It was unseasonably cold that spring day in 1986 when the representatives arrived. There'd been wet snow overnight but it had turned to rain in the morning, leaving the streets slushy and slippery, and a damp chill in the air that the building's aging heaters could do very little to dispel. The headmistress of the Gogolya State Home for Girls had hoped the unpleasant weather would keep her guests from making their scheduled appointment, but they were on the step promptly at ten AM. There were eight men in white uniforms, and one woman – a tall, elegant individual with blonde hair tied up under her ushanka, and a white coat with a thick fur collar.
There were no pleasantries. The headmistress let them in, and the woman handed her coat and hat to a subordinate who took them without a word. Underneath she was dressed in a pale gray tweed suit with a skirt to just past her knees, and white boots. The only splash of colour was a malachite-green silk scarf tied around her neck, which only served to make her already pale face look even more unearthly. The headmistress did not know this woman's name. She'd never heard her addressed as anything but Madame.
"Where are the new girls?" Madame asked. Everybody else's breath was visible in the cold and damp, but hers was not.
The headmistress stood up as straight as she dared. "I want you to know," she said, "that I do this with the most strenuous objections."
"Objections?" Madame narrowed her gray-blue eyes. "Do you object to the glory of the Soviet State, Comrade Kiryanova?"
"I object to your treatment of these girls," the headmistress replied. "I know where you're taking them, and I know what you do to them there." She kept her trembling hands behind her back, and hoped her voice wasn't shaking as much as she thought it was.
Madame leaned closer. "These girls," she said, "will serve a destiny far greater than yours, and you must not allow your petty jealousy to deny them that. Now, show me the new arrivals."
The headmistress met the other woman's gaze as steadily as she could, but there would not have been any real way to argue with Madame, even if she hadn't had armed men with her. She paused a moment to self-consciously rearrange her shawl – hand-knitted by her grandmother, and in places needing repair – around her shoulders, then headed into the room where the children were beginning their day's studies.
There was very little time for play in a state home like this one. Even as young as three and four years old, children had to be taught to be good citizens, productive workers, and strong members of the Party. These little girls were no exception – they were being taught their alphabet and numbers, and those whose attention drifted might receive a scolding or a rap on the knuckles. The headmistress prided herself on her institution molding well-behaved, well-educated young women... but even then, they were supposed to be young women. Not what Madame and her followers would make out of them.
"The new ones are at the far end, the ones from Ukraine," she said, pointing to the last table. The girls there were quieter than most, and often smaller – some were only a year or two old. "They lost one or both parents in Chernobyl. Some of them are recovering, others are still in shock." She glanced sideways at her guests. "The officials thought you might be interested in them, since they should probably never have children of their own anyway. The exposure may have caused mutations."
Madame said nothing. She walked up and down the table, past the row of little girls who were carefully copying shapes or scribbling in notebooks their tutors had given them. A few looked up as the stranger passed, but none spoke.
"That one's had a high dose," said the headmistress, indicating one in particular. "You can see she's lost half her hair. The one third from the end broke her wrist. She tried to climb down from a moving vehicle to go back and get the family dog, but they weren't allowed to take animals with them."
Madame wrinkled her nose in disapproval of such sentiment.
"The one at the end on the left side, she's been badly traumatized," the headmistress went on. She did this every time, trying to make each child seem as undesirable as possible. Sometimes it worked. Mostly it didn't. This time, however, she had high hopes. The children from Chernobyl were already weak and sickly – and if Madame's attention remained on their infirmities, she might not think to look at the others. "She lost both her parents and a stepbrother. She hasn't spoken since they brought her here," she added. "We know she can speak, but she doesn't want to. She does as she's told, though."
Madame raised the chin of the girl in question – a thin child, with freckled cheeks and feathery brown hair – and studied her for a moment. Her eyes were empty, as if whatever soul the girl had possessed had died with her family in the nuclear fire. "That could be useful," Madame said, and turned to her underlings. "Take this one, and the twins there, the ones who are taller than the others."
