In the Still of the Night
Chapter Two: Shh, It's a Military Secret
A/N: And here's chapter two! Thanks to everyone who read chapter one, hopefully it caught your interest and you'll keep going with this story. I won't be writing author's notes for every single chapter, but for this chapter I just wanted to mention that I will definitely be incorporating other characters from the Captain America movie-verse, and maybe even from The Avengers (hint hint). Also, don't be shy about reviewing! I will always accept positive AND negative feedback! :)
-PenPaperParadise
P.S. In the future, any updates, notes, or links for this story will be on my profile.
Chapter Two: Shh, It's a Military Secret
It was almost too easy. There were two ground soldiers guarding the door, several marksman hiding on the rooftops, and Natasha knew there had to be a hit-man or two hiding in the shadows down below in the alley. She just had to go down to the street level, take out any masked man that comes at her, and break into the room that the soldiers were guarding. This kind of mission was kid's stuff, far below her caliber. Why she was still assigned stuff like this, she didn't know. And it was getting tedious.
Natasha soundlessly started climbing down the fire escape, ready to jump down to the ground, when she heard the groaning of metal above her. Her head snapped up and she saw one of the masked men pushing the metal ladder, and she felt herself falling. Like a cat she managed to twist around and land on her feet, crouching to the ground like she was a runner awaiting a race. All around her, the masked men closed in on her and she put her mind on the back burner as she let her body take over. She took each man out one by one merely through muscle memory. A sharp hit here, a roundhouse kick there...it was all just a pattern at this point. Predictable. Boring, frankly.
But then someone quite large jumped on her from behind, bringing them both down to the ground. Natasha felt a sharp pain in her side as she fell, her body twisting awkwardly as she went down. The man had her around the neck, holding her down on top of him. She squirmed to get free but couldn't break loose. Okay, me not being able to break free of someone's grip doesn't happen very often, she thought warily. Using all her strength she pulled the man's grip off of her neck and somersaulted away from him. The pain in her side increased exponentially, but she just gritted her teeth and ignored it.
Fighting off the rest of the men became a lot harder with the pain in her side, but Natasha managed to bring them all down in seconds. She went over to the door that the guards (who were now on the ground) had been protecting and kicked it down. Once inside the small dark room, she walked straight to the little pedestal in the center of the room. There was a little red button resting atop the pedestal and Natasha pushed it. Nothing happened. "Oh come on," she muttered, pressing the button multiple times and becoming irritated. "Work!" she screamed at it, pulling her gun out, ready to blast it to oblivion.
"I saw that, Romanoff."
Natasha groaned as the button finally worked. The bright lights on the ceiling flickered to life, illuminating the fake city street that made up the training room. The groaning men on the floor rose up one by one and limped over to the awaiting medic over by the façade of the empty diner. Natasha looked up to the see-through booth that sat stories above the fake buildings and saw Coulson staring down at her, holding the intercom. She made a face at him but said nothing. She put her gun back in her belt (gently, as her side was still hurting) and left the training room, sauntering past the medic, who gave her a pointed look. As she walked down the hallway of the SHIELD headquarters, sure enough, Coulson caught up to her.
"Nice work out there, Agent," said Coulson as he fast-walked to keep up with Natasha's quick stride, "although for a moment there I wasn't quite sure you'd make it out alive."
"Well, it wouldn't have been much of a show if you hadn't had a moment of doubt, now, would it, Director Coulson?" Natasha replied coolly.
"I suppose not," he said with a grin.
He kept walking with her, prompting Natasha to ask, "Is there a particular reason that the Almighty Director decided to watch my meager little training session?"
"A mission," Coulson said simply. "This time, not a training mission. If you're up for it. It's nothing too difficult, I think."
"You lost me there, Director," Natasha replied. "I never take easy missions."
"Who said anything about easy? I just said it wasn't difficult."
Natasha paused. Well, it would break the monotony of training missions, wouldn't it? The pain in her side ached dully and Natasha absentmindedly rubbed it a little. "Oh why not? I could use a little break from doing...well, nothing."
"Alright," Coulson said happily. He handed over a file with the SHIELD logo stamped on it. "If you have any questions...you know what to do."
"Call you in the middle of the night?"
Coulson smiled at her. "Answer them yourself."
