This was eventually bound to happen. In a world infested with secret organizations and intelligence agencies forever spying on one another and competing for influence, Adonai's sudden rise was always going to attract attention. Sooner or later, someone would decide the new player had grown too powerful to ignore and make an attempt to bring him under control.
He was reasonably certain most of his companies had already been infiltrated to some degree, perhaps by SHIELD, perhaps by several governments, and almost certainly by rival corporations. Nothing he had uncovered particularly worried him, but he was aware of it. Espionage was simply another tax one paid for becoming important enough to frighten people.
Still, having the Black Widow herself sent after him and getting the opportunity to fuck her senseless was one of the more unexpected perks of the infestation. The present situation somehow made her even hotter, if that was possible. Natasha stood naked before him with the pistol raised, fear naked in her eyes even while her hands remained perfectly steady.
She had just watched him move faster than she could perceive and casually stop three bullets with his body, but she was already back on her feet and pointing a weapon at him and Rogue. He had to give the woman credit - she had a good poker face.
Still, despite how ridiculously hot she looked standing there, there were very few things Adonai Ezra refused to forgive, and an attempt on the life of someone under his protection happened to be among them.
He crossed the room before Natasha's eyes could follow him, tore the pistol from her hand and drove his knee into her epigastrium. The impact lifted her from the floor and hurled her backward, emptying her lungs in a ragged gasp before she struck the hardwood and slid several feet. Adonai had held back considerably. She would spend tomorrow feeling as though a horse had kicked her in the stomach, which seemed a reasonable tariff for the attempted murder of his Anam Cara.
Adonai stood over her and casually adjusted the collar of his ruined white bathrobe.
"That," Adonai said softly, looking down at her, "was for attempting to murder my companion. I am a wealthy man, Natasha, but I become exceedingly miserly when it comes to the safety of my people." He glanced back toward Rogue, whose face had lost some of its color despite her attempt to appear unbothered. "Are you all right, darling?"
"I'm fine," Rogue said, though she remained visibly shaken by how narrowly she had avoided receiving a bullet through the brain. "We're going to have a serious conversation about you sticking your dick in women who have guns within reach."
"I didn't think she'd immediately go for the kill," Adonai said with a shrug. "There is usually some conversation before the shooting begins. Three bullets without so much as a preliminary argument is just unnecessarily antisocial."
Adonai crouched beside Natasha and caught a fistful of her red hair, lifting her head enough to look into her watering eyes.
"Why did you have to do that, Nat? We were having such a lovely evening until you started putting bullets through my friend." He glanced back toward Rogue with an almost thoughtful expression. "What should I do with her? I was going to enlighten our guest, but that was before she tried to kill you. Her life rests in your hands now, Rogue. Say the word and I'll snap her neck."
"And give SHIELD a reason to come after us personally?" Rogue asked, thoroughly unimpressed. "Don't be ridiculous. Besides, she only got the opportunity because you were thinking with the wrong head."
"Unbelievable. This is now somehow my fault?!" Adonai asked with mock offense, placing a hand against his chest as though she had wounded him terribly. "How was I supposed to know she had managed to sneak a gun into the exhibition? I also expected her to ask a few questions after finding out her cover was blown before she started blasting."
"She's a spy, Adonai. You revealed that you knew her real identity the entire time and had been playing along for your own amusement." Rogue folded her arms beneath her chest and gave him a dry look. "How exactly did you expect the highly trained assassin with a gun to react?"
"I thought we had an understanding, her and I," Adonai defended, sounding almost wounded by the suggestion. "There was chemistry there, Rogue. A real connection. Something special!"
"The only special connection was your dick in her pussy, you tethered beast!" Rogue retorted.
"If the two of you are done with your curtain lecture," Natasha managed from the floor, her voice hoarse from the blow, "I would appreciate knowing what the hell you intend to do with me."
