Sirens wail and blue and red lights blindingly flash, lighting up the dark residential street. A team of cops dressed in black are moving in and out of a middle class home. Neighbors are huddled together in the cold as they're forced to stand back and allow for an officer to create a blockade with bright yellow tape. The inside of the house is just as busy as the outside. There's a puddle of blood by the stairs and a team of analysts is chatting amongst themselves and snapping pictures. The coroners have just set a man's body on a gurney and begin to seal him up into a black plastic cocoon. To the farthest wall on the right is a mounted security alarm, painted with a light spray of crimson. A woman's body lay sprawled on the floor below, her pastel pink shirt stained with an ugly maroon. She's waiting for the coroners to finish up with her husband so they can be taken away together.
Natasha Romanoff stands in the midst of it all. Her keen eyes observe the woman's body, the blood dripping down from the alarm, the crimson puddle by the stairs… Two officers walk right past her, then a blood spatter analyst moves in to eagerly take pictures of the woman's waiting corpse. Natasha needs to shake them off. All the noise-the talking, the cameras, the footsteps-it's enough to drive anyone crazy.
She needs quiet. She needs to think.
Her eyes close and she focuses on her breathing amidst the surrounding darkness. She cancels out all the noise as she sends herself into her own private world. When she opens her eyes, the police officers disappear one by one, followed by forensics, until only the woman's body remains. Natasha struts towards her and doesn't even bat an eye as the body vanishes into thin air. She lifts her gaze to focus on the blood on the wall. Each droplet is lifted from its place as it flows back into space. Natasha begins walking backwards and watches as the blood by the stairwell shrinks in on itself until there's nothing there. She continues to walk backwards until she's out the front door and down the porch steps. With every movement, the CSI team begins to disappear, followed by the crowd of neighbors, cop cars, the ambulance… Now, there is silence. The redhead stands in the driveway alone and stares into the welcoming front window of the Parker home.
The wife moves past a veil of sheer curtains. She's heading for the kitchen to clean up from dinner.
Natasha waits for her to disappear from view.
That's when the inner animal kicks in, the one who craves fresh blood.
She sprints towards the door with heavy footsteps and kicks the front door open. The alarm begins wailing and there's a woman's shriek, followed by the incoming footsteps of her husband from upstairs. Natasha whips out her glock and knowingly points it towards a man with greying hair as he rushes down the steps. She shoots him once in the gut, then again in the neck. Natasha watches the light fade from the man's eyes as the last thing he lays eyes on is her. He loses his footing and stumbles down the stairs, cracking his head on the final step and creating a steadily growing pool of blood. "This is my design…" she murmurs.
Natasha turns her head to find the wife sputtering broken prayers as her trembling fingers desperately fight to punch a code into the alarm. She shoots the woman in the neck, simply paralyzing her. She's still alive, but completely immobile. A trail of blood leaves the woman's neck as she falls to the ground. Natasha moves in to hover over the body. Her finger reaches towards the alarm to punch in a code. The alarm stops its shrill blaring and a man's voice follows.
"This is NY Security, who am I speaking with?"
Natasha purses her lips in contemplation. "I need the incident report," she announces. The cops and forensics team have now returned and are busy attempting to piece together what happened within the home. An officer approaches Natasha and slips a manila folder into her gloved hand. She takes a moment to quickly scan the first two pages. "It says here this was a false alarm," she murmurs. "But there was one last week," she adds skimming past NY Security's statements.
The woman living here was most likely paranoid. Something like the wind causing a tree branch to scratch a window could spook her into reporting it to the security company.
Perhaps the murderer knew this factoid about her. Something was done on purpose…
"The line was tapped," Natasha tells herself as she tucks the folder under her arm and heads outside for the head officer's assistance.
Half an hour later, there's an electrician being lifted up onto a crane. "Yeah, it's been tapped!" he calls down after having checked the phone line across the street.
"The conversation was recorded," Natasha tells two cops and an investigator.
Say the woman called in over a trivial matter. She would be required to state her name, her password…
"This is NY Security, who am I speaking with?"
Natasha brings herself back into the killer's shoes. She pulls out a phone from her pocket and lets her thumb push play on a recording.
"May Parker," states the woman's pre-recorded voice. But the security office can't possibly tell…
"Can you please confirm your password for security purposes?" the man's voice continues from within the alarm system.
"Teakettle," the recording continues.
"Thank you, Mrs. Parker. We detected a front door alarm?"
"Yes, sorry about that."
"Is there anyone in the house with you?"
"Just my husband."
"Do you require any further help?"
