Chapter Six: To the Bone
"Yes, she's electric and yes, she's a monster at times." -Mary Jo Bang
Moscow, Russia - September 6, 2012
Even as they scaled the side of the warehouse, Audrey wasn't entirely sure why Natasha was there. Yes, she knew about the Red Room. Yes, she was a highly skilled assassin. But most of the time, S.H.I.E.L.D. had a very strict policy on the mingling of personal and professional—which was that they didn't.
It wasn't like Audrey wanted to go in on this alone. She was relatively inexperienced in the field. She was clumsy. She was terrible undercover. But at least she hadn't been traumatized by the organization they were attempting to infiltrate. Since they had two snipers on the team, Natasha could've been switched out for Clint. It wouldn't have been a completely foolproof plan—Natasha excelled at hand-to-hand combat while Clint's strength was distance work, but it was a smaller price to pay than the risk they were taking.
Audrey bit her lip, trying to push the thoughts aside. She was thinking too much like a handler. That wasn't her job anymore—now, she was responsible for watching Natasha's back and retrieving any information on the DIVUS weapons she could find.
"In position for entry?" asked Clint through comms. Audrey couldn't see him under the cover of nightfall, but he was perched high up somewhere with a sniper rifle.
"All good," Natasha replied, smirking at Audrey as she activated the switch on her widow's bites. A pop of electricity caused a scratch of light to glow through the shadows between them, but it disappeared just as quickly as it had formed.
"Just disengaged the security system. You have about fifteen seconds," Delphine added. She was stationed in a surveillance van a few blocks away, with Jaspar and a DGSE tech expert.
Audrey took a screwdriver and pushed it into the thumbprint scanner that locked the door. The glass screen shattered, and a click rang through the air as the door released. She fidgeted with the screwdriver, wedging it between the scanner's base and its frame as Natasha slid the door open and stepped inside.
Ten, nine, eight…
Audrey listened for the sound of three guards being disarmed and tackled to the ground. When three thuds had resonated through the comms system, she pulled the screwdriver from the scanner and ran through the doors, listening to ensure they had clicked shut behind her.
Natasha was waiting, a black bandana now covering the bottom half of her face. Behind her, a patrolling guard was approaching.
"Behind you," she whispered, and watched as Natasha's eyes lit up. The redhead turned to wave at the guard.
"Hi, there, sir," she greeted brightly, before grabbing a fistful of his hair and yanking his head down to her knee. His head collided with her leg, hard, and she finished the job off with a widow's bite to the neck, before releasing him to the floor, twitching.
Watching Natasha fight was something Audrey always enjoyed. The acrobatics, the elegance, the strength and control she possessed—it was incredible. Even sparring with Natasha had become something fun, though it often resulted in Audrey curled up on the floor in extreme pain.
"Let's go," Natasha instructed, leading the way toward the center of the warehouse.
Blueprints had shown that the primary elevator that allowed access to the lower levels was in the warehouse's center. However, service staircases were located in the northeast corner of the warehouse. Audrey had proposed at first sticking to the border of the building as they made their way to the staircase, but then realized that security cameras were likely to be located primarily on the borders—as were the guards. Delphine had been the one to suggest going straight through.
Guards monitored the warehouse, which was full of shelves of furniture, oddly enough, in perimeter fashion. Each circled a particular row of shelves, in concentric fashion. To get through, they would need to pass six circles of guards and pick the lock on the staircase without being noticed. Possible, yes. But difficult.
Audrey darted forward, past the first row of shelves, and Natasha followed suit. They stood back to back for a moment, huddled behind a large couch cloaked in bubble wrap.
"Clear?" Audrey asked.
Natasha nodded, her long braid swinging and brushing against Audrey's shoulder. "Clear."
As they wove their way through the maze of shelves, Audrey held her breath. She felt so much louder now that they were somewhere they weren't supposed to be without making any effort to fake it. While Natasha disengaged guards as necessary, Audrey mostly hid. It was a plan that worked well enough, because it got them to the stairwell without being caught. Audrey fidgeted with the lock and a small piece of metal, and when it turned, she pushed the door open and followed Natasha inside.
Once they were in the bank of the stairwell, Natasha removed her bandana. "We should split up."
"Uh," said Audrey, thinking back to what Clint had told her on the quinjet.
Which was: "Under no circumstances are you two to split up."
Audrey had nodded at the time, recognizing him as an experienced field agent and essentially her superior.
