illogical

𝚌𝚑. 01

❗this chapter contains: mild violence, cursing

_._♧_._

Katerina Koroleva knew what she was doing. 

That was the best part of her job. Everything about it made sense. It was logical, and logic was all Katerina knew.

She followed a routine: wake up, breakfast, train, lunch, train, dinner, sleep (That last step was quite irrelevant. Sleep brought illogical things she did not want to deal with).

She had settled into this routine. For the first five years of her employment, it had been her life. She spent her years training, and training, and training, and training. It finally paid off in missions, when she had first been granted access to the field four years ago. All of her hard work transferred into doing something good. She was helping people. She was now the one who eliminated the evil in the world; the same evil that had plagued her in her childhood was now stooped low under the barrel of her gun.

Logical. It was all logical.

Tonight, without a doubt, was probably one of the most logical missions she could have been given; a simple information retrieval. SHIELD had called in an unidentified object from their base in Serbia. Katerina's job was to get the official, unredacted paper records that couldn't be accessed online. 

She sat in the dimly lit cargo hold of the plane. The only other agent present with her was a tall, blonde man who stood guard in the corner. Katerina couldn't remember if he had been here before or not, as her repetitive missions began to blur in her mind after a while. It didn't matter, though. The nameless agent would stay on the plane while Katerina left at the drop point.

In fact, she should probably get her parachute on. Her wrist communicator started blinking, showing her 30 seconds out. 

She got up from her seat, grabbed a parachute, and started latching it on herself.

Out of her peripheral vision, she saw the agent in the corner watching her, his muscles tense and his finger resting on the trigger of his standard-issue gun. He was scared. Of her.

A part of Katerina enjoyed it. She enjoyed the fear she caused, how people flinched when she got too close or made too sudden of a movement. She was respected here, as she should be. She was their best asset, after all. 

Katerina fought down a smirk. The agent in the corner did not need to see her smile; he might mistake it for some form of weakness.

Katerina was not weak. Weakness was illogical in her job, and she did not deal with the illogical.

She finished strapping on her parachute, cinching the belts tightly around her waist and shoulders. As usual, the pilot had started counting down in German over the intercom, ticking down the seconds until she needed to deploy. 

"Zehn...neun...(ten...nine...)"

She unlatched and hauled the heavy plane door open. Countless missions had taught her how to throw her weight just right so she wouldn't put excess strain on her arms.

The wind hit her like a ton of bricks, but she kept her balance gripping the doorframe of the aircraft. The noise muffled the pilot's voice, but Katerina could still hear it faintly enough to know when to jump.