Chapter Text
2015, Sevastapol
Yelena Luchenko breathed out, her lithe, muscular body covered in sweat as she hung upside down from the rafters of the dilapidated Soviet-era warehouse, her jet-black hair tied in a tight bun to avoid entanglement. Beneath her lay her objective: a small metal box on a table, surrounded by a hilarious number of alarms, trip-wires, and sensors. With practiced grace, she eased up on her descender until her black-clad body hovered just above the table and carefully placed four steel mirrors at the edges, reflecting the lasers neatly around the box.
She breathed in. No sounds of alarm yet, no rushing of boots or klaxons. From her belt pack, she took out a 1 kilogram lead weight and deftly swapped the metal box on the table with the weight, depressing the plate it rested on so that the sensor never registered a change. It had taken her 33 tries in practice to master this move, and she permitted herself a small smile in success.
Her partner, Sofia Azarova, gave her a thumbs up as she pulled Lena’s rope up, holding out her hand to take the metal box. Yelena handed it up, then turned her body so that Sofia could pull her the rest of the way back into the rafters.
… except nothing happened. She was suspended in mid-air, five meters above the ground, and wasn’t moving. Yelena pivoted her body around to see what had happened and saw… nothing. Sofia was gone, abandoning Yelena to be caught or killed. She swore to herself, wrapped the rope around her leg, and pulled herself back up while trying not to make enough noise to set off the auditory sensors in the room.
Once she was safely back in the rafters, she checked her exit route. The window at the top of the warehouse was still propped open, so she raced across the rafters and outside into the pitch black night. Just as she was about to round the corner, something triggered her sixth sense and she came to a stop, pulling out her Grach MP-443 service pistol. Dropping to her belly, she inched her way forward until she was able to see around the corner. Sure enough, Sofia was laying in wait, a pistol aimed in her direction at chest height. Had Yelena simply run around the corner, she would have been shot dead by her compatriot.
She and Sofia weren’t supposed to be enemies; in fact, throughout most of their Unit 29155 training, they’d been secret lovers. Comforting each other after intense training sessions, sneaking to quiet corners wherever they could, they sheltered in each others’s embrace in the harsh Russian GRU special forces academy. She recalled one of the worst sessions they’d experienced together; her instructor had tied them both naked to metal chairs in a warehouse not unlike the one they were in, in the middle of February in Moscow. Over the span of twelve hours, she’d had water thrown on her every fifteen minutes to induce severe hypothermia while she was beaten with rubber garden hoses in a simulated interrogation. Both were certain they wouldn’t have passed that lesson without each other for support, even if they’d barely spoken, and both lay in each other’s arms the following night.
“Sofia… what are you doing?” she whispered around the corner, taking care not to alert the guards that patrolled the warehouse’s perimeter far below.
A shallow laugh came in the darkness. “Yelena, you know as well as I do that only one of us graduates tonight. Liliya was quite clear about that before we set out. Whoever brings the box back graduates from the program.”
“And we agreed we would do it together! She wouldn’t dare lose the two best agents she’s ever had,” Yelena hissed. “Now let’s stop this ridiculousness and go back and confront her together. Isn’t that what we always said these last 3 years? Stronger together?”
She listened carefully and heard only a tired sigh in response.
“One of us graduates, Yelena. The other one dies. You know that’s the way. That has always been the way. And that cannot be me. I am sorry, Yelena.”
What made Yelena such a promising candidate in Unit 29155 wasn’t her marksmanship, which was excellent nonetheless. It wasn’t her stunning beauty, her mostly flawless skin or her emerald green eyes. It wasn’t even her mastery of language or her photographic memory. What made Yelena a rising star was her ability to understand people deeply and know what they were going to do, even before they knew it themselves.
Blinking away the tears that had welled in her eyes, she sat cross-legged at the corner of the building. True to her habits, Sofia rounded the corner with her arm fully extended, another Grach pistol her in hand. Yelena kicked her legs straight out, catching Sofia’s knee with one foot and hooking her calf with the other, causing her partner to stumble and drop her pistol to catch her balance.
Yelena reached up, grabbed the metal box as it fell out of Sofia’s other hand, then tucked her knees into her stomach before kicking straight up.
Sofia flew over her, over the edge of the roof, and plummeted to the broken concrete far below.
