Chapter 7
Tony almost passed out from the horror. "She's still in there. The two girls, they are one now. It's all my fault. I have to get her out of there."
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Natasha woke up feeling tired and sore. Her memory was still fuzzy but she remembered killing her friends, no, her sisters. Wait, she did that years ago. Why would she be remembering that now? She tried getting up but then noticed her body strapped to a chair. Slightly panicked, she looked around the room and saw a man with his back turned from her. It was Dr. Andrei, the one who was always so nice to her during her "treatments" when she was in Red Room. But he died long ago. He was fiddling with a vial and calculating a dosage. From the looks of it, it looked like there was only enough liquid in the vial for one person. She knew it was injected into her so long ago. The super serum that Ivan had promised to the girl that "won." She never imagined that the test would be to kill every single girl she had trained alongside of. Natasha tried to close her eyes at the memory but opened them again when she heard the door open.
Ivan walked into the room feeling extremely excited. Today was the day the super serum would be put into action. After years of waiting for it to be ready, it was finally in his hands. He saw Natalia looking at him and he just winked at her. He then walked over to the doctor to prepare for the procedure.
"Are we ready yet Andrei?"
"Sir, what if it doesn't work? It has taken years for it to be developed and this is all we have. Plus, we don't know what it will do to her. She is the best and you completely went against orders and had the other candidates killed." Dr. Andrei was desperately trying to voice his concerns to Ivan but he never listened.
"I said, is the serum ready, doctor?" Ivan was growing extremely impatient. He was ready for this to work so he could move forward with his plans. He had made a lot of enemies over the years and it would be a relief to have them off of his back. He would send Natalia after them.
"Yes, it's ready. Let's begin."
The two walked over to the young girl and watched her look fearfully up to them. She had not said a word since she woke up strapped into the chair.
"Natalia, are you ready?"
No one had called Natasha that since Red Room. Wait, she was in Red Room? But how? They had her strapped down but nothing was supposed to be able to hurt or touch her, and there was a stinging on her chest and she felt as if she had lost a lot of blood. Then it hit her. Natasha was Natalia. She was trapped inside of Natalia's mind. And she could feel everything around her. She had no control over her movements. She was simply existing inside of the young girl, watching and feeling all over again.
She wanted to scream, but she couldn't; she was trapped. She tried to close her eyes but it wouldn't work. She was helpless. Natasha in that moment, wanted to die.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Natalia watched as the doctor and Ivan approached. She knew she was going to be injected with the serum. The only thing she could do was wait for the agony. And then it came.
The needle was stuck into her vein and the evil liquid quickly spread throughout the girl's body. It felt as if she was on fire, again, but this time it was ten times worse. Her body started convulsing as she pulled against the restraints. She pulled so hard in her agony that there was a small cracking noise heard in the room. Her wrist had broken, but she kept pulling on the restraints. Harder and harder she pulled as the serum coursed through her body. She started feeling stronger, could think more clearly, and a million other things at once. The pain intensified to the point where she almost blacked out.
To see a child suffer like this is horrible but it only made Ivan happy. He would have his very own super assassin to toy with. He couldn't keep the smile off of his face as the little girl before him convulsed and broke her body in order to escape the pain. The smile was soon wiped off of his face when she broke through her restraints and jumped off of the table. No one should have been able to break those bonds. She was indeed changing.
Natalia was on fire. She pulled as hard as she could at the restraints, ignoring the pain in her wrist, and finally broke free. She jumped off of the table and ran to the corner of the room. She couldn't think straight and she felt as if she had no control over her body. It just did what it wanted. Maybe it was the serum working its way through, she didn't know. She fell against the wall and shrunk down, trying to escape the invisible flames. She pulled at her skin, scratching until she was bleeding, trying to put the pain out. All the while this was happening, Natasha, still trapped in Natalia's mind, could only silently endure this pain a second time. It was tearing her apart from the inside out and she tried her hardest to block it out, but in vain. She screamed along with Natalia, not being able to escape the pain. This by far was the worst pain she had ever felt in her life and there was nothing she could do to stop it. She remembered this moment every single time she saw fire. It brought her back to all of the pain and suffering she went through just to be used by a sick and sadistic man.
Natalia felt as if she were thrown into a volcano, reduced to ash, and then fire set to the ash until there was nothing left. To go through this twice was enough scar someone for life. She couldn't think anymore, she couldn't breathe, she couldn't even feel. She became numb to life around her. As the fire left her body, she was left shaking on the ground. She couldn't remember anything. The agony basically brainwashed her. She was another person. Natasha on the other hand was having trouble hanging on to her memories as well. The intense pain is supposed to make you forget.
Ivan and Dr. Andrei watched nervously as Natalia went through her ordeal, hoping that she would come out of it alive. After ten minutes of watching her tear at her skin, she finally stopped. Dr. Andrei ran over to her to check out her injuries and found her arms and legs bleeding profusely. He gently led her back to the table to fix her up. After he grabbed a rag to press on a gash, he found that it had already stopped bleeding. Upon a closer look, he was surprised to see that the wound was closing itself up.
"Ivan! Come and look at this! She's healing!"
Ivan ran over to look and was ecstatic to find that the serum worked. It was time to send her into the field for a test run.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
"What the hell Tony! She's trapped? How can she be trapped in there if you got out!?" Clint was furious. Natasha looked so pale and miserable laying on that table. She was going through hell.
