Friendly Fire, 1/6.
Title: Friendly Fire
Series: #16 in Ready For The Siege
(#1 - Look Over Your Shoulder, #2 - Armed Up To The Teeth, #3 - Misery Inspires, #4 - Broken Underneath, #5 - Change Is Coming Soon, #6 - Lick Your Wounds, #7 - Bitter Sparks, #8 - Father's Will, #9 - To Feel Safe Again, #10 - Hit Your Prime, #11 - Open Your Eyes, #12 - Can't Be Ignored, #13 - Make You Ill, #14 - Aim Straight, #15 - Not The First Time)
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Rating: R
Pairing: Loki/Natasha, Natasha/Yelena, Natasha/Winter Soldier
Disclaimer: Not mine! Some comic backstory is incorporated into characterizations, but this is still primarily movieverse.
Spoilers/Warnings: Post-Avengers, AU to the rest of MCU. Read the other stories before this one, because it does refer back to events in them. Additional warning for mindfuckery of various flavors (hello, Red Room!) and detailed descriptions of violence.
Title and series title from "The Royal We" by Silversun Pickups
Special thanks to phoenixrising06/
romanovasledger for plotting and characterization discussion. :)
Summary: The Red Room has returned.
One - Set Up
Slipping out of Japan had been far easier than Natasha had expected. After a few days in Australia to recuperate, the trio landed in Seattle. Agents of Black Spectre were on the Red Room target list. This organization brainwashed any number of kidnapped women, stole currency plates and wanted to bring down the United States government and destabilize the world to let chaos reign. Their agents were all female and wore all black and black gas masks.
"I don't like the sound of this," James intoned, looking over the data that Natasha and Yelena had hacked out of Hydra and AIM databases. It was much more complete a file on Black Spectre agents and intentions than the composite file that SHIELD had. Natasha looked over all the data they had, committing the important parts to memory.
"They brainwash women," Natasha said flatly, still looking at the file. "Looks like drugs, sounds and triggers in various combinations, depending on the willpower of the victim they abduct. They tend to take the strongest ones they can find, and those assholes seem to enjoy breaking down defenses and corrupting them."
Yelena's expression was hard when Natasha looked up at her. "We kill them all. I don't care what it takes, we kill them all."
"We're vulnerable," James said slowly. "Our history with the Red Room..."
"We kill them all!" Yelena repeated shrilly.
Natasha put a calming hand on Yelena's arm and pulled her in close. "What if we play this smart, eh, Lena? Use resources out there we haven't been."
"What are you talking about?"
"The Avengers."
Yelena pulled back, hissing in anger. "No. They will try to take you, force you to go back with them again. I will not allow it!"
Cupping Yelena's face in her hands, Natasha gave her a level look. "Lena. Love, I told you. I'm with you. Clint understands that. He was the best friend I had there, he brought me in after the Red Room was gone. He knows I kept telling him I'd only say as long as it suited me. And it doesn't suit me anymore."
She didn't seem mollified. "They were in Japan. They'll want you back."
"Doesn't mean they can have me back, Lena."
She let out an irritated breath. "Natalia, you belong to me."
Natasha let her thumbs trail along Yelena's lips. "Lena. We can use them. Use their numbers and strength and resources. It was too close in Japan. I'm not losing you, Yelena. If it means we work with them, we work with them. They offered, remember? I think it's about time that we took them up on that offer."
It was too brusque a way to introduce the concept, but Yelena didn't seem to take it the wrong way. She pouted and sulked. "But you're mine, Natasha. My Natasha. Even the Winter Soldier doesn't know you as I do."
"I know," Natasha said softly. "But I will not lose you, not when we are now all back together again. It was so long, and I won't risk your death."
She pulled away from Natasha and looked to James. "And what do you think?"
"Tactically speaking, it would even the odds. Three of us against untold agents of unknown skill, plus all of their handlers..." The folly of this plan went unsaid. "We will need more weapons, more in number. To kill them all, we need numbers."
"I don't want you going back to them, Natasha," Yelena insisted.
Natasha gave her a sly smile. "There are ways to get their attention without being there."
***
Bruce had been working with Jane on various projects besides the Einstein-Rosen Bridge, even if that was her particular favorite. "It's not every day you get a man from another planet using the thing you study to prove its existence," she had said when he commented on that.
"And if you can stabilize harmonics on this end, you can go visit him whenever you like."
"There's that, too," Jane said, cheeks turning a little pink. "But then, there's also visiting Ketilve at the palace library. All that wealth of information going to waste just because the warriors there think it's beneath them to pick up a book. That's a crime, as far as I'm concerned."
"Probably for Ketilve, too," Bruce replied with a smile. "But in any case, you can't just put sensor arrays on a rooftop. I think we might have to talk to Tony about that."
"Why? Does he have a satellite or a space station I don't know about?"
"Somehow, I wouldn't put it past him," Bruce said, making Jane laugh. "There must be some kind of design flaw we're not thinking of."
On this particular occasion, the two of them were stuck on the analysis of an artifact that SHIELD had found in an archaeological dig that Hydra had tried to take over. The Academy students hadn't been able to make heads or tails of the metal, and some of the research labs had also drawn a blank. Bruce wasn't sure if they could do any better, but it was a nice side project that could distract them. Jane was scribbling furiously to try to make the math work, but it wasn't working. Her groans were starting to grate on Bruce's nerves. "We need a break," he said finally, pushing back from the desk.
Jane startled and looked up. "Oh. How long have we been at this?"
"Long enough for me to wonder if I can speak Greek. Which I don't, by the way."
She grimaced. "Maybe a change in scenery? Darcy used to have me do that a lot when I lost track of time. Coffee shops have closing times, so I'm not sitting in the same place overnight working on something."
"How is she?" Bruce asked as he stood up, hoping it would give Jane a not-so-subtle hint that he wanted an actual break, not just a break from his desk.
"Doing great. Last semester, and I think Pepper plans to hire her for their PR department."
"You miss her, I can tell," Bruce remarked. He bit back a laugh when Jane looked embarrassed and hastily stood up. He led the way out of the lab so they could head down to the elevators. The communal kitchen area would have worked, but he wanted a complete change of scenery to clear out his head. "It's okay, I don't feel bad."
"It's not that you're not a great friend," Jane said, giving him an awkward smile.
"I don't do the girl talk."
"Yeah!" Jane cried, clearly glad he didn't take that personally. "I mean, you know Thor, you're friends with him, but I can't talk to you about other stuff, because that would be weird. Wouldn't it? I don't know. You're a good guy to talk to, you really are, but it feels like sometimes you don't want that."
"Well, I'm not that kind of doctor," Bruce replied.
"Oh, I know that," Jane said with a laugh. "Eric had to see quite a few therapists after New Mexico to get clearance for SHIELD work after New York. No, I mean, a lot of guys don't want to talk about relationships. Or feelings. Or anything, some of the time."
