Breaking into offices was, by definition, pretty easy. Wait for everyone to go home, slip in, slip out.
Breaking into Senator Smith's office was even easier, since it was closed and secured while the investigation into his death was finished. Slipping into it was only made minimally more difficult by the enhanced security surrounding the building still. What made this easier was that since she was already being hunted, discreet searching was not required.
The information she had found on the DoD servers had explained much of what General Herring was doing, except the only point at which he and the Senator had a connection was a Project Phoenix. Everything she could find said that Phoenix was particularly opposed by the Senator in the committee he chaired, which ran many of the oversight panels on military science projects. Vexingly, however, the Phoenix files were encrypted in a manner Natasha had never encountered before, and while her system could break the encryption, it requires time.
Time was unfortunately not something she had.
Tossing the Senators office was the next time multiplier she could think of, finding some clue regarding the nature of the project. She hadn't been able to find any hard documents, so now she was waiting for her password program to open up his computer.
New York, 2011
Coulson was amusing, Nat thought as she watched him from the chair she was flopped in across the sterile room from her pacing fellow agent. He had shown her his card collection many times, and the small shrine to Captain America he kept in his home office was borderline adorable.
But this, THIS, was just amusing. He was hovering just out of reach of the freshly thawed and sleeping super soldier, the look of awe on her friends face was making her snicker. She looked back to the tablet in front of her, refreshing herself on the information on Project Rebirth - the Super Soldier project of the SSR that had created one successful graduate, and had left a wave of destruction in the following sixty plus years trying to recreate that one success.
Natasha had left Harlem not that long ago, still recovering from the latest attempt to make soldiers great again. The paranoia that these programs created in SHIELD and in the governments of the world due to their destructive nature when things go wrong was understandable. Watching the footage of the Hulk crash through Harlem was disturbing enough, but the idea of being there in person was enough to make Natasha Romanov, the SHIELD agent other SHIELD agents feared, well ... nervous. How do you out maneuver something that huge?
Looking at the files on Project Rebirth, she fixates on a familiar looking blue liquid in the small vials. They bring to her mind a glimpse of a memory, buried somewhere deep. A woman standing over her, a cold look on her face. Pain in her arm. What few memories Natasha still has of her early years are often like this, glimpses of the past. This memory has come on so strong, she can almost feel the cold of the air and the pain in her arm, an odd burning sensation.
The memory starts again, still disjointed and fuzzy, a memory seen while on an acid trip, even. "What is your name, girl?" "N.. Na ... Natalia?" "Nurse, inform the Major we have a survivor." She sees some girls, looking so young to the adult Natasha, gathering around the younger redhead, her brain still adjusting to whatever hurt it. They push her, call her names, but the voices she hears don't match their mouths movement. The scene shifts, the girls are spread out now, three on the floor not moving, and the fourth - the ring leader - her arm twisted unnaturally away from her body, the arm being held by someone, no, by the young Natalia. The young owner of the arm looks at Natalia, and a voice calls out before her lips move, pleading for her life. The young redhead, mind still scrambling to figure what is happening, finds the plea disgusting. The young injured girls mouth goes wide as a scream Natalia doesn't hear escapes her mouth as the arm is snapped, the twisting motion causing bone to tear out of the skin and thin top the girl is wearing. Natalia stares down at the screaming girl, her arm flopping as she tries to move it, and then the young redhead walks away, back to her bed to sleep off this headache as the other girls stare in fear.
Breaking out of her thoughts, she looked up at the sleeping soldier, whose decades in ice had done little to hurt the imposing, and impressive if she was being honest, physique. She wondered if she could take down the soldier if she needed to, if he woke up wrong. The Hulk was all brute strength, mashing and crashing through all obstacles in front of it. Captain Steve Rodgers was certainly capable of that form of attack, but watching the digitally restored film from both the SSR files and newsreels said that he was a man first, who fought. She could beat a man if she had to, but what if there was a beast where the man had been?
Well, Natasha paused, that was a concern if he woke up at all, really.
More importantly, she hoped that Coulson could wait until the man got out of bed before trying to get him to sign the damned cards.
The door to the inner office burst open, and two Capitol police officers came through. Silently Natasha whispered a prayer of thanks that Barton wasn't here, because she'd never hear the end of it. Caught by the night guards like a rank amateur. This week had really taken a toll on her, most people would consider a vacation once this was over. Natasha wondered if she should try that once, to see what it was like.
She was sure it would be misery, all that time with nothing to do.
"Freeze!" Shouted the guard in front, gun drawn. His partner was several steps back, also leveling his weapon at Natasha. Slowly, the redhead raised her hands, buying time to assess the situation before having to jump into action. The second guard was twitchy, his gun shaking ever so slightly.
"It's HER!" Officer Two says.
"You sure?" One replies.
Two looks at her, black tactical suit, gauntlets, hair, and ...yep, predictable pause over the girls. People on the Internet had a lot of opinions about why the suit tended to be unzipped as it was in the pictures from the Chuitari incident, either overly zealous feminists suggesting she was dressed by the patriarchy, and more than a few men not far removed from the cave suggesting she was either a tease or a slut. What most people, civilian or spy, would consider was that for all of Natasha's renowned skill in fighting, she was also a master manipulator, and sometimes words were not as useful as a well dressed woman.
Obviously, however, that wasn't going to help her tonight, since these guys think she killed three of their coworkers, and possibly friends.
Two finished looking her over and then gave a brief glance at his partner, trying to figure out, perhaps, how he could be so blind.
Natasha quietly waited for them to do something. She didn't want to hurt them, but she also didn't want to be locked up before she could clear her name.
One stepped forward warily, taking his left hand off his weapon and collecting his handcuffs. He slowly tosses them near Natasha, and his hand goes back to his sidearm. "Ok, you! Put those on! Then get on your knees. Do it slowly!"
Natasha looked down at the cuffs, mere feet away from where she stood. They were too far away and too jittery to make a move that won't get them hurt, or worse. She takes a tentative step towards the handcuffs, Two making a slight move to keep her in his sights and One out of his field of fire. Keeping her hands up, Natasha takes a second step, making eye contact with Two as she slowly approaches the cuffs. Two tenses, expecting her to make a move, when he is suddenly gone, pulled from view and out the door. One, hearing the noise, turns to check on his partner before dropping backwards, his glock hitting the carpet of the dead senator's office and sliding to a stop right by Natasha as the sound of a suppressed weapon discharge echoes about the room.
A second shot in the anteroom silences Two, and a woman stealthily slinks into the room with Natasha. Her hair is straight and blonde, the rest of her face covered by a mask, just like the assassin in the hallway downstairs had worn. The woman's arm, encased in a dark grey tactical suit not unlike Natasha's, reaches up to remove the mask, the woman's bright blue eyes glint of joy as she levels the silenced weapon at Natasha's face.
"Привет, Наталья Романова. Я ждал много лет, чтобы встретиться с вами. А жаль, чтобы убить тебя так скоро." The sound of her mother tongue had never been said so sweetly to her, or gave her more shock than those words had just now.
"Hello, Natalia Romanova. I have waited many years to meet you. A pity to have to kill you so soon."
Yes, in blame Google Translate for my bad Russian translation. Anyone who wants to fix it please let me know. :)
Also, while I'm breaking my author notes rules, I'll keep the status on my stories updated on my profile page.
