The hallways were only dimly lit but the map in his mind was clear. Clint stopped, listened, and allowed the environment to whisper to him, tracking air currents and silently adjusting his grip on the weapon in his hand. All was quiet, save for the low hum of the generator that supplied power to the tunnels, but the security system monitoring the halls was too new to be coincidence. He had to assume that his presence had been noted and take the necessary precautions.
The air was stiflingly hot and sweat beaded his forehead, running slowly over his skin and beneath his collar, as he moved deeper into the warren of tunnels beneath the warehouse complex. Keeping part of his attention on the words that came over the earpiece, he scanned the shadows thrown by the flickering security lights and remained alert for any threats that might wait for him.
Four days with not so much as a confirmed sighting, no contact, no indication that she was still alive. He was going out of his mind. Even those days in Iraq, where he had lost a half dozen of his colleagues in as many days, seemed like a walk in the park in comparison to the emotional shit storm he was weathering in her absence. Knowing that she had been given bad intel and walked into an ambush didn't make his mood any better. She was his partner, his best friend, his only family and the thought that she was in trouble without him there to back her up made him want to put an arrow in every person that stood between him and the information he needed to get her back.
As he eased his way along the narrow hallways, he allowed himself a brief consideration what might be waiting for him at the end of this journey. Not all of the potential outcomes were good. After four days as a hostage there was a possibility that even if he found Natasha she might not be whole. He tried to push the thought away - Romanoff was strong, she wouldn't break no matter what was done to her.
While the rest of the team searched the warehouse complex on the surface, he had opted to search the bowels of the building alone. It was the most sensible place to keep a hostage: quiet, not immediately apparent if you didn't know about the hidden stairway that joined the modern complex to a much older and much different one below it and easily missed due to its concealed entrance. Assuming that they hadn't moved her, it was the most likely place that she would be held.
"Hawk do you copy?" the voice in his ear pulled him out of his thoughts, reminding him once again that he wasn't the only one looking for his missing partner. There was an entire STRIKE team somewhere above him, each of them tasked with the mission of bringing one of their own home.
"I copy," he replied, placing his back to the wall and lowering to a crouch so that he could peer around the corner. A second hallway stretched as far as the eye could see, dimly lit by the overhead lighting and hotter than hell. He swiped the back of his hand across his brow, using his wrist band to wipe away some of the perspiration.
Static crackled in his ear and he counted the beats of his heart while he waited. He was so used to Natasha's voice on the comms that it threw him a little to hear someone else's when he worked without her. "Main complex clear; moving on to the outbuildings. You need some help down there?"
He contemplated the offer for a second - having others to help with the search would certainly speed things up but if he wanted to handle this quietly, which under the circumstances would be preferable, it was better to do it alone. If Natasha was alive and in some way compromised she would want to be found by him. Damage limitation was something they had become frighteningly adept at during the years of their partnership. "Na, I got it covered," he replied. "Keep me up to speed with what you find."
"Roger that."
He took a deep breath and forced away the acrid taste of his own unease. He couldn't allow emotion to rule over logic, not while he was alone. Straightening his shoulders Clint rounded the corner and pressed onward, fast and light on his feet. The gun in his hand was familiar enough to be comfortable, though ordinarily it wouldn't have been his first choice of weapon. The confined spaces within the tunnels made the Sig a more practical choice than his usual bow. It helped that he was almost as proficient with the handgun; there was a lot to be said for confidence when handling a weapon in a potential combat situation.
He counted the doors, clearing each room that he passed, casting his awareness out into the hallways in search of anything that might announce the presence of another human being. No signs of life. No sound. No movement. Three doors. Four doors. Turns were made at the appropriate points, each new corridor clear of obstruction and signs of recent occupation, but instinct pulled him onwards and deeper into the complex. That nagging feeling in the pit of his stomach never lied; he was getting close.
After what seemed like miles of hallway illuminated only by the dim yellow bulbs that hung from the ceilings, he found himself at a dead end. Two doors presented themselves for his consideration, both made of steel, one slightly ajar and the other firmly closed.
A quick glance through the open door was enough to ascertain that the room was empty and mostly dark, a trio of computer monitors bathing it in soft light. His own reflection in the the large window at the back of the room startled him and he whipped up the gun, his finger almost squeezing the trigger in the heartbeat before he recognised his own form and features. He frowned, recognising that the window was out of place in an underground structure and could only have one possible use - to provide a view into whatever lay beyond it. Hill had mentioned that the site had once been a lab complex, could it be a teaching lab of some kind?
Cautiously, he stepped into the room and moved between the desks and computer monitors. There was a camera on one of the desks, connected by cables to the laptop that sat nearest to it. Clint paused to swipe a finger across the mousepad and was rewarded when the screen saver blinked off and a video file resumed playing on the screen, muted by the previous viewer. Bile rose in his throat as he realised what he was watching, a female body suspended by the wrists from shackles in the ceiling, her feet barely touching the ground. She was being tortured, her body jerking involuntarily at the bite of blade and the application of electric current, her body bruised and battered by numerous rounds of interrogation.
He tried to tell himself that what he was seeing was somehow a mistake but denial could only take him so far when he was faced with the evidence. It was the work of a moment to delete the video file, and then to perform a search of the hard drive. He found eight more videos, each of them time stamped within the time frame of Natasha's disappearance. Nine separate instances in which she had been potentially beaten and interrogated. Nine separate rounds of torture. He didn't open any of them, didn't want to know what was on them; he just deleted everything that had a time stamp within the last four days. Nobody else needed to see what was in those files. Nobody, himself included.
As soon as the videos were gone, instinct had him moving toward the glass, his ears straining to pick up even the slightest of sounds that would indicate that his presence had been detected. The only sounds in the room came from him, a near silent footstep, his shallow breathing and the heart that beat like a wild thing in his chest, fear and anger churning within him. The glass was soundproof and he recognised the tint that identified it was a two way mirror, meaning that whomever was on the other side could be observed without knowing it.
The room was dim and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust well enough to see past his own reflection in the glass. Slowly a table came into focus on the other side of the window, a wheeled table covered in torture implements and then another fitted with thick leather straps that could be used as restraints. Clint reached out and placed one hand against the wall by the window, bracing himself as he focussed more carefully on the table with the restraints. Dark stains materialised on the table-top as he looked more closely, smeared across the stainless steel surface in a manner that made his stomach flip.
Beyond the tables and the restraints something lay on the floor. Something small.
Something human.
He stepped up closer to the glass trying to get a better look at what he was seeing and then the shape on the ground shifted slightly and it all became suddenly, horrifyingly clear.
His breath was a strangled gasp, all of the blood seeming to freeze in his veins. "Natasha."