"I think it's safe to say I'm hardly ordinary," Bruce told her self-deprecatingly as the elevator descended to the ground floor where the SI coffee shop was.
"Well, of course not. Not everyone knows about radiation and astrophysics."
"No, I meant-"
"Bruce," Jane said firmly, holding up a hand to stop him. "I know what you meant. Your control is pretty legendary as far as I'm concerned. You and he share a body and have different skill sets. I have a really hard time calling him a monster like you do."
He blinked in surprise. "Well, why wouldn't you?"
"If he was a monster, he would shift out of you right now and take out this building. He wouldn't stop because there are innocent people around, he wouldn't stop because there are friends next to him that might get hurt. He wouldn't let you help me with my research when there's nothing in it for him." She gave him a pointed look and shrugged. "Is he scary? Sure. I don't know how to reason with him, and I don't know if he'd understand me. But you know what? He helped out and did great on Asgard. And perfectly ordinary human beings can be scary, too. People are capable of great kindness and great evil. In that respect, he's just like everyone else on this planet."
Stunned, Bruce could only blink and stare at Jane. He swallowed, then nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess you're right."
"Hard facts, right?" Jane teased, poking him in the arm. "Now, if you are interested in talking about relationships, that's perfectly okay and I guess I should've asked sooner. It would be nice to have some instant feedback instead of waiting for a Skype session after Darcy gets out of class or off of work." She flashed Bruce a wide smile. "I may be looking forward to her finishing up at Culver and getting to New York already."
"You'd want to have her input," Bruce temporized.
"True. But you've also been around the world. You have perspective she doesn't."
That gave Bruce pause again. He hadn't ever really considered it in that light before. He had been so focused on research and work and not Hulking out that he didn't think of the positives that had come out of his journey around the world. The Avengers accepted him as he was and respected him, but he admittedly kept wondering when the other shoe would drop, when others would see him as nothing more than a muscled monster.
His phone pinged as they exited the elevator. Bruce frowned at it as he looked at the app that he had installed at Tony's insistence. It tracked various communication signals that the team used or that SHIELD used. He kept a number of servers active for them to use in a stealthy manner, anywhere in the world; JARVIS monitored the access points and instantly alerted the entire team about any impending messages.
Message detected on undisclosed server. Priority alpha-one, Avengers only.
Frowning, he stopped walking and stepped to the side to check on the message. Jane frowned at him, but didn't interrupt; she never bothered to learn the features on her own phone or install apps, so she knew there wasn't much she could help him with.
"I think there's an office somewhere here that we can use. I'm pretty sure this is not going to be something the public should know about."
"Or," Jane began, steering him toward the coffee shop in the front of the building. "We can actually get some coffee for ourselves and a few others, then have a conference. You know how much they love conferencing on stuff." She flashed him a facetious grin when he groaned. "But seriously, if it's a super secret priority message, odds are good they'll want to be there to see what this thing is."
"After all, who else knows the access codes but us?"
"Exactly."
Armed with the rest of the team's usual coffee preferences, Bruce and Jane headed back upstairs with coffee trays. Bruce had JARVIS notify the others, so they all convened in one of the larger meeting rooms. Tony had already retrieved and decoded the message by the time they arrived with the coffee. Jane was about to head out when she noticed a flash of long blond hair. "Thor!" she cried happily, grinning at the sight of him. "I thought you were still on Asgard!"
"And I thought to surprise you," he said with a smile, reaching for her and tracing her cheek tenderly. "Unfortunately..."
"What? Oh, yeah, no, that's okay," she began, shaking her head and waving off his concern. "I'm not an Avenger."
"I vote yes," Tony piped up, raising his arm. "I'm sure Bruce would, too."
"But I'm no fighter," she protested.
"Maybe not, but you do science," Tony replied with a grin. "You're a Science Avenger. A Scivenger!" he laughed. "What do you think of that?"
"It sounds awful," Jane replied, but she laughed and grinned back at him, and plopped down into a seat at the table.
"You coordinated data very well on Asgard," Steve offered. "And you're the soul of discretion."
"Wow, people still say that?" Tony asked.
"Shut it, Stark," Clint interrupted before Steve could say something else or Tony could further the snark with something truly offensive. "Just go over the message."
Because if none of those present wrote it, that meant it had been from Natasha.
Jane sat down to Thor, who had a curve to his lips as he looked at her out of the corner of his eyes. She sat up straight, at full attention, as if not wanting the others to regret considering her an Avenger. Bruce sat down in the seat between her and Clint. Steve was seated on his other side, then Tony. "Hey, where's Sam?" she asked, looking around the room.
"On call at the VA," Steve supplied helpfully. "He'd be here otherwise."
The encrypted message was up on the main view screen next to Tony. He couldn't figure out how to decrypt it, but Clint did so easily. Bruce sipped at his coffee and contemplated the sparse words, tuning out others' murmurs.
We need help, are overwhelmed. Numbers afterward had to be coordinates.
"Okay, Legolas," Tony began, gesturing toward the floating message. "What the hell does she mean by this? It's some secret code, right?"
Clint sighed and rubbed his eyes. Bruce frowned a little to see how tired and worn out he seemed to be. Though he had friends combing the internet and all the international databases on crimes that might lead to the Red Room. He was the type to double check everything, to try to come up with his own theories. Most of the others seemed to bypass him when discussing anything other than Natasha, but he was a sharp mind and had a keen eye for interpersonal connections. He knew when to back off, when to press, when to sidestep. Usually it was buried under humor and snark, making his observations a little more palatable for the listener.
"Nat and I were Strike Team Delta," Clint began slowly, letting his hands fall to the table. "As in, one of the top teams once they turned her loose of the leash. Most others wouldn't work with her that soon after she joined up with SHIELD, and Coulson thought it was hilarious that I would be stuck with her after I brought her in. But we got along real well after a few hiccups, the usual getting to know you stuff. It was at that point that Coulson gave us a code system to go along with the team name."
"Wait, it wasn't something you made up?" Steve asked, frowning.
"Nope. We got it from Coulson, and as far as we know, the only other one that knows the system is Fury himself. It's for the sensitive shit nobody wants to own up to."
"So what does that mean? It's not just a cry for help, is it?"
"Nope." Clint shook his head. "Yes, there's a need for help, but the verbiage carries other codes along with it. So yes, she needs help and they're overwhelmed. But the underlying message in that particular wording means that it's a top level danger site, go in hot and figure out your own extraction plan."
"And in this case?" Steve asked, looking at him in concern. "What would that mean for the rest of us in this scenario?"
"It means that Natasha's calling us in to help her with a particular target they've picked. The three of them can't do it on their own."
"After Japan, I'm not surprised," Steve intoned.
"Wait, you're not seriously considering killing people are you?" Tony cried, incredulous.
