Multiverse: Deathstroke-Chapter 515: Leviathan

Anya clung to Dottie, both sitting on the bed, sobbing quietly.

They didn’t dare cry loudly, afraid of drawing the guards’ attention.

"Dottie, your fighting and shooting scores are the best, way better than mine. Kill me and live on for both of us."

"No. If you won’t kill me, we’ll find a way to break out together. Worst case, we get shredded by machine guns."

"If it comes to that, they won’t shoot," Anya shook her head, wiping tears. "They’ll just send dogs and a sled at dawn, then pick up our frozen bodies a few miles out."

Dottie glanced down. Yeah, even the guards inside the base wore thin clothes.

The guards outside, the base’s defenses, the electric fence—those could be handled. Their training covered similar scenarios.

But no lesson taught them how to fight nature. A single dress wouldn’t get them far. Siberia’s icy winds would kill them.

Bullets could be spared. Their corpses might even end up as target practice for the other girls or dissection material.

"If we take out enough guards and layer their clothes, we might make it past the snow," Dottie suggested.

"But which way do we go?" Anya asked. "We don’t even know where we are. We’ve lived here our whole lives. What’s beyond the wilderness?"

"..."

Dottie had no answer. But since neither could kill the other, they’d have to escape together.

Meanwhile, Su Ming was drinking.

Yup, after over two weeks of staking out and a few wrong turns, he’d finally found the Red Room.

This godforsaken place was a nightmare. No trains, just human-pulled sleds for transport.

Flying high above the train station, watching prisoners and laborers move like ants, painfully slow, Su Ming had overtaken them once he locked onto the direction.

Finding this place from a hundred kilometers away was thanks to Stranglehold’s sense of smell, the cloak’s aerial recon, and Deathstroke’s old hunting skills.

In the DC universe, he could’ve used his visor’s fused artifact. But in Marvel, that tech was useless.

The Red Room was unassuming, but Su Ming sniffed it out.

A rundown shack with an electric fence? In Siberia’s backcountry, with tanks? Overkill much?

Few patrollers on the ground, a squad per watchtower around the fence, a handful in the central house, and one squad walking dogs.

Two beat-up tanks, engines off—crews probably not on duty.

These were all Leviathan’s goons. Su Ming felt no guilt. It was nighttime, pitch-black—perfect timing.

He landed lightly on a watchtower roof, hanging upside-down from the eaves. The soldiers warming by a fire didn’t even react before Stranglehold choked them out.

Four towers, same routine. Only the ground dogs caught the scent of blood, growing restless. No one else noticed Su Ming.

These soldiers were mediocre. Seeing Deathstroke drop from the sky, they were too spooked to even flip their safeties. By the time their fingers reached the triggers, their heads were rolling in the snow.

Su Ming’s owl dagger was enough for the humans. Stranglehold handled the dogs. Against an alien predator, the dogs couldn’t even bark.

Stranglehold was too fast—a black blur, tentacles snapping necks, then sprouting a maw to swallow them.

Su Ming had half a mind to try dog meat, but that chance was gone.

Stranglehold suggested they could share human flesh instead. Tasty, it said. Ever tried?

Su Ming declined.

On second thought, those dogs might’ve eaten human flesh. He lost interest.

No cameras in this era—golden age for assassins. The infiltration went off without a hitch.

Su Ming looted the bodies, pocketing rubles and vodka, then entered the central shack.

A few sleeping junior officers inside. Stinking boots and empty bottles were strewn about, poker cards scattered on the floor.

"Stranglehold."

Su Ming didn’t care how they’d die. He scanned the room.

A massive steel door in the corner led downward, next to a big red alarm button, a comms device to the lower levels, and some basic weapons.

To avoid tipping off the enemy and risking them killing the girls, stealth was the play.

He’d cut through the SSR’s Brooklyn lab door silently. This one should be no different.

But first, a swig of vodka to warm up.

No "magic breath" spell on the cloak meant he’d sucked in plenty of freezing air. He was chilled to the bone.

It looked like Sprite, but vodka wasn’t gonna make his heart soar.

