Chapter Text
The Widow
Hassenstadt – Latveria – 8:04am
“Found anything yet?” He asked in Hungarian. She sifted through a milk crate full of VHS tapes, most of them of programs she’d never heard of in boxes too beat up to be legible. Her ear-piece buzzed. It was Sam:
“Nat, I’m picking up chatter on the encrypted channel. You better speed up this pit stop.”
“You got any I Dream of Jeannie?” She asked back in his language.
“Ooh – from the special collection. One moment.” He raced into the garage from the back door. Sounds of fumbling, folk music, and machine noises spilled into the alley. She was alone, between the peeling work buildings and a row of medieval duplexes people still lived in because the buildings still stood. All of Latveria was like this, from what she could tell. Old, and slightly less old.
“I’m in position,” Steve said in her earpiece, “How long are you expecting this to take?”
“I’m getting excellent customer service,” Nat said, “Not long.”
“I respect this kid’s hustle,” Sam said, “You know when I was a kid we found these toads under the back porch and I was—”
A muffled Latverian voice inside yelled “Bruno, the hell you doing?!” and Bruno didn’t respond. He nearly tore the door off its hinges returning with the tape in his hand.
“Collector’s Edition. 1995. Four episodes.”
“Have you seen it?” She asked.
“What and wear out the merchandise? No. I’ve been tempted, but no.”
Nat looked over the back of the box. The packaging was old. The airdates were even older. Nat hoped she hadn’t already seen it.
“Uh, if you don’t mind me asking,” Bruno said. “Where are you from? Originally? It’s not here.”
A whole choir of directors, teachers, mentors, drill instructors, abusers, and team-members yelled in her head at once. She wondered if she should be using this opportunity to work on her accent – but no – the cover stories couldn’t cross. Nothing related to the mission could lead back to this kid and this alley. There was no telling how it would sound when she needed it, though. She was rusty. It was a rough assignment too, she’d have to be flawless.
Flawless.
Her joints went sour and her shoulders tensed at the thought of ‘flaws’. Every arabesque in the Red Room had to be perfect. Imperfections killed – if not in the Room, in the field.
She gave Bruno a once over. She didn’t like analyzing normal people. World leaders and super-powered megalomaniacs were fair game, but doing what she was about to do to genuine people always made her feel wrong.
Things were wrong though. Very wrong. She did it anyway:
Name: Bruno Velsing
Height: 5’ 9”
Weight: Roughly 110 lbs
Nationality: Latverian
Ethnicity: ...Greek-Hungarian one side. Old Latverian on the other.
Age: Late teens – probably seventeen, give or take eight months.
Scrawny build, athletic frame – plays football or runs in his spare time. Spent his early childhood closer to feminine caretakers than masculine ones. Father not in the picture? Abandoned or killed – abandoned. Yes, definitely abandoned. Raised by uncle or grandparents. Works at an auto garage – dissatisfied. Trying to learn English from movies and old TV. Sources his contraband from an unknown vendor, needs to work on his concealment. Probably wants to entertain for a living. Typical teenager. Unarmed. No martial arts training. No identifiable enhanced abilities.
Threat level: Sub-Epsilon. Extremely Low.
The other side of Carpathians was crawling with Americans. She could play it safe here.
“The United States,” She said, and tried not to think of how high that just hiked the price.
Bruno got a kind of dreamy look in his eye. He said “America” kind of breathlessly, the way people do when they’ve never been.
Then put his hand to his chest and took a big gulp of air.
“Wheeeeeen Captain America throw the mighty shieeeeeeeld,” he started in broken English. Nat clamped a hand over her mouth. She prayed Steve could hear this.
“What.” Steve said.
Yes, She thought, Oh god yes.
“All those who would to oppose shield must yieeeeeeld.”
Her earpiece buzzed: “Nat, what the hell is going on.”
“Hush Steve, I’m trying to listen,” Sam buzzed back.
“Unless you are plane.”
“Oh my god.”
“Or of bomb. Or ice. Then he will to take nap, because ice is nice. When Captain America throw the miiiiiightyyy shieeeeeeld!”
“You better tip this kid after that, Nat.” Sam said.
“Bravo,” Nat said.
“I am Captain America’s…ah…biggest fan…in Latveria. Especially now that he…um…” he pulled in close enough to whisper in English, “…now that he is fugitive. Very hope he makes it.”
“I’m sure he appreciates you.”
“Oh he better,” Sam said in her earpiece. “Dude wrote a song about you. Come on, man.”
“I didn’t choose to take a nap. The nap chose me. Big difference,” Steve said.
“How much for the VHS, Bruno?”
“For gorgeous American blonde?” He was still speaking English. “Free.”
Nat rolled her eyes. “Alright. Bye then.”
“Ah—but your country’s sanctions. They make life in Latveria very hard. Cars very old. Meals very rationed. Wizard does experiments that kill crops. All video in SD.”
“What was that?”
“Yes, we have no flatscreen TV in Latveria. All picture is cathode ray tubes.”
“No. The wizard.”
“Oh…ah,” Bruno slipped back into Hungarian. “That’s Chairman Victor’s right hand man. Doctor Eisenhardt.”
Her target.
“He teaches at the Institute. Has a reputation for bizarre experiments – brilliant by all accounts but…intense. The rumor out in the country is that he killed the harvest with his alchemy, but they’re idiots out in the country and I don’t think even most of them believe it. I’ve, um, never met him.”
“Can’t you afford the Institute?”
“Oh that’s not it! Tuition is free in Latveria, but, uh, I’m not smart like that – with chemicals and numbers and science.”
“Ah.”
“I’m smart with people. And prices. That VHS tape would sell for 250 Francs to the right buyer.”
“I’ll give you 5,” Nat said.
Bruno blinked. “100 Francs.”
“6 because you sang.”
Bruno blinked again. Then he blinked a third time.
“Deal,” He said.
She tossed him the money, “Pleasure doing business with you.”
“And you,” he said in English, stacking up his milk crates full of banned Western television, “Beautiful American blonde.”
She stepped out of the alley, into the busy muddle of foot traffic, car traffic, and animal traffic on a Hassenstadt road.
“Damn that was cold,” Sam said.
“Haggled like a true New Yorker,” Steve said. “Do you know where you’re going?”
She pushed her way through a crowd opposite her, used each brush with a stranger to alter something about her appearance. She changed her coat, her shoes, put her hair in a ponytail, and pressed her face against a photostatic veil. The AI she wrote last night generated the new appearance – someone pleasant, but unassuming: a “Sub-Epsilon” threat level if assessed by another Widow. She slid against a hole-in-the-wall restaurant attended by smoking patrons, then pressed the paper-thin screen more delicately against her face, blinking a few times to keep it in place. A young family at breakfast caught her out of the corner of her eye and she smiled at them, unrecognizable now. Their oldest daughter smiled back.
