Black Widow: Forever Red

by Margaret Stohl

  “Ava,” she called, walking backward. “Ava Orlova. Let me know if it starts to ring any bells.”

  Then she was gone, and he felt like she had taken all the air in the room away with her.

  Ava Orlova.

  She thought he knew her, but he’d never seen her before in his life. He only wished he had.

  Then he yanked his fencing jacket loose from his waist and stared at it. It was inside out, which meant she couldn’t have read a single word on it.

  And yet somehow she still knew his name.

  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: Dante Cruz is the child of a law enforcement officer in the state of New Jersey. Is that correct?

  ROMANOFF: Yes, sir.

  DOD: And the boy’s friend. Closest friend.

  ROMANOFF: [nodding]

  DOD: And he’s one of ours?

  ROMANOFF: Sir?

  DOD: This report states that Dante Cruz and/or Police Chief Captain Guillermo Cruz were cleared as possible candidates for surveillance assets placed in the field as eyes on the boy known as Alex Manor.

  ROMANOFF: No, sir. I don’t believe that.

  DOD: That Dante Cruz was S.H.I.E.L.D.?

  ROMANOFF: That Dante Cruz was anything that needed my attention, sir.

  DOD: Why not?

  ROMANOFF: I would have picked up on it. They were kids. They were into LARPing. And fencing. And…superheroes and comic books. And…superheroes.

  DOD: Now, that’s just ironic.

  PHILLY CONVENTION CENTER LOBBY

  THE CITY OF BROTHERLY LOVE

  Ava stood in line at the registration desk, willing herself to calm down. Her stomach was roiling. Her head was pounding. It only got worse, the longer she waited. She hoped she wasn’t going to throw up.

  This isn’t like you, Ava Orlova.

  Get your butt back out there, myshka.

  Ava moved a few feet up in line.

  So he doesn’t know who you are. So he doesn’t have the same dreams.

  So what?

  She stared at the head of the girl in front of her for a good long while. More perfect braids. Another alien. Where do they all get these whale shirts? This one was talking on a cell phone about a place called Squaw Valley. Ava wondered what a squaw was and why it had its own valley.

  But nothing could distract her from her own racing pulse for long.

  You know he’s real now. You know he’s here.

  You both are.

  Doesn’t that have to mean something?

  Isn’t that the important thing?

  Beyond that, why did it matter that she was still alone in her dreams? What had she expected—that his nights would be as magically full of her as hers were of him?

  Who cared?

  Maybe the dreams were just meant to bring us together.

  Like fate. Or destiny.

  Maybe I don’t need them anymore.

  Maybe this is what it was all always about.

  Ava was almost at the registration desk now, but her mind was still a thousand miles away. And the pounding in her head felt like it could split her skull in two.

  What would it be like to not have the dreams?

  What would it be like to not feel a connection like that to anyone, except for maybe Oksana?

  Could I be more alone than I am now?

  She tried to summon her mother’s face, but she could only remember her shadows. Her deep, dark eyes. The other edges, the hard ribs beneath her lab coat, when Ava hugged her.

  Strong like an ox and sharp like a razor.

  “Okay, Alexei Manorovsky,” she said, if only to herself. “Let’s do this.”

  “Do what?” a calm voice asked.

  Ava was startled. She hadn’t realized that she was at the very front of the line now, where an athletic-looking Asian woman in aviator sunglasses and a USFA cap was looking up at her from behind the desk.

  Her name was Jasmine Yu. That’s what her badge said, anyway.

  Ava took a breath.

  Jasmine spoke again. “Were you not talking to me?”

  “No,” Ava said, handing her a registration form. “Sorry, Ms. Yu.”

  “Same-day registration? Well, let’s get you into the computer. You just made it on time.” Jasmine typed a few words into her computer and frowned. “That’s funny. There’s some kind of problem.”

  Of course there is, Ava thought. “I don’t understand.”

  “It says here that you don’t have a birth certificate on file.”