"No," the recording finishes. "But thank you for calling."
Natasha's phone returns to her pocket as she stares down at the corpse.
"We've all thought about killing someone," Natasha states. In her hand is a photo of May Parker, dated from three weeks ago. She stands before her podium and stares out into the crowd of faces that curiously watch her. "Now imagine this." She presses a button on a tiny black clicker and the screen behind her reveals a photo of Mrs. Parker's pale face surrounded by her own blood. "Imagine killing Mrs. Parker. Why would she deserve this?" Out of the corner of her eye, Natasha notices her boss Nick Fury enter the classroom. She steals a quick glance at her phone that rests on her podium. There's eight minutes left of class, but Nick's frown is looking more pronounced than usual today and Natasha can feel his right eye refusing to look away from her. It's urgent. "We'll resume this Thursday," she finishes.
The students begin to pack up their laptops and notebooks, then proceed to file out, casually chatting amongst themselves. Nick sifts past the crowd until he reaches Natasha's podium. "How's the teaching coming along?" Nick knows that Natasha isn't the most sociable person, but the students seem to be liking her, and not just for her pretty face.
"Fine," she answers, gathering up her pen, clicker, and slide notes into a neat pile. "I told you before, I don't mind this position. I talk, they listen. I'm fine here, Nick."
"We've had seven victims lined up over the course of seven weeks," Fury explains to her. "A serial killer, but there's no found connection."
Natasha clasps her black messenger bag shut. "So you need me to help you out."
"Both male and female victims," he explains. "All relatively close in age, but it's not enough to draw any conclusions."
Natasha slings the bag across her chest and stares into Fury's one good eye. "Seven victims, seven weeks. That's one a week, yes?" she concludes. "When was the last victim found?"
"Five hours ago."
She raises a brow and follows Nick out of the classroom. "Is this killing done weekly as part of a ritual, perhaps?" Natasha prods as they walk amidst crowds of students.
"Yes," Nick answers. "All Mondays-that's when the victims have died, at least."
"The killer could be plotting the murders over the weekend." She follows Nick out of the building and over to his car. They both get in and Nick drives her to his office.
Nick has a corkboard in his office that's decorated with pictures of each of the victims taped to a map of the northeast with red yarn that starts at a portrait and leads to an estimated point of where the body was found. Three have been found in New York, two in Jersey, one in Pennsylvania, and one in Connecticut. They're fairly spread out. The victims themselves also look fairly diverse. One is Asian, another black. The rest are white. Two have beards, the rest don't. Short hair, long hair… She's finding no connection based solely on appearances. Each picture is labeled with an age. They all range in age from twenty-eight to thirty six. Natasha considers age to be a pattern, but two men are thirty-one, so she rules out that connection. "I'd need to see the crime scene," she says after taking a momentary pause.
"I figured you would say that," he sighs. "You should know that it's not pretty," he cautions. "Each of our victims is missing an organ. All different. One lacks a stomach, another a heart. All of it was done post-mortem."
Natasha raises a brow in interest. "Any idea on what the wounds look like?"
"Whoever did the killings knows their stuff," Fury replies. "Clean incisions and not a single nerve or muscle ruptured during the process. We're looking at someone with a medical background."
"Do you mind if I look over what you have on the victims?" Natasha asks.
"There's not a lot-we officially opened up investigation last week," he admits as he grabs the eight folders for the two months worth of victims.
Natasha takes the paperwork from him and follows him back out to the car. "How in depth has research gone?"
"Forensics is looking for any patterns that match up with the deaths. There's been no luck with that. Two were set up as strangling, one was made to look like a suicide… All that's leading us is these weekly Monday deaths and organs gone missing." Fury starts up the car and Natasha begins sifting through the papers on her lap.
"Where are we heading?" She pulls out her phone and enters victim number one's name into it.
"New Haven," he replies.
The kills don't seem to have any specific location pattern…
Fury happens to glance over and spy the familiar blue and white Facebook logo on his agent's phone screen. "Already checked," he grumbles. "None of them know one another. All different high schools and colleges," he matter-of-factly states.
"It's not always about people knowing people," Natasha mumbles as she types in another name. She reaches into her bag on the flood to grab a pen and notebook. "Sometimes, it's about who you know…" She scribbles down the name Maya Hansen. She's friend to four of the victims. The others know an Aldrich Killian. "Should've looked harder, Nick," she murmurs. "Or have Barton do the online research." She then scans the files to check if any of the victims had any illnesses.
"So you have a lead?" A smile slowly spreads across Fury's lips.
