52
I dialed Peter from my usual number, the one probably flagged in every intelligence agency database by now. The rings dragged on painfully, and with each one, a knot of cold worry tightened in my chest. Finally, a tired voice answered on the other end, and I exhaled with relief. He was alive. Just caught up in his hectic life as always.
"Hey, Pete. How are you? Everything okay? Just skip the details, please," I deliberately emphasized that last phrase, and thankfully, Peter got the message.
"John! Yeah, everything's great. The last few days I've just been catching up on sleep, spending time with family, with MJ. I did a little work in the university lab. Basically, I'm recovering from last week's chaos."
"Great," I lied. The part about MJ was nowhere near great. "How are things with MJ, by the way? Is the relationship moving forward?"
"Um... yeah..." Peter said uncertainly. I could practically feel him awkwardly scratching the back of his head. "Listen, John... here's the thing... this is really awkward to ask, but could you, uh..."
"Just spit it out. We're friends," I cut off his suffering.
"Could you lend me a couple thousand? I'll pay you back or work it off, I swear," he blurted out in one breath.
Money trouble. I frowned. Given that the problem with Uncle Ben had been resolved, this shouldn't be such a pressing issue. Plus, I'd already given Peter a decent sum back when we were still working at the university lab. I was genuinely curious what he needed such a large amount for, by his standards.
"No problem. But only on one condition: you tell me honestly what you need the money for. If you'd rather not discuss it over the phone, just say so." I gave him an out. An oppressive silence filled the line for a moment. Finally, Peter answered.
"For MJ," he said. One word, and my jaw clenched. Damn it. He should have lied. "I want to make her happy."
"Make her happy? For a couple thousand?" I couldn't hide my confusion. "What are you planning to buy her? A diamond necklace from Tiffany?"
"She..." Peter's voice went quiet and small. "She's been getting new jewelry lately... expensive pieces. And I can feel her... pulling away a little. Like I'm not measuring up."
"New? Maybe they're from Harry?" I asked, grasping at my last shred of hope. Intellectually, I understood that MJ was fickle, but I didn't want to believe she'd start an affair behind Peter's back.
"No... MJ doesn't like wearing the same thing twice. I know everything Harry ever gave her by heart. This is... different."
I exhaled slowly, fighting the rage threatening to boil over. Even on NZT, keeping my cool in the face of such idiocy was nearly impossible. A genius, one of the brightest young minds on the planet, was degrading himself over a woman who didn't value him at all. And he wasn't just humiliating himself; he was sinking deeper into the trap, trying to fix an emotional problem with money. Someone else's money. No. This festering wound needed to be lanced, and today was the day.
"Come to our place," I said, my voice icy and level. I meant the Base. "We'll talk there. Plus, I've got important news for you." Yes, it was time for Peter and Gwen to learn about S.H.I.E.L.D. and my plans for them.
"Alright, I'll be there in a couple of hours." Peter sounded annoyed. He wanted money, not lectures. Well, well. We'd see how he sang once I laid out his redhead problem for him. Funny. I had my own redhead problem now, too.
"I'll be waiting."
I ended the call and summoned a taxi to the shipyard checkpoint, then dialed the next number. Gwen.
"Hey, most beautiful grad student in the city." I smiled involuntarily, and it was genuine. What a relief to talk to a normal girl who wasn't trying to tangle me up in secret organization intrigue. "What's new in your life?"
"Oh, I'm flattered, though I'm not a grad student. I'm just finishing my bachelor's," she replied. She sounded tired, but steel threaded through her voice. "But thanks for 'beautiful.' As for news, that's better discussed in person."
Right. So not a phone conversation.
"Then I suggest we arrange that meeting as soon as possible. At our place. Peter's apparently already on his way. I hope you can make it. We need to discuss some very important matters."
"Okay. I'll be there," Gwen said curtly and ended the call.
"Well, fine," I muttered, tossing the phone onto the couch. "I didn't really want a long goodbye anyway. See you soon."
I gathered my things quickly. Running my fingers along the seams, collar, and cuffs of my clothing to check for bugs and other spy gadgets would soon become second nature. Outside, the taxi was already waiting. I was grateful that Elena hadn't taken advantage of that ten-minute window when I was home alone after Natasha left. Dealing with her was the last thing I wanted right now.
