Armed to the teeth.
She raised the surging mass of wiring and steel high over her head, kicking off the sniper who now tried to crawl up from the water beneath her.
Natasha cracked the power cell over the hired gun’s head, and the guy sank back into the water—but not before she shoved the burning generator cell in after him.
A blue-white shock wave smashed through the cistern, leaping up off the surface of the water as if the liquid itself was burning.
That’s the smell.
Burning.
The cistern is burning.
Even the water is on fire.
The screams of the gunmen still trapped in the water were furious. They wouldn’t be dead, but they wouldn’t necessarily be conscious, either.
Natasha Romanoff had shut down half of Somodorov’s army.
In five seconds.
She backed away from the burning tsunami that enveloped the larger lake of the cistern, and then began to run as if her life depended on it.
Which it 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: What then?
ROMANOFF: Turn off the tape.
DOD: I never turn off the tape.
ROMANOFF: Sir.
DOD: Keep talking.
ROMANOFF: This isn’t about you, and this isn’t about the United States. This is where your part of the story ends.
DOD: That’s not how this works.
ROMANOFF: The rest is personal. It isn’t about saving American lives. It isn’t about saving anyone’s life.
DOD: What do you imagine is personal about your life at this point, Agent Romanoff?
ROMANOFF: No. This isn’t yours. It’s mine. Some things have to be mine.
DOD: Says who?
ROMANOFF: This isn’t about the Avengers Initiative or Turkish public safety or any kind of global peacekeeping mission. This is my life.
DOD: You’re the last line of defense for citizens of the United States of America¸ not to mention the world. Act like it.
SOMODOROV FACILITY,
YEREBATAN SARAY
JUST OFF THE CISTERNS, ISTANBUL
Ava gripped Alex’s hand tightly in her own. His skin was pale and clammy, and she squeezed it again and again. “Stay with me, Alex. We’re getting close now.”
He nodded but didn’t open his eyes.
She turned her attention back to the device in front of her. The O.P.U.S. was practically glowing. Bright bursts of energy seemed to pulse from inside the massive nest of wiring. “It’s going. I think I’ve got it working again. I should be able to short it out now.”
It was time.
She fumbled for the black drive in her pocket.
It was all she needed now—the last step to disable Ivan’s nightmare project. At least it was supposed to be. As long as the code Natasha had written was working.
She looked over at Alex, who she’d rolled over to one side so as to stop the bleeding from his right arm and leg. She still had her own hand pressed against his left arm.
“It’s time, isn’t it?” Alex’s eyes blinked open.
She nodded.
“It’ll work,” he said.
“What if it doesn’t?”
“Then we’ll just do this all over again.” He tried to smile, but instead he winced. “Go on. Do it.”
“Ten seconds,” she said.
She studied the motherboard. She could wedge the drive directly in…there.
“Five.”
“What are you, chicken?” His eyes were closed, his voice weak. She knew he needed to get home before he lost more blood.
“At least I’m not a brat,” she said, staring at the machine in front of her.
Three.
Two.
One.
Now.
She slammed the drive into the loose motherboard and connected the last sparking wire to complete the circuit.
There.
She closed her eyes and ducked next to Alex. His lips formed into a smile. It was the last thing she could feel against her cheek.
“Molodets.” Good job, kid.
Then the world exploded around her.
Around them.
Into millions and millions of shrapnel-sized pieces of their past.
Ava’s and Alex’s and Natasha Romanoff’s.
Yulia Orlova’s and Anatoly Pavlov’s and Pyotr Usov’s and especially Ivan Somodorov’s.
Clouds of thick, black smoke ballooned over her, enveloping her and everyone still alive. It raced through the cistern cavern, erupting up through the tunnels and exploding out every entrance.
A baptism, she thought.
Only with smoke and fire and death and destruction—
And without the church.
The biggest of big bangs—
Only the kind that comes at the end of the universe—
Not the beginning.
Ava could feel herself losing consciousness, the power draining from her.
The vivid ghosting of Natasha Romanoff’s eyes, beyond her own, was fading away.
It was working.
She was forgetting.
Not all of it—but the part that didn’t belong to her.
Everything else she remembered.
Maybe that was a last gift from my mother.
The remembering.
Ava shoved the bent, burned sheet of metal off her. The bottom of the panel had melted completely away.
“It’s over,” Ava said, sitting up into the world of white dust and gray ash. “I mean, I think it’s really over. I feel it.”
She lay her hand against Alex’s warm cheek. “Come on, Alex. Let’s get out of here. We’ll get you fixed right up.”
“Bossy,” he muttered.
A shower.
That’s what I want.
