Chapter Text
Red Room, Soviet Union, 1989
Natalia pressed her palm to the ground and her white fingerless gloves disappeared into the snow. Her fingertips were no doubt blue from constricted blood vessels but she couldn’t see them as she dug into the snow to pull herself forward, crawling across the wet and frozen ground. Reaching the crest of the hill Natalia rose to a crouch and pulled her knees close to her chest, checking the thick treads of her boots were planted firmly through the top soft layer of snow.
She was already pulling a small pair of field binoculars from a pocket in her jacket when Sasha came up beside her. The older girl was moving much slower but with a black rifle strapped to her back that ran almost the length of her entire body Sasha was keeping lower, her belly pressed to the ground as she crawled.
Sasha was already thirteen but still a year or two at least from graduating the Red Room; if she could keep up with the other girls her age. Their current classmates were all between ten and fourteen years old, all except for Natalia who at half Sasha’s age had already proven herself enough to be moved ahead in training. They both understood why this assignment needed to go well for Sasha, and why it was that Natalia had been chosen to partner her.
From their vantage point at the top of the hill Natalia could see a grey nondescript facility a short distance away, standing out against the plane of white. They’d briefly been shown an exterior photograph from a mission file, along with a rudimentary floor plan, when given their objectives but no further details had been deemed necessary. The building itself looked to be an old aircraft hangar or warehouse maybe but it would be hard to say for sure until a service road or runway became visible in the spring.
Releasing the clips that held the rifle in place and sliding it from her back, Sasha settled into position; flicking down the bipod attachment and checking her scope. Natalia focused on her own task, watching the building for sentries; their numbers, their movements, seeking patterns and weaknesses that would allow Sasha to take out their target quickly and without raising any alarms.
It was obviously a more demanding assignment than those back inside the walls of the Red Room. Being handed a loaded pistol and ordered to fire a bullet into the head of a man strapped to a chair in front of you was just another task. A task which required no deliberation or planning and merely demonstrated a girl’s very basic skills with a weapon and her ability to follow instructions. The men in those cases, even writhing against their bound arms and muffled by a gag, were nothing more than another object within the Red Room, no different than a training dummy.
Out here though the targets were far more dangerous. In various classrooms before they’d been allowed to take part in such missions Natalia had sat through lectures telling the girls these men were prisoners who (it had been decided by someone in authority far beyond the reach of a trainee Widow) could prove themselves useful to the greater cause. It was never mentioned whether they’d given their lives willingly or not.
The men below had been assigned their roles to play today. Most were ‘soldiers’ with no more instruction than to stand in one spot and watch the snow fall. Walk to and fro along the rooftop. Escort your fellow performer with the General’s stars on his shoulders to a mess hall mocked up out of plywood. Watching each of them through her binoculars Natalia wondered if any of the men had realised that their real role was to be hunted like rabbits; that no matter the part, a lowly guard or a General, it would end the same way. With them dead.
There had to be men who understood the fate awaiting them and Natalia couldn’t help thinking when exactly the realisation had hit them: after leaving the confines of their cell? When they’d been given the clothing of a soldier then handed a weapon and live ammunition? When they’d been pushed out of the back of a truck in front of this shell of a place and left in the snow?
More importantly she had to wonder if the men here today had decided to play along with the game they were now a part of.
Even if Natalia had any doubts about her capabilities to deal with them, somewhere in the woods behind her and Sasha or hidden within the patchy areas of scrubland that had broken through the blanket of snow, someone else was watching over the two girls. And over their targets, in case any of the prisoners decided to take their chances on another role. At least for today Natalia and Sasha’s lives held value, certainly one greater than the men out here in the cold with them. The girls were a precious resource to be safeguarded.
The thought of a Widow watching over them wasn’t an entirely comforting one. The worst way to fail on a training assignment of this kind was to have your targets dropped by another unseen sniper. And while Natalia and Sasha had their eyes on the men in the facility, they too were being watched and assessed.
When Natalia was satisfied she had all the information required she lowered her binoculars then tucked them into her pocket again. With a finger she drew the building outline in the snow between her and Sasha. When Sasha leant away from the rifle’s scope Natalia pointed to each sentry position on her makeshift map, adding lines for guard movements around the perimeter and holding up raised fingers to give Sasha the length of each patrol. When Sasha nodded Natalia swiped her palm across the snow erasing the markings.
Sasha had her eye to the scope again, shifting the gun slightly to find the lone sentry that Natalia had identified as their best first target. Once he was down they’d have a clear shot at the ‘General’.
“Let me do it,” Natalia whispered, as if her voice might carry too far on the wind if she wasn’t careful. They hadn’t spoken even to each other since they’d left the grounds of the Red Room more than an hour ago.
Sasha only scowled in response. Natalia could see her lip curl up even though most of her face was hidden behind the gun stock.