"She's tough," Clint had said. "I mean, obviously. She's Natasha-fuckin-Romanoff. She doesn't spook easily. But the Red Room brings it out in her. And I don't want her getting hurt."
She was Natasha-fuckin-Romanoff. The name spoke for itself. Raised by the Red Room, a Russian organization known for kidnapping and training young girls under the guise of being an elite ballet academy. Even though it had initially been developed under the Soviet Union, it later grew to be managed by an outside group, Department X. Audrey didn't know—nobody knew—who Department X's allegiances were with. Only that they were dangerous, and they offered themselves to the highest bidder. The Red Room was just another part of that machine. Exporting little girls trained to be killers.
Among them, Natasha had been the best. Audrey had never talked to her about it, but she'd read the files when Coulson had decided to put a mark on her head. She was a prodigy among the other Black Widows. She'd killed her sisters if she had to. She'd assassinated the daughter of a scientist who had defected. When it had gone more messily than planned, she burned down a hospital to eliminate witnesses.
That was when S.H.I.E.L.D. had intervened. Natasha was twenty-two when Clint Barton was sent to assassinate her. Audrey had helped Coulson choose who to send. Bobbi Morse was an option. So was Melinda May. But Romanoff would best anyone in hand-to-hand combat, so it had to be a marksman.
And that marksman had grown rather attached to Natasha, all these years later. So attached, in fact, he had specifically ordered Audrey not to leave her alone.
"Please," Clint said. She had never seen him look so sincere before. "Promise me you'll look out for her."
"I promise," Audrey had agreed, caught off-guard by how desperate he seemed.
But now, in the middle of a concrete stairway lit up by one LED bulb, she was struggling to keep that promise.
"Carter? You hear what I said?" Natasha asked.
"Yes," Audrey said. "I did. However, I think we should explore the possibility of us not splitting up."
"Is this for your sake or for mine?" Natasha demanded.
"Um...mine."
"Seriously?"
"Yes," Audrey said. It wasn't completely true. She definitely felt safer when the Black Widow was accompanying her and on her side, but also, she wasn't going to pitch a fit because she felt unsafe during an unsafe mission. It was part of the deal.
Natasha stepped toward her. "If you weren't ready to go into the field, you should've said something. You could compromise the entire mission."
As if she didn't know that. Audrey had served as a handler for years. But still, she nodded, biting her lip. "I know. Yes. I know. But. I think it's important to recognize that it's too late now, and I truly think it would just be, um, better if you came with me."
Natasha rolled her eyes.
"Or I could go with you. Either's fine with me."
"You think I can't tell when you're lying?"
Audrey blew out a breath. "No, I know you can, but I figured it was worth a shot."
"Why are you so insistent that we stay together?"
Audrey grimaced. "I just think that we should."
"You're gonna have to do better than that. We're losing time, and if we don't split up, we won't be able to sweep the place." Natasha pursed her lips. "I don't know if this is you being worried about me, but I can take care of myself. As I feel like you should know."
"I do," she said. "Clint asked me to watch out for you though," she finally admitted.
She winced. This felt like mediating whenever Peggy had had an argument with Daniel or Angie.
Natasha scoffed. "I can take care of myself. Clint had orders too that he shouldn't have disobeyed. We're splitting up, and we'll meet back at the rendezvous point when we're done."
"Copy that."
With a last wave, Natasha flipped herself over the bar in the stairwell, hooking a Widow's Web onto the metal handle and sinking into the depths of the sublevels.
Something about this whole thing reminded Audrey of Dante's nine circles, but she pushed the thought away as she opened the door and headed out into the first sublevel.
She was met with a huge room filled with rows and rows of filing cabinets. Holy crap. Audrey had never seen this much physical intelligence in one place. Ever. Not even S.H.I.E.L.D. could complete with the sheer size of the room, which easily stretched out past the boundaries of the warehouse above it.
It lined up with the Red Room's M.O. Natasha had once referred to them as "old-fashioned." Fury had retorted with a snide, "I think you mean archaic." Either way, they avoided digitizing their records, and instead maintained paper records of everything.
And it was all here.
Audrey surveyed the room for cameras before she moved from the doorway. Surveillance cameras dotted the ceiling, likely recording, and another hung in the corner above the door. She could knock that one out, but it was likely that whoever was on the other end of the ceiling monitors knew she was there. She had to move fast.
There was a metal cart next to the doorway with a pile of files resting atop. Audrey disregarded those, instead grabbing onto one of the metal support poles and anchoring her foot on the cart's bottom level. She grunted as she snapped the metal off of the cart.
