The Story So Far: Chaos Reigns Down
“All the pieces are in play… Make the call.” —Vikhor “Stitch” Kuzmin
Russel Adler is untethered, but the free world is far from safe.
Following Adler’s extraction by Frank Woods on June 10, 1984, Perseus agents Stitch, Wraith, and Knight gathered in an undisclosed location for a debriefing. The CIA’s rescue mission went faster than predicted, and their satellites are now interfering with Perseus’s broadcasts, halting Stitch’s grand experiment on the “test subjects” in Verdansk.
He still has an ace up his sleeve, however, as another agent is ready to make Perseus’s next check in the global chess game for power.
We see that agent, a menacing metal-faced assailant, breaching a CIA Ground Station compound in South Africa on June 26, 1984. He reaches the control room, where he takes a satellite specialist alive and phones in Stitch, who guides the hostage into de-orbiting two CIA satellites at specific points in Verdansk and Algeria. As these satellites hurtle down to earth, the masked Perseus agent strangles the life out of his victim on command, leaving no loose ends in Perseus’s path to world domination.
The next day, it appears one of the satellites has been downed deep in an Algerian desert. A CIA-led NATO squadron is on-site to assess the damage, neutralize hostiles, and gather any information from the satellite. Leading that task force is Adler himself, following weeks of recovery.
Despite physical and mental health clearances and numerous tests, something inside Adler seems to snap when he sees the satellite. Ignoring his squadmates, he recklessly charges forward, eliminating any forces in his path to grab a codec from the satellite.
After being questioned for his behavior, he grows even more abrasive to his allies.
“You don’t get the war we’re fighting, do you?” Adler says, in reply to a recruit from Egypt.
“Stitch is capable of anything.”