Adonai released her hair and watched as she pushed herself upright with one hand braced against the floor. Her breathing remained shallow, but she refused Rogue's offered hand and eventually dragged herself onto the edge of the bed under her own power. Prideful creature. She sat there naked and furious, one arm wrapped around her aching stomach while the other swept disheveled red hair from her face, and the look she gave him contained enough venom to kill a lesser man.
Christ, two faced bitches are hot. She was hot enough to make a man ignore the golden rule: don't stick your dick in crazy.
Adonai took pity on her eventually and tossed the discarded crimson dress onto the bed beside her.
"Since we're all friends now, I suppose we should begin somewhere familiar. How is Alexei Shostakov these days? Still telling anyone unfortunate enough to stand within earshot about the glorious years when he was the Red Guardian?"
The anger vanished from Natasha's face so quickly that Adonai almost regretted spoiling it. Her body became utterly still, and for a moment the only sound in the room came from Florence beyond the open terrace doors.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she said.
"Oh dear, perhaps I have the wrong family." Adonai leaned against the dresser and folded his arms comfortably. "Melina Vostokoff, then. Surely that name rattles something loose? Or perhaps sweet little Yelena Belova will fare better? Please don't tell me you've forgotten your mother and sister as well, Natalia. That would make this reunion sadder than I intended."
Natasha froze. There it was, a genuine breach in the Black Widow's defenses, small enough that most people might have missed it. Her lips parted without saying a word, and her eyes searched his face as though the answer might somehow be written there.
"Oh, you do remember them," Adonai continued, almost cheerfully. "Thank heavens. Here I was prepared to recount your lovely little stint in Ohio from the beginning. Such a quaint slice of the American dream, too. The suburban house, fireflies in the backyard, Melina making dinner while Alexei complained about capitalist television and pretended to be an ordinary blue-collar father. Then there was little Natalia playing big sister to blonde little Yelena and teaching her how to ride a bicycle. Three years of make-believe that became real because two children believed in it." He watched her expression carefully before allowing his voice to lose some of its playfulness. "Do you still think about the day the curtain fell? Cuba, the runway, Yelena screaming while they dragged her away from you and sent both of you back to the butcher shop?"
"H-how..how do you know that?!" Natasha asked. Her voice had fallen almost to a whisper, stripped of every polished layer she had worn downstairs. "Who told you those names? How the hell do you know about Ohio?"
"Information is my trade," Adonai said with a small smile. "And I consider myself an enthusiastic merchant. You should be more interested in what else I know."
Natasha stared at him, and Adonai could almost see her trying to fit that answer around the impossible amount of knowledge he possessed. Unfortunately for her, Adonai quite literally possessed knowledge out of this world.
"Budapest, for example," Adonai continued. "Dreykov had to die before SHIELD would accept your defection, and you needed to be sure, so you authorized the explosion while knowing his daughter was inside. Antonia Dreykov, if memory serves. An innocent little girl became collateral damage in Natasha Romanoff's grand adventure toward redemption before the adventure had even properly begun. There is a certain irony in that, don't you think? You escaped an institution that treated children as expendable material by sacrificing somebody else's child to purchase your freedom. It's funny how a pristine SHIELD badge is supposed to function like some dry-cleaning receipt for the soul."
"You've spent a lot of money digging into graves that don't belong to you, Mr. Ezra," Natasha said, as her fingers tightened around the dress in her lap. "People who spend too much time around open graves have a habit of falling into them. Whatever you think you know about Budapest, you weren't there."
"Please, call me Adonai. We know each other far too intimately for Mr. Ezra." He gave her an easy smile before walking toward the decanter and pouring himself another drink. "And nobody dug up anything, Natasha. I have a privileged view of the board. You should be asking yourself why I'm showing you the pieces."
"What do you want from me?"
Adonai lifted his glass and considered her over its rim. He had wondered for years, what precisely he would say when this moment arrived. Truthfully he liked black widow. There was something almost frantic in her pursuit of redemption. A monster created by other people looked at the blood covering her hands and desperately wanted to become human again, but nobody had ever taught her how to make choices without someone standing behind her with orders. So she ran toward the first light she saw.
