Chapter 4

Russia

Late Fall 1996

Despite the headache that pulsed behind her eyes and the way her muscles felt like they were cramping from overexertion despite having done little to work them yet, Nadya was alert and attentive. She had to be. Anything less was weak. Even the Treatment was no excuse for weakness. Far from it, really.

Anything less than perfection was considered failure. But she'd long learned how to suffer through. Headaches and broken fingers and cracked ribs were nothing to her now. She could hide it all, even from herself.

So when Madame B gestured for her and Inga to take the floor, her pale eyes lethal and cold, Nadya walked to meet the other girl as though her body didn't feel on the verge of rebelling against her. Each step was measured and easy, her breath coming in an even, relaxed rhythm. And before Madame B could say a word, Nadya was darting forward, hands and feet lashing out faster than Inga could track with her dark eyes.

But the other girl recovered quickly, retaliating in kind. She hit hard, and she struck fast, her heel connecting with Nadya's thigh with enough force she could have snapped the limb out from under her. But Nadya was faster, shifting her weight so the power transferred from the other girl's kick helped fuel Nadya's own attack, helping her twist and propel her body around and through the air to crash with precise efficiency into the dark-haired girl's torso.

Back and forth it went, both girls fast and clever, bodies lithe and honed into effective weapons. But Nadya was proving stronger, her strikes just that much faster, her blows—when they landed properly—just that much harder. Her acrobatics were fluid and swift. With one final, whirling tackle, Nadya sent Inga slamming into the floor with a violent crack, her knee digging into the centre of the other girl's back. Beneath her, the dark haired girl's breath wheezed erratically out of her, severely winded from being driven into the ground.

But she didn't finish it. She couldn't. It hadn't been an even fight. As much as Nadya knew she should, she didn't reach down and end it. Despite knowing that Inga was not the strongest of the older girls who remained, it sat wrong with Nadya to do it. It wasn't supposed to be a lethal fight today, not between the older girls. They were supposed to be able to fight until Madame B called time. Nadya shouldn't have been able to take Inga down as she had; she hadn't anticipated the degree of the Treatment's effects this time.

Which was why she should finish it; Inga was weak, especially compared to Nadya.

"Nadya." Madame B's voice was sharp and pointed. Nadya knew what she wanted. The other girl didn't even struggle, unable to fight back even if she had tried. The way Nadya had her pinned precluded any chance of continuing the fight unless Nadya let her. It would be too obvious if Nadya let her 'fight her way free.' Nadya glanced up from where her grey eyes had been fixed on the back of Inga's head.

Natalia was standing not far away among her own group mates, her green eyes grave and hard as she watched the scene before her. Every girl in the room watched, from the girls younger than Natalia to the remaining girl from Nadya's group, Katerina, who stood next to Madame B. Each one bore the same expression as the redhead on their face. Eyes sliding shut as her head dropped back to the girl lying helpless below her, Nadya inhaled deeply before her hands flashed out.

A wet crack echoed through the room.

Standing, Nadya glanced toward their Training Mistress, her own eyes as hard and blank as the older woman's. But even as unreadable as her face was, Nadya could still tell Madame B was disappointed. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the eyes of one of the younger girls widen. But Nadya didn't have time to react, the hairs on the back of her neck suddenly prickling with unease.

A faint, metallic whirr was all the warning Nadya got. Her breath catching in her chest in surprise, she just barely dropped out of the way as an arm drove through the air where she'd been standing a split-second before.

Her training and her instincts took over and Nadya's mind was once again focused on the fight as she spun around. It didn't allow for any more surprise, only analyzing and doing. As her new opponent lashed out with another lightning-fast strike Nadya was already moving, dipping around the blow and latching on to the arm that powered it, letting the man's momentum as he retracted the limb to pull her toward him, allowing her to shift her balance and swing her lower half around to use every inch of her body against him.

It was a desperate fight, more desperate than any other Nadya had experienced. Sure, there had been moments in past contests before the Treatments had begun, instants where Nadya had to force herself to move a little faster, and withstand a little more than she thought her body could handle to make it to the other side alive. But she'd never felt so out of her league before.

This time she did.

