Marvel Hunter - Chapter 13

Chapter 13: The Echo and The Mirror

The Hotel Metropol was a fortress of old-world luxury, standing stoic against the biting Moscow winter. Inside the Presidential Suite, the radiator hissed, fighting a losing battle against the chill radiating from the floor-to-ceiling windows.

Veer stood by the glass, looking down. The square below was a tapestry of gray concrete and white snow. To the naked eye, it was empty. The pedestrians had hurried home to escape the freezing wind.

But to Veer, the emptiness was a lie.

He didn’t need to see them to know they were there. He felt them.

Seven distinct fires burned in the cold distance. They were faint, suppressed, likely trained to lower their heart rates and breathing, but against the backdrop of the lifeless city, their life force stood out like flares in the night.

“They’re set,” Veer said, his voice low. “Seven snipers. Rooftops. 360-degree coverage. They aren’t taking chances.”

Natasha was sitting on the edge of the bed, checking the magazine of her Glock for the third time. She wore a white tactical suit she had stashed in a safe house years ago—a ghost from her past life. It blended perfectly with the snow, but against the velvet drapes of the hotel room, she looked like a marble statue.

“They want to box us in,” Natasha said. “Suppressing fire from the roofs, extraction team through the door. Standard Red Room protocol.”

“Simple,” Veer noted. “Effective.”

He turned to her.

“You know the plan, Natasha. I clear the board. You play the bait.”

“I know,” Natasha cut him off, holstering her weapon. “But don’t kill them. They’re victims. Just… turn off their lights.”

Veer nodded. “Try not to die before I get back.”

“I’m harder to kill than I look,” she smirked, though the tension around her eyes remained.

Veer didn’t smile back. He simply turned to the window. He didn’t open the latch. He placed his hand against the glass.

Ren.

A pulse of aura surged into the pane. The glass didn’t shatter explosively; it simply crumbled into dust, dissolving silently under the pressure of his aura.

The freezing wind rushed in, carrying snowflakes into the warm suite.

Veer stepped onto the ledge. He looked down at the fifty-foot drop to the alleyway below.

“See you in ten minutes,” Veer said.

He dropped.

He didn’t fall like a stone. He fell like a leaf, his body relaxed, his Silent Gait active even in mid-air. He caught a gargoyle on the third floor, swung his momentum, and landed in the snow-covered alley without making a sound. The fresh powder barely shifted under his boots.

He was in the wild now.

…

[Veer’s Perspective]

The cold was irrelevant. His Ten kept his body temperature regulated, an invisible thermal suit that separated him from the Russian winter.

Veer looked up. The rooftops were a maze of slanted slate and chimneys.

He located the first target. Northern perimeter. The old bank building.

Veer moved.

He ran up the side of the hotel. He didn’t need a ladder. He channeled aura into his feet and hands, digging his fingers into the brickwork like claws. He ascended with the speed of a spider, clearing four stories in seconds.

He vaulted onto the roof and sprinted across the slate tiles.

The world was white. The snow was falling heavier now, reducing visibility to a few meters.

On the adjacent roof, a figure lay prone. She was wearing a white thermal suit, a high-caliber sniper rifle propped on a bipod. She was perfectly camouflaged. If Veer had been using his eyes, he would have missed her. She was just another drift of snow.

But her aura betrayed her. It was a calm, steady yellow light, focused intensely on the window of the Presidential Suite.

Veer approached her from behind. The wind howled, masking the sound of his movement, but he didn’t rely on the wind. He used Zetsu. His presence vanished. He was a hole in the world.

He stood directly over her. She didn’t flinch. She was completely unaware that death was standing two feet away.

“Sorry, kid,” Veer thought.

He crouched. He didn’t use Ko. He didn’t need it. He stiffened his hand into a knife-hand strike—a shuto.

He struck the base of her neck.

Thud.

It was a precise, surgical impact. Not enough to break the spine, but enough to pinch the vagus nerve and shut down the brain instantly.

The sniper slumped over her rifle, limp as a ragdoll.

Veer checked her pulse. Steady. Just asleep.

“One,” Veer counted.

He didn’t linger. He leaped from the edge of the bank building, soaring across the street to the clock tower.

The second sniper was positioned inside the bell housing.

Veer landed on the spire, balancing on a gargoyle. He slipped inside. The girl was young, maybe nineteen. She had the blank, focused look of the chemically subjugated.

Veer moved like a shadow. Chop.

“Two.”