"Run the coordinates," Clint replied, voice hard. "She would never ask me to kill someone without a strict kill order. She would never ask the rest of you to do it. Which means there's an angle here where we can work without compromising ourselves. She will compromise the hell out of herself, but she would never put someone else into that position if she can help it. She's not that way."
"If she can help it," Bruce echoed, giving him a sad expression.
"She's in control of her faculties. She wouldn't use the Strike Team code for something I'm not comfortable with authorizing." Clint's jaw tightened as he stared at Tony. "You seem to forget just how much Natasha does for others without ever thinking of herself or her own safety. You're acting like she chose this situation, like she wanted to be kidnapped and warped by the Red Room as a kid, like she asked for Yelena to fixate on her so hard. If she can bring them in, if we can undo the damage that the Red Room did to them, then by all means, I will help her do it. Nobody deserves to go through that shit, nobody. I don't care whose side they're on, you don't fuck up little kids and then leave 'em alone."
Something in Tony's expression softened, and likely everyone was contemplating just why that situation would make Clint feel so impassioned. Bruce merely nodded at Clint, feeling his own past loom large. None of them had stable, warm, upbringings, did they? Well, Steve had before the Depression. Thor thought he had a loving family, and Loki was a ball of crazy a hair's breadth from falling apart. Bruce didn't talk about his family much, so Jane hadn't volunteered much of her own history. But they couldn't be terribly close if she could pick up and move to New Mexico and then Tromsø in order to work on the science. Her fellow researchers and Darcy seemed to be her family now.
And as Tony put it, she was a Scivenger. So she belonged at the table, too.
"They messed with memories, didn't they? I think I remember someone saying that," Jane said into the uncomfortable silence. She waited until Clint ponderously nodded. "Well, doing something like that can't be easy. Memories are scattered throughout the mind. I mean, I'm an astrophysicist, but I did take psychology and biology courses as an undergrad for a change of pace from theoretical physics." She gave a self-conscious twitch at Tony's interested glance, but didn't otherwise respond. "So, there are different ways that memories are encoded in the brain, I remember that much. But to completely wipe out memories like that, they would have to use drugs and probably electric current, something like ECT. That wipes out some memory. If they put someone in a suggestible state, they can remake the mind into whatever they want."
"Something that some branches of AIM and Hydra were doing."
"Hydra's been decimated and SHIELD is working on the rest of them," Steve announced. "AIM is scattered and trying to recapture the field. They're getting picked up as they do that."
"Which means it's someone else, someone new," Bruce said, more of a question than a statement.
"Any number of terror organizations want to step in," Clint said quietly. "It's part of the problem, right now. Terrorism is too rampant."
"But which ones have done work on memory alteration and implantation?" Jane pressed.
"The Red Room," Clint replied immediately.
At the same time, Steve said "Hydra."
"Throwing out those two, who else would it be?" Bruce asked. "As much as we should consider all possibilities, I think it's fair to say that those organizations are not behind this."
Tony had been working his way through notes and files on his StarkPad. "I might-"
Thor leaned in close to Jane, patting her hand with a sweet smile on her face. "I did miss the way you could find the heart of a problem and seek a solution."
"About that heart thing," Tony interrupted. "It's not quite that."
"What are you talking about?" Steve asked, confused.
"MI6 database," he replied in clipped tones. "Don't ask how I got it, so I don't have to tell you. I'm sure Dread Pirate Fury isn't going to be pleased with me. Anyway, they have notes on a bunch of different organizations that brainwash their members, send them out to do their dirty work." He looked up from the pad. "That seems to be the problem we're dealing with, right?"
"Aye," Thor said, leaning forward in anticipation. "What say your compatriots?"
Tony threw up a virtual screen, then arced his search results up onto it for everyone to see. "So, we've got deadly ladies of various persuasions, some psycho killers, jihadists, other religious whack jobs of different flavors... There's a lot out there to deal with."
"Cross reference the coordinates Natasha gave us. She wouldn't send us into a minefield without a way to narrow it down and prepare," Steve said.
"The coordinates are for Fort Worth, Texas," Tony announced after a moment. He looked up in confusion. "I don't get it."
"There's got to be something there that terrorists would want. I mean, it's not necessarily a place of historic significance, is it?" Steve asked.
Jane immediately set her tablet to Google and started looking up Fort Worth. "Airport, museums, universities, multinational corporations..." She continued to scroll through results. "Oil. Natural gas. Military outposts. FAA and FBI offices. Um... Federal women's prison. Close to Dallas, if that counts as historic. Sister city to Budapest, Hungary."
"I think that's a bit to go on," Steve began.
"The Bureau of Engraving and Printing has an office there. And it's not too far from the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas," Jane continued.
"Well. Military, intelligence and financial targets," Bruce said with a slight edge to his voice. "When it rains, it pours, doesn't it?"
"It will be our intention to seek the reasoning behind their journey to Texas," Thor told him. "I believe there is much more to this than we know."
"Terrorists brainwashing people into becoming their agents," Clint murmured. "It's definitely something Natasha would want to stop. It's partly why she was gunning for Hydra so hard."
"So with Hydra out of commission for the moment," Steve said, "she has a new target."
"Looks like it," Clint agreed.
"Then it looks like we're all heading to Fort Worth," Steve declared, standing. "Everyone ready and willing to check it out?"
Jane raised her hand. "Not me. So not the fighting type. I'll analyze the heck out of your data set, though," she added with a self-deprecating smile.
Thor gave her an indulgent kiss on the temple. "I will find you all the data you like."
"Endearing. And odd. But mostly endearing," Tony announced. "I'm in."
Aside from Jane, everyone else at the table was willing to go. Natasha would be there, and she needed their help. That was reason enough to go, but helpless innocents getting corrupted against their will? It was added incentive to fight.
***
Gabrielle knew logically she had to have a history prior to her work with the Agency. There were whispers among the other agents that they all had prior histories, may have worked for other agencies, may have had lives. But one theory went that they had given up those past lives to be a blank slate on behalf of the Agency. No memories to fall back on and make her balk at orders. No way to question, no way to screw up.
Only, she knew this didn't ring true. She didn't know when she started to question the Agency's methods, when she started keeping track of their tactics and what happened to her fellow agents. All of the women shared a dormitory between missions, all of them whispered and read between the lines. Some whispers abruptly stopped, some continued.
She didn't know if Gabrielle was her real name or a cover granted by the Agency. It wouldn't take much to look it up and check, but she also didn't want to know.
If she wasn't real, what else wasn't real?
Janet once said the Agency wasn't called that by outsiders. They were Black Spectre in MI6's files, due to their black uniforms and masks. Clare had called her a liar. Then three days later, Janet disappeared on an assignment she should have come back from.
Gabrielle remembered that, remembered how Janet laughed and smiled in the mess hall. "Look at us," she'd said. "All alike except for height, facial features and coloring. It's like an assembly line for agents, don't you think?"