This man was fast and he was powerful. And he didn't hold back. Each hit he landed felt like a pile driver colliding into her body. At one point she felt one of her fingers crack, but she ignored it. Pain bloomed through her side as a kick that sent her flying partway across the room left her gasping for air, but she pushed it aside. She registered the sound of her boot impacting metal as he blocked a kick of hers with a forearm, filing the information away in case it could be of use. A damp, wet trickle trailed down over her cheekbone, the blood catching strands of her pale hair from where his elbow glanced off the side of her head, splitting the skin above her eyebrow. She merely dashed one of the drops away from her eyes. She ignored the deep, bruising ache that spread through her arm as she just barely deflected a rigid blow from a wide swing of his left arm, too intent on tilting away from the second swing he made with his right to pay it much mind.

She wasn't about to let on that she suddenly doubted she could beat him, not even to herself. Instead, she let herself think and move seamlessly, acting and reacting, analysing and strategizing.

As she danced and darted around him, using the whole of her body to combat him as she had been taught, she analyzed. And she made her split-second decision. As she leapt onto his back, her leg swinging up to hook around his arm and carry her weight around his body to unbalance him, her hand darted out. A smile of satisfaction tugged at her lips even as he recovered in time to snatch at her calf as she snapped her other leg around in an attempt to kick at his face, using her own force against her to wrench her from where she clung to his back.

With a grunt she slammed into the floor, but as he lunged forward to finish her she was rolling back to her feet and driving herself upward, her shoulder connecting hard with his chest as she twisted within his guard.

The stolen combat knife in her hand flashed out.

He stumbled back for an instant, looking almost perplexed but otherwise indifferent to the blood seeping from a slice across his cheekbone, narrowly missing his eye. Though catching the expression, Nadya didn't dwell. She couldn't afford to. She didn't even have time to frown with confusion or apprehension of her own. Instead, she took advantage.

With a snarl she propelled herself around, driving a powerful kick into his chest, off-balancing him, before dropping down to swing another first into his thigh, shocking the hard muscle into spasms, and a second into his gut. With a grunt he seemed to fold under her last kick, and for a split-second Nadya thought she might have a chance.

But his left hand closed painfully around her ankle in a move nearly too quick for her to register and yanked her toward him, his right lashing out to just barely miss cracking her across the face.

And then they were all but grappling. Lips distorted in a grimace, Nadya twisted and thrashed, fists and feet connecting anywhere she could manage, her knee flying up to drive with numbing force into his side. The knife, still in her hand, struggled to hit its target as the man ducked and bobbed and blocked each time she swung it around before snatching at her wrist and twisting until she cried out, the knife dropping helplessly from her fingers.

It was over in seconds.

In a lightning fast move, his left arm clamped around her neck as his right braced around the back of her head. For the first time since the fight began, panic seared through Nadya as the cool, inflexible grip encircling her neck shocked her out of struggling to break free, her fingers suddenly scrabbling for hold on the arm she finally registered as smooth, gleaming metal. As comprehension burst through her, awe mixed with terror. Behind her, he stilled, holding her completely immobilized against him.

Gasping for air as the metal limb restricted her airway, Nadya's eyes flashed to Madame B as the Training Mistress came to a stop in front of Nadya, her face cold and critical.

"I should let him finish you," she said softly. Behind the Training Mistress, horror flashed in Natalia's eyes, but Nadya forced herself to ignore it, fixing her attention on the older woman in front of her and the arms clasped painfully tight around her head and neck. Her chest clenching as a silent snarl twisted her lips, Nadya thrashed again, but the arm around her throat only tightened further, the fingers on the back of her head digging into her scalp.

A glimmer of amusement flashed in Madame B's hard blue eyes, but it was quickly gone. She stepped closer, her voice dropping lower. "Just because you were outmatched is no excuse for mercy. You were stronger than Inga, just as he is stronger than you. She was weak, she lost and she had to pay the price. You know this. Yet you hesitated. The success or failure of the Treatments have no bearing here. She lost to you because she was weak, not because the Treatment failed. Just because an opponent is physically stronger, that is no excuse for failure." Nadya clenched her teeth together, fingers clamped around the arm encircling her throat as she eyed Madame B defiantly. She was not going to beg. The supervisor at least looked satisfied when she realized that for herself.

Without warning the arms loosened and Nadya was collapsing to the floor, choking and gasping as air once again flowed freely into her lungs. Madame B resumed her place at the edge of the room. Her eyes fell mercilessly on Nadya as she stood, forcing her limbs not to shake as pain prickled through her body. The older woman's chin rose fractionally.

"Again."

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