“Why would Dante and Sana be in there?”
“Fun? An interest in helium? Aerodynamics? Aerosol?”
Ava looked up, grabbing Tony’s arm. “Did your Like Minds think tank work on anything to do with this parade?”
“Not really. Nothing important. Maybe the aerosol delivery system. Ellie volunteered to head up a team that took my PropX design and use the same trigger system to inflate the balloons in like, a tenth of the time—”
“Helen Samuels worked on incorporating an explosive device into your parade balloons?”
“Well, it sounds bad when you say it like that, but—essentially, yes.”
Ava sat up on the edge of the suede couch. “Tony. Balloons?”
He got it the same second she did. “Balloons.”
“Tony. The Faith.”
He looked grim. “That wasn’t a parade Helen Samuels was working on. It was the dispersal system for a chemical weapon that could take down all of Manhattan.”
Ava shot out the door and into the crowd before he could say anything else.
Tony was right behind her.
S.H.I.E.L.D. EYES ONLY
CLEARANCE LEVEL X
SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES & INDIVIDUALS (SCI) INVESTIGATION
AGENT IN COMMAND (AIC): PHILLIP COULSON
RE: AGENT NATASHA ROMANOFF A.K.A. BLACK WIDOW
A.K.A. NATASHA ROMANOVA
AAA HEARING TRANSCRIPT / CALL EXCERPT
CC: DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, SCI INQUIRY
COULSON: Tony. I can’t hear you.
TONY: I’m running in the middle of a parade. We have a situation. Stark Holiday Parade of Heroes.
COULSON: Bad?
TONY: You need the whole house, Phil. And a hazmat team, and a radiation drone. We need to start taking readings now.
COULSON: Missile strike?
TONY: Right now, Coulson—
COULSON: What are we fighting, Tony? More warheads?
TONY: Worse.
COULSON: What’s worse than a missile hitting New York?
TONY: When New York is the missile, Phil.
STARK HOLIDAY PARADE OF HEROES,
PARADE WAREHOUSE
THE GREAT CITY OF NEW YORK
Dante awoke to the tramp of boots. Something was happening—and now.
He staggered to his feet, using the edge of a shipping crate to pull himself up by the elbow. His eyes had finally begun to adjust to the altered chemical state of his blood, and he found that now he could move, albeit slowly, and make out distinct shapes and faces.
The Faithful had dispersed, pulling laminated lanyards and neon-yellow T-shirts on over their clothes.
STARK HOLIDAY PARADE OF HEROES.
Holy crap. Was that today? Suddenly all the pieces began to fall into place. The helium trucks, and the tanks. The massive shapes, the colorful sails, only that’s not what they were.
The teams of Faithful.
The sound of the commotion around him.
Now they were indistinguishable from the other parade volunteers filling the room in front of him, wheeling giant tanks of helium to the row of enormous balloon figures that lined the floor in front of him.
It was only if you looked carefully that you saw the Faithful were using tanks stamped VERAPORT. That’s not helium.
One by one, the three balloon floats slowly began to inflate.
No—
Each balloon—full of Faith particulates?
What could that do?
And to how many people?
Aerial dispersal?
The entire city could be exposed.
He looked down at Oksana, still motionless. “Come on, Sana. Wake up. You’ve got to wake up.” He pulled her to a sitting position, leaning her against the crate, but her body was still limp and her eyes still closed. She struggled to open them.
It’s affecting her worse than it’s affecting me.
Why is that?
He grabbed her phone and dialed the same series of numbers, again and again.
Ava has to pick up—I have to warn someone—
“Dropped call? Don’t you just hate the service on those S.H.I.E.L.D. satellite phones? At least, I know I do mine.”
He turned to see a blond woman, small and spry, standing in front of him. Waving an identical phone to the one he was holding.
“You know, you’d think if S.H.I.E.L.D. could send a satellite into space, targeting it at just X, and at precisely Y miles above the earth’s crust, that they could get the freaking signal to work, am I right?” She grinned. “That’s okay, you don’t have to answer. I know I am.”
