V I R U L E N T n.romanoff

Three

Three: Mission

A v a l i n a

I inhale sharply at the sharp pain spreading across my abdomen. My wrists are secured tightly to the bed I'm in, it's not my own I realize. As I open my eyes I'm greeted by Madame B sitting in a chair across from my bed.

"Good morning Miss. Bascrov," she says.

I brace myself for what she'll say next, surely my I'll have to face the repercussions of my actions from prior to whatever it is that have done to me. And I deserve to. I displayed fear, and fear makes you weak. Even if to an onlooker it looked like anger it wasn't, it was fear.

To my surprise she hardly mentions it "while your actions yesterday were less than appropriate it has been decided that you will still go on your mission. You will have four days to recover and then you're flying out to Washington D.C. I'll give you details later."

I nod, and she stands to leave.

"What did they do to me?" The question has been itching at my brain since I woke up.

"They just removed some unnecessary organs that may cause problems in the future. Appendix, gallbladder, uterus, ovaries," I interrupt her.

A wave of nausea washes over me. While I'd never been overly keen on the idea of having kids I still wanted to be able to if eventually I felt the desire. Now that's gone too.

"How are my uterus and ovaries unnecessary?" I swallow hard.

She shrugs "kids could distract you from your missions, now that's not something we have to worry about. Besides in your line of work you don't have time for kids anyway."

Rage blinds me as she leaves, though I quickly push it down. I don't even know why I'm angry, I truly shouldn't care. But I do. I give myself seven seconds to feel before locking it away again.  Slowly I exhale and decide to look at the damage the doctor has done to my stomach.

I escape my cuffs and gently, I lift up the gown I'm dressed in, revealing my bandaged abdomen. I can't tell how many incisions there are, though I'm sure they won't be healed in four days.

The next three days passed in a blur. The only person I saw was the doctor who came in to give me more IV saline and change my bandages.  Conveniently, it seemed that they had "forgotten" to give me food, so needless to say after three days I was somewhat hungry. Finally though, on the third day,  Madame B enters the room again and motions for me to follow her.

I stand up slowly, a searing pain erupting from my abdomen. Ignoring it, I rip out my IV and follow Madame B to a small an office I know quite well, Dreykov's. She ushers me inside and leaves, closing the door behind her.

"Sit," he orders, and I do.

"You do know what you did before your operation was unacceptable correct?" He asks quietly.

I nod.

"And you know what should happen to you after that display of yours?"

Again I nod, waiting for him to call in the guards to take me to the "lesson room". I know I deserve what's coming, the pain that will surely come will be all my fault.

"Well, I have decided to give you one more chance for redemption. Not because I want to, I don't believe in second chances," he adds "but because you are simply my only choice."

"What about the others?" I ask confused.

As far as I know there should be at least three of us, seeing as one of them didn't complete the graduation ceremony.

"Two of them proved to be a disgrace and did not complete the ceremony, the other didn't make it off the operating table," Dreykov shrugs.

I nod for a third time. The fact that I'm still in his office, preparing for a mission, and not getting beat to a pulp is a gift in itself.

"Now as I was saying, I am giving you another chance. However, if you prove your weakness again I'm afraid you will meet a bitter end."

I don't react to his threat, instead I wait for him to tell me exactly what this mission will be.

He pulls out a Manila folder from his desks and opens it to the first page before sliding it over to me.

"You know who that is?" He asks and I look down at the photograph in front of me.

The face I see is one that any one of the girls in the red room would recognize. A face of a traitor, of our enemy. Natalia Romanova.

"Yes," I respond.

"Well your mission is simple. Eliminate her."

I scoff a little bit at his words. He says it like it's the easiest thing in the world, but she was the best assassin the red room had had in years, so killing her most definitely would not be easy.

"Do you accept this mission?" He asks, it's a rhetorical question.

"It's not like I have a choice," I shrug.

Dreykov laughs "that is very true. You don't."

"All the information you need is in that file, you will leave at six a.m. tomorrow so be prepared," with that, he waves me away and  I leave his office.

Because I have nowhere else to go, I find myself walking to the room that I've spent the past thirteen years growing up in . It's weird seeing all the beds bare and empty. I spend the entirety of the night going over the file, though I know I should be getting rest. I figure I will have plenty of time to sleep on the flight to America.

From my research I learn that Natalia now calls herself Natasha Romanoff and that she now works for an organization called shield. Beyond that most of the file is filled with stuff about her time in the red room. There's not much about her after her betrayal. Except for a packet titled Budapest 2008 which is full of mostly blacked out information which doesn't really help me. Though I have heard snippets of what happened in Budapest that help me fill in the blanks.

At around four in the morning Madame B comes to collect me. She leads me to a room that I've never seen before. Two guards stand on the outside of it. Madame B nods to them and they open the door. Inside there are more weapons than I've seen in one place in my entire life.

"Take what you need and put it on that table," she says gesturing to the table in the center of the room "everything will be waiting for you on the plane."

I nod and take my time surveying the selection of weapons and finally decide on two pistols a rifle, and a bunch of throwing knives.

After another hour and a half I'm yet again being led somewhere I've never been before. Madame B opens a door and for the first time in months I'm met with fresh air. We almost never get to leave the compound so I make sure to savor it. We seem to be on a runway, at the end of it there's a small plane.

After walking to the end of the runway Madame B looks at me "Don't fail again," she then nods me forward, and I board the plane.

Before I even get a chance to sit down a needle pricks my neck and my vision fades out.

A u t h o r ' s   N o t e
Another short kind of crappy chapter. This was really just a filler again. I promise there will be actual action within the next chapter of two. Anyway thank you guys for 40 reads!

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