An assembly line for agents. Black Spectre. MI6. Untimely disappearances.
It didn't add up, and questioning it led to awkward glances and the risk of disappearing; this might not be the life she should have had, but Gabrielle didn't want to lose it, either. Janet had been a good friend of hers, sharing her face cream and the relaxers for their hair. Clare had always been a jealous cow, belittling their darker skin and brown eyes, as if being a precious porcelain doll was anything other than an accident of birth.
Then again, there were also shadows behind Clare's eyes. Maybe she didn't think the others could see it, but Gabrielle could. She took note of things like that once she was more aware that they existed. Clare acted like a favorite agent, but there was a slight hitch in her step after a long meeting with her handlers. She sat down a shade too delicately. Her eyes were glassy and a little vacant. Gabrielle was willing to bet there were welts and bruises on her body, though Clare always insisted she was fine, she was okay, the missions had gone well. Even when there hadn't been any missions at all.
It didn't add up. Suspicion grew, festered, poisoned her mind.
She smiled at her handlers as always, accepted the files and summaries leading up to the black bag missions. Enemies of the state had to be subdued; she never asked which state, what the crimes were. Files were heavily redacted, telling her nothing about why they were enemies of the state.
Why? That was the operative question.
Miguel was by far her favorite handler. He didn't leer at her, didn't behave in anything but a professional manner. If they were all like him, smartly dressed, polite and prompt, she would have dismissed her concerns as silly fantasies borne of boredom. He was one of the few that acted in the manner befitting an Agency, however, so her suspicions only grew.
He had handed her the latest batch of files, and she didn't have a good enough excuse to linger and question him about them. Her thoughts completely blanked at the sight of his expectant look. "You're married," she blurted, seeing the photo on the desk. "I didn't know that."
Now the expectant look turned indulgent. "Agent Figueroa," he began.
"I've said that before, haven't I?" Gabrielle guessed. She gave him an apologetic look, and held onto the files even tighter. "I forget things like that. But I'm on point for the mission," she added abruptly, not wanting him to think less of her.
Laughing, he nodded. "It's all right, Agent Figueroa. You have other things on your mind. I don't expect you to remember my personal life."
Gabrielle nodded gratefully. "Still, it's rather rude of me, isn't it?" She reached out toward the photo and picked it up once he nodded at her. She looked closely at the wedding photo, smiling fondly at the obvious happiness on their faces. There was something vaguely familiar about her, something that sent a shiver down her spine. To cover it, she put the photo down and kept the smile on her face. "How long have you been married?"
"Almost five years," Miguel said with a proud smile. He nodded toward the door. "Don't worry about it. It's not like you've ever met Jen."
Gabrielle left, and it wasn't until that evening that she realized what had been so disconcerting about seeing Miguel's wife Jen.
She looked exactly like Janet, but with blonde hair.
Janet had disappeared less than a year ago, which meant either Janet had also been married to Miguel and had merely kept it hidden, or Miguel was just as affected as the agents seemed to be. No wife would choose to stay in the dorms or eat at the mess hall if she had a husband to go home to, right? Gabrielle certainly would choose to sleep at home in her own bed, especially if she had a spouse to sleep with.
If handlers had their memories altered as well as agents, who was the one in charge? Who was the ultimate boss? Someone had to have their memories intact.
But to even ask would be signing her own death warrant. Perhaps she would be recycled into someone's wife if someone was kind. She didn't count on that, and couldn't. Whatever she had been once upon a time, right now she was a capable agent. She knew better than to rely on luck, and would have to create her own.
The files sent her to Fort Worth, Texas. There were certain employees of the FBI that had to be taken out. A colleague would be tasked with taking out dissenting members of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing before they destabilized the treasury. Clare was being sent in to mimic one of the Bureau employees that worked on the printing floor to ensure that the US currency printed correctly.
Gabrielle hadn't seen Clare in the mess or dormitory in two days. If their superiors were indeed erasing memories and changing things, that would be the time to do it. And if they were truly doing this, then Gabrielle couldn't trust that her orders were actually what they looked like on the surface. So if FBI agents were meant to be killed because they were enemies of the state, and ordinary treasury workers were also going to be killed, it likely was not to save the US economy. While she was no expert, Gabrielle was sure that eliminating one of the printing offices would start to destabilize the country's economy. From there, it was only a matter of time before the other world economies started to fall like dominoes.
But she had nothing but suspicions, and vague ones at that.
She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. There was no use in notifying anyone. She would be hunted down and caught as a traitor to the Agency. Erasing her would be the kindest option, but traitors never fared well in history. She would have to make her own luck, would have to figure out how to stop Clare and the other colleague that hadn't been selected yet.
Wait. That was it. That was perfect.
She returned to Miguel's office. "Sir? I had an idea for the Fort Worth situation," she said, all smiles and eagerness. "The third slot hasn't been assigned yet, has it?"
Miguel looked up from his computer. "No, not yet. Why do you ask?"
"Well, Rita has been working hard at the range, and I don't think she's had much field experience yet. This seems like such an open and shut case that she could possible start to get that field experience along with myself and Clare. I haven't seen her, by the way, so I couldn't run this idea past her."
"Oh, she's in Reconditioning," Miguel replied with a vague smile. "She'll be ready to join you when you leave tomorrow."
"Ah. Of course," she said with a nod. The smile on Miguel's face was disconcerting, and she pushed it aside.
"I think you have a point about Rita. She's got to test real world applications soon enough. This is a much larger operation than a three-woman team, so it's definitely safe to add her."
Gabrielle frowned. "It is? But the files-"
"You were given background on only your own piece of it."
Her mouth snapped shut. "Of course. I'm sorry, sir."
"Think nothing of it. You couldn't have anticipated that. I do appreciate how forward thinking you're trying to be."
She pasted a complacent smile on her face. "I want to further the Agency."
"With that attitude, you'll go far, Agent Figueroa."
"Oh? Is that how you advanced in the Agency?" she asked innocently.
Something sharp and ugly reared up in his eyes, but she forced herself not to react. Whether he was innocent or not, the assessing glance shook her more than she wanted to admit.
"No, there was a separate track."
Gabrielle nodded obediently. Praising him now would be over the top, so she didn't even bother to try. "Is there anything I should anticipate when we leave tomorrow?"
The odd look that had come over Miguel's features was completely smoothed out and gone. He smiled, his usual affable self. "Definitely gunning for advancement, Agent Figueroa?"
She laughed, but didn't relax her guard in the slightest. "The Agency is my life, sir."
"Good girl. Good luck tomorrow."
She nodded and left the office, her gut roiling in terror. If the Agency was sending in more than a three woman team, something big was being planned for Fort Worth. Replacing a Bureau worker was only a small part of it. Either that, or they were running scared.
But what could scare the Agency this way?
