Veronica Barnes: Trained to Kill

XII.

     Date: 6/17/2016
     Location: Forrest Hills, Queens

           Veronica sat on her bed scribbling on her notebook pad. "I don't get it," she spoke, Peter laying on his back with his laptop propped up on his knees, typing and researching. "How would Natasha be my mom? It just doesn't add up-"

"The Red Room Academy," Peter interrupted. "That's where she was trained." He scrolled down on the page. "It's been active since the 1930s, and was just dismantled earlier this year. Leaders were Dreykov, Madam B., and Trick Master. They started the strand of 'Black Widows', and has ties to the Soviet Union..." He stopped and read for a second, eyes going wide.

She scooted over next to him, closing her notebook and throwing it to the side. "What? What is it?"

"The Red Room Academy would perform a 'graduation ceremony' in which they would sterilize the girls," he spoke in disbelief. "They'd take young girls and turn them into the world's most deadly assassins. The girls had hand-to-hand combat training, weapons training, acrobatics, and tactical skills every day. They also had extreme ballet classes where they were forced to do the same routine over-and-over again to make them 'unbreakable'."

Veronica played with a loose thread on her sweater while listening. "What else?"

He sighed, scrolling down, his eyes scanning the screen. "They would be forced to watch projections of videos like Snow White which was full of subliminal messages of fear and pain to brainwash the girls. When they'd sleep they were handcuffed to their beds..." his breath hitched in his throat at the end of the article. "By the end they would have actual people as shooting targets for practice." He looked over at Veronica, his eyes saddened slightly. "D-Did you go through this? You...You don't talk about it much which I completely understand but if you need to talk to someone-"

She nodded her head. "Some of it, yes. Others, no." Her eyes leveled down to the comforter on her bed. "When I first got there I tried to escape everyday. I was only two years old, but I knew something wasn't right. They'd sedate me every night and keep me handcuffed to a bed in a cemented room, like a prison cell. Everyday they'd force me to watch documentaries on assassins, sharp-shooters, Hitler even. By the age of five I knew his entire Reichstag speech, word-for-word." Peter sat up on the bed, stretching out his legs as he looked at her intently. "I-I can speak five languages fluently other than English, which I guess is pretty cool. I can speak German, French, Russian, Latin, and Italian."

"Really?" Peter asked in surprised.

She nodded. "At HYDRA, their thing was mainly active skills," she told him. "I wasn't taught ballet or tactical skills. I was taught strategy and how to move without anyone seeing me. I can use practically every weapon..."

"Can you use nunchucks?!"

She let out a small laugh. "Yes, I can actually."

He shook his head. "So cool...I-I mean it's not cool but like...it is in a weird way, you know?"

A smile formed on her face. "I mean, I guess it kind of is in a way. I mean, I took down one of the six-foot tall guards who had a machine gun with just a flagpole once-"

"A flagpole-?"

"Hey, gotta use what you've got access to sometimes."

He smiled. "Alright, since you can speak five different languages say something to me."

"Well, what do you want me to say?"

"Whatever you want," he shrugged.

"Alright...tu es un con, mais je t'aime," she spoke, holding back her laughter.