glasses. she says, "i don't know how to kiss. i've never done it before."
"but you've seen it in cartoons, in your cultural studies, yes? in snow white, when the prince kisses the princess to wake her up?"
"… yes…"
"well, just do it like that. don't be shy, little princess. it's easy."
so melina leans down slowly, just like in the cartoon, and presses her lips lightly against his. his moustache tickles her nose and smells like ash. she quickly pulls away.
"not bad for a first attempt," dreykov says with a soft chuckle. his pupils are dilated. he reaches up, traces his thumb gently across her bottom lip, before pulling back. "you'll get better with practice, i'm sure."
melina tears into the snacks. he watches her and says, "if i fatten you up enough, the other girls will turn on you while you sleep and eat your flesh raw."
she nods distractedly, so he continues while she eats: "i think hunger is good for people. it makes them see each other the way they really are — meat and bone marrow. it overrides sentiment. shackleton's men ate their dogs, you know. little dogs that they raised themselves, from puppies." he sniffs and takes out a cigarette. "i've always hated dogs."
when the food is all gone, another wave of nausea comes over melina. she rests her hands on the desk to steady herself while it passes.
dreykov moves his ashtray to her lap and says, "feeling a bit better?"
"yes, sir. thank you, sir."
"good. and remember, our little secret. pchelintsov would kill us both if he knew about — well, any of this."
she nods and jerks her chin towards his desk drawer. "you never did tell me about shackleton."
he taps the cigarette carefully before looking back up at her. "he was an explorer. a hopeless misfit in regular society, but a great leader in his right element. his men followed him to the ends of the earth, literally. they called him, in english, the boss."
"he was an american?"
"no, but the book is."
"you shouldn't be reading american books, sir."
"well, i want to know how he did it." he shrugs. "besides, it's a good story, you know? escapism."
she frowns. "why do you need a story to escape? if you don't like it here, you could just leave. you can do whatever you want."
he laughs. "just because i'm not stuck here like you, that doesn't mean i can do whatever i want. which way i fly is hell; myself am hell. you heard that one before? no, of course you haven't. all it means is — sometimes it's nice to pretend to be someone else for a while."
melina thinks about that as the food settles in her stomach. at last she says, "sometimes i wish i was someone else. maybe i could be shackleton, too."
"you can't be shackleton," he tells her flatly. "you're a girl."
"well, who can i be? aren't there any girls in the story?"
dreykov considers it. "there's his wife. she didn't do anything exciting. she just stayed home and looked after his children."
"that doesn't sound so bad," melina confesses. "better than starving and eating dogs."
"perfect," he grins, "i'll be shackleton and you'll be my wife. you'll call me boss, won't you?"
melina smiles obligingly. "yes, boss."
he gives her hand a gleeful squeeze. then he leans in, lowers his voice. "have you ever been inside pchelintsov's office?"
she shakes her head.
"i have," he whispers. "it's ten times the size of this room. huge windows, with a balcony overlooking the grounds. thick carpet, antique oak desk."
melina says under her breath, "it sounds very nice."
"it is," dreykov confirms. "and one day it's going to be mine. and then everyone in this godforsaken building will have to call me boss, hm?"
that night, in the dark of the dormitory, melina practises kissing her own hand. she isn't sure if she's supposed to be the princess or the prince. what she does know is that she now has a new weapon in her arsenal.
and yes, the thought of kissing dreykov again makes her skin crawl. but while the girls in the beds all around her are starving, melina has food in her stomach, and the lingering taste of sugar on her tongue.
*
it becomes a routine. she sits in his chair, he kneels on the carpet beside her. he gives her offerings of food, and she repays him in kisses.
over time, the kisses get longer and more serious. with patience, he teaches her: makes her part her lips, has her move her tongue against his.
his tongue feels very large in her mouth. sometimes it gets carried away and pushes all the way to the back of her throat. sometimes he has to grip the back of her head to keep her still, to hold her in place. sometimes, instead of the mouth, he kisses her gently on the throat or behind her ear. he makes these little noises, as if she's a particularly delicious piece of food.