The men moved to lift the children from their chairs. The freckled one went silently. One of the twins whimpered, and the other kicked and struggled but was soon scolded into silence. The men put a wristband on each child, and carried them out the door, while the headmistress looked away. Orphans of the accident had left every State Home between Kiev and Novgorod overflowing with unwanted children, and she would not have to make up as many extra beds on tables and floors that night – but those girls deserved a better fate.
"I'd like to look at the rest," said Madame.
"You've seen the rest," the headmistress told her. "They were here last time."
"I'd like to look at them again," Madame replied coldly.
The headmistress could do nothing but stand back and watch as Madame paced up and down the rows of tables. She paused here and there to study round little faces, watch penmanship, or read a paragraph over a child's shoulder. Despite the chill, the headmistress felt a bead of nervous sweat roll down her back. She couldn't escape the fear that Madame was counting them. Perhaps it was only her own paranoia. Hopefully, she would soon be satisfied and leave.
"Where is the last?" asked Madame.
The headmistress tried not to show any reaction, although inside she felt as if she'd been suddenly pushed off a cliff. "What other?"
"You're supposed to have one hundred and seventy-two children under your care here," said Madame. "I count one hundred and seventy-one."
"Perhaps there was an error in the records," the headmistress suggested. "Or you counted wrong." In her head she begged God and Saint Jerome to make this woman leave.
Madame turned to the men. "Search the building," she ordered. "Tear up the floor if you have to." They immediately spread out to do so, and Madame turned to meet the headmistress' gaze. Her ice-blue eyes were as empty as the silent girl's brown ones. The threat was unspoken, but hung in the air regardless, heavy and solid as a lead weight.
All the headmistress could do was stand there and pray – and when, after a few minutes of searching, she heard a child's cry, she knew that God had not heard her. When the men returned, two of them were carrying a struggling girl, barely holding on to her although she was no more than two years old. The child kicked and wailed as the men pinned her arms to her sides and yanked her head up by her red hair to force her to look at Madame.
"She was in the pantry," said one of them. "On the bottom shelf, behind bags of flour."
"That one is mine," the headmistress protested. She had to say something, and that was almost true. "My own daughter."
"No, she isn't," snorted Madame. "You have no children and you're not capable of having them. I've seen your medical records. A hysterectomy at the age of twenty-two, to correct untreatable adenomyosis."
"She will be!" the headmistress insisted. "I am adopting her myself. I've already sent in the paperwork." Surely even these monsters had to bow to the law, if they loved the State as much as they claimed they did. "She's not suitable for you. She's disobedient and sensitive, and she asks too many questions!"
"The children will be tested," said Madame, "and those who are not suitable will be placed elsewhere. Take her, too," she ordered her men.
But that was more than the headmistress could bear – she couldn't possibly watch this sweet, rebellious, and endlessly curious child taken away to become a machine. She dropped her shawl and rushed forward to wrestle the red-haired girl out of the arms of her captors. Before she could reach her, however, Madame put out a leg to trip her. When the headmistress' arms went out to catch herself, Madame grabbed her from behind by the shoulder and upper arm and wrenched them in opposite directions, breaking her collarbone. The headmistress fell to the floor, howling in pain.
Her employees shushed the frightened children and encouraged them to return to their studies. Nobody made a move to help. Nobody dared.
"I trust you have learned your duty to the state," said Madame coldly. "I will see you again next year, Comrade Kiryanova – if you live that long."
Outside, the rain had turned to snow again. Madame lit a cigarette and waited on the step while her men collected the State Home's records for the four girls they'd taken. It was part of the procedure. They would eliminate every trace – it was important that none of the girls from the Red Room have any connections outside of it.
"Is that everything?" she asked, when the last man emerged with a box of records.
"Yelena Belova and Irina and Ilona Melnik," he said. "And Natalia Romanova."
The corner of an envelope was protruding from the top of one of the folders. Madame pulled it out and read the handwriting on the front: for Natalia, when she comes of age. For a moment she considered opening it, but then she put her cigarette to the corner instead and watched coldly as the paper caught fire. "Burn it all," she ordered, "as usual."