She stepped out of the restaurant, into the main road.
“Yeah Steve,” she said, circling to face the hill, high above Hassenstadt. Von Dûme Institute worked out of a huge black castle, or maybe it was a temple, or mosque, or a cathedral – she couldn’t tell. It loomed over the city and the cars and the pedestrians and the morning crowd and the smartphones and the kids and the storefronts. “It’s kinda hard to miss,” She said. “Sam, how’s our channel?”
“Sounds like they have orders to move out at 0100 hours.”
“Then you’ll have to make this quick, Nat,” Steve said. “Proceed with extreme caution. Eisenhardt is bad news.”
“Roger that, Rogers,” She said with a smile on her new face.
“That’ll never catch on.”
“I’m actually with Cap on this,” Sam said. “Not your best work.”
“Oh both of you shut up,” She said.
She found a flight of stairs that snaked up the hillside and started her long climb.
Hang in there Wanda, she thought. We’ll have your medicine soon enough.
“By the way,” Sam said, “I never finished my toad story. So like I said, they were under the porch and I was picking up all this butter—”
And I have four more episodes we can watch together while you’re recovering.
“Hold on Sam, I just ordered a whole plate of Crepes and I can’t listen while I eat.”
“The hell do you mean you can’t listen while you eat? This is a good story, man.”
We can undo what they did to you.
“Remember that time you were telling me about your fishing trip with your cousin in Louisiana? Because we were at a burger joint at the time so I don’t.”
“WHEN I FELL IN THE – Oh my god I’ve made like six references to that since then.”
“Didn’t catch ‘em.”
You’re almost there.
“Sorry Sam, that’s kinda his thing,” Nat said, taking the stairs three at a time.
You’re almost normal.
~~~
8:26am
Speaking a language so perfectly that you blend in with the locals is an exact science. Speaking a language just imperfectly enough that you don’t – that’s an art form. On day six of Budapest, she and Clint had identified Lieutenant-Colonel Dobry Artyomov. He was a regular at a café near Erzsébet híd (Elisabeth Bridge) every morning between 9 and 11 am, ordered a Danish and a black coffee and sat out in the only booth with a decent view of the Danube. Nat worked on her cover: a girl with a set of bruises, a habit, and a past that was trying to find her. Her voice: almost perfect Hungarian, but filled with hard glottal stops and tight vowel sounds she tried to bite down – as if masking a Russian accent.
She got a job as a waitress at the café and immediately spilled coffee on her first client. She mixed up orders, talked for too long and too intimately with the customers, put on a sheepish frown when her managers chewed her out, and gave bubbly hello’s and goodbye’s to every patron she caught in the doorway. It took two days for Artyomov to start asking for her in the morning. “Is the redhead working today? You know, the ditzy little Russian who’s pretending to be Hungarian?”
By day eleven of Budapest, she had Dreykov’s location. Dreykov had a missing Lieutenant-Colonel.
Nothing baits a predator harder than vulnerable prey. Nat learned that when she was very, very young.
She was at the top.
Steve sat under an umbrella across a courtyard, just out of the castle’s massive, black shadow. He had the only other UV map of Nat’s new face and looked away when he recognized her. He leaned his head on his hand and tapped the earpiece.
“I have eyes on the lab. Sam?”
“There’s some commotion out here at the airbase. They might move out sooner than expected,” Sam buzzed.
“Should we delay?”
“We aren’t delaying,” Nat said.
“Nat, I’m not trading team members—”
“—I’ll be fine. Wanda won’t.”
Steve sighed in her earpiece. “Then you better get going.”
“Igenlő,” She said, with the waitress’ not-quite-Hungarian voice.
She caught a view of herself in the Institute’s entryway. She tugged at a crease in her veil and her digital face shimmered a little. Her cover story turned over in her head, all its layers and contingencies. The choir of voices started offering espionage advice again, but one-by-one fell silent until only Fury’s remained:
“Everyone stops looking when they think they know what’s up.”
She pulled out her burner phone and checked the web page they’d put together last night. It was bad, but then again, so was Latvarian Wi-Fi. It just had to be enough to convince a ninety year-old terrorist.
She stepped through the doors.
The furniture was modern, the walls were ancient, and the computers were somewhere in between. She avoided eye contact with reception, made for the access stairs, climbed four flights of linoleum then three more of weathered stone. She came to rest at a wall-to-wall mosaic of an old Byzantine Emperor (Justinian I, she remembered) and a sign in a few different languages.
“Bio-Engineering – Magnus Eisenhardt,” they all read.
His office, lab, and apartment were all the same wing of the Institute. She imagined that didn’t help his ‘evil wizard’ PR. The office was a mess, but an organized mess. Papers were stacked in overflowing piles in stainless steel paper trays. His bookcases were haphazardly stuffed with old hardback Soviet tomes – engineering, metallurgy, genetics, electromagnetism – and memorabilia from around the world.
No, not just memorabilia…war trophies.
As the bookcases veered into more bizarre territory: Latvarian Superstitions, Teachings of Agamoto, Excerpts from The Darkhold, Elements of Chaos Magic – the decorations took more bizarre shapes. Metal sculptures of animals, castles, and stick-figure-families made from twisted landmines, bullet casings, shrapnel, and scrap metal.
She pushed aside a copy of Faust and picked up a metal man holding hands with two children. It felt alien in her fingers. She tapped the father’s head. A familiar ring filled Eisenhardt’s office.
Vibranium.
“Is it the reading or the hobby?”
Showtime.
“Ah, Doctor Eisenhardt –” she measured her inflections carefully, tried to find the right balance between convincing and conspicuous “– Nikolette Rohasko, grad student from the University of Belgrade, Microbiology. We’ve been in contact.”
Like everything in Latveria, he was tall, a bit disheveled, and very old. He held mug of tea in a leathery hand and fidgeted with a pen in the other. He pulled a tiny pair of spectacles from an overflowing shirt pocket, furrowed his brow, and gave her a confused squint that was almost familiar.
She had no qualms doing to him what she did to Bruno.
Name: Magnus Eisenhardt
Height: 6’ 2”
Weight: 210 lbs
Nationality: German
Ethnicity: Ashkenazi Jew
Age: 89
No signs of cartilage loss, joint pain, glaucoma, or trouble hearing despite old age. Hyperfocused – no Dementia or Alzheimer’s concerns. Muscular frame…he’s nearly Cap’s age – how do they have the same physique?
Holocaust Survivor – Auschwitz ID: #24005. Sonterkommando. Reported connections to Nazi Scientist Johann Schmidt. Supposedly instrumental to the formation of Hydra, but all connections to the organization have been purged. He’s been erased. Neither SHIELD’s old databases, nor Von Strucker’s files hold any record of him, anymore. I know. I leaked those files myself.
