"Your next mission." Natalia's handler slid a folder across the table. Natalia picked it up and flipped through.
"Capture or kill?" she asked.
"Capture. Shield has been collecting powered people and, we think, trying to replicate their powers. We need to know what they know. Once you have the information, terminate and return for debrief."
Her target had a small apartment in midtown. Natalia watched from a roof across the street. Her team waited in their stations, scattered around the building.
Natalia spotted Commander Hill as she approached from down the street. She clicked her radio once to alert her team.
Hill wasn't stupid. There was nothing obvious about her movements, but Natalia could see that she was actively surveilling her surroundings. She clicked her radio twice, signalling her team to stay back.
Maya waited at the bus stop on the corner. A bus pulled in and Maya did not hesitate before climbing on and digging some change out of her pocket for the fare.
For the past three hours, Oksana sat unmoving, tucked in an alcove off the alley. When the radio clicked twice, she shifted to lay down, curling around herself and pulling her blanket over her head. She ignored the target less than half a block away. The new position left her back completely exposed, but she knew that the Black Widow would not have told them to back off if she didn't have the situation completely in hand.
Bogdan and Roman kissed against the side of the building, a few doors down from Hill's apartment. Natalia was fairly convinced that there was nothing staged about their frenetic make-out session. They'd picked the same cover for every stake-out in the last two months. Roman closed his eyes and moaned as Bogdan's hands moved to his belt. Neither of them paid any attention as Hill walked right past.
Natalia dropped down on Hill from above.
She landed almost silently, mere feet behind the Shield commander. Hill whirled on the spot, swinging at her as Natalia detached the rappel line that had slowed her descent. Natalia dodged the strike and hit the release button. She felt the rush of air as Hill's fist missed her by a millimeter.
Hill was good. She held her own for several minutes. When Natalia finally got in close enough, she zapped Hill with her Widow's Bite. Hill snarled and swiped at the electrodes, trying to knock them off her chest even as her muscles seized up and she stumbled to her knees. Natalia reached for a syringe in her pocket and popped off the cap. She jabbed Hill in the thigh. Bogdan slipped around the corner to get their car as Roman and Oksana came over to help Natalia.
Natalia guided them to the safehouse her handler had told her about. It belonged to a couple of deep-cover operatives. Nicholas and Veronica been in the US for close to 30 years and built their house from the ground up to be both an unremarkable American home and the perfect safehouse for Russian operatives.
Nicholas opened the garage door and Bogdan drove in. Once the garage door was safely closed behind them, Natalia and her team piled out. Veronica started to greet them, but Natalia brushed her off. "She won't be out much longer," she said, gesturing to Hill. "You have a cell ready?"
Veronica nodded. "Follow me."
Natalia dragged Hill across the backseat of the car and hefted the dead weight up over one shoulder. She followed Veronica into the home and down the stairs to the basement.
"Well this is more fun than the black box under the Kremlin," Natalia remarked.
Veronica shrugged. "If the American police ever came in here, we needed an excuse for having a cell in the house other than 'we're Russian spies.'"
"True."
The entire basement glistened in black and chrome. Tall mirrors and strategic lighting created shadowy recesses between brightly lit platforms, each with its own unique furniture piece made of metal, wood, and leather.
A freestanding cage provided the focal point of the room. Thick metal bars stretched from the floor to the ceiling, with gaps barely large enough to reach a hand through. Natalia carried Hill in and set her down on the cold cement floor.
They had patted her down in the car to look for weapons or tracking devices. Still, Natalia knew better than anyone that anything could be a weapon if someone was motivated enough. She stripped Hill, methodically removing every scrap of clothing before she stepped out of the cell and locked it behind her.
Maria woke on a hard, rough surface. Her head pounded and her mouth was so dry her lips cracked.
She sat and looked around. Whatever she expected after being abducted by what were clearly highly-trained agents, it was not waking up naked in a BDSM dungeon.
Maria stood and inspected her cage. The black iron bars were anchored to the floor and ceiling, the door secured with a thick padlock. A thin pair of navy blue scrubs sat in one corner and Maria pulled them on.
Someone had folded her clothes and placed them on top of a spanking horse, just a few feet away from the cage. Maria scowled. She would have expected to get patted down and her weapons removed, but stripped naked was another matter entirely. The lockpicks sewn into her jacket cuffs and the garrotte threaded through the underwire of her bra were useless to her if she couldn't reach them.
She heard a door open and footsteps on the stairs. Her opponent from outside her apartment walked into the dungeon, carrying a gas-station styrofoam cup and oversized straw. She approached the cage and held the cup out toward Maria. It wouldn't fit through the bars, but Maria guessed that's what the straw was for.
"Drink," the woman said. Maria didn't move.
Her captor sighed and took a sip of water for herself. "It's water," she explained.
Dry mouth or no, Maria was not about to go drink from this woman's hand. She shook her head and her captor shrugged. "I know the dry mouth can be a bitch. You'll be more comfortable talking to me without a sore throat."
Information. That was what this was about. Maria crossed her arms over her chest. "What do you want to know?" she asked. Whatever it was, she wasn't going to tell them. But it would help to know who they were and what they wanted.
