Chapter 13
Clint hits the soldier hard, glancing over his shoulder he sees Steve do the same.
“On your left,” Steve tells him and Clint shoots twice, taking down one more soldier.
“You think they’ll know?” Steve asks, heading into the building.
“What, where Natasha is or that we’ve infiltrated their compound?” Clint responds dryly.
“Where Nat is?”
There’s a hopeful tone to his voice and Clint can’t let himself feel it. They’re deep in Russia and and all he feels is trepidation.
“I don’t know,” he answers truthfully.
Steve throws his shield at the window, letting it bounce to hit one more guard and he shrugs.
“I think it’s clear,” he deadpans.
Clint has a hint of a smile on his face.
“You know Rogers, you’re half funny.”
Steve smiles.
“The other half is trauma.”
Clint can’t help but laugh at that.
“Don’t we all?”
He runs up the stairs to where Jarvis has told him the computer control center is, so he can hack the data base to find all the outgoing flights.
The military base isn’t big enough for military operations and not small enough for private chartered planes, and it was the only place that two of the cars had stopped at.
Enough to carry Dreykov and maybe Natasha.
“Watch the entrance?”
Clint needn’t have asked, Steve already has it covered.
The hack takes him over ten minutes, however once he’s in, he sends the data to Jarvis to go over knowing it’ll be quicker than he could ever do it.
“Now what?” Steve asks, as Clint rejoins him.
“I guess we wait.”
.
Natasha grits her teeth.
The widows uniform hides the burns across her abdomen and she’s long since removed the splint. It made her a target more than she wanted it too.
The girl that gave her the water and the other that broke her arm stare at her. She’s not sure if she knows them.
There’s too many unknowns here. They’re marched into a part of the compound that she doesn’t know.
The tracker that’s held against her chest is a life line.
If she can activate it, they can find her.
Her own defiance against the complete control on her body. She just needs to find out how.
Natasha knows if she steps out of line, they’ll likely send her to the basement, back to the chair, but it’s a toss up whether it’d be more branding or electrocution. If it’s the electrocutions; she can touch the tracker to chair, it’s likely enough to reset it.
But… getting there, making it happen, it means more; more damage, more pain, more hurt.
She doesn’t care.
She wants to go home.
The armoury is exactly as she remembers.
They’re lined up in two lines of six.
She hears the order and makes a plan.
She’s following orders. It’s not her fault the guard isn’t specific.
“Aim.” The first order.
“Shoot.” The second.
Round one, Natasha complies, feel the urge of the Black Widow to take over and she snarls as she pushes back the pain, steadying her broken arm with the other, ignoring the burns that light up her torso hot and painful. It hits left of the target.
“That’s ten,” the guard tells her, and she sees one of the widows smirk.
In the old days, shooting off target meant ten minutes in stress positions. Do it again and it would be twenty. Then forty.
Natasha shivers lightly at the memory.
The next order comes, a reprieve as the girl in front of her steps up.
She readies herself for the dumbest thing she’s done in a while.
“Ready.”
She raises the gun.
“Shoot.”
And shoots the girl that poisoned her in the leg.
.
Dreykov stands over her. Mouth guard in his hand as he frowns.
“That should not have happened.”
He holds up another injection and cocks his head at Natasha, the chest guard back on, straps firmly in place.
She smiles at him.
They’re going to electrocute her and she’s gleeful.
He seems to be frustrated at her, because he backhands her face, splitting her lip against the metal of the top of the mouth guard. She clenches her fist around the tracker, the top of it pressed against the chair, hears the first whir of the generator and then feels the spark flow through her.
It’s pain that makes her feel like her skin is peeling back to expose her neurons, but it’s a win.
In all her time in the Red Room, she can count the times she’s won on her fingers. She just hopes to god it works.
Dreykov gives the call to stop, and he hovers over her. Her vision blurry and head pounding.
“We haven’t tried this on the others yet, but no time like the present to try it on you.”
His grotesque look makes her stomach turn; the liquid in the syringe blue and viscous.
“New nanites, they’ll combine well. You’ll have no control over anything, and only the Black Widow will remain.”
He leans in close.
“Say goodbye.”
Injecting the liquid into her neck, Natasha feels the cold inside and out.
.
Tony rubs his hand over his face and groans. On one hand, he keeps Jarvis looking for Natasha, the operating system scanning across Russia as Clint’s data is analyzed.
On the other hand he has a scientist who recreates a serum that seems to be like a paralytic mind control.
Bruce is incredulous at the power behind it, as he reworks it.
He explains to Tony that it’s only when he knows what it does that he can create the antidote for it.
Tony doesn’t care, he just wants to help Natasha.
“Sir,” the AI brings his attention to Grozny, then zooms into a compound in a town that Tony can’t even begin to pronounce.
“Her tracker is live,” he announces.
Tony’s heart fills with hope.
“Map the area whilst it’s still active,” he orders.
“Can you get her vitals?”
Jarvis replies with a negative but gets the schematics of the compound.
“Will it stay active?” he asks, looking at the layout and sending all the information to Clint, calling him straight away.
“Yes I believe so.”
Clint picks up straight away.
“You’ve found her,” he states.
“Grozny,” Tony answers.
“How long will it take you to get there?”
Clint pauses, maybe looking at all his options for transport.
“An hour,” he decides.
“Okay, keep in touch. Clint, she’s been given who knows what but… Bruce is figuring it out but uhh, preliminarily it doesn’t look good. We aren’t sure how many widows are in the compound so maybe make it covert. I’m coming with the quinjet, I’ll meet you there.”
There’s a pause.
Clint voice is steady, and Tony is again reminded he used to be a soldier.
“Do you have an in for us?”
Tony shakes his head, but even as he does it he looks to the schematics and starts to think.
“I’ll figure it out by the time you get there,” he promises.
“Call me when you reach the point I’ve just sent you, okay?”
Pausing, Tony runs scenarios in his head.
“Maybe Steve can drive and you can have a look too?”
Clint’s more of a tactician than both he and Steve are, and they all know it.
“Yeah, yeah okay,” Clint agrees, putting Tony on speakerphone and thinking out loud as points to a car for Steve to hotwire.
.
Clint thinks it’s a good plan.
It’s their only plan.
A diversion at the front, whilst he goes in up through the sewage entry, the pipes big enough for him to get through, and back out again.
Tony says she hasn’t been moved from the space he thinks is their medical facility.
Clint is terrified at what he’s going to find, but they fixed her Tony said.
Everything else is better than death.
.