What do a Soviet spymaster, Stalin himself, SS occult officers, a rogue Scottish regiment in Afghanistan, and two teenage GULAG prisoners have in common?

Everything.

In the screenplay "The Last Bargain of Beria"—the explosive first installment of the "Arkady's Dark Berry" series—two boys, Arkady and Maryat, are ripped from the frozen horrors of a Siberian labor camp and thrown into the heart of a global conspiracy.

Infested with supernatural entities after a botched Nazi experiment, they become the key to a secret, high-stakes deal between the Soviet Union and the British Empire. The price? Two million pounds sterling. The cost? Their humanity.

But getting them from a GULAG in the Soviet town of Tyumen to British-controlled Afghanistan will be harder than ever anticipated. NKVD guards meant to deliver them begin falling—hard—for the boys they're supposed to betray. Enemies become lovers. Lovers become traitors.

And in the shadows, a cabal of bearded, occult-obsessed aristocrats is pulling strings. Are they the Crown's agents sworn to protect the Empire's newest assets... or something far more sinister?

From the marble hall of the Kremlin to the windswept peaks of the Afghani highlands, this genre-blending saga fuses history, horror, romance, and political intrigue like nothing you've read before.

History is a lie. Love is forbidden. Escape is impossible.

And the game has just begun.