sometimes melina can hardly repress her shudders. she closes her eyes and uses the trick he taught her: she imagines she is someone else. mrs shackleton, safe and warm in some cosy western cottage, looking after her babies and dogs. all the men in the world thousands of miles away, starving and eating each other.
it goes away when she opens her eyes, but it does make her feel a little better.
sometimes he makes her unbraid her hair, and then just marvels at the way it frames her face, the soft waves of dark brown spilling over her shoulders. sometimes he runs his fingers through her hair and smells it, buries his face in it. she has to braid it back up again before the guards come to escort her to the dormitory, only to let it down once more for bed.
nobody can know. he tells her that, always.
sometimes he calls her beautiful and ugly in the same breath. sometimes — rarely — he talks in hushed tones of what he would like to do to her, if he could take her away from this place. if she belonged to him. if it wouldn't mean risking his job, risking a scandal.
sometimes he says, "i've never told this to anyone before," and then follows it up with all kinds of things. an admission that he hates adult females, feels sick under their scrutiny, has to get drunk just to endure talking to them. or else it's strange fantasies, often violent and sexual, but not always. he says he likes the first few minutes after waking up every day, when he can briefly imagine that everyone else on earth has died overnight.
sometimes he's sad, and lays his head in her lap, and she strokes his hair, and they stay like that in silence for an hour or more. this is when melina's nurturing impulse serves her best. she feels like how she imagines a mother must feel, even though he's a grownup and she's just a kid.
and then sometimes he's in a better mood, and he takes melina's shoes and socks off for her so he can rub her feet, and on those days she really does feel like a princess. it's almost a pleasant sensation, provided she keeps her eyes closed so she can pretend she's somewhere else.
eventually he starts giving kisses to her feet as well, and then sucking her toes. that is not a pleasant sensation. when he does that, she has to fight every impulse she has to scream and kick him in the face.
throughout it all, they talk. more and more, as melina finds the confidence to speak up, their conversations become two-way streets. she tells anecdotes from her training. she soon learns to focus on the violence, to cherrypick the most gruesome injuries she's witnessed or inflicted. he likes those stories better. they make him laugh, even though they're not funny.
she asks all about life in the outside world. what it's like to drive a car, to eat in a restaurant. what it's like in england, where he went to university. she asks about the photograph on his desk and he talks her through the whole family tree: his parents, his brothers and sisters, their spouses and children.
she twiddles a button on his uniform and asks, "why haven't you got married yet?"
he looks at her for a moment before changing the subject.
six more months go by.
melina waits for a day when he's in a particularly good mood before she dares to ask: "what are we candidates for?"
he pulls her big toe out of his mouth with a wet pop and looks up at her stupidly. "huh?"
"the secret project," melina says, all patience. "the reason we're here. what is it?"
"oh. well. one moment."
he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and gets up from under the desk. he nudges melina away so he can sit down in the chair, then invites her to sit down in his lap.
she rubs her foot on the rough carpet in an attempt to shed the gross, wet feeling, then slides obediently into position.
one of his hands settles on her lower back, the other on her knee. at last he says, "pchelintsov wants to try making a new kind of widow. stronger, more durable."
melina's eyebrows go up. "like — red guardian?"
"no, princess, no serums. just armour. cybernetic enhancements, perhaps. they're calling it the iron maiden project. remember," he growls, "this is top secret. even the candidates aren't supposed to know."
she makes herself breathe. iron maiden. impenetrable, invulnerable. "i want it to be me."
"of course you do. and if it were up to me, you'd get it, no more questions asked."
"oh. it's not up to you?"
"not at the moment. maybe someday. right now, i'm really just here to develop a screening process." he squeezes her. "don't worry. you're the best candidate, anyone can see that."
her heart lifts. "i am? you really mean that?"
"yes, little one. the results bear it out. you're the smartest, and the most deadly."
"and the prettiest?"
he leers at her. "well, that's more subjective. you're quite pretty, but so are lots of other girls. lyudmila's not bad-looking."
melina feels a stab of jealousy. "she's struggling in mathematics," she sniffs. "messes up her times tables."
