Iev was raised in a cult-like group that would train their young to become excellent fighters. These children would then be sent off to organisations when they were adults to counter government forces. Though they were extremely good at covering their tracks and blending in with others, no one knew that they existed. Iev met his, now, sister there were they vowed to protect each other since they were children. This would soon lead him to cause a fire to break out in the underground bunker, allowing them both to escape through the main door that was usually sealed shut. Though it had been opened for them as the overseers were afraid of losing their best student, they didn't expect them to flee into the nearby woods. Though the escape wasn't as smooth as they had hoped it to be as Iev had been shot in the shoulder before making it to the tree line. His sister, Anna, managed to drag him through the snow to an unoccupied cabin where Iev had his first brush with death by almost freezing and bleeding out. Though he may have escaped the facility, the trauma of what had happened to him during his time there would consume him.

He tried to distract himself by becoming a hunter, working for a butcher in a village, but he was unable to let of the anger that felt for what had happened to him and what he had to endure for someone's sick fantasy. He first become a hitman before losing himself and trying to track down those who were in the same cult as him. During that time, he became known in groups for the ruthlessness that he displayed with each kill, eventually having his first run in with special services. Though it wasn't in the way that he was expecting, finding a soldier bleeding out by the edge of a river bank. In return for his hospitality, Iev asked for a favor that would later grant him entry into Rainbow 6.