meet me at our spot | n.r x oc | ✓

2 - a safe place

2016
[stefaniya's pov]

I have one eye shut, the other staring out the telescope of my sniper rifle. Yelena and I are with our Black Widows unit. We were in Morocco on a mission to track down the vials of Red Dust-- the only known cure to break out of Dreykov's mind control. Fun stuff.

"Eyes on target. Waiting for package,"
Yelena says through the earpiece. I'm just a few buildings away from her, also on a roof. Unlike Yelena, I don't have a mattress or anything to lay on top of, so I'm hunched over in the most awkward and uncomfortable position. I shake the thoughts from my head and focus on the target.

"I have sights on collateral one,"
I respond. I move my rifle slowly around, panning to the package in the target's hands as she walked around the hallway.

"Firing place of three," Yelena speaks. "Five, four--"

An alarm rings in the distance and the shouting of kids alerts the target. She makes eye contact with me briefly before throwing down a smoke bomb.

"She made us. Target deployed smoke," I stand to run down to the street, hoping to cut her off there.

Running at nearly lightning speed, I make it down to the busy street and threaten a nearby driver with my rifle. He gives up his beaten-down car easily and I take his seat. Tires screech as I leave him behind, driving straight for the alleyway which the target should have exited from. As I planned, she appears right in front of the car and I crash into her. I see Yelena catching up to us.

Citizens scream and scatter away from us and I jump out of the car to assist Yelena in stealing back the package. The target doesn't go down easily though-- she gets back up as if nothing happened and grabs the package, swinging it across my face. My skin stings but I push back, delivering punches to the target's face. I push her forward into Yelena, who is holding a knife in front of herself. The woman groans as Yelena twists the knife as it lodges itself into her abdomen.

I move to pull the woman onto her back to pry the package out of her hands. Instead, I'm met with a cloud of sparkling red-- crap, the red dust. I can tell that Yelena was hit too as she coughs behind me.

I wipe at my face, turning to meet Yelena's eyes. Her normally green-brown eyes glow red, but only for a second before it fades back to its normal color.

"Yelena? Wow, fuck, my shoulder hurts."

She looks at me, then turns to the target. I follow her eyes and recognize the bloodied woman lying helplessly on the pavement.

"Oksana."
Yelena kneels down and presses her hands onto Oksana's stab wound.
"Oh no, what did I do?"

Oksana holds up the package of red vials to me.
"Free the others," are her last words before her breath catches in her throat and she's gone.

Yelena whimpers. I crawl over to her.

"Hey, hey, we'll be okay."

Yelena meets my eyes and nods, unconvinced, but I know that she only does it for my sake. I appreciated the thought.

I toss the empty vial that was used on Yelena and I into the package with the other vials and closed it. I hold out a hand to Yelena.

"Come on, let's go."

"Yelena, Stefaniya, we need a status report,"
the earpieces crackled. I stop, not knowing what to do now. I look to Yelena for help, but she already has her knife in her thigh.

"Yelena, what the fuck are you doing?!"
I kept my voice down. Yelena only winces as she dislodges a Red Room-installed tracker from her thigh, throwing it to the ground next to her abandoned earpiece. I start to catch her drift and pull my butterfly knife out of my suit pocket, flipping it around to reveal the blade and then cutting into the soft flesh of my upper thigh. I start to scream but Yelena's already next to my side with a hand clapped over my mouth.

"We've got to go."

Yelena waits until I've finished to grab my hand and pull me away. I make sure to stomp on the tracker, leaving nothing left functioning. I didn't see what Yelena did to hers, but I can only hope that we could slip away with the vials unnoticed.

"Where are we going?"
I hold the package tighter to my chest.

"A safe place."