"does she," says dreykov, a slow and knowing smile spreading across his face.
the next day, dreykov drills them on their times tables. lyudmila holds up perfectly until seven times seven, when her lip wobbles and no sound comes out.
dreykov rises and emerges slowly from behind his desk, unbuckling his belt as he comes. he tugs it free and loops it in one hand, then uses the other to grip lyudmila by the back of her neck.
she doesn't resist as he bends over the desk. nor when he pulls her dress up and yanks her underwear down. the rest of the class watches in silence as he raises the belt over his head and brings it down with a loud smack.
he hits her until she's a red mess of welts and open wounds. when he gives her permission to stand once more with her classmates, there's a silent tear streaking its way down her cheek, and blood trickling down the back of her thighs.
melina looks at dreykov, who's refastening his belt as he sits down. his face is flushed pink, and he looks back at her with gleaming eyes.
after that, melina turns informant on her classmates whenever her own confidence is flagging. she mentions that svetlana is insecure about her weight; dreykov dedicates an entire session to measuring the girls himself and humiliating svetlana over the results. melina happens to let slip that alexandra struggles with arabesque; the next day, he makes them all change into their ballet clothes and give him a demonstration.
every time alexandra messes up, dreykov punches her in the ribs, until she ends up in the sickbay. professor pchelintsov is not pleased.
a week later, out of nowhere, dreykov starts giggling uncontrollably to himself. when melina asks him what's so funny, he gasps out that he's still thinking about the beating he gave alexandra.
psychology lessons at the academy mostly focus on its practical applications in a mission context: how to deceive targets, how to manipulate them and use their own minds against them. melina has only a rudimentary grasp of the concept of 'personality disorders,' and she knows she is not remotely equipped to diagnose them.
however, she is starting to suspect that lieutenant colonel dreykov is not quite normal.
one day he asks her about her own weaknesses. she says she doesn't have any. he smirks and tells her she has many weaknesses, overconfidence being first among them. "nobody's perfect, little one. everybody has a weakness."
melina fiddles innocently with the end of his tie. "what's yours?"
he rolls his eyes. "okay, you got me. i don't have any."
when a lie is so big that even the person telling it doesn't expect anyone to believe it, that's called sarcasm. melina knows that this is an example of sarcasm.
fundamentally, she thinks, dreykov's main weakness is a lack of self-control. it manifests in several ways. he's reliant on caffeine and nicotine and sugar and alcohol. he has strong emotional reactions sometimes, and he's no good at hiding them. she rarely sees him deny himself anything, no matter how small. he's a slave to his appetites — of all kinds.
by now, he's filled the empty slot on his office door with a little handwritten card:
Подполковник
Иван Вадимович Дрейков
and perhaps it's just melina's imagination, but she thinks he writes his own name as if he were the most important person in the world.
to melina, that is exactly what he is. a tiny, insignificant, and emotionally unstable cog in the state machinery, he nevertheless holds the key to her future; he is the one person she needs in her corner if she is ever going to rise above her peers.
she will do anything to please him.
this is how she comes to be shivering in the corner by the fax machine, her dress thrown over her naked body like a blanket, while professor pchelintsov shouts.
he's not shouting at her.
"what the fuck do you think you're playing at," the professor rants, his face purple, as he leans over the desk. "these girls have an essential role to play in the future of the war, you — don't you have any respect for what we're trying to do here?"
dreykov's fingers drum on the desk. he talks quietly. "i've been running this project on my own, to the best of my ability, without so much as —"
"you don't care about the project!" pchelintsov interrupts, spittle flying. "you want to get her pregnant? you want to give her syphilis? she's a child, you sick fuck! she's not a prostitute brought in to amuse you, she's an elite assassin in training! she belongs to the people!"
"i know that."
"you're so…" pchelintsov paces around the tiny room, furiously searching for the right words. "i despise boys like you. just because you're related to some party bigshot, you think you can waltz into my academy and treat it as your own personal kiddie brothel."
