“This isn’t about me, Yelena.”
“Of course it’s about you. It’s always about you. You always needed everyone to tell you again and again how you were the best, the smartest, the strongest, the prettiest. Well, it’s my turn to be the Black Widow now. I’m on the inside, and you—you’re nothing, a nobody with no family, no friends and no job.”
“You didn’t beat me out for this assignment, Yelena. I would never have wanted it, and neither would you if you weren’t so desperate. You’re still second best. Now, tell me, because I know you don’t have what it takes to initiate this kind of operation. Whom do you report to?”
“I don’t have what it takes?” Yelena’s face contorted with rage. “You have no idea.” Without warning, Yelena slammed the heel of her hand toward Natasha’s chin. Natasha took the blow, and then dabbed the bloody corner of her mouth.
“You’ve got be kidding. With everything that’s going on here, you want to have some kind of grudge match with me?”
“What’s the matter? Scared I’ll hurt you?” Yelena punched again, but this time Natasha grabbed the other woman’s wrist—rotating it and using Yelena’s own arm as a lever to propel her into Natasha’s knee, and then down on her back.
“Enough of this nonsense. Tell me who’s in charge.”
Yelena’s response was to grab Natasha’s elbows and flip her over. “Actually,” Yelena said, getting to her feet, “that would be me.”
In a blur of motion, Natasha kicked out, scissoring her legs and taking Yelena back down to the ground. “Wrong answer.” Natasha grabbed the tight black collar of Yelena’s jumpsuit. “Let’s try again. Who’s running this op?”
Yelena wiped a trickle of blood from her nose. She had always been prone to nosebleeds. “I am.”
Natasha moved behind her, still holding the collar. “I doubt that.” She twisted her wrist, cutting off Yelena’s air. “Ten seconds of this, and you’ll black out. A little more, and you won’t wake up.” Yelena’s face began to turn red; she flailed, struggling.
“Natasha!” It was Steve, of course. “Stop it, before you kill her.”
Natasha glanced up. “Not if she surrenders. Do you surrender, Yelena?” She relaxed her grip.
It took Yelena a moment before she could speak; when she did, her voice came out in a hoarse croak. “Never.”
“All right, then.” Natasha leaned in again, and Yelena closed her eyes.
“Natasha! Stop.” Steve put his hand on her shoulder. “That’s an order!”
“Nat.” It was Clint, standing beside her. “You have to let her go.”
Natasha looked up. Jessica, Tony, Peter and Luke were all staring at her. She knew without being told that they were giving her one last chance to do the noble thing before they stepped in and forced her to do it. It would be Clint, of course, who would be the enforcer. With a grunt of disgust, Natasha flung herself back off Yelena.
“That is not the way we do things,” said Steve, his voice tight with anger.
“I’m beginning to see why your old team fell apart,” replied Natasha, getting up. Yelena rolled onto her hands and knees, retching. “What would you like me to do? Offer her a coffee and a call home? Promise her amnesty if she talks? You have no idea what kind of people you’re dealing with.”
There were bright patches of angry color on Steve’s cheeks. “Miss, I cannot tell you how sick and tired I am of hearing that.”
Natasha shook her head. “Then you should know there’s no room for those kinds of qualms in a situation like this, Captain. If you don’t use everything you’ve got, you’re going to let them win.” She heard a gasp from behind her and whirled. Yelena was sitting back on her heels, her eyes wide as she looked up at the sky.
Then Natasha heard the leathery flap of enormous wings, accompanied by a hoarse, hawkish scream. She looked up and nearly screamed herself when she saw Sauron swooping down at her with bared claws. But she was not his target. Sauron snatched Yelena by the front of her uniform, the back of his crested head dripping gore. His huge wings beat the air slowly as he attempted to gain altitude.
Natasha stared up at the sky, shielding her eyes from the sun. “How is he still alive, Clint?” Too late, she remembered that they weren’t on speaking terms.
“He must have some kind of healing factor, like Wolverine.”
“Wait a minute, guys,” said Peter. “I’m getting a bad tingle here.”