Once it was secured around the door's handles, she tied a bandana over her face and got to work.
There were only a few things the intel could be filed under. Читаури, for Chitauri. оружия, for weapons. Or potentially, оружия, Читаури for weapons, Chitauri.
Audrey made quick time locating the o's, but had no luck. Her cyrillic alphabet skills were limited, but she had a general idea of how to find the Ц's in relation. The first spot she checked was too late in the alphabet, so she moved up to the beginning of the section.
Цартер. Wait. That was just cyrillic for Carter.
Audrey pulled the file from its spot in the cabinet, flipping it open. Why would the Red Room have kept a file on Peggy? HYDRA had, and the Third Reich had, and the KGB had. But the Red Room was too specific of a subsector to have served as a hub for intelligence beyond its own operations.
Parts of the file were in Russian, but most of it was in German. Audrey wasn't focused on that though, so much as she was focused on the fact that smack in the middle of the first page, in bold letters, was her name.
AUDREY CARTER ROGERS (KNOWN THROUGHOUT AS BOTH "ASSET" AND "SUBJECT")
Asset acquired 9 December, 1966. Initial trials successful. 3 rounds of extractions and injections completed. Results to come.
ASSET BACKGROUND: Subject is child of STEVEN ROGERS ("Captain America", aff. SSR, United States) and MARGARET CARTER (aff. SSR/CIA/S.H.I.E.L.D.) born in 1945. Regenerative cell growth increases lifespan. When injured, Subject heals at accelerated rate. (Can Subject die?) Traces of Dr. Erskine's serum have been preserved in the Captain's spawn.
CONDITION OF SUBJECT: Brat. Cried until vomiting upon arrival at base. Refused to answer questions re: parentage. The Madame insisted on a no-cruelty approach. When fed by Madame, Asset behaved better. Had to be drugged unconscious in order for trials to take place.
TRIALS: Plasma extractions proved useless in the pursuit of serum recreation. Subject responded well to injections. Previous subjects entered almost immediate cardiac arrest following injections, or more rarely: strokes, blood vessel lysing, instantaneous bone decay. After first trial, Subject able to observe and replicate the Soldier's movements in action. After second trial, Subject able to withstand impossible amounts of physical pressure. After third trial, Subject survived major head trauma inflicted by a) combat b) controlled lab testing.
THE SOLDIER: Soldier initially responded poorly to Asset's presence. (Remembering?) Had to be wiped at a 400% higher frequency than typical. When Asset threatened, Soldier completed missions faster. When tasked with training Asset, Soldier was unable to communicate verbally but successfully demonstrated movements and corrected Asset's form.
RESULTS: Subject will prove useful a) in injection trials and b) as motivation for the Soldier.
EDIT 18 JANUARY 1967: S.H.I.E.L.D. RAID ON TESTING CENTER. DATA RETAINED. SUBJECT REMOVED FROM BASE.
The pages of reports were followed by data, charts, photos of a small blonde girl curled into a ball, asleep. Audrey knew, intellectually, the file was about her—it had information that only should have been available to Howard and Peggy in the 60s, and it had photos of her as a kid—but she couldn't make herself believe it. She didn't remember any of this. And if she'd been in Soviet captivity for a month, there was no way she'd forgotten the entire thing.
Audrey scanned the documents quickly, uploading them into a S.H.I.E.L.D. server before shoving them back into their folder. She had too many questions now to focus on the Bardot and the Chitauri. How had a month of her life gone completely missing from her memory? What were the injections? Who was the Soldier? What testing had they done on her? How the hell had they managed to take her from her mother?
She rummaged through the next few drawers numbly, in search of the Chitauri files. When she located them, she skimmed them but they didn't reveal very much about where they were being stored or how they had been acquired. Still, she scanned them.
"I found something," Audrey said into her comms set. "Files. Intel."
"Good," came Natasha's voice. There was a buzzing sound, followed by a low groan. "Anything useful?"
"I'm not sure. There's a file on me, though."
Natasha grunted, and Audrey recognized the familiar sound of a fist colliding with and breaking a nose. "A file on you?"
"Yeah. On tests that were run on me."
"Come to the fifth sublevel. I think I've found Bardot's prototypes. You can tell me what you found while we confiscate his little arts and crafts project."
"Copy that."