***
***
To Chapter Two - Freedom of Choice
Series: #16 in Ready For The Siege
(#1 - Look Over Your Shoulder, #2 - Armed Up To The Teeth, #3 - Misery Inspires, #4 - Broken Underneath, #5 - Change Is Coming Soon, #6 - Lick Your Wounds, #7 - Bitter Sparks, #8 - Father's Will, #9 - To Feel Safe Again, #10 - Hit Your Prime, #11 - Open Your Eyes, #12 - Can't Be Ignored, #13 - Make You Ill, #14 - Aim Straight, #15 - Not The First Time)
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Rating: R
Pairing: Loki/Natasha, Natasha/Yelena, Natasha/Winter Soldier
Disclaimer: Not mine! Some comic backstory is incorporated into characterizations, but this is still primarily movieverse.
Spoilers/Warnings: Post-Avengers, AU to the rest of MCU. Read the other stories before this one, because it does refer back to events in them. Additional warning for mindfuckery of various flavors (hello, Red Room!) and detailed descriptions of violence.
Title and series title from "The Royal We" by Silversun Pickups
Special thanks to phoenixrising06/
romanovasledger for plotting and characterization discussion. :)
Summary: The Red Room has returned.
One - Set Up
Slipping out of Japan had been far easier than Natasha had expected. After a few days in Australia to recuperate, the trio landed in Seattle. Agents of Black Spectre were on the Red Room target list. This organization brainwashed any number of kidnapped women, stole currency plates and wanted to bring down the United States government and destabilize the world to let chaos reign. Their agents were all female and wore all black and black gas masks.
"I don't like the sound of this," James intoned, looking over the data that Natasha and Yelena had hacked out of Hydra and AIM databases. It was much more complete a file on Black Spectre agents and intentions than the composite file that SHIELD had. Natasha looked over all the data they had, committing the important parts to memory.
"They brainwash women," Natasha said flatly, still looking at the file. "Looks like drugs, sounds and triggers in various combinations, depending on the willpower of the victim they abduct. They tend to take the strongest ones they can find, and those assholes seem to enjoy breaking down defenses and corrupting them."
Yelena's expression was hard when Natasha looked up at her. "We kill them all. I don't care what it takes, we kill them all."
"We're vulnerable," James said slowly. "Our history with the Red Room..."
"We kill them all!" Yelena repeated shrilly.
Natasha put a calming hand on Yelena's arm and pulled her in close. "What if we play this smart, eh, Lena? Use resources out there we haven't been."
"What are you talking about?"
"The Avengers."
Yelena pulled back, hissing in anger. "No. They will try to take you, force you to go back with them again. I will not allow it!"
Cupping Yelena's face in her hands, Natasha gave her a level look. "Lena. Love, I told you. I'm with you. Clint understands that. He was the best friend I had there, he brought me in after the Red Room was gone. He knows I kept telling him I'd only say as long as it suited me. And it doesn't suit me anymore."
She didn't seem mollified. "They were in Japan. They'll want you back."
"Doesn't mean they can have me back, Lena."
She let out an irritated breath. "Natalia, you belong to me."
Natasha let her thumbs trail along Yelena's lips. "Lena. We can use them. Use their numbers and strength and resources. It was too close in Japan. I'm not losing you, Yelena. If it means we work with them, we work with them. They offered, remember? I think it's about time that we took them up on that offer."
It was too brusque a way to introduce the concept, but Yelena didn't seem to take it the wrong way. She pouted and sulked. "But you're mine, Natasha. My Natasha. Even the Winter Soldier doesn't know you as I do."
"I know," Natasha said softly. "But I will not lose you, not when we are now all back together again. It was so long, and I won't risk your death."
She pulled away from Natasha and looked to James. "And what do you think?"
"Tactically speaking, it would even the odds. Three of us against untold agents of unknown skill, plus all of their handlers..." The folly of this plan went unsaid. "We will need more weapons, more in number. To kill them all, we need numbers."
"I don't want you going back to them, Natasha," Yelena insisted.
Natasha gave her a sly smile. "There are ways to get their attention without being there."
***
Bruce had been working with Jane on various projects besides the Einstein-Rosen Bridge, even if that was her particular favorite. "It's not every day you get a man from another planet using the thing you study to prove its existence," she had said when he commented on that.
"And if you can stabilize harmonics on this end, you can go visit him whenever you like."
"There's that, too," Jane said, cheeks turning a little pink. "But then, there's also visiting Ketilve at the palace library. All that wealth of information going to waste just because the warriors there think it's beneath them to pick up a book. That's a crime, as far as I'm concerned."
"Probably for Ketilve, too," Bruce replied with a smile. "But in any case, you can't just put sensor arrays on a rooftop. I think we might have to talk to Tony about that."
"Why? Does he have a satellite or a space station I don't know about?"
"Somehow, I wouldn't put it past him," Bruce said, making Jane laugh. "There must be some kind of design flaw we're not thinking of."
On this particular occasion, the two of them were stuck on the analysis of an artifact that SHIELD had found in an archaeological dig that Hydra had tried to take over. The Academy students hadn't been able to make heads or tails of the metal, and some of the research labs had also drawn a blank. Bruce wasn't sure if they could do any better, but it was a nice side project that could distract them. Jane was scribbling furiously to try to make the math work, but it wasn't working. Her groans were starting to grate on Bruce's nerves. "We need a break," he said finally, pushing back from the desk.
Jane startled and looked up. "Oh. How long have we been at this?"
"Long enough for me to wonder if I can speak Greek. Which I don't, by the way."
She grimaced. "Maybe a change in scenery? Darcy used to have me do that a lot when I lost track of time. Coffee shops have closing times, so I'm not sitting in the same place overnight working on something."
"How is she?" Bruce asked as he stood up, hoping it would give Jane a not-so-subtle hint that he wanted an actual break, not just a break from his desk.
"Doing great. Last semester, and I think Pepper plans to hire her for their PR department."
"You miss her, I can tell," Bruce remarked. He bit back a laugh when Jane looked embarrassed and hastily stood up. He led the way out of the lab so they could head down to the elevators. The communal kitchen area would have worked, but he wanted a complete change of scenery to clear out his head. "It's okay, I don't feel bad."
"It's not that you're not a great friend," Jane said, giving him an awkward smile.
"I don't do the girl talk."
"Yeah!" Jane cried, clearly glad he didn't take that personally. "I mean, you know Thor, you're friends with him, but I can't talk to you about other stuff, because that would be weird. Wouldn't it? I don't know. You're a good guy to talk to, you really are, but it feels like sometimes you don't want that."
"Well, I'm not that kind of doctor," Bruce replied.
"Oh, I know that," Jane said with a laugh. "Eric had to see quite a few therapists after New Mexico to get clearance for SHIELD work after New York. No, I mean, a lot of guys don't want to talk about relationships. Or feelings. Or anything, some of the time."
