Fresh air

So dark. An artificial darkness, with no stars above, the taste of the air dry and stale. She's inside, the blackness closing around her like a fist. She knows she has to move, that something is in here with her, but she doesn't know where she is even supposed to go, and how is she going to get there? There are no sounds to follow, she has no sight. All she has is that insistence in her spine, the prickling along her skin, that if she doesn't move, if she doesn't find her way out of here, it will find her and she'll lose everything.

"You should have stayed in bed, little girl." The voice came from nowhere and everywhere. Cold amusement dripped from the words as they echoed round the clearing.

She was so small, the trees around her stretching up so far, twisted black columns that reached for the night sky. She couldn't find the owner of the voice among all the shadows they cast.

Until the saw the eyes. Red, gleaming, just a few feet away. Then came the glint of pale starlight on bared teeth, and Asta knew the voice was right.

"I'm not afraid," she lied, balling up her fists. The teeth were at her throat a second later.

Coulson wasn't alone at Asta's door when he arrived to take her to the session that morning. Beside him stood a young woman with blood red hair and a sharp gaze, wearing the black uniform all the soldiers wore.

"Asta, this is Agent Romanoff. She's observed some of our previous meetings and believes a change of scenery may help trigger your mind."

Romanoff did not have Coulson's kind demeanour. She was one of the few women Asta had seen in the compound, but she wasn't anticipating girl bonding to be on the agenda. The guns she wore at her hips were not discreet and she seemed far more interested in scanning Asta's room with her perceptive gaze than engaging in greetings.

The presence of the new agent distracted Asta from Coulson's words. "Change of scenery? Are we going to a different room?"

"We're going outside."

She took in his strange choice of clothes: jeans and a plaid shirt, so different from his usual suit. He gestured for Asta to begin walking and she stumbled along, gaping at him. "You mean, for a walk around outside the compound? Fresh air?" Romanoff must've been following them, but Asta couldn't hear her moving.

"No, I mean we're taking a trip into town."

Asta didn't speak again until they were on the road in a huge van which had its black paint buffed to a mirror-like sheen. She was flanked by the two agents, though she wasn't in any way restrained. Coulson seemed to be treating it like a regular thing, while Asta knew Romanoff's hand wasn't resting on her thigh out of comfort—she was ready to draw her gun if she needed to. The world rolling past was alien, scrubby desert, something she only recognised from the television. This wasn't her natural habitat; she fancied her world featured a lot more greenery. This wasn't even the kind of desert she'd seen on the TV, with acres of shifting sands and the heat rising from the earth so thick it could be seen. Instead, this was pale, stony land, what plant-life there was as viciously spiny as the spires of rock that sprouted along the route. A merciless landscape, one you could only survive in if you knew it well. Asta wouldn't last a day.

"What exactly are we going to do?" she asked Coulson, pulling herself from her musings about the possibility of freedom.

"We're going to do some everyday activities—visit the diner, go to the grocery store, see what else there is to do. We hope that these things will feel familiar to you and allow other, related memories to come through."

"I suppose if I try to sneak off anywhere, Agent Romanoff's job is to retrieve me?"

Romanoff didn't even blink, and Coulson gave that small smile. "I told you she was intelligent," he said to his colleague.

"Is this trip out a way of testing to see if I do try to escape, then?" Asta continued.

Coulson's smile widened and Romanoff turned her stare towards Asta. "I'll be observing you," Romanoff confirmed. Her fingers twitched on her thigh. Asta doubted she ever missed a target. She seemed the efficient type.

"If this is too overwhelming, let me know and we'll return to the base," Coulson said. Asta nodded and stared back out at the landscape. They turned off the narrow road onto a wider slash of asphalt with two lanes, big green signs giving town names and miles to reach them. "We probably should have blindfolded you so you don't know exactly where the base is, but I'm sure you know not to share that information. It's a matter of great importance to national security that we aren't compromised."

"Understood." It wasn't like Asta wanted to spend the rest of her life in the basement cell, and blabbering was the surest way to end up back there.

Other cars passed by, one white ambulance speeding in the opposite direction. "I was found in this kind of area," she said, more for confirmation than anything. What she could piece together even from the beginning of her memories was scattered, fragments that didn't quite fit together. A circle in the sand, erratic patterns blasted in the soil and the imprint where her own body had lain. The overly bright, pristine white of the hospital, and the endless questions and endless faces. An agent with a hypodermic needle and a pitiless expression. But it had all started on the desert floor, a place she didn't belong.

"Yes, you were. Not in this area precisely, but it would look similar."

She'd been in a dress: she remembered that from the mirror at the hospital. Satin that looked like liquid gold, ankle length, arms bare, torn to rags. Strange how she'd forgotten about the dress until now. She wondered what had happened to it; she wondered where it had come from in the first place. It had to be one of the details that brought her to the agency's attention in the first place.

Today she wore the same thing as she always did, the items they loaned her—black t-shirt, black trousers in some kind of stretchy material, black boots. Add guns of her own and she could fit in beside Romanoff. Still, it was better than an orange jumpsuit.

This was going to be an interesting experiment, whether it helped with her memories or not. She doubted the real life she was about to sample in any way matched what she'd once thought of as real life, but she'd relish this small taste of freedom, her reintroduction to the world, and try not to give Romanoff any reason to stretch her trigger finger.