Subject Age: 16 years, 10 months
"She is our most promising candidate," says Andrei Volkov, the doctor whose program was responsible for the girls in front of him. He knows the General has always been impressed with his work, and today he had wanted to directly observe the girls in their sparring practice. It didn't surprise him in the least. The Red Room program is reaching its conclusion, and he wanted to get a feel for the prime operative before they put into motion the Cicada Protocol. "Your friend Sorolov trained her personally in this form of combat."
General Mikhail Rebrenovich watches with a critical eye the redheaded whirlwind. Mischa had always had high praise for the girl's natural talents. She is a rather impressive specimen. Not intimidating, that is, if she hadn't been putting opponent after opponent into the mats. That is what makes her so perfect—no one will suspect her. They never go after the pretty ones, he's learned. "I can see why, Doctor. I've looked at her completed missions. She is a remarkable asset. A true testament to the tradition of the Red Room."
"And she is a master of interrogation tactics, has a high pain tolerance, and has shown no adverse side affects from the mind wipes." These 'mind wipes' (brainwashing just sounds so barbaric) are Dr. Volkov's pride and joy. With a certain stream of chemicals, paired with visual and auditory stimulation, he can wipe entire memories from the subject's mind. It is a wonderful culmination of his research, passed down from his father who had been a key member of the Winter Soldier program.
As revolutionary as his work is, his employers had approached him with a fascinating project—they desired a way to remove emotional centers from a subject without altering brain chemistry. A challenge, for certain, one that had called upon all his intellect. Even so, he'd still needed to call in assistance from several colleagues and experts outside of the Red Room program.
Some of them, well, one, hadn't been able to handle the truth of the project once it was presented to him. Volkov had been quick to report the man's violent reticence, and he hasn't heard anything from Gavril since then.
"Are there any other recruits showing scores as good as hers?" asks General Rebrenovich.
Dr. Volkov looks over his notes, "Red Wolf," he points out the pixie-like girl, delicate both in facial features and in stature, who has taken on the apparently unwanted task of sparring with the Black Widow, "has showed high scores in all areas, and she is the only one who has ever defeated Widow in a spar. Others have come close, but have all lost."
"Are there any risks with either of them? I need a reliable agent, Doctor."
Volkov hesitates minutely, appears to briefly consider making it seem as if his program is flawless, but apparently decides that full disclosure would be more favorable, "With any psychological experiment, there are risks for a psychological break. We've conditioned their minds against such an occurrence, but the human mind is fundamentally unpredictable."
"Have they shown an aptitude for compassion?" His tone is disgusted, haughty as if 'compassion' is something to be despised.
Dr. Volkov sighs. This is the one fall-through with the two prospects. "They both have a number of times. There are full summaries in their files of the occurrences if you wish to see them. It also appears that they've formed something of a friendship."
"That might be a useful point of manipulation," Rebrenovich murmurs quietly. He looks back to Volkov, "I would like to see their full files."
"Of course." The doctor continues, "We've tried to design environments to suppress these tendencies, but we've thus far been, for the majority of the time, unsuccessful."
"The majority?"
"We've had marginal success with wiping certain emotional experiences, but the procedure hasn't been perfected. Emotional memory is a powerful psychological anchor. We're having trouble erasing the emotion from the brain directly. It's not that precise yet, and we've only been able to erase memories. We've found that some of the participants are genetically psychopathic, but none of them are as talented as Black Widow or Red Wolf."
"I trust you're continuing to work on the procedure?"
"Of course, sir. It's been our primary objective."
"When will they be fully mission capable?"
"Very soon. The Cicada protocol is coming quickly. Then, if the Black Widow does as I expect she will, she will be ready within the year."
He pauses as he watches as Widow is knocked onto her back by the Red Wolf, but quickly recovers. She looks determined, and a sheen of sweat covers her face as she leaps at the Wolf; her gymnastic form of combat is an impressive sight as the Widow's opponent crashes to the mat with pained grunt. "Are you sure she'll be able to kill them all?"
