[ NATASHA ]
"That's just how time travel looks like to the untrained eye. The reason why there aren't more travelers is that your average physicist refuses to be eaten by a giraffe in the name of science." – Bradley Sands, It Came from Below the Belt
When the Pocker came for her again, she was ready.
Natasha laid on her bed, back to the door. She waited and listened, running over pointless lists and random memorized facts in her head to keep herself awake and occupied. The names of the nine realms she'd learned from Thor. Bruce's recipe for butter chicken and naan. Movies the team collectively decided Steve had to see. The endless ways to incapacitate someone with simple office supplies. Anything.
Finally, the door opened and in came the guard, barking at Natasha to get up. She held her breath and stayed in her crumpled, lifeless position, eyes open and unseeing.
"Hey!" the guard shouted, "Deaf, crag? I said get the hell up!"
He stormed over to jab her in the back. Natasha was prepared for him and didn't flinch, but it was a near thing.
"Hey! " the Pocker yelled louder, close to her ear. He watched her for a few seconds then swore loudly.
He never had a chance to call for backup to help him dispose of the dead prisoner, because Natasha was on him. She leapt up, cracking the guard in the head with her own. Fighting off the sparks in her vision, she gripped the string of fabric she'd torn off of her pants leg and dove for the cursing guard. Natasha tackled him. The weapon he'd been reaching for at his hip went tumbling under the bed. She looped the fabric under his chin, planted her weight on his back, and pulled.
The guard flailed, trying to hit any part of her he could reach. Natasha held the pressure on his neck, grunting when his hits landed but she didn't budge. He gurgled and wiggled and fell still. Natasha eased the fabric away from the Pocker's neck but held her position for another few breaths. Certain he was unconscious, Natasha hopped off of his back and retrieved his weapon.
She turned it over experimentally—it looked like a regular 9mm, but there was no safety and no magazine release. Natasha frowned and wrapped her fingers around the hilt. It was too light, the heft of it all wrong. She wondered if it was empty, or what else she wasn't seeing. She didn't have time to puzzle it out—any moment now, another Pocker might be coming to check on her or realize somebody was missing from their ranks.
Natasha poked her head out of her room, but there was no one in sight. She jogged with feather-light footsteps down the corridor, knowing with every step she didn't have a clue where she was going. Maybe if she could find a control room…take a Pocker hostage, get out of these weird binding cuffs, force the guard to lead her out...
Then, coming in the opposite direction Natasha was going, was Garrett and four white-clad guards. Garrett's face and arms were bruised and bloody, hands bound in front. Like the red-headed woman Natasha had seen, blood spattered his white uniform.
She met his surprised blue eyes.
The Pockers shouted at her and they threw Garrett to the ground. Two Pockers tore after Natasha. The others holding Garrett down shouted a garbled-sounding language into glowing panels on the top of their gloves. Alarms blared. Natasha aimed her gun and pulled the trigger but nothing happened as the Pockers bore down on her. The gun clicked ineffectively in her hand.
She flew into action. She threw the useless gun aside, flipping to disable the first guard that reached her. The next one tried to stop her, but a high-slicing kick to his neck had him on the floor wheezing. A second hit to the head, and he was as incapacitated as his friend. Red and yellow lights flared to life and flashed in the halls, accompanied by loud, clanging alarms.
The pair holding Garrett on the floor were frantic. One got up to charge Natasha and she dropped to avoid his weapon discharge, crashing into his knees and slamming him face first into the floor. Natasha rolled and swung her still-cuffed arms around. The binders cracked the Pocker in the mouth with an ugly crunch, sending a spray of blood and teeth across the floor. He fell back wailing and clutching his face. Natasha clocked him again to shut him up.
Garrett struggled against his last remaining sweaty captor, who hollered at the panel on his glove. Natasha dove at him, knocking him off Garrett. He was as easy to knock out as the other three had been—little to no fight training, she noted. Or at least, not very good fight training.
Pockers down, Natasha took off, ignoring a pang of guilt at the sound of Garrett's shouts for her to wait. Perhaps she should've slowed to help him somehow, but what could she do? What could he do? He was a battered prisoner, still bound in the mysterious white cuffs same as her. He was only going to slow her down.