"I want something from Natasha Romanoff eventually," Adonai said. "But for now I'm interested in the tragedy of Natalia Romanoff. The innocent child taken by the Red Room and taught that her worth depends upon how effectively she obeys, lies and kills. Years pass, the child becomes perhaps the finest assassin her masters ever created, and then somewhere along the way she develops a conscience. Suddenly there is a ledger inside her head, every name written in red, and she becomes convinced there must be some combination of good deeds capable of balancing the scale. So Natalia runs. She escapes the Red Room, finds Nick Fury waiting beneath the great white eagle of SHIELD and finally thinks she found a way to use everything the monsters taught her for something good. Same extraordinary talents, new uniform, new masters, and now every bullet comes with the comforting knowledge that everything she's doing is for the greater good."
"I am doing something good," Natasha whispered. "I know what I am. Fury gave me a chance to use what I am to protect people, and I've saved lives since joining him. You don't get to erase that because you learned a few names from my past."
"Oh, I believe you've saved people." Adonai swirled the wine slowly around his glass. "But I'm interested in the rationale of it all - how exactly does the ledger work? Does killing someone on Moscow's orders add a red line while killing someone on Washington's orders erase one? Does the ink inspect the flag printed on your mission briefing before deciding which column to enter? You traded a Soviet leash for an American one and hoped the hand holding it has better intentions."
Adonai smiled faintly. "They gave you a beautiful pitch, I imagine. Serve SHIELD, protect the innocent, and eventually all that red will become easier to carry. A text book recruitment. Take a deeply traumatized, hyper competent weapon, give her a moral cause and let her guilt do the work for you."
"You think you're the first arrogant genius who thought he could profile me?" Natasha asked. Her eyes narrowed as she studied him. "You're playing a very dangerous game."
"I'm trying to open your eyes, Natalia." Adonai set his wine aside. "Right now, you think you're balancing the scales. You believe SHIELD stands somewhere on the brighter side of this ugly little world and that every mission carries at least some moral legitimacy. Unfortunately, the men choosing some of your targets are considerably less virtuous than you imagine." He allowed a pause, watching her carefully. "Alexander Pierce, for example. The honorable statesman sitting near the summit of your establishment, signing off your missions, just happens to be the respectable face of a very old and hungry serpent."
"What are you trying to say?" Natasha asked.
"You know the official story, so we can begin there." Adonai moved toward the window and looked across the sleeping city. "Johann Schmidt builds Hydra inside the Third Reich, Captain America ruins his ambitions, and the great serpent loses its head while Europe tears itself apart around the corpse. Everyone congratulates themselves because evil has finally received the cinematic ending it deserves. Unfortunately, history is a scavenger. Before the corpse was cold, Washington and Moscow were already picking through its pockets for anything useful."
"Operation Paperclip," Natasha said coldly. "That isn't exactly a secret."
Natasha's face revealed nothing. It irked Adonai that he could not read her at all, but somehow her complete refusal to give him anything only made her more attractive. Am I a masochist? Why the hell is the cold stare and colder shoulder turning me on? It seems he discovered a new kink.
"Excellent, you get a gold star." Adonai raised his glass toward her. "Now think of Hydra's motto. Cut off one head, two more shall take its place. So what do you think happens when men like Arnim Zola become founding members of SHIELD?"
Natasha's gaze narrowed. "I expected better than conspiracy theories from the man they call the visionary. Zola worked under supervision. Whatever Hydra information he had would've been exactly why they kept him alive."
"Perhaps. But suppose you were Hydra after 1945." Adonai said cheerfully. "Your armies are gone, your leader has vanished, and the entire Western world considers your ideology defeated. Building another fortress full of jackboots would be idiotic. So you stop building your own institutions. You enter somebody else's. The allies are already creating the greatest intelligence apparatus in human history for you, complete with global reach, surveillance networks and weapons research. Why conquer that apparatus from outside when you can spend fifty years crawling through its veins? Eventually the parasite no longer needs to command the body consciously because enough nerves belong to it."
