Maddison Romanoff-Stark

I'm Where?!

I wake up on a bed, it only takes a second to realize that I'm in a cell. It's not bad but it's a cell. It has an L shaped bed, and a glass door. I have no idea where I am though. Then I see four guards approach my cell and they open the door. Two of the guards grab me by my arms and one walks in front and one walks behind.

They walk me to an office I think. I see a man sitting at a desk. He looks up when we enter. "Ah, our newest recruit. Welcome to the Red Room. What is your name? And how old are you?" He says. "What do you want?" I say. "To make you one of our best. Just like your friend Natasha Romanoff," says the man. I go pale when he mentions my mom. Then it clicks. This is the Red Room that trained my mom to be an assassin. "How do you know Natasha? And again, what is your name and age?" asks the man. "The better question is what do you want? And what is your name," I say. "You have fire. Natasha has it too. My name is Dreykov," says the man. I take a deep breath before saying "My name is Madison and I am 6." "Do you have a last name?" asks Dreykov. My mind is now choosing between Romanoff and Stark. "Stark," I say remembering that my mom isn't supposed to biologically have kids. "Madison, you are to be in the KGB program. If you are good enough you will be in the Black Widow program. You could be the next Black Widow if you follow the rules and do well. If you don't follow the rules or do well, you could get killed," says Dreykov. I nod in response. He looks at his guards and says "Take her to the training room. See what she can do."

The guards nod and grab my arms again and they bring me to the training room the training room has a target on the wall. As well as cameras. There is no doubt in my mind that Dreykov is watching the footage from his office. "Show us what you can do," says one of the guards. I know better than to disobey certain orders in the Red Room from my mom's stories. I do some of my most advanced gymnastics and they hand me a gun and I shoot the target and I get bullseye every time. While my parents were on missions, I would sneak into the training room and use their guns to practice.

The guards bring in another girl who looks like she's my age. The girl has brown hair like mine and brown eyes. "Fight," says another guard. I use my tricks that my mom taught me and I end up pinning my opponent to the floor. "Good. Now take her out," says another guard. "What?" I say shocked at their order. "Kill her," says the guard. "Why should I? She's done nothing wrong. Dreykov just wanted to see my skills not watch me kill a kid," I shoot back as I unpin the girl. She sits up breathing heavily and looks a little relieved I didn't kill her. I just hope she doesn't kill me. The guards nod to the girl and she gets up and leaves. I am shocked that they didn't have her kill me.

The guards grab my arms again and they lead me to a room. One of them points to a training outfit and says "Put it on. Then come back out of the room." I nod and I close the door and change. It's a black sports tank top and black exercise pants. It's just like the outfit I wear when I train with my mom at the compound. It also has black gloves. Good I can sort of hide my watch. They trust me this much? I wonder in my head. I am so tempted to talk to Friday and find a way out of here. To activate Friday I would have to talk out loud and I could get killed from doing that.

The guards take me to another room where I see girls about my age in a line with guns. The girls are wearing the same outfit as me. Plus protective eye wear and headphones, both of which have the Black Widow logo on it on the sides of them. The room has targets on the wall one in front of each of us. They place me next to the girl I fought with earlier and they hand me a gun, headphones, and protective eye wear. I put those on and I hold the gun. Then all of use start firing at our targets. All of us get bullseye. Dreykov walks in and we keep shooting. He watches me in particular. I see this from my peripheral vision. I don't turn my head from the target. All of us finish shooting our bullets and we take off our headphones and protective eye wear and we put down our guns and we are lead to another room.

All of us change out of our outfits and into normal clothes. I change into the clothes I arrived in. We are lead to yet another room. It's a room with a lot of TVs we sit down in a chair in front of each TV. There are juice boxes next to each TV. The TVs play a cartoon. It's pretty weird. After a little while, someone picks up their juice box and the rest of us follow. We all take a sip and put them down and continue watching. We watch for a while we take another sip of our juice boxes. We repeat this for an hour or so until the cartoon ends. Then we finish our juice boxes and are lead out of the room. We change back into our training outfits.

We are lead to another training room. We are told to sit down against the wall so we do. We watch as women walk in and they do their training sequence. They are Black Widows. Then the older women leave and we are told to stand up so we do.

A woman enters and says "My name is Melina Vostokoff. I will be training you, that is if you make it into the Black Widow program." She teaches us a fighting sequence and we preform it over and over again. Once we have it memorized, we are split into pairs and we do the sequence against each other. Melina told us that the loser gets killed by the winner. I am paired with a different girl than before. We fight and she pins me down. I break free from her grip and we keep fighting. We are pretty evenly matched. I end up getting the upper hand and I flip her to the ground and I pin her down. Everyone is fighting at the same time. I look up for a moment and I see a girl kill her opponent. I look back down at my opponent. "I'm sorry," I say and I break her neck. Those of us who have finished fighting stand against the wall. After all the losers are killed we move their bodies to another wall and we are paired again. I am with another girl I haven't met yet. We fight and she manages to pin me down. Just before she kills me I grab her hand and I flip her over and I am on top of her. I regretfully kill her too. This is one of the hardest days of my life for sure. We repeat doing this for another round.

It's just six of us left now. "Congratulations. You are now part of the Black Widow program," says Melina. She gives us new Black Widow suits like my mom's.

We leave the room and put them on. We walk back in and we continue training. I start to memorize who made it into the Black Widow program. The girl I had to fight when I got here, a girl with blonde hair, an African American girl, a girl with red hair that's a little darker than my mom's, a girl with black hair, and me. We are a team now.

After a little while longer of training we are told to go take a shower and change into normal clothes. We leave the room and do that. Melina leads us to a lab. All six of us are strapped down on tables and Melina leaves the room. The doctors cut a slit in all of our right wrists. I hiss in pain and so do the other girls. The doctors put a tracker in each of our wrists. Then our wrists are stitched up and we leave the lab. Melina is waiting for us in the hallway.

She leads us to another room. This room has six beds. Each bed has handcuffs attached to the bar where our heads go. "This is where you will sleep," says Melina. Then she leaves the room. We have no specific beds so we choose where we go. I end up in between the girl I fought with when I got here and the African American girl. None of us had learned each other's names yet. "So, what are your names?" I ask. The girl I fought with earlier goes first. "I'm Carmen," she says. We all nod. The African American girl goes next. "I'm Amy," she says. The red haired girl goes next. "I'm Ruby," she says. The blonde girl is next. "I'm Bailey," she says. The black haired girl goes after her. "I'm Lucille," she says. It's my turn now. "I'm Madison," I say. Everyone nods. No two of us look alike so memorizing everyone's names and faces isn't gonna be that hard. We talk for a little while and my theory is right. We are all 6 years old.

Then Melina comes in and says "Dinner time." We all stand up and follow her to the cafeteria. The food is edible but it's nothing like the food at the compound or headquarters. We finish eating and Melina leads us back to our room. A pair of PJs are folded on our beds. Melina leaves and we change. She comes back in and we lay on our beds and she handcuffs our wrists to the bed post so we can't escape. The handcuffs sit right by where we just got trackers implanted. If I need to escape, I can. I have two secret bobbie pins in my hair at all times. They're the same shade of brown as my hair so they blend in. The only problem is the security cameras. All of us know better than to talk until we fall asleep. It takes me a little while to fall asleep but I do eventually.