It was easy to push away the regret of leaving him behind when she couldn't hear him calling out anymore.
Wherever she was, the place was under attack. An explosion rocked the walls and sent her to her knees. She was up and running in an instant. The white glow of the halls surrounding her switched to an all red glow. Small white lights appeared at the edges of the wall where it met the floor. It wasn't exactly an arrow pointing to the exit, but it was close enough since some hallways were missing the little white lights.
Natasha smiled.
She encountered a set of armed guards when she rounded a corner. She dropped to the floor as they fired. Natasha rolled into their midst, popping up and using her heavy cuffs as a weapon. She swung her arms in a wide, jaw-splitting arc. They couldn't shoot at her in such close quarters, instead trying to bludgeon her with their sleek little guns.
Natasha was too fast for them. She wove between them, leapt up and scissored her legs around one guard's neck. She used her momentum to take him down and was on her feet before the others could compute what had happened. She shoved the rest into each other, tripping them up. She slammed them into the walls, smacking skulls and teeth indiscriminately with her elbows and knees.
There was another explosion as Natasha knocked out the last guard. The force of the blast was close enough to make the walls splinter and she almost fell off her feet. She heard shouting and gunfire and took off running again.
Natasha made it to another corridor before a group of people barrelled around the corner opposite her. She was about to attack again when she realized it was Garrett, uncuffed, leading about a dozen people with mismatched clothes and weapons, and three others dressed in white.
"You!" he shouted. He actually looked relieved. "Come on!"
Natasha hesitated.
"Come on, run! " Garrett yelled. He gestured for her to follow as him and his crew tore off down the corridor ahead and to her left.
Natasha bit her lip, still not thrilled with the idea of trusting strangers, but ran after them anyway. If Garrett's buddies were the ones blowing stuff up around here, they were certainly preferable company to the people who wanted to "bleach" or execute her. Besides, the least she could do was use them to get out of the building before striking out on her own.
The band of fighters came upon a few sets of Pockers and shot their way past them. Natasha wondered how Garrett's people had gotten the strange guns to work as she hopped over the fallen white-clad bodies. The blood from the holes in the guards' chests looked pitch black under the red lights.
At a set of massive double doors, the group came under heavy fire. Natasha ducked for cover, cursing her lack of mobility due to the cuffs.
Another explosion shook the walls and debris flew by. A beefy man with dark skin shielded her and she glanced at him in surprise. His eyes caught on her cuffs. Though she couldn't hear what he was saying over the din, he pulled a squat black tube from his jacket and pressed it to the metal around her wrists. The binders sizzled, smoked, and vibrated so hard it made her teeth rattle, but they popped apart. She slid her hands out and kicked the dreaded thing away, rubbing at her skin.
The guy grinned and she yelled her thanks, though she wasn't sure he could hear her.
Then, they were off and running again. Most of the guards were down, the doors hung off smoking hinges, and she could see actual sunlight. They pounded towards it, emerging into an open, grassy area dotted with stone pillars. Gunfire peppered the pillar nearest them as smoke and fire filled the air to her right. She blindly followed Garrett's people through the incredible chaos.
The force of an explosion behind her threw Natasha to the ground. Heat roared past her and she was positive she was dead meat until a hand closed around hers and yanked her to her feet. Garrett's face was filthy and bloody and banged all to hell, but he still managed to shoot her a grin and yell something that sounded like All right, Red?
She tumbled after him up the ramp of a strange, metal craft. She copied him when he held on to the netting lining the walls. As it took off, turbulence and heavy gunfire buffeted the ship, and Natasha held on tighter with both hands, praying that the thing didn't fall out of the sky.
When the flight evened out and they'd left the sound of bullets and explosions behind, Natasha allowed herself to properly breathe. She cast a glance at the battered crew around her. Some of them were bleeding, most were streaked with grime. A few of them had their eyes closed, though she couldn't be sure if they were resting or unconscious.
Garrett, beside her, saw her looking and smiled. "Helluva a rescue, hey?"
Natasha swallowed and desperately hoped that, in getting on this ship, she'd done the right thing.