She waited until the flames had crawled up the envelope almost to her fingers, and then dropped it in the snow and got in the truck.
The new girls were waiting there. The twins were holding each other, in tears. The red-head Kiryanova had been so determined to save for whatever reason was curled in a ball on the floor, crying. The silent one was sitting by herself with her hands in her lap, unresponsive.
"No crying," Madame told them as she did up her seat belt. "Where you're going, you will have no need for tears."
The children looked up at her, uncomprehending. Oh, but they would learn.
"You were in that place because your parents didn't want you," said Madame. "The poor girls we left behind might be there for years with nobody ever to love them, but you're going to a better place. The State will love you as no human mother could ever love her daughters." She smiled. "If you're good, she will make sure you never want for food or warmth or a place to sleep. And someday, when you've grown up big and strong, you will be able to love and serve her in return."
The engine started, and the truck rumbled away into the swirling snow.
Twenty-six years later, Natasha Romanov lay curled on the floor of an airplane bathroom, trying to think.
She knew the Red Room had been watching her for years. Natasha had dozens of fake identities, all of which came with histories and paperwork – the Red Room had probably been collecting them, and she'd taken care to lay false trails for them to follow as well. They'd tried to get her back once before, when she'd made the foolish mistake of visiting the old orphanage in Volgograd. Now they'd decided to try again... why now, and why this way?
It had to be the Battle of New York, she decided. Her face had been on the news at least once, when a group of television reporters had met the Avengers outside the diner where they'd gathered for what Thor had called their Victory Feast. The entire rest of the world had seen that, so surely the Red Room agents had, too... maybe they'd decided they just couldn't afford the risk of anybody else digging into Natasha's background, or maybe it had been their confirmation of who she was really working for. Either way, they'd decided the time had come to lay a trap.
Somebody must have seen Natasha buy the phone. The chip she'd put in it, to keep it from being traced to nearby towers, was something she'd stolen from the KGB – if anybody could track that, it was the Red Room. They would have listened in to the calls and texts the phone made, which had told them that somebody important to Nat was on this flight. Had Laura sent the message that the plane had been hijacked, or had the widows done that themselves? Did they know who Laura Barton was, or only that Natasha had been supposed to meet her?
Whatever the case, it was clear that they had no regard for the fate of the passengers. For all Natasha knew, they were planning to have everybody shot when they landed in Vladivostok – if they didn't die of oxygen deprivation on the way. Somebody would have to bring the plane down to ten thousand feet, where there would be enough air for everybody... and in the absence of anybody else to do it, 'somebody' was going to have to be Natasha herself.
She prioritized. The first thing she would have to do would be to get out of her bonds, and the second was to get more oxygen – she wouldn't be able to sustain physical activity on what was available at this altitude. Then she'd have to find weapons.
First things first. Her hands were behind her back, so instead she took a look at the cuffs on her feet. They were chained to each other, and she could feel that they were attached to the ones on her wrists by a metal bar that was intended to keep the two just a bit more than a hand's length apart, so she couldn't pick the locks on the ankle cuffs. Feet were bigger than hands, however, and Nat was good with her toes. Moving slowly and carefully so as not to jingle the metal, she started to wiggle out of her boots.
Once the boots were gone she had to get out of her socks and then, using only her toes, extract the hot wire hidden in the seam of one boot – an old but dependable piece of spy gear. The problem was that if she accidentally activated it in the process, the carpet or her own clothing might start to smolder, which would set off the washroom smoke detector and alert her guards to her escape attempt. She worked as slowly as she dared, stopping frequently for deep breaths to keep her oxygen levels up.
Finally, the wire came free and she was able, with some painful twisting and turning of her arms and legs, to feed it through the cuff on her right wrist. Now all it would take was a quick, sharp tug to activate it.
Her first attempt wasn't quite enough. The second succeeded, but she bumped against the counter and a bottle of hand sanitizer fell into the sink with a clank. Natasha held her breath, waiting.
