Acts of Vengeance

~~ Part I: Denial~~
Truly it is evil to be full of faults, but it is a still greater evil to be full of them, and to be unwilling to recognize them. -- Blaise Pascal --1-- “Ma’am?” the barista asked again. “Are you ready to order?”

She was ready… of course she was. She had spent the last 15 minutes hovering inconspicuously in the back of the cafe, casting stealthy glances at the menu board from behind the opaque lenses of her oversized sunglasses in order to decipher the inscrutable lexicon it displayed. She had committed a lengthy string of adjectives to memory by mimicking the seemingly endless line of middle-class customers before she stepped up to the register. She could speak seven languages and infiltrate a world-class security system with just a laptop, a few lines of code, and a precious few minutes in which to type them. Therefore, she could order a simple cup of coffee in a hipster beverage franchise. She could do this.

“Tall…” she began, hesitating longer than she would ever admit. “No, grande...the bigger one…latte,” she paused, only having reproduced less than half the adjectives she had intended to regurgitate. She was actually breaking a mild sweat; this had to be unprecedented. Then her pocket began to buzz with the unmistakable flurry of an incoming call. And not the personal phone--the ‘International Intrigue and Dire Diplomatic Emergency’ phone.

Oddly, she was mildly relieved.

“Do you want any syrup in that?” the perky twenty-something girl behind the counter chirped.
“Sure,” she replied flippantly, reaching for the phone in the inner pocket of her brown suede jacket.

“What kind?”

What kinds of syrup were there? Surely she wasn’t talking about...maple? The phone was continuing its incessant vibrations in her hand, and the screen displayed the urgency of the matter with the name of the caller: ‘Mom,' which was code not for the being that bore her, but the entity that owned her. She had to take this, no question.

“Whatever kind you think would be great,” she barked while trying to sound accommodating. The barista shot back a look which clearly conveyed annoyance so she quickly ran back through the list of words she had meant to spout out from the beginning. “Hazelnut,” she concluded, and this seemed to please her inquisitor so she backed it with a confident smile. “I have to take this,” she whispered apologetically while indicating the wildly resonating device in her hand. "It's my mom." The clear-skinned girl behind the counter nodded sympathetically.

She touched ‘answer’ and then cradled the phone between her ear and shoulder while digging into the depths of her purse for her wallet. She had been out of the “real” world for so long, it seemed, that even mundane tasks like this felt awkward to her. “Hey….what’s up?” she asked casually, as if she wasn’t one-hundred percent certain that she was going to hear those six little words in response.

“We need you to come in.”

“Of course. I’m just getting some coffee.” She handed the barista a five dollar bill.
“We know where you are. There is a car en route to your location.”

She smiled to herself as she recognized the owner of the matter-of-fact voice in her ear. The gesture turned to a definite frown as the woman behind the counter handed her back just a few coins. “Seriously?” she mumbled as she moved to the other end of the counter.
“You sound disappointed.”

“It’s not that...it’s just…” she was now wrestling with putting her change back into the wallet and then the wallet back into her bag with the phone still perched on her shoulder. “...when did coffee get so damned expensive? It’s practically just bitter water.”

“Did you get a latte?” the voice continued in a monotone, all business.

“Yes, which is just bitter water with foamed milk.”

“Have you tasted it yet?”

“Well, no,” she admitted, slinging her purse towards her back and out of the way. How do women deal with carrying these cumbersome things all the time, anyway?

“It’s heaven in a cardboard sleeve.”

“You want me to bring you one, don’t you?” she smirked.

“Grande, vanilla, skinny with an extra shot,” he rattled off with an ease that she envied.

“Sure, anything for you. I missed you,” she replied, grabbing her beverage and heading back to the far side of the counter. “I’ll see you in a few.” She ended the call and shrugged at the barista. “My mom wants a cup,” she explained, then spouted off the order with more confidence this time.

“Okay. What’s your mom’s name?” the lady asked good-naturedly, a Sharpie poised to scribble the moniker on the surface of the cup.

“Phil,” she stated, choosing to ignore the raised eyebrow she received in return.