“Mr. Stark,” said the armor, “I am detecting a level-white energy flux.”
“Oh, man, that’s not good. Raise the repulsor shield!”
“Shield vector can only protect a three-foot radius, Mr. Stark.”
Luke turned to Peter. “What’s a level-white energy flux?”
“Trust me,” said Peter, “you don’t want to know.”
“Everybody, get close to me—now!” Tony raised his arms, and a white light burst from the palms of his metallic gauntlets. Clint grabbed Natasha, pulling her back with him as the energy pouring out of Tony’s palms formed a dome around the seven Avengers.
Through the scrim of the protective energy shield, Natasha could make out Sauron’s reptilian form carrying Yelena off like a monster out of some old horror movie. Suddenly, the sky behind them turned dark. A fierce wind whipped through the trees, nearly bending them in half. Sauron’s great wings rippled; he threw back his head and opened his beak as if to scream, but no sound emerged.
Inside the dome, Natasha felt the air pressure change and closed her eyes. Through her eyelids, she saw a flash of brilliant white, followed by a deep rumble of sound that vibrated through her very bones. The ground trembled underfoot as the explosion ripped through the jungle, and Natasha lost her balance. The deep groaning vibration continued; Natasha felt a sharp pain in her sinuses, as if she were descending too quickly in an airplane. She stumbled into someone who drew her in, cupping the back of her head in his hand as he held her against his chest. Clint. She breathed in the distinctive smell of him mingled with the salt of sweat and thought, This is dangerous. Yet she could not make herself move away.
Then the pressure lifted, and Natasha opened her eyes. Clint released her. “They’re gone. Vanished.”
At first, Natasha didn’t understand. “Who?”
“Everyone who wasn’t standing right next to us.” His tone was clinical, detached. It was as if she had imagined him holding her a moment earlier.
Luke scanned a bloody patch on the ground “Is that all that’s left of Sauron and Yelena?”
“All those soldiers I tied up.” Peter sounded dazed. “Oh, God.”
“Not your fault,” said Steve. “You didn’t drop that bomb.”
Natasha spotted a few strands of golden hair caught between two rocks. She crouched down to pick them up. Yelena. All those talks about teachers and boys. The time they had swiped a bottle of vodka from the teachers’ lounge and tasted the burn of alcohol for the first time. Experimenting with makeup together, learning how to dismantle and reassemble a Makarov pistol, testing their skills with explosives, practicing their dance moves to Mumiy Troll and Zemfira.
It had all been a lie. One more lie in a life built of lies. Natasha brushed her old friend’s hair off her palms.
“I’m sorry your friend died like that,” said Clint.
Natasha stood up and felt a dizzying head rush that made the day go dark again for a moment. “I’m not.”
“Don’t hold a wake just yet,” said Tony. “Armor, did anyone survive the explosion who wasn’t in the dome?”
“I am detecting two life-forms retreating—one human, one mutant. Both are badly burned, but not deceased.”
“How is that even possible?” Luke stared at the circle of scorched earth where the bomb had detonated. There was almost no trace of the two dozen soldiers who had been there a few moments earlier, and the smell of burnt wood and fabric mingled with the unnerving odor of charred flesh. “I don’t know about you, Cap, but I don’t think even my thick hide could withstand that ki
nd of a blast.”
“Sauron mentioned something about the Weapon X program,” said Natasha. “Could they have ramped up his healing ability to the point where he could survive something like this?”
Propping his leg up on a small boulder, Clint used his utility knife to cut a strap from his vest. “I guess it’s possible. Could your friend have received some treatments, as well?” He wrapped the strap around his ankle, which looked swollen.
“Yes, maybe.” She watched him sheathe his knife again. “Is your ankle broken, or just sprained?”
“Sprained, I think.”
“Feel up to going after them?”
“We can’t,” said Jessica, looking up at the sky. “We have bigger problems to deal with first.”
The small, dark shape in the sky grew steadily larger as it descended, revealing itself at last as the distinctive blimp-bottomed, flat-topped S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier.
“You wanted answers, Miss Romanova,” said Steve. “It appears we’re about to get them.”