Immigrated to the United Kingdom in 1946. Studied at Oxford schizophrenically but with honors: Physics, Poetry, Genetics, Philosophy, Anthropology, Biology, Nuclear and Mechanical Engineering. Left in 1955 with no degree.
Protested the Vietnam War – then volunteered for the Viet Cong. Spent the remainder of the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s as a guerilla. Supposedly doomed entire American platoons, armed terrorists, and used his education to produce armies of super-soldiers.
Possesses honorary doctorates in Medicine and Chemical Engineering from the University of Havana and the Von Dûme Institute in Hassenstadt respectively. Rubbed Shoulders with Ho Chi Minh, Che Guevara, dodged almost as many assassination attempts as Fidel Castro.
Settled in Latvaria in the 90’s – became one of the most influential men in the country after the collapse of the USSR. Has been quiet since 1997.
Threat level: Delta. Caution Advised.
She smiled, cautiously. For a second, he didn’t say anything, just kept the familiar squint. His eyes were steel gray – stayed locked on hers, as if magnetically. She expected them to wander (men’s eyes usually do) but he took a sip of his tea and seemed to reach for thoughts out of his grasp, as if feigning senility. He was assessing her, she realized, the same way she’d done, with the same tricks she might use.
You don’t live to be this old in this line of work without being cautious yourself.
A bead of sweat pooled under her veil. She rolled the script she’d worked on with Melina in her head, tapped at the edge of the burner phone in her pocket.
He smiled finally, warmer than a man of his reputation should, said in Hungarian, “I’m sorry. Yes, I recognize the name. ‘Effects of the Erskine-04 Serum on B-cell replication.’ Nagel, et al. You’re one of the ‘et al’, correct?”
Melina’s mock paper had worked.
“Yes,” she said, “and may I just say how much I appreciate that you took the time—”
“—Please, the pleasure is mine,” He shook her hand. “Join me on the balcony?”
Her earpiece buzzed. “Go ahead. I have eyes.”
Eisenhardt stretched in a deck chair with a good view of the Carpathians, placed his mug on a side table, and breathed in the morning. Nat took a seat next to him.
“So, we’ve been trying to synthesize a treatment for cellular damage using Abraham Erskine’s research and…”
“…I try not to discuss research over tea,” He said. “Just now, were you looking at the books or the trinkets?”
Nat risked a glance off the balcony to her left, caught the umbrella Steve was under in the corner of her eye.
“The trinkets,” She said. “Vibranium?”
“You know your exotic metals?”
Shit.
“We’re big fans of Captain America on the Serum project,” She said.
Sell it, a legion of spies in her head said.
She bit her lip, “Big fans.”
Eisenhardt laughed and gave her a scrunched-nose smirk, “Me too.”
Nat’s digital eyebrows shot up. She nodded. That’s a detail you’d hide from the Nazis.
“I picked it up from Sokovia,” he gestured to the mountains. “Just a short hike from here. After the Avengers lifted the entire city of Nova Grad into the sky there was plenty of it to go around. Managed to grab it just before the Americans moved in and hoarded it all.”
As if on cue, Sam buzzed in her earpiece: “Nat, Steve, we got a lot of movement. Looks like pre-flight diagnostics.”
Steve: “Already?”
Nat shut them out – tried to concentrate. He was in Sokovia immediately after we were. That’s a good sign.
“That must have been a sight from here,” she said.
Sourness folded into Eisenhardt’s voice, “We get many sights of Sokovia from here, lately.”
“The Americans are offering relief, though? Rebuilding the city?” It sounded stupid even to her, but she had to keep the cover from slipping until it was time.
“Rebuilding their outposts, maybe. Kelley Airbase is just over that ridge, between the peaks. Every evening after 9 pm we see F-22’s crisscrossing the sky.”
Sam: “They’re gonna leave within the hour. Orders from high up.”
Steve: “How high?”
Sam: “…Secretary. Secretary of State.”
Steve: “Ross. Nat, we don’t have any time.”
Nat shot a glare at the ridge, between the peaks. Then she cleared her throat, “Doctor Eisenhardt, I respect that you try not to mix leisure & business, but I have a train to Prague I need to catch.”
“Yes, yes. Go on.”
“In short, we believe leaps in immunology are just the beginning of the breakthroughs capable by reverse engineering the samples of —”
“—I’m afraid I grew past the fascination with super-serums in ’54, when Howard Stark finally gave up the search for our beloved Steve Rogers.”
She’d hoped he’d say that.
“While I can appreciate that, we’re different from the scientists in 1954. We’re using the serum to save lives, not take them.”
Eisenhardt gave a warm chuckle, leaned back in his chair, sighed into the sky.
“Every scrap of research connected to that place will be used by someone to take lives.”
“With all due respect, Doctor Eisenhardt –”
“– Doctor. You know I got horrible marks in school?” He said. “All my German teachers were convinced I was an idiot – Jew, after all. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand the work, no. Mathematics was easy. School was just boring. We’re academics. We can admit that.”
Sam: “Oh god, they’re scrambling.”
Steve: “How many?”
Sam: “I count five Quinjets. Four Blackhawks.”
Nat’s heart picked up speed. She slowed it with a long breath.
“See, I always cared more about sports and automobiles…and…well, an Austrian boy covered in freckles in the townhouse across from us.”
He got quiet for a second, and looked very tired.
“My father worked in finance – good with numbers too – and it frustrated him to death. He saw my potential. My mother was a scientist in her own right, a psychologist. She tried to motivate me to do my schoolwork with sweets from the corner store and trips to the lake when my grades improved.”
He met her gaze. The steel in his eyes was super-heated, turned to something molten.
“The last time I saw her, the Gestapo had caved her skull in.”
“Oh.”
“They’d arrested my father earlier that morning. I never saw him or my little brother again.”
“I’m so sorry – I…”
“The Nazis saw my potential too,” He looked down at his hands like he hated them. “They relied on it.”
An old, leathery hand moved from under his gaze, pulled down the edge of his collar. His skin was a patchwork of scars.
“I learned there were other ways to motivate a child. I learned how brilliant I was. I learned it by giving them what they wanted. By staying alive. I was the only prisoner in the entire camp given a pencil and private cell, because they knew my own people would throttle me in my sleep.”
“I don’t know what to –”
“Do you know what they made me fill the chambers with, Miss Rohasko?”
Nat just stared.
Magnus Eisenhardt
Drenched in guilt.
Threat Level: Gamma. Capability for harm.
“You should know this, as a microbiologist.”
A voice in her mind knew the answer. It put a chill in her nerves even though the man was dead.
“Zyklon B,” Nat said. “Hydrogen Cyanide.”
Dreykov had many toys.