"I think it's safe to say I'm hardly ordinary," Bruce told her self-deprecatingly as the elevator descended to the ground floor where the SI coffee shop was.
"Well, of course not. Not everyone knows about radiation and astrophysics."
"No, I meant-"
"Bruce," Jane said firmly, holding up a hand to stop him. "I know what you meant. Your control is pretty legendary as far as I'm concerned. You and he share a body and have different skill sets. I have a really hard time calling him a monster like you do."
He blinked in surprise. "Well, why wouldn't you?"
"If he was a monster, he would shift out of you right now and take out this building. He wouldn't stop because there are innocent people around, he wouldn't stop because there are friends next to him that might get hurt. He wouldn't let you help me with my research when there's nothing in it for him." She gave him a pointed look and shrugged. "Is he scary? Sure. I don't know how to reason with him, and I don't know if he'd understand me. But you know what? He helped out and did great on Asgard. And perfectly ordinary human beings can be scary, too. People are capable of great kindness and great evil. In that respect, he's just like everyone else on this planet."
Stunned, Bruce could only blink and stare at Jane. He swallowed, then nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess you're right."
"Hard facts, right?" Jane teased, poking him in the arm. "Now, if you are interested in talking about relationships, that's perfectly okay and I guess I should've asked sooner. It would be nice to have some instant feedback instead of waiting for a Skype session after Darcy gets out of class or off of work." She flashed Bruce a wide smile. "I may be looking forward to her finishing up at Culver and getting to New York already."
"You'd want to have her input," Bruce temporized.
"True. But you've also been around the world. You have perspective she doesn't."
That gave Bruce pause again. He hadn't ever really considered it in that light before. He had been so focused on research and work and not Hulking out that he didn't think of the positives that had come out of his journey around the world. The Avengers accepted him as he was and respected him, but he admittedly kept wondering when the other shoe would drop, when others would see him as nothing more than a muscled monster.
His phone pinged as they exited the elevator. Bruce frowned at it as he looked at the app that he had installed at Tony's insistence. It tracked various communication signals that the team used or that SHIELD used. He kept a number of servers active for them to use in a stealthy manner, anywhere in the world; JARVIS monitored the access points and instantly alerted the entire team about any impending messages.
Message detected on undisclosed server. Priority alpha-one, Avengers only.
Frowning, he stopped walking and stepped to the side to check on the message. Jane frowned at him, but didn't interrupt; she never bothered to learn the features on her own phone or install apps, so she knew there wasn't much she could help him with.
"I think there's an office somewhere here that we can use. I'm pretty sure this is not going to be something the public should know about."
"Or," Jane began, steering him toward the coffee shop in the front of the building. "We can actually get some coffee for ourselves and a few others, then have a conference. You know how much they love conferencing on stuff." She flashed him a facetious grin when he groaned. "But seriously, if it's a super secret priority message, odds are good they'll want to be there to see what this thing is."
"After all, who else knows the access codes but us?"
"Exactly."
Armed with the rest of the team's usual coffee preferences, Bruce and Jane headed back upstairs with coffee trays. Bruce had JARVIS notify the others, so they all convened in one of the larger meeting rooms. Tony had already retrieved and decoded the message by the time they arrived with the coffee. Jane was about to head out when she noticed a flash of long blond hair. "Thor!" she cried happily, grinning at the sight of him. "I thought you were still on Asgard!"
"And I thought to surprise you," he said with a smile, reaching for her and tracing her cheek tenderly. "Unfortunately..."
"What? Oh, yeah, no, that's okay," she began, shaking her head and waving off his concern. "I'm not an Avenger."
"I vote yes," Tony piped up, raising his arm. "I'm sure Bruce would, too."
"But I'm no fighter," she protested.
"Maybe not, but you do science," Tony replied with a grin. "You're a Science Avenger. A Scivenger!" he laughed. "What do you think of that?"
"It sounds awful," Jane replied, but she laughed and grinned back at him, and plopped down into a seat at the table.
"You coordinated data very well on Asgard," Steve offered. "And you're the soul of discretion."
"Wow, people still say that?" Tony asked.
"Shut it, Stark," Clint interrupted before Steve could say something else or Tony could further the snark with something truly offensive. "Just go over the message."
Because if none of those present wrote it, that meant it had been from Natasha.
Jane sat down to Thor, who had a curve to his lips as he looked at her out of the corner of his eyes. She sat up straight, at full attention, as if not wanting the others to regret considering her an Avenger. Bruce sat down in the seat between her and Clint. Steve was seated on his other side, then Tony. "Hey, where's Sam?" she asked, looking around the room.
"On call at the VA," Steve supplied helpfully. "He'd be here otherwise."
The encrypted message was up on the main view screen next to Tony. He couldn't figure out how to decrypt it, but Clint did so easily. Bruce sipped at his coffee and contemplated the sparse words, tuning out others' murmurs.
We need help, are overwhelmed. Numbers afterward had to be coordinates.
"Okay, Legolas," Tony began, gesturing toward the floating message. "What the hell does she mean by this? It's some secret code, right?"
Clint sighed and rubbed his eyes. Bruce frowned a little to see how tired and worn out he seemed to be. Though he had friends combing the internet and all the international databases on crimes that might lead to the Red Room. He was the type to double check everything, to try to come up with his own theories. Most of the others seemed to bypass him when discussing anything other than Natasha, but he was a sharp mind and had a keen eye for interpersonal connections. He knew when to back off, when to press, when to sidestep. Usually it was buried under humor and snark, making his observations a little more palatable for the listener.
"Nat and I were Strike Team Delta," Clint began slowly, letting his hands fall to the table. "As in, one of the top teams once they turned her loose of the leash. Most others wouldn't work with her that soon after she joined up with SHIELD, and Coulson thought it was hilarious that I would be stuck with her after I brought her in. But we got along real well after a few hiccups, the usual getting to know you stuff. It was at that point that Coulson gave us a code system to go along with the team name."
"Wait, it wasn't something you made up?" Steve asked, frowning.
"Nope. We got it from Coulson, and as far as we know, the only other one that knows the system is Fury himself. It's for the sensitive shit nobody wants to own up to."
"So what does that mean? It's not just a cry for help, is it?"
"Nope." Clint shook his head. "Yes, there's a need for help, but the verbiage carries other codes along with it. So yes, she needs help and they're overwhelmed. But the underlying message in that particular wording means that it's a top level danger site, go in hot and figure out your own extraction plan."
"And in this case?" Steve asked, looking at him in concern. "What would that mean for the rest of us in this scenario?"
"It means that Natasha's calling us in to help her with a particular target they've picked. The three of them can't do it on their own."
"After Japan, I'm not surprised," Steve intoned.
"Wait, you're not seriously considering killing people are you?" Tony cried, incredulous.
