ʟᴏꜱᴛ ᴄʜɪʟᴅʀᴇɴ || 𝟙

ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ 5

"You came all the way to Russia to come and see an old ballet studio?" Steve asked as he knocked down the door, graciously allowing Natasha to enter first.

The room was the bare shadow of a ballroom. Dusty cobwebs entangled amongst the chandeliers whose lights had been shattered, the hardwood floors so thick with dust that it muffled their footsteps like a carpet, the mirror opposite the formerly golden rail was smudged and cracked, distorting and splintering their reflections. It was difficult to reconcile this room with one that was supposed to be filled with laughter, light and the warmth of celebration.

"This is the Red Room."

The last two words bore such a sense of menace that his guard immediately went up three notches.

"As in where you...?" his question trailed off as he carefully watched Natasha's expression, her normally impeccable poker face, cracking slightly with grief, eyes full of unknowable pain.

She chose not to answer the question  eyes surveying her old training centre. Despite the years, if someone blindfolded her, she could have probably pointed out where each and every piece of equipment used to be like it was yesterday.

Over on the left where she and the other trainees would gather in their pink frilly tutus, practising their routine over and over. Later in the dorms, some girls would complain of aching knees and bruised toes.

Those didn't last long.

On the foremost right where there was a blank wall, life sized targets had been painted on blocks of wood with dark dripping paint. As the girls lined up, there would be an array of fine weaponry.

The first test was knife throwing. They had been trained to be ambidextrous no matter which hand they favored. They were worked until they could launch knives simultaneously from both hands with frightening accuracy.

The next was weaponry. They studied it extensively from snipers, Glocks, rifles and machine guns, although those were normally taken outside, the noises would reverberate through the high arched ceiling.

In the centre, a tarp-like mat had been smoothed out where they had been taught a multitude of self-defence techniques. Judo, karate, kick-boxing. If it involved hitting someone or bringing someone down, they had learnt it.

And in the back, the trainers, her superiors would be standing as still as mannequins, taking mental notes, the rough scratching of pencils on clipboards needling and sanding away at their nerves, as the girls pummelled each other seemingly to death, their knuckles cut open and bloody by the end of it.

They would whittle down the group until there were barely a handful of them. The remaining girls would go for their "Graduation" ceremony and when they came back, the ones old enough to get their periods, were no longer bothered by them.

The last one was the most vivid in her memory. She remembered faking her results. But they found  out anyway, they always did. Strapped to the gurney, an oxygen mask pressing against her face, the plastic leaving dents in her skin, flickering lights flashing by like some sort of drug induced hallucination as they rolled her to meet the "doctor".