A-GRL

Can't Relax

Natasha wakes up with a volcanic headache and a view of the Marux ship's dark underside. Cannons and machine guns should never be the first things people see when they open their eyes, she notes.

Her arm trembles as she props herself up. It's even colder in the hangar now. She remembers the two men and how she got her massive headache. She squints as this memory and the image of the majestic Golden Gate flicker back and forth in her mind.

Suddenly she is standing and looking down at her hands. Am I still alive? she asks.

She sits in her ship's cockpit, not sure when she climbed in. She shivers. Ice glazes the canopy. Her head throbs. She dares not slip her arms into the controls.

She jerks awake on the air shuttle back to the hotel. Natasha whispers "Help," although there is no one else in the shuttle.

When she is inside her hotel room, she doesn't remember how long ago she stepped out of the shuttle, nor how she got where she is. "Dimi-3, what just happened?"

"You've asked me this question three times now. Are you okay?"

Natasha jerks awake. "I don't-"

She is in a new room. Hospital, she infers.

Her head isn't threatening to split in two anymore. She doesn't know how she got here. Sweat collects in the small of her back. She is too afraid to move, lest she appear somewhere else without explanation.

She remembers the attack. They were two men speaking English. They took something from my cockpit. But what?

A nurse appears with breakfast. "You're awake," she says in English, an accent like Victor's.

"This is America?" Natasha inquires in the nurse's language.

The nurse's face looks worried for a second. "Yes. This is Nuevo San Francisco General Hospital. How are you feeling?"

"Good."

Nat spots her glass phone on a table nearby. "Dimi-3, call Grigoriy," she says as she picks up the light-blue device. Her crew chief answers quietly.

" Ballerina," he names, "I've been waiting for your call." Hearing someone speak Russian fills her with happiness.

"They broke into the hangar and took something."

"Uff. Who?"

"I don't know, but one of them covered my mouth and nose. I couldn't breathe!"

"This is impossible. No one went into the hangar last night. Everyone was out at the club."

"No! I don't think it was one of ours. They were speaking English like westerners."

"How western?"

Nat pauses. She can't remember if the intruders sounded American or British. "I don't remember. It happened fast."

"Well if you or anyone else was at the hangar, Dimi-3 would've told me or the police."

Nat grips her phone angrily. "I'm telling you, Grigoriy."

"I'll get Dimi-3 check the cameras as we fly to Germany."

"When are we leaving?"

"Um. We're on the way to the port."

"Now?"

"Da, now."

"You're leaving me here. Unbelievable."

"The music plays even if you don't dance."

"Who's flying the Nürburgring? Kaz? Nikolai?"

"Someone will. We don't know yet."

Neither of them speak, then attempt to at the same time. Natasha leads.

"I will return stronger. Faster. For the motherland."