There is blood everywhere.
The crimson fluid coats the room. If she looks over to the wall, she can see the arterial spray from when she'd stabbed the target in the throat. Along the floor, little puddles from when her well-placed punch cracked his nose. Spots of blood litter the bed from when she failed to choke him with the wire. She's shaking and she is terrified. She can't let herself think of the cooling corpse on the floor as anything other than the target. To think of him as a man, one with a pretty wife and two children, one frightfully close to her own age, reminds her of her own humanity, reminds of her parents who are now nothing more than rotting corpses in a grave, victims to the spy organizations effort to recruit her. Before she can even think to call in for an extraction, she turns to the side and vomits onto the floor though there is little there but stomach acid and water, the Red Room, her masters she thinks bitterly, rarely allow her the luxury of food. It's her first kill and it is a failure.
She's only been in the Red Room for three months when they send her out on her first hit, a simple diplomat who was critically involved with the efforts to undermine the communist authority that gripped her mother nation. It should have been quick, easy. All she had to do was slip in while his family was on vacation, fit the wire around his neck, and pull it tight until the target stopped moving. Hold it for five minutes to make sure he is dead, her mind repeats the handler's instruction to her. But she'd loosened ever so slightly, just for a second, and that was all it took for her target to fight back. She had nothing to lose then, nothing but her life, and so she had fought. Even as he threw her off, his weight more than double her own, she'd managed to land a solid punch. Then the struggle was on, both of them fighting for their lives. She used anything she could as a makeshift weapon, the floral-print vase on the dresser smashing over his head, his scarf laying upon the floor in an attempt to strangle him once more, before finally, she finds the letter opener that ends the fight, sliding it home into his neck. She's not without her own wounds. She knows there are a few cracked bones in her hand, a broken rib that is making it hard to breathe, and when she pats the back of her head, her hand comes away bloody, remnants of when he'd slammed her head against the hardwood floor.
When the extraction team finally arrives, Cena is with them. He takes one look around the room before going dangerously silent. "This was an easy kill," he hisses, taking a fistful of her hair and dragging her out of the room, "and you have failed, cadet." She's dimly aware that she's begging with him, pleading that she'd completed the mission, that the target is dead. "It should have been a quick kill, a clean kill, and you have made a mess," he retorts before his eyes widen. "You've pissed yourself? You are not a child!" he screams before tossing her into the back of the van, wet and shivering in her own piss and blood. She is absolutely terrified because she knows what comes next, knows just what her punishment will entail. Before her fear can get the best of her, a gas starts to pour from a vent in the van and before she knows it, she's passed out on the cold metal floor of the vehicle.
When she awakes, she starts to scream when she can see nothing, all she can feel is the icy chill of the water in the sensory deprivation tank. The tank is filled up above her nose and to breathe, she must stand on her tip toes, lest she let herself drown. It couldn't have been more than an hour, but it feels like a day, when her screams stop. Her throat is raw and she can taste blood, her arms useless as they are bound to her. Someone save me, she thinks desperately. Her mind flashes to the one they want her to replace, to Maria Kanellis. She imagines hair that looks like it's been stained crimson, of skin as pale as snow, and a face as beautiful as the sun. Save me please! she begs in her mind. I do not want this! Please take me away! But no one comes for her and instead, she's left to stay there.
A day passes. She's been given nothing to eat and the only thing to drink is the water around her, water that is dirtied with her own filth and piss and blood. Finally, she gives in, resigned to her fate and lets her eyes slip closed, falling into a deep, blissful sleep. But her rest is short lived as the sirens start to sound and she wakes up screaming once more, her voice hoarse and shredded from the day before. The sirens sound for what feels like hours and it isn't long before each burst of sound feels like it's hammering into her skull. The sirens go silent and when once again she falls asleep, the sirens are back. By the end, three agonizing days later, her mind has gone silent, she's no longer shivering, and she can feel no part of her body.
The tank serves its purpose. When she is finally pulled from the icy depths, she cannot think, blindly seeking out for anyone but only finding one person. John! her mind cries out when her hands ghost upon her mentor and he pulls her into his arms, comforting her, giving her the much needed affection and praise that she craves. It further cements the hold he has on her, that he is the only one who cares for her, that only he can give her what she truly needs. Over the next few days, he nurses her back to health, her body too weak from the prolonged starvation to be of any use during training.
She can feel her mind crack that much further. It's the only way to stay sane. It's then that her hatred for the one known as Kanellis starts to fester; it is then that she decides that she must be better. There is no one who will save her but herself. She was chosen because Kanellis deserted them and so she will not fail her masters, will not let this happen to another girl, another child. She will become the Black Widow, and she will be better than any that has come before her.