If the link holds, she’s an experienced operative trained on two continents who speaks five languages and knows at least three ways to kill someone with her bare hands.
It was too complicated to take in—especially for someone whose life had already been as complicated as Natasha Romanoff’s. She had tried to keep her life in this country as simple as this apartment. She had exactly three rooms and four pieces of furniture to her name in this country. A couch, a bed, and a small kitchen table, and a chair. And somehow, a cat with no name that wandered in and out as it pleased and that seemed surprised to see her now.
Natasha wondered when she’d last sat at this same kitchen table.
Three months ago? Six?
The plain square of varnished wood tabletop was perfectly reflective, as if even a fingerprint had never smudged it. The entire kitchen was like that. The white paint was fresh and the cupboards were bare, as though Natasha had just moved in, when really she’d lived there for years.
If you could call it a life.
She picked up one of the traditional babushka dolls called matryoshka, that sat in the center of the kitchen table, with red painted scarves on their heads and pink circles on their cheeks. They wore flowered aprons for dresses and had hearts for mouths. They were one of her few personal possessions in the whole apartment—the kind of thing a grandmother would have given a granddaughter, Natasha guessed.
If I still had a grandmother.
These were from Pepper Potts, after a business trip to Moscow. They fit together so neatly, you found yourself looking at twelve concentric babushkas trapped inside each other, when you had thought you were only looking at one. It was only a doll; Natasha didn’t know why she found it to be so disturbing. The hidden-identity trick. Pepper had thought it was funny. “Look,” she’d said, “the original Russian secret agent. She reminded me of you.”
Is that what I am? What Ava is? A matryoshka?
Twelve different people and different pasts that only pretend to be one?
She pulled the hollow wooden dolls open, one after the other, until their empty halves lay on the table in front of her.
Inside the last set, the smallest, was a piece of worn paper, folded into a neat square. She didn’t have to open it to know what it was.
The remaining half of an old, torn five euro note.
Natasha drew her knees up to her chest, balancing on her chair with crisscrossed legs, as she had when she was a child.
She stared at the hollow wooden figures.
Could I really be that full and that empty all at once?
And, except for the other versions of myself, that alone?
Natasha drank from a take-out cup of black coffee—this wasn’t the kind of apartment that had appliances—and stared into the screen of her laptop. She needed to stop thinking. She needed to focus only on Ava’s dossier.
Hold it together, Romanoff.
She picked up a pen and wrote another word on the take-out napkin she was using as paper. Now there were four. Four places Ava Orlova could be. Four places that she might think of as home, given her history.
BROOKLY N
DC
ODESSA
MOSCOW
She had moved in a reverse chronology through Ava’s file to come up with the four possibilities. Brooklyn was her home now, if you could call it that. Natasha had visited the Y, and she was impressed. The kid was tough.
And then before that, the S.H.I.E.L.D. safe house in DC.
For what, five years?
That had been a grim place too. Natasha had only seen it once a year, when she went to drop off a birthday present for the kid.
Even if it was without a card.
She shook her head.
Before that, Ava had lived in Odessa, and as a baby, in Moscow.
So, Ukraine. Odessa and the warehouse.
Would Ava want to go back there, to where it all started?
Maybe.
But would she dare to head that deep into Ivan Somodorov’s stronghold?
If she’s thinking like a Romanoff?
Yes.
She circled the word ODESSA and returned to scroll through Ava’s dossier. Half the scanned pages linked back to Natasha Romanoff’s own files. And like Natasha’s files, half of every page was redacted. There were more blacked-out lines than not.
She was frustrated—wasting time and getting nowhere.
Meanwhile, Ava and Alex could be halfway around the world.
Natasha pulled up another file.
Let’s try the boy.
Alex Manor.
Again.
She stared at the folder on her screen for a long time before clicking on it.
