The Gamble

By Kiarash Karimian Dowlatabad

The speculation surrounding Rick Jones held a kernel of truth. In fact, Rick had served as a Pentagon officer, assigned by the Defense Intelligence Agency to lead a task force monitoring a secret Russian nuclear program based in Tula. One hundred days after Russia’s new administration took office, one of the CIA’s most experienced deep-cover operatives reported suspicious activity in the region. The source, long embedded in Russia, described massive developments at a coal mine in Tula—operations so extensive that, despite Moscow’s efforts to conceal them underground, both American and Chinese satellites had begun to pick up visual anomalies.

Following the catastrophic economic fallout from the Ukraine war in the 2020s, Russia had spent more than two decades rebuilding its technological and industrial base. However, when Viktor Valkov rose to power in late 2038, he pursued a more aggressive path. Determined to restore the lost grandeur of the Soviet empire, Valkov sought a shortcut to dominance—one forged not through diplomacy, but by scientific brinkmanship.

History, it seemed, was repeating itself. And once again, the Russians had failed to learn the full lesson of Chernobyl.

At the time of the Chernobyl disaster, the Soviet government had crafted a convincing cover story—one that attributed the catastrophe to reactor design flaws, operational errors, and systemic decay. The narrative held up for decades, successfully fooling even American intelligence. But the truth, carefully buried by the Kremlin, was far more dangerous than poor engineering.

If the Americans had ever uncovered the real cause of the explosion, it might have handed them the key to permanent dominance in the Cold War. To protect that secret, the Soviet state silenced more than a few of its own scientists.

The real reason behind the disaster remained buried for nearly seventy years. It wasn't until the tragedy at Tula that old fears were reignited.

In the final years of the Soviet Union, scientists had been experimenting with a dangerous fusion process involving superheavy isotopes of Rutherfordium and Niobium. The Chernobyl reactor hadn’t simply melted down—it had detonated as a result of an uncontrolled chain reaction during an early Rutherfordium-260 fusion trial. The explosion shattered the graphite piping and released an immense burst of radioactive contamination, the magnitude of which the world had never seen before.

The man behind the project was Comrade Professor Rostov, a brilliant and fiercely nationalistic nuclear chemist. Once the favored protégé of Igor Kurchatov—the father of the Soviet atomic bomb—Rostov was a committed Marxist-Leninist and a veteran of the Party’s scientific elite.

Drawing on the theoretical work of Babayev and Flerov, as well as his own tenure with the Soviet space program, Rostov proposed a concept that immediately captured the attention of the Central Committee—and even that of the President himself.

His vision: the creation of a revolutionary elemental alloy, one that would transform Soviet military capabilities. If successful, it would mark an unprecedented leap forward in missile technology, aerospace engineering, and advanced weaponry. It would secure the Soviet Union’s global supremacy for generations.

Rostov’s reputation ensured that his proposal faced little resistance. Since the Khrushchev era, he had been a trusted voice in the Party’s inner circles. Many of the USSR’s most ambitious technological advances had passed through his hands. Within months, his latest vision was greenlit and moved to development under deep secrecy.

Professor Rostov’s brother had been more than just a confidant; he was the closest ally of Comrade Sergey Korolev, the legendary architect of the Soviet space program and the chief engineer behind Yuri Gagarin’s historic spaceflight. Together, the Rostov brothers had helped design the Vostok 1 spacecraft—an achievement that marked the pinnacle of Soviet engineering. From that moment on, Rostov became obsessed with a single ambition: to develop an alloy that was not only far lighter than anything known, but also exponentially more durable.

For years, his research team explored hundreds of combinations. They initially settled on titanium-based alloys, reinforced with elements like chromium and molybdenum. But even these advanced composites failed to meet his towering expectations. He envisioned a material so light, it could float like paper—and yet so strong, it could endure tank fire and atmospheric re-entry without a scratch.

He envisioned a future where the MiG-21 could soar through machine-gun fire unscathed, and the T-62 would transform into an unstoppable titan on the battlefield.

