An alternative reality in which at some point history turned onto a different track, and the USSR in the 21st century still exists. The action takes place on the territory of a research institute in a small closed city.
That awkward moment when you realize you were just going on vacation with friends to Karelia, but along the way you got shanghaied*. Again. Only before they recruited you as a nameless mercenary to hot spots, and now I woke up as a junior researcher in a secret research institute of some parallel reality. Around you—autumn 2023, and an unknowably surviving Soviet Union.
*Shanghai—an old maritime term. To drug someone into unconsciousness and load them onto a ship, so that the person wakes up already out at sea.