A dull pain in her head slowly awakened her consciousness and her slimy eyes opened. A second to realise the situation and his arms and legs twitched. Thick ropes bound the limbs tightly.
Natasha found herself in an unenviable situation. The introduction had failed and her identity as an unknown spy had been revealed. Stark's hired mercenary had stunned her and left her in an unknown dark room.
The widow sat in a chair, her hands tied behind her back and her feet tied to the metal legs of the chair. As a professionally trained agent, the girl didn't panic at all at being in such a situation. All she needed was time and she would get out of the restraints. The ropes restraining her arms were already slowly giving way.
A faint grin appeared on the spy's beautiful face. She didn't know how long she had been here, but it didn't really matter. Every day at a certain time, she was to contact the main headquarters and turn in a daily surveillance report. It was impossible to miss it. If Natasha didn't log on to Shield's closed channel at the appointed time, it could only mean one thing - she had been exposed and captured.
If an agent was captured in his home territory, which was North, Central and South America, the Shield organised a rescue team as a matter of urgency. Recovering captured agents was always a priority, if it was impossible to rescue an agent, he was simply eliminated by any means possible. Secret agents knew too much. The captured spies were supervised by specially trained people who could untie anyone's tongue. It just took longer for agents prepared in advance to do so.
Natasha was sure that a special response team had already advanced on her. In her mouth, instead of an extracted wisdom tooth, a moulage with a special location tracker had been installed. This device was virtually impossible to detect, and to disable it would require dismantling the fake. That is, to literally remove the artificial wisdom tooth from her mouth.
The ropes on her arms almost gave way, just a little more and she would be free. As if in a chuckle just at the last moment before releasing the captured spy, the door to the dark room opened.
"Are you awake yet? How did you sleep? - A white-haired man in armour without a helmet on his head entered the room. One of his eyes was covered by a black cloth. According to verified information obtained from the police database, the mercenary's right eye was affected by some strange mutation and that's why he tried to keep it closed all the time.
The unusual mutation in the mercenary's right eye had led the Shield's analytical centre to some speculations. They were not well-founded and needed to be confirmed. There were many people with different abnormalities all over the world. The mercenary's altered eye was nothing special. All the powers he had officially shown were within human limits, so Shield wasn't particularly interested in him. The data collected on the Stark mercenary was level five access, the lowest possible.
"Where am I?! Why did you kidnap me?! - Natasha began her believable act.
"Well, well, well, I'll give you ten out of ten for your acting," the mercenary clapped his hands together. - You not only made a believable expression of horror on your face, but even changed the intonation of your voice. Have you thought about trying Hollywood? With a face like that and such a brilliant performance, you'd be popular in no time.
"I don't know what you're talking about, Mr August, what have I done to you?! - Natasha twitched as if in a fit of terror, actually trying to free her hands from the restraints.
"Nothing at all," the man smiled and went to the wall cupboard. He took out a saw, a hammer, nails and pliers.
Smiling enigmatically, August slowly approached the bound girl. The widow continued to play her role, panic-stricken, asking the man what he was going to do, beating hysterically and even managed to squeeze out tears.
The mercenary, holding his tools in his hands, just stopped in front of the spy and watched her play amazed. Such believable acting! An ignorant person would have had doubts at any rate.
Placing the tools on the girl's lap, Augustus sighed to himself. He had never been good at torturing people, and he didn't like it. He had taken the tools out of the locker just to tickle the spy's nerves and perhaps to get her out of the way. Obviously his psychological manipulations didn't work against a trained professional. Chances are, even if he tortured her, it wouldn't make a difference. Agents at this level have a high threshold for pain, conventional torture won't work on them. It would take a lot of time and skill to crack the Widow.
Anita and Pepper were now watching the "interrogation" through a hidden camera in the basement. When the mercenary brought "Amanda's" passed out body into the villa the two girls went into shock. August had to spend about five minutes explaining the whole situation. The explanation could have gone on longer, but Anita still decided to trust him and gave him the basement to check. Pepper tried to talk her friend out of it, but Stark quickly shut her up, remembering Afghanistan and how many times the mercenary had saved her life.
When August pulled out his tools, the two girls watching became visibly nervous. They had fallen for Natasha's acting skills. The fright and fear demonstrated by the bound girl convinced them.
Pepper was about to rush to the basement to stop it, but Anita held her back and showed her that the mercenary would do nothing.Not knowing what to do with this insolent spy face, August decided to talk to her straight, pretending that he already knew everything about her. He knew Widow's backstory from the canon, but in different comics Widow had different stories, which Widow was sitting in front of him was still a big question.
"Natasha, stop shedding crocodile tears," the man pulled up a second chair and sat down opposite the bound spy. - Let's talk frankly.
Watching the Widow's expression carefully, Augustus noticed her eyes widen for a moment at the mention of her real name. But that was only for a moment; the girl continued to play the victim.
"On the twentieth of December in the year one thousand nine hundred and twenty-eight, a heavy snowstorm howled in the streets of Stalingrad. On this night a remarkable event took place in the family of the Romanoffs, a beautiful daughter was born to them, - August stopped for a moment and looked at the surprised Widow, she stopped playing the victim of the kidnapping and now listened to him silently. - Unfortunately, happiness in the family Romanofyh did not last long. In one thousand nine hundred and twenty-ninth year in Stalingrad penetrated armed group, wishing to return the state of the past regime of government and for this purpose they decided to resort to terror. Stalingrad went up in flames, and only the recently born daughter of the Romanofakh family survived. She was saved at the last moment by a Soviet soldier who pulled her out of the burning rubble.