"Run the coordinates," Clint replied, voice hard. "She would never ask me to kill someone without a strict kill order. She would never ask the rest of you to do it. Which means there's an angle here where we can work without compromising ourselves. She will compromise the hell out of herself, but she would never put someone else into that position if she can help it. She's not that way."
"If she can help it," Bruce echoed, giving him a sad expression.
"She's in control of her faculties. She wouldn't use the Strike Team code for something I'm not comfortable with authorizing." Clint's jaw tightened as he stared at Tony. "You seem to forget just how much Natasha does for others without ever thinking of herself or her own safety. You're acting like she chose this situation, like she wanted to be kidnapped and warped by the Red Room as a kid, like she asked for Yelena to fixate on her so hard. If she can bring them in, if we can undo the damage that the Red Room did to them, then by all means, I will help her do it. Nobody deserves to go through that shit, nobody. I don't care whose side they're on, you don't fuck up little kids and then leave 'em alone."
Something in Tony's expression softened, and likely everyone was contemplating just why that situation would make Clint feel so impassioned. Bruce merely nodded at Clint, feeling his own past loom large. None of them had stable, warm, upbringings, did they? Well, Steve had before the Depression. Thor thought he had a loving family, and Loki was a ball of crazy a hair's breadth from falling apart. Bruce didn't talk about his family much, so Jane hadn't volunteered much of her own history. But they couldn't be terribly close if she could pick up and move to New Mexico and then Tromsø in order to work on the science. Her fellow researchers and Darcy seemed to be her family now.
And as Tony put it, she was a Scivenger. So she belonged at the table, too.
"They messed with memories, didn't they? I think I remember someone saying that," Jane said into the uncomfortable silence. She waited until Clint ponderously nodded. "Well, doing something like that can't be easy. Memories are scattered throughout the mind. I mean, I'm an astrophysicist, but I did take psychology and biology courses as an undergrad for a change of pace from theoretical physics." She gave a self-conscious twitch at Tony's interested glance, but didn't otherwise respond. "So, there are different ways that memories are encoded in the brain, I remember that much. But to completely wipe out memories like that, they would have to use drugs and probably electric current, something like ECT. That wipes out some memory. If they put someone in a suggestible state, they can remake the mind into whatever they want."
"Something that some branches of AIM and Hydra were doing."
"Hydra's been decimated and SHIELD is working on the rest of them," Steve announced. "AIM is scattered and trying to recapture the field. They're getting picked up as they do that."
"Which means it's someone else, someone new," Bruce said, more of a question than a statement.
"Any number of terror organizations want to step in," Clint said quietly. "It's part of the problem, right now. Terrorism is too rampant."
"But which ones have done work on memory alteration and implantation?" Jane pressed.
"The Red Room," Clint replied immediately.
At the same time, Steve said "Hydra."
"Throwing out those two, who else would it be?" Bruce asked. "As much as we should consider all possibilities, I think it's fair to say that those organizations are not behind this."
Tony had been working his way through notes and files on his StarkPad. "I might-"
Thor leaned in close to Jane, patting her hand with a sweet smile on her face. "I did miss the way you could find the heart of a problem and seek a solution."
"About that heart thing," Tony interrupted. "It's not quite that."
"What are you talking about?" Steve asked, confused.
"MI6 database," he replied in clipped tones. "Don't ask how I got it, so I don't have to tell you. I'm sure Dread Pirate Fury isn't going to be pleased with me. Anyway, they have notes on a bunch of different organizations that brainwash their members, send them out to do their dirty work." He looked up from the pad. "That seems to be the problem we're dealing with, right?"
"Aye," Thor said, leaning forward in anticipation. "What say your compatriots?"
Tony threw up a virtual screen, then arced his search results up onto it for everyone to see. "So, we've got deadly ladies of various persuasions, some psycho killers, jihadists, other religious whack jobs of different flavors... There's a lot out there to deal with."
"Cross reference the coordinates Natasha gave us. She wouldn't send us into a minefield without a way to narrow it down and prepare," Steve said.
"The coordinates are for Fort Worth, Texas," Tony announced after a moment. He looked up in confusion. "I don't get it."
"There's got to be something there that terrorists would want. I mean, it's not necessarily a place of historic significance, is it?" Steve asked.
Jane immediately set her tablet to Google and started looking up Fort Worth. "Airport, museums, universities, multinational corporations..." She continued to scroll through results. "Oil. Natural gas. Military outposts. FAA and FBI offices. Um... Federal women's prison. Close to Dallas, if that counts as historic. Sister city to Budapest, Hungary."
"I think that's a bit to go on," Steve began.
"The Bureau of Engraving and Printing has an office there. And it's not too far from the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas," Jane continued.
"Well. Military, intelligence and financial targets," Bruce said with a slight edge to his voice. "When it rains, it pours, doesn't it?"
"It will be our intention to seek the reasoning behind their journey to Texas," Thor told him. "I believe there is much more to this than we know."
"Terrorists brainwashing people into becoming their agents," Clint murmured. "It's definitely something Natasha would want to stop. It's partly why she was gunning for Hydra so hard."
"So with Hydra out of commission for the moment," Steve said, "she has a new target."
"Looks like it," Clint agreed.
"Then it looks like we're all heading to Fort Worth," Steve declared, standing. "Everyone ready and willing to check it out?"
Jane raised her hand. "Not me. So not the fighting type. I'll analyze the heck out of your data set, though," she added with a self-deprecating smile.
Thor gave her an indulgent kiss on the temple. "I will find you all the data you like."
"Endearing. And odd. But mostly endearing," Tony announced. "I'm in."
Aside from Jane, everyone else at the table was willing to go. Natasha would be there, and she needed their help. That was reason enough to go, but helpless innocents getting corrupted against their will? It was added incentive to fight.
***
Gabrielle knew logically she had to have a history prior to her work with the Agency. There were whispers among the other agents that they all had prior histories, may have worked for other agencies, may have had lives. But one theory went that they had given up those past lives to be a blank slate on behalf of the Agency. No memories to fall back on and make her balk at orders. No way to question, no way to screw up.
Only, she knew this didn't ring true. She didn't know when she started to question the Agency's methods, when she started keeping track of their tactics and what happened to her fellow agents. All of the women shared a dormitory between missions, all of them whispered and read between the lines. Some whispers abruptly stopped, some continued.
She didn't know if Gabrielle was her real name or a cover granted by the Agency. It wouldn't take much to look it up and check, but she also didn't want to know.
If she wasn't real, what else wasn't real?
Janet once said the Agency wasn't called that by outsiders. They were Black Spectre in MI6's files, due to their black uniforms and masks. Clare had called her a liar. Then three days later, Janet disappeared on an assignment she should have come back from.
Gabrielle remembered that, remembered how Janet laughed and smiled in the mess hall. "Look at us," she'd said. "All alike except for height, facial features and coloring. It's like an assembly line for agents, don't you think?"