He moved across the city skyline. It was almost too easy. These women were elite killers, trained from birth, but they were fighting a war of ballistics and sight. Veer was fighting a war of magic and biology.

He neutralized the third on a fire escape. The fourth on a billboard platform.

He was a ghost haunting the rooftops of Moscow.

As he reached the fifth sniper—a girl shivering slightly in the cold as she held her position—Veer felt a pang of pity.

Natasha was right. They weren’t soldiers. They were dolls.

He struck her gently, catching her before she hit the cold metal of the roof, and laid her down.

“Sleep,” he whispered. “When you wake up, the nightmare might be over.”

…

[Natasha’s Perspective]

Inside the suite, the silence was deafening.

Natasha stood in the center of the living room. The cold wind from the broken window whipped her hair around her face. She waited.

She knew they were coming. The elevator cables were humming.

Ding.

The elevator doors didn’t open. Instead, the ceiling of the elevator shaft exploded.

Simultaneously, the service door to the suite was kicked in.

CRASH.

Four figures in white tactical suits burst into the room. They moved with terrifying speed, flowing like water. They didn’t shout. They didn’t pause.

Two rappelled from the ceiling vent, landing in a crouch. Two surged through the door.

Widows.

Natasha didn’t reach for her gun. At this range, against four Widows, a gun was a liability. They would disarm her before she cleared the holster.

She grabbed the heavy oak chair next to her and hurled it.

The lead Widow didn’t dodge. She slid under the chair, her movement fluid, and launched herself at Natasha, electric batons extending from her wrists.

Natasha parried the strike with her forearm guards. Crack. The electricity sparked, stinging her skin even through the insulation.

“Yelena?” Natasha shouted, blocking a kick to her head.

The Widow didn’t answer. Her face was covered by a tactical mask, her eyes blank and cold. She spun, delivering a heel kick to Natasha’s ribs.

Natasha absorbed the blow, grunting, and grabbed the Widow’s leg. She twisted, using the momentum to throw the girl into the coffee table. Glass shattered.

But the other three were on her instantly.

A wire wrapped around Natasha’s neck. A garrote.

Natasha gagged, clawing at the wire. She dropped her weight, slamming her elbow backward into the attacker’s stomach. The girl wheezed but didn’t let go.

Another Widow lunged with a knife.

Natasha was trapped.

Think. Move. Break the rhythm.

Natasha stomped on the foot of the garrote holder, forcing a micro-second of looseness. She ducked her head, slipping the wire, and rolled forward.

She came up holding a shard of the broken table glass.

She slashed—not to kill, but to force distance. The Widows backed off, circling her like a pack of wolves.

They weren’t trying to kill her. She realized it in the way they attacked. They were aiming for limbs. They were using tasers and nets. They wanted to capture the traitor.

“They wants me alive,” Natasha realized. “He wants to put me back in the chair.”

The thought ignited a cold fury in her gut.

“Not today,” she hissed.

She ran.

She vaulted over the sofa and sprinted for the broken window.

“She’s running!” one of the Widows shouted—the first words spoken.

Natasha leaped onto the ledge and looked down. She didn’t have Veer’s aura. She couldn’t just jump fifty feet.

But she had a grapple line.

She fired her Widow’s Bite grapple at the building across the street. The line caught. She swung out into the snowy void just as the Widows reached the window.

She crashed through the window of the office building opposite the hotel, tumbling onto a carpeted floor amidst a shower of glass.

She scrambled up.

“Come on,” she challenged the empty air. “Follow me.”

And they did.

Three Widows zip-lined across the gap seconds later.

The chase was on.

Natasha led them through the dark office corridors. She used everything. She tipped over filing cabinets to create obstacles. She used a fire extinguisher to create a blinding cloud of white powder.

She reached a long hallway. The three Widows were closing in, their footsteps synchronized.

Natasha stopped. She turned to face them. She was out of breath, bruised, and cornered.

Or so it seemed.

She took a breath. She remembered the rhythm. The metronome in her head.

Thud. Thud. Shhh.

She began to walk towards them.

The Widows paused, confused by her sudden change in demeanor.

Natasha sped up. She moved in the specific cadence Veer had drilled into her.

Rhythm Echo.

To the Widows, Natasha suddenly split.

One Natasha became two. Two became four. Four became eight.

A circle of Natasha Romanoffs surrounded the confused assassins. They flickered in and out of existence, leaving ghostly afterimages that confused the eye.

The Widows hesitated. They didn’t know which one was real. They fired their tasers at the images on the left. The darts passed harmlessly through the ghosts.