"i assure you —"
"stop it," pchelintsov snaps, holding up a hand. "just stop talking. consider yourself lucky if you don't end up in jail over this. freak."
the professor storms over to melina and yanks her to her feet. forces the dress down over her head, before grabbing her wrist and tugging her towards the door.
melina looks back at dreykov, hunched behind his desk. he meets her eyes for a brief moment before lowering his gaze.
she knows he doesn't feel guilty.
humiliated, yes. angry, yes.
vengeful, yes.
the way things shake out, he doesn't end up in jail. he doesn't even get ousted from the red room, on account of his family connections; professor pchelintsov was right about that much. he's promoted to full colonel and provided with underlings — a junior officer and a female scientist — so that he'll never have to be left alone with the candidates.
melina expects to be killed for her corruption. instead she's beaten and held up in front of her classmates as a cautionary tale: this is what happens to girls who fraternise with the male staff.
afterwards, she learns she's no longer a candidate for the iron maiden project.
she sits alone at dinnertime and cradles her empty stomach. she practises kissing her hand at night.
it's all her fault. she was, as dreykov liked to say, a slut. she flirted with him. she was too pretty, too eager to please. she grasped too hard for her prize, and now she's lost her one chance, her one ally, her only friend.
a year goes by.
sometimes she sees dreykov passing through the courtyard, long coat swishing behind him. he'll stop to watch her training for a minute, maybe two, before moving on.
she forces herself not to meet his eyes.
in november, brezhnev dies. at the time, of course, melina is completely out of the loop. later on, she plays historian. that means piecing together a simplified version of the story, like this:
a dead leader means change, means old cliques collapsing and power dynamics shifting across every part of the government machine. that includes the red room, where professor pchelintsov quickly finds himself without allies. with his departure, the academy falls completely into the hands of the military.
situations like this are to dreykov just as chemical equations are to melina; he thrives in the petri dish of politics. at the great age of twenty-six, he successfully manoeuvres his way into the red room's upper management.
only now is melina allowed to visit him in his new office. it's larger and nicer than the old one, though still — he insists — not as large or as nice as the one on which his heart is set.
instead of blaming her for what happened, he gives her a shot of vodka and covers her face in kisses, saying how much he's missed her and how much she's grown.
he's been admiring her progress from afar, of course. in a locked drawer of his new filing cabinet are a year's worth of reports, as well as a pair of worn-down ballet shoes that she outgrew a few months ago. she can't guess how he got hold of them, but she can guess what he's been using them for.
"not to mention," he notes, and fumbles through her dress at her newly budded breasts. "you're becoming a woman so fast, i can't believe it. you haven't started menstruating yet?"
"not yet, sir."
"i'm sure it'll be here any day now. by the way, why don't you start calling me ivan when we're alone?"
"won't we get in trouble?"
"not anymore," he grins. "there's been a change of leadership around here. as long as we're reasonably discreet, we can do whatever the hell we want." he slides a meaty, nicotine-stained hand up her thigh. "you are back in the iron maiden candidate pool, my lovely little coquette."
melina's heart leaps. "i can come back to the morning sessions?"
"we're shifting away from that model. we're experimenting with more targeted, one-to-one mentorship."
his thumb slips inside her underwear. she's started growing hair there since the last time, and she worries he won't like it, but right now it seems to be the least of his concerns. he says, "we're also introducing practical assignments. real, hands-on experience. do you think you're ready for that, kitten?"
*
the bedroom door swings open and pchelintsov goes "jesus christ!"
he scrambles for the gun in his belt, the one he's been carrying everywhere since that ugly business in moscow.
the ragged little girl crouching beside his bed puts a finger to her lips. she looks up at him with big, pleading eyes.
he shuts the door slowly, gaze fixed on her the whole time. he's wary, of course he is. he may not know the girl by name, but he recognises the remnants of the red room uniform, and the otherworldly look that every one of those girls comes to share if they make it to adolescence.
he can think of no rational reason why a student from his former place of work should be here, in his bedroom in leningrad, in the middle of the night. so he keeps the gun trained on her, even as he drops down to her level and creeps slowly towards her.
"i'm so sorry," she warbles, in a tiny voice. "i didn't know where else to come."
"what do you mean?" he stares at her matted hair, the bruises and scrapes all over her skinny body. "have you — run away from the academy?"
the girl nods her head, trembling. "after you left — colonel dreykov, he — he said there was nothing to stop him touching me anymore. it hurt so bad," her breath hitches, "and i — i — he said nobody would believe me if i told. but i remembered that day when you caught him touching me in his office, and i thought… maybe if you came back, you could make him stop."
pchelintsov lowers his gun.
before he even has time to register what's happening, the gun is in the girl's hand and she's got him flat on his back on the floor.
