Winter Soldier: Fade to Red

Ready to Comply

The apartment was silent as the grave when Nikolai woke the following morning. Still exhausted and unsure as to why, he shuffled out of bed and into his tiny kitchen where coffee was mercifully available. After brewing a pot, he drank in silence and stared through the window at the frosty morning.

How did I get here?

Memory was his nemesis these days. Ever since Sokovia.

Sokovia...

He drank in silence as his mind attempted to slide the pieces of the memory puzzle into place. He remembered what happened before Sokovia. He was Wolf Spider- the only male assassin within the Red Room. And he was a prisoner within his own body- a slave to Dreykov's will. Not that it was entirely different from his life up to that point. He was sent on a mission to Sokovia. His target- he couldn't remember. In fact, everything after his arrival in Sokovia was a hazy mystery for him. The events that took place there were as good as gone. And everything that took place after he returned to Russia was utterly fragmented. There were bits and pieces of his life- mundane, dull activities- stitched between strange blackouts. He tried to return to the Red Room once, but it was no more. Confusion mingled with a sense of feeling lost, and he struggled to find some kind of meaning in the wake of mass confusion and the loss of his master. And then those blackouts would happen. There were times when he would find himself staring at a clock, wondering where the last several hours or days had gone. Then the phone would ring and the world would suddenly go dark again.

The phone rang.

Despite his reputation for being a cool, skillful assassin, Nikolai's heart raced immediately. Whatever happened during those blackout periods was always initiated with a phone call.

What if I don't answer?

But he couldn't resist. He never could. Something strange, almost primitive, commanded him. He was powerless to the call.

Setting the mug down on the edge of the counter, he barely registered when it teetered off and came crashing to the floor. He entered the sparsely-furnished living room while coffee slowly spread in a puddle, punctuated by fragments of glass. He picked up the phone.

"Hello?"

"Crawl."

Nikolai stood perfectly still, his mind slowly being swallowed up in a strange vice.

"Gasp...writhe...spin..."

Nikolai's mind was completely submerged. Torn apart by forces he couldn't comprehend.

"Weave...snare...tangle...bite...drink...prey."

Nikolai eyes glazed over. "Ready to comply," he uttered.

On the inside, he was screaming.

Alyona Federov smiled after hanging up the phone. Reclining in her plush office chair, she smiled at the man who sat in one of the wing chairs on the other side of her desk. "It's done," she said with an air of satisfaction.

"You're sure?" the man asked. "He's going to do it?"

Alyona frowned. "Do you have amnesia?" she asked. "Have you been out of commission for the past week?"

"It just sounds too good to be true!" the man replied defensively. "This is all very unusual."

Alyona shrugged her shoulders and reached for her packet of cigarettes. After lighting up she took a deep and satisfied inhalation, then released the smoke into the air. As it curled like a ghost, she stared at her office visitor. "We have a dutiful little tinker toy to do our dirty work for us. So, tell me- why the fuck are you complaining. Do you want to come down from your ivory tower and do the killing yourself? Or do you want the illustrious Wolf Spider to handle it."