"Most certainly, sir."
Widow helps Wolf off her back with a disarming smile. "You know, if you hadn't backed off when you put me down you might've had me," she says. "Key word being 'might.'" Her opponent looks up, and Widow follows suit, seeing the two men who have been watching the days' sparring from a high balcony above the mats.
"Who are they? I don't think they're instructors." Wolf observes.
Widow wracked her brain, "I'm not sure. I've seen the bald one around, but this army guy's new."
"Jeez, I don't remember him. I wish I had your memory."
"You and everyone else."
"God, you're so smug sometimes."
"When you're born with a photographic memory I think you can afford to be smug about anything you want," Widow jested playfully.
"Smartass."
They stand side by side, staring down the men who are still uncomfortably observing the entire gym. They stare right back. They give off an air like that of tyrants, and Widow isn't sure she should even be reading into the situation. (Don't question, don't question, don't question...) She feels a sudden rush of anger, disgust and something else, her fingers tingle as she looks at the bald one. She feels like she knows him from somewhere. Why? She ignores the gnawing emotion.
Widow and Wolf both know their time slots are done with, and end the uncomfortable stare down with the observers. They both head for the trash cans near the doors. As they begin unwrapping the tape from their hands and wrists (the tape is the one concession they're allowed) Widow sees an interesting expression on Wolf's face. She knows it as suspicion, as foreboding. Emotions she doesn't expect to even exist on Wolf's face.
"What's the matter?"
She remains quiet a moment, seemingly fascinated with the tape on her hands before she says, "Things are changing. I can't explain it, but... the air just feels different somehow." She continues to unravel the white wrap from her hands.
Widow knows what she means. Things are changing with incredible speed. For someone who's lived her life a certain way for as long as she can remember, the change is obvious. She doesn't flinch as she rips the tape roughly past still-healing blisters and cuts.
Instruction is down to near zero, and all they've done recently is fight the other girls and go on missions. Widow didn't mind, she prefers the action much more than classroom work anyway. The missions are... just missions. Her mind goes to a different place when she kills, and it is almost a... fog that she just loses herself in. The fog of seduce, torture, kill. It is automatic, what she is made to do. She's learned that she's always had these... skills. (Your talents cannot be wasted on normalcy, Widow. You have the privilege of being special. To waste such talent would be criminal.) Widow comes back to herself. "Changing how? I know they've changed our schedules for more fighting and whatnot, but..."
Wolf bites her lip as she abandons the last pieces of tape and Widow follows suit, rubbing the newly revealed skin gently, awakening the deadened nerve endings, and the pair walks out into the hallway. Wolf is silent, but Widow doesn't repeat her question. She knows she heard it, and she knows Wolf- she won't ignore it. They have an hour of free time before their next session, and neither of them really know what to do. They used to retreat to one of the vacant gyms and practice, trying to perfect each others' technique. Now, they're barred from the gyms, and they can't quite figure out why.
"You know that feeling when you feel as if the end is near?" Wolf suddenly asks. Widow gives her an odd look (not the answer she was expecting), but nods anyway. "That's what I'm experiencing at the moment. It's not pleasant."
Widow swallows, not entirely familiar with the concept, but enough knowledge to make an educated guess. Wolf's gut almost never led her astray. "I'm sure we'll be fine."
"Will we? Look at what's going on—we're being observed much more closely during training, we've got no classes, only physical training, more and more difficult missions, and all these military guys keep coming around and watching us. Something is happening, and I don't like not knowing what."
Widow bit her lip in contemplation. All true points, but she'd always been taught to never dissect motives... "If I was the philosophic type, I'd say you were right. But since I'm not, and we shouldn't be questioning our superiors, I'm choosing to ignore it."
Wolf softly smiled at Widow's answer. "I feel like the answer is in my mind somewhere, but I just... can't remember it," she finishes softly, wistfully.