"i've brought you a message," the girl says robotically, "from colonel dreykov."
"jesus christ," pchelintsov gasps, holding his hands up to shield his face. he wishes he could remember the girl's name. "please… you… you don't have to do this. i can help you get out, get you protection."
"you shouldn't have called him a freak," she recites. "and when he controls the red room and takes your office for his own, he's going to fuck my underage hole on top of your desk, and i'm going to love every second of it."
"please, you don't have to do this," pchelintsov gabbles. "you, you can still —"
melina shoots him twice in the face.
she doesn't do it out of any personal animosity towards the professor. she doesn't do it for her country, or for political or ideological reasons. she doesn't do it for the red room — the order doesn't officially come from that machinery, never shows up on their paperwork.
she does it for the boss. he's very grateful.
over the next few years, the upper management of the red room has a high turnover rate. officers more senior to colonel dreykov start to find themselves embroiled in scandals. arrested, or quietly pushed to resign.
those who cannot be budged by political means are removed more brutally. to those in the know, their deaths show all the hallmarks of black widow assassinations, but the hits never show up on the red room's ledgers.
one way or another, they are all moved aside, until the way is clear for the new commander of the red room. it's 1987, and he's thirty years old.
melina becomes iron maiden just before her seventeenth birthday. the boss makes good on his promise to pchelintsov, grunting and rutting over her on the antique oak desk in his palatial new office, before strapping her into the metal suit that will become her second skin.
she is his right-hand man, personal enforcer, and sole consistent fuck. other girls come and go, but melina knows they don't get to call him by his first name.
she knows things about her man that nobody else knows. she knows the things his sisters used to tease him about when he was small, and she knows how he took his revenge on them. she's the one who combs his hair and builds up his ego when he's anxious before a mandatory social event. she's the one who comforts him and rubs his shoulders when he's exhausted afterwards.
(she swallows her own nightmares. no comfort for her. that's not how their arrangement works. she's iron maiden, unflinching, unbreakable. he takes; she gives.)
she's the one who's always there for him. more than a bodyguard, more than a wife. his increasingly bloated bulk presses her into the mattress until she struggles to breathe. the smell of his cologne follows her everywhere, clings to her hair.
she's the one who helps him oversee the shipments, in the swirling snow, in the twilight. her: in her gleaming armour and cloak. him: in his uniform and greatcoat. the girls look at them both with the same terrified eyes.
and there are always more girls. dreykov handles them, and talks about them, like inanimate objects. like so many bags of sugar. it makes melina appreciate how kind he truly is to her — how much worse things could be for her.
she remembers all too well what it was to be one of those faceless little girls, being dragged out of a shipping container at gunpoint, and she sets her jaw. not just a survivor but a winner. everything she has now, every advantage, every privilege — it doesn't matter how she got it. all that matters is she has it, and she's going to hold onto it.
she can't waste emotion on these girls, not when there's nothing she can do to help them. they are faceless, interchangeable, replaceable. she is not. she has value, she is somebody.
by the time she turns eighteen, nothing seems to have changed between her and the boss. she's never forgotten what he said about hating adult females (she's seen it borne out over and over again, in fact), and she's all too aware that his other victims are usually tossed aside long before reaching maturity.
she thinks she must be an exception to the rule. she doesn't worry about her future. she is strong, and still young.
unlike the soviet union, which is dying. this has a number of repercussions for melina, two of them major.
the first major repercussion is that the red room officially becomes an independent entity, no longer beholden to anyone's interests but its own, effectively making general dreykov the petty tyrant he has always dreamed of being.
the second major repercussion concerns red guardian, something in which melina has never been interested. now, it seems like she's not the only one. the increasingly obsolete superhero is kicked from place to place until he finally lands on the doorstep of the red room, quite literally, dripping with rain and carrying his own suitcase.
he looks like an abandoned dog. melina's nurturing instinct flares for a fraction of a second, before she smothers it back down again.