"Hansen and Killian. They work for the same chain of pharmaceutical companies," Natasha reveals. "You mentioned a suicide…" She carefully flips through each individual's cause of death. "Jack Taggert, overdose."
"Let's say he did take one too many pills," Nick muses as he focuses on the road ahead. "How did he get ahold of drugs without a prescription?"
"Who said he asked for the prescription?" Natasha counters. "He was an employee of Duane Reade, a chain that gets supplies from FuturePharm." There's a pause. "Let's take this victim for example…" She grabs a file at random and checks for the cause of death. "High glucose levels, but they're diabetic."
"Lack of taking their medication. It's fairly common."
"She had three kids, Nick," the redhead continues. "Still married, lives in the city… She would want to keep herself alive for her family's sake."
"Glucose levels would beg to differ," Nick retorts.
Natasha watches her boss out of the corner of her eye. "Think of the placebo effect tests. Sugar pills replacing actual medication…" She stacks the papers and slides them back into their manila folder. "She was the unfortunate winner of FuturePharm's golden ticket."
"Are you accusing a global pharmaceutical company of playing a twisted Willy Wonka game?"
"Both Jack Taggert and a Mrs. Emilia Ortiz live in Jersey. What are the chances Jack dealt the drugs?" Natasha wagers.
"Suppose you're right," Fury assumes, "that still doesn't link the seven others."
"We should look into Hansen and Killian," Natasha finishes.
Nick shakes his head. "Unless you link the other victims, I won't do it. You've only deduced two, Romanoff, and your deductions felt too 'spur of the moment…'"
Natasha hastily returns her attention to the paperwork before her. Answers, answers, she needs answers. The missing pieces in this unfinished puzzle are practically staring her in the face. She leafs through the files and draws that of a Mr. Chad Davis, a postman in New York. There's one other New Yorker in the bunch, Eric Savin. "Suppose he delivers his mail," he mutters to herself. Back to her phone to check Facebook. Hansen and Killian's profiles state that they're living in New York. "Suppose Davis delivers mail to everyone here…" Natasha types in Savin's name and checks his profile in hopes of finding a link. Maybe it's another coincidence, but Killian's listed as a mutual friend. That's four victims connected to her suspected killers. "Savin was strangled," she recites as she double checks the file. "So was Davis. One lost the left lung, the other, the right," she observes. "Killian?" she asks herself. Ellen Brandt and Thaddeus Pascoe are the final two that she has the full details of. Pennsylvania and Connecticut, a missing liver and a missing kidney, death by dehydration and death by car crash. The deaths. Pascoe's car crash was a hit and run, Natasha reads to herself. A literal hit and run. The person responsible fled their car after the accident. They were driving a rental, according to the report. "Have you heard back on the rental car for the Pascoe case?"
"There was a dealer murdered," Nick explains. "Security footage showed a hooded figure shoot the guy, then flee the scene. Cops were sent to catch the murderer, but next thing you know, there's a hit and run first thing on a Monday morning."
Natasha moves on to consider Ellen Brandt's illness. She was hospitalized for an overdose of vitamin C. Natasha wonders if the prescription was purposefully butchered, thus linking her to her suspected targets.
A red light brings the car to a halt, allowing for Nick to steal a glance at his employee. "You're on to something," he notices.
"Killian and Hansen both have the medical knowledge we're looking for. We should run background checks."
"Seeing the victims has always given you a stronger lead," Nick reminds her. "Let's see what Obadiah Stane has to tell you…"
"Hopefully, answers." Natasha keeps herself busy by organizing Fury's reports by order of the killing. Ortiz is the first, Pascoe is the most recent.
"I trust you'll find what you need," Nick promises with a small smile.
Natasha shrugs. "You must be desperate if you're coming to me for this."
"You're the team's wild card, Natasha," he chuckles. "That reminds me, I have a meeting scheduled with a new recruit tomorrow. Care to join? He's involved with psychiatric profiling. He may become almost as valuable as you are."
Natasha straightens the stack of papers in her lap. "So he'll be a replacement?"
Nick senses the strong bitterness in her tone. "A colleague," he promises. "I was hoping he could confide in you about any cases. If he meets my standards, that is."
"I'm free in the morning. Might as well meet the guy if you expect us to play nicely." She turns her head to watch a line of evergreen trees rush by.
"He's an educated man, Natasha," Fury warns. "I wouldn't expect any idle nonsense coming from an Oxford man."
"Stark and his Harvard diploma would beg to differ," Natasha challenges with a smirk. Her boss begins to chuckle, but then the car falls quiet for the remainder of the drive.