"Tony," Mercedes called after climbing to the surface and in a gas mask. She made it just in time as FitzSimmons flew the plane overhead again and dropped another round of water onto the town. The mist was quickly clearing up and practically becoming nonexistent. The crowd started to calm down and their behavior for tearing out each other's throats was toned down. There were still a lot of bodies on the ground but the living outnumbered the dead. "Tony!" she ran for her husband as he stepped out of the crowd. "You're not going to believe what I found."
"What?" Tony asked. He had just subdued Rose and had her on the ground with his boot on her back. "What's going on?"
She silenced herself before talking because of Rose on the ground. "Who is this?"
"My biggest fan. She's madly in love with me."
"We ARE soulmates!" Rose said.
"Shut up, Rose. As you were about to say, Mercedes. The love of my life."
"There is a continuous flow of Flower within the entire water supply of the city. Meaning that no matter how many times we dump water, it is still prone to vaporizing in the air unless we take out the primary source."
"Doesn't the detonator blow up the water supply and vaporize the water from there?"
"No, it's using focused microwaves to vaporize the water supply."
"What about the detonator I shot out of Rose's hand."
"That was a ruse," the hypnotist said. "Rappaccini's too smart to expose her real detonator. That detonator, she designed it herself. Like Batman Begins, it vaporizes the water supply with focused microwaves. Isn't it amazing what A.I.M. scientists can plagiarize from movies and recreate into small but lethal devices?"
"Where's the primary source?" asked Mercedes to the obsessive, fanatical fangirl, Rose. "Where is your base of operations? Planning something this big, you must've needed an endless supply to dump the chemicals into the water supply. Where is the main source."
"I'm not talking," she said, still have an ounce of loyalty within her. "I'm no rat."
"Please," Tony begged. "It would make me very happy if you told me." He crouches down and puts his face next to hers. Rose's eyes widened at the feeling of his mask touching up against her cheekbones. She almost fell in a trance and she sighed deeply. "Please, for your idol?"
"Of course," Rose said immediately. "But can you protect me from Rappaccini when it comes to it?"
Tony nods.
"Rappaccini and I have been using Rand Chemical Plant to supply the main load of Midnight Oil. It has a water supply that is connected to the rest of the capital. We spent four weeks dumping Midnight Oil into the water supply. I suspect Rappaccini is there right now, ready to vaporize the entire water supply across the city. One click of her C4 detonator and it will cause a catastrophic event that will turn all of Washington D.C. to a state of madness and prove the A.I.M. The acronym is correct. America Is Mad."
Nat lifts her eyes open slowly and swings her head from left to right before picking it up and looking forward. She sighs and tries moving her hands, only to feel something tight binding them together. They felt like metal, and she tried prying her hands open but it was futile. For now at least. She sat in the corner on her knees and looked around.
"You slept soundly."
She turned her head to the left and saw Rappaccini sitting down in a wooden chair with the same tranquilizer gun in her right hand. She was sitting down, not in a paralyzed state but sitting down. If Rose wasn't here then how did she get out?
If she could resist the pain long enough to shoot me unconscious, then she could resist the pain to move her hand and remove the needle herself.
"Don't worry, I won't be causing you any harm. Not yet at least."
She steps out of her chair and keeps the tranq drawn on Nat as she kneels to her level but stays out of reach. "You really pissed me off with what you did with the needle. You pricked me in the back of my neck. I spent thirty minutes moving my hand slowly but painfully to the back and I had to scream in agony just to rip the needle out my neck at the right speed." She pulls out the acupuncture needle from her pocket and holds it inches away from Nat's face. "I'm going to give you a goddamn taste of your own medicine. You three-dollar slut."
Rappaccini drops the tranq gun and punches Nat in the chest. Nat yells in pain, realizing that Rappaccini stole her Black Widow Bites and she was hoisted by her own petard.
The needle was in and Nat was paralyzed, unable to move and with her hands chained behind her back, it didn't look like she was going to be escaping anytime soon. Now she really was at the mercy of Rapapccini as she draws a knife and puts it to Nat's throat.
"I could kill you right now, but I don't want that to happen." She retracts the knife and steps back. Nat's eyes followed her everywhere around the room. "I don't want you to fall yet. You are crucial to my mission. You ARE crucial to my mission." It was starting to sound like she was losing her mind and trying to come up with excuses not to kill Nat. It was like the chemical fumes were getting to her head.
"If you're going to kill me, then hurry it up already. I'm getting tired of villains coming up with excuses not to kill me. You guys aren't that much of a threat if you have to come up with an excuse to not kill me."
"You are vital to my plan. You have to live for a little while longer."
Almost off instinct (or impulsively), she turns her back to Nat and slips on a pair of tactical leather gloves. She reaches inside and pulls out a syringe. "Time to take your medicine." She turns to Nat and thrusts the syringe deep into Nat's neck and pressed the plunger. "Have a good dose of the Carrion Virus."
