𝐏𝐀𝐍𝐈𝐂 𝐑𝐎𝐎𝐌

𝐨𝐧𝐞

- ⧗  ZARIAH PETROVA ⧗ -

   ZARIAH PETROVA WASN'T LIKE THE OTHERS. She knew that well. And she knew it wasn't just her vibrant hair colour that made her so. Something innate inside her made her different from the rest of the girls at the academy. Not only had she always been much stronger than the rest of her peers, but the adult officials had always carried a certain fascination with Zariah and kept a close, watchful eye on her throughout her time at the school.

   All of the girls were trained in the same way. The Red Room was a factory, perfected in their process of creating the greatest weapons known to man. Any subject who could not live up to the standard, who was deemed as weak, was erased.

   Zariah was never weak. That was a thing for small children, or for the feeble failures of this world. And Zariah never failed.

   She could not remember a time before the Red Room. At night, the other girls would cry into their pillows. Tears fell over lost mothers and fathers, over lives now long faded away into the past. Zariah never cried. Not over parents, or the outside world, or anything. Crying was for people who were weak.

   Silent and deadly. That's how Zariah had been trained to be, how all of the girls inside the Red Room were. Strategic, clever, strong. Never weak. They were trained in the ways of espionage, how to blend in undetected or retrieve information without a trace, as well as in the way of assassination. Killing.

   Zariah was very good at killing.

   Truly she could not recall a time before killing was an indifferent task, yet she held the memory of the first time she had ever taken a life very close. Little fingers barely strong enough to pull the trigger, the recoil so strong it had knocked her off her feet, and her unblinking face as the body lay limp in a pool of blood ahead of her. Thirteen years had passed since then and now the girl didn't even flinch when placing a bullet between a person's eyes.

   At fifteen, she was the best spy and assassin the academy had ever produced. Dreykov, the head supervisor of the Red Room, would often remind her of this. Yet the girl felt no extra pressure, all she possessed was pride.

   Zariah was top of her division in everything. She could be anyone, from anywhere in the world, a perfect actress. She knew how to obtain data, either through manipulating a person to sharing their thoughts, or by accessing encrypted details through programmes and solving them herself. She was multilingual, the best dancer in the class, and most importantly, the strongest fighter. To date, she had never met a foe she could not defeat.

   In everybody's eyes, including her own, she was a perfect example of what exactly a Black Widow assassin should be.

•••

   The morning was cold as Zariah woke to the sound of matron's bell echoing through the dormitory. She was awake quickly, alert and ready as she'd been trained to always be. Her breath lingered in a cloud in the chill of the room but Zariah took no notice.

     It wasn't long before matron had reached her bed with the small silver key in hand. She reached to unlock the handcuff around the girl's pale wrist, freeing her from her bed. Zariah itched at the small marks it had left on her skin as matron moved on to the next girl. Perhaps to some this morning ritual would seem utterly strange but to Zari, it was her normal.

     She was quick once again to her feet, unhesitating as she began to pull the sheets of her bed into an orderly manner. Hospital corners were the standard and there were no exceptions. Not unless you wanted a good punishment. Like everything else, Zariah had mastered this technique.