The woman chuckled. She sat on a padded bench next to the St. Andrew's Cross. "Are you going to tell me, or do you just want to know what I'm after?"
Maria pointedly looked around the dungeon, then turned back to her captor and raised her eyebrow. "If I don't tell you, are you going to spank me?"
That earned an honest laugh. "No," her captor said, green eyes twinkling. "There are better ways to get intel. Torture's not my style"
Maria leaned against the side of the cage. "What is your style, then?" Despite what the propaganda always said, torture was not an effective method of extracting reliable intel. Oh, a person would talk under torture, and talk fast. But nothing they said could be trusted - half might be true and the other half would be anything they could think of to make the pain stop. When you needed intel fast and you had other sources to compare stories, there was a place for torture in an intelligence officer's arsenal. Other methods could get reliable intel. But those took longer - time measured in weeks or months rather than hours and days.
"I'm Natasha."
"That's not your real name."
Natasha shrugged. "No. But it's as good as any. And you need something to call me."
Maria shrugged as well, unconsciously mirroring Natasha's gesture. "So I get to know you, you get to know me. You keep me in a cage and visit me periodically until a couple weeks from now I am so desperate for human interaction that I tell you whatever you want? Is that how this is going to go?"
"A couple weeks?" Natasha looked hurt. "Maria, I thought we had more of a connection than that."
Maria snorted. "Is that the connection we formed when you electrocuted me or when you took my clothes off?"
"Oh the first, of course." Maria wasn't entirely sure if the lights in the room were playing tricks on her, but she could swear Natasha winked. "The latter was just for safety."
"Right."
"And I brought other clothes for you," Natasha pointed out. She dropped the flirtatious tone, "I know what it is to be a captive. I didn't want you to be uncomfortable."
Maria did not thank her. She appreciated having something to wear, but she also recognized the calculated maneuver. Take everything - literally - everything away from the prisoner. Then when they feel powerless and alone, give them some small token or gesture. The prisoner feels grateful, and the bond between captive and interrogator is strengthened.
She knew interrogation strategies as well as anyone. She would hold out, at least until she could escape or Shield came for her.
Natalia should have been paying more attention. Her team was upstairs, along with Nicholas and Veronica. With six agents watching the main floor, she had been confident enough to focus her full attention on the prisoner.
But when the basement door opened and unfamiliar steps sounded on the stairs, she knew she'd made a mistake. Natalia hit the floor as an… arrow? who the fuck uses arrows? flew overhead.
She noticed Hill had seen it coming as well, diving to the far side of the cage before the arrow landed. The tip exploded on impact, blasting the hinges of the cage door.
Natalia ducked behind a stockade as a man came down the stairs. He wore a tight uniform with purple accents and carried an honest-to-God bow and arrow. He held one arrow notched on the bow as he scanned the room.
Metal squealed against concrete as Hill wrenched the damaged door aside. Natalia turned to see Hill burst out of the cage, lunging for her.
She blocked the first blow, and the second, but then Hill kicked hard and fast, striking her in the kidney. Natalia snarled and launched herself into the fight.
They were evenly matched. Natalia had known it in the street outside Hill's apartment, but she'd had surprise on her side. This time, she had no such advantage and Hill had the benefit of backup from the man with the bow. He stayed back, obviously not wanting to fire while Hill was in the target zone, but still Natalia had to keep him in mind as track his movements even as she fought Hill.
A small distraction, but enough to turn the tables. When the fight ended, Natalia was on her knees and Hill stood over her, arms locked around her throat. Hill could snap her neck at any second and they both knew it. But she didn't.
The man with the bow lined up his shot. "Stockholm get you already?" he asked. "You want me to take her out?"
Natalia couldn't see, but she felt Hill shift slightly as she shook her head.
"Stand down, Barton," Hill ordered. "We bring her in."
Barton relaxed the drawstring, but didn't lower his bow. "You want to bring in the person they sent to capture you?"
"I want to bring in the person who succeeded in capturing me. And did a damn good job of it too."
"Not good enough," Natalia pointed out. "He's here." She couldn't nod toward Barton, not with Hill's arms still locked around her neck, but they all knew who she was referring to.
"Subcutaneous GPS emitter," Hill explained.
Natalia scowled.
"You have cuffs?" Hill asked.
Barton nodded and reached behind him to a pouch on his quiver. He tossed Maria a pair of purple, fuzzy handcuffs.
"Really?" Hill asked. "Standard issue too boring for you?"
Barton grinned. "I like to keep things interesting." He looked around the basement. "Looks like you've been having an interesting time of it yourself."
"Stuff it, Barton," Hill snapped, but there was a smile in her voice. She hauled Natalia to her feet, hands firmly cuffed behind her. Natalia wriggled her fingers and flexed, testing the cuffs. Purple and fuzzy they might be, fake or flimsy they were not.
"Natasha, meet Clint. Clint, Natasha," Hill introduced them. "You brought a quint?" she asked Barton.
"It's parked on the lawn."
"Let's get our new guest back to the Hub then." Hill tugged her forward and Natalia followed. Barton led them up the stairs and past the corpses of her teammates.
They walked up into the quintjet and Hill secured Natalia for take-off. Natalia sighed as the engines roared to life. Guess I'm Natasha now, she thought.