"And I'm supposed to accept that SHIELD somehow failed to notice Nazis breeding inside its walls for decades?" Natasha asked. "Nick Fury isn't an idiot. If there were a ghost living inside his house, he would have torn down every wall until he found it."
"Fury is so busy looking out the window for outside threats that he missed the termites eating the floorboards right under his leather trench coat. He feeds you target after target, telling you you're clearing the red, while Hydra writes the actual kill orders."
"You said Pierce," she murmured. "If you're so certain, give me something I can verify. Give me one piece of evidence that doesn't depend on trusting you."
Adonai spread his hands. "I could hand you the answer tonight, but you'd spend the next year wondering whether I manufactured it. Find it yourself. You are the Black Widow, after all. Surely one little Nazi conspiracy can't be beyond you."
That part was a bluff. Adonai did not actually possess anything truly incriminating on men like Pierce, and much as he hated to admit it, Hydra was frighteningly competent at hiding its movements or burying them beneath layers of perfectly ordinary bureaucracy. That was precisely why he opened the conversation by reciting Natasha's childhood in Ohio, something she believed no outsider could possibly know. Once he established himself as a man who somehow knew the unknowable, it became much easier to make her wonder how much else he knew.
He gestured for Rogue to bring him a small flash drive. She did so dutifully, holding it out to Natasha, who accepted it after a moment's hesitation and looked at Adonai with obvious confusion.
"It's information we've gathered on Hydra," Adonai explained. "Names, operations, all the little threads that should help you find the truth for yourself. Start with Zola and follow the personnel chains outward. Cross-reference those names against early SHIELD recruitment, then look at their families, protégés and associates whose careers survived changes in administration consistently." His expression grew slightly more serious. "One final piece of advice, Natalia. I recommend keeping this little investigation to yourself."
"Why are you telling me any of this?" Natasha watched him for a long moment. "You knew who I was before I entered this building, so you could have fed me whatever information you wanted and sent me back without revealing yourself. If SHIELD is compromised as deeply as you claim, exposing that fact to one of its agents creates a problem for you. What do you gain?"
"You." He let the word settle before continuing. "Your talents are being thoroughly wasted acting as the clean-up crew for a Nazi death cult. I'm putting together a little operation of my own. One that's going to systematically rip the steering wheel away from these parasites and build a world where no little girl is ever taken from her home, and turned into a monster to satisfy the ego of a tyrant."
Natasha gave him a cold smile. "How convenient. I assume your leash comes in nicer leather."
"Oh, please, that would ruin the entire lesson." Adonai laughed and tossed the rest of her clothes onto the bed. "If I handed you another badge tonight and told you to trust Adonai Ezra because Adonai Ezra knows best, I'd simply become another man standing at the end of your leash."
"You fuck me, break my ribs when I shoot at your girlfriend, tell me my employer is secretly controlled by Nazis and then offer me a job. Your HR department must have fascinating retention statistics."
Adonai chuckled, he liked her wit. "Go back to your nest. Keep working for Fury tomorrow if that's what you choose. Investigate me too if you wish. Perhaps you might even find that I'm full of shit and return here to kill me. Given our evening so far, I'm sure you'll make that entertaining."
"And then what?" Natasha asked.
"Then you decide what Natasha Romanoff does about it." Adonai met her eyes evenly. "You want to become something beyond the weapon they created, so start by choosing your own wars. Find out whether SHIELD deserves your loyalty, or I your trust. I do hope you come back. Our first date was far too entertaining to leave without a sequel."
"Is it really wise to let her walk away like this?" Rogue asked after the Widow had left, climbing back onto the bed beside him. "What makes you so sure she won't run straight back to SHIELD and tell them everything that happened tonight?"
"Nothing guarantees she stays quiet," Adonai replied nonchalantly as he stretched across the mattress. "If she tells Fury everything, I imagine a man as paranoid as him will take at least some of what I said seriously and start doing a little housecleaning. I can have Cypher leave him a few carefully placed trails if necessary. SHIELD itself doesn't necessarily have to become our enemy and Natasha hasn't been with them long enough to develop any deep loyalty that would stop her from questioning what she finds."
"Is she one of your fabled Ten Pillars?" Rogue asked, resting her head against his chest.
"No, she's not," Adonai replied, idly running his fingers through her hair. "She's an exceptional spy, probably one of the finest alive, but each of the Ten Pillars have some unique talent or field of expertise that are indispensable to the world I'm trying to build. Natasha would be an extraordinarily useful ally, though." His fingers paused briefly as another thought occurred to him. "Speaking of indispensable people, how is the search for Forge going?"
"Badly," Rogue sighed. "It's hard to find someone when you don't know his real name, where he lives, or much of anything useful beyond the vaguest description of what he looks like. We've got people searching, but there's only so much they can do with 'Native American mutant inventor who can build basically anything' as their starting point."
"I know, I know," Adonai said with a chuckle. "I know I've been putting everyone under a lot of pressure lately, but that man is indispensable to several of my plans."
"You don't have to be such a baby about it. We're all in this together," Rogue said, leaning up to kiss his cheek before settling against him again. Her expression grew more serious after a moment. "But there is something else I don't understand. Why didn't you tell Natasha that the Red Room still exists?"
"Never play all your cards at once," Adonai answered softly.
Rogue did not seem satisfied with that answer. "It still leaves a bad taste in my mouth knowing those girls are out there right now. They're children, Adonai. Somebody takes them before they're old enough to understand what's happening, and then turns them into weapons for monsters who will never have to suffer a fraction of what they inflict on those girls. Natasha got out, but how many others are still trapped there waiting for somebody to come? I hate knowing about something like that and going to sleep while it keeps happening."
Adonai covered her clenched hand with his own and slowly loosened her fingers, holding them between his palms. There was something about Rogue's capacity for empathy that he had always found endearing. Life had given Anna Marie ample opportunity to become bitter, but suffering still offended her most when somebody else endured it.
"We'll destroy it one day," Adonai promised.
Rogue remained quiet for several seconds, tracing an idle line across his chest before another thought visibly began troubling her.
"How do you know all of this, Adonai?" she asked hesitantly. "It's uncanny sometimes. I can explain the businesses and inventions by telling myself that beneath all the general debauchery you're some kind of ridiculous hidden genius who sees where the world is heading before everybody else does, but people are different….Douglas, Tabitha, Maya Hansen, Valentina, Natasha, and plenty of others you somehow knew to look for before anyone around you had even heard their names. You knew about something Natasha did in Ohio decades ago, and somehow you know that Hydra survived and crawled inside SHIELD How are you supposed to know any of that?"
"Why, Anna Marie," Adonai said, turning toward her with a slowly widening grin, "are you finally curious about my secret identity? Why do I know many things? Have all these years of mystery become unbearable? Do you finally wish to know what incomprehensible secret lies behind Adonai Ezra?"
"Please don't tell me you're Batman again, whoever the hell Batman is," Rogue said, already pouting.
"It's because I am Batman!" Adonai declared solemnly. "Wait a moment! How did you know I was going to say that?! Batman is my super-secret identity. Nobody is supposed to know that except Alfred, and I haven't even hired an Alfred yet. Good God, woman, have you compromised the Batcave?"
Batman comics, and DC in general, did not exist in this universe, which Adonai was a tragedy. He had an entire lifetime of magnificent references that nobody understood. He could deliver the greatest Batman joke in human history and receive the same blank stare one might give a schizophrenic announcing himself as the Duke of Luxembourg. Most of the time he found that hilarious. Occasionally, though, the joke left behind a peculiar melancholy. Every reference nobody recognized was another quiet reminder that an entire world of things he had once known existed nowhere outside his memory. It was strange how lonely something as trivial as a comic book could make him feel.