Dante didn’t react. His hand moved to shove the phone into his back pocket, as if he could keep it—or anything he knew—from her.
“I’m so excited that you woke up, my friend. I’ve been waiting for you. This is going to be so fun.”
“Yeah? I don’t think I know you.” Dante was wary.
“Of course you do. I’m Ellie. You’re Dante. And we’re thisclose.” She held up her fingers, crossed. “I work with Tony. Or at least, I did. Until I got a better offer. From myself.”
Dante froze.
At first, something about her voice was just familiar—but then he realized who she was. The woman with the megaphone, commanding the fleet of refueling trucks, the one he had seen at the cargo loading doors, before.
The Queen Bee. Their commander.
Their Alpha.
The one giving the orders, the one the Faithful lived to serve.
He could feel it in his own mind, even now, though it didn’t seem to control him the way it did the others. It was a hunger, like desire, but somehow stronger. He could tell even without the megaphone that it was her. You could hear it in her voice. The entitlement. The confidence. The darkness.
It was almost like she wasn’t human, but like—
What?
A goddess—
Stop.
You’re doing it again.
Don’t listen.
You can’t drop your guard.
Not for a second.
“What do you think, boys? Should we give our friend Dante a little something, to make him feel better?” She gestured with one hand, and the enormous security guard next to her stepped forward with a silver aluminum case, flipping it open and holding it out in front of her.
He was one of them. Dante could tell by the way he moved, by the way his eyes fixed on the Ellie person, no matter who else was in the room.
“I don’t know, I think I’ll pass,” Dante said.
He eyed the case, which looked like it was full of some kind of glass vials, holding black water. Black as Faith.
That can’t be good.
“Oh, come now. Life is so painful as it is. Haven’t you been through enough? Hasn’t she taken everything from you? Your best friend? Your life? You can’t be enjoying any of this.”
Dante’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“Of course you do. Her. Them. It doesn’t really matter, if you’re talking about one or twenty, they’re all the same.”
“Who?”
Ellie sighed. “The Widows. The Black Widow. The Red Widow. What’s next, the Blue Widow?”
She moved toward him. “Should that be me? What do you think? I could stand for the red, white, and blue, the way she does for Mother Russia.”
She dangled her arms around Dante’s neck, and he bristled.
“The Widow America? I could run around with Captain America in his little tight man-pajamas?” She leaned her face close to him.
He shook his head. “I think maybe you got a little of that stuff in your own head, lady.”
“Of course I have.” She kissed his cheek, then pulled a vial out from the precision-cut black foam lining of the case.
She reached again into the lining, pulling out a long, slender hypodermic needle. “And now you will, too.”
Dante’s eyes found the door, and he threw himself toward it.
The se
curity guard grabbed him and flung him backward, now holding his arms pinned behind his body.
“Running for it? A little late for that, don’t you think? Besides, what would Daddy think about that? Running away, when you could be standing up for the more unfortunate, doing your civic duty?”
“You don’t know anything about me or my duty,” Dante said, through his teeth, as the guard twisted his arms.
“Really? And if you ran now, what would your beloved Widows say? Would you be worthy of them, then? Are you a hero or not, Dante Cruz?” Her voice wrapped around him, tightening until it felt like he was going to choke.
I’m going insane. She’s crazy and she’s making me crazy.
“How do you know my name?” Dante shook his head. “How do you know anything about me?”
“I know everything about all the Widows.” She leaned over Dante’s face. “All three of them.”
“Three?”
“Natasha, Ava, and Yelena.” She was whispering now. “They’re like the Three Musketeers, except deep down they all hate each other.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.” Don’t take the bait. Don’t listen to anything she says. “And I don’t care. None of this has anything to do with me. Just let me walk out of here and you can go ahead and do whatever you want.”
“Of course I can. I always do.” She walked closer to Dante, who pulled backward, away from her. “Hold him tight, boys. He’s a slippery sucker. Practically a snake.”