****

“You don’t look happy to see me, Agent Coulson,” she deadpanned, handing him the promised latte.

“Not unhappy, Agent Romanov,” he answered. “After all, you brought me heaven.” He removed the lid in order to inhale the heady aroma. “I just figured you would be more … shocked to hear from me.” He took a tentative sip, swishing the contents with reverence as if tasting a well-aged wine.

“Are you kidding, Coulson? No one has the decency to stay dead around this place.” She gave him a knowing glance from under her shades. “I had a suspicion you were too committed to the agency to let a little thing like death get in the way of your work.” She took a seat at one of the nearby workspaces--it was all smooth, clean edges and cutting-edge technology. Despite the recent upheaval, it was all still so...so S.H.I.E.L.D. She could not have felt more at home. “Does this mean I’m active again?” she offered hopefully.

“Yes, Agent Romanov--” (he paused for another obscenely satisfying drink) --”I’m afraid it does.”

“Good.” Natasha began to pull items from her oversized purse: extra shades, her remaining paper money, some reloadable toll cards for the subway . “Then throw this thing in the nearest river, would you?” She pitched the bag and its remaining contents at one of the agents who had escorted her in. She turned back to Phil. “I’m having a little trouble blending in with the regulars,” she explained unashamedly.

“You will find that your non-civilian skillset is still valued here,” Agent Coulson assured her. “In fact, we could use your powers of interrogation right now, if you would oblige us.” He motioned towards the closed metal door at his back. “We’ve had these two on ice for about seventy-two hours now, and we can’t get a word out of one....” He crossed over to the computer on the desk in front of her. “May I?”

“Sure,” she replied. She pulled up the chair from a neighboring workstation to use as a footrest, and Coulson didn’t even twitch when she propped her high-heeled boots noisily onto it.

He typed furiously for about twenty seconds and then turned the monitor to fully face her. “The other one is….well, he’s just...pitiful, frankly,” he finished. His tone did not portray any of the pity of which he spoke.

The screen showed two separate holding cells, each containing what was obviously a detainee with a lengthy backstory. One was so pale he was barely visible against the industrial white backdrop of the walls, and the other was off-pink and completely hairless with murine features. Romanov was instantly intrigued, and she stood and leaned over to study the subjects more carefully. This was not going to be a run-of-the-mill spy mission.
“Where did you find these two?” she inquired brusquely, crossing her arms as if to ward off the strangeness of what she was seeing. The last time she had to deal with such alien-looking creatures she had been helping to fend off a full-scale extraterrestrial invasion, and that was not ground she wanted to cover again anytime soon.

“New York Harbor, off Rikers Island,” Coulson explained. “I should probably tell you, though, that there had been quite a bit of excitement in the area just prior to us fishing them out of the water.” He turned and sat on the edge of the desktop, mirroring her cross-armed stance. “There was a prison riot...but not at Rikers.” He paused and searched her features for some bit of recognition.

So he wanted to know how much she knew. “The Raft,” she answered without pause. There was no reason to play ignorant with a fellow agent at this level. Only agents with the highest security clearance knew of the existence of this underwater prison for the most uncontainable of inmates--or those who were savvy enough to have snooped around in the S.H.I.E.L.D. databases without detection. Coulson was assuming (quite correctly) that she was one of the latter. This detention center was one of the agency’s dirtier little secrets, as the methods of containment for such powerful beings often straddled the boundaries of both ethical and humane. “I’m going to need whatever details you have, you know that,” she finished, hoping that he would glaze over her apparent knowledge of the unknowable.

“Then we should start with the prison riot,” he continued without missing a beat. He executed a few more urgent keystrokes during which the two strange captives disappeared and were replaced by some grainy security footage that had been recorded from such a distance as to be nearly useless. “There was a riot that lasted nearly 18 hours. It began at about 0300 when the cell doors all opened simultaneously of their own accord. Even the solitary cells.” His face became even more grave.

Natasha nodded, knowing that whomever--or whatever--was kept in solitary confinement in a place like the Raft must be unbelievably monstrous.