"I knew you'd try something," Yelena said, and the door opened.
But Natasha's right hand was now free. She whipped the hot wire up and, as Yelena reached for her, wrapped it around the other woman's arm, burning through her white blazer. Yelena hissed through her teeth but did not scream, and headbutted Nat, causing her to fall back into a sitting position on the toilet.
Natasha took a quick inventory. There were two taser discs left, hidden in her collar – but she didn't have time to get them out. Instead, as Yelena stepped towards her, Nat jumped up and caught the other's hand between her shoulder and chin, holding it tight in just the right spot to activate the electricity. Nat had three layers of pleather to protect her from the shock, but Yelena had only one. She twitched as the current flowed into her, then collapsed on the floor. Natasha hit her in the back of the neck with her free hand to make sure she'd stay down.
So far, so good – but she was now down to just one disc, she'd lost the hot wire, and her left hand was still cuffed to her ankles. Kamila and Triinu were still outside the door, and somehow she was going to have to take them both.
With her free right hand, Natasha pulled the other taser disc out of her collar and launched herself as best she could at the first widow to appear in the doorway – Triinu. As she did, she yanked as hard as she could with both legs, hoping the chain on her cuffs would break. It did not, but the cuff itself was forced painfully down over her thumb, and Natasha was able to rip her left hand free, leaving a broad bleeding scrape down her hand. Not pretty, but she'd deal with it later.
She made ready to attack Triinu with the disc, but the blonde woman grabbed her out of the air and threw her against the partition that divided the washroom area from the emergency exits behind her. The thin wall collapsed and Nat rolled across the floor, panting as she came to rest at the feet of a couple of unconscious passengers.
That was a sharp reminder. Whatever else happened, she had to remember that there were over three hundred civilians on this airplane. Those lives were why she was here.
The row behind her had three seats but only two passengers who had activated their oxygen masks. The third mask was just dangling, and there should still be oxygen in the canister above. Natasha jumped to her feet and ripped the whole thing out of the ceiling. She heard the hiss as it activated, and got the mask onto her face moments before Triinu came at her again. The gases inside smelled like something dead but she could feel the buzz as fresh oxygen flowed into her lungs. Now she'd be able to think.
Natasha had no more weapons, but the metal bar was still attached to her foot cuffs – she could use that. She rolled back on her shoulders and swung her legs at her attacker, intending to use the extra eight inches of the metal bar to hit her in the face. Triinu dodged by half an inch and grabbed Nat's legs on the way by, so Natasha switched tactics and used her arms instead, grabbing the legs of the seats to pull Triinu off her own feet. Once the blonde was down, Nat rolled over her and got back to her feet as best she could to face Kamila.
Her eyes darted to the left. The emergency exit was right there. If she opened that, she could throw Kamila and Triinu out and let the engines blow them away. It was a long way down.
But that was a solution of last resort. Natasha had made Fury promise her that if SHIELD apprehended any more black widows, he would give them a chance to reform – or at least allow them a fair trial before they were imprisoned or executed. Having extracted that promise from him, Nat could do no less herself.
Because of the cuffs on her feet, Natasha was unable to widen her stance. Kamila could, and understood that this gave her an advantage. So did the fact that she had both hands free, while Natasha had to use one to hang on to the oxygen canister she'd pulled out of the ceiling – the chemical reaction that produced the gas was starting to heat the metal, and she wasn't sure how much longer she'd be able to touch it. The heat might make an effective weapon, though. Kamila didn't appear to be armed, herself – she had the others would have had to go through airport security in order to get on the plane, even if they were supposedly employees. But black widows were taught to improvise.
Kamila jumped up on the arm of a seat and opened an overhead bin. The first item she pulled out was a small wheeled suitcase – this was pink, with Hello Kitty characters on it, but it was also hard-sided and full almost to bursting. Kamila dropped to the floor again, using gravity to give the suitcase an extra burst as she hurled it at Nat.