As it turned out, I arrived at the Base before everyone else. Well, that was better for me. It gave me time to think about Peter's redhead problem. Turning on the computer in the lab, I logged into Peter's social media profile and found Mary Jane Watson among his few friends. Her page was the complete opposite of Peter's modest profile: thousands of friends, hundreds of photos. A real digital showcase, a carefully staged performance. And in this performance, her relationship status was conspicuously empty.
My brain kicked into overdrive, scanning the redhead's profile for anomalies, inconsistencies. Anything that would serve as irrefutable proof that her relationship with Peter was a farce. And I found it. The inconsistency went by the name of Morris Bench.
My meta-knowledge clicked into place: Hydro-Man. According to his profile, he was a former sailor. This sailor had liked every single one of MJ's hundreds of photos, and he'd left a string of enthusiastic comments under the most recent ones, posted just days ago. I clicked over to his page. Besides old photos from ships, his feed was filled with recent shots: his wrist sporting a brand-new Rolex, a view from a luxury hotel window with a Manhattan panorama, and himself in an expensive tailor shop trying on a custom-made tuxedo. Aggressive nouveau riche spending. He wasn't even trying to hide his sudden wealth. Considering who he was, the source of this money was obvious.
To be fair, Morris actually looked pretty good. He was the classic alpha male type: close-cropped hair, muscular build, strong cheekbones, and a broken nose that only added to his brutal charisma. All of this, combined with his new luxurious lifestyle and attention, made him perfect bait. No wonder MJ took the bait. But how did Peter not see this?! How could a genius of his caliber, capable of inventing the most complex engineering solutions and calculating Nobel-level chemical formulas, be so blind to the simplest human relationships? They say it's true: love is blind.
The quiet hum of the opening elevator pulled me from my dark thoughts about how to break this to Peter. I instantly cleared the browser history, closed all tabs, and left the lab. Gwen was at the Base.
"Nice place," she said with a slight smile, looking around and sitting down on the couch.
"While we wait for Peter, we can discuss what to name our kids," I blurted out the first thing that came to mind.
Oh yes. Her shocked, indignant, and embarrassed expression all at once was worth that stupid joke. I couldn't help but laugh, feeling some of the day's accumulated tension drain away.
The laughter died down. I caught her gaze, and my face became serious again.
"Okay, jokes aside. Tell me what's going on with you, since this wasn't a conversation for the phone."
Her name was Ava Orlova, but in the shadows, it had long been replaced by a title: Red Widow. She was the pinnacle of the reformed Soviet Red Room program, the answer to a string of betrayals by the original Black Widows. The KGB had reconsidered the entire approach to creating living weapons. Psychological conditioning and brutal training gave way to intellectual and genetic superiority. Candidates were now selected for the X-gene and raised in isolated academies. The emphasis was on emotional control, charisma, and complete symbiosis with their innate abilities.
The program's goal was to create not broken killers, but perfect agents of influence. Operatives capable of infiltrating the highest echelons of Western power without leaving a trace or evidence, becoming their cancer. Ava was the only one who passed the twelve-year selection. The only one who survived. The other ninety percent of candidates were weeded out by ruthless elimination when they failed their missions. She earned her title by becoming the executioner of traitors.
Her appearance was as much a weapon as the stiletto hidden in her glove. She had an athletic yet distinctly feminine figure: a narrow waist, curvy hips, and a modest bust. Her skin was flawless and pale, almost porcelain. She had supermodel features: high cheekbones, full lips, almond-shaped eyes the color of storm clouds, and a cascade of wavy platinum hair. Behind this fragile, almost otherworldly beauty lurked one of the world's most effective specialists in infiltration and elimination.
The combination of elite Red Room training and an inborn Alpha-level mutation made Ava the perfect soldier. Her gift, controlled electrokinesis, was lethal in combat, but its true power revealed itself in more delicate work: seduction. Through slight alterations to a target's bioelectric field and modulation of their neural impulses, she could create euphoria from a single touch. It was this unconventional application of her powers that made Ava so effective. Her dossier contained no failures. The mission to steal blueprints for Stark's experimental missiles, capable of bolstering her Motherland's military might, was not meant to be an exception.
An exclusive charity gala at Stark's Malibu mansion became her hunting ground. Under the guise of a French tech investor, Ava was not the hunter but the prize. Stark, as analysts predicted, took the bait himself. She played the game with a technique refined over years, letting him think he was conquering her. At the crucial moment of their flirtation, standing on a balcony overlooking the ocean at night, she used her ability. When their fingers accidentally touched, a visible spark of static electricity jumped between them. This wasn't just a discharge; it was a concentrated impulse of pure attraction, directed straight into his nervous system. Men melted afterward, as Ava put it. Tony Stark, playboy and genius, was no exception.