“The security cameras went offline at the same exact moment. We have had 48 hours to process the breach, and our best techs cannot even begin to determine how it was pulled off.” He pressed a crooked finger to his upper lip in lingering disbelief. Meanwhile, the muddy footage continued to play on the screen behind him. Natasha raised her eyebrows in an obvious challenge. “Yeah, I know...the footage. Well, there was one camera hidden high up in a pillar of the dining room. It wasn’t integrated into the main system because it wasn’t one of ours: it had been placed there by Tony Stark several years ago in order to spy on us. The Raft was one of his little discoveries when he hacked our Helicarrier during the Avengers Initiative: Manhattan edition, and he was trying to prove that we were up to Abu Ghraib-style antics down there. We haven’t determined how he managed to get it in, but he wasn’t able to penetrate further than the cafeteria. Needless to say, he has never been able to prove a more grievous infraction than ‘Meatless Mondays’ so Amnesty International hasn’t been very interested,” he smirked.

“But Stark came clean after he found out what happened down there,” she guessed.
“The power supply was nearly exhausted--and the position was terrible since the placement was done very much on-the-fly--but we were able to recover some equally terrible footage.”
“Can we clean it up?” she queried, hopefully.

“We already have,” he admitted.

“So, why even show it to me?” It was not a spiteful question, she was just trying to expedite the big reveal that she assumed was coming.

He suddenly faced the monitor and keyboard again, and she could not see exactly what he was up to. “You can vaguely see the figures of many persons gathered in the dining hall. They used it as a base for their riot. The strange thing is, you can see more inmates than there actually were in the facility.” He stepped away to allow her to see the recording. He had forwarded it slightly until, sure enough, one could determine that there were a sea of bodies collected in the modest room. No details still, but there was a definite number of free-moving shadows which presumably each denoted a separate entity. “There were 87 inmates registered at the Raft. Last count was somewhere around 140 people in that room. The fire department would have had a conniption.”

“What happened to the guards?” she asked, afraid of what the answer was likely to be.

“Most of them were not alive to begin with so the loss of actual life was not that great, thankfully. They were mostly robots--super high-tech androids, some of which were controlled remotely. It was too great a risk to have real guards in most cases. The Raft was designed as basically a metal tube descending straight into the depths of the water; there is essentially one way in and one way out of every level. In the case of a jailbreak, escape, or prison riot such as this, the inmates would be easy to contain...but it would be a deathtrap for any of the workers due to this same principle.”

Natasha leaned back in her wheeled chair and crossed her arms crisply in front of her. “So where did all the others come from?”

Agent Coulson brought up another screen, this time with a surveillance film which was obviously taken outside the complex. The image showed the top of the Raft from a great distance above, probably taken from a hovering vehicle--likely a helicopter. “We couldn’t risk sending any personnel into that environment so we kept watch on the exit in the hope that we could pick them up one-by-one as they tried to leave. But there were others who came in from outside…” He zoomed in on the darkened image so that she could discern several approaching vehicles, including several speedboats and similar craft which looked to be perhaps extraterrestrial. The time lapse displayed a range of several hours over which dozens of beings arrived via these various craft and disappeared into the depths of the institution beneath.

“We think they were invited. The prisoners and their, uh . . . guests assembled in the dining hall for several hours. But the party didn’t really start until…” the senior agent brought up a close-up of a small craft arriving at the entrance “. . . these guys showed up.”

There were three large, reptilian creatures and one tall, hooded figure whose face remained hidden throughout their approach. It was apparent even from this distance that the hooded one was shackled and restrained by the other three.

“They took over a prison just to bring in a prisoner?” She could not begin to conclude where this could possibly be heading, but her patience was beginning to noticeably thin. She looked at him from under pursed eyebrows that clearly stated, ‘wherever this is going, please get there faster.’

Actually, the ‘please’ was tenuous.

He switched back to the original footage. “You can see them enter the dining hall here,” he indicated with his index finger. There were indeed four figures approaching what was presumably the front of the room, but they were just as smudged as the others had been.
“I’ll take your word for that,” she huffed impatiently.

