•FOUR•
The glint of a knife blade caught the light of the setting sun as the expertly trained Russian spy scaled the building soundlessly. Anyone who happened to look up at that exact moment would see only a flash of steel and shake it off, wondering if they were imagining things and continue on their merry way; perched directly in the shadow of the building, black hood up, Natasha Romanoff, as she preferred to be known, was invisible. She was pressed snugly in a narrow crook, whilst one floor above Sally Jackson sat unassuming in her cheerful apartment, having dinner with her husband, completely unaware that at that very moment she was being spied on.
Natasha heaved a silent sigh and glanced at the dim screen of her watch, briefly illuminating the shadow she hid in. 7:50 PM. Freshly back from a mission gone disastrously wrong in Germany, she'd immediately been sent out to collect their final recruit: a sixteen-year-old boy by the name of Perseus Jackson, whose mother lived in the very apartment she was lying in wait under. There was an uneasy feeling stirring in her gut as she lay there, steadying her breathing; although as a spy she had done much in her time - tortured and even killed people - there was something about this job that didn't sit right with her. What use would Fury have for a sixteen-year old boy? But she wasn't made for questioning; if there was a job to be done, she would do it. Which led to her sitting there, spying on a perfectly normal middle-aged couple. She shook off her trepidation and stealthily scaled the wall, intent on finishing her job.
There was no room for doubt, not when there was a mission on the line.
Paranoia crept in on Sally Jackson as she received the distinct feeling that she was being watched. She'd gotten extremely good at noticing things that were out of place over the years; being a clear-sighted mortal who could see the Greek monsters that roamed the streets, it had been a requirement. Even more so when she'd been carrying a demigod, a Big Three demigod at that. She forced a smile on her face, chatting away to her husband Paul about inane things like how was your day, all the while trying to subtly swivel her head to detect the source of the disturbance.
There. A flash in the corner of her eye at the far corner of the living room, gone without a trace by the time she gave it a second glance. Whoever, or whatever it was moved fast. She'd barely gotten a glimpse, but in that split second she'd recognised a humanoid shape. So not a monster, then. She frowned, Paul blissfully unaware of her churning thoughts as she tuned him out, occasionally emitting a noncommittal sound, flipping through a mental encyclopedia on all Greek things that went bump in the night.
Empousa? No, they had a bronze leg, they couldn't possibly scale a wall.
A nymph? ... That wasn't possible, they hated to be out of water.
A thought suddenly struck her like lightning, causing her to stiffen, though she did so imperceptibly so as not to alarm the person lurking outside her window. For she was fairly sure it was a person, now.
It had been precisely a week since the phone call from the mysterious SHIELD agent. No doubt they were here to scope out their quarry.
Balanced on the windowsill, Natasha peered in through a gap in the curtains. At the dining table sat two people; a man with salt-and-pepper hair, the boy's stepfather if her intel was correct, and a brunette woman, his mother. A tremor of guilt shot through her. Why was she here? They weren't criminals. They were just ordinary citizens and she was here to take their son from them.
Trying to bury the guilt deep inside her, she fumbled in her pocket for the listening device. It was small and compact, built to look like a tiny bug so as to be inconspicuous. Taking a deep breath, she gently placed it onto the window, watching as it scuttled away and disappeared from view deep inside the apartment. She would have preferred one with a camera function, but SHIELD had deemed it a violation of privacy. Sometimes, she really questioned their moral compass; wasn't a listening device as much, if not more, of an invasion of privacy?
Switching on her earpiece, the muffled sounds of their conversation sharpened, the listening device picking up on every word uttered. "... and today this kid started a food fight in the lunchroom," the man was saying, chortling, showing his wife a ketchup stain on his shirt. Natasha remembered something in his file about being a teacher at a local high school.
The woman was smiling distractedly, nodding along to what her husband was saying, looking for all the world like she was deeply focused on the conversation, but Natasha's training honed in on the tense set of her shoulders, the furtive glances from side to side. Instinctively, she swung over to the side of the building, taking no risks that the woman would see her.
Her job accomplished, she scaled down soundlessly, a frown gracing her features. Something about the job disturbed her. Sure, she had known from the start that this might be required; on the phone, the woman had sounded scared, furtive, and Natasha had known immediately that she would try to warn her son. But this just didn't seem right to her. The boy had exhibited no supernatural tendencies, hadn't done anything wrong. So what use did Fury have for him?
Whatever the case, the boy was nowhere to be found. She couldn't help herself but think, Perseus Jackson, wherever you are ... you'd better stay there. Hopefully, soon enough Fury would forget about him. After all, he was just one in a million sixteen-year-old teenage boys; there was nothing special about him.