6:00pm, Saturday, March 8, 2014
A tall brunette in an official looking blazer opens her car door as the one in front of her leaves. Good, at least now she didn't have to worry about him. She was still reeling from the fact that her best friend has kids and is married to her coworker. Natasha had always had a soft side for the triplets, but she had no idea that Natasha would ever adopt them. Going up to ring their apartment might physically be the easiest thing, but it meant that would be writing these kids deeper into a darker narrative.
The red light on the intercom.
"YOU SHALL NOT PASS"
"Nope, we don't live here"
"Sorry that my brothers are so juvenile"
Three separate voices yell at the same time, no going back now, "It's Agent Hill, I'm here on behalf of Fury. Deep Shallow Conditions."
There is a pause then the door buzzes, "Apartment 3B"
She walks through the open door, then up the stairs, and finally down the hallway. She takes a deep breath before knocking on apartment 3B's door. A high security camera pops out and murmurs something that sounds like its from Star Wars. The door opens, the boy that she remembers to be Xander opens the door.
"Why are you here? I can assume why you know the code but why does it include us?" He opens the door to show Henry and Ronnie at her computer desk.
"I'll explain everything. May I come in?" She gives Xander a pointed look. He smiles at her and opens the door all the way for her to fit. The two triplets at the desk went over to close the door. Maria stares at the three. "Ok, so I guess I'll start from the beginning" that's a good place to start right? "Deep Shallow Conditions protocol was created after we had Coulson fake his death. The only people who know about this were myself, Coulson, an old doctor friend that could identify him without question, and your Mom. We've never known how it was going to happen but we needed to be prepared. It's my job to take you to the safe area, but we need to take a quick stop first. Fury told me that you guys aren't supposed to do spy things, but your parents are going to be dealing with the firepower so we can at least handle the files. If you're coming, we need to leave in seven minutes."
The triplets stared at each other, as though they could speak with their eyes. They tell her to wait and run off to their rooms. They took that surprisingly well.
Six minutes later, the triplets come out, each with a small bag. "Lets go" Ronnie picks up one of her computers from the huge setup as well as a small case. "It's been seven minutes."
Maria smiles faintly, these kids are something else. She sits in the driver's seat next to Xander, he only gets to sit in the front during long rides because he's the tallest. "Ahem, aren't you gonna put on your seatbelt?" He asks.
"Mom always says that it's better to be safe than sorry" Henry adds. Maria rolls her eyes, that does not sound like Natasha Romanoff, but then again neither does wife and mother of three. Maybe I don't know her as well as I thought I did.
It's official, these kids have too much energy to sit in a car for three hours. Luckily it didn't take longer than that because Maria speeded the whole way. She parks about a quarter mile away from the base, it's in Maryland so they should be able to get to the plant at the right time. She zips up her SHIELD uniform and her eyes open wide when she looks behind her. The triplets all had their own suits.
"I'm basically the more quiet version of Dad, oh and I'm the prince of a third world country." Xander casually gave as his explanation.
"I've been trained and my genius girlfriend is the princess of a third world country." Henry gave his.
Ronnie applied some chapstick with a pop. "I'm trained in martial arts and ballet, and I'm the only one that uses both sides of my brain."
"We checked, it's a medical anomaly," the boys say together. Maria raises an eyebrow, she doesn't know whether they're kidding or not. How are these kids Natasha's? "What's the plan?" Henry asks.
"Well I think that we should split up, cover more ground. I should go with Henry and see if there are any weird experiments. Xander, you and Ronnie find the computer room and download their files. We're about ninety percent sure that this has something to do with Insight. Ronnie, when we get to the plant, can you design and program three chips that could cancel out everything if we need to?" Maria asks.
"In my sleep." Ronnie replies and gets out her phone, after a few taps she looks up. "And to answer your question Henry, yes this is that rabbithole that I found in SHIELD's servers. We need to get moving, the new guards will be here in 15 minutes."
They all get out of the car. Ronnie and Xander nod in Henry's direction before running off.
"You three know how strange you act right?" Maria asks without a filter.
Henry smirks, "it's our shining quality." They sneak along the hedges, bad guys always have the nicest houses after all. The basement entrance should be right off the pipeline that they're at. "Age before beauty" Xander offers her to go first as he plugs his nose.
Maria rolls her eyes and scowls but goes in first anyway. It's fairly easy to navigate. Soon they reach a room with a dead bolt. Maria is about to use her shoulder when Henry stops her, holding up something that looks a little but like a lightsaber.
"I've seen Fury have that, it can cut through almost everything right?"
"Yep, Ronnie designed it after our failed attempt to create a real lightsaber, this is the next best thing."
He uses his shoulder to shove the circle cut out into the room so they could get in. Nobody is around, probably because of the car chase they heard about over the radio. "Start over there" Maria tells him as they start to search through everything.