“That’s right. First used as a pesticide in America. Synthesized to prevent illness and save the harvest. Like you, noble research done on a murderous substance,” He said. “How did it work?”
Fuck.
“The research or the…?”
“Hydrogen Cyanide. How does Hydrogen Cyanide work?”
She felt the cold in her spine again.
“Cyanide blocks cell respiration,” She said. “Cuts off the cell’s supply of ATP.”
They were all Dreykov’s words. She’d expected Melina’s voice inside her head for this.
“How?”
“When a subject inhales it –”
“– At the cellular level, Miss Rohasko. You are a graduate student. How does cyanide block ATP?”
Her head was full of ways to speak, ways to kill, ways to see, and ways to hide. No memory in her head could answer that.
“Well, ah, ATP is produced when…”
“…What does ATP stand for?”
Steve: “…Nat, I’m covering your exit.”
She huffed a sigh. Maybe it was a blessing they were ahead of schedule.
“It stands for –”
Eisenhardt’s didn’t speak, he stung with his voice. “Adenosine Triphosphate is produced by the electron transport chain, which terminates in the enzyme ‘cytochrome c oxidase.’ The cyanide binds to iron ligands in the enzyme and stabilizes it, making it unreceptive to incoming electrons. The cell starves itself out because one infinitesimal piece of it is full.”
He leaned back in his chair, squinted again as if he’d just realized something.
“University of…Belgrade, you said?”
He’s noticed. Sell it.
“We are very far off-topic,” She said, selling it.
“—If you really wanted information on the serum there were many, many places you could have gone besides here.”
You’re panicking. Sell panic.
“As I was saying, we’re using Erskine’s research on respiration and pituitary enhancement to engineer treatment for—”
“—You want know the strangest thing I’ve heard about the American occupation of Sokovia? Apparently, to the extent they’re rebuilding the city, they’re building churches.”
Your cover is failing. Make it perfect.
“—treatment for acute carcinoma—”
“—Southern. Baptist. Churches. In the only majority Romani nation on Earth. When the Byzantines annexed Old Latveria, they built universities,” He gestured to the building around them. “Places to feed the mind, not places to starve it. When was the last time you set foot in one, Miss Rohasko?”
Sam buzzed in again, “They’re en route. We gotta move.”
“Nat, I’m aborting the mission,” Steve said. “We’ll find some other way to help Wanda. I need you down here, now.”
Steve. I am SO close.
“You aren’t pursuing a PhD in Microbiology,” Eisenhardt said.
“Doctor, please I—”
“—You aren’t even from Belgrade.”
“I’m sorry if I’ve offended you but—”
“—What Serb speaks Hungarian with a Russian accent?”
She offered a deep, troubled, breath – loosened the muscles in the back of her throat. Her palette changed shape with familiar movements. She used her natural voice, the one she was born with.
“My apologies for the deception, Doctor Eisenhardt,” She said in Russian. “I didn’t think there was any other way to reach you.”
Textbook.
Eisenhardt’s gray eyes narrowed again, reassessing.
She pulled the burner phone out of her pocket, flashed the screen for barely more than a second. Her news site was intentionally amateurish and unrefined. Simple CSS. Broken links. Images that refused to load. A hacked-to-bits implementation of Firefox intended to bypass firewalls. The Cyrillic was perfect, though – and subversive. It looked like something Putin would shut down. The whole thing was hosted on the micro-web server on Dreykov’s ring. She wore it on her left hand. It was untraceable. Judging by Eisenhardt’s eyes, it was convincing, too.
“My name is Natasha Petrovosky. I’m a journalist for the New Worker’s Path,” Nat said. “I’m investigating the American Occupation of Sokovia.”
A white eyebrow lifted.
Try and see through this one.
“They’ve moved military contractors and private labs in to extract Ultron’s Vibranium for ‘research purposes’ – subsidiaries of Advanced Idea Mechanics, mostly. They found Von Strucker’s castle ransacked when they arrived. No evidence of his research or Ultron’s robots,” she said.
This was her favorite part, when it all came together.
“You mentioned you were in Sokovia immediately after the Avengers?”
Eisenhardt’s eyes went wide. And then he smiled. And then he laughed.
“That’s what this was about? Von Strucker?”
“So you stole his research?”
“If I did, why would I tell you?”
“Because –” and then the noise cut her off.
Sam: “We have liftoff. You’ve got about fifteen – shit!”
Lights, from Sokovia, over the ridge between the peaks. They shot into the sky, turned the morning horizon into something explosive. She heard the blast in her earpiece before she saw it in the air.
“They see me,” Sam said.
“Status?” Steve said.
“I can give ‘em the slip. This one’s a wash though.”
“Nat – I need you down here, now,” Steve said.
Eisenhardt tapped the face of his watch. Her blood went cold.
He knows they’re coming.
Magnus Eisenhardt
Access to compromised Info.
Threat level: Beta – Active antagonist. Possible intent.
“–Because I can make sure you’re protected from what’s coming,” Nat said.
Eisenhardt stared at her for a second, pulled over her face magnetically. For an awful second, his eyes looked like they were tracing the rows of pixels on her veil. He chuckled.
“You’d best step into my lab, Ms. Petrovosky,”
“Nat, don’t,” Steve said.
“Of course,” She told Eisenhardt.
“Nat.”
She idly brushed a stray hair behind her ear, let her fingers hover just over the earpiece.
“NAT.”
Then she shut it off.
Sirens rang behind them. They descended a claustrophobic spiral staircase, entered a dark opening somewhere in the ancient throat of the building.
“In the Second World War, the old Baron Von Dûme and his militia made this chamber the base of their resistance to the Nazi invasion,” Eisenhardt said. “It is at the center of the castle.”
He pulled a massive iron switch. Yellow industrial lights filled the laboratory. The walls, workspaces, and floor were coated in steel. Test tubes, Bunsen burners, and volumetric flasks shared space with bolts, wires, motors, and machines. An old plastic Macintosh 9500 sat in a corner, surrounded by stacks of paper and another pile of books. She wondered how many floppy disks she’d be able to stuff in her pockets if it came to that.
Eisenhardt stepped in. Nat hesitated for a moment, then joined him.
“Like his predecessors – and like many others in recent years – Von Strucker looked for the future in the sky. While the world beneath them burned for their avarice, they studied and exploited the patterns of the stars. The Tesseract. The Scepter. The Chitauri…”
He crossed to a table, lifted a silver fluid in a glass tube and swished it around. His steel eyes seemed to bore into it. His breathing slowed.
“…It never occurred to them that the future was happening right here, on this Earth, under their own watchful gaze.”
The Twins? She thought.
A steel panel against the wall slid out. She didn’t hear any hydraulics or machinery – it was like it moved on its own.
Inside was a cold storage rack filled with other silver test tubes.