“Wrong,” Natasha’s voice echoed from everywhere.

The real Natasha struck from the right.

She moved inside the guard of the lead Widow. A palm strike to the chin. A sweep of the leg. The Widow went down hard.

The other two spun around, lashing out at the afterimages.

Natasha danced through them. It was the first time she had used Rhythm Echo in real combat, and it was devastating. The confusion gave her the split-second advantage she needed to overcome their numbers.

She grabbed the second Widow’s arm, dislocated the shoulder, and slammed her head into the wall.

The third Widow, realizing her eyes were deceiving her, closed them and swung blindly.

Natasha slid under the swing and delivered a precise kick to the temple.

Silence fell in the hallway.

Three elite Widows lay unconscious on the floor.

Natasha stood there, panting. She looked at her hands. They were shaking, but she was alive.

“It works,” she whispered, a grin spreading across her face. “Veer, you magnificent bastard, it works.”

She tapped her earpiece (a new, secure one Veer had bought).

“Veer? Status?”

Static.

“Veer?”

Suddenly, a heavy thud echoed from the end of the hallway.

Natasha spun around.

A figure stepped out of the shadows.

It wasn’t a Widow.

The figure was clad in heavy, blue and orange tactical armor. A hood covered the head, and a skull-like mask hid the face. A shield was strapped to one arm, a sword to the back.

Taskmaster.

Natasha’s blood ran cold. She knew the rumors. The Red Room’s ultimate weapon. The enforcer who hunted the hunters.

Taskmaster didn’t speak. The figure tilted its head, studying her. The mask’s HUD glowed faintly orange.

“Who are you?” Natasha demanded, raising her fists.

Taskmaster drew a sword. The movement was eerily familiar. It was perfect. Efficient.

Natasha didn’t wait. She knew she couldn’t win a contest of strength. She had to confuse him.

She engaged Rhythm Echo again.

She began the cadence. The afterimages flared. She split into multiple copies, circling the armored figure.

“You can’t hit what isn’t there,” Natasha thought, moving in for a strike from the blind spot.

She lunged at Taskmaster’s back.

But Taskmaster didn’t turn around. Taskmaster simply… shifted.

The armored figure took a step. It was the exact same step Natasha had taken.

Thud. Thud. Shhh.

Natasha’s eyes widened in horror.

Taskmaster began to move. And as the figure moved, afterimages appeared behind it.

Taskmaster was doing the Rhythm Echo.

“No…” Natasha whispered. “That’s impossible. It took me two months…”

Taskmaster didn’t just copy it. Taskmaster perfected it. The armored afterimages were sharper, faster. They surrounded Natasha, overwhelming her own illusion.

Natasha was trapped in a hall of mirrors.

She lashed out at a figure. Her hand passed through air.

A steel gauntlet struck her from the left.

CRACK.

Natasha flew backward, slamming into the drywall. She gasped, her ribs burning.

She tried to get up, but Taskmaster was already there. The figure mirrored her recovery move perfectly, anticipating her dodge.

Taskmaster grabbed her by the throat and lifted her off the ground.

The skull mask stared into her eyes. The camera in the HUD zoomed in, recording her fear.

Natasha choked out, but still asked who she is.

The grip tightened. Taskmaster reached for a knife.

Natasha kicked, struggled, tried to use her Widow’s Bite, but Taskmaster caught her wrist before she could fire. The copycat knew her moves before she made them.

She was checkmated. Her own best technique had been stolen and used to crush her in seconds.

“I’m sorry,” Natasha thought, darkness encroaching on her vision. “Veer… I failed.”

Taskmaster raised the blade for a non-lethal, incapacitating stab to the shoulder.

Suddenly, the wall next to them exploded.

It wasn’t a door opening. It was the concrete wall disintegrating.

A hand reached through the dust cloud. A hand that was glowing with a terrifying, dense purple light.

The hand grabbed Taskmaster’s face.

There was no technique. No martial art to copy. No rhythm to analyze.

Just raw, overwhelming speed and power.

“Let her go,” a voice said calmly.

Veer stepped through the hole he had just punched in the building. He was covered in snow, his coat flapping in the draft.

Taskmaster, sensing the impossible grip strength, tried to stab Veer’s arm.

The knife struck Veer’s forearm.

CLINK.

The blade shattered. It didn’t even scratch the Ten.

Taskmaster froze. The HUD flashed red. ERROR. UNKNOWN VARIABLