meet me at our spot | n.r x oc | ✓

12 - "unknown"

[natasha's pov]

Ah, shit.

Dreykov pulls off the cloaking mask, revealing my own face and hair.

"Welcome home,"
his voice rasps.

I stand up, towering over him as he was sitting on his desk, and Taskmaster raised his arm up to blast be with electricity. Dreykov put his hand up, stopping him.

"Now, now. Don't go breaking my new toy."

"We're going to take you down. You won't ever do to anyone else what you did to me. To my sister. Stefaniya. My mother,"
I seethe.

"Oh, really? Is that your plan?"

"My plan was to kill you."

"I'm alive. So what do we do now?"

"What was my mother's name?"

"Ah... Where we buried her, there was a tree. Umm... A pink blossom. Beautiful. And there was a tombstone with her name engraved on it. What was her name?"
he looks to the side in thought.
"Ah. 'Unknown.'"

I shake my head, tears filling my eyes.
"You don't feel anything? You feel anything when I killed your daughter?"

"Is this your haunted past? Really?"
He laughs to himself.
"Thank you, Natasha. You gave me my greatest weapon."

He moves to Taskmaster and whispers to the helmet,
"Say hello."

The Taskmaster pressed the control panel on his right arm, opening his helmet. Revealing...

Dreykov's daughter.

My stomach sinks and my breath catches in my throat.

"When your bomb exploded, it nearly killed my Antonia. I had to put a chip in the back of her neck. Look at her. You find it difficult to look at her?"

I study Antonia's scarred face She remains stoic, under her own father's mind control.

"I do. She... She watches everything and she can do it. She's a perfect mimic."
Dreykov moves his face right in front of mine.
"And she fights just like all of your friends."

"Can she hear me?"
I ask.

"What? You want to make her feel better? You want to tell her you're sorry? Well, you should have thought of that before you blew her face off. But enough of this bullshit. Go to work. I have rats in the basement, go. Go."
he directs the order to Antonia, who puts her helmet back on and leaves.

As soon as the door shuts, I whip out my gun and point it to Dreykov.
"Well, that was a mistake."

"Was it?"

"You just sent away the one thing that would stop me from killing you."

"Try, then,"
he says smugly.

My index finger moves a fraction of a centimetre before it stops, touching lightly against the trigger. I grunt, using all of my strength to pull it, but it wouldn't budge.