  Of course I don’t. She wondered if Oksana had one and realized she probably did. Ava tried to look unfazed. “That has to be a mistake.” Then, in her best impression of an entitled teen: “My mom must have messed everything up. Again. She always does this.”

  Jasmine nodded at her sympathetically. “But I’m really not supposed to register you without one.” She handed Ava back her registration form. “Do you have a parent here? Or one you can call?”

  Of course not.

  Ava pretended to think about it. “They’re at work. But you could call my coach.”

  “Perfect. The forms are all in the office. Do you mind?” Jasmine motioned to her. “Come around the desk.”

  She put up a plastic sign. REGISTRATION CLOSED.

  “Straight ahead now. This way. It’ll just take a minute.” Jasmine fumbled with a door, finally shoving it open.

  As she did, Ava noticed there was no key in her hand.

  It wasn’t until Ava stepped through the door marked STAFF ONLY, however, that she really knew something was wrong.

  They weren’t in an office. They were in some kind of dim, industrial stairwell that appeared to run the full height of the convention center.

  The door slammed shut behind them.

  Ava panicked.

  This isn’t right. This isn’t good—

  Her instincts kicked in.

  She turned to go, but Jasmine grabbed her jacketed arm. “That door is locked, kid. You’re not going anywhere.”

  Ava stared at her in disbelief.

  Even through the sleeve of her Kevlar jacket, her arm throbbed like it was on fire beneath the official’s hand.

  Every cell in Ava’s body began to burn. She tried to wrench herself free, but it was no use. “Are you some kind of total psycho? Let go of me!”

  “Not so fast, Ava. We just need to have a little chat.” Jasmine’s grip on her Kevlar was as hard as her voice had become. Now Ava’s arm was burning with searing pain.

  “Yeah? The next person I chat with will be the cop who hauls your butt to jail,” Ava said, forcing herself to calm down.

  I have to think.

  I have to get out of here.

  Jasmine sighed. “Let’s get some air, why don’t we?” She yanked Ava up the convention center stairwell, pulling her by her side, a few steps at a time.

  Her grasp on Ava’s jacket was iron.

  Ava’s head now ached with such intensity she thought she might lose consciousness.

  Up? That doesn’t make sense. That’s not the way out.

  But Jasmine was surprisingly strong, and Ava knew she was in trouble. She screamed, but the sound echoed pointlessly through the abandoned stairwell.

  At this close range, Ava could tell Jasmine Yu was no USFA official. Police? Or…worse? She wore all black—black jeans, a fitted black blouse, black boots. There were no other clues to her identity.

  Jasmine—if that was her name—shoved her farther up the stairs.

  Ava tried to get another look at her. A better look. Even her abductor’s hair was jet black, from what she could see of it, with severe, geometric bangs and a chin-length crop poking out beneath her ca
p and her expensive-looking aviators. She looked like someone famous, like a star from a James Bond movie or something.

  Probably not one of the good guys.

  Now Jasmine was pushing her up through the stairwell so quickly, Ava almost felt like her feet weren’t touching the ground.

  They were within sight of a doorway. A sad-looking, rusted metal door, surrounded by a thin rectangle of light. They must have reached the roof.

  Jasmine Yu kicked open the door with one leather-booted foot and shoved Ava into the light.

  Ava stumbled out onto the roof. The woman stayed behind her, squarely between Ava and her only escape route.

  Ava breathed as the pain in her arm faded away.

  The sky was cloudless and blue, and all around them was cold winter sunshine and Philadelphia skyline. Ava edged toward the low wall at the perimeter of the building. She could see traffic moving, slow and oblivious, far below.

  No way out.

  Her head was no longer pounding but was still buzzing with static. She took a steadying breath and looked out toward the horizon—where the buildings met the shoreline—as she raised her voice. “Who are you?”

  “You know who I am, sestra.”

  The words hung in the air, low and grim.

  It wasn’t the answer Ava was looking for. It was, in almost every way, the opposite.