A few moments passed during which nothing at all could be perceived from the indistinct image, and then a flurry of movement filled the screen followed by the pulsing of an eerie blue glow from near the center of the picture. Everything went black for several seconds (except for the blue glow which remained constant), and then the lighting came back just as suddenly as it had departed. After the passage of a few more moments, the lens cracked, and the picture ended.

“Someone discovered the hidden camera,” she ventured. Romanov was not certain of what she had seen, but there didn’t seem to be much that could be derived from that poor quality video.

“Actually, the camera lens was shattered by what is being referred to as a ‘seismic event.’ ”

“An earthquake?”

“It measured slightly on the Richter scale. However, the origin was traced to be inside the Raft.”

At that, Natasha actually sat up and began to take interest. “Inside the Raft?” What could possibly have the force to cause a disturbance that significant?

“What’s more, it destabilized the structure of the building,” Coulson continued. “The weight of the surrounding water collapsed the walls, and it filled the interior within just a few minutes.”

“Survivors?”

“Your two new friends next door.”

“Any others?”

“Two more that we know of, actually.” The screen then displayed the mugshot of the largest (presumably) human male Natasha had ever laid eyes upon. “Cain Marko--a.k.a. ‘Juggernaut,’” Coulson explained. “The most physically powerful inmate in the Raft. Virtually unstoppable, as his name implies. Fortunately for our unexpected guests, he was able to overcome the pressure of the incoming water after the walls gave way. As he swam out, he was carrying his two fellow prisoners, one in each arm. When we surprised him at the surface, however, he abandoned them and made a hasty exit, damaging two of our watercraft in the process. His current whereabouts are unknown.”

“What about the other one?” Agent Romanov settled back into her chair and tried to relax her posture as much as possible.

“His identity is unknown,” Agent Coulson admitted, his tone almost apologetic. “We know he exists, but not his name or race or . . . even his species, really. The face is never visible.”
Now the screen displayed more footage of the Raft taken from the camera hovering above. However, instead of showing more arrivals, this time there was someone coming out of the porthole on the surface of the structure. He flipped up the covering of the entrance and leapt out onto the deck with a feline grace. The camera zoomed in to focus on the individual just as floodlights lit up the scene from above. There was a steady wind blowing the garments of the departing figure, belying that the vehicle above was almost undoubtedly a helicopter; however, the subject did not acknowledge the light, noise, or breeze from the lingering chopper. What was immediately apparent to Natasha was that this was the hooded man from the earlier video: his face was still cloaked behind the cowl of fabric, and his wrists bore the fetters from before, only now the chains between them now hung limply from the manacles--severed. A voice, which she immediately recognized as Coulson’s, began to address the person below.

“Attention, who--whoever you are,” the voice declared. “You are attempting to escape a high-security correctional facility owned and operate by the United States Government.” The words mingled with occasional static from the device which amplified the sound.
The hooded personage paused only briefly at the sound of the words and then began to approach the outer edge of the framework. The being was tall--an inch or two over six foot-- with broad shoulders and no discernible hips. Almost certainly a male, Natasha confirmed. He moved forward until he stood on the very rim of the flat surface, the toes of his boots protruding out over the sea below but still facing away from the man that addressed him.
“Please put your hands in the air and turn slowly towards me. If you refuse, deadly force may be used against you,” the non-visible Coulson continued through the bullhorn.

Natasha could not have been more shocked when the man below actually began to pivot back towards the voice addressing him, although his hands remained at his sides. He took great care to ensure that his visage remained obstructed by the cloth that surrounded it, moving torpidly with his chin tilted slightly downwards. He remained poised on the very lip of the surface, his heels now extending out over empty air in a stance that she recognized but could not instantly place. It was at least a 20 foot drop to the water below.

“Put your hands in the air immediately,” the voice repeated with more force, “or you will be fired upon.”

After this command, the figure swung his arms slightly backwards. Suddenly,Natasha recalled where she had seen such physical bearing before--Olympic coverage of platform diving. He bounced quickly up on his toes, vaulting himself up and outwards in the blink of an eye. His body folded until his hands touched his toes in an admirably solid pike position and then extended his legs up until his body was pointed downward, arms extended and hands first, forming a perfectly straight line from head-to-toe. He dropped into the water with almost no added disturbance to the surface whatsoever.

