A day later, Natasha, Pete Clint and I were sitting in the bushes outside Charlotte's mansion. It was a huge estate on the outskirts of the city, the size of which rivaled the white house. We had missed the first night, for obvious reasons. Fury had had a bone to pick with me over the phone, and Natasha still seemed...
wary. I wished I could apologize for the other night. But somehow I felt like if I brought it up, it would only make things worse. For now, though, we were all focused on the mission. I was wearing my battle outfit, and Clint and Natasha were both in their combat suits. Pete was still just wearing his disguise.
"Alright. What's the gameplan?" Pete asked.
"I'm glad you asked." Natasha said. "You're going in first."
"I'm what?"
"Going in first. I need you to climb up that wall," She said, pointing. "And in through that window. From there you'll scout out the room for alarms, traps, guards and anything else that could get us caught. Once you're sure we're safe, you'll give us the go ahead to follow." He nodded and jumped out from behind the bushes, keeping his head low as he sprinted across the yard. We waited tentatively as we watched him climb up the wall and into the window. Five seconds passed. Then ten more. Then we saw him pop his head out the window.
"Is that the go ahead?" I asked. Natasha didn't get the chance to answer; Pete shot a line of web our way, sticking it to a nearby tree.
"I think that's the go ahead." Clint said. We each took ahold of the line in turn, and crawled across it to the window.
"Hey, it worked!" Pete said delightedly as we came one by one through the window.
"Shhh." Natasha shushed him. "We don't want to alert the guards." Pete made a motion to lock his lips with his fingers. He then threw away the key, and smiled cheekily. "Cute." Natasha said dryly. The window we had come through led to a study. It was a grand room full of bookshelves, maps, and big cushy chairs. An official-looking desk sat in the middle of the room with a computer sitting on top of it.
"Alright, where next?" Clint asked. Natasha held up a finger as footsteps rang past the door.
"He's gone." She said when the footsteps were far enough away. "To answer your question, next we have to find the information we need."
"How about that?" I said, pointing to the computer.
"The information we're looking for could put Charlotte in federal prison. Or worse. Do you think she'd have it just sitting here in plain view, where anyone could access it?"
"Screw you." I said. She ignored me.
"Well, where would it be then?" Clint asked.
"Well, luckily enough, Fury got his hands on the specs for the house. The unofficial specs."
"Ooh, secret rooms!" Pete said excitedly. "Where are the prints?" Natasha tapped the side of her head and smiled.
"Oh, you've gotta be kidding me." I said. "We're supposed to be doing all this based on what you may or may not remember from a bunch of specs you had, at the most, two days to study?"
"That's right." She said simply. "Now; we can't stay in here too long. Follow my lead." She opened the door just a crack and peeked out. It must have been clear, because she waved us in. We were in a grand foyer now. We kept to the shadows and edged across the walls, dodging security guards and wait staff. The place was full of corridors and hallways, all lined with doors. Natasha ignored them all; until we came to the kitchen. I tried to step forward, but Natasha stopped me.
"What?" I said, irritated. She pulled out a spray bottle from a pocket hidden in her suit, and sprayed the air in front of her in a move straight out of a James Bond movie. The vapor revealed a fence of crisscrossing lasers just in front of the door.
"You always have to deal with lasers." She said smugly. I scowled.
"Leave this one to me." Pete said. He climbed up to the ceiling, then shot a web down around my waist and carried me safely over the lasers to the middle of the room. He helped Clint next, then went back over to help Natasha. Before he could do a thing, however, she took a step back and cartwheeled forward, maneuvering nimbly through the laser alarms like Lara Croft.
"Showoff." Pete said.
"This place is huge!" I whispered. It was; it looked like you could've run a restaurant from the place.
"Charlotte likes to host parties here. Gather potential investors. From what we gathered, she's trying to gain control of Moscow under the name-" I cut her off.
"Alisa Mihaylov."
"That's right." She said, turning toward me. "How did you know?"
"You wanna know what's going on with a city? First place you go's the local pub."
"I'll bet you must have all sorts of information bouncing around in that head of yours, then."
"Watch it, sweetheart." We were starting to get louder. Clint stepped in.
"The mission?" He reminded us.
"Yeah. The mission." I said. "Why are we in the kitchen anyway?"