Despite years of effort, the alloy remained elusive. The project consumed vast resources with little to show for it. Yet, the tantalizing potential of Budushcheye continued to fuel the dream. High-ranking Party officials—at times even Brezhnev himself—personally intervened, ordering physicists and chemists across the USSR to abandon their fields and join Rostov’s effort.

At Rostov’s request, prominent scientists like Yuri Babayev and Yakov Zeldovich were added to the project’s ideation team. But it was Georgy Flerov, drawing on his prior work with superheavy elements, who radically shifted the team’s thinking.

Flerov proposed abandoning metallurgy altogether.

Rather than manipulating existing elements, he argued they should create a new one. The properties of any material, he reminded them, were determined not by how it was forged, but by the nature of the atoms themselves. To achieve the impossible, they needed to build something entirely new—an element that didn’t yet exist.

With Smirnov’s support, the team devised a plan to synthesize a novel element by merging superheavy isotopes using particle accelerators and experimental nuclear reactors. Through a chain of controlled nuclear reactions, they hoped to forge a material that would outperform steel, resist all forms of kinetic force, and yet remain completely non-nuclear in its volatility.

Their calculations—based partly on classified studies by the original discoverers of rutherfordium and dubnium—suggested that an alloy containing a rutherfordium-based core might possess the ideal properties: ultra-resistant to stress and deformation, highly conductive, and capable of redirecting explosive force.

It was a bold and visionary idea—but nearly impossible to implement.

The laboratory conditions required for the synthesis were beyond what even the most advanced Soviet facilities could sustain. The pressure from the Central Committee intensified. Party officials, already skeptical of the project's cost, issued veiled threats. Paranoia mounted, and when the anticipated results failed to materialize, the KGB's suspicion turned towards espionage.

The intelligence service intervened with brutal efficiency. Interrogations turned violent. A few scientists confessed under duress to collaborating with the West. Some vanished. Others committed suicide. The climate of fear choked creativity. Flerov and Zeldovich soon withdrew from the project, disillusioned and under surveillance.

The final blow came from outside: the Islamic Revolution in Iran. With the fall of the Shah and the U.S. losing a crucial regional ally, the Soviet Union shifted its focus to Afghanistan. A costly invasion followed. Resources were redirected. The "Future Alloy" was quietly defunded—shelved as an unfortunate failure of ambition.

By the early 1980s, the Soviet Union’s economy was spiraling into a severe recession. Energy shortages gripped the Eastern Bloc. Under the weight of stagnation, morale was collapsing, and public trust was disintegrating. The KAL 007 incident—the downing of a civilian Korean airliner by Soviet forces—had further isolated the USSR on the global stage, drawing international outrage. Inside the Kremlin, President Yuri Andropov knew his health was failing. But what haunted him most was the fear of becoming a historical disgrace—the last leader of a collapsing empire.

Desperate for a miracle, Andropov summoned his most trusted KGB aides to a closed session inside the Kremlin walls. He gave them a simple but urgent order: bring me the boldest, most radical ideas to save the Soviet state—no matter how far-fetched.

Three months later, as the war in Afghanistan escalated, the committee reviewed hundreds of economic and industrial proposals. Only one proposal seized their attention.

It came from Professor Rostov.

Backed by recent breakthroughs at the GSI Helmholtz Centre in Darmstadt, where scientists had discovered a new element, Meitnerium—Rostov’s team, now led by Yuri Smirnov, presented a dramatic shift in the old alloy project. Their new model showed that Meitnerium could serve as a nuclear catalyst, the missing link needed to stabilize the alloy fusion process they had pursued for decades.

Rostov claimed that this catalyst would enable the creation of an elemental alloy with near-infinite thermal resistance. Such a material could unlock the potential for small, immensely powerful fusion reactors—capable of solving the Bloc’s energy crisis. Beyond that, it could be used to build weapons of enormous destructive capability; yet with controlled radiation output. In theory, it could end wars in days. Most provocatively, the alloy could serve as a shield against radiation bursts and high-energy particles, even in the event of full-scale nuclear war.

Rostov’s presentation stunned the room into silence. Then Andropov stood and applauded—and within moments, so did the entire committee.