Natasha looked out at the treeline, weighing her options.
“Don’t do it,” Clint said. “You’re a part of this now.”
She glanced up at him. “I don’t think Cap here agrees with that.”
Steve nodded his head in acknowledgment. “I won’t deny that you’ve been a valuable asset, but you crossed a line back there. We don’t torture answers out of people.”
“I understand.” You’re nothing—a nobody with no family, no friends and no job.
“Do I get a vote?”
Natasha looked at Jessica in surprise.
“When you told her to stop,” said Jessica, “she stopped. She argued with you, but she stopped.”
Tony lifted the visor of his helmet. “Do I get a vote? Yes, of course I do—money always gets a vote. So here’s my take: We came together at the Raft breakout by chance or fate or whatever the hell it was. And then you came up with the idea of making us a team again. It was a good idea, because the bad guys are working together—which means we need to work together, too. They’ve got mad scientists and shape-shifting super-fighters and high-tech experimental weapons and God knows what else. So we need all the help we can get.
“I watched Red here stroll into a top-security S.H.I.E.L.D. outpost and stroll right out again. She got caught because of Blondie back there, but you know what she did then? She risked her neck to warn us that you guys needed help.”
“I didn’t know that,” said Steve. “How does everyone else feel?”
“I think she should be given the choice to stay.” Clint’s face was impassive, unreadable. Natasha was ready to swear he wasn’t angry with her any longer. Still, something had changed. She just didn’t know what.
“How about you, Peter?”
“Personally, I don’t think I can comment. I’m an outsider here.”
“You don’t have to be,” said Steve.
“It’s not you guys, it’s me. Let’s just say I’ve got commitment issues.”
“Too bad,” said Luke. “My take? I say, the girl is badass. We need some of that.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t agree to this.” Steve looked up at the Helicarrier, which was now only twenty feet from the ground, its propellers stirring up the dust. He turned back to face Tony and the others. “You can’t be an Avenger and have no moral code.”
“The real question is, can you have a moral code and still work with S.H.I.E.L.D.?” There was no trace of Tony’s usual sarcastic tone. “Because according to them, Lykos has been dead for more than a year.”
Steve stared at him, not comprehending. “What?”
“I finally unlocked the Raft files. Out of the forty-two escaped inmates, fourteen are listed dead by S.H.I.E.L.D.—including Jerome Beecham, Nekra Sinclair and Karl Lykos.”
“I don’t understand,” said Jessica. “Why does S.H.I.E.L.D. think they’re dead? Some kind of a clerical error?”
Tony shook his head. “If it were an error, the files wouldn’t have been locked.”
“No wonder Maria Hill seemed so upset about our re-forming the Avengers.” Steve stared up at the Helicarrier. “She needed our help to recapture the Raft prisoners, but she had to lock up the files.”
“Or else we’d see that the folks we’re chasing are supposed to be dead,” said Luke.
“So these guys weren’t just stockpiling Vibranium,” said Steve. “They were stockpiling super-powered criminals.”
“And from what Lykos was saying, it sounds as though they were experimenting on them,” said Peter. “But who are we talking about? Is this a rogue S.H.I.E.L.D. op?”
“Or does this trace back to the Black Widow program?” Jessica pulled back her hair, tucking it behind her ears. “This doesn’t seem like something S.H.I.E.L.D. would do.”
“Let’s not rule out the possibility of some other group…Hydra, perhaps.” Natasha pulled her hair out of its ponytail. “Here’s your hair tie back.”
“You’re right. It could be Hydra. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Problem is, it’s all conjecture. We don’t know who they are,” said Tony. “But they sure as shiitake know who we are.”
“This is bad,” said Luke. “This is the kind of bad that makes me want to stay home with the nice garden-variety muggers and addicts and gangs. I say we go big on this. Talk to Anderson Cooper. Make a stink.”
Peter shook his head. “We do that, the bad guys go to ground. Disappear. Re-form in some new shape. We can’t trust anyone with this.”
“Yes, we can,” said Steve. “We can trust one another.”