As the transport roared through the air, Natasha toyed with what persona to project to these people and how to interact with them. As they spoke sympathetically to her about her being "bleached," about her supposed loss of her memories, however, she realized she didn't have to pretend to be anyone, not really. She didn't know anything about this world, but no one expected her to.
They scanned everyone for trackers and bugs. Garrett went first, standing still with his arms spread apart as a short woman waved a thin black wand over every part of him twice. When the last person was checked and deemed safe, Garrett broke into another relieved grin.
The ship came in for a landing about half an hour later. Natasha hadn't seen much through the cramped windows while they'd been in the air—lots of desert, lots of scarred and blackened landscapes, and the occasional gleaming city too far in the distance to make out much detail. Wherever they were, it was in the shelter of red mountains.
The ship's ramp lowered with a loud hiss and Garrett was first to disembark. He was greeted by three people and a medical team, the latter of which hurried on board to tend to the wounded. Another group clad in black and faded green outfits hurried forward to do another check for bugs and trackers, this time with different devices—they looked like a few different things mashed oddly together made a squat box with lights and cords.
When she was cleared too, Natasha followed Garrett's crew members out, unsure what she was supposed to do or where she ought to go. Her feet hit red dirt, and she glanced around, absorbing the scene before she took another step.
The ship had docked under some sort of massive manmade hanger, wedged into russet rock. The space was huge and oblong, maybe about the size of a football field. There were a few other large ships like the one she'd arrived in—built a little like a cargo plane without wings. Most were in pieces, riddled with bullet holes, or covered in scorch marks. There were smaller vehicles too, similar to ATVs, scattered around and in various states of disrepair.
A few dozen people milled around the area. Some came over to greet Garrett and his people—all, she noticed, had tattooed circlets on their wrists: blue, black, and white.
Deeper into the hanger were multiple sets of doors. The largest ones in the middle were propped wide open, allowing a steady flow of foot traffic in and out. Before she caught much more than a glimpse of them, Garrett waved her over to him and dismissed the people he'd been talking to.
"Still all right, Red?" he asked.
Natasha shrugged.
Garrett smiled. "Yeah. Let's get you something to chow and bring you up to speed. Keen?"
"Sure," she replied. She followed him and two of his crew members towards the large open doors and out of the hanger.
Garrett led them down a series of hallways. Everything was dingy and ramshackle in the way that spoke of it being well-used and "homemade," but not unsanitary. It was a far cry from the extremely white, pristine prison she'd toured through and somehow immensely more comforting. Natasha wasn't about to let her guard down, but she let her shoulders relax. She'd always been one to trust her instincts, and right now, they were telling her that this place was safe, at least for the moment.
The people in the base shared a sort of shabby look that spoke to hard but determined living. As she passed them in the halls, she noticed they bore scars, and most of them wore ragged clothes, but few appeared to be unhappy. In fact, most of them greeted Garrett with smiles, shouts, and salutes. It was clear to Natasha by the time she, Garrett, and his friends reached the eating area that he was a leader here and well-liked.
"Have a seat, Red, and I'll get you somethin'." He gestured to the mismatched benches and chairs crowded around banged up tables and flashed her another smile.
Natasha chose a chair that gave her a view of the room and the entryway, placing her back against the wall. The other two went with Garrett to retrieve food from the makeshift-looking kitchen, erected along the far wall. A dozen or so people sat scattered around the other tables. Natasha wondered how big this complex was and how many people were occupying it. Were they all the "treacherous rebels" that Garrett's father had mentioned?
Garrett and his two friends returned minutes later with a few steaming bowls. They settled around the table with her. The tanned man on her right, with a black tattoo on his wrist, aggressively dug into his bowl of stew. The dark-skinned woman across from her eyed Natasha and ate her food with more care.
"Sorry, rations are thin this week," said Garrett, sliding Natasha a spoon. "So's the stew."
It didn't look or smell like much, nor was it overly tasty. There were bits of vegetables, small chunks of different-colored meat, and Natasha was fairly certain even Clint could've produced a better meal. Still, after a good day or two without anything in her belly, it was welcome and filling. Even if it did need some salt, spice, and more items to fill out the broth.