He walked away. Natasha rolled her eyes at him as she stood in the hallway and watched him leave. The pain in her side was starting to subside but that did not stop her from continuing to absentmindedly rub it. The ache made her worried – not worried that she had broken ribs or anything, but worried that she was losing her touch. That man – one man – had nearly brought her down, and she couldn't break free from a simple grip? Maybe it was a good thing that she took this mission...Natasha needed to rethink some things.
The mission, it transpired, wasn't really a mission at all - it was just a computer breach that needed to be investigated. According to the file, an unknown entity had tried to hack into the archival records of SHIELD using a fake identity and password. More kid's stuff, Natasha sighed.
Natasha sat in an empty conference room in the SHIELD base with her laptop on the polished oak table in front of her, the file resting beside the laptop's right side and a large mug of coffee on its left. As she looked into the breach more, however, she realized that the hacker was pretty good at what they did. He or she managed to cover their tracks pretty well; Natasha couldn't even get the location of the computer from which the hacker tried to access the archive records. They may be good, Natasha thought, but I'm better.
Fingers flying over the keys, Natasha tried accessing all kinds of data regarding the attempted cyber break-in. Still no identity or location, but she did manage to see what kind of file the hacker was trying to access. It was a protected file that required a password. That's strange, Natasha thought, wouldn't a hacker of this caliber be able to get past a file that only needed a password? Natasha tried accessing the file but the network wouldn't let her through. She tried all sorts of keystrokes and tricks to get past it, but nothing worked. It was then that she realized the file required not just any password, but a high clearance level password. A Level 10 password, as a matter of fact. And the only people who had that kind of clearance, as far as she knew, was the Director of SHIELD himself.
Something wasn't quite right. If the Director of SHIELD was the only person who could access the file, then why didn't Coulson know about it? Why didn't he just type in his high-level password and see what the hackers were trying to gain access to? Natasha worked out that there were only a few explanations: Coulson could have known about the high-level restricted file and was trying to get Natasha to see something he didn't...or he was completely ignorant about the file which makes things even more mysterious because the Director is supposed to know practically everything about SHIELD...or Coulson knew about the file, maybe even created it, knew Natasha would try to access it, and was testing her to see if she could figure things out...
Natasha shook her head. Too many theories, she thought. Perhaps I should find out more about this before I go crazy and suspect Coulson of being the new head of HYDRA or something. She pondered that for a moment. ...No.
She turned back to her laptop, searching the history of the file. "Huh," she said out loud when she read the creation date of the file: it dated back to the 1940s. That scratches out the "Coulson created the file and is testing her" theory: it was created before Coulson was even born. So that means the file goes back decades...Natasha didn't even know who the Director was back then. Did it have something to do with Fury, maybe? He was the last Director, and he was Director for a long damn time. Did Fury even know about the file? And if he did, why would someone else try to hack into it now that Fury was dead? (Well... "dead", she corrected herself.) Or was the reason they were trying to hack into it was that Fury was "dead" now? The questions kept swimming around in Natasha's brain and she had to close her eyes for a second and rethink things.
Okay...There's something strange regarding this file and I have to find out what it is. Me only and me. I don't want to trust anyone else to hold onto this kind of information.
She reached over and grabbed her cell phone, dialing a number. It rang once before Coulson picked up and spoke before she could.
"Agent Romanoff. Did you find anything out?"
"I did," Natasha answered. "The person who attempted to breach the system was trying to access a -" she paused, briefly, "protected file." She had to stop herself just then from saying "high-level protected file." Something in her gut was telling her that maybe she should look into things a little more before she let the Director know everything about the file. "I haven't figure out who or what or why yet, so I need a bit more time."
"Take as much time as you need," said Coulson, a hint of urgency in his voice. It's obvious he wants this case to be solved, and fast, said a voice in the back of Natasha's mind.
"I'll let you know if I find anything."
She hung up. Okay, so she didn't really lie to Coulson - she just left out a few details about the information she acquired. Yeah but if Coulson finds out you're hiding information, you're going to have your ass handed to you. By him. Personally. As much as Coulson was a good man, Natasha knew he was someone she didn't want to mess with.
Her brain was starting to hurt. She reached over to her coffee mug and put it to her lips - it was empty. She groaned, stretched, and stood up. If I'm expected to solve a mission that goes up as high as the Director of SHIELD, she thought, I'm gonna need another cup of coffee.