Natasha’s Awakening

Natasha curled up on the ground, trembling all over. As she weakly tried to crawl up, another girl suddenly stepped forward and straddled her, both hands tightly clamping down on the slender, pale neck beneath her vivid red hair.

The girl’s face was pale and haggard, her bloodshot eyes filled with savagery and madness. She snarled hoarsely, "Die already! Why aren’t you dead yet?"

"Emily, let me go!" Natasha gripped the other girl’s wrists with both hands, making futile struggles driven by her will to survive. The frozen ground had scraped her skin raw, turning it a brownish purple.

"Natasha, please, just stop breathing already…"

"You—"

Hearing the plea from the girl straddling her, Natasha shuddered all over.

Emily, once her only friend among her classmates, now desperately wanted to kill her for the last scrap of food and the chance to keep struggling onward under the Red Room’s rules.

This was true human nature and cruel reality.

Feelings and compassion were burdens. Only by treating herself as a killing weapon stripped of emotion could she survive until the end and become the strongest agent of this class—the Black Widow.

With her head tilted to one side, Natasha caught sight of the desolate wilderness around her. Nearby lay piles of girls’ corpses, frozen stiff before they could even decay.

A tear spilled from the corner of her left eye, immediately freezing into frost along with her blood.

It was the last tear she would ever shed. From this day onward, the weak female self within her would be utterly erased.

"Sorry, but I want to live too!" Natasha’s face turned cold. She kicked upward, her astonishingly flexible body crossing her calves around Emily’s neck and pulling back.

An eye for an eye!

Emily had not expected Natasha to have the strength to fight back. Startled, she desperately tightened her hands, trying to completely choke the breath from Natasha.

"Emily, you still forgot. I was the one who secretly helped you catch up in combat training.

If only one of us is destined to survive, then let me carry your share and keep going!"

As Natasha screamed in her heart, a cold light surfaced in her emotionless eyes as she exhausted the last of her strength—

Her wrists, waist, and calves moved in unison. Natasha forced Emily’s hands apart, then violently rolled forward, her calves clamped around Emily’s neck as they spun one hundred and eighty degrees through the air.

With a crisp crack, Emily’s neck snapped in midair. Her dimming eyes lost their light as she fell onto the frozen ground.

"I won." Natasha panted heavily, her limbs giving out as she collapsed onto the ground beneath the howling wind. Her stomach let out a desperate growl of hunger.

She dug her teeth into the frozen earth and used it to drag herself forward. Soon, she stopped beside a small pile of black bread stained with blood and snow.

Without a second thought, Natasha opened her mouth and tore into the small piece of black bread, swallowing it before chewing much.

Clap, clap, clap!

A burst of applause rang out for no apparent reason. Natasha weakly raised her eyes and saw a middle-aged man in an officer’s uniform strolling toward her.

"Beautifully done. As expected of my daughter. Now you truly are a Black Widow." The man smiled happily, not sparing even a moment from clapping.

"Taras." Natasha gritted her teeth. Her red hair hung messily over her face, while the eyes visible through the strands gathered resentment and chilling hatred.

Taras Romanov, her adoptive father, was one of the Red Room’s higher-ups. He had trained and driven her to become a cold-blooded agent and spy.

"Excellent eyes. You will become the strongest agent our Soviet Red Room has ever had." Taras praised her, utterly unconcerned by Natasha’s hatred and resentment. After all, it would all become meaningless after the brainwashing process.

An agent’s emotions and memories could be erased, even their humanity wiped away. All that mattered was that they followed procedure and completed the espionage and assassination missions assigned by the state.

This was the Red Room, a powerful organization that left nothing to chance.

Taras was exceptionally confident in this. He stepped forward, about to take Natasha back to the Red Room.

"Natasha, you really do look awful right now."

At that moment, a calm, indifferent voice suddenly sounded from behind. Upon hearing that familiar male voice, Natasha forced her eyes wide open, and hope once again colored her hollow gaze.

Taras turned around in surprise. Across the vast frozen wilderness behind him came a strange trio: a girl, a young man, and an older man. The older man had a sharp buzz cut, while the girl and young man both wore hooded tops that concealed most of their faces.

"Local residents? Don’t you know this is a restricted military zone?" Taras demanded coldly, drawing a large-caliber pistol from his waist with his left hand. Though there were three of them, he possessed the peak human physique of a Super Agent himself. There was no reason for him to be afraid.

Yet the hooded young man at the front did not even look at him. His gaze fell on Emily as he said slowly, "Don’t lie there pretending to be dead. When you escaped from the warship last time, more than a dozen of my soldiers died because of it. I still haven’t settled that score with you."

"That was done by other Red Room agents. It had nothing to do with me." Natasha explained weakly, still sprawled miserably on the ground. As she spoke, she could not help but smile.

She asked, "What you said last time—about having me join your side—does that still count?"

"It does." The hooded young man nodded, giving a simple reply.

But that single word was enough to transform Natasha’s circumstances. She took a deep breath, narrowed her eyes, and said, "Then take me away from here."

"Logan, bring her over." The hooded young man ordered. The buzz-cut older man beside him immediately ignored the armed Taras and strode toward Natasha.

"You’re acting like I don’t exist?!" Taras was shocked and furious. From beginning to end, the three strangers had not given him a single proper look!

And now, right in front of him, they had reached a verbal agreement with Natasha and intended to take away the top agent cultivated by the Red Room!

Taras fixed his eyes on Logan as he approached, raising his large-caliber pistol. "Take one more step, and I’ll shoot!"

Logan continued forward without acknowledging Taras, making the veins on Taras’s forehead bulge with rage as he aimed and pulled the trigger.

Very quickly, Taras realized something was wrong—no matter how hard he pressed, the pistol’s trigger seemed restrained by some force, impossible to pull down and fire.

"Boss hasn’t said you can move yet."

Beside the hooded young man, the petite girl looked coldly at Taras, her eyes glowing faintly with silver light.

Taras’s expression changed. The pistol in his hand flew free into the air, hovering there as its muzzle turned around to aim at its owner.

By then, with no one stopping him, Logan had already reached Natasha. He grabbed her with one hand and easily slung her over his shoulder.

Recovery successful: one Black Widow.

I forgot to update this morning. My mistake, so I hurriedly made it up.

There’ll be another update later tonight.