Note: I really don't know what to make of Brezhnev. He was an interesting character, but I saw no point in introducing him. But I am going to try and see if I can come up with a coherent reason as to why he just appeared to help. For the sake of this story, we are assuming that he and the other Fortieth Day defector in Chapters of Deceit are different people. So I am going to treat the latter as an unknown, minor character open to speculation. This hopefully will turn out well. Or maybe it looked better in my head. Let's see. Although I will likely take this down soon.

One other thing: This is a work in progress. If you have any feedback, please dm me. Especially if I got the date wrong in Fortieth Day for when Brezhnev is in the hospital. The game's starting date was July 10th. And off the top of my head, I don't remember if the Brezhnev hospital scene was two or three days after the game's start.

Chapter 1: Rumination

Viktor Brezhnev had been left with... Not much. The two men from before had betrayed his kindness. Brezhnev was not one to hold grudges, but he had helped the men. If they had just left him behind with the woman and asked no questions, it wouldn't have happened. They owed him a favor. And leaving him would have been all he wanted. He wouldn't have been laying there at the mercy of the woman if the favor had been fulfilled and the bribe accepted. The woman was one he had worked so long to finally get rid of.

She had been following him. He knew this to be true. Everywhere he went outside of the United States, she was not far behind. (For the last 10 years. The other 2 assassins had suspiciously died in separate accidents.) Brezhnev was a defector. During the latter part of the Soviet era, he had left the KGB. He had attempted to flee into the United States because he had been disloyal and the country had no longer been safe. And he had been so close to safety! He just had to return to the closet, to finish what had been started so long ago. Beyond his control. All back in June of 1989, when the Russian was a mere 22 years old. Just married to Sylvie. And on his way to what promised to be a stellar KGB career.

Now he noticed the woman level a pistol and aim at his stomach. He weakly looked up. So this is how it would all end. In a mall in Shanghai. Many miles from his home in the little, safe, rural Wisconsin town of Bear Lake in Barron County. He didn't wince. He continued to look up. This was the 3rd assassin sent after him. The woman stared at him with a look of pure hatred. As Brezhnev stared at the pistol, there was a single noise in the closet. He felt the pain in his stomach spike again. Blood slowly ran as he thought of home and family in the United States. He first went back to the start of February 1990. When he had reached the United States.

As he looked along the beautiful pine forest in the town of Bear Lake, Brezhnev noticed what looked to be an abandoned yellow house. It looked as though it hadn't been maintained in years. The grass was like on the East European Plain back home. Beautiful, an endless expanse of wide-open grass. He could run for over a mile in any direction and end up finding no people. Just the way he liked it. The house's paint was faded and beaten, the siding in need of replacement soon. The only sturdy component, it seemed, was the roof.

"Viktor, are you sure about this? I know it looked nice, but..." Sylvie told her husband.

"I am certain. We can start here. We can have kids playing over there in grass, we just have to cut down grass. You've been telling me for months that if we stay here, you wanted to do it in the country. It is just like Eastern plains back home. We can make it into a home for kids you want us to have,"

"I suppose you are right. We can make home here, Viktor," Sylvie responded.

And they did. For 2 long years, they worked to cut the grass, replace the siding, the roof that leaked, the yellow paint, they added two bedrooms and repainted the house's interior. They had also added a garage, as that was necessary for the used car they had purchased recently in January of 1992. And on March 19, 1992, they had almost had a son. However, the umbilical cord, in a tragic turn of events, had become tangled around the baby's throat. Unable to correct the situation in time, the baby sadly died.

For years after that event on and off, Sylvie could not manage to become pregnant afterward. Or if she did, the baby died from complications before birth. But that did not cause the couple to give up. And for years, they continued to try. But each attempt was met with failure.

And in 2009, Viktor Brezhnev had signed up for the Fortieth Day Initiative. Discouraged by being unable to have a child and having hit a rock in his career where his advancement was non-existent, as well as being faced with an expiring green card, he assumed there was no other option. He joined up and spent the next year working in Shanghai to spread fear into the Chinese people, in what would later prove a futile idea.

However, after seeing the sheer brutality with which the movement went towards its aims, he became disillusioned. In March 2010, he left. Unable to adapt to life in Shanghai easily, and with a pregnancy from Sylvie that seemed to be going unusually well compared to what they were used to, Brezhnev decided to turn his attention away from war and needless death and violence and to his fledgling family.

Loyalty to the Fortieth Day Initiative, just as it had been with the KGB, turned out to be misplaced. As just then, dissent was not allowed to grow and he crushed resistance as he had before in the KGB. And he left due to the realization that he was only furthering the oppression he despised from his Soviet days.

And so, he worked only to help him and his fledgling family, donning armor to remind him of why he never stopped fighting. To end oppression he despised with a passion.

Although the train of thought felt long, Viktor had only spent a short amount of time reflecting. As he returned to the present, he noted a first aid kit on the wall. He smashed the glass, doing his best to patch himself up with the gauze and available medical supplies.