the new arrival bonds with dreykov in no time, clearly grateful for an authority figure willing to tell him what he wants to hear. stability, renewed glory. they drink and laugh and sing together and talk about how everything is going to be just fine.
melina holds her tongue and gives the men space, like she's been taught to. but when the supersoldier is away at training, she purses her lips. "ivan, it's cruel of you to lead that boy on. he's going to be crushed when he finds out his career is over after all."
dreykov shrugs and doesn't look up from his book. "he's a national hero. and a sweet kid. don't be such a downer. let him have a few more years of hope."
she snorts.
that does make him look up at her, and he sneers. "you're jealous."
"hardly," she retorts. "unless you're planning to fuck him."
"don't be disgusting."
"besides, how could i be jealous of someone so stupid? you heard him, he thinks there are only three continents. the mighty red guardian is a simpleton."
dreykov laughs. "but that's one of his best qualities."
as a soldier, or a mascot, that might be true. but it means the boy — shostakov — will never be more than that. he'll never be competition for melina, who proudly considers intelligent conversation to be among the most important services she performs for her master. he gives her books to read — after he's done with them, of course, to avoid a situation where she's more knowledgeable than him on a given topic. (still, when he's wrong about something, she avoids correcting him.)
"i just think he should be warned," she insists. "better to know when you're approaching your sell-by date than to live in blissful ignorance until it's too late."
dreykov looks down again and says, "eh. perhaps."
to melina's irritation, shostakov sticks around. it's well known that he has nowhere else to go. she doesn't hide her contempt for him. if he treated her the same way, it wouldn't be so bad, but he insists on being nice. always overly friendly, talkative, and generous.
as time goes on, she even begins to detect pity in the way he smiles at her. this enrages her more than anything, and it's not long before she has to confront him about it.
shostakov shies away from meeting her eyes. "i didn't mean to offend you. i feel what i feel, i can't help it."
melina glares at him. "what is that supposed to mean?"
"you seem like a very… nice girl. you're very loyal to general dreykov, very good to him, very loving."
"that's hardly any of your business," she frowns. "and i don't see what it has to do with anything."
shostakov sighs. "when you're not there… he says things, you know."
her frown deepens. "what things?"
"he thinks you're getting boring. too comfortable. and too old."
too old for what, she doesn't ask.
all this time, she really thought heartbreak was something that only happened to stupid, weak, sensitive, frivolous girls. maybe it is, and she has been one of those girls without realising it.
either way, this is the beginning of a downward spiral.
melina does everything she can do, is everything she can be. she's submissive and soft and sweet and ferocious and ruthless and powerful. she trains until her whole body hurts, she waxes, she wears makeup, she asks dreykov if he thinks she should go blonde. he tells her not to bother him with asinine questions.
she comes to realise, with nauseating dread, that she and shostakov — alexei — are in the same boat now.
as the months go by and alexei's best days grow ever more distant behind him, he starts to realise it too.
finally, together, they find themselves facing exile. it's dressed up as an undercover mission in america, but it's exile. even alexei is clever enough to know that.
"you could leave," he suggests, stupidly, when they're alone together. "you're smart, and good at fighting. you could go anywhere, do anything you want."
"which way i fly is hell," melina mumbles, a distant look in her eyes; "myself am hell."
alexei blinks at her. "what?"
melina sighs and flips open the mission brief. traces her fingers over the profile of her cover identity. melinda shaw, happy american housewife. the kind of woman who looks after babies and dogs. "it just means that — sometimes it's nice to pretend to be someone else for a while."
she doesn't want to tell alexei about how she ended up here. he thinks she earned her prestigious position through merit alone, and he admires her for that. she feels certain that all his respect for her would dry up in a heartbeat if he knew how it really happened: the things she did for dreykov, the things she let him do to her body.
alone at night, she plays those moments again and again in her head. at the time, all she wanted was for it to be over. it was painful, humiliating, scary.
and now that it is over... she doesn't want it back, exactly, but the thought of it makes her ache inside. she was only ever good for one thing, and now she doesn't even have that. she's worthless, redundant, expired.
there's no fanfare, no warning.