Audrey eyed the entrance to the door, where the twisted metal bar still locked the doors shut. Behind her, there was an elevator. She took it a floor down and exited on the level below, before jogging down the staircase.
"Shit!" came Natasha's voice through her earpiece.
Audrey skidded to a stop. "Romanoff?"
Feedback buzzed in her ear, but no answer. Audrey's brow furrowed and she started hopping down the steps two by two until she reached the fifth level. They were past the levels of files now, and the stairwell opened into a hallway that stretched on for ages, with doors on both sides.
If it weren't for the trail of unconscious guards, Audrey would not have known how to reach Natasha. But she took a left when she saw the first one and kept going until she found a door that was ajar.
Inside was a lab full of weapons, as Natasha had promised. But the glass walls of the lab were shattered, and the shards of glass in a pile on the floor were stained red. Audrey figured that it hadn't looked like that when Natasha arrived.
She stepped over the glass, careful not to make any noise, and rested her hand on the gun at her belt. In the adjoined lab, she could hear muffled voices.
"Please don't do this."
That couldn't be Natasha. It sounded like her—specifically, it sounded like her begging for her life, but there was no way in hell that was happening. Audrey had watched Natasha throw herself into the air and onto an alien spaceship with nothing but two knives and a pistol. Nobody was a match for Romanoff.
Audrey removed her gun from its holster and released the safety, resting her back against the door and listening in.
"Please don't do this."
"You should know better….we're talking about…no merciful angel."
Audrey shuddered. Whatever it was that had the Black Widow asking for mercy was nothing she wanted to encounter. Still, she wasn't going to leave Natasha behind.
She stepped away from the door, took a deep breath, and then slammed her body against it.
The deadbolt lock tore through the frame and the door went flying open. Audrey brandished her gun, but the scene inside wasn't at all what she'd been expecting. Natasha sat on the floor, sobbing over a body with a slit throat.
"Oh my god," Audrey gasped, before she could stop herself. "Rom—Natasha?"
The girl she cradled in her arms couldn't have been older than nineteen. At that moment, she made a desperate gargling sound and Natasha brushed her hair behind her ears. "я не хотел этого." She lifted her head. "I swear, Anastasia, I didn't want this."
The room was a mess. The conference table in the center had been split in two, likely from the force of a body slamming into it. Two guns had been thrown into opposite corners of the room. Bulletholes dotted the walls. Audrey put her gun back in its holster and collected the two pistols that had been tossed aside.
"Natasha," she said, standing up straight. "We should go."
Natasha shook her head. "You don't understand. I knew her. She and I were the same."
Audrey froze. They'd sent a Black Widow?
There was no way they would have stationed one of their prize assassins to guard an empty lab. Not unless—
Unless they'd known who would be coming.
The revelation hit her at the same time the door was kicked down again, this time off its hinges. Audrey lept behind the overturned table as a swarm of guards buzzed in. One of them seized her by the arm and yanked her to her feet, but Audrey fired at his foot before he could take her anywhere. He cursed and fell to the ground.
Audrey kicked him in the teeth to keep him down, but another was on her as soon as the first had dropped.
"Carter!" Natasha called.
On the other side of the room, Natasha was beating the bicep of a guard holding her in a chokehold. Audrey didn't think as she pointed her gun and squeezed the trigger. A bullet flew across the room, burying itself in the head of the guard, and he snapped backwards, a spray of blood painting the wall behind him.
Audrey inhaled sharply. It wasn't that she didn't know what happened when someone got shot in the head. She just had neve been the one to pull the trigger before.
"Gun!" Natasha called. Audrey obeyed, flipping on the safety and tossing the pistol across the room to the other agent.
The guard on Audrey swung his fist into her face and her vision blacked out as she went down. Jesus Christ. She flipped herself back over and kicked him in the kneecap, then grabbed onto the hem of his shirt and yanked him forward so his face was in the range of her fist.
She punched him—hard—and heard a sharp cracking noise on impact. He reeled back, spitting a tooth to the side. Audrey punched him again for good measure and grabbed onto the edge of the table to pull herself up.
"Soldat," the guard said into his walkie-talkie. "Soldat!"
She bent over and yanked it out of his hand, throwing it on the ground and crushing it with the heel of her boot. It wouldn't do much, not now that he'd made the order, but maybe it would cause some sort of delay.
Audrey pulled her gun from her belt and attempted to shoot at the string of guards still streaming in. She hit two in their shoulders, but her hands were shaking. With three guards left, she'd emptied her pistol.
