The year is 2058. For the last decade, most of the world has known only conflict as east and west waged total war on one another. After the nuclear destruction of many prominent cities across the globe, an uneasy truce was signed and a new order has emerged. Most of Eastern Europe and Asia have fallen behind what has been called a "New Iron Curtain" as a Russian-dominated union spread its influence further across the continent...
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An old moped drove through rural Belarus in the very early morning, still hours before sunrise. The driver, a young woman named Irina, knew that she shouldn't have been there. A curfew had been imposed on the entire country for the past six months, after the occupying Russian Union imposed martial law to quell a minor rebellion that had broken out across the nation.
The rebellion wasn't so minor to Irina, however; it had consumed her entire life for months. After witnessing her husband of under a year -- an innocent passerby -- be gunned down by soldiers trying to break up a riot, she searched out a way to join up. She participated in several successful operations, and was now sent out on her first solo mission.
After driving for nearly an hour, Irina reached her destination: An intersection that, according to their intelligence, a convoy of troops was scheduled to pass shortly after dawn. She shut off the moped's engine and dismounted, carrying a small package. She quietly crept to some thick underbrush near the intersection.
Hearing a very faint rumbling noise, she paused to listen.
"Stop immediately, and put your hands on your head! You are in violation of curfew!" boomed a sudden voice over a loudspeaker. Irina froze, temporarily paralyzed with shock. A blinding light was pointed at her, and she found herself staring at a Russian patrol vehicle perhaps twenty meters from where she stood. Running on a fuel cell engine and sporting infrared sensor technology, the vehicles were silent and nearly impossible to spot in the darkness. There was always a small chance of encountering a random patrol on one of these missions, but it was uncommon this far away from a major city.
"I said, put your hands on your head!" the voice repeated. Irina, having no better ideas, dropped her package and took off running towards some nearby foliage. Her escape was cut short as she was hit square in the back of the neck with a tranquilizer projectile and found her vision blacking out before she even hit the ground.
When Irina awoke, she found her vision obscured by a hood that covered her head, and her hands bound behind her with handcuffs. She was lying on a hard surface; based on the periodic bumps she felt, she figured she was in the small cargo compartment of the patrol vehicle. She had always been told to avoid being taken alive if possible, as the Russians were rumored to be ruthless towards captured rebels. But alas, here she was. She felt sick to her stomach.
The ride plodded on for under an hour, but felt like ages to Irina. She assumed they were taking her to a prison at Brest, the nearest major city as well as the area she and her friends had been operating from. Her arms were getting sore from being pulled behind her back, and breathing underneath the thick hood was difficult, to say the least.
Finally, the vehicle came to a rest. The rear compartment opened and moments later, she felt a rough hand pull her by the arm. Unable to see or pose any meaningful resistance, she complied and followed. Her feet plodded along a short concrete path before she heard a heavy door open. By the sudden increase in temperature, she guessed that she was now indoors. She was shoved along for a few more steps, and then brought to a stop.
"Who is she?" droned a nasally female voice.
"Irina Savitsky," said the man who had led her into the building. "Twenty-six years old, widowed, lives alone in a lower class apartment complex. No record of arrest. Records show that she has worked as a waitress in various restaurants for the last ten years." All of her personal information was accessible by the military via a tiny chip implanted behind her sternum -- part of a program that had been implemented with worldwide collaboration before she was even born.
"She was picked up on a routine curfew violation 80 miles outside of city limits," the man said. "But the patrol discovered that she was in possession of a small incendiary bomb. They were lucky to have come across her."
"All right, take her in for processing," the female voice said. "Put her in 59H in the military wing when you're finished." Irina heard a few items being passed back and forth between the two before she was tugged along once again. A few more sets of heavy-sounding doors opened and closed before they came to a stop.
The hood was suddenly lifted from Irina's head. She was momentarily blinded by the light in the room, but it felt good to breathe freely again. The room was plain and bare, save for a large desk behind which sat a middle-aged soldier. Two guards stood on duty.
"All right, we'll take her from here," said the man behind the desk. The soldier who had escorted Irina turned around and departed.
"Savitsky, was it?" the man behind the desk said. He sounded surprisingly polite for a prison officer. "Listen up. We're going to remove your handcuffs; once you are released, you're going to remove all of your clothing and jewelry and place them on the floor in front of you. At that point, you'll be searched for any weapons or contraband."
