𝐒𝐔𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐍𝐎𝐕𝐀 | While the Winter Soldier was a ghost story, Nadine Ryker is a ghost. She's The Ghost. Her past is a mystery, her identity even more so.
Few knew her as Nadya Ivanovna Rykova, the lost recruit of the Red Room, never spoken of aft...
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Russia
Late Fall 1996
She had gotten so used to disassembling, cleaning and reassembling the Makarov PM blindfolded, that whenever she was required to do so now, Nadya Ivanovna Rykova always did so with her eyes closed. Her fingers flew over the components, fitting them back together and a handful of heartbeats later it was ready to fire.
"Good." Nadya's eyes opened, glancing up to Madame B as she passed by the station Nadya had been working at. Sitting in front of her were several different firearms—a variety of handguns, Russian and American among others, a submachine gun and even an anti-personnel rifle—each cleaned, reassembled and neatly laid out for inspection. The corner of the older woman's mouth pulled a little, the closest thing to an approving smile she gave for the most part, before she moved on.
Around her other girls were similarly finishing up with their own batches of weapons. A thorough knowledge of firearms was merely one small component of their training, and their taskmistress was exacting to a tee.
"Faster, Natalia. Fast but not sloppy." Though the rules included ignoring any distraction, Nadya couldn't help but glance over at the sound of Madame B's almost casual admonishment. Almost as soon as their trainer had passed by the younger girl's table, Natalia glanced up herself to catch Nadya's eye, stressed green meeting grey. Nadya spared the girl a tiny smile before slowly shifting her gaze back to her own station. It was a trick long ago learned; slow movements were far less likely to catch attention.
"Nadya," but not today, it seemed, "again." Holding in a frustrated groan, Nadya complied.
It was no longer difficult work, stripping and reassembling the firearms they trained with, Nadya having mastered many of them long before she was Natalia's age, but that meant it was now tedious and exacting. The excitement of the challenge had long since worn off, and even Barrett anti-personnel rifle, the most recent addition to her personal arsenal given her particularly keen marksmanship, had become near second-nature. Even some of the old soviet weapons or the odd obscure ones from a variety of other countries they were sometimes given as a test were no longer a challenge. When it came to firearms, she was the best of every girl there whether it was handling or firing them, so that was no surprise.