"Remember? I said I had the specs memorized." Natasha said. She walked up to one of the two huge refrigerators and pulled it away from the wall. Underneath was a metal hatch in the floor. I walked up to get a better look; there was a fingerprint scanner on the hatch.
"Ooh, tough luck." I said. She said nothing. Just started digging around in her belt and pulled out a brush, some powder, and what looked like scotch tape. We all watched as she powdered the lock, stuck some tape over it, and pressed her thumb to the screen. The lock beeped affirmatively, and the hatch hissed open. "Show off." I muttered. One by one, we all filed down the hatch, down a short ladder, and into a system of clean, steel hallways. Pete started forward, but Natasha shot her hand out and stopped him, pulling him behind a corner. He had narrowly missed bumping into a woman who walked by us and down the corridor.
"Oh, great." Pete whispered. "There are still people here working? It's midnight!"
"We'll just have to be extra stealthy." Clint said. He started out. Natasha threw her arm out again. "What this time?" Clint protested. Natasha raised an eyebrow at him. Then started out herself. She motion for us to follow. Same routine as before; keep to the edges and the shadows, avoid people; easy. Pete kept to the ceiling, and Natasha, Clint and I took advantage of the many nooks, crannies and empty rooms the place was built with.
"This place is so epic!" I whispered to Pete as we tip-toed down the corridor. "Like a secret lair!"
"It is a secret lair." Natasha whispered back.
"No, I mean it's like straight out of a comic book!"
"We're here."
"What?" I asked.
'We're here." She repeated. We had stopped at a door with a glass window in the middle. Looking through, it was a room not unlike Fury's office; full of desks, computers, and people working on them.
"Well, how the hell are we supposed to get in there?" I asked. That's when we heard an alarm go off. We turned to see Pete standing next to a fire alarm. He shrugged.
"When in doubt, go with the classics, right?" He said. Natasha hid in a corner. Clint followed. Pete shot a web up to the ceiling and zipped himself up there, carrying me with him.
"Thanks." I whispered.
"No problem." He whispered back. Soon it came; the tsunami of worker bees flooding through the corridors and out the building. In a matter of seconds, we had the place to ourselves. We all came out of hiding, and filed through the door.
"Computers!" I said, delighted. "Computers, I can work with!" I cracked my knuckles, sat down, and got to work searching for important files. "Aw, it's encrypted!" I said. "How cute." I set about destroying Charlotte's code while the others searched around the room.
"This guy's got kids." Pete said, examining the pictures on one of the desks. "What's he doing here?" Natasha was looking at a massive map of the world on one of the walls. It was decorated with differently colored pushpins.
"I think I know what this is." She said. "She's mapping her conquests. If we just knew what the different colors stood for…"
"What color is Moscow?" I said, not looking up from the computer.
"Yellow." She answered.
"Then yellow must be what she's still working on." Natasha was silent. "What is it?" I asked, turning. That's when I saw; the pushpins were in only two colors, yellow and red. If yellow stood for works in progress, than red must be what she had already finished.
"She has more than fifty percent of the world under her control." Natasha muttered. There were red pushpins everywhere. Delhi, Paris, Stockholm, Austin. She was going city by city. I turned back to the computer; one more press of a key and I was done.
"Let's see what you're hiding." I said, looking through the file. "Oh great. It's in Russian."
"Aw, do you need help?" Natasha said. I got up out of the chair as she sat down.
"Я говорю на русском просто отлично, спасибо." I said. She turned to me, arching one eyebrow. "I just can't read it." I said in English. She turned back to the computer.
"What is it?" Pete said, leaning over her shoulder.
"Yeah, what?" I said, leaning over her other shoulder.
"Her plan." She said. "It's simple, really. She's using her power to make money. She's using her money to buy the world. City by city. She has a different name everywhere she goes. And once she has enough cities under her control, enough people under her spell, she'll go after world leaders. She has everything planned out. I doubt she's even in Moscow, this is just one of her outposts."
"Um, guys?" we heard Clint from the corner.
"What is it, Clint?" Natasha said, a bit annoyed.
"You might want to see this." She stood up and walked over to him, sitting at another computer.
"How did you break the code?" I asked.
"It wasn't encoded. It was just sitting there in plain English. Look." I leaned in to look where he was pointing. The title of the file; Wendy Trescott.
Author's note: Bum bum BUM!