The project was revived with a new name: Element of Victory.

Andropov approved a massive budget, diverting military and scientific funding from across the USSR. Reactor No. 4 of the newly constructed Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant was allocated to the project. The old dream was reborn—with more fire and more secrecy than ever before.

Not everyone was convinced.

When Smirnov approached Andrei Sakharov to bring him into the project, the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb denounced the idea as reckless madness. Sakharov warned that using unstable elements as fusion catalysts risked an uncontrolled chain reaction—one that could yield a nuclear explosion equivalent to 100 megatons. It was a nightmare scenario he had feared once before, during the development of the Tsar Bomba in 1961. Even then, they had reduced the weapon’s yield by half before daring to test it.

Sakharov urged restraint. He spoke of catastrophic consequences, of a Chernobyl-level disaster multiplied a hundredfold. His warnings fell on deaf ears.

His continued resistance resulted in his political exile. He was banished to a remote village, stripped of influence. Babayev, too, quietly distanced himself from the program. But Smirnov remained—loyal to the end, and now fully in charge.

Despite the worsening economic conditions, vast sums of the Soviet budget were funneled into the Element of Victory program. Containment chambers were built. Superheavy isotopes of Rutherfordium and Niobium were synthesized and fused in trial runs. It was a desperate gamble; one that Gorbachev, newly elevated to power, chose to continue. Initial results were promising, with three successful experiments giving them hope.

They thought they were on the brink of salvation.

In truth, they were standing on the edge of the abyss.

On April 25, 1986, the staff at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant were quietly rotated out. Under classified orders, all personnel were replaced, and a new team—handpicked by Professor Rostov and operating under Yuri Smirnov’s direct supervision—was stationed inside Reactor No. 4.

Their instructions were precise: begin a controlled test and reduce the reactor’s power output in preparation for the final fusion trial. The operation was timed to commence exactly at midnight on April 26.

The first attempt failed within the hour. But then, an hour into the second try, something extraordinary happened. The system stabilized. The Meitnerium catalyst began forming intermediate complexes. For twenty minutes, the reactor operated with astonishing precision. The impossible seemed within reach.

Then the chain snapped.

The reaction between Rutherfordium isotopes accelerated beyond control. The energy surge overwhelmed the reactor’s core. The containment structure failed.

Reactor No. 4 exploded.

It was the largest unintentional nuclear release in human history.

Had Smirnov succeeded that night, the world might have charted an entirely different course—one where it may not have been Communist China leading the twenty-first century, but a resurgent Soviet Union—armed with clean fusion energy, invincible armor, and a monopoly on the most advanced material ever created.

But history had chosen another path.

In the weeks that followed, Professor Babayev, consumed by guilt for not doing more to stop Smirnov, fell into depression and died in quiet disgrace. Smirnov himself perished in the explosion; but under direct orders from the KGB, his name was omitted from all casualty lists. The official story made no mention of his presence at what was, according to Soviet reports, a routine safety test gone tragically wrong.

In the wake of the disaster, General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev reached out to the only man who could help craft a convincing lie: Andrei Sakharov.

In a highly classified transmission, Gorbachev urged Sakharov—still under internal exile—to construct a scientifically plausible narrative, one that would satisfy international inspectors. One that would explain the Chernobyl catastrophe not as the collapse of a secret superweapon project, but as a tragic, all-too-human mistake. Most importantly, it had to be a lie strong enough to prevent other nations—especially the Americans—from ever discovering what had truly happened in Reactor No. 4.

Sakharov hesitated. But in the end, he agreed.

Not for the Party. Not for power. But because Gorbachev promised him one thing: that the Soviet Union would abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions forever.

Publicly, Gorbachev declared a new policy of transparency—glasnost—and a push to reduce military expenditures. But behind closed doors, the Party’s goal remained unchanged: to keep the Element of Victory project buried, and to ensure that no foreign power could replicate its science.

The narrative they presented to the world—of a failed reactor cooling test, a cascade of errors, and a reactor design flaw—was not entirely false. It was just false enough.