It felt like something was swimming in her bloodstream. Like an eel swimming down one vein to the other and digging into her heart. She winces and looks up at her enemy with hate and determination in her eyes. She may have been infected with the Carrion Virus (if she wasn't infected already), but she still needed a whiff of Midnight Oil for the insanity process to happen. And since FitzSimmons was unaware of her location and the fact that her wrists were bound together by chains, the chance of getting cured seemed the same as making one jump to the moon and back in under three seconds.
"There you go," Rappaccini pants like she just did a mile run. "Now you're infected. Now, a few more steps must be taken before I can kill you." She takes out the C4 detonator and holds it in front of Nat's face. "I'm going to need one of your hands." She takes out a key and unlocks the chain to her hands. Nat was still unable to move in her paralyzed state and was at her mercy when she wrapped her hand around the C4 trigger. "This is what's going to happen." She grabs Nat's chin and lifts it so they were looking at each other directly in the eye. "This chemical plant is ground zero for the Flower weapon. You're going to press this trigger and when you do, every single tank of hazardous liquid will evaporate into the air as well as the water supply directly below us. Once this happens, the entire water supply across the city will vaporize one after the other like dominos. I'm wearing gloves so when the police find this and you in this factory, going crazy, they will find your fingerprints on the detonator and everyone in America will remember Natasha Romanoff as a former spy from Russia who came to America to poison this 'beloved' country's capital."
Did she pick me as a scapegoat because I was a former assassin for the Red Room? And I thought it was something personal.
"It's nothing personal, Nat."
Speak of the devil's whore.
"This is all business. I'm sure you understand as an assassin who kills people to complete missions."
"No," Nat abruptly said. "Don't even try to compare us, Rappaccini. I would never kill innocent people and I would never use a weapon of mass destruction upon a city of civilians."
"And I thought you understood what I'm trying to do," Rappaccini said in an agitated state. "Rose, she was a hypnotist but she was easy to 'hypnotize'. All I had to do was convince her that if she helped me in this task then she would be able to meet her idol and do whatever she wants to him."
I gotta destroy this detonator. She's a speech type person so I should have more than enough time to think.
"I really should be thanking you for everything you've done, Nat. Once I've scapegoated you, A.I.M. will be bigger and better than ever. I mean, I deserve some credit because I forced you to pull the trigger on this detonator."
Now you're just getting arrogant.
"I'm afraid this is goodbye now, Natasha Romanoff. As they say in Russian, 'uvidimsya v adu'."
"Save me a seat for me there." A wolf would chew off its paw, its survival instinct is that fierce. I'm a volk.
Nat headbutts Rappaccini with all she has, breaking through the paralyzed state. The terrorist falls to the ground and her vision spins in all directions.
The trigger remained in Nat's twitching hand and she used her other hand to slowly and painfully move her hand up and yank the needle out. She pulled it out as fast as her shaking and paralyzed hand would allow and it was pulled out with just enough speed.
Now I know what it feels like to be 'Kiss of the Dragon-ed'. Rappaccini crawls back and heads for the tranq gun that she dropped. Nat lunges.
You've got to take her out, Nat. Ignore the pain and stiffness! Your body's not up to it. Been chained and paralyzed for too long. Fight with your head. Use anything that comes to hand as a weapon. There is no time to worry about fighting fair. If you don't drop Rappaccini, you're dead, and so is D.C.
"Not this time!" Nat grabbed Rappaccini by the back and wrapped the chains around her throat and yanked. She yanked like she was trying to push and pull at weights.
She has Rappaccini arches her back up and silently screaming. She claws at the chains but they were too deep in her throat for her to get her fingers under. Her breaths become short and pants like a dog. Something inside her made her realize that this just might be her final stand against Nat. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out another C4 detonator.
Nat spots the trigger in her hand and eyes widen. Seeing that there were two buttons on the trigger this time and her thumb goes for the one colored red. That must've been some kind of self-destruct button.
She kicks Rappaccini in the back with both feet.
Rappaccini's neck pushes deeper into the throats until her head was craned back and a loud snap filled the room.
The thumb pressed the green button instead of the red one. Her eyes rolled to the back of her head as her life instantly expired.
Broke her neck.
Nat lets go of the chains and removes the detonator. Now with both detonators in hands, she looks at them both and sees what kind of comparisons she could make. They were virtually identical except the one with the two buttons had a timer on the back that was counting back from four minutes, the same time it would've taken her to run out of the building from this floor.
"Shit, she tried detonating the place but accidentally activated the timer instead. "If this was to a device that uses microwaves to vaporize the water supply, then that means that this trigger must turn on the microwave emitter itself. Gotta find the device."
And with Rappaccini dead, she now has a goal.