When she did, she saw that even for a civilian, it was thin. Alex Manor was a decent student at Montclair High School. Fencing team, mixed martial arts club. Marilyn Manor worked at New Beginnings Travel Agency. Specialized in honeymoons and pet-friendly getaways. The house was paid off. The car was used. The termite problem had been solved.
Nothing out of the ordinary—but not enough to be ordinary. There were no school records for Alex before high school. Nothing before tenth grade. No driver’s license. No birth certificate. No mention of a father—not even divorce papers.
There should be more here.
Natasha scrolled through his dossier.
More strangely—especially for a civilian, and a minor—just as it was in Ava’s file, half of what was there was redacted. For all the black bars running through Alex’s paperwork, he might as well have been a spy.
Then she noticed a few words scribbled in the margin of the very last page of his file. She zoomed in.
Three words.
She had never noticed them before, which was strange. Because this wasn’t the first time she’d opened Alex Manor’s file.
The first time she’d opened it had been the day after she found herself on the street outside his house, watching him as he left for school, without even knowing who he was or why she was there. She’d sat there for hours, three houses down, only to return the next day.
He means something to you, doesn’t he?
It had been her secret. Nobody at S.H.I.E.L.D. knew—not Coulson or Bruce or Cap. Not even Tony.
But you know.
You’ve known it all this time.
That the boy matters.
She stared at the screen, not even seeing the words.
That’s why you’ve had eyes on him, without even knowing why. Why you’ve watched his house, his friends. His tournaments.
Now she tried to focus on the three odd words in front of her. The ones she’d never noticed, almost illegibly scribbled, as they were, at the bottom of the margin on the very last page.
ALIAS ALEX MANOR.
Her head pounded with a sudden searing pain.
Alias?
Alex Manor is an alias?
Alexei Manorovsky isn’t Alexei Manorovsky, after all?
It made no sense.
She scrolled farther.
SEE PROJECT BLANK SLATE.
Blank Slate?
What’s Blank Slate?
The words themselves seemed to push and claw against her brain, like it hurt to even think them.
Natasha had never heard of the program, whatever is was. Nonetheless, Alex appeared to be some kind of participant.
Under whose supervision?
Because that someone has a little talking to do.
Natasha ran through his files. She could only locate one more mention of Blank Slate, which didn’t help until she found that it was cross-linked to another buried S.H.I.E.L.D. server folder—and that folder had an owner.
Someone had created it.
Someone who was presumably in charge of Project Blank Slate.
And that someone was—
She clicked on the folder.
NATASHA ROMANOFF.
She wouldn’t have believed it, but an authorization code appeared beneath the name, and the digits were strangely clos
e to her own.
“What the—?”
Natasha Romanoff stood up, grabbing her jacket.
The door banged shut behind her, and the cat with no name jumped up on the table, staring at the now disassembled wooden parts of a girl that had once been a hollow doll.
Natasha Romanoff’s motorcycle skidded to a stop in front of the Triskeleon, at the edge of the East River. The monologue didn’t stop running through her head the entire time.
You have two choices, Romanoff.
“You? Nobody wants to see you here, Agent Romanoff.” Even the guy working the front desk knew what had gone down, she guessed. He didn’t look like he was about to buzz her in.
File flight plans for Odessa and get your butt to Ukraine before something happens to Ava or Alex—assuming they’re even there.
“Yeah, yeah. Save it. I need to talk to Coulson. Or Maria Hill.”
Or find a way into the Triskeleon mainframe and figure out what this is really about. Who you can trust—if anyone.
“Pretty sure they’re in meetings all day, Agent. At least they are now.” The guy smirked.
She raised an eyebrow.
My first choice keeps everyone alive, but for how long?
She held up the drive she’d just finished with.
“I just have to give them this. It’s some stupid Mac thing Coulson gave me, but I have a PC, and I can’t even get it to work. Computers, right?”
The door buzzed.
Natasha smiled.
My second choice is riskier, but in the long run might keep everyone safer.