Clean sheets pulled up over our heads for a thousand years.
Alexei Romanoff by my side for a thousand more.
She looked at Alex. His face was pale, but his eyes were moving behind his closed lids. “Can you walk?”
She reached for his hand and squeezed it.
“For you? Anything.” His lips barely moved as the words slipped out. “Always.”
His last word was a whisper as he squeezed her hand back slowly. Tiredly.
Once—and then twice.
“Hang on,” she said. “Just a few minutes more.”
He had lost a lot of blood.
He was also the reason that she was still alive—and that her mind was her own again.
If he hadn’t drawn the fire of half of Somodorov’s snipers, would she have even been able to shut down the O.P.U.S.?
And if her mother hadn’t taken the Luxport job—if she hadn’t run the project—if her father hadn’t worked in the Istanbul lab—would Ivan have taken her for his test subject?
But if he hadn’t taken her, would she ever have met Natasha Romanoff?
And if she hadn’t met Natasha Romanoff, would she ever have found her way to Alex?
Ava didn’t even want to think about it.
She heard Natasha calling in the distance, picking her way through the rubble. “We’ve got to get out of here. The police—the real police—are everywhere.”
“Over here,” Ava shouted back.
But as the smoke cleared and her eyes stung, she knew there was still one thing missing.
Only one thing she had left to do.
Something she had never done before.
She rolled over on her side, even though she was cut and bleeding, and the rubble beneath her was as rough as a bed of broken glass and stones.
“I love you, whatever your name is. Alex Manor or Alexei Roma
noff. Do you hear me? I love you. I want to play with your dog in the park and meet your stupid cat. I want to fence with you and dance with you and go get ice cream with you.”
She smiled.
“And I want to kiss you, really kiss you, until I can’t find the place where you leave off and I begin.” She nuzzled into the Alexei smell of his shirt. “How does that sound?”
She heard a scraping noise as Natasha shoved a busted lab table out of the way.
“Alex?”
Ava leaned curled against him, listening for the solid, stoic beating of his heart, as she had when they were falling asleep in the Dacha Odessa Hotel the night before.
She waited.
She didn’t hear it.
She listened again.
“Alexei?”
She frowned, pulling herself up next to him.
She touched the side of his bloody face.
It was cold.
Then she knew Natasha was shouting—but something was wrong, because Ava couldn’t hear anything at all.
The world went silent—as if the blood were coming from her own punctured eardrum instead of his.
Everything stopped. Nothing moved. She didn’t know if the fire on the water was still burning, or if ash was still falling through the air.
It didn’t matter.
Nothing did.
Nothing
As she rolled him onto his side
Breathed air into his purple-blue mouth
Kissed his cold lips
Held his quiet face
In the distance, his sister shoved her fists against his ribs
Up and down
In and out
Breathe damn it
breathe
He’s marble now, she thought
Already
Like my parents
Like Ivan
Like the snow that covered Alexei’s face
in his nightmares
People shouldn’t be marble
People should be warm
And they should stay
And they should touch
And they should whisper
And they should laugh and love
and weep and wait
and wait
Wait
Alexei Romanoff
You have to wait
wait for me
Alexei
Don’t
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.
EVIDENCE LOG: As received from S.H.I.E.L.D. Turkish Bureau, Istanbul Field Office.
O.P.U.S. tech remains charred, recovered, crated.
To be dispatched to secure S.H.I.E.L.D. holding facility for further research & development.
Note: All active output/input from device has been disconnected. Device has been deactivated and rendered inert.
Test subjects previously affected by O.P.U.S. tech have been restored to previous mental conditioning.
Classified information has been determined “NOT AT RISK.”
[Romanoff_N]
S.H.I.E.L.D. TRANSPORT SOMEWHERE
OVER THE MEDITERRANEAN
“No. I’m not going!” Ava was screaming in the cargo hold of the S.H.I.E.L.D. plane. Coulson’s plane. Natasha couldn’t think, let alone fly.
Ava pounded on the sealed metal door until her hand began to turn purple. “Let me off! We can’t leave him here. We have to wait. Alex is going to come back.”
The floor of the plane angled steeply up as Ava spoke. She stumbled, but Natasha kept her on her feet.
They were going, like it or not.
Natasha’s S.H.I.E.L.D. brain was on autopilot. It was two hours and forty minutes to the Bulgarian border by car. On the plane, that meant only minutes until they were no longer in Turkish airspace.
Which meant they were gone.
She let her hand drop to the girl’s shaking curls. “Ava¸” Natasha said gently. “Alexei’s not going to come back. He’s gone. Every part of him is gone. We both know that.”
Ava sank to the floor of the cargo hold.
