The Ghost [Marvel | Steve Rogers]

Chapter 5

Prague, Czech Republic

Spring 2015

It wasn't the ideal place to be taking her shot from—usually she preferred to be firing from much farther away—but given what she'd been put together about Romanoff's anticipated movements, it was the best of a bad situation. So Nadine sat on a balcony, tucked down behind the solid yet decorative stone railing, peering through the pillars to the street below as her rifle was held ready in her lap.

Hiding in plain sight. It was what she did, what she was good at.

No one ever saw her coming.

She didn't know precisely what Romanoff's mission was and she didn't care. It had taken the entirely of her drive here to Prague to somehow detach herself from what she was preparing to do but she had managed it anyway. From there she had gone on to figuring out how to complete her mission, her years of lessons in the Red Room and subsequent years of practical experience proving their worth yet again.

After the collapse of S.H.I.E.L.D. nearly a year before and the spilling of its secrets all over the internet, there was now a glut of intelligence out there for Nadine to take advantage of. And as all of her early preparation told her when she'd first been handed this mission, Natalia had more than earned the 'Black Widow' designation. A little part of Nadine was jealous; it was something every girl in the Red Room had aspired to, and for a short time, it was Nadya who had seemed poised to earn it. But that was a long time ago. Now Nadine was different. She wasn't Nadya anymore, with aspirations to a name that designated her as one of the best assassins in the world. Now she was The Ghost. Now she arguably was the best assassin in the world.

She was the assassin they sent after assassins.

She was enough of a match for Black Widow.

...at least in theory.

It was still early, the street still mostly empty, though people were beginning to appear, heading for breakfast or work. There was a faint breeze in the air, stirring the fine strands from Nadine's high ponytail to cling to her cheek and lashes. With an absent gesture she freed the blonde strands, brushing them back before checking her surroundings...again.

But then something in the air seemed to shift, her skin suddenly prickling in anticipation. Instinctively, Nadine knew the critical moments were approaching. Slowly shifting the rifle, her movements slow and precise, Nadine readied herself, one boot bracing against one of the stone columns of the railing as she leaned forward to peer through the scope.

There was a hint of movement around the building across the street. The building itself was, for all appearances' sake, just another, run-of-the-mill business headquarters, one of several that lined this particular street. But it could easily be anything else, which was why Nadine'd had her contacts keeping it under observation.

Considering the determined way Natalia and her companions had been striking off HYDRA locations linked with records, research and data storage, it was a logical conclusion to draw that eventually they would hit this one; hence Nadine's surveillance of this particular building over the others on the list provide within the original target docket.

The beefed-up building materials the building boasted had cemented that conclusion for Nadine when she'd made her recon visit weeks earlier; the windows weren't just paned with your average glass and the doors and window frames were heavily reinforced. And considering the other sorts of materials on the shipping manifests and invoicing from the building's renovations not long ago, she was also willing to bet the walls themselves had been further fortified from within once HYDRA had set up shop in the building. Hell, it was possible that they'd built it in the first place; she hadn't quite looked that far into it since doing so hadn't been necessary, but the age and style alone suggestedas much; she was thorough, but not that thorough. Yes, it easily stood to reason that this building hid one such location. The electricity usage that the building was responsible for certainly indicated something more than simple commerce was happening inside.