"I knew because you say it every chance you get," Rogue replied dryly. "I'm serious, Adonai. Sometimes you know things that you simply shouldn't be capable of knowing."
Adonai regarded her solemnly for several seconds, allowing every trace of amusement to leave his face.
"Very well. You deserve the truth." He took a slow breath and lowered his voice conspiratorially. "I'm actually an interdimensional entity from a higher plane of existence where your entire universe is fictional entertainment. I came here on vacation because the brochure promised attractive women and an unreasonable number of apocalyptic events. Somewhere beyond the boundaries of reality, incomprehensible eldritch beings called 'writers' control all our destinies while another species known as 'fans' spends thousands of hours arguing about which of us could defeat the others in hypothetical fights. I know the future because I used to read spoilers on the internet."
Rogue stared at him.
Adonai maintained an expression of absolute sincerity.
"Well," she finally sighed, "at least it's more creative than 'I am Batman.'"
Adonai looked deeply offended. "I bare the incomprehensible truth of my extradimensional existence to you and receive mockery in return. This is why cosmic beings don't communicate with mortals."
Rogue rolled her eyes, though the amusement disappeared from her face as she pushed herself upright and met his gaze directly.
"I mean it, Adonai… You don't have to tell me tonight, and I'm not going to keep pushing when you clearly don't want to talk about it. I only want you to know that if you ever decide you do want to explain it, I'm here, and so are Alison and the others. We trust you a hell of a lot, probably more than you'll ever know, and I hope you know you can trust us too. Whatever the answer is, whenever you're ready to give it, you'll have people willing to listen."
Adonai said nothing for a while, his fingers returning to her hair as Rogue settled against his chest. His thoughts eventually wandered back toward the redheaded assassin.
Natasha Romanoff complicated things. The Natasha he remembered from the films joined SHIELD somewhere around 2008 or 2009, while this Natasha entered Fury's service considerably earlier. She looked like somewhere in her late twenties, which would have been perfectly ordinary if the details of her childhood had not placed her birth decades earlier. That alone confirmed something Adonai had suspected for years. This world followed no clean MCU timeline.
Alexei, Yelena, Melina and Ohio all existed largely as Adonai remembered them from the films, except the dates had shifted backward. The Ohio operation occurred in the early seventies here, and Alexei had been rotting in Siberia since the eighties. Adonai had sent an agent to persuade Alexei to talk about the entire operation. His account matched what Adonai remembered almost perfectly, with the whole sequence simply shifted backward by decades.
Natasha was therefore born sometime in the late sixties, which should have placed her in her late thirties, but she barely looked twenty-five courtesy of the serum. More importantly, this technically made Natasha a MILF, which meant Adonai had tapped that geriatric ass. Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.
"Adonai," Rogue said after a while.
"Yes?"
She remained against his chest, though her voice had grown quieter. "Did you mean what you said earlier? When you told me Natasha's life was in my hands and that you would kill her if I asked. Were you actually serious about snapping the Black Widow's neck for me?"
"Of course."
[A month ago]
Valentina Allegra de Fontaine learned very young that there were no good people in the world. There were bad people and worse people, predators with manners and predators without them, and occasionally someone decent wandered between the teeth and got eaten. Civilization consisted largely of dangerous people agreeing upon which forms of predation were acceptable. Her father thought otherwise and the lesson killed him. The Mafia had taken him from her while she was still young enough to believe fathers were eternal, and whatever childish faith she had in justice went into the grave with him. Valentina intended to remain among those doing the eating.