Dante glared. “Pretty sure I’m not the snake around here.”
“You? Of course not.” She patted Dante’s face. “You’re Alexei Romanoff’s best and most loyal friend. You have to live with the knowledge that he died for no reason, after being taken from you with no warning.”
No. He died because of people like you. You were the reason. You took him from me with no warning.
Dante said nothing.
Ellie brushed the hair out of his eyes coyly.
“It’s hard, isn’t it? Carrying around all that hate? You have every reason to hate Natasha Romanoff as much as I do. But without the Faith, all that hatred, it can really drag a person down, don’t you think?”
I don’t hate anyone except you.
Dante closed his eyes. “You tell me.”
“The Black Widow…now, she’s the real snake. She destroyed someone I loved very much. Two someones, actually. She destroyed someone you cared about, just the same.” She pulled the plastic cap off the hypodermic needle. “We have to hold her responsible, Dante. Someone has to.”
The words came out before he could stop them.
“It was an accident,” Dante said, stubbornly. “She didn’t kill her own brother. Don’t be stupid.”
She held up the needle, examining it in the dim warehouse light. “In Istanbul, in a militarized underground base, surrounded by a private army, under the command of a literal mad scientist. Whoopsie.”
Dante said nothing.
In her own insane way, Ellie was right about that. At least, he couldn’t argue with her logic.
She shook the vial of black liquid in her other hand. “Now that she’s spawned another Widow—equally stupid, and as insufferable as the original—well, there just isn’t enough ego in the world to tolerate the two of them.”
Dante shrugged. “Yeah, well. Like I said. Not my jam.”
“Of course. Our jam is going to be the future. We’re going to be the best of friends, Dante. You and I.” She examined the vial, giving it one last shake.
“Yeah, I’m not your friend.”
Ellie smiled, raising the now-naked needle in front of his face. “Oh, but you will be. I’m about to take care of that. We’re about to have even more in common than the three Widows.”
Dante stared at the needle as she stuck it into the vial with one swift move of her hand. Then she withdrew it, letting the empty vial drop to the floor. It shattered, and she laughed. “You know, I think Natasha is really going to like seeing us together. It’ll be a little reminder for her, of the brother she never had.”
“Great. Just what I always wanted.”
She smoothed the skin on the inside of his elbow with the other hand. “You know what this is, Dante?”
“Yeah.”
“But you don’t. It’s Faith, you know that much. But it’s not anything like what the others were exposed to. It’s pure Faith, more than any human has ever endured. There are only a dozen vials of it in the entire world, and all of them are right there in that case.”
“So?”
“Ah yes. Elegantly put. So, it’s highly experimental, and very dangerous. And beyond that, who knows? It could kill you. It could render you a drooling idiot. It could eat away at your brain from the inside.”
“Super.”
“But the one thing it will do, beyond anything else, is affect you. And as you can see, for some reason, you seem to be less affected by the aerosolized form of the compound, which I find most peculiar, and somewhat irritating.”
It was true.
Dante had come to realize it hours ago.
He had been temporarily paralyzed, and his vision had blurred—and his head pounded like he’d just gotten a major beating—but he had never for a moment completely lost his will. He had stayed himself, never become one of the Faithful.
Why me? Why not them?
“It’s possible that some human minds are simply, naturally immune. Certainly something we should study in the future. Consider yourself a chemical trial. With the added bonus that, after I baste you like a turkey, I’ll drop you off on Natasha Romanoff’s doorstep. A little present, a souvenir, really. Something for the holidays, to remind her of her beloved brother.”
“Sounds great,” Dante said. “But you forgot one thing, Ellie.”
“What’s that?”
“Her.”
Ellie’s face clouded—and as she looked in the direction of Sana, lying on the floor…but no one was there—and, with all the energy she could summon, Sana came flying out of the shadows behind the soldiers, behind Dante.
She lunged at Ellie, cracking a wooden balloon stake over her head.