Natasha slid down onto her heels next to her.
Ava was shaking. She tried to talk, but her mouth was trembling so hard it was difficult to make out the words. “But he was here this morning. We were here, both of us. In the hotel.”
It didn’t seem possible.
It shouldn’t be.
Natasha understood.
“I know. But he had to go.” She slid her arm around Ava, who clung to her so tightly that she wondered if her gun was going to discharge.
Ava shuddered, still crying. “Why?”
Natasha focused her eyes on the window, willing them not to blur. “I don’t know.”
“Why does everyone leave? Why is it always only us?” The words were almost unintelligible.
Natasha found she couldn’t look at Ava. She couldn’t look anywhere but the far wall. She didn’t know what would happen if she let herself look away. She tried to push everything she was feeling onto the solid blankness of the wall. “I don’t know that, either.”
“It’s not fair,” Ava said. Her voice was hoarse.
Natasha took a deep breath. “It’s not.”
“Don’t let go,” Ava said quietly.
“I won’t,” Natasha said. She looked up at the ceiling now. She was afraid the steel wall alone wasn’t strong enough to hold everything she felt.
As she turned her eyes upward, she felt the burning weight begin to collect along her lashes.
No.
Not yet.
Not for me.
I don’t get to cry now.
But it only took a few seconds for the ceiling to become as heavy as the walls, and even Natasha’s eyes were beginning to burn from the pressure.
It was too much for anyone or anything to bear.
When will it be my turn?
When will I get to let go?
Who will be holding me?
Natasha Romanoff gave up.
She let the ceiling and the walls come crashing down. She let everything break into a thousand pieces around her. She let the world end.
My brother is gone.
My brother, the last of my family.
They’ve won and I’ve lost.
My brother and myself.
There is a part of me that will never come back now either.
They stole him from me for years, and now he’s really gone.
Natasha closed her eyes and let the tears come.
They ran down her face, her neck, her hair.
They dripped down all the way to the top of Ava’s head, cradled in her arms, but Ava was sobbing too hard to notice.
And if she did, she wouldn’t have cared.
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.
Death Certificate: Teen Doe, Deceased Minor.
Name: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Age: xxx
Gender: xxx
Citizenship: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
City of Birth: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: xxxxxxxxxxx
Place: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Time: xxxxxx
Operation: xxxxxx
Cause of Death: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[REDACTED]
MONTCLAIR ALL SAINTS CHURCH
SUBURBAN MONTCLAIR, NEW JERSEY
The Montclair High School orchestra played Tchaikovsky at the funer
al.
Swan Lake.
Alex Manor’s mother—or at least the veteran S.H.I.E.L.D. field agent playing the part of Alex Manor’s mother—could not stop crying.
Her face was buried inside her handkerchief for the better part of an hour. She was not wearing a cat sweatshirt today. It was convincing, whoever she was. Ava had to give her that. Perhaps even an operative could become attached. Given that this was Alex, the tears were quite possibly real. He made people like him; that was one of his charms.
Just as his sister knows how to push them away.
Ava looked down the pews, willing herself not to cry. Even behind her borrowed sunglasses, she still refused to do it. Not in front of these people.
These strangers.
The church was crammed with high school students, the same faces Ava had seen laughing in her dreams. It was strange to see them crying. It was only Alex’s friend—Alex’s best friend—Dante, who seemed strangely together.
He sat in front of the casket, along with five nameless, faceless boys Ava had only seen at the fencing tournament.
He never moved his arm from around his little sister’s shaking shoulders.
That’s Sofi.
Alex said her name was Sofi.
Ava sat in the back pew next to Natasha, who was incognito in a smooth blond wig and giant black glasses that made her look like some kind of jetlagged Parisian model. Coulson, on her other side, always just looked like Coulson.
He didn’t seem to be able to help it.
Tony Stark had reluctantly stayed home, but then there would have been no way to explain the presence of Tony Stark at a random teen’s funeral in suburban New Jersey.
Steve Rogers sent flowers in the shape of the American flag, out of respect for Natasha. So had Pepper Potts. Bruce Banner, the last of the Avengers, had sent only a note in a small, white envelope. Natasha still clutched it in her hand.
Ava stared at the paper program in her hands, the one with the picture of Alexei in his fencing jacket, holding a blade. He looked like himself, cocky and funny and full of attitude and life.
She touched the white streak in the photograph—his blade. His old fencing bag sat unused in Natasha’s apartment, now. Natasha had given his gear to Ava; even she couldn’t bear to throw it away. Ava herself didn’t know how or when she would ever be able to open the bag again.
Black Widow: Forever Red Page 27