When Red Meets Scarlett

Chapter 1 - What They Made Her

You’d hear her name echo in the hallways, whispered like a warning. You’d learn what she could
do — the things she survived, the people she made disappear. But you’d never meet her. Never
see her face. Never confirm she was real.
Never was the only option.

Thinking otherwise could get you killed.

I used to listen.
Late at night, when the lights dimmed and the air felt thinner, I’d lean against the cold wall and
wonder if the stories were true.

Some said she escaped. Others swore she was dead.
I liked to believe she became something they couldn’t control.
Because if she could do it...
Maybe I could too. Maybe.

I hadn’t realized how much I’d let myself wander.
Who was she?

What if I’d seen her before and just didn’t know it?

What if she wasn’t even re—

The thought cut off the second a hand cracked across my face.

The sound echoed — sharp, clean, final.
My head snapped to the side, breath catching.

“FOCUS.”

The command split the air, clipped and cold.
She was smaller than me — lean, sharp, muscle wrapped in ice — but her strike carried the
weight of someone who never missed.

I obeyed.

My feet shifted back into stance before my mind caught up.

Fists up.
Eyes forward.

Forget the sting. Forget the shame. Forget the ghost.

“You think daydreaming will save you in the field?” she barked.
Another lunge. I blocked this one. Barely.

“You want to end up like Subject Eleven?”
I didn’t ask who Subject Eleven was.
We never asked about the ones who disappeared midweek.

I breathed through the burn in my cheek.
Locked my gaze on hers.
Nodded once.

Good Widow. Good soldier. A Good lie. Hell, even a great lie. But in the space behind her
voice, beneath the drills and the discipline, I still thought about her.

I could never stop.
Even if I knew I should.
Even if I knew I needed to.
Even if it would get me killed.
But I never did.
Not once.

Because something about her, the not-knowing, the maybe of her… was the only thing that felt real in this place.

They trained us to forget.

To unlearn softness.

To purge curiosity and hope like a disease.

I never let it get to me.
Not really, anyway.

I kept my head down. My posture perfect. My footsteps silent.
A model Widow.
But it was hard.
Obviously.

Even the smallest flame of hope was doomed and could be the cause of your death.

Crushed under boots. Smothered by routine.

Hope didn’t survive here.
It wasn’t meant to.
This place was designed to unmake girls like me, girls who used to dream.

You didn’t cry.
You didn’t trust.You didn’t dream.
And if you did… well, someone always saw.
And the Red Room had ways of reminding you what happened to the ones who forgot their
place.

But still, somehow, in the quiet between commands, when no one was looking, when the air felt
less like poison and more like something I used to call freedom— I remembered her.

The way her name made people flinch.
The way her story never had an ending.
The way she didn’t die, even if they swore she did.
And I told myself it didn’t matter.
That I didn’t care. That I could let it go.
I lied.

Because in the pit of my stomach, beneath the bruises and the training and the poison they fed
me…

I still believed.
God how I wish it was easy.