Dante shoved the two soldiers nearest him against each other, cracking their skulls together like two halves of a clamshell. As one soldier dropped his small-caliber weapon, Dante scooped it up, firing rapidly.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.
Faith darts went flying, and each of the four soldiers sank to the ground.
He turned the pistol on Ellie, who was struggling with Oksana—
Pulled the trigger—
CLICK.
It was empty.
“No!” Dante shouted. “Watch out! Sana—”
Oksana looked up, surprised—
As Ellie—Helen Samuels—sank the hypodermic needle into the softest part of Sana’s stomach.
S.H.I.E.L.D. EYES ONLY
CLEARANCE LEVEL X
SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES & INDIVIDUALS (SCI) INVESTIGATION
AGENT IN COMMAND (AIC): PHILLIP COULSON
RE: AGENT NATASHA ROMANOFF A.K.A. BLACK WIDOW
A.K.A. NATASHA ROMANOVA
AAA HEARING TRANSCRIPT
CC: DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, SCI INQUIRY
[REUTERS] [BREAKING] STARK HOLIDAY PARADE OF HEROES KICKS OFF; BIGGER BALLOONS, BELOVED HEROES TAKE BROADWAY
[New York City] Santa has come to Manhattan—in the form of Tony Stark, CEO of Stark Industries, who will be kicking off a heroic holiday season in style—and live!—any minute now, as soon as the football game ends. (Please set DVRs to allow thirty extra minutes on either end of programming.)
Join us as thousands of heroic balloon handlers, super-marching-band musicians, and cape-able clowns—as well as a host of other performers—parade through the streets of New York City. Help us bring SuperSanta himself from all the way uptown to his favorite tree at Rockefeller Center, along with more than forty-three of your favorite new and returning super
hero characters, now starring in balloon form!
Will Captain Marvel do the Big Apple proud in her first parade appearance? Will Grand Marshal Tony Stark be forced to put on his Iron Man super suit to save the day—or will the balloon Iron Man save it for him?
Join with us in welcoming the holidays to the Big Apple—stream the festivities live here and here.
FIFTY-ONE THOUSAND FEET
OVER THE ATLANTIC
SOMEWHERE OFF THE COAST
OF NEW YORK CITY
Putting a plan in place always calmed Natasha down. The first step of this particular plan had involved grabbing a taxi to Vnukovo, Moscow’s private airport. The second had required grabbing a plane. In between those two steps, there had been only three or four small, irrelevant details—haphazard private security, flight plans, passenger manifests—and then suddenly there she was, in the air on the way across the Atlantic.
Natasha had been almost disappointed in her old motherland.
By the time her Widow’s Cuff began to buzz, she had started to descend out of the clouds. She could just make out the Statue of Liberty and the far edge of the city where her plans would become more…complex.
Her Cuff buzzed again. “Sorry, I have to take this call,” she said to the man in the expensive-looking suit duct-taped to the copilot’s seat.
He nodded, eyes wide over his duct-taped mouth. He had been the fourth small, irrelevant detail standing between Natasha and liftoff. She’d locked his pilot in the private bathroom in back, but there hadn’t been room enough for both of them, so she’d given up and duct-taped him into his chair. That had been five hours ago—and he still looked terrified.
Natasha tapped on her Cuff, pressing her earpiece into her ear. “Phil? Is that you? You gotta start calling people back.” A burst of static answered her. The connection was bad, but what did you expect when you were higher than any cell tower?
“Where are you now?” Coulson’s words finally erupted in a single burst over the garbled line.
She raised her voice. “Just a little longer. I told you I’d take the fastest ride I could find. We’re almost there.”
“We? Are you on a military transport?”
“Not exactly. I got a ride with…” She pulled a wallet from the inside jacket pocket of the man next to her. “Vladimir Milosovich.” She glanced up at her copilot with a laugh. “Hey, you’re Vlad the Dad? Small world! I’m a friend of Maks—why didn’t you say something?”
Black Widow: Red Vengeance (A Marvel YA Novel) Page 27