"Most of these are in Russian, we should get Ronnie here." he pauses for a minute "they'll be here in a minute, they have to finish downloading everything."
In a few seconds, Ronnie and Henry come rushing through the door. She starts carefully reading through the files, determining if they need to be taken or not. Xander is collecting everything that she'll need to make the discs later. While reading one of the files, her heart nearly stops and she drops the file to the floor. Her face loses all emotion. She feels paralyzed despite this. Xander looks at her from across the room before running over, he's never seen her like this, ever.
Henry picks it up, his eyes on his sister. He hopes that for her sake, living with two Russians for enough years, that he can spell out the basics of what is says.
Project File: Experiment X
Phase 1
Father
Name: Ivan Petrovich
Status: Killed by Natasha Romanoff.
Mother
Name: Confidentiel per HYDRA and the Red Room's request.
Status: Exterminated at end of Phase 1.
Fetus
Name: Veronica Petrovich
Status: Alive, Born: April 11, 2000
Phase 2
Fetus will be injected with the American super serum while in womb - Stage Complete
Fetus will enter training at the age of five - Stage Disruption.
Project Exterminated.
"Bozhe Moi"
The car ride to the plant was silent. Ronnie's head was communicating unintentionally with her brothers and this is the only time that she seriously wished that they aren't connected that way. And you really can't blame her. She was created in the organization her father nearly died to destroy, her birth father is the man who tortured and raped possibly both of her mothers, and last but not least, she is like her parents. She's enhanced. In a way it makes sense, she has always been very agile and strong but she never imagined it to this extent. What of her parents see her as a threat?
"No" Xander says, almost angrily.
"Sis you know that they won't." Henry soothingly rubs his hand up and down her shoulder. "They didn't see Xander as a threat when they found out that he was...special."
"We wouldn't let them" Xander says, effectively ending the conversation, "Ronnie, you're one of the best people that we've ever known, you have never hurt anyone. Remember Dad's promise." He throws caution to the wind and jumps in the back seat, earning a growl out of Maria. Both brothers hug her, she shouldn't have to go through this. They all know that the unknown is the scariest part of their lives.
Maria pulls up outside of the plant. "Everything here needs to be completely untraceable, but I assume that you already know that. I notified the doctor on the way that he may be getting a little package from Fury. That was really stupid, sneaking into Stark. Good job though, I can see why Fury actually likes you."
"Well he has his team of secret agent children in you, Mom, Clint, and Coulson so he needed genius grandkids." Xander offers as an explanation. Maria shakes her head, he's not totally wrong. She leads them to the opening, showing them the way to open the doors for people coming in. She offers to show them the rest of the base, but the boys know that Ronnie needs to talk to them without her there. Maria nods and leaves the room that they're in, closing the curtain to provide some sense of privacy.
Ronnie takes a shaky breath, she knows that her brothers will never pressure her to talk to them about this, but she feels like she has to. "All those deaths, the family, those agents, they didn't deserve that. Not for me. I'm glad the Mom killed Ivan. I need you two to promise that you'll help me find out how HYDRA got their hands on that super serum. You know what happened with the Red Skull. My skin is too pretty to be pulled off." And that's the most teenage thing that she has ever said.
"Of course we'll help. Remember, you don't have to go through this alone." Xander says, kissing her forehead.
"We probably wouldn't be alive without you sis. I know that you're scared of what Mom and Dad will think, but they love you. We all do." Henry kisses the other side of her head and she tears up. "We'll never let anything happen to you."
"Just remember that now you're even more of a badass than you were before." Xander reminds her.
"Language" both of his siblings joke through the tense atmosphere.
"How did I end up with the best brothers?" She laughs through tears.
"Because I'm too amazing to miss" Xander replies, earning both of his siblings punching his shoulders. "But seriously, none of us could've survived without each other."
The three just sit in silence, not the kind of silence where they're talking to each other with their heads. Actual silence, to process. all that's interrupted when Maria storms into the room. "Sorry to interrupt, SHIELD just called, Fury's been shot in your parents' apartment. Get to work on those chips. I'll call with an update and Henry please get the hospital area over there set up"
"When will he get here?" Henry asks, knowing that Ronnie is wondering the same thing.
"I don't know, I'll text though. Whatever your parents text, give them the bare minimum of details" Maria grabs her car keys and leaves. HYDRA, HYDRA's behind all of this. HYDRA knows where the Rogers live. HYDRA is responsible for the birth of Captain America and the Black Widow's adoptive daughter. This is going to be a fun mess to clean up.
Do I realize now that I did a whole story on Xander's backstory and only have two or three chapters planned out for Ronnie's? Yes. Am I going to be nice and give her a lot of character development? Also yes.