"I'm out," she told Natasha.
"I'm low," Natasha replied, boosting herself on the shoulders of one guard so she could swing her body onto the neck of the second. Audrey hunched over and charged for the third, jutting out her elbow. It wasn't until she slammed into him that she realized he'd been holding a knife. Sharp pain flooded her right side as she stumbled back. The guard smiled at her, taunting.
"Ow," she grunted, gritting her teeth. There was blood in her mouth. Audrey spat on the guard and as he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, she reached for the hand holding the knife, peeling his fingers off the handle and bending them backward. He cried out, but she kept pushing, until he released the knife. Audrey gripped the handle in her fist and hammered the blade into the guard's stomach. She twisted. He sunk back against the wall and then down to the ground.
A piece of splintered wood flew into her face. Beside her, Natasha had bashed the other guards' heads into the table.
"Okay, now we really need to get out of here," she said.
"Agreed," replied Audrey. She offered Natasha her hand as the assassin stepped over the bodies of the guards they'd taken out. "I think we're clear at least until the hallway. But not for long."
Natasha nodded. She flexed her hand before closing it into a fist. Her widow's bites buzzed and glowed blue. "Ready?"
Audrey clamped her hand over the stab wound in her side, trying not to wince as she walked. "Yep."
As soon as they stepped out of the conference door, there was a hum, and the lights went out.
"You've gotta be kidding me," Natasha said. "You got a flashlight, Carter?"
"Um, yeah. Hold on." She fumbled for a flashlight on her belt. She almost had it out when a loud bang rang out and Natasha crashed back into her, sending them both stumbling to the floor.
"Fuck!" Natasha cursed under her breath. "I've been hit."
"Oh god." Audrey could barely dress a wound under normal circumstances, let alone with nothing to dress it with and in the dark. She pulled the flashlight from her belt and flicked it on, the beam of light revealing nothing. As she swept it across the room, something metal reflected the light back to her. Audrey panned back.
Holy hell. A man, on the far side of the lab, had a rifle aimed at her head. His masked face was framed by long, dark hair. Audrey's pulse started slamming against her chest cavity and her breath stuttered. She was trapped. Underground. Unarmed. With an assassin who had just been shot in the stomach and a man with a sniper rifle aimed straight at her. S.H.I.E.L.D. protocol didn't generally involve begging an assailant not to kill you, but Audrey didn't have many options left.
"Oh my God," Natasha said, before Audrey could begin groveling. She had a hand pressed to her belly and her jaw had fallen slack. "It's you."
"Who?" Audrey asked, her voice shaking.
"You need to go," Natasha said. "I'll take him. You have to go."
"I'm not leaving you," Audrey insisted. "You can't fight him with a bullet hole in your stomach."
Natasha shoved Audrey over and tried to pull herself to her feet. "Get the hell out of here, Carter. You're way out of your depth."
"It's not you I'm here for, Natalia," the man interrupted. Audrey froze, but Natasha pulled a knife from her belt and hurled it across the room. The man lifted his arm and the knife clattered against it before falling to the floor pathetically. Audrey's hand shook and the flashlight beam with it, but as she blinked, it became clear that she had seen right—his arm was made of metal.
"Too bad, because it's me you're taking."
"I have orders."
The man stepped out from behind the lab table and began approaching. Audrey wanted to scramble back, and curl up into a ball, and hide, but there was nowhere to run. Natasha was holding her ground.
Natasha pulled herself to her feet, still with one hand over the wound, and started towards the man. She swung a kick towards the side of his head, crying out, but he caught it and twisted, flipping her over. She didn't give up. Natasha swept her legs out in an attempt to knock him over.
"I have orders," the man repeated. "And I'll kill you if I have to."
Natasha coughed. "You'd really do that to an old friend?"
The lights flipped back on. Audrey dropped her flashlight. The man approached her quietly and she started dragging herself back into the conference room, but it was helpless. He reached down and wrapped his hand—this one flesh and not metal—around her throat.
"Please," Audrey said, her voice barely audible.
He lifted his metal arm, wrapped his fingers into a fist, and brought it down onto her face. Even as she reeled back, she could feel it. The ridges of steel meeting her skin, the scrape of his knuckles against her eyelids. Audrey didn't know she could hurt that much, but as he brought his fist down on her again, everything—pain included—blacked out.
a/n: wow a little winter soldier tease….I hope everyone is excited to start unpacking that in this next chapter! let me know what you thought and thank you so much for reading :-)