Western governments, hungry for a Soviet admission of incompetence, accepted the explanation. They saw Chernobyl as confirmation of everything they believed about Soviet engineering: poorly designed, poorly managed, destined to fail.

They never asked the right questions.

For six months, from exile, Sakharov dictated instructions by telephone, crafting the lie, stage by stage. With the occasional consultation from Yakov Zeldovich, he guided military engineers in how to falsify documents, manipulate reactor logs, and control physical evidence to satisfy international oversight bodies.

By December of that year, the Chernobyl site had been sealed. The last foreign inspectors had left. And Gorbachev himself called Sakharov—personally—to thank him, and to confirm his release.

Only a handful of men knew the true story of what happened in Reactor No. 4. The rest of the world accepted the illusion, unaware that deep within the radioactive soil of Pripyat lay the buried remains of a failed miracle.

Upon regaining his freedom, Andrei Sakharov became a vocal opponent of the Communist regime. Determined to prevent another catastrophe like Chernobyl, he refused to remain silent. Under growing pressure from the KGB, he threatened to expose the buried legacy of Element Pobedy—the truth behind the explosion.

The threat bought him and his family a brief reprieve. For nearly three years, the notorious Soviet security apparatus backed off.

Then, on the eve of a critical speech he was scheduled to deliver before Congress, Sakharov died suddenly of what was reported as a heart attack. Rumors spread quickly. Many believed he had been about to reveal the true cause of the Chernobyl disaster. His wife, Yelena, had quoted him saying, “Tomorrow will be a battle,” just hours before his death.

Two years earlier, Yakov Zeldovich had also died of a heart attack—just as unexpectedly.

Inside the KGB, no one admitted responsibility for altering Sakharov’s medication. But evidence pointed to a switch that had triggered fatal cardiac arrhythmia. When news of Sakharov’s death reached Gorbachev, he acted swiftly—dismissing the officials suspected of involvement and ordering a full purge of the intelligence services.

That decision, though principled; destabilized the very institutions that kept the Party in power. Within a year, it helped spark the August Coup.

Ironically, the same man who had authored the cover story for Chernobyl had also laid its most lasting foundation. Sakharov’s containment strategy had been so precise, so scientifically thorough, that even three decades later, engineers tasked with fortifying the site followed his original plans—almost line by line.

The cost of Element Pobedy—the “Victory Element”—proved catastrophic. In its final years, the Soviet Union funneled over twenty percent of its economy into a single secret weapons program. It was meant to rival Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative—a leap beyond Star Wars. But in the end, the project produced no miracle alloy, no fusion salvation. It delivered only silence, sickness, and an international nuclear disaster.

Instead of revitalizing the Communist regime, it accelerated its collapse.

The failure of Element Pobedy didn’t just devastate the USSR—it fractured it. What was meant to be a final assertion of strength became its epitaph.

And as the old red empire crumbled, another began to rise.

Quietly and patiently, China stepped into the vacuum. Not with threats, but with silence. Not with declarations, but with design.

The torch of resistance to Western dominance had passed—to a younger, craftier, and outwardly more compliant heir.

China superpower emerged from the opening gates of the 21st century.

Chapter 11: The Gamble (Part II: The Last Spy)

Throughout modern history, Russia stands apart as the only major power whose homeland has never fallen to foreign occupation. Time and again, they have emerged undefeated—rulers of vast, often inhospitable lands—with no clear limits to their ambition or influence, whether on Earth or in orbit. Even in times of economic despair, the Russian spirit has never accepted the role of a second-rate power.

Six decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Viktor Valkov—an uncompromising nationalist—rose to power on a platform explicitly rooted in the long-term vision of Vladimir Putin. His goal was singular: to restore Russia to superpower status. 

As Viktor Valkov consolidated his power, China had already embedded itself deeply in Russia’s economic veins. For decades, Chinese investment had flooded into Russian mining operations, infrastructure megaprojects, and post-war reconstruction following the Ukraine conflict. In return, China had quietly gained access to critical intelligence—sometimes even more sensitive than that available to Russia’s own cabinet ministers. After twenty years of sanctions, proxy wars, and mounting frustration, the Russian public had grown weary. They turned to the LDPR and Valkov, seeking strength, pride, and sovereignty.