“There is very little worth to anything Hydra does, but even a fool like Von Strucker can strike gold on accident. A benefit of having many heads is that you can fail in many different directions,” He slid the test tube into an empty slot with the rest, left the compartment open. “The rest of the knowledge went to our esteemed Chairman. Despite our disagreements, we are of the same mind on the defense of Latveria.”
Test tubes. That’s it. That’s how Melina saves Wanda.
Her heart pounded harder than she expected.
“Phase 2 – The Chairman has access to Hydra weaponry?” She asked, inching closer to the container.
“Very knowledgeable about American lies for a Russian journalist.”
“All underground journalists talk to each other,” She said. She felt every tutor in her mind snicker and hiss at how haphazardly that came out. “I understand the Chairman is an academic in his own right.”
Eisenhardt stepped to a covered container pressed between the wall and an eyewash station, fiddled with some panel on the front. “The Chairman is many things in his own right,” He said. “Angelic and demonic in equal measure.”
He had his back to her.
Nat was at the storage facility now. She analyzed it with a side-glance. No motorized components. No internal wires. No motion sensors, heat sensors, ultrasonic etc. Just a rack with chemicals on it, effectively open and unguarded. She backed against it. “People attract who they are,” she said.
“In my experience, that is seldom true.”
“In my experience, it’s very true,” She slipped a hand behind her. This was very easy. It was almost concerning. “You turned weapon’s research over to a brutal dictator, but not before you used it for your own ends.”
“Are my ends angelic, Ms. Petrovosky?”
Her fingers slid around a silver-full, rubber-stopped piece of glass. “You tell me. I think a man with your history has seen evil first-hand and might find it hard to—”
Metal closed around her arm.
All the hisses in her mind gave “I told you so”-s in every language she spoke. It was dizzying.
“…An undercover journalist sidles up to a rogue academic on the morning of his arrest – under the auspices of a fellow researcher desperate for a consultation – then drops her cover. Then she immediately attempts to steal his research.” He said, “Bizarre behavior for a journalist.”
He turned.
“Predictable behavior for a spider.”
Goddamnit.
He moved towards her, bore through her with his steel-colored eyes.
“Take off that absurd disguise, Agent Romanov. I’ve been counting the pixels since I first realized you weren’t a clueless lab tech.”
Plan B. She thought. Improvise.
She hated improvising.
With her free hand, she peeled the photostatic veil off, saw him with her own eyes, watched him for movement, kept her breathing regulated and her muscles ready. There were no gotcha’s left.
“If you needed help, you could have just asked,” He said, unexpectedly candor. “The organizations who hunt you have been stalking me for sixty years.”
“You understand why we couldn’t trust you with your…reputation.”
“Then it’s a wonder anyone trusts you, Widow.”
With a practiced concentration, the sting never registered on her face.
He glanced behind her, “Do you even know what you’re holding?”
“A test tube.”
“Full of?”
“…stuff.”
Both white eyebrows shot up. He muttered something impolite in Yiddish. “It’s a concentrated genetic encoded serum—”
“—I thought you ‘outgrew the fascination with super serums in fifty—’”
“—Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. It’s medicine, synthesized from Von Strucker’s experiments on the Maximoff twins. Why would you need it?”
Parts of her desperately didn’t want to tell him. Others knew she had no choice. The choir of remembered spies was quiet now. They always were when things actually mattered.
“Wanda Maximoff is dying,” she said.
For the first time in her entire conversation, his eyes softened. They looked less like steel, more like clouds, grayed by an oncoming rain.
“Diagnosis?” He said.
“Advanced necroptosis. Total cell death. It gets worse when she uses her powers,” She tried to stifle another rage-fueled admission, but it spilled out anyway: “It was the Raft.”
Back to steel. Back to molten.
“So. They’ve…interrupted her cellular respiration.”
Nat swallowed.
“…Whatever they did to her while she was imprisoned there, it wasn’t compatible with what the Mind Stone did to her that altered her DNA—”
The metal brace around her arm constricted. She looked down at it and winced. She couldn’t figure out how it worked.
“…Mind Stone…??”
He said the words like there were four dissertations, twelve academic papers, a manifesto, and a hundred eulogies behind it. She was missing something. She was missing a great many somethings.
“After Captain America and I rescued her and the other imprisoned Avengers from the Raft, we immediately flew Wanda to Melina Vostokoff in Saint Petersburg,” she said. “We discovered her genome was…wrong. I don’t have the academic language to describe it. Her 23rd chromosome was virtually inhuman. This was corroborated with Von Strucker’s tests on her after she survived contact with the Mind Stone…You know about the Mind Stone —?“
“—Yes I know about the blasted Infinity Stones. Yahweh made the universe in six days, and on the seventh he scattered the materials he used to make it throughout creation. Hydra worshipped the stones like a cult.”
That’s not the version of the story I learned, but it’s probably not wrong, though.
“Well…as far as we can tell, the Mind Stone killed most of Von Strucker’s test subjects before the Maximoff twins. They were the only two survivors – and their powers came at the cost of altered DNA. You have his personal notes, what did they say?”
“Von Strucker ran no preliminary tests on the Sokovian volunteers. It turns out inheritors of the SS were awful cavalier with Roma lives,” Eisenhardt said. “What he has on the twins is inconclusive before a certain point.”
She pulled against her metal shackle. It wouldn’t budge. She grunted, “No human was meant to have Wanda’s powers. Now they’re killing her.”
Eisenhardt said nothing, but his stare could start a crucible. She watched his jaw clench, heard him fight to control his breathing.
Finally, “…What sort of experiments did they do to her on the Raft?”
“Whatever they could to reverse engineer what Von Strucker did to her genome, I guess. No regard for her safety or her life.”
“She was an American prisoner. That isn’t surprising.”
Nat felt her face get hot, “It’s just…it’s my fault.”
Eisenhardt’s white brow furrowed again.
“I could have talked Tony Stark out of supporting the accords,” she said.
The brace on her arm loosened a little.
“I believed in them, but I should have seen what we were walking into. If I did she never would have left Avengers Campus. Never would have been in Leipzig. Never would have been arrested,” she rubbed a tear out of her eye – a real one, rare for a stranger to see. “Every time I think I’m getting rid of the red in my ledger, I manage to fill it up again.”
“It makes you feel like a monster,” Eisenhardt said.
“It makes me feel like…”
…Nat’s arm came free. She was still holding the serum.
“Take it,” He said.
“Excuse me?”
“You were going to take it anyway.”
“Right – but,”
“It’ll work.”
“Work how?”
Eisenhardt sighed, “It’ll repair the damage incurred to her DNA.”
“So it’ll reverse the effects of the Mind Stone?”
His nostrils flared.
“She’ll lose her powers,” Nat said. “She’ll be normal.”