The guy’s head hit his desk with a slam, and a second gate opened.
His boots dragged across the slick lobby floor—and into a maintenance closet. The door closed behind him.
So make the call, Natasha.
Natasha walked through the atrium, letting her motorcycle helmet drop to the floor. She nodded at the suited man standing in the elevator next to her, then shoved him out of the way, just as the doors closed.
What do you need?
No more people in your head?
No more people getting hurt because of you?
The elevator doors slid open, and she moved down a pitch-dark hallway, lit only by a thick strip of luminous blue safety lights in the floor.
No more doctors, no more generals, no more Ivans getting inside your brain?
What did he call you, all those years ago?
A time bomb?
Is Ava Orlova in your head going to be one the thing that finally pushes you over the edge?
She was in a basement now.
Dark. Secure. Featureless.
A place to withstand any kind of attack—even the kind that S.H.I.E.L.D. seemed to most frequently attract, from within.
What do you need, Natasha? How about twenty-four hours?
Twenty-four hours to figure this out.
She found the door she was looking for.
The one marked DANGER—RADIATION EXPOSURE.
She backed away from the door, raising her sidearm. German. In honor of Ivan Somodorov.
Even Ava and Alex can keep themselves alive for twenty-four hours.
She fired three rounds into the door.
Now hurry up and find this slate and unblank it.
The room was mostly empty. The walls were empty, a single lightbulb dangling from the ceiling. Only a small table sat in the center—big enough for one person, like a school desk—next to a folding chair.
This was the real Brain Trust.
She slid into the chair, tapping twice on the desk.
A hidden screen rose up from the surface, angled like the cover of a notebook computer. Then a keyboard.
Natasha punched in her own authorization code.
Then she took a breath and slowly typed in the variant code, the one she had found written in the margins of Alex Manor’s file. The one that was only three digits off from her own.
Blank Slate? Come on. What is that?
The screen powered up.
A three dimensional model of a woman’s face materialized in front of her.
Her own face.
The face spoke. “This is the Stark Personal Virtual Data Backup for Natasha Romanoff.”
“Of course it is,” Natasha muttered.
“If you’re within earshot of my voice, you can thank Tony Stark for uploading a personal photographic scan and cloning all existing digital data, to secure it for future use, Natasha.”
“Remind me to send him a note.”
“I’m sorry. That exceeds my intended function as your VDB, Natasha.” The model smiled. It was unsettling.
Now she beckoned for Natasha to come closer. “Natasha, I’ll need to ask you to stop for retinal scan now, please.”
A guide appeared on the screen, and Natasha leaned toward it.
“Hold still, Natasha,” the on-screen voice said.
A red light flashed, and the flesh-and-blood Natasha sat back, blinking. “Wow.”
“Identity confirmed. How can I help you today, Natasha?”
“All right.” The real Natasha looked at the virtual one. “If you’re really so smart. What is Project Blank Slate…Natasha?”
The Romanoff on the screen angled her head, as if she was thinking. Then she turned back to face Natasha and smiled brightly.
“Blank Slate is the adaptation of proprietary Red Room alpha-wave reconfiguration technology for use by the S.H.I.E.L.D. agency, Natasha.”
“I don’t understand. Rephrase. What is Blank Slate?”
“Blank Slate is a colloquialism. Blank Slate is a program. Blank Slate is a protocol. Blank Slate is also a state of mind, Natasha.”
“I know that, Natasha. What I don’t know is what anything you’re saying means.” Real Natasha was frustrated.
Digital Natasha shrugged. “I’m sorry. I’ll try to be more clear, Natasha.”
Real Natasha glared at her. “Who instigated the Blank Slate program?”
The face angled—thought—smiled—and answered. “You did, Natasha.”
“Me? Why would I do that?”
“It is an advanced security protocol, Natasha.”
“Whose security?”
