The year was 1950, and for the first time since the fall of Hydra, a familiar unease crept back into my thoughts.
Not the chaos of war.Not the reckless arrogance of Schmidt.But something colder. Quieter. More patient.
The Soviet Union.
The first report came from one of our deep-cover assets embedded within Soviet intelligence. The transmission was fragmented, rushed, and carried the unmistakable markers of a man who knew he would not survive long enough to see a response.
He was right.
Before the message even finished decrypting, the signal went dead.
But what he sent was enough.
The Soviets had raided abandoned Hydra caches—ones even we hadn't located. Whether through luck, betrayal, or brute persistence didn't matter. What mattered was what they found.
One hundred units of anomalous flesh.
Each sample was described identically: thick, dark-red meat fused unnaturally around human skeletal frames, bones embedded as if grown there rather than implanted. The flesh pulsed faintly, even when separated from any living host.
Foundation cross-referencing identified it immediately.
Sæhrímnir.
The mythical beast of Norse legend—slaughtered and eaten nightly by the gods of Valhalla, only to regenerate by morning. Flesh that refused to remain dead. Flesh that remembered being alive.
According to the spy's report, Soviet researchers discovered that when this flesh was bonded to a human skeleton, it did something extraordinary.
It anchored the body.
Injuries regenerated rapidly. Severed tissue grew back. Even complete destruction of muscle could be reversed if the core skeletal structure remained intact and the subject was allowed sufficient time to "rest."
Not true immortality.
But close enough to be tempting.
And Joseph Stalin, as it turned out, was very tempted.
The second report came from another asset—this one embedded far deeper, within Stalin's inner scientific circle. Unlike the first, this spy survived long enough to deliver a full briefing.
The contents were… troubling.
Stalin, according to the report, had become obsessed.
Not with America.Not with nuclear parity.Not even with global dominance.
With revenge.
Hitler was dead. Cremated. Reduced to ash.
And yet, in Stalin's mind, that was not enough.
He wanted judgment.
He wanted suffering.
He wanted to prove something—to history, to ideology, to himself.
Thus was born Project Judecca.
To accomplish it, Stalin had done what even Hydra hesitated to do.
He made a deal with Sarkicists.
Sarkicism—also known within Foundation archives as Fleshcrafting—was not merely a cult or philosophy. It was a worldview built on the belief that flesh was sacred, mutable, and meant to be shaped. Followers traced their teachings back to Grand Karcist Ion, a figure whose existence blurred the line between prophet and anomaly.
Sarkic practitioners possessed anomalous abilities tied to blood, bone, muscle, and genetic manipulation. They did not build machines.
They grew solutions.
The Soviets provided them with resources, test subjects, and Sæhrímnir flesh.
In return, the Sarkicists delivered something obscene.
A clone of Adolf Hitler.
Not a crude replica.
Not a vat-grown mockery.
A biological duplicate—grown from preserved genetic material scavenged from remnants of the Führerbunker and other recovered artifacts. The clone was engineered to mature rapidly, stabilized using Sæhrímnir-derived tissue and reinforced through Sarkic flesh-binding rituals.
The result?
A living, breathing Hitler.
With regenerative capabilities.
And—most disturbingly—memories.
Imperfect, fragmented, but present.
Enough to recognize the world.Enough to understand defeat.Enough to suffer.
When the report finishes scrolling across my desk, the room is silent.
Julius breaks it first.
"…They cloned Hitler," he says flatly.
"Yes," I reply.
Lincoln leans back, rubbing his temples. "That's not revenge. That's insanity."
I shake my head slowly. "No. Insanity would be killing him again."
They look at me.
"This," I continue, "is ideology weaponized through obsession. Stalin doesn't want Hitler dead. He wants him owned. Studied. Broken. Paraded as proof of communist superiority."
"And the Sarkicists?" Julius asks.
"Thriving," I answer. "Access to industrial-scale resources, state protection, and the opportunity to push fleshcrafting further than ever before."
No one likes that.
The strategic implications are… unpleasant.
If the Soviets can mass-produce Sæhrímnir-bound soldiers, they gain an army that does not fear death.If Sarkic biotechnology scales, containment breaches become exponentially harder.If Stalin perfects cloning stabilized by anomalous flesh—
I pause, then finish the thought internally.
—then death itself becomes negotiable.
That is unacceptable.
By the end of the meeting, decisions are made.
Spies are re-tasked.Surveillance escalates.Mobile Task Forces are placed on standby.
Project Judecca is elevated to Omega-level priority.
Not because Hitler lives again.
But because someone proved they could do it.
And if one madman can resurrect history's greatest monster out of spite—
Then the Foundation must ensure he never gets the chance to do it twice.
Because some things should stay dead.
And some lines, once crossed, demand correction.
Quietly.
Permanently.