Natasha sat motionless, the pad of her thumb balanced tensely between her teeth.

“I would give him a solid eight, eight-point-five for execution, but he lacked somewhat in difficulty,” Coulson chuckled. Natasha continued to stare vacantly at the computer monitor even though the video had cut out. “Obviously the Russian judge is harder to impress,” he shrugged.

“He escaped,” she stated coldly.

“Yes,” was all that Agent Coulson could say in his defense.

“And we have no idea who he is?” she asked, trying not to sound accusing. She strongly suspected that she failed in her attempt.

“We have the video which provides us a vague description. More importantly, we have the two witnesses next door, one of which seems to have been closely acquainted with him.” Coulson had again adopted his usual businesslike demeanor. “At least the other one--the rodent-looking guy--tells us that the really white guy knows him and that we should direct all our questioning to him.”

“But he’s not talking,” Natasha replied. “The white one,” she clarified.

“Decidedly not,” he admitted, “which is where you come in, of course.”

She nodded gravely. “What aren’t you telling me?” she fired back, hoping to catch Coulson off-guard and get him to reveal something in a moment of weakness. To her undisclosed delight, the corner of his mouth twitched ever so slightly. She lowered her gaze to peer at him sternly through pinched eyebrows.

The senior agent raised his hands in mock surrender. “Alright,” he said, “I am holding back, but only a little.” Her silent stare urged him on. “There was a second prison break, this one in Colorado. It was also a S.H.I.E.L.D. facility.”

“The Vault,” she snapped, biting into the flesh of her thumb until it was pale at the edges.

“That’s more than a little bit of intel, Coulson.” The Vault was also a maximum security facility for superhuman inmates, except instead of extending down into a body of water it was burrowed deep into the heart of the Rocky Mountains. It was even more clandestine than the Raft.

“I know,” he shrugged, “but I have my orders. I wasn’t supposed to tell you more than you could guess. I’m thinking you can guess a bit more than than they thought you could.” He took another generous drink of his latte to center himself; it was mostly lukewarm by now, but his face still revealed it to be more than satisfying.

“Is there footage from the Vault?” she asked, her posture tensing up as she awaited his answer.

“There is,” he revealed. As she opened her mouth to request that he show it to her immediately, he raised a hand to stop her. “But I’m not allowed to show it to you, Agent Romanov. It’s not directly related to your mission.”

“Orders?” she challenged.

“Orders,” he stated with finality.

“Can you at least fill me in on the basics?” she inquired with business-like sincerity. It was best to show them you were willing to play ball if you wanted any crumbs whatsoever. “I mean, these incidents have to be related, right?”

“I can tell you as much as I know, which is just the bare bones. I know that there was a security breach which mirrored the one at the Raft where the cameras and cell doors went offline allowing the inmates to leave their cells. There were several high-level enemies who managed to exit the facility prior to the arrival of the containment team . . .”

Natasha’s eyebrows shot up in a clear demand for details.

“ . . . which contained a couple of your fellow Avengers.”

The eyebrows tightened.

“Clint and Tony did a bang-up job of containing the rest of them,” he stated. “The video really is spectacular, and I am sorry that I am unable to show it to you,” he reminded her.

“Who bailed?”

“Venom, most notably. The others were important, but not nearly as worrisome.”

Natasha continued to sink teeth marks into her abused thumb. “Any other attempts?” she pried.

“Not that I have been made aware of.” There was no deception in his eyes.

“So you want me to see if I can get the really white guy to talk?” she prodded.

“We’ve told him a little about you, including your background, in the hopes that he will relate to you. Greasing the skids, so to speak. The rest is up to you.”

“Let’s do this, then,” she agreed. As she stood and moved toward the door which led to her assignment, she gave Agent Coulson one last deliberate glance. “And when I’m finished . . . then we’ll talk about how the Hell you’re still alive."

Notes