Widow has experienced those moments as well, just random gaps in what would seem like knowledge that she should have. Mostly small pieces of missions, and that's so weird because she remembers everything, even when her adrenaline is running a mile a minute, sometimes after she's snuck out, large chunks of time she just doesn't remember (if she drank on those outings, she could've blamed the booze, but she didn't drink. Didn't want to put anything into her body that might change her, change her reaction time, make her less able to fight. She didn't let her guard down like that). When she saw the man in the gym, she somehow felt like he is tied to it, but she had no evidence to support the... feeling. Ick. Feelings and emotions are unpredictable. And Widow hates emotional unpredictability. She makes a derisive sound, "I don't like the word 'feeling'." And with that, the absolute strangeness of their conversation flees (she's never known Wolf to act so emotional and insubordinate) and levity replaces it.
Wolf only laughs as they finally arrive outside Widow's room. "Hey, let me show you something," Widow says, leading Wolf into her room.
She drops onto her stomach and shimmies under her bed, heading for the corner of her room. "Excellent job," Wolf says sarcastically.
"Shut up and give me two seconds." She pulls up the edge of the carpet, revealing the concrete floor beneath, and a few sheets of paper. She withdraws the small packet of papers that she's hidden. Widow is breaking a lot of rules to have done this, to have kept it. Wolf's gasp tells her as much.
"Christ, and I thought you were a daredevil for hanging onto that damned pin. How on earth did you hide that? Also, where the hell did you get that much paper and a pencil?"
Widow rolls her eyes. "Just look at it. I designed it." She hands over the designs and says, "I call it the Widow's Bite. Clever, right?" Widow's mind is very well-oriented in designing weapons, she's even designed a few gas-chamber handguns that she likes almost as much as the Bites. "It's not finished yet, but I'm thinking it's going to be like an electrical blast, energy surge type of thing. Stronger than any random taser or cattle prod, but a fraction of the weight and size. Theoretically, this works great, but I'll probably never know unless I can actually build it."
The design is a thick bracelet, a gauntlet almost, with two small output cells on the gloved portion that run back to the bullet-like power cells around the wrists. There are deconstructions of each part occupying every inch of paper, which is indicative of her absolute lack of it. Wolf has no doubts that her friend has whittled the pencil down until there is literally no lead left in it. "This is impressive," Wolf says. "I hope I can see them for real sometime."
Widow takes the drawings back, running her fingers over the paper. Yeah, she'll probably never build these, but it's fanciful to think. Think that if she can someday get out from under the watchful eyes of her handlers that she could get the parts to build it. "Yeah, I doubt it," she says dismissively, and she tries to quell the rising sadness that her designs will never see the light of day. She crawls back down and replaces it under the flap of carpet.
She pops back up and starts shucking her clothing, heedless of Wolf's presence. "If you don't mind, um, get out. I need to take a nap before next session."
Wolf laughed, "Its so hard to believe that you can sleep so soundly with a ticking time bomb beneath your bed."
Widow crawls beneath the sheets, curling into the colorless wall, leaving her back exposed. She squeezes her eyes shut before saying, "I think I recall asking you to leave." Her tone was tired but in good humor.
She hears Wolf step towards the door. "Sleep tight."
"Never understood that expression..." Her eyelids grow heavy. The strenuous physical training and constant activity is wearing on her body. She is so tired.
She hears the door shut, and her eyes fall shut.
"This friendship is most concerning," says General Rebrenovich. He's surrounded by monitors, in a darkened room. So, so many monitors, in the ventilation systems even, outside the facility, everywhere. It is charming that the girls think that they can just get out of the most heavily secured building in Russia next to the Kremlin without their handlers knowing about it. Many of the supporting psychologists are hesitant to let them have their moments of freedom, but Volkov is the program head directly beneath the General, so they have to differ to him. The effects are most fascinating.
The doctor nods, eyes fixed on the camera monitor from the Black Widow's quarters. "Agreed, but if you think of the potential this gives us for experimentation of her emotional reactions, it could be invaluable."
The General's expression is unreadable, and only a twitch in his lip reveals to the casual observer that he is not a statue. "Please send me your plans for these experiments. I would like to see the results."