  There was only one person who had ever called her that.

  But that’s impossible—

  Ava was silent.

  Everything came tumbling back to her now, slowly, randomly, like so many charred ashes falling through a burned-out Ukrainian warehouse.

  The blast.

  The woman in black knocking me to the floor.

  The red hair.

  The red flames.

  The blood.

  The burning face of the demon man himself.

  “Eto ty,” Ava said, falling into Russian. It’s you.

  She turned to look at the woman who had taken her—slowly, finally.

  The woman whose name had never really been Jasmine Yu.

  “So it seems,” the woman answered.

  She hardly looked familiar, but Ava had learned not to trust her own eyes when it came to S.H.I.E.L.D.

  Now the woman lowered her aviators and pushed back her cap, tapping once on the USFA tournament credentials hanging from her neck.

  A tiny illuminated dot next to the printed name Jasmine Yu turned from green to red. Jasmine Yu’s face—or what Ava had thought was her face—twisted into a digital glitch and flickered out.

  You.

  The badge hadn’t been a badge at all, but some kind of remote holographic interface. S.H.I.E.L.D. tech. Ava had heard rumors about their capacity for holography, since her days at 7B.

  Of course it’s you. I should have known.

  The face that looked back at her—the woman’s real face—was unmistakable.

  Behind the projection mask were the exquisitely cold eyes of Natasha Romanoff, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., the infamous Black Widow herself.

  Natasha Romanoff.

  Avenger. Agent. Assassin.

  Even though Ava hadn’t seen her since she was a little girl, she could never forget that face. It had been burned into her memory by fire and death and disaster. Ava remembered it as a face that could bring the walls crashing down—because it had.

  It was a terrible, beautiful face.

  It was not a face to be dismissed or disregarded, especially not forgotten, not even by a little girl. There was nothing else like it, not anywhere in the world.

  Natasha Romanoff’s was a face of contradiction, with round curves and hard lines, features both rugged and soft. Her eyes were as cold and dark as her lips were full. However ironically, her face was heart shaped, with cheekbones so pronounced they seemed to cast their own shadows. Not heart shaped, Ava corrected herself. Hard heart shaped.

  Natasha stood there in silence.

  “What is that, your iFace?” Ava finally asked. She looked away.

  “Something like that,” Natasha said. She shrugged. “You know what they say. If it exists, S.H.I.E.L.D. has an app or crap for it, right?”

  Nobody laughed.

  Ava didn’t want to give her abductor—because that’s what she was, wasn’t she?—the satisfaction of knowing how shocked she really was. So instead she steadied her words. “You never came back.”

  “No,” Natasha said quietly. She slid the glasses back up and the cap back down, though there was no one else around to see her. She let her true face remain, but Ava didn’t have to be a spy to realize that this was a person who preferred to stay in the shadows.

  Ava sat down on the warm asphalt of the roof, her back to the parapet wall. It was a full minute before she spoke another word.

  “You said you would come, but you never did. You handed me over to S.H.I.E.L.D. and left me to rot with the Americans.”

  “In some circles, that’s known as growing up.”

  “I wrote to you. I went to the Ukrainian embassy and tried to cash in your stupid paper hourglass. They turned me away. They laughed.”

  “I know. Who do you think told them to do it?” Natasha didn’t look remotely apologetic.

  “But I knew no one. I was alone. No one cared. You might as well have left me to die.”

  “You didn’t, did you?”

  “Die? No, I didn’t. No thanks to you. Now I know I can only depend on myself.”

  “Exactly.” Natasha shrugged. “You’re welcome.”

  Ava didn’t respond.

  Natasha sat down next to her. “Such Russian problems.” She settled her back against the wall. “I know you’re angry. Be as angry as you want. But no matter how you feel, we need to get out of here. Fair enough?”

  “Why should I do anything you say?”

  “Because you can trust me.”

  “Are you crazy? You’re the one person I can’t trust. You taught me not to trust you.”