Irina felt a chill travel up her spine. She was overly self-conscious about her body and had never been seen naked before by total strangers. One of the two guards in the room walked behind her and removed her handcuffs. She took the opportunity to stretch her arms and rub her wrists.
"Proceed," the man behind the desk said. When Irina hesitated, his tone turned a little harsher. "If you refuse to comply, I can get the guards to assist you." Realizing that she had no choice, Irina bent down and began untying her shoes as slowly as possible, trying her best to delay the inevitable humiliation.
"We're pretty busy here, so we'd appreciate it if you hurried up," the man behind the desk snapped coldly. Irina glanced up at him with a look of nervousness, and began to work a little quicker. She slipped off her shoes and socks and kicked them out in front of her. She removed her sweater and tossed it on the floor, followed by the cotton shirt she wore underneath. She proceeded to unbuckle her belt and slip off her jeans. Now standing in her bra and underwear, she paused.
"All of it," the man snapped. "It doesn't do us any good if we can't thoroughly search you." Irina plucked out her earrings and tossed them onto the floor into the pile, followed by her necklace and ring -- her wedding ring, which she had continued to wear after her husband's death. She felt a tear starting to well up as she realized she was probably never going to wear it again.
Since there was no more postponing of the inevitable, she unfastened her bra and tossed it on the floor. While covering her chest with her left arm, she then used her right arm to wiggle her underwear off, before sticking her right hand in front of her crotch.
"Hands on your head," the man behind the desk snarled, his tone becoming harsher. "Please. It's not like any of us have never seen a pair of tits." The two guards chuckled. Irina, shivering from nervousness and cold, put her hands on top of her head. Her small, light pink nipples stood out hard from her smallish breasts.
One of the guards, clearly having done this many times before, grabbed her pile of clothes and placed them on the desk where the man sitting there began placing them into a plastic bag. The guard then returned to Irina and circled around her, looking over her body. Irina thought that would be the worst of it until he approached and individually lifted up her small breasts. Entirely pointless, Irina thought, as there wasn't much space to hide anything under them.
The guard then squatted down and used his hands to push her thighs apart. He crudely stuck two fingers into her untrimmed patch of pubic hair, spreading her labia and crudely digging around a bit inside. Irina gasped and her eyes bulged at the unexpected intrusion and she blushed, wondering if they ever actually ever found women trying to hide things inside. He then circled behind her and spread her buttocks, taking a quick peek between them.
"She's clean," the guard said. The man behind the desk nodded and the guard escorted Irina, still entirely naked, through another door into a small room containing a small cabinet and a single open shower stall. Irina heard him rummaging through the cabinet for a moment. "Okay, hands at your side, and stand still." Afraid of what the consequences might be if she disobeyed, Irina complied. She felt him pulling her wavy, raven hair out into a bunch and then heard a few quick *snips* -- he was giving her a rough haircut. A few more snips and he put the scissors back in the cabinet. Irina couldn't see herself, but imagined it was probably the shortest (and worst) haircut she'd ever received.
"Okay, now wash yourself off," said the guard. Irina walked towards the stall and turned the knob. Lukewarm water, smelling strongly of a chemical detergent, sprayed down on her. Facing away from the guard the entire time, she rubbed herself down as quickly as possible with her hands. When she finished, the guard tossed her a towel that she used to dry herself off.
"All right, bring the towel back," said the guard after Irina tried to wrap the towel around herself to hide her nudity. With a look of shame, she returned to the guard and handed him the towel. He grinned and very obviously looked her milky skin over from head to toe. Irina blushed, but didn't dare to protest.
The guard shoved a one-piece orange jumpsuit at her. No bra or underwear, but Irina didn't complain. The sooner she covered herself up, the better. She slipped into it and zipped up.
"Let's get you to your cell," said the guard. He opened a door that led to a dimly-lit hallway. On each side of the hall were metal doors with a tiny little grate towards the top -- prison cells, she assumed.
The guard walked her down the hall, opened her cell and shoved her inside before slamming the door. "They've scheduled you for interrogation in nine hours," he said through the small grate at the top of the door. "Sleep tight..."
Irina looked at her cell. It was bare, except for a nasty metal toilet and a metal bench without a mattress that was presumably supposed to serve as a bed. She curled herself up and fell asleep crying softly, wondering how she got herself into such a mess.