Adonai's proposal was therefore perfectly suited to her appetites, which irritated her almost as much as the blackmail. President Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. The first woman to occupy the Oval Office, her portrait hanging among Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt and all the other great who had etched their name in the annals of history. The thought did wonderful things to her vanity. She had left SHIELD because she refused to spend her life executing somebody else's vision, and she certainly had no intention of becoming a well-dressed servant beneath Fury or Pierce or any other man clever enough to acquire a desk above hers.
The world was ripe for taking. She hated admitting it, but the boy opened her eyes to possibilities even she had underestimated. He could make her president. She would use his designs and ride the great technological wave he was creating all the way into the White House. What she would never become was his obedient little puppet. She was Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, and she served no man. If Adonai Ezra believed she would dance wherever his music led, the little arrogant brat needed an education.
The question was how to teach him that lesson without damaging something she needed. His technology was far too valuable, and whatever other cards he kept hidden had already proven dangerous enough that Valentina preferred finding them before beginning any serious war against him. She needed something smaller, a warning delivered with sufficient force to bruise his ego and remind him that Valentina de Fontaine came to negotiating tables as an equal.
Mitchell Carson offered an opportunity for that. He had been trying to recruit her into Hydra for awhile, and Valentina knew perfectly well where his eyes wandered whenever he thought she was distracted. Men were predictable creatures once libido joined ambition. She could exploit Carson without joining his decrepit little cult. She agreed with Adonai about one thing. Hydra was old bones. His error came from assuming old bones could no longer bite. He did not understand how deep their roots went.
Perhaps she would even be doing the boy a favor. Better that he receive a controlled lesson now than discover Hydra's reach after youthful arrogance drove him into some pit he could no longer buy his way out of. A little humiliation might improve their partnership. Valentina smiled at the thought, picked up her phone and entered the disposable number Carson gave her.
Her thumb did not move.
Valentina frowned and tried again. The command formed inside her mind. Her hand remained suspended above the screen, thumb hovering a fraction of an inch from the little green symbol while every muscle from her wrist to her fingertip refused her. She tried moving her other hand and found that it lay motionless against her thigh. Her shoulders would not turn. Her legs would not shift. The breath inside her lungs suddenly seemed too cold, and a chill passed through the room so deep she felt it in the marrow of her bones.
Valentina knew sleep paralysis. She experienced it twice as a teenager and remembered the primitive terror of waking inside an unresponsive body while the mind screamed commands into dead limbs. This was different however. She was standing awake beneath the warm lights of her apartment with her phone in her hand and her eyes moving freely enough to see that nothing had changed.
The curtains hung exactly where they belonged. The lamp remained lit. There was no intruder behind her reflected in the glass, no movement anywhere in the room. Still she felt something. She could neither see it nor hear it, but every instinct buried beneath years of experience screamed that something had entered the room with her.
She tried to call for help and found her jaw would not open.
Her heart began hammering. Each beat became louder than the last until she could hear blood pounding inside her ears, and Valentina attempted to force herself through the paralysis by sheer fury. She was Valentina de Fontaine. She would not stand helpless in her own apartment because some invisible presence decided her muscles belonged to it.
Her body disagreed.
The cold deepened.
For several terrible seconds she had the impression of standing at the edge of some enormous abyss whose bottom existed far beneath anything human beings were intended to see, and something down there had become aware of her looking into it. The sensation had no shape she could describe afterward. There were no claws, no red eyes, no theatrical sulfurous breath. Those things would have comforted her because things with bodies could be understood, categorized and eventually killed. This felt older than imagery. It felt like discovering that the darkness behind a closed door had always been awake.
Her phone rang.
Valentina jerked so violently that she nearly dropped it.
The paralysis vanished. Warmth rushed back into her limbs, her lungs filled with air and the sinister pressure disappeared with the abruptness of darkness retreating when someone switched on a light. She staggered backward and caught herself against the table, staring around the apartment while the phone continued ringing in her trembling hand. Nothing was disturbed. The door was locked. Everything was exactly as it should be.