Natasha somersaulted over it. Her training, grilled into her by years in the Red Room, was to try to wrap her legs around Kamila's neck, but she couldn't do that when her ankles were still cuffed together. Instead, she grabbed the handle and got back to her feet, only to realize that if she threw the suitcase at Kamila, it might hit the elderly man who was unconscious in the seat on the other side of the aisle. All she could do safely was push it away to the rear.
That oxygen canister was really getting hot now.
Kamila took down a second piece of luggage, but kept holding on to this one as she swung it at Natasha. Nat bounced backwards onto her free hand and blocked with her feet. Kamila tried a higher angle. Nat kicked the luggage out of her hands and seized her opportunity to use the canister as a weapon, pushing the hot metal against Kamila's face.
Kamila screamed and grabbed Nat by the hair, throwing her to the ground. The canister was torn off the tube connecting it to Nat's mask, and the sudden cessation of the oxygen made her gasp. Spots began to flicker in her vision again as the metal cylinder rolled away under the seats.
Nat looked around, increasingly desperate. The was a kitchen area at the next cross aisle, up at row 24 – there might be something in there she could use as a weapon, but Kamila was in her way. There was another kitchen aft, at row 45, but that was where Triinu was, and she was now getting to her feet. Natasha couldn't go back into the bathroom, because that was a dead end and Yelena might regain consciousness at any moment.
With no other options open to her, Natasha right right, towards the other aisle. It was a tight squeeze between the first row of seats and the back wall of the central set of washrooms, but it would be difficult for the others to follow her there. Triinu, still unsteady on her feet, didn't even try – but Kamila jumped back up on the seats themselves, and used the backs of them to vault herself over the sleeping passengers and land in the other aisle ahead of Natasha.
That forced Nat to go aft. With her feet still bound, she decided to try a handspring, but Kamila tackled her. Nat rolled over to kick her off, but Kamila pinned her to the floor with her hands on Natasha's wrists and a knee just under her ribs.
"I'd have thought SHIELD would teach you some new tricks!" spat Kamila, then raised her head as Triinu came wobbling up. "Get the door," she ordered.
The other emergency exit was next to them. Triinu stepped over Kamila and Natasha and grabbed the handle.
"I thought Madame was going to deal with me," said Natasha through gritted teeth.
"That was preferable." Kamila dragged Nat to her feet and pushed her against the wall next to the door. "But you know that killing is always an option – especially if there's no other way to complete a mission."
Triinu turned the handle, and wind came howling in.
If ever there were a situation of last resort, it was now. Natasha let her knee collapse, and as Kamila tried to catch her, suddenly straightened up again, driving the back of her head into the other woman's jaw. Kamila cried out and staggered backwards, and when Nat turned she saw blood on her lips from a bitten tongue. She threw herself forward, grabbed Kamila around the legs, and pinned her in turn, twisting her arms up behind her back. Kamila would have to dislocate at least one shoulder to escape the hold, which was something widows had been trained to do. Whatever Natasha was going to do now – and she really wasn't sure – she didn't have a whole lot of time to do it.
And there was still Triinu, who took a couple of steps towards them, then paused.
"What the hell are you waiting for?" Kamila demanded, shouting over the wind.
Triinu licked her lips. "Natalia!" she shouted. "You escaped!"
"Yes, I did!" Natasha said. She'd refused a summons from the Red Room and had gone rogue – something no widow had been able to do since 1946. "If you want out, I'll help you! SHIELD will help you!" she promised.
"I don't want SHIELD!" Triinu said. "I want to disappear!"
"Then I'll help you do that!" Natasha said. "I promise! Just help me save this plane!"
Triinu nodded and grabbed Kamila's ankles. The two of them lifted her off the floor, and Triinu moved as if to throw Kamila out the open door. Natasha had to pull on their captive's arms, which must have hurt, in order to stop her.
"Wait!" she ordered.
"Why?" Triinu demanded. "If we let her live, she'll try to stop us!"