The mercenary had said enough already. The bound Natasha's face hardened, and she was burning a hole in the man standing opposite her with a murderous stare.
"You see, you don't have to pretend, you can communicate calmly like two adults.
"Who are you?" the Widow said stiffly, tensing all the muscles in her body.
"Just a mercenary who knows a little more than the others," Augustus' face broke into a smile. The red-haired spy sitting in front of him was blazing with the desire to finish him off.
The girl's obvious desire did not scare the mercenary in any way. In terms of parameters and skills Widow was behind him, he had learnt that in their first scuffle on the street. Natasha was unable to react to his blow and dodge it. Of course, his blow was not fair, in the back, but the heroes do not talk about honesty. They always attack in a mob against one. When Augusta stabbed Natasha in the back, he sincerely thought himself a brave hero at heart, so his conscience was clear.
Staring at the mercenary sitting in front of her, the Widow's mind was racing. The analytical centre wasn't working properly as usual, it wasn't the first time the smart people sitting behind the computers had let her down. "There's no information, danger level is low, no problems expected on the mission" the red haired spy mimicked the words of the think tank employee in her head. Natasha now wanted to confront the bespectacled young girl from the think tank who had told her all this and punch her in her snotty face a few times.
August had described her childhood in great detail, the exact date and time. Even the Shield that had recruited her didn't know such details. When she switched sides, all information on her had been removed from all sources. Even the staff of the think tank with the highest level of access had no information on her.
What organisation was he a member of? Natasha didn't have to guess any more, a recent report from the European branch of Shields came to her mind. It referred to the discovery of a mothballed laboratory from the Second World War. The investigation had confirmed that the discovered laboratory belonged to Nazi Germany, namely to a special scientific department of the SS called Hydra. In the discovered laboratory they conducted anti-human experiments to create a super-soldier, adaptable during combat operations monster that will turn the course of the entire war. The test subjects were the most loyal members of their organisation.
According to the documents and body flasks they found, the project had reached the final stage and was almost complete. They did not have enough time, the Allied and Soviet forces were already pressing them from both sides. It was decided to temporarily mothball the lab and return to the project as soon as everything settled down.
Shield had already noticed strange activity in Europe several times, and several secret operations had been carried out, which proved that a terrifying organisation from the Second World War still existed.
"Heil Hydra," Natasha said quietly and fixed her gaze into the mercenary's eyes. No one knew about the secret scientific department of the SS. All mention of Hydra had long since been erased, only the highest echelons of Shield knew of the existence of this organisation during the Second World War.
Hearing the words that had escaped the spy's lips, August was first shocked, then chilled. He even involuntarily stood up from his chair. To himself he shouted loudly, "Not again!".
A comic book called "Secret Empire" came to his mind. In that comic, Captain America was serving Hydra from the beginning, not his country. A sick and twisted comic with a contradictory plot.What if Widow herself was also originally a member of this anti-human, domination-wanting organisation? After all, the Shield is now crammed full of Hydra members... If we consider this theory, then all the gaps in Widow's story have been doled out. The canon of the film universe has gone one place since the beginning, so August assumed the craziest options.
A little orphan girl after the death of her parents fell into an orphanage, and immediately from it into an underground organisation, where she was treated well and had the right ideas shoved into her head from childhood. After being sent to the red room, where already from a loyal girl made a professional killer and spy ...
Then "betrayal" of the USSR and escape to the side of the political enemy. A huge number of German scientists escaped to the USA after the Second World War and among them, of course, were several members of Hydra. The former Nazi organisation began to slowly entangle its tentacles in America. Newly converted members took political positions, gradually climbing the career ladder. Those who decided to go the other way went into the security services, the army, police, CIA, FBI, and of course Shield was on the list.
"Why did you speak German? - smiled at the mercenary, only for a couple of seconds out of reality.
The widow answered him nothing, only her gaze became even more murderous. The spy misinterpreted the man's reaction and confirmed her partially informed guesses, putting together a complex puzzle in her head. A recently dismantled laboratory from which the only male body with a successfully inoculated serum was missing, a recently appeared super-mercenary without a past and his strange reaction to the secret greeting of an organisation erased from history....
Meanwhile, a black Sonata pulled up to the Stark villa. A man and a woman dressed in black suits got out of the car. They approached the entrance to the villa and rang the doorbell. The CCTV camera at the entrance slowly turned towards them.
Anita and Pepper sitting behind the cameras saw the two agents approaching. Pepper decided to open the door for them, Anita moved to a wheelchair, pretending to be a cripple. Meanwhile, the artificial intelligence was ready to activate the house's full alert mode at any moment.
"Hello Mrs Potts, we're from the Strategic Intelligence and Logistics Directorate," as soon as the door opened, the man spoke first and pulled out his ID card from his inside pocket.
(Natasha Romanoff, strange surname, apparently they wanted to make a reference to the noble Romanov family, but something went wrong).
***
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