Unscrewing a fresh bottle, he pulled off his helmet, downed a few gulps, exhaled a warm breath, and snapped the helmet back on. He drew the Nightfall sword.

The black blade glittered with star-like flecks.

A gentle thrust sliced through the door like paper, carving a perfect circle.

Stranglehold held the metal disc, easing it to the ground.

Silent.

A wide, sloping ramp led downward.

Su Ming nodded, satisfied. His red optic sank into the darkness.

The structure was like an inverted skyscraper. The upper levels near the exit were barracks or armories.

Leviathan was ruthless. The soldiers down here wore short sleeves. Only those rotating to outdoor patrols got the few dozen overcoats.

Food was scarce—soldiers lived on borscht cans and rock-hard black bread. Supplies were basically nonexistent.

Except for vodka. That, they had in spades.

Su Ming didn’t pity them. Stationed here, they were Leviathan’s loyal dogs. They had to die.

Unlike Hydra’s brainwashing or the SSR’s grand ideals, Leviathan’s motto was "to claim our place in the world."

Whatever that meant.

Su Ming calmly ordered Stranglehold to slaughter the sleeping soldiers while he collected rubles and gold watches from the bodies.

He planned to free all the Red Room girls, but not all might follow him.

Most were orphans, but some, like Natasha, had families who’d given them up.

Natasha was found on a battlefield by a soldier named Ivan, who raised her like family.

But Ivan blindly trusted his superiors, offering Natasha to serve the motherland. Following orders, he handed her to Taras Romanov, a spymaster.

Taras, a Leviathan operative, didn’t serve the motherland or Comrade Steel. Leviathan needed girls like Natasha.

He taught her assassin skills, using her child’s appearance to kill targets.

At ten, she was sent to Japan to assassinate a pedophile Yakuza leader.

Predictably, she failed. Luckily, Wolverine, wandering in Japan, saved her by chance.

But Logan wasn’t cut out for parenting. He sent her back to the USSR, to Ivan, and killed Taras for good measure.

"Sending a ten-year-old foster daughter to kill a Yakuza boss? Guy’s nuts. Gotta die."

That was Logan’s logic. Problem solved, happy ending. Then he trekked across the USSR to Europe to find his brother, Victor.

But the water here ran deep. This was far from over.

Leviathan came for Ivan again, drafted Natasha, and threw her into the Red Room.

Now fourteen, Natasha’s killing skills were unmatched among her peers.

Still, Su Ming didn’t want to force anyone to leave their families. A few more or fewer students didn’t matter.

Some might remember their parents and want to go home. Dangerous, sure, but he’d let them choose.

If they wanted to leave, he’d split the rubles for travel. Not much, but enough for a train ticket or food.

He had dollars, but those weren’t usable in Soviet civilian markets.

After collecting a sack of cash, the hundreds of soldiers in a dozen barracks were all dead.

Stranglehold was pleased. Human brains were sweet, it said.

The upper levels were cleared, no one aware a lethal killer had breached the base’s depths. Su Ming kicked a headless corpse off a cot and sat on the blood-soaked bed to smoke.

Looting cash was a pain. Solo missions sucked without backup.

The lower levels were likely the labs—brainwashing machines, hypnosis rooms, and probably the leech serum he wanted.

These soldiers weren’t the girls’ instructors. Grunts couldn’t train elite agents. The barracks looked like a bandit hideout, discipline nonexistent.

After a cigarette, Su Ming moved through the dimness. The corridors were littered with sentries’ bodies, dead before they even saw Deathstroke’s shadow.

He descended smoothly. As expected, this level was all labs and research facilities. The first door he pushed open was a morgue.

Broken bodies of young girls lay there, faces twisted in pain, eyes open in death, some with human bite marks.

The incinerator next door was still running. The smell of burning bones was familiar to a mercenary. That was their fate.

Su Ming sighed, pulling a sheet over them.

Leviathan, like Hydra, couldn’t be fully eradicated now. Even if he saved the girls and razed this place, they’d just build a Green Room or Black Room elsewhere.

Dwelling on it was pointless. He’d save the living, let them work for him. They’d have better lives.

As long as they were loyal, they didn’t even have to keep training as killers. They could learn to cook or something.