Amidst the confusion and the chaos of guards shouting, Yelena rappelled down the back of the warehouse, the metal box in hand, and disappeared into the night.
“I knew you had it in you to succeed, Yelena. Well done,” Liliya Luchenko nodded with approval, her pursed lips curling ever so slightly into a smile.
Yelena stared icily at the woman, her eyes almost unblinking. Ten heartbeats passed before she spoke, every word spat. “You made me kill my best friend. For what? Why did Sofia have to die?”
Liliya scoffed, toying with the metal box Yelena had recovered from the warehouse. “You have no friends, rybochka. You only have victims. This is your lot in life.” She stood up from behind the massive wooden desk in her Moscow office, the room decorated in dull walnut paneling and cigarette stains, its bright red rug long ago discolored to rust. “You have been honed to the perfect weapon, one which we will unleash upon the world. Now, it is time for you to graduate.” She opened the box, pouring out its contents - one single brass key with a tiny red ribbon tied to it.
“That’s it? That’s what Sofia had to die for? A key? What is it even for?”
Liliya gestured to a bureau on the side of the room before rolling up the wooden lid. On the desk sat an iron lockbox.
Yelena took the key and strode over to the desk, eyeing Liliya the entire time. She carefully inspected the box first, looking for traps and tricks. Finding none, she turned the key and opened the heavy metal lid with a loud creak. Inside lay two small stacks of documents bound together with binder clips - four or five passports of varying nations including the European Union and America, some other identification, a large bundle of currency, and a stack of airplane tickets in each pile. She lifted up the various documents to find a single small piece of newsprint at the bottom.
“What is all this?”
“Your graduation, rybochka. Today, Yelena Luchenko is dead. Today, Yelena Luchenko fades into history.”
Yelena lifted up the newsprint and gasped.
Елена Лученко, 22 года, погибла ночью в результате дорожно-транспортного происшествия недалеко от Севастополя. Ее “Лада” столкнулась с другим легковым автомобилем, которым управляла 21-летняя София Азарова. Ни у одного из водителей не было родственников, и местные власти признали это несчастным случаем.
Yelena Luchenko, age 22, died overnight in a vehicle accident near Sevastapol. Her Lada collided with another passenger car driven by Sofia Azarova, age 21. Neither driver had family, and local authorities have ruled it an unfortunate accident.
She put down the newsprint and opened up the first passport in the pile, a blue leather passport that could only be for the United States of America. Inside, she saw her face and information.
Name/Surname: LUTHOR
Given Name: LENA KIERAN
Nationality: UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Date of Birth: 24 OCT 1993
Place of Birth: METROPOLIS
“Congratulations, Yelena. You have learned the final lesson, that to succeed you must be able to kill even when you love. You are now Lena Luthor. Now the real work begins,” Liliya smiled thinly before walking out of the room. “Your flight leaves in two hours. A change of clothing is in the bathroom. Take nothing else besides the contents of the box. If all goes well, if you do your job well, you will never see me again.”
The door to the office slammed shut, sounding like a grenade exploding. Out of curiosity, Lena looked at the other stack of documents and pulled out the top passport.
Name/Surname: ARIAS
Given Name: SAMANTHA RUBY
Nationality: UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Date of Birth: 29 JANUARY 1994
Place of Birth: METROPOLIS
Lena struggled to hold in the sob threatening to burst from her chest. Liliya had planned to allow Sofia to live, to let them both graduate - but had told Sofia otherwise. “I’m going to kill her,” she muttered to herself, “if I ever see her again, I’m going to kill Liliya.”
Two days later, Lena listened to the dull thud of the US Customs and Border Patrol agent stamp her passport with a cheerless, “Welcome home, Miss Luthor” at the international terminal in National City. She exhaled, breathing in the warm California air, and headed to the arrivals area for a taxi.
Author’s Notes
Unit 29155 exists. It’s a known Russian assassination outfit responsible for some real world assassinations. The Russian text I translated using DeepL, so apologies for any grammatical mistakes it made.
This fic originally started out as a comedy prompt in the Supercorp 2.0 Discord. The original prompt was from Jay, "Lena trying to kill Kara? and failing over and over again? ". However, things happened and this is not comedy.
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