After three years of rebuilding the economy and recalibrating foreign policy, Valkov made his move.

He resurrected the forgotten Soviet dream—the Element of Victory project. A gamble, yes, but if it succeeded, it would launch Russia fifty years ahead in military and energy supremacy.

Armed with sixth-generation artificial intelligence and modern quantum simulations, Russian scientists reconstructed every phase of the failed Chernobyl-era experiments.

The great bear was ready to wake from its long winter slumber.

From 2051 to 2054, they painstakingly modeled the original calculations, identified the flaws in Smirnov’s work, and refined the process to microscopic precision.

The choice of the experiment site was deliberate. Deep beneath the coal mines of Tula, a micro-reactor facility was constructed in absolute secrecy. The compressed carbon in the ancient coal beds would act as a natural shield, capable of absorbing potential radiation and preventing surface-level contamination in the event of failure.

This time, the Russians weren’t flying blind. Seven decades of technological advancement had rendered the errors of Chernobyl almost elementary. Confidence soared. Artificial intelligence suggested a novel safety protocol: converting excess fusion energy into antimatter—a buffer against catastrophic chain reactions. If an uncontrolled release occurred, the system would redirect the energy to trigger antimatter formation, thereby absorbing the destructive output.

According to theoretical models, the isotopes of Rutherfordium and Meitnerium could enter a metastable antimatter state, which would possess a longer half-life. Within that window, the fusion process could stabilize into a hybrid alloy that preserved the atomic properties of multiple superheavy elements within a single, stable lattice.

In short: this time, they had a chance.

Across the ocean, the CIA had picked up whispers. A high-ranking FSB officer—his loyalty bought and insured—leaked details of the Tula operation. Satellite imagery confirmed the construction of an underground facility. Alarm bells rang in Washington.

The Department of Defense quickly assembled a task force to assess—and if necessary, neutralize—the emerging threat.

Rick Jones was their choice to lead the mission.

Rick, a seasoned officer in the Defense Intelligence Agency, had long been trained for high-risk espionage involving experimental military technology. His charismatic nature, combined with his precision and unwavering resolve, gave him an uncanny talent for building elite units. This time, he handpicked his team from the best the Western intelligence community could offer.

His timing could not have been better.

Nor his mission more dangerous.

Highly classified intelligence regarding the Russian program and the underground reactor in Tula had been meticulously gathered by a spy network affiliated with the MSS operating deep within Moscow. The Chinese had successfully infiltrated Rosatom’s central servers using a network of Trojan viruses, deployed by an AI-driven android developed by ChinaCorp.

To avoid detection by Russia’s advanced cybersecurity protocols and evade interception while traversing RuNet’s heavily firewalled cloud infrastructure, the AI encrypted and fragmented the stolen data into multiple ultra-secure packets. These were then divided into five physical microchips, each no larger than a centimeter. Four of them contained the encrypted technical specifications for the reactor and the synthesis process for the Victory Element. The fifth microchip held the decryption keys, along with a detailed sabotage program outlining three tiers of potential destruction.

For security reasons, the chips were physically smuggled out of Russia by separate couriers, each transporting their payload along different routes to Shenzhen, where ChinaCorp’s decryption systems would reassemble and analyze the files.

The Chinese had considered using secondary relays in the UAE and Norway, but concerns about interception by the CIA—or worse, by the emerging cyber-intelligence services of Neom—led them to abandon electronic transfer entirely. Physical transport was the only secure option.

But one courier was a double agent.

He had hidden the microchip beneath his skin using a crude surgical implant, an unconventional smuggling technique that ultimately led to his death. En route to China, he encountered an American contact infected with the Nyoma white-strain virus. Within hours, the agent collapsed mid-flight and died. His body was intercepted by the Americans before Chinese officials could search it thoroughly.

Jones’s task force, acting on real-time intel relayed by their operative, managed to retrieve the microchip before the Chinese authorities incinerated the corpse at the Huan Min Waste Incineration Plant.