"She's as much of a victim as we are!" Natasha said. "If we're getting out, then we're taking Yelena and Kamila with us, even if we have to drag them! Do you understand?"
"They'll try to kill you! They tried once before!" Triinu reminded her.
Counting today, they'd tried twice, Natasha thought, and the first time they hadn't even been under orders. But killing them herself was what a vigilante would do – Natasha was an agent. She was supposed to have a code of conduct. "They have to go back to SHIELD for trial!" she insisted.
"What do we do with them, then?" Triinu asked.
That was a difficult question. Kamila and Yelena would remain dangerous as long as they were alive and conscious, unless they too changed their their minds and decided to escape. "Cuff them together," Natasha decided. "There should be cupboards in the kitchen that can lock." Those wouldn't lock very securely, certainly no more so than the bathroom, but their options were limited.
She tried not to think of another little girl hiding in a kitchen cupboard. Baba Galina had told her the monsters were coming – and she'd been right.
Natasha and Triinu shut the emergency exit, then got the cuffs off Nat's legs and used them to fasten Kamila's right hand to Yelena's right foot, which was the most awkward arrangement they could come up with. Then they took both of them to the aft kitchen section, where Triinu took the various wires and tools they had hidden about their persons and dropped them in a sink of water to destroy the electronics, while Natasha stuffed them in a cabinet and locked it.
Triinu then pulled a panel from the wall and unwound some wires from the interior of the coffee maker. Natasha quickly figured out what she was trying to do, and helped – they used the remains of the cuff Natasha had broken to secure the wires to the cupboard door lock, and Triinu turned the coffee maker on. With no water in it, it wouldn't make coffee, but it would electrify the metal and give a nasty shock to anybody who tried to open the door.
"All right," said Natasha, inspecting the scrape to her left hand and the burns to her right – both were superficial and could be ignored for now. "Who's flying the plane?"
"Dimitria," Triinu told her.
Dimitria Volkova had been the best pilot of Natasha's class, as well as a master of fighting in small spaces. They were going to need weapons. "Bottles," she said to Triinu.
Triinu nodded and began opening the fridges, while Natasha searched the overhead compartments for duty-free purchases. She found a bottle of wine that would make a decent club, and returned to the kitchen area to find that Triinu had broken two beer bottles to use as knives. Thus armed, they made their way forward.
"You, Kamila, Yelena, and Dimitria," said Natasha. "Anybody else?" She doubted it – black widows rarely worked in groups. They'd never needed more than two for any given situation. Four was overkill.
"That's all," said Triinu.
So Dimitria would be alone in the cockpit – that would give them an advantage. "How did you guys get in?" Natasha asked. Since 9/11, cockpit doors had been made nearly impenetrable. She might learn something now that would be useful to the FAA later. And if Triinu were willing to answer questions, Natasha might also find out how much the Red Room knew about the Barton family.
Triinu smirked. "We went to ask the crew if they wanted coffee. When we brought it, Dimitria spilled it in the co-pilot's lap, and with nobody looking at her, Yelena hit them from behind."
"Where are they now?" Natasha asked.
"In the ocean somewhere," said Triinu with a shrug.
She clearly didn't care, so Natasha just nodded. For the purposes of the widows' mission, the pilots were disposable. The fact that they had families somewhere – parents, spouses, children, friends – wouldn't matter a bit.
"When we're on the ground, I want to go to Haapsalu," said Triinu.
Natasha knew the place – a picturesque city on the west coast of Estonia. "What's in Haapsalu?" she asked.
"My father, I think," said Triinu. "I remember watching him waving goodbye from the deck of a ship."
"What was his name?" asked Nat.
"Kristofer," Triinu said.
"I'll find him for you," Natasha promised, but then both women fellsilent as they came to the top of the stairs, into the business class section. This area was not nearly as cramped as economy and with a bigger and better-appointed kitchen. That might be useful, but for now, their first concern was getting into the cockpit. The door was shut and locked, and Dimitria definitely wouldn't be opening it for an offer of coffee.