Valentina hurried to the safe hidden behind a painting, opened it and pulled out her pistol, years of field training returning through instinct while her mind struggled to explain what happened. She checked the hallway, the bedroom, and every possible entrance. Nothing. The phone rang again, cheerful and mundane amid the silence, and Valentina looked down at an unfamiliar number glowing across the screen.
She answered with the gun held firmly in her other hand.
"Hello?"
Silence breathed through the receiver.
"My dear Valentina," Adonai said pleasantly. "Here I was thinking we had reached such a suitable arrangement. I confess I expected some mischief eventually, given your temperament, but your enthusiasm has exceeded expectations."
Her blood turned cold again.
"A-Adonai?"
"Present and accounted for. I hope I haven't caught you at an inconvenient hour. Then again, considering what you were contemplating a moment ago, perhaps inconvenience is precisely what the occasion calls for."
"H-how…how did you know?" she demanded, hands trembling. Her eyes swept across the room again, examining the smoke detector, the lamps, the vents, every place a camera or microphone could conceivably hide. "Did you bug this room? My phone? Do you have someone watching me? Whatever surveillance you've built around me, I promise you I will find it."
Adonai chuckled softly. "Technology capable of reading thoughts is sadly beyond even my laboratories, and hiding cameras in your walls would be terribly crude. You searched the room before we spoke, naturally, and I expected you would. You will find nothing there."
"Then how?"
"I knew your intent. The moment you resolved to move against our agreement, I became aware of it."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"It means our covenant is working exactly as intended."
"Covenant?" Valentina whispered. "What did you do to me?"
"Nothing you didn't willingly accept."
Valentina's thoughts raced backward through their meeting, tearing through every word, gesture and document while searching for the trap. Then she remembered something she had dismissed almost immediately at the time. The book upon the table. An old, unremarkable thing whose significance Adonai never properly explained. He asked her to place her hand upon it and swear to the agreement they had already negotiated, and Valentina indulged him because billionaires were known for their eccentricities. Presidents swore upon Bibles. Soldiers pledged allegiance to pieces of cloth. Ritual gave theater to promises, and Adonai Ezra was certainly theatrical enough to enjoy his own little ceremony. She placed her hand upon the book willingly.
"The book…" she whispered.
"Bingo!"
The word was playful. Somehow that made everything worse.
Valentina's hand began trembling around the pistol. "What did you do to me?"
"You entered this agreement of your own free will. Keep your word and you have nothing to worry about. Live your life, chase your ambitions, and enjoy everything our partnership brings you. But remember the first law of our covenant - thou shalt not work against me."
"You… what…?" Valentina breathed, her composure finally breaking. "What the hell are you?!"
Adonai laughed.
The sound was warm and youthful through the telephone, and Valentina heard something terrible inside it now, some impossible depth her frightened mind supplied to every breath between his laughter. For an instant she imagined every old story mankind ever told about beautiful strangers waiting at crossroads, smiling while desperate people signed their names.
"You should be more careful about the promises you make, Valentina, especially when you already intend to break them. Once you step onto the dance floor, you may find that some dances last forever. Goodnight."
The line went dead.
Valentina hurled the telephone against the wall. It shattered, and she sank to her knees with the pistol still clutched in one shaking hand, sweat cold upon her skin while that terrible laughter continued inside her memory.
What the hell had she made a deal with?
AN: Another issue I had with the Black Widow film was how young they made Natasha. The USSR is a pretty big part of her history in the comics, so I wanted to keep that aspect while still keeping the Ohio mission and the mind-controlled Widows. I've played around with the timeline a bit and also given Natasha the super-soldier treatment that slows down her aging, similar to the comics. That might also help explain how she's able to keep up with aliens and other superpowered beings in the movies despite supposedly being a normal human.
As for whether she'll eventually join Adonai or stay with shield, we'll see in the future.
As always, advanced chapters are available on my Patreon. If you want to read ahead, vote on which story gets updated each week, or simply support my writing so I can focus more on it, you can check it out here: https://patreon.com/abeltargaryen?