Tony yelled back at him. "I don't know! Everything was the same with the hookup...except for her crystal. Maybe that did something. The hell if I know." He was frustrated at the whole situation.
"What crystal Tony?" Bruce asked him calmly, knowing that Tony liked to put twists into his experiments without having them tested first.
"One I picked up after the Chitauri invasion. It had amazing qualities and seemed perfect for the machine."
"Man of Iron, please tell me that this is one of those Midgardian jokes. Chitauri crystals are extremely dangerous, and are banned from Asgard. They are unpredictable and if you used one, it may be too late to save her." Thor had never sounded more serious and worried.
All heads, Thor, Bruce, Clint, and Steve, turned towards Tony with concern.
Tony was now ten times more worried. He should have talked to Thor first about using alien crystals. "Ummmm yea, I used one."
"What the hell Tony!" Bruce yelled.
"It was the only thing I could think of to link her mind to the machine and have it work! I'm stupid I know and I'm sorry. Now please, help me save her." Tony was practically in tears at this point.
The teams angry faces softened a bit at his plead. Tony rarely ever apologizes at something.
Clint breaks up the moment with "I hate to break up this pity party but something is happening on the screen."
Everyone looks to Natasha's screen just in time to see a needle shoved into Natalia's arm. They all knew it was the serum, except for Steve. He missed that part of the conversation.
They stood by in horror as their teammate thrashed on the table in pain. They watched as tears streamed down the sleeping Natasha's face and as her wrist broke. They watched as her skin tore open and listened to her screams. Bruce had to leave the room because he was getting too upset and didn't want to hulk out and hurt her. Thor, Steve, Clint, and Tony watched as their teammate was tortured to the brink of submission. They never wanted to hear her scream like that ever again. None of them could imagine being in that much pain.
After the ordeal was over, Bruce came back in to observe her injuries. They all crowded around to watch him work, they didn't want to leave her side.
She had claw marks all over her arms, torso, and legs from her trying to release the pain from within. She had broken through her restraints from the pain but remained on the table. Her wrist was broken as well as all of her nails. She was a bloody mess and it made it hard to see any other injuries. Bruce ordered a blood transfusion because of all the blood loss and also a morphine drip. He hoped that this would help her wherever she was.
As he was addressing her wounds, he discovered that they were already healing. He looked to the screen along with the rest of the Avengers and they saw that Natalia was also healing.
Natasha had kept from the avengers that she had a super serum similar to Steve's. It was never a big secret but it is never fun to tell someone your age, especially when you are older that all of them, even Steve. The Black Widow had been enhanced by biotechnology that makes her body resistant to aging and disease and heals at an above human rate as well as psychological conditioning that suppresses her memory of true events as opposed to implanted ones of the past without the aid of specially designed system suppressant drugs. Due to the Super-Soldier Serum, the white blood cells in her body are efficient enough to fight off any microbe, foreign body and others from her body, keeping her healthy and immune to most, if not all infections, diseases and disorders. Also, it takes quite a bit for Natasha to become intoxicated. Her agility is greater than that of an Olympic gold medalist. She can coordinate her body with balance, flexibility, and dexterity easily.
Steve was amazed when he was told this. Here he thought he was alone but his teammate was almost just like him. Clint told him all about it so it would distract him from the red head. Natasha had confided this information to him on a mission a few years back.
"But why did her body react like that and mine didn't?" Steve asked him.
"The serum they used on her was the first ever in existence. It was way more powerful than yours. I don't know how you received the serum because Natasha told me that she tracked down the list and destroyed it before more could be made. What you got was the more diluted version I guess you could say."
Steve was amazed and instantly felt closer to the red head. He now had someone to relate to, then a question dawned on him. "Is she stronger than me?"
Clint smiled mischievously.
"What?" Steve asked him.
Clint, still smiling at a memory told him a little story. "You know the titanium wall that used to be in the training room that you used to bounce your shield off of since it was too strong to try and penetrate?"
"Yes..." Steve said.
"Well, me and Nat were training one day and she noticed your practice shield still in there. She gave me this look and then went and picked it up. Without spinning it to give it any momentum like you do, she flung it into that wall and it went clear through. That's why it's not there anymore."
Steve simply could not believe it. He had tried and tried to get his shield to break through and here goes Natasha in one try. He couldn't help but laugh to himself. He was impressed. He looked over to her and saw that more of her wounds had healed, the superficial ones at least. For him, it would have taken him a little longer to heal.
Thor listened intently at the story and was not so impressed. "I could hurl Mjölnir at the wall and have it go straight through my friends. Please, why are you so impressed?"
Clint rolled his eyes and said, "Thor, buddy... you're a god. We are not."
He thought on this a moment more before finally accepting the answer. He was still not so accustomed to Earth.
Tony could not get into Clint's story. He was assisting Bruce with patching up Natasha and all he could think about was, this is all my fault, this is all my fault, this is all my fault. If only he had not used the crystals. He didn't know what to do. In a sudden burst of anger at himself, he ended up yelling "What am I supposed to do!"
The room got quiet. Everyone tried to give suggestions but Tony knew they wouldn't work. Except for Thor's suggestion, it could definitely work, but it was a crazy plan. They all tried to find ways for it to happen. Should they walk right in and demand it? Should they go undercover? Should everyone go, or just Thor and another person? After nearly an hour of arguing and Tony winning, they reached a solution. They were going to go undercover and break him out, even though they hated his guts. He knew more than them about Chitauri crystals.
Loki could be their only chance.