The agent who recovered the chip successfully escaped the port facility, but with MSS agents tightening security across all wharf checkpoints, she was unable to carry the microchip past the perimeter. In desperation, she hid the chip’s container in a trash can, intending to retrieve it later.

She never got the chance.

During a skirmish with ChinaPol agents hours later, she was killed in a violent confrontation.

Less than a week afterward, a local scavenger found the box and listed it for sale on a secondhand tech marketplace.

The CIA—being the only organization aware of the microchip’s visual design, thanks to the now-deceased agent’s last transmission—purchased it for 103,000 SinoBits through Alibaba. The seller disappeared without a trace the moment the funds cleared. Only a handful of senior officials on both sides knew what had truly happened, or why, in the months that followed the Tula disaster, bounty hunters around the world were relentlessly tracking a nameless young woman.

The consequences for China were twofold.

First, without the fifth microchip, they could no longer decrypt the Victory Element files and understand the precise objectives of the Russian experiment. Second—and far more dangerous—they were left completely unaware of the AI’s programmed sabotage plan.

Meanwhile, Rick and his task force, aware only that sabotage was imminent but ignorant of the scale of devastation, positioned themselves to intercept whatever hyper-radioactive product might emerge from the operation.

As the Chinese didn't receive the fifth microchip and didn't issue any choice among the plan’s three destruction pathways, the AI automatically selected the third and most beneficial course for its creators: the complete obliteration of Russia, followed by the acquisition of its resource-rich territories.

The explosion at Tula occurred, and the entire world, including the Chinese, was drawn deep into shock.

The recovery of partial data from compromised servers in Shenzhen allowed MSS operatives to begin to understand the situation. They realized what had been uploaded to Singaporean cloud networks and why, mere minutes after the reactor’s destruction, a fully equipped American robotic unit accompanied by elite scientists had been deployed to the crater site.

In the aftermath of the Tula catastrophe, Rick Jones’ task force found themselves in possession of a decisive intelligence advantage. By sheer luck and a string of high-stakes operations, they had acquired over five terabytes of encrypted Russian data—granting Rick and his team a clearer view of the situation than any other government on Earth.

While the world remained stunned in disbelief, Rick acted swiftly, dispatching a specialized team composed of Russian scientists covertly employed by AppleSoft subsidiaries across Russia and Eastern Europe. Accompanied by advanced robotic units and extraction equipment, the team moved under Rick’s direct command toward Moscow and the ruins of Tula.

They were the first fully equipped unit to reach the epicenter of the explosion.

The landscape was a scorched abyss. The coal deposits that once fed the energy grid still smoldered, and the air shimmered with residual heat. A crater, unfathomable in size, had erased all trace of life within a hundred-kilometer radius. Seismic shockwaves measuring above 8 on the Richter scale had reduced Moscow to rubble. Nearly every structure had collapsed, and communication systems had gone silent. The Russian state, paralyzed and leaderless, stood frozen for hours.

Foreign governments hesitated, unsure whom to contact. The only surviving cabinet member was the Minister of Education—bedridden in Saint Petersburg, ravaged by the latest strain of the post-pandemic era. Major General Zebkov, the highest-ranking officer left standing, had narrowly avoided death while vacationing with his family in Sochi. He had been due to retire in a week.

Meanwhile, Rick’s team was already inside the blast zone, combing the crater. Within minutes, they reached the suspected epicenter and began their search. Their objective was clear: recover any surviving material from the experimental fusion, including isotopes or unknown compounds that might offer insight into the "Victory Element."

They succeeded—but at a cost.

Within twenty-six hours, symptoms began to appear. Nausea, cognitive disorientation, bleeding. Despite being stationed in the ruins of Moscow and using sixth-generation radiation-proof suits, something (whether residual gamma radiation, exotic particles, or an entirely unknown emission) had breached their defenses. Whatever had been created in Tula had rewritten the rules of exposure.