  “No. I taught you not to trust anyone,” Natasha said. “And that’s something everyone has to learn. Especially every girl.” She sounded as stubborn as Ava felt.

  “So now I’m supposed to thank you for the lesson and move on?”

  “Things have changed. Now you have to listen to me. Now you don’t have a choice.”

  “This is America. Here I have a choice, sestra.”

  “No, you don’t.” Natasha frowned, and for a split second, an expression that looked entirely too human for the infamous Black Widow flickered across her face. “Not since six fifteen this morning, when customs officials flagged a passenger arriving on a flight from Manila, en route to Newark via Panama City.”

  “Panama what? Why?”

  Natasha sighed. “Because Panama is the go-to airport for the modern cartel. And because the country does big business in cleaning up blood money.”

  Ava was confused. “And all of this has what to do with me?”

  “Only that this passenger apparently had more than two hundred Russian Belomorkanal cigarettes on him, which, as you probably don’t know, is Panama’s legal limit on imported brands.” Natasha shook her head. “Disgusting.”

  “Cigarettes?” None of this was making sense to Ava.

  “Not just any cigarettes. Belomorkanal is an old brand in Moscow, where it seems the passenger’s flight originated.” Natasha looked Ava in the eye. “Following a three-hour train ride from Odessa.”

  Ava froze.

  “That customs inquiry triggered another, let’s say, less official flag. Which caused one particular individual in a certain network of unlisted and unnamed friends to run a check on an unpublished number. Which in turn resulted in a single transmission via a secure broadcast.” Natasha shrugged. “And here I am.”

  “What are you saying?” Ava couldn’t breathe.

  “Ivan Somodorov didn’t die, Ava. He’s not in hell where he belongs. He’s in New Jersey.”

  The words fell between them with a dull weight. Ava felt like she’d been struck in the
face. She thought she had forgotten the name, but she hadn’t. Of course she hadn’t. She only wished she could.

  Ivan Somodorov.

  She let her head drop into her hands.

  Natasha’s tone was more than serious as she got up from where she was sitting next to Ava. “He could have just disappeared off the face of the earth, but he didn’t. He’s still at it. Your name keeps coming up in chatter that all tracks back to Somodorov, now more than ever. He seems to have unfinished business with you, Ava. I believe he’s been looking for you for eight years, and he’s never going to stop.”

  Ava tried to think but found she could barely speak.

  Because Ivan Somodorov is looking for me.

  Ivan Somodorov is not finished with me.

  Ivan Somodorov will be the end of me.

  My demon.

  “So?” Ava said finally. She felt the warm asphalt roof beneath her feet as she stood up. It was all she could manage.

  “So the return of our friend Ivan changes everything.” Natasha was pulling a bag out of a hidden corner in the roof.

  Weapons, probably.

  Ava forced herself to walk over to Natasha, despite the trembling in her legs. “Don’t act like you care.” Her head was already pounding, but she wasn’t going to let Natasha know that.

  “I didn’t say I did.” Natasha shrugged as she knelt beside the bag. She lowered her voice until the words were almost a whisper. “He’s coming for us, and that’s why I’m here. That’s why we need to go. Your friend Oksana and your coach Nana and this boy, Alex—”

  “Alexei,” Ava corrected automatically. “Manorovsky.”

  Natasha Romanoff knows about Oksana? And Nana? And even the boy I dream about? She knows every detail of my entire life?

  The thought was somehow thrilling and horrifying—though Ava hated herself for caring, either way.

  Natasha smiled at Alex Manor’s Russian name.

  “Alexei and Oksana don’t deserve to die. They don’t deserve Ivan Somodorov. No clueless teenager deserves to get thrown into the middle of that.”

  “But I do?”

  “Some of us don’t get to choose, Ava.” Natasha sounded sad, but that didn’t change the truth of the words. “Children are disappearing from Ukrainian orphanages again. I don’t think it’s over. Not for Ivan and his mad Red Room science experiments. Not yet.”