SILK TOUCH ▹ NATASHA ROMANOFF

oo2. hells bells

But Juno had no idea where any of these memories were coming from - or whose they even were, for that matter. They couldn't be hers, there was no way she was once that small and wide-eyed and innocent and . . . happy. She cleared her throat, though it resembled more of a growl than anything, and let her hand travel up to the nape of her neck for a moment. Her lungs felt as if they were working in overdrive, and each breath seemed to demand more and more oxygen. 

But Juno Eline was not having a panic attack. Panic attacks required innate emotions - like fear - which Juno Eline no longer had, or even remotely desired. She firmly slammed her fist against the center of her ribcage, letting the force of the impact shock her lungs into submission as she continued briskly walking throughout the winding alleyways of the slums. 

Her narrowed eyes focused on nothing and no one, except the long stretch of pavement beyond her. Time blended together, forming a long mudslide of existence that would only end once her targets were eliminated at the mercy of her own hands. 

The agent had no idea how long it took for her to arrive at the location, but the sun had already started to set over Rio, sending a flock of shadows towering over the main streets. 

The reverberating sound of a slamming door is what snapped Juno out of her angry haze. Her chocolate-colored eyes immediately darted to the source, like a posse of drug-sniffing dogs searching for their target. The last thing Juno saw before the figure retreated into the covert building was a loud-and-proud logo of a black, skull-headed serpent on what appeared to be a bullet-proof vest. 

"I guess I'll just have to aim for the head." A smirk crawled up onto the woman's face as she cocked her silenced Sig Sauer P226, which she often referred to as her 'pequeno bebê,' or 'little baby,' for no apparent reason. 

She had modified the soles of her knee-high combat boots so that they emitted less noise when they connected with the pavement, and gripped the asphalt with steadier force. Juno quickly crossed the street and cozied up to the back door of the building so that, to the pedestrians walking by, it looked as if she was taking a quick cigarette break from the perils of manual labor, but in reality she was just trying to shimmy a bobby-pin into the keyhole. 

Once she felt the familiar click of the lock, Juno slowly twisted the doorknob to and slinked inside without making a sound. Her hand guided the door shut, before turning around and eyeing the long, unlit corridor that she was faced with. Juno felt a burning sensation at the back of her throat and it felt like the walls were caving in on her, about to collapse and bury her in twenty feet of concrete at any second. It looked liked the exact same building, the exact same hallway, as when she was being trained by El Insolente. 'They must still use the same interior decorator,' she chuckled bitterly to herself as an acidic feeling rumbled in the pit of her stomach.

You'refine, you'refine, you'refine. Justamission, justamission, justamission.

The hallway seemed endless, but her legs continued to carry her through it, and she eventually veered left down a new one after hearing the muffled voices of what she assumed were about four or five men - large and heavyset, by the deep tones of their voices and weight of their footprints. Juno followed the voices until she was met with another goddamn door, though this one was made of steel and had a four-digit electronic padlock on it. She bit her lip in frustration, but her mind traveled back to her earlier days of training. 

The woman's forehead crinkled as her hand gently swept the bottom of the door - a trick devised purely for El Insolente's own agents, after most of them had become easily forgetful due to the years of physical trauma. Despite how excellent they were trained to be at fighting, the one fatal flaw was that the human skull would never be enough to protect them. That was why Juno was their prized pupil; her . . . enhancements never granted her the mercy of being incapacitated for too long, so she was never given an off day.