Eisenhardt voice stung again: “Yes. She’ll be normal.”
Nat turned the test tube around in her hand. She didn’t like any of this. Melina had to analyze every microliter of the stuff before Wanda took anything. At the same time, her heart skipped a beat. She didn’t have to lose a member of her family. Not again.
Eisenhardt crossed back to his covered container. Distant screams sounded from the outside, above the staircase. A hellish, airborne racket was approaching…
…Five Quinjets, Four Blackhawks. They’re on their way from Kelley to arrest Eisenhardt. They’re almost here.
“Doctor Eisenhardt, it isn’t safe for you to stay—”
“—on the contrary. It isn’t safe for you to stay,” He tapped a button on a small console. “I’d recommend you leave precipitously, now that you have the treatment for Wanda Maximoff’s condition. I can’t let this work fall back into American hands.”
Oh my god.
He ripped the cover off the container. Wires folded down from stainless steel panels, fed into rusted iron bevels caked with dirt. Tanks of volatile liquid encircled the object inside. Charges covered its shell. A digital timer ticked down from five minutes. The old Stark Industries logo was half chipped, rusted to hell along the surface.
He punched another button on the panel of the glass case, and primed the bomb inside.
Magnus Eisenhardt
Threat level: Alpha – Clear and present danger.
She drew her Glock. “I can’t let you do this.”
“I dug this out of Laos in ’71. Did you know the Americans dropped more bombs on Laos during the Vietnam War than they did on all of Vietnam? And they dropped a lot of bombs on Vietnam.”
The timer clicked down. 4:55.
“There are civilians in this building.”
“If you’re here, I assume that means The Captain isn’t far behind? He’s somewhat of an expert on civilian evacuations by now. He'll find the people of Latveria respond well to a chiseled jaw & sturdy pectorals.”
She pulled the hammer back. “Disarm the bomb.”
Eisenhardt didn’t. He didn’t put his hands in the air either. He stepped closer, “I’m disappointed in you, Agent Romanov. With all your expertise, you’ve forgotten a fundamental rule of espionage.”
There was a raucous up the stairs. It was approaching the balcony. They were here. 4:50.
“Never let on how little you know,” Magnus said.
Then he turned, toward the exit, up the stairs, into the noise of American justice.
Nat’s eyes narrowed. She thought about calling out. She thought about running. She thought about bringing him down hand-to-hand and finding a way to get him out of here without the Marines getting involved.
Instead she leveled her Glock at him, aimed at a place she’d been shot before – where the bullet would pass right through.
She fired.
The sound bounced off every steel wall in the chamber. Her aim was perfect. Her distance was fine. Eisenhardt didn’t react. There was a light plink on the iron floor. An unused bullet casing made a rapid drumming sound.
The spent round rolled towards her, rested at her feet.
“Congratulations,” She heard Fury say, “You thought you knew what was up.”
Magnus Eisenhardt
Threat level: Unknown.
~~~
The Survivor
8:41am
Max stepped onto his balcony with his hands in the air. Five Quinjets, four Blackhawks, just like that awful din in the spy’s earpiece had said. They instantly covered him in a sea of red dots.
There was the shouted “Go! Go! Go!” from the lead chopper. A team rappelled onto his balcony and moved in to restrain him.
His left hand twitched.
A rookie in the third heli would spend all day swearing that he didn’t have his finger on the trigger. His rifle accidentally discharged anyway. The bullet whizzed past his squad-mate’s ear, tagged Max in the shoulder. He hit the deck and writhed in pain.
Someone slapped the kid. There’d be a court martial when they got back to Sokovia, or worse. A medic came down. They loaded Max onto the Quinjet in a stretcher.
Before the hatch closed, he got one last look at his bookshelves, at his desk, at his kitchenette, and at the tiny Latverian apartment he’d sequestered in for the last twenty years. He saw the door down to the lab where he’d left the Black Widow. For the first time in his life, he prayed for the selfishness of heroes.
If Romanov dies, it ruins the plan.
Max laughed to himself.
‘Plan.’ I feel young again.
~~~
The Widow
8:41 am
4:42
Her brain went eight different places – none of them useful.
He doesn’t want me interfering with his arrest. He wants to make it to Sokovia, or the Raft, or Guantanamo, or wherever else.
4:40
And he managed to pull one over on me.
4:39
Almost impressive.
She tapped her earpiece back on, “Steve, Sam, come in, anyone?”
“Nat!” Steve said. There was commotion on his end, “What’s your status?”
“Cover’s blown. Eisenhardt knew. There’s a bomb.”
“A bomb? I’m coming up.”
“Damnit – stay down. I need the block clear of civilians.”
“How much time?”
4:35
“Not much.”
There was silence on Steve’s end for a second. Her mind picked up speed again against her will.
“Alright,” he said, finally. “I’ll do what I can.”
She quietly thanked the universe for Captain America.
He was running now, “There are still two Blackhawks on Eisenhardt’s balcony. You’re gonna have company in a second.”
She heard rummaging above her, in the office. She placed maybe two teams of marines. She pressed against the iron wall near the spiral staircase exit, kept her voice low. “Roger, Rogers. Sam?”
“Just crossed the border into Latveria. Won’t be able to make it in time,” Sam said.
“What about the drone?”
“His name is Red—!”
She rolled her eyes, “Yeah, Redwing. Can he carry a payload the size of a test tube?”
“He can, and he’s already on his way.”
“I love you guys.”
“Don’t die,” Steve said.
She heard their approach at the opening of the stone staircase. Cautious. Kevlar. AR-15s. Single file. Ten of them. She looked back at the timer.
4:24
Then she looked at the cold storage facility, still open.
Then she got an idea.
They funneled into the lab. Four fanned out ahead. Two took the left side. One on the right. Two up the center. One on their exit.
Nat fastened the Widow Bites around her wrists, shivered a little.
“Command, we have a bomb,” one of them said.
They kept advancing. Nat checked her taser disks. One missing, remote activation.
“A blast to that back wall would bring down the whole structure,” Command said through his radio. “We can’t get bomb disposal down there in time. Take what you can and get out—”
They were in position. So was she.
The cold storage facility shot open, knocked two marines down. A few test tubes shattered across the floor.
“Contact!”
She tapped a button on her wrist. The giant iron switch crackled with electricity. Her taser disk tripped the breaker. The yellow industrial lights sputtered off. She slipped out into the black chamber, lit only by a red glow from the ticking timer.
“Oh my god,” a marine said.
She moved by sound alone.
4:03
The first four had a vague idea where she was by her silhouette. She flipped the first one onto an iron workspace, swept the leg on the second, and threw him into the third. The fourth was in the dark. She hurled a random assortment of metal from the bench to her right in the direction of her best guess, heard twelve clattering sounds and a grunt. She roundhouse-kicked the grunt.
