[The second chapter will be up in a few hours]

Velyka Doblon, Ukraine, November 3, 2017.

A gentle snow was falling on the small village of Velyka Doblon. The winter crops lay dormant under the white blanket that Mother Nature had pulled up to cover the sleepy town and its residents were still yet to wake up for the day. Their livestock was still slumbering in their sheds, dogs and cats lay near warm fireplaces inside the houses, and the roosters were just beginning to stir in preparation for their daily jobs of yelling at the sun and chasing the hens. Everything was the same as the day before, and the day before that, and the people living there thought things would remain the same tomorrow, and all of the tomorrows to come.

They were simple folk, and, being far away from the hustle and bustle of city life, they thought they would remain safe from the conflict on the border with Russia.

Today, they would learn that their thinking was wrong.

The villagers were awoken, not by the sound of roosters, but of barking dogs and boots crunching through the snow against a backdrop of growling diesel engines and the squealing treads of tanks. One dog, not knowing any better, even ran up to the marching Russian infantry, its tail wagging and tongue flapping from the side of its mouth in time with its floppy ears bouncing up and down on the sides of its head. It probably thought the people were friendly and were coming to play, but it was mistaken.

They were not.

A gunshot rang out, followed by a brief yelp, and the laughing of Russian soldiers.

Yevgeny, looks like were eating dog meat tonight! one soldier laughed and patted the soldier that had shot the dog on the shoulder, congratulating him for his good aim.

The order was passed by the colonel in charge of this particular column of Russian troops for them to halt. The troops and vehicles came to a halt just outside the idyllic little village, all of them wondering what they were stopping for; Kyiv was still quite a distance away from them, after all. But they didnt have to wonder for long as the next orders were clear: leave none alive.

They commenced their slaughter, and within minutes, the idyllic little hamlet had been left with no survivors. The troops formed back up and marched on, leaving a new ghost town in their wake, one that was filled with the resentful ghosts of the innocents whose blood now stained Russian hands.

Soon, Mother Nature had once again pulled its white blanket over the small village of Velyka Doblon, covering the red mud, extinguishing the few fires left burning, and returning it to its former idyllic appearance, save for one difference.

Nothing lived there anymore. Even the livestock had been rounded up and herded away by the logistics troops accompanying the invading column of Russian troops.

......

Tucked away in a hastily dug bunker, five beautiful women kept watch over a sleeping man in a preservation coffin laid on the ground behind them. The man was groaning, tossing, and turning as his flesh squirmed like live worms and snakes had been planted beneath it and his bones creaked and groaned. He was undergoing a genetic modification, and it would soon be completed. Even while he himself was being kept unconscious by the glasses on his face, his body was still reacting to the painful process of turning one person into another, completely different person.

He wasnt even the first to be graced with residency in the coffin he now lay in, either. It had been airdropped to the nyxians and had contained a charred corpse at first. Well, whether or not it could be considered a corpse was actually undetermined, as it was a clone of Vladimir, who was the coffins current resident, and had never been alive in the first place. It was grown in a vat using the same principles as an atomic printer, save that it used an organic materials DNA to grow, hastened by the printer in the bottom of the vat rapidly placing the newly grown cells in their proper locations, all while nourishing them with the bubbling green liquid that filled the glass vat.

The dead, charred Vladimir was dropped near the militia camp that the live one had just blown up, planting his corpse to prove that the intelligence operative was actually dead, should anyone care to investigate. Which they would, as a nyxian that had been embedded in the KGB as an intelligence analyst would raise the alarm a few hours later.

And in two or three days, once Vladimirs transition was complete, he would be awoken and begin his next task for the intelligence branch of ARES: replacing his target.

......

The same column that massacred Velyka Doblon continued its march, and after a few daysthanks to the work of the Russian KGB and local Ukrainian collaboratorsarrived outside Kyiv, where it met the other four columns of invaders. Their smooth progress was made possible by the plan that Vladimir drew up and the massive intelligence branch of the Russian government paving the way by sabotaging the Ukrainian militia encampments and assassinating its leadership.

Once the four columns combined, they rested. The next day, the invasion of Kyiv, and the downfall of Ukraine, would officially begin.

......

Vladimir, on the other hand, was smuggled back across the border and into Moscow by a trail of nyxians. He reached the Kremlin in the early afternoon and openly marched into Putins office. He sat down across from the Russian dictator, put a small black cube atop the desk, and, in Putins own voice, said, Hello, comrade. I need a favor from you. Well, actually, I dont need a favor from youI need to BE you.

He smiled at the dictator, then reached across the desk and dragged him to the top of it, where he put a familiar pair of glasses on the struggling mans face. Then he said to the empty air, Begin the download.

Vladimir settled in to wait for the process of downloading Putins mind map to be completed. Soon, he would replace the man on every level, from his genetics to every single secret contained in his head and everything else. In every respect, Vladimir Putin would cease to exist, and Vladimir, the Edenian agent would take his place as the leader of Russia.

He could hardly wait.

......

In Kyiv, the citizens were huddled in basements or in sturdy buildings as the initial bombardment began. The Russian troops had been softening up the citys defenses for four whole hours as the citizens ran, hid, and died to artillery, bombs, and tank rounds. They started out screaming, but now the regular people had lost their voices and could only silently pray to whatever gods there were that they would survive to see the next day.

Then, the invasion began. After four hours of indiscriminate shelling, the Russian troops made their way to the government building, where they captured the surviving leadership of the country and forced them to capitulate.

Seven days. One short week was all it had taken for Russia to bring down Ukraine, from the moment they crossed the border to the moment they captured the survivors in the government building.

Kyiv, and by extension, Ukraine, had fallen.