Yet their mission had achieved one crucial success. The robotic units had recovered a strange metallic substance—viscous, faintly pulsing, and reactive—sealed inside a reinforced platinum containment vessel. The team loaded it onto a super-jet drone, and it launched toward Big Diomede Island, the closest U.S. territory across the Bering Strait.

A heavily armed American extraction team awaited its arrival.

But the drone never made it.

Roughly three hours into the flight, the aircraft deviated from its designated path. Moments later, it vanished from American tracking systems—last seen crossing into Chinese airspace. Then: silence.

No one could explain what had gone wrong. The flight plan was encrypted, the route shielded from electronic interference, the pilot AI replaced by a human piloting operative against cyber-intrusion. All precautions had been taken. And yet, after all the planning, sacrifice, and intelligence coordination, the payload—what could have been the spark to revive a crumbling Western economy—was gone.

"Had China won again?" The question echoed in Rick's mind, driving him to the edge of madness.

Eighteen hours later, already in Shenzhen, Rick assembled a new strike team composed of agents from the U.S., Europe, and even defected Chinese operatives. With him was his former student, Captain Benjamin Priest, the drone’s original pilot, who had memorized its last known coordinates before the signal dropped.

While global relief operations scrambled to send aid to Russia, Rick and his team spent 29 sleepless hours sweeping the Chinese wilderness, hunting for a wreck no one had acknowledged and a cargo that could change the balance of power.

Kurchatovium.

Russian scientists, as indicated in the fifth microchip, had given that scientific name to the element intended for synthesis in its antimatter state—a substance politicians had dubbed the 'Element of Victory'. The irony lay in the fact that the base element was Rutherfordium, a name Flerov wanted to be Kurchatovium in honor of Soviet nuclear science, but American influence blocked its widespread acceptance.

And once again, it was slipping through Rick’s fingers.

The Kurchatovium-bearing drone was one of only three ultra-advanced American drones equipped with classified super-jet engines. By the time it entered Chinese airspace, depleted of fuel, the drone had emitted no heat signature, no radio signal—nothing that could have triggered even the most sensitive of surveillance networks.

But somehow, it was lost.

Rick Jones was no stranger to vanishing acts or black sites, to dead drops and silent kills. He had tracked warlords through Afghan tunnels, intercepted encrypted transmissions in North Korean darknets, and ghosted through Tehran in broad daylight. If anyone could find a drone that had dropped from the sky like a phantom, it was him.

And he did.

A day later, just beyond the port of Shenzhen, Rick and his team found the shattered remains of the aircraft—its twisted frame embedded among warehouse rubble and scaffolded ruins. But the most important piece—the 70-kilogram platinum container that had cradled the Kurchatovium—was gone.

Gone without a trace.

Finding a 15-centimeter capsule in a megacity of 30 million people, after it had plummeted from the stratosphere, bordered on madness. Rick knew this. But Rick Jones did not believe in surrender.

Not now.

Not ever.

Failure had finally crept within reach; but he rejected it, as he always had. He made his decision then and there: he would remain in China, as long as it took. No matter how improbable, no matter how invisible the path, he would keep hunting. Until the last breath. Until the last clue.

Because this wasn’t just about the United States anymore.

And it wasn’t about pride, or rank, or his decorated reputation.

Something had shifted. Something in him.

If the platinum capsule had fallen into ChinaCorp’s hands, the consequences were incalculable. If it had been intercepted by a nation hostile to the West, the geopolitical fallout could fracture what remained of the global balance. But there was a darker truth—one known only to Rick.

He had seen the simulations.

Kurchatovium, in its antimatter state, wasn’t just unstable. It was self-annihilating. Anyone who came into close contact with it without proper shielding would begin to disintegrate at a molecular level. Irreversible. Unstoppable. Death by collapse.

The only way to find the capsule was to follow the bodies.

He would trace the trail of sudden, unexplained deaths—of corpses that seemed untouched but had fallen apart from the inside. And somewhere along that trail, Rick would find what he was looking for.

Because now, it was personal.

Kurchatovium had become his obsession.

His curse.

His last mission.

And he would not rest until it was in his hands again.

By Kiarash Karimian Dowlatabad