The Lost Princess

Chapter 3

James is escorted to the room, seeing Alexei strapped to the chair, a layer of sweat covering her body, her chest heaving as she pants. He is forced to stand in the back of the room and watch as she is unstrapped and the head scientist circles her chair like a shark, her book open in his hands.

"Sem'ya. Zabytyy. Semnadstat. Polnoch'. Pech'. Pyaht. Poteryannyy. Sirota. Odin. Kazn'." The scientist snaps the book shut, coming to a stop in front of Alexei. "Otstupnik?"

"Gotov podchinit'sya." She replies robotically, her voice hoarse from screaming. She stares straight ahead of her, her eyes blank.

"Kak vas zovut?" The scientist asks. (What is your name?)

"U menya net imeni." She says in that same monotonous voice. "Oni nazyvayut menya otstupnikom." Any hope that James had that she would remember her name is shattered as she continues staring straight ahead. (I have no name. They call me the Renegade.)

"Kakoye u tebya proshloye?" (What is your past?)

"U menya net proshloye. Tol'ko moi missii." The scientist looks to Pierce who nods, convinced that they have successfully wipes any memory she may have recovered. (I have no past. Only my missions.)

"I know who killed Fury." Natasha Romanoff tells Steve Rogers. "Most of the intelligence community doesn't believe she exists, the ones who do call her the Renegade. She's credited with over a thousand assassinations in the last century. She usually works with a man, another assassin they call the Winter Soldier. He's credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last fifty years."

"So they're a ghost story." Steve says.

"Five years ago I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran, somebody shot out my tiers near Odessa." She says. "We lost control, went straight over a cliff. I pulled us out, but the Winter Soldier was there. I was covering my engineer, so he shot him straight through me." She pulls up the hem of her shirt to show him a scar on the side of her stomach. "Their signature. Soviet slug, no rifling. Bye-Bye bikinis."

"Yeah, I bet you look terrible in them now." Steve says with a slight smirk. "What about the Renegade? You ever see her?" Natasha shakes her head.

"She wasn't with the Winter Soldier that day. I've never seen her." She tells him. "No one has. She gets in and out unseen. She's assassinated people who are in the middle of a crowded room and has never once been seen. No witnesses, no one to say what she looks like." Natasha shakes her head. "Going after them is a dead end. I know, I've tried." She holds up the flash drive Fury gave Steve. "Like you said, they're a ghost story."

"Well, let's find out what the ghosts want." Steve says, taking the flash drive from her.

Pierce has the scientists wipe James for good measure. He said they needed insurance that he wouldn't remind her of anything she had told him. Now they both only remember each other as partners and their missions. Nothing else. Not their pasts, their names, or their feelings for each other. In fact, neither of them even remembers what it's like to feel.

Twenty-four hours later, the two enter Pierce's house silently and sit at the kitchen table, their backs to the wall. Alexei sets her gun on the table, her right hand resting right next to it, James doing the same. They sit silently, so silently and still that no one even realizes that the assassins are there.

Pierce enters the kitchen to get a drink, stopping when he sees the assassins sitting at the table, their blank eyes staring back at him. He's almost startled at their presence, and finds their ability to go unnoticed in his home more than a little unnerving. He vaguely wonders how long they've been there.

"I'm going to go, Mr. Pierce." His housekeeper, Renata calls out. Alexei's eyes move towards the room her voice came from, her fingers slowly stretching to her gun should the woman enter. "You need anything before I leave?"