Shielding their eyes from the wind and dust, the New Avengers stood and watched in silence as the Helicarrier landed in the field in front of them. A door opened, and a staircase stretched out until it reached the ground. The slim, uniformed figure of Maria Hill emerged, flanked by two guards.
“Captain,” she said as she approached him. “Mr. Stark. We’re so pleased to see that you are unharmed.”
“Yeah, we’re unharmed,” said Steve. “No thanks to you. Do you have any idea how many people you just killed here? Did you decide that we would just be collateral damage—or were you actively trying to murder us, too?”
The S.H.I.E.L.D. guards cocked their rifles.
Maria raised one hand. “Stand down, soldiers. Captain Rogers, the drone was preprogrammed an hour ago, and we had no idea that you were here. You have not kept us apprised of your whereabouts. If you had been in communication with us, we would never have ordered the drone attack. You are all valuable assets. I assure you, we had no intention of harming you.”
“That’s nice to hear,” said Natasha. “Do you think you can explain the nature of the mission?”
“Ms. Romanova,” said Maria, narrowing her eyes. “I did not realize that you were involved in this operation. The last I heard, you had escaped S.H.I.E.L.D. custody along with the other Raft criminals. Perhaps you can explain your presence here? Or should I just assume that you were working with your colleague Yelena Belova?”
“She came here because she was investigating the escaped Raft prisoners, ma’am,” said Clint. “Same as us.”
“I see. You are aware, Agent Barton, that Ms. Romanova attended a school whose sole purpose was to train her to seduce the gullible?”
“I was raised in a circus, ma’am. We lose our gullible early.”
Maria shook her head. “Unbelievable. I think we need to take Agent Romanova in for questioning.” She gave Clint a hard look. “This time, I will take charge of the prisoner myself.” She motioned to her guards. “Take her into custody.”
The guards stepped forward, and Clint moved to block them. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
“Agent Barton, step away from the prisoner.”
“With respect, ma’am, I answer to Captain America.”
“Captain Rogers, please tell your man to step away from my prisoner.”
Natasha felt her mind snap into battle alertness.
Steve
moved so his shield blocked both of them from the guards. “You can’t have her.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. She stays with us.”
“I’m afraid that my authority supersedes yours in this.”
“You want to take this to Washington? Fine by me. I’ll tell the president how you nearly killed us,” said Steve. “Or do you really expect us to believe that you just set a timer on your drone and left it on auto-pilot?”
Maria’s brows came together. “Are you calling me a liar?”
The note of outrage sounded genuine to Natasha. So either Maria Hill was telling the truth, or she was a world-class liar—better, perhaps, than Natasha herself.
“You might have contacted me,” said Tony. “After all, the Avengers don’t cause civilian casualties. Drones do.”
“Ah, the Avengers.” Maria gave them a tight smile. “Forgive me. I wasn’t aware you had re-formed the team. Am I to understand that the Black Widow is part of this enterprise?”
“Yes,” said Steve, without equivocation or embellishment.
He’s decided to vote yes on me, thought Natasha, and he’s the kind of person who will stand by his decision. From here on in, in his eyes, I’m an Avenger. Natasha was dumbfounded. Didn’t he realize how easily she could betray their trust?
It’s a good thing I am on the team. They have no more sense of self-preservation than a bunch of preschoolers.
“Well,” said Maria. “It seems you have seduced the whole group. I, however, believe you still pose a security risk. So, Captain America, what’s it going to be? Do you release Agent Romanova to my custody, or do we have to resolve this some other way?”
Tony looked at Jessica. “Did she just threaten us?”
“Oh, man,” said Luke. “This day just won’t end.”
“It’ll end,” said Peter. “It just doesn’t look like it’s going to end well.”
There was buzz from the sat phone at Maria’s waist. “Excuse me.” She picked up the phone. “Yes?” Suddenly her whole body tensed. “Yes, sir. Standing by, sir.” Her eyes flicked over to Jessica, and then up, to a one-man jet that appeared over the horizon. Blunt-nosed and impossibly small, the plane was also impressively fast. Within moments, it landed squarely in front of Maria.
New Avengers: Breakout Prose Novel Page 18