"You really are bleached?" asked the woman, Ophie. She was about the same age as Natasha, and watched her carefully like she wanted to trust her but couldn't just yet. Natasha knew the feeling.
Natasha nodded and set her spoon aside. Her stomach gave a quiet rumble—thankful for substance, but there hadn't been nearly enough.
Since she truly didn't know anything about this world, it was easy to pretend she'd had her memory wiped. Garrett and his crew were perfectly happy to answer any question she had, no matter how inane it was—like asking the year (2176, apparently). It was an excellent, if less than ideal, way to gather intel as they sat around the table, digesting their stew.
"Look, it's simple," said the tanned guy with the black band on his wrist, Jeksen. "You got your Coals, Scuds, Supers, and Empties. Coals are the cragging elite, Scuds are the scum and undesirables, Supers got the powers, and the Empties are nobodies—the everything else, the in-between. Keen?"
Natasha raised her eyebrow at Garrett. "And in English…?"
Garrett laughed, a warm, rolling sound. "Yeah, it can be kinda sideways to latch. You're not the first bleached mate we've found or rescued. You might be the first unclassified one I've ever peeped, though."
Ophie nodded vigorously. "Ain't impossible, just cragging hard to do. You ever get peeped by a Pocker out there, they'll haul you in and terminate 'cha."
"Okay, that's about the fifth time I've heard that," said Natasha. "What does that mean—'unclassified'?"
Garrett pointed to her unblemished wrist. "No identifier." He lifted his arm to show her his white circlet. "Former Coal, me. She's former Empty, and Jeks's former Scud. You come of age, you get slapped with one of these."
"People have tried to get away from it—to hide," said Ophie, her tone growing hard. "But damn Pockers always find you. You can only hide so long, even out here." She held out her arm and turned it so Natasha could see the inside of her tattooed wrist. A jagged, ugly scar marred her dark skin. "Tracking chips come with the ink. Damn hard to remove, what with bein' tied to your nervous system and all."
Natasha chewed the inside of her lip then asked, "And so the colors signify what group you're in? But how do they know?"
"Supposedly they got some secret test or algorithm or some bullshit," explained Garrett. "Best and brightest, prettiest and richest are always Coals—you know, for the Coalition. They're the cragging whackers up in the shiny cities. Scuds are the opposite—criminals, degenerates, crazies, horror shows, idiots and all."
"Shoved out and quarantined in the worst areas in the country, separated from the pretty little public by stretches of Dead Zone—you know, the inhabitable bits?" Jeks chimed in. "'Course, plenty don't actually deserve to be there, but you think the Coals care 'bout that?"
"Scud Territories are absolute hellholes," added Ophie. "Made to be. You take all the worst of the worst and shove them in a small, craggy area…" She snapped her fingers and made an explosion noise.
Natasha's gut turned over. What the hell had happened in this world? How had the Coalition formed? How had they come to this point? How had the rest of the world let them?
"Empties fit into neither," continued Garrett. "The average, the middles, the people who're not extraordinary or undesirable. There's plenty of 'em, but they're beaten down by the Coals to stay in line or risk getting rebranded a Scud." Darkness clouded his expression and she didn't want to imagine the horrors he was recalling.
Natasha swallowed against the dryness in her throat. "And you mentioned… Supers?"
"Right. They wear red. They're the people who have superpowers—literally. I know, creative, right?" Garrett sighed and raked his fingers through his hair. "The Coals actively hunt Supers. Anybody who displays a power is captured and terminated. We've heard of some Supers who're, uh… rehabilitated and re-purposed, but we're pretty sure that means bleached and genetically stripped until there's nothing left but a cragging shell."
Ophie dropped her eyes to her empty bowl and Jeks let out a long, heavy breath. Waves of shock and horror rolled over Natasha.
"How did this happen?" she managed. "How could…any of this…happen?"
Garrett's smile was empty and exhausted. "That's a real long story, Red. And we've got things to do." As he pushed his chair back to stand, Ophie and Jeks did the same. "C'mon. I have it on keen authority you had a choice little chat with my dear ol' dad. And you got yourself out of the hands of a Pocker, in a cell, by your lonesome."
Natasha shrugged.
He grinned. "We're gonna need every detail."