X-Men: From the Ashes Infinity Comic #10

Kemerovo Oblast, USSR, 1967:
A boy and a girl crouch near a dead dog. The girl remarks that this is Taisia Igorevna’s dog and asks the boy, nicknamed Arkasha, if he knows what happened to it. He did, the unnaturally pale boy admits. Calling the girl Nastya, he reveals Vasily burnt his hand on the stove again for fun. It hurt so bad he came outside and the hunger hit him again. He doesn’t understand it. Yes, he does, Nastya replies and points to his hand that is healed again. A miracle.

A monstrosity, the boy replies, forming a fist. He is Upyr, one of those genetic accidents comrade Brezhnev talks of. He says they only have them in the west. That they are a sign of decadence. With a smile, Nastya promises him there is no remainder in the Soviet equation. Whatever he is, a role and place will be found for him.

Kemerovo Oblast, Russia, now:
Standing outside the village, Arkady Rossovitch, the mutant known as Omega Red (currently dressed in civilian clothes), quotes “from each according to his ability…” “… to each according to his needs,” an old woman finishes the quote. She wept when she first heard those words. Such a beautiful dream. A pity it made them so ugly upon waking, no?

All beautiful dreams do upon waking, he replies grimly, calling her grandmother. Every single one. That is why he has come home. She calls him a sweet sickly boy and addresses him as Omega Red. Home is a dream too, she warns him, then turns away. He shouts at her to wait. Who is she? She mumbles something about winter drawing in and disappears among the trees. He does not follow.

It's been decades since he last took this path through the forest. He walks past the steel plant where he was once expected to blacken his lungs and meet an airless end. Except Nastya was right. A use was found for him in the Spetznaz program. Then, when they found out what he was, the KGB put him under the knife to make him an even more efficient parasite, a monster inside and out. After they made him what they made him, he lost any desire to return home, until now.

He enters the village. A man accosts him on the street and demands to know who he is. Is he from the military commissariat, here to pick their bones clean? Arkady denies this and asks if Anastasia Illyevna Pavlihenko still lives here. Hearing that name, the man becomes furious and hits him in the face with a steel bar. Unfazed, Omega Red grabs him by the throat and the other man realizes he is facing a mutant. A bit more, Arkady adds. A reaper of men, smithed and smelted by Soviet Science into something far deadlier. Would he care for a demonstration? He begins to use his lifedraining ability on the other man.

Suddenly, a bullet is fired into the air and Omega Red lets the other man go. The old man who fired the gun addresses the attacker as “son” and asks if he has too much time on his hands, now that the shift at the plant is over, that he has to bother strangers. The younger man groans and tells his father to look at him. This one could bring drought – another plague! The old man tells his son Vitya that he is thinking of enlistment officers and orders him and the others to go home.

Omega Red thanks him. The old man explains he is a good boy but has suffered terrible agonies. Addressing Omega Red with the diminutive “Arkasha,” he asks if he recognizes him. Grigori Olegovich, Arkady realizes. “Grischa.”

Grigori muses that he heard the name Omega Red in the army of course; just one of death’s many names, but never dreamed it would be him.

Later, the two share drinks in Grigori’s home. Arkady assures him he is no threat to them. Krakoa has changed him. As Afghanistan changed him, Grigori muses. Of course, he has aged a bit more. Grigori’s bitter looking wife Elena slams a pot on the table. Leftovers, she announces. Take it or leave it. Grigori chides her for her behavior in front of a guest. She snaps he invited that thing into their home, not her. Accusingly, she tells Arkady her sister told her what he did to the animals in the village, before the army took him. He is an unclean spirit, and he will bring the evil eye down on this house!

Arkady apologizes for coming here. Grigori assures him it is not his fault. There is a void at the center of things here. They all feel it. Three years ago, a terrible sickness took eight of the villagers’ little ones, their grandson among them. May the earth be soft for him, Arkady tells him. Condolences from Veles himself, Grigori chuckles. He has lived too long, hasn’t he?

He looks at a picture of his son and grandson and asks has he come looking for Anastasia? He informs Arkady that she died years ago in a fire.

Omega Red looks outside, musing the old woman in the forest was right. Home is a dream, too.