What would Agent Coulson or Maria Hill have said about that? Where was your Academy training when you needed it today? Have you shut down your whole S.H.I.E.L.D. brain?
Ava wondered. Would she have noticed a targeted polonium-210 poisoning, like the one that took down the Russian spy Litvinenko in London? An umbrella that fired dioxin, like the one that had struck the politician Yushchenko in Ukraine? A one-shot kiss-of-death lipstick gun or a poison pen, as in the K.G.B. case studies she’d read in her Cold War counterintelligence seminar? How about a precision aerial drone strike on the entire Cristo monument? Would she have heard it? Would she have even seen that coming?
I don’t know why Natasha hasn’t sent me back to the Academy already. She probably wants to.
For a second, Ava considered the possibility of taking advantage of their Quantum link to see exactly what Natasha thought of her….
“You know it’s more complicated than that,” a voice said.
Ava looked at the empty chaise next to her. Alexei Romanoff—or rather, the ghost, the memory, the soul of Alexei Romanoff, she no longer knew what to call him—sat on the edge of the cushion, shielding his eyes from the sun with one hand. He was as breathtakingly handsome as ever, and now looked tanned and fit and pleased with himself—or at least, pleased that he’d been able to just show up on the rooftop like this. Alexei still loved a joke.
“Is it?” She rolled her eyes, but as he grinned at her, the familiar sadness uncoiled itself deep in her body. She had gotten used to his visits, though she had thought she was losing her mind when they’d first begun, the night after his funeral, when he’d curled up next to her and whispered soothing words into her ear until the sun came up again. I’m here. I’m still here. You aren’t alone, Mysh. You never will be. I’m here—
Now she’d made her peace with only being marginally, secretly insane. He came to her most often at night, in the moments just before she fell asleep. He also had a habit of turning up when she was super stressed, or very upset. Frightened. Sleep-deprived.
Or crashing burning bikes into swimming pools, she thought.
Apparently.
“I’m a liability. Admit it,” Ava said to what she knew, deep down, was just an empty space on an empty chair. Still, it was better than an empty heart, which is what she’d had until Alexei had reappeared.
“It’s only been a year,” Alexei said. “You have to remember, when I left my sister in Istanbul, I left her with more than just a razrushennoy heart.” Shattered, yes. More than broken.
“Exactly,” Ava said. “You left her with me, and now she’s stuck with a little sister she never wanted. And I drive her crazy, because I’m a half-trained rookie moron, and I barely know what I’m doing. I can barely control my own powers. So yeah, I’m a liability.”
“She’s not stuck with you. And you’re not a rookie moron. You’re the Red Widow, remember? She’s just looking out for you, like I told her to.”
Ava’s eyes flickered toward him. I don’t want to talk about this. Not with you. She wanted to fling herself at him—hide in his compactly muscled arms and kiss his sunburned face—but she had learned by experience that it only made her feel that much more alone. When I reach for your warmth and feel only air—
So instead, Ava tried to keep her eyes on the sky. “Are you ever coming back to me, moya lyubov?” My love. Their sweetest words always seemed to stick to Russian, as if they still needed to speak in code, even now.
Instantly, he was close by her side, sitting right next to her. She could smell him, the mix of his sweetness and sweat as he held his face only just apart from hers. “You tell me, lisichka. Did I ever really leave, little fox?” He smiled.
Ava wondered at the clarity of his gaze; though brighter, even the sky had more clouds. When she turned toward him, it was difficult to not look away, and she found herself fingering the edge of her towel distractedly. “Pervaya lyubov. You were my first love. My first broken heart.”
“Da, pervaya lyubov,” Alexei agreed. “You still are.”
“Maybe that’s enough. To have been in love, even once.” She studied his face carefully now. It seemed to soften as she spoke. “I’ll never have that with anyone else.”
He smiled sadly. “That’s not true. You have Natasha and everyone at the Academy. At least three of your classmates ask about you, every day. And of course, Sana and Dante.” Dante had been his closest friend, just as Sana had been hers.
“They love you best, and they know us both.” He reached out to touch her face.
Knew, she silently corrected, and with one word, the anger she worked so hard to keep in check burned back up to the surface.
“Ava.”
She looked him in the eye now. “I swear, Alexei. I’ll kill everyone who had anything to do with taking you away from me. The Red Room, the military—the whole country if I have to.”
“Don’t.” He sounded wistful.
She frowned. “Why shouldn’t I?”
“Ivan’s gone. It’s over,” he said, softly. “I’m gone, too.”
“If it’s so over, then why are you here, moy prizrak?” My ghost.
Alexei sat back on his heels. “Ava Anatalya. Vesti sebya.” Behave.
She put her hands to her eyes, rubbing away the brightness of the sun. “You know it’s not over for your sister—or for me.” Vengeance and hatred, Alexei, that’s the nature of our Widows’ bond. I accept that, why can’t you?
Her head ached with the weight of it all.
He shook his head. “Nyet. But that’s not true—you know it isn’t only grief that binds you to my sister, Mysh.” No, Mouse. “And it isn’t only me that binds you, either.”
Ava rolled to her other side. She didn’t want to think about quantum entanglement, though it wasn’t far from her mind. The two Widows were trapped together in Ivan Somodorov’s never-upon-a-time world; they had been since the day their psyches were first linked. Ava’s and Natasha’s conscious and subconscious minds, thanks to what Tony liked to call the mad science of Ava’s quantum physicist mother, Dr. Orlova—not to mention the sick machinations of Ivan himself—were still connected in ways the two of them could only partly comprehend.
Quantum ways.
They could sometimes feel what each other felt or dream what each other dreamed. Other times they simply remembered. The two Widows had tried to sever their linked psyches once, but since they’d arrived in South America, months ago, their connection had only gotten stronger—a fact neither one of them had yet to openly acknowledge to the other. Whether it was proximity or something else, Ava knew, for instance, that Natasha was still reliving the night of Alexei’s death in her nightmares—seeing his pale face framed by a spreading puddle of scarlet, over and over again—
“But so are you, Ava Anatalya,” Alexei interrupted.
“Of course I am,” Ava said, looking at him. “I probably always will. You left. Ivan Somodorov and his army of killers took you from me. My life ended that day, too.”
“I don’t want that,” he said sadly. “Not for you.”
“I can’t help it. I don’t have a choice. I can’t control my nightmares, and I can’t stop your sister’s. At least the memories only come in the day.” She didn’t want to admit the cost—trauma, exhaustion, unyielding sadness—that the grim parade of images exacted, not even to herself. She imagined it was no better for Natasha. She knew it wasn’t, actually, from what she had seen of her mentor’s psyche.
The price of the Widow.
Most often, they dreamed of Alexei’s death. Sometimes it was Ivan’s, or for Natasha, the bombing of the Romanoff family home. Other times they saw the faces of girls who had died in the Red Room, whether from savage beatings or hypothermia or starvation—or from their role as human guinea pigs for the military/scientific/industrial complex served by Ivan and his laboratories.
Why so much darkness? Why is it only the nightmares that linger? Why can’t we let them go?
She stared up at the fla
t blue of the now cloudless sky.
“Because you think they make you powerful, but they don’t. They only make you suffer, and you’ve suffered enough,” Alexei said reluctantly. “You don’t have to remember. I wish you wouldn’t.”
“How could I forget? How could I even want to?” Ava avoided looking at him. Instead, she studied her own toes. Anything to not see his eyes.
Where’s the S.H.I.E.L.D. training for forgetting the eyes of the dead?
Training aside, Ava knew S.H.I.E.L.D. was still a problem, just as it always had been. A shared psyche was inconvenient and sometimes embarrassing, but in the classified, compartmented, eyes-only life of a spy, especially with the Avengers Initiative and global security involved, it was also potentially lethal.
“None of this is your fault,” Alexei said, reappearing on this side of the chaise and startling her. “You don’t need to be so worried.”
“How do you know what I need?” Ava said. But she was worried; in fact, the longer they were out in the field, the closer they got to the looming possibility of going home, the more anxiety Ava felt about it.
“How wouldn’t I know? I know everything about you, Ava Anatalya.” He smiled.
She thought about it. What was the issue with going back to New York? She didn’t want to fail Alexei by allowing the Red Room to remain operational—and she knew Natasha felt the same way. But Ava also didn’t want to go back to the Academy if it meant returning to a life of pretending she wasn’t a thousand times more broken than everyone else around her. Beyond that, she didn’t want to think about what Tony Stark—who had taken it upon himself to monitor their shifting quantum entanglement—would have to say about the Quantum connection now.
Nothing good.
She looked through the Plexiglas doors to see Tony’s face on the monitor, while Natasha stood with her arms folded in front of him. Probably beating their heads against the wall—
“Yeah, Tony will probably have you both wired up to a monitor the moment you land at the East River Triskelion,” Alexei agreed. The Triskelion base, stretching for the most part deep beneath New York’s East River, was also the home of S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy, where Ava had spent part of last year training. “Don’t let him burn the whole place down. You know he could.”
“As if anyone could stop that,” Ava said. Tony had, in fact, burned down his lab the last time they were there together.
Alexei grinned again.
“Anyways, he can try whatever he wants—it won’t help. Nothing does.” She felt like giving up. “Even if he won’t let it drop.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Your sister and I will probably always be linked—and I’ll always be a mess.” Because I’m the rookie. I’m the one setting fires and sparking like a downed power line.
It was true.
“Stop it,” Alexei said. “You’re doing the best that you can. How could you do any better? You’re at the top of your class. You’re training in the field. You’re on a mission.”
“This isn’t the Academy, Alexei, and I don’t know what I’m doing.” Truthfully, even the Academy had taken some getting used to; Ava’s chest still pulsed with a seemingly free-flowing electrical charge, as it had ever since Istanbul. The current of blue light that coursed through her body carried with it an explicable charge and newfound powers she had only begun to explore. When Ava had it all under control—when she wasn’t under attack, or hyperemotional, or otherwise chemically surging—she appeared to be a normal girl, if you didn’t look too closely.
Or so she hoped.
It was only when you caught the glints of electricity sparking in her eyes—or the slightest waves of crackling sea-colored light that rippled over her skin—or, okay, when everything around you was suddenly burning—that you realized what she was. Or what she wasn’t…
“Normal,” she said out loud. “I’ll never be normal. Not even for a Widow.”
“Compared to what? And who cares?” Alexei shrugged. “I don’t know any normal people. Not one.”
“But you’re dead. In your case, that’s sound logic.”
“In my case, I’m a talking ghost. That’s your idea of logical?” Alexei smiled.
She sighed. “Well, in my case? I’m just a freak.” There was no answer. She rolled over. Even my subconscious knows it’s true.
When she looked back again, Alexei had disappeared into the sunshine.
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
COULSON: Did you know Ava was hallucinating?
ROMANOFF: Quantum entanglement, remember? Our secrets were never very secret from each other. Not that this one would have been easy to miss.
COULSON: So you didn’t say anything?
ROMANOFF: What could I say? “Hey, I know you’re losing it, but this is a covert military intelligence organization, so no crackpots allowed—we’re going to have to cut you loose”?
COULSON: You could have told me.
ROMANOFF: So she could get sent home for needing a shrink?
COULSON: If S.H.I.E.L.D. did that, we’d have no agents, Agent.
ROMANOFF: Send someone to battle and there will be scars, whether or not Uncle Sam allows you to admit it.
COULSON: Believe me, I know.
ROMANOFF: So I guess you also know I was in no position to judge.
COULSON: Because of your own scars?
ROMANOFF:…
COULSON: Say no more.
ROMANOFF: I wasn’t going to.
COPACABANA BEACH, RIO DE JANEIRO
THE STARK PENTHOUSE,
COPACABANA PALACE HOTEL
Natasha had to give it to Maks Mohawk; even if he was the person they liked for the hack, he wasn’t the easiest guy to find. According to her last image search for him, he had disappeared completely online as of twelve months ago.
There were zero photos of him, not clubbing with models or posing at the wheel of half-a-million-dollar race cars or brandishing color-coordinated platters of sushi on his private jet. Not since last year, and not anywhere—not in the searchable databases of the print trades, not online.
Vlad the Dad wasn’t giving anything up, either. According to Credit Suisse, Vlad’s wealth management consultants—whom Natasha had rung, after Ava saw their names dropped on a Moscow’s Fun Percent streaming documentary—Mr. and Mrs. Vladimir Milosovich had been on an extended “corporate health retreat” at a private riad at the swank La Mamounia in Marrakech for months now. The fact that Morocco enjoyed a healthy nonextradition treaty with the United States was probably also not a coincidence. And Vlad the Dad was apparently a fan of the pigeon soup.
Natasha shuddered.
What sends an oligarch running to the desert? Or gives his weak-chinned son the backbone to disappear? She had no idea.
After a fifteen-hour digital database search, the Widows had decided to regroup. Now they sat at the kitchen table across from each other, eating room-service Wheaties out of eggshell-thin china bowls, with silver pitchers of foamy milk. (“Wheaties? Now you’re a Wheaties person?” Ava had asked. Natasha had glared. “It’s the breakfast of champions. You got a problem with that?”)
“So something must have happened,” Ava said. “Something big.”
Tony’s voice crackled up from the speakerphone on the table next to her. “And our rich Russian kid of Instagramsky vanished.”
“Maybe Maks messed with the Russkaya Mafiya?” Ava asked.
“Maybe. Bratva’s got a long memory,” Natasha said.
“Or the S.V.R., the G.R.U.? A little questioning in a basement of Yasanevo?” Ava shivered. The infamous former headquarters of the K.G.B. was nowhere anyone wanted to visit. “Th
at’s what they did to my mother. It would send me running.”
It did, Natasha thought. You’ve been running ever since. I know, because I know that feeling. And that basement—
“That kind of big trouble is, you know, big big.” Tony was mulling it over. “So big he couldn’t handle it. So big he erased himself.”
“Whatever it was, unfortunately for us, it made him realize he had to be less stupid,” Natasha said. “Not stupid enough to use an Amex or keep a sim card in his phone. Nothing that could help us get a read on his G.P.S. or on any other kind of digital signature.” She stirred her cereal in the bowl.
Ava looked at her. “Then how are we going to find him?”
“Don’t ask me,” Tony said. “You’re the ones with the Wheaties. Last time I had breakfast, it was a thirty-five-year-old Scotch.”
“Ew,” Ava said. “You’re disgusting.”
“Excuse me, you’re talking about a 1977 Single Malt Highland that I would have dumped Helen of Troy over.”
“As if Helen of Troy wouldn’t have dumped you first,” Natasha teased.
“In my defense, I would have made one heck of a Trojan horse,” he said. No one could argue with that, and they didn’t.
The conversation paused—
“That’s it. Of course.” Natasha let her spoon clatter to the table. “I’ve got it. We’re not going to find Maks Milosovich. Maks Milosovich is going to find us.”
“How?” Ava asked.
“The girl in the green dress is our horse.” Natasha leaned closer to the speaker.
As she did, the perfectly circular Carrera marble tabletop reflected the bright morning sunshine of the kitchen window, and she wondered for the first time if things were going to start falling into place. Because when has that ever happened?
“I thought we couldn’t find her?” Ava looked at Natasha.
“We’re trying to, and we will eventually. But we don’t need to locate her to use her server to get a message to our hacker. We just hide ourselves in her digital signature,” Natasha said. “Right?”
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