Even though the Red Room had moved past pitting its girls against each other (now weaknesses could be uncovered in ways that did not reduce the number of active students quite so drastically as having them pick each other off) there was still a level of resentment from the older girls toward her. Natalia had no doubt a few of her classmates would relish the chance to put a bullet through the back of her skull, but even those that wouldn’t were not particularly pleased by a child half their age proving to be better than them.
The classmates who tripped her during ballet, who took pieces of the broken down rifle from her bench, those girls, Natalia knew, wouldn’t last much longer in the programme. They let their emotions get the better of them.
Her fingers were colder now they were out of the snow and Natalia flexed her hands to try to rid some of the burning numb. All it did was make them twitch to wrap around the trigger of the rifle.
Sasha was focused on finding the target in her sights and with a final slow sweep across the building she stopped on the sentry at the entrance. She didn't move away from the scope as she growled back at Natalia, “This is my mission.”
It was only her mission because she was older. Time and time again Natalia had shown she was the better shot. Sasha’s hands were never steady enough and she didn’t wait for the exhale of breath before squeezing the trigger. Not in training on the range and not now. Even without binoculars Natalia could see the spark as the bullet Sasha had fired pinged off the metal above the sentry’s head.
The man scrabbled for a nearby steel barrel to hide behind, franticly pulling at the rifle that was strapped to his back.
After cursing under her breath Sasha fired again and this time Natalia heard a wet thud follow the shot. A split second later she realised she shouldn’t have been able to hear the unmistakable sound of a bullet hitting flesh from such a distance. Natalia looked to her side and saw Sasha had rolled almost onto her back on the ground. Like a drop of ink hitting water a thick dark patch, black with wet but clearly tinged red, seeped across the shoulder of Sasha’s white jacket.
Natalia was about to dive for the rifle Sasha had dropped when the snow between the two of them puffed up into clouds from a rain of falling bullets. Then a couple of seconds later it was silent and still again except for Sasha’s writhing and whimpering, Natalia rolled across the snow for the rifle and looked through the scope. She expected to see the man Sasha had missed franticly trying to unjam his gun or fumbling as he tried to reload but instead she saw him slumped on the floor. A pool of black blood, thick like tar, was spreading across the ground beside his half ruined face.
“The mission is over.”
Natalia felt a hot shame, as well as creeping concern, that she’d allowed someone to get so close to them without noticing. She rolled onto her back and looked up to see the person who was now stood over them. Natalia and Sasha were both dressed in white and grey to camouflage themselves against the snow but the person stood over them wore all black tactical gear. A Widow. Natalia imagined if you stood at the feet of the great bronze statues of Lenin this must be what they looked like, only Melina was a statue of obsidian-black marble.
In their schooling the girls sat through lecture upon lecture instructing them to respect and admire the women who’d come through the Red Room before them. It was probably the least necessary lesson Natalia had ever been taught. From the moment she’d first watched one of the women dance, barely four years old and stood shivering in the cavernous ballroom in a too thin grey uniform, the Widows had been everything Natalia aspired to be.
Beside her Sasha continued to groan. Natalia hadn’t ever been shot before but she’d been stabbed, cut and beaten enough to be convinced she wouldn’t make a sound.
Melina offered her hand to pull Natalia up from the wet snow then when Natalia was on her feet Melina knelt beside Sasha. She pressed a hand over the site of the wound and the other girl keened like an injured animal.
Ignoring her classmate’s cries Natalia said, “I didn’t know you were back.”
Even graduates of the Red Room never fully left. After missions the women would be cycled back through the programme, or they would lead the training for the younger widows that grew ever more punishing as the girls aged. But Natalia hadn’t seen Melina on the grounds in almost two months.
“Then you weren’t paying enough attention this morning.” Melina’s brown eyes were so dark they were almost black yet they shone bright against the snowy landscape around them.
Natalia thought back to this morning, her and Sasha standing to attention outside the academy’s façade, a mansion house seized in the early years of revolution and isolated within its extensive grounds. The cover of a ballet school for young girls had been in place longer than Natalia had been alive, all the current Widows too. No-one outside of the Red Room would even be able to tell that beneath the mansion lay a nest of tunnels and rooms making up an extensive training facility. And no-one suspected that even inside the house blood was spilled over the same polished wood floors girls in silk ballet slippers danced across.
Natalia had been too interested in the rifle and their instructions for the exercise to notice the return of another Widow and there were always consequences for a lack of attention, for a lack of anything. She wondered if the consequences for today’s mistakes would come from Melina here and now or later from Madame B.
“Go on Natalia.” The dismissal was hard but then Melina looked up from Sasha and told her more softly, “Go home where it’s safe.”
Natalia took off across the open expanse of soft snow toward a thick copse of trees, moving fast enough that her boots barely left an imprint behind. Once she reached the trees Natalia didn’t slow her pace, weaving her way through the trunks at breakneck speed. Madame B would not be impressed with the mission outcome, not when Natalia reported back alone and certainly not once Melina returned with Sasha. Bursting through the other side of the trees the house loomed before her and Natalia kept running, ignoring the voice in her head telling her she was not heading toward safety.