The night in his penthouse became the operation's climax. Using her powers, she created a low-level bioelectric field around them, a web of invisible threads resonating with his nerve endings. Every touch was intensified to the limit, every sensation heightened to pure euphoria. Even for him, this was a completely new, almost supernatural experience. To be fair, Ava enjoyed herself that night, too. Stark had experience, and for a brief moment she felt a pang of regret that such a genius didn't serve her country. She immediately dismissed the thought as professional weakness and suppressed it.
Near dawn, when Stark slept soundly in her arms, Ava moved to the final phase. Cold and focused, she slipped out of bed. Focusing a powerful but brief EMP pulse, she created a blind spot in the local security sensors around his personal terminal for a fraction of a second. Using an induction interface built into her glove, she connected to the device. Copying an encrypted file marked "JCHO_PROTO_FINAL" onto a disguised flash drive took seven seconds. Everything went smoothly. Frighteningly smooth.
Leaving the mansion before dawn, she was confident of triumph. The failure was discovered only twelve hours later, in the sterile silence of one of the KGB's classified labs. An analyst, pale as a sheet, reported to the handler: the blueprints were fakes. It was deliberately planted disinformation containing outdated and incomplete data. Stark had been playing her from the very beginning.
Red Widow had failed a mission for the first time in her life. The word failure tasted like poison on her tongue. It was a crack in the monolith of her perfection.
Her taciturn handler didn't dwell on the failure. There were no reproaches, no punishment. Just a new order, delivered in a cold, colorless voice.
"Eliminate the traitors to the Motherland. Romanoff and Belova. This time, failure is unacceptable."
The new word, failure, bred an unfamiliar feeling in Ava's soul: cold, burning fury. She would not make mistakes. She would wash away the shame of the Stark failure with the blood of the Black Widows.
Waking up, Tony Stark stretched lazily, feeling silk sheets slide across his skin. A smug grin played on his face. Memories of last night were, without exaggeration, divine. He stared silently at the perfectly white ceiling of his Malibu penthouse, but within moments, he noted an inconsistency. The cold spot on the bed beside him.
His platinum goddess was nowhere to be found.
"JARVIS!" Stark's voice, hoarse from sleep, echoed through the room. "Status on our charming guest? I hope she's not trying to steal the silver spoons."
"Sir," came JARVIS's flawless, emotionless voice. "The charming guest departed at 5:17 a.m. Analysis of biometrics and energy fluctuations confirms she is an unregistered mutant, presumably Alpha-level. Due to the elevated risk to your safety, Protocol Doppelganger has been activated."
Tony froze for a moment, then leaned back against the pillows and burst out laughing.
"Holy shit! And I thought it was love," he muttered into the darkness. "So the whole electrical thing wasn't just foreplay? She knew which buttons to push, literally. Did we ID our super-spy?"
"The subject is presumably Ava Orlova, also known as Red Widow. An intelligence community legend, until now considered a myth."
"Damn it, the Soviets!" Stark sat up in bed. "Old tricks from a dusty playbook. They'll never leave me alone. Jericho is too juicy a target for them."
"The agent successfully copied the disinformation package containing outdated project data, sir. Perimeter defenses have been reinforced, and security has been elevated to Code Red. I would advise reconsidering your vetting process for temporary partners, specifically regarding superhuman abilities."
"Go to hell, you digital eunuch," Tony muttered without malice, climbing out of bed. "Actually, no, wait. Don't go. Draft a memo for Pepper and a couple of our favorite generals. Subject: 'Urgent Conference Call.' And prep the plane for tomorrow. We're flying to Afghanistan!"
"Acknowledged, sir," JARVIS replied emotionlessly. "Confirming departure: September 30, Afghanistan. Regarding the time for the conference call..."
"Leave that to Pepper. She's way better at dealing with people than you are. You're just a brilliant piece of code, don't forget."
"Acknowledged. What purpose should I list for the Afghanistan visit in the internal report?"
Tony walked to the panoramic window overlooking the ocean. A spark of excitement, the kind that came with his genius, lit up his eyes.
"Presentation!" he smirked. "They wanted to study my technology? Perfect. Let's give them a front-row premiere. It's time to unveil Jericho to the world. Time for the world to see."
//=================//