3:59
Two flashlights gave themselves and number three’s recovering silhouette away. She aimed her wrist, fired a taser disk. It illuminated herself and one of the flashlights in blue light, knocked him out.
“There!”
3:57
Seven muzzle flashes while she slid under a chemical sink. She knew where they all were now. Her grapple gun brought another down, snaked her towards him while he screamed like a horror movie kill. She rolled onto the closest desk and broke out in a sprint. The other flashlight swung around and gave her a great view of the remaining squad.
3:54
Dropkick, dodge, block, counter, predict, strike, grapple, stun. She didn’t need to see to take them out.
3:51
She heard a voice to her immediate left – “Get those lights back on!” – and she grabbed him from behind, slid him further down the room, readied her Glock.
The yellow industrial lights flickered back on. There were three of them now – dazed and bruised. They swung around in a frenzy.
“She’s got the corporal—!”
She brought them all down in the light. One shot each.
3:47
There was a silence full of heavy breathing, both her and the corporal in her headlock.
“Where are they taking Eisenhardt?” She interrogated.
“I don’t know.”
She squeezed, applied pressure to a laceration on the side of his neck. “Don’t lie.”
He grimaced, “I said I don’t know! They’re gonna detain him at the airbase until brass decides to transfer! We were after the research – that’s all I know!”
She shoved him in the direction of the silver puddle and the broken glass. “I hope you brought a mop.”
He grunted, spat a mouthful of blood into the puddle.
“I hope you brought a band-aide.” And he stabbed her in the leg.
She recoiled, shoved him into the goop. The cut wasn’t deep – hurt like a son of a bitch, sure, and if she didn’t treat it soon she’d be in trouble – but she’d done more with less in the past.
The corporal rose, steadied his knife, rubbed blood off his nose.
She sighed.
Name: Random-ass Corporal
He tried a stab and she clubbed him across the face.
Heigth: 6’ 5”
Weight: 200 lbs.
He made a downward cut. She put his arm in a hold and broke it. He yelled. She went for the flip but tanked a frustrated punch instead. She slid across the floor.
Nationality: Violently American
He charged and she rolled over and dove between his legs – knocked him down on his face.
Ethnicity: Bruised
He pulled himself up, readied the knife again, and lunged. She restrained his knife hand. He dropped it, reached his bad hand to catch it, but she swatted it away.
Age: Thinks he’s in an action movie.
She’d lost her Glock when he punched her. It was on the ground. They both made for it – he got there first, fired three shots into the stone ceiling.
Republican.
“You’re gonna tell me EVERYTHING he told you!” He yelled, “Fucking EVERYTHING!!”
Then Redwing knocked his ass flat. He sat there in a daze for a second.
“Good robot,” she said. Redwing gave a charmed little hum.
She kicked the Glock across the room, rolled over a workbench, and pulled the test tube out of her jacket pocket. Unharmed – thank god. Redwing opened a little compartment for it. She almost slid it in.
The corporal grabbed her arm, stripped the serum out of it, staggered back to his feet. She ripped her Glock off the floor and shot it – rained silver goo and glass all over him.
They both whirled across the room. There was one more test tube left in Eisenhardt’s cold storage rack.
They raced for it. She pulled just far enough ahead for…
…He slammed his elbow into her face. Her nose burned where she’d broken it a few weeks ago. Perfect.
He reached the compartment first, tore the test tube out of the rack.
“Command! We have –”
Then she slammed the rack closed. With his head inside it. She pulled the serum out of his unconscious hand.
Redwing whistled at the pain. She whistled back. Redwing hovered over. She gave it the serum.
“Now get out of here,” she said, breathless.
It beeped defiantly.
She pushed it, “…I said move you stupid can.”
It hesitated, then flew back up the spiral stairs. She was doubled over, exhausted, covered in sore spots, bruises, and cuts.
Then she said “OH SHIT” out loud.
1:12
She dragged her mess over to the glass case with the bomb in it and aimed her Glock. Then she stopped, tapped the glass.
Bulletproof – also housing vials of Nitroglycerin. Avoid jostling and sparks.
1:09
Disarmament. She flipped the front panel up, felt her heart sink. The wires were a spaghettified mess. There were hundreds. No color coordination. No sensible paths to their connections. Some weren’t even plugged in. She shot a taser disk at it. The countdown display glitched. Nothing else happened. She slammed the panel back down and ran her hands through her hair. Every mentor she’d ever had was talking in her head at once now when she just needed some goddamned quiet. Even international superspies get anxiety attacks. She choked down a sob.
On the worst plane ride of her life, from Ohio to Cuba when she was eleven, Melina had taught her a set of breathing techniques for stress. “In for 3. Hold for 7. Out for 4.” She’d lose track of the amount of times she’d count her breaths in the Red Room – or the night of her graduation – or in New York, DC, or Sokovia – or on that day in Budapest all those years ago.
1:04
She didn’t have that kind of time right now, but she was back. She took stock of the room. The bodies. The guns. The puddles. The exit. If the bomb went off here, it would bring the entire Institute down on her head, bury hundreds of civilians. She had to get it away from here.
She glanced back at the spiral staircase. Then she moaned. She was the worst Avenger for this job.
0:55
Just scraping the glass case to the stairs took everything she had. The thing was a few hundred pounds. Her arms, hips, back, legs, cuts, bruises, and stamina burned. She lifted it up the first stair and thought her biceps were going to give out. She pulled up the second stair, and the corner stabbed the curved wall. For a horrible moment, she thought it wouldn’t fit. It did, but it was tight.
0:49
Step number three nearly killed her. The corner of the case made sparks on the wall, left a white-grinding trail behind it.
“Nat,” Steve said. He sounded in a hurry, “The castle’s clear of civilians.”
A wave of relief hit her.
“What’s your status?”
“Oh…you know,” She tried to hide a grunt while she pulled the case up stair number four. “…I had fun.”
0:41
“The bomb?”
She audibly growled on stair number five. “Steve, I-I...need you to get out of the building.”
“Nat.”
“I want to thank you,” she said. “I think we really…really made the world safer. Despite it all.”
She pulled up another stair, felt a muscle spasm in her right arm, felt her back threaten to give out, felt her wrists fold in on themselves. She nearly lost the bomb. The explosive liquids in their containers sloshed a bit dramatically.
0:35
Heavy, fast footsteps echoed in her earpiece.
“I wanna thank you too, Sam,” Nat said.
“I’m dodging Quinjets. I have visual on Von Dûme Institute. Can you hold out a little longer?” Sam asked.
“We got thirty seconds, bird boy. I don’t think so.” She lifted it up another stair. This had to be her last one. She was caked in sweat, barely had any grip in her hands anymore.
She still tried. She groaned in pain. The feet of the container just pulled above the corner of the stair. This was her last one.
She looked up – she’d gone halfway. She could see Eisenhardt’s office.
0:29
“Listen…before you inject Wanda with anything, make sure Melina runs studies on it first.”
“Of course, Nat.” Sam said.
“Steve…” She tried one more pull, couldn’t make it – tried another, couldn’t quite. On her third, she realized she couldn’t feel her calf anymore where she was stabbed. She felt lightheaded. Her leg was soaked in red. “…promise me you’ll take care of Wanda…”
Pounding footsteps, “Sam, what’s your status.”
“Too far away,” Sam said.
“…she deserves to be happy. Normal,” Nat said. “Promise.”
0:22
Steve was booking it, “I promise.”
“Good…” She’d lost most of the feeling in her hands now. “…now get out.”
She tried one more pull, but the glass case slipped out of her hands. It undid the last few painful inches of her progress, started accelerating down the stairs.
The door to Eisenhardt’s office exploded. Another set of hands caught the bomb. They yanked hard, brought it back to her.
“I said, I’m not trading teammates,” Steve said.
She quietly thanked the universe, one more time, for Captain America.
0:18
Steve took the case in both hands, and ripped it the rest of the way up the stairs in a single huff, slid it into Eisenhardt’s office.
“I told you to get out,” Nat said.
“I told you not to go into Eisenhardt’s lab,” Steve said.
Then they both laughed. Nat got up, stumbled a little, and ran to the window.
“Sheer vertical drop. Into a ravine. No civilians.”
She stepped back, fired four shots into the window – shattered it.
“We still have to pick it up to get it out the window,” Steve said.
0:13
“You pull. I push.”
Steve nodded. They switched places.
0:11
Nat only had the energy to scoot it across the floor. Steve picked up his entire end and more or less dragged her with it, rested his edge on the windowsill.
0:09
She saw him creep up the stairs out the corner of her eye. Her head started listing facts before she could stop it. Covered in contusions. Severe head trauma. Broken ulna. Four bones in the shoulder fractured. M1911 in his good hand, stripped off a body in the lab.
The corporal raised his sidearm. Nat almost dodged, but her legs burned and rebelled. Steve jumped between them.
A familiar ring filled Eisenhardt’s office.
The spent rounds fell at Steve’s feet. The black star on his arm warbled. The shield spiraled out from its center. Metal prongs telescoped and folded interlocking sheets of Vibranium in position. Braces secured them in on the other side. Steve stood, incognito shield ringing lightly. It was black and white like a Zebra pelt, concealable like a Hyena in the Savannah, retractable like a Panther’s claws. Wakandan engineering.
And it was just as bouncy as the colorful one.
The corporal dropped his gun, blinked in disbelief, “You gotta be shitting—”
The shield sent him back down the stairs.
0:04
Nat was just done. She only had adrenaline now. She got up – body checked the glass case as hard as she could.
0:03
“Nat wait –!”
Again. It moved.
0:02
Again.
0:01
It was out the window, sliding, down, out of the castle.
Its back legs caught on the windowsill.
0:00
Steve wasn’t fast enough. The blast launched him into the stairwell. It launched Nat off the balcony.
She fell.
Down the height of the castle, down the hill she climbed to reach the castle. 200 feet, 250 feet, 350 feet. She wasn’t scared. Her families were safe now – both of them. She shut her eyes, waited for the crash.
And waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And…?
…she opened her eyes. She was wrapped in scarlet.
Stray sparks of red played in the sky above her. Chaos magic held her in the air, danced in her fingers. She choked a breath. It enveloped her, tightened as if it didn’t care if she was alive or dead. It was hot, unnerving, dangerous. And it saved her life.
Goddamnit Wanda.
“On your left!” Sam tackled her out of the sky, flew her to the ground. They rolled a little in the alleyway. She slid away from Falcon, landed in a pose. For a second, every voice in her head was just Yelena’s:
“Poser.”
Then she collapsed, took a few rough breaths, and assessed her damage. She’d be fine, she decided – just needed some rest. And food. And bio-foam. And apologies from some captured scientists.
“SAM. DO YOU HAVE EYES ON NAT?”
“She’s good – she’s good,” Sam said in his earpiece. He stood. His metal wings folded in. “I…uh…I had some help.”
“Wanda broke my fall,” Nat said.
“Wanda? How? She’s forty miles away,” Steve said.
Sam swallowed hard at the number, met Nat’s gaze. Nat looked down at her herself; the sparks were only just now dissipating. She tried not to imagine Wanda’s face when they got back to the Dacha. Pale. Haggard. Thin. Sick.
“Does it make any sense to you?” Sam asked.
“No,” Nat said. “I don’t really want to think about it.”
Sam nodded, sucked in a breath, “I don’t either,” He said. “She’s not gonna be doing too good when we get back.”
Then he looked past Nat and smiled to someone.
“Hey – great song man!”
Nat glanced over her shoulder. Bruno’s eyes were massive. He dropped a little crate full of power tools and passed out.
Nat’s voice shook: “You have the serum?”
Redwing poked out of Sam’s suit. The test tube poked out of Redwing. “Steve,” He said. “How you holding up?”
“Few cuts and scrapes,” He said. “Look like I played a bad game of stickball.”
“They really played that out in the streets back in the day?”
“We weren’t playing Candy Crush.”
“Can I see it?” Nat asked, pointing to the serum.
“Sure – holy shit, your leg.”
“Bowie knife. Seven inches.”
He handed her the test tube. “Could be a severed artery,” He said, then unclasped the harness that kept his wings on. “One sec.”
“Sam – I’m fine.”
“You’re really not,” He opened a compartment on his wings, pulled out a bio-foam injector, Doctor Cho’s design. They managed to pinch a few from Avenger’s Campus before they split.
“We only have enough for three of those!”
“Then we’ll have two more. Hold still.”
The needle went in, a light anesthetic mist sprayed over the wound.
“It’s gonna sting a little,” Sam said.
It stung a lot – kind of a long, lingering burn. Foam bubbled up in the cut, hardened around the opening, and tried to speed her cells’ attempt to heal. She grimaced, but it was better than keeping an open wound on Cap’s bike, she decided.
She swished the test tube around the way Eisenhardt had just before his arrest. It was heavy, she realized – heavy and reflective. Light caught against the serum in the glass and made it sparkle.
“Do you…ah…do you really think we can trust that stuff?” Sam asked.
“Damn, I don’t know,” Nat said. “The guy who made it just perfectly cross-examined me twice then tried to drop a fucking building on my head.”
“Alright, alright. We’ll make sure Melina gets a look at it.”
Nat realized she was bracing for something, but couldn’t tell what. She hated the feeling, fell back into high alert – tired muscles ready for anything…
“…Language.”
“Go to hell, Steve.”