My most dear readers,
It is with great pleasure and immense pride that I present to you my 8th Avengers story. I have been laboring over this story for almost half a year now, and I am so excited to finally share it with you. I tell you honestly, I think this one is really something special, and I hope you too think so. As I'm sure you will quickly realize, this is a multi-chaptered story, and I can assure you that the updates will be frequent and prompt without any loss of quality. If you would be so kind as to forgive the brevity of the Prologue, I should have Chapter 1 posted by this Thursday (American time), and Chapter 2 by the following Monday! I will tell you that from this point on, my stories will no longer be able to stand alone, so consider yourself warned.
I do want to thank everyone who has given me encouragement up to now, and I want you to know how much that really means to me. I simply love to write, and you can't conceive how the time you have taken to talk to me about my work has inspired me not just to keep going but to always try to be better. When I tell you that this story is for you, I hope you understand that I am offering the only gift I can, and I hope you are made happy by it.
Now, if you will forgive my brief diversion into what I can only describe as sentimentality (forgive the reference, it was unintended), without further ado, I give you my story.
Truly, all of my love,
Ballerina Terminator
Prologue
The Black Widow was almost relieved when she finally located the master bedroom of the villa. The estate was situated on the far edge of the city, and the house sprawled over the extensive grounds that were bordered by the high walls that crawled with guards. The house's chilly halls were lined with windows, but the overcast night provided no illumination to ease her navigation of the building, a task which had been made especially challenging by the fact that the floor plan she had memorized was clearly out of date. She had mentally reviewed her path through the building repeatedly prior to the mission, and, for the most part, the original footprint of the building was still there. Nevertheless, the minor alterations left her feeling haunted by a sense of disorientation.
Any relief she might have felt at reaching her destination quickly dissipated when she let the door drift opened, gun drawn, eyes searching for any movement in the room. There was no movement because there was no one in the room which may have been the master bedroom at one time but was so no longer.
Large stacks of cash from three different nations were stacked on a table that stood against one wall, but it was only one of several tables that filled the room. Two of the other tables held heavily taped packages, stacked high like bricks. A quick calculation told her that there were something like six hundred packages on each table, but she didn't need to test the contents to know that it was cocaine. She knew whose house she was in, after all. Her limited experience with the drug made it impossible for her to estimate the weight of the stockpile, but she personally considered it to be a hell of a lot of drugs. The rest of the tables were covered in boxes and boxes of ammunition. As interesting as all these items were, what it all boiled down to was that her subject was not sleeping here.
A sharp crackle given off by her comm unit made her wince, and she removed the tiny implant from her ear for to look it over. When she saw no visible damage, she carefully reinserted the piece in her ear.
She pressed the button to transmit. "Control?" After a minute with no response she tried again. "Control, come in," she said softly.
Again, there was no answer, but she knew that didn't mean that she wasn't being received. "Control, this is Black Widow. My comm unit has stopped receiving. If you are receiving this transmission, the subject is not in place; I repeat, the subject is not in the western bedroom. I'm going to regroup with Hawkeye in the central courtyard."
She took a step forward to pull the door closed, and she felt a slight give of a pressure plate just under her left foot. A siren began echoing through the corridors, and everything went to hell.