“The minor asset with the alias of Alex Manor, Natasha. You negotiated it as part of his conditional release to the United States under the auspices of S.H.I.E.L.D., Natasha.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am an uncorrupted record of saved data, Natasha.”
“When was this?”
“Twenty-two months ago, Natasha.”
She sat back in her chair.
Alex Manor? She should have known. She should have seen it coming.
Admit it.
At least admit it to yourself.
You’ve had eyes on Alex Manor for almost two years now.
You haven’t told anyone—not Coulson or Tony or Cap or Bruce. Not even Pepper. Not anyone.
Why?
What can you possibly find to be so interesting about a teenage boy from Montclair, New Jersey?
And why are you so terrified of him?
It was Natasha Romanoff’s private business, something she was handling herself, and something that was no clearer now than it had been at the start.
What did the boy matter to anyone—but most especially, to her?
The whole thing was so off the radar that she’d actually defied S.H.I.E.L.D. protocol to clear out her own schedule, if only so she could stay in the country long enough to check in on a fairly regular basis.
And she still didn’t even know why.
You don’t know why he bothers you, but you can’t let it go.
It probably has something to do with the whole Ivan thing, but you don’t even know what.
You don’t know anything.
Why don’t you know?
Why you?
Why—
Natasha looked up.
“So this Blank Slate,” she said slowly. “It’s me, isn’t it?”
Virtua
l Natasha nodded. “Yes, Natasha.”
“I’ve been wiped?” Real Natasha asked incredulously.
“Yes, Natasha. That is the colloquial expression that articulates the process by which the neurotransmitters in your hippocampus, amygdala, and striatum have been electromagnetically reconfigured, and in which your overall neurogenesis has been altered.”
“And Alex, too?”
“Yes, Natasha.”
Actual Natasha was reeling.
I’ve been wiped.
Me.
I’m missing pieces of myself.
So is Alex.
Why?
The avatar looked at her expectantly. “Do you need further assistance, Natasha?”
“I don’t know,” Real Natasha said helplessly, switching off the screen. “I’ll have to get back to you on that.”
Because I don’t know anything, anymore.
She sat alone in the darkness, wondering who did.
S.H.I.E.L.D. EYES ONLY
CLEARANCE LEVEL X
LINE-OF-DUTY DEATH [LODD] INVESTIGATION
REF: S.H.I.E.L.D. CASE 121A415
AGENT IN COMMAND [AIC]: PHILLIP COULSON
RE: AGENT NATASHA ROMANOFF A.K.A. BLACK WIDOW, A.K.A. NATASHA ROMANOVA
TRANSCRIPT: DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, LODD INQUIRY HEARINGS.
DOD: That’s a lot to take in, Agent Romanoff.
ROMANOFF: Tell me about it. At that point, all I knew was that there was more to the story than Ivan Somodorov. First Ava, now Alex, and of course, me. We were all somehow part of this, and I was personally involved with both of them.
DOD: And you simply believed that? That someone had microwaved your brain and basically lobotomized you? Just because, what, your clone told you? Tony Stark’s knockoff Natasha Romanoff?
ROMANOFF: I could feel it in my gut, sir. The wipe. I should have picked up on it earlier. Especially after all that time in the Red Room.
DOD: So this had been done to you before? When? How?
ROMANOFF: Two times that I know of. I’m sure many more that I don’t.
DOD: Unbelievable. Those are some tall tales, Agent.
ROMANOFF: Tall doesn’t make them not true. If it did, I would be out of a job.
DOD: Ah yes. The unicorns.
ROMANOFF: Always the unicorns.
STREETS OF ODESSA
BLACK SEA INDUSTRIAL PORT
“Odessa Verfi. That’s it.” Ava held up the old photo of her mother. In the picture, her mother was standing in front of a rough section of corrugated-metal siding, with what looked like the top of a ship visible to one side. ODESSA VERFI was barely visible on a freshly painted sign in front of the ship. “This has to be the dock.”
Black Widow: Forever Red Page 18