An assembly line for agents. Black Spectre. MI6. Untimely disappearances.
It didn't add up, and questioning it led to awkward glances and the risk of disappearing; this might not be the life she should have had, but Gabrielle didn't want to lose it, either. Janet had been a good friend of hers, sharing her face cream and the relaxers for their hair. Clare had always been a jealous cow, belittling their darker skin and brown eyes, as if being a precious porcelain doll was anything other than an accident of birth.
Then again, there were also shadows behind Clare's eyes. Maybe she didn't think the others could see it, but Gabrielle could. She took note of things like that once she was more aware that they existed. Clare acted like a favorite agent, but there was a slight hitch in her step after a long meeting with her handlers. She sat down a shade too delicately. Her eyes were glassy and a little vacant. Gabrielle was willing to bet there were welts and bruises on her body, though Clare always insisted she was fine, she was okay, the missions had gone well. Even when there hadn't been any missions at all.
It didn't add up. Suspicion grew, festered, poisoned her mind.
She smiled at her handlers as always, accepted the files and summaries leading up to the black bag missions. Enemies of the state had to be subdued; she never asked which state, what the crimes were. Files were heavily redacted, telling her nothing about why they were enemies of the state.
Why? That was the operative question.
Miguel was by far her favorite handler. He didn't leer at her, didn't behave in anything but a professional manner. If they were all like him, smartly dressed, polite and prompt, she would have dismissed her concerns as silly fantasies borne of boredom. He was one of the few that acted in the manner befitting an Agency, however, so her suspicions only grew.
He had handed her the latest batch of files, and she didn't have a good enough excuse to linger and question him about them. Her thoughts completely blanked at the sight of his expectant look. "You're married," she blurted, seeing the photo on the desk. "I didn't know that."
Now the expectant look turned indulgent. "Agent Figueroa," he began.
"I've said that before, haven't I?" Gabrielle guessed. She gave him an apologetic look, and held onto the files even tighter. "I forget things like that. But I'm on point for the mission," she added abruptly, not wanting him to think less of her.
Laughing, he nodded. "It's all right, Agent Figueroa. You have other things on your mind. I don't expect you to remember my personal life."
Gabrielle nodded gratefully. "Still, it's rather rude of me, isn't it?" She reached out toward the photo and picked it up once he nodded at her. She looked closely at the wedding photo, smiling fondly at the obvious happiness on their faces. There was something vaguely familiar about her, something that sent a shiver down her spine. To cover it, she put the photo down and kept the smile on her face. "How long have you been married?"
"Almost five years," Miguel said with a proud smile. He nodded toward the door. "Don't worry about it. It's not like you've ever met Jen."
Gabrielle left, and it wasn't until that evening that she realized what had been so disconcerting about seeing Miguel's wife Jen.
She looked exactly like Janet, but with blonde hair.
Janet had disappeared less than a year ago, which meant either Janet had also been married to Miguel and had merely kept it hidden, or Miguel was just as affected as the agents seemed to be. No wife would choose to stay in the dorms or eat at the mess hall if she had a husband to go home to, right? Gabrielle certainly would choose to sleep at home in her own bed, especially if she had a spouse to sleep with.
If handlers had their memories altered as well as agents, who was the one in charge? Who was the ultimate boss? Someone had to have their memories intact.
But to even ask would be signing her own death warrant. Perhaps she would be recycled into someone's wife if someone was kind. She didn't count on that, and couldn't. Whatever she had been once upon a time, right now she was a capable agent. She knew better than to rely on luck, and would have to create her own.
The files sent her to Fort Worth, Texas. There were certain employees of the FBI that had to be taken out. A colleague would be tasked with taking out dissenting members of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing before they destabilized the treasury. Clare was being sent in to mimic one of the Bureau employees that worked on the printing floor to ensure that the US currency printed correctly.
Gabrielle hadn't seen Clare in the mess or dormitory in two days. If their superiors were indeed erasing memories and changing things, that would be the time to do it. And if they were truly doing this, then Gabrielle couldn't trust that her orders were actually what they looked like on the surface. So if FBI agents were meant to be killed because they were enemies of the state, and ordinary treasury workers were also going to be killed, it likely was not to save the US economy. While she was no expert, Gabrielle was sure that eliminating one of the printing offices would start to destabilize the country's economy. From there, it was only a matter of time before the other world economies started to fall like dominoes.
But she had nothing but suspicions, and vague ones at that.
She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. There was no use in notifying anyone. She would be hunted down and caught as a traitor to the Agency. Erasing her would be the kindest option, but traitors never fared well in history. She would have to make her own luck, would have to figure out how to stop Clare and the other colleague that hadn't been selected yet.
Wait. That was it. That was perfect.
She returned to Miguel's office. "Sir? I had an idea for the Fort Worth situation," she said, all smiles and eagerness. "The third slot hasn't been assigned yet, has it?"
Miguel looked up from his computer. "No, not yet. Why do you ask?"
"Well, Rita has been working hard at the range, and I don't think she's had much field experience yet. This seems like such an open and shut case that she could possible start to get that field experience along with myself and Clare. I haven't seen her, by the way, so I couldn't run this idea past her."
"Oh, she's in Reconditioning," Miguel replied with a vague smile. "She'll be ready to join you when you leave tomorrow."
"Ah. Of course," she said with a nod. The smile on Miguel's face was disconcerting, and she pushed it aside.
"I think you have a point about Rita. She's got to test real world applications soon enough. This is a much larger operation than a three-woman team, so it's definitely safe to add her."
Gabrielle frowned. "It is? But the files-"
"You were given background on only your own piece of it."
Her mouth snapped shut. "Of course. I'm sorry, sir."
"Think nothing of it. You couldn't have anticipated that. I do appreciate how forward thinking you're trying to be."
She pasted a complacent smile on her face. "I want to further the Agency."
"With that attitude, you'll go far, Agent Figueroa."
"Oh? Is that how you advanced in the Agency?" she asked innocently.
Something sharp and ugly reared up in his eyes, but she forced herself not to react. Whether he was innocent or not, the assessing glance shook her more than she wanted to admit.
"No, there was a separate track."
Gabrielle nodded obediently. Praising him now would be over the top, so she didn't even bother to try. "Is there anything I should anticipate when we leave tomorrow?"
The odd look that had come over Miguel's features was completely smoothed out and gone. He smiled, his usual affable self. "Definitely gunning for advancement, Agent Figueroa?"
She laughed, but didn't relax her guard in the slightest. "The Agency is my life, sir."
"Good girl. Good luck tomorrow."
She nodded and left the office, her gut roiling in terror. If the Agency was sending in more than a three woman team, something big was being planned for Fort Worth. Replacing a Bureau worker was only a small part of it. Either that, or they were running scared.
But what could scare the Agency this way?
***
***
To Chapter Two - Freedom of Choice