The Devil's Keeper - Blackhill

Chapter 4 - This Too, Shall Pass

[March 9th, 2007 – 100 miles North of Tomsk, Russia]

Maria put her ear-piece in after loading her gun.

"Report in, do you copy?" she asked, testing the line connecting all the team members. They all responded affirmatively. "Are you all in position?" Again, all of them responded affirmatively.

They were just outside the main entrance to the facility Natalia had pointed them to, and they were about to strike. Maria, Phil and May were going to get through the main wing, the North one, while Bobbi and Sharon entered West and proceeded South. Hawkeye would stay outside and serve as the sniper in case someone tried to sneak out.

"Hawkeye, whenever you're ready, take out the two sentinels."

"I was born ready." came the sassy response that made Maria roll her eyes. Sure enough, a second later, two arrows struck their necks simultaneously.

"You knew I meant one at a time." Maria whispered, "But this works too, let's go."

They went in, taking down any resistance they met along the way, which admittedly wasn't much. It was odd.

"Anyone else feeling like this might be a trap?" Bobbi voiced her concerns. "West wing clear. Carter and I are heading South."

"North wing clear too." May reported. "There were less than ten agents here."

"This is starting to feel like a trap." Phil murmured.

"We need to all go East." Maria ordered hurriedly, "According to Fitz's maps, there's an unlisted room. At this point we have to get to her as soon as possible and then get the hell out of here once we've captured her."

They met up in one of the corridors and, after taking down a few more agents, moved towards the room Fitz had assessed as the most likely to be the Black Widow's.

"Morse, Carter, you stay here and guard the hallway. Coulson, May, you stand on watch at the door. I'm going in."

"Alone? What if she's armed?" Hawkeye asked over the comm line. "Screw that. She's the Black Widow, armed or not, why on Earth would you go in there alone?"

Maria completely ignored him and looked at May. They nodded to each other, then Maria counted down to three before kicking the door open. May got behind her, they stood shoulder to shoulder as Maria stepped into the dark room. The dim light from the hallway barely allowed her to see the inside of the room, so she needed a couple of seconds to locate the woman sitting on the floor, her knees hugged to her chest. She lifted her chin when the light came in and, looked at the figure in the doorway. Maria could see she wasn't stained in blood anymore, she probably hadn't been back for more than an hour, because she still looked exhausted. She did say she was twelve hours in the future, after all.

She slowly raised her hands. Maria drew her gun on her, but she quickly realized Natalia was offering her wrists to her, so Maria would be able to handcuff her.

"So this is it? You're not even going to try to fight back?" Maria asked, a little puzzled.

"I asked you here. I'm turning myself in. Why would I fight back?" Her voice was raspy, tired, and there was a bitter note to it.

Maria eyed her a moment longer, then nodded and lowered her gun.

"Why is there so little security here?" She asked while putting Fitz-Simmons' special handcuffs on her and helping her up.

"Why are these glowing blue?" Natalia nodded to her own wrists.

"It's complicated. Basically, it's a metal meant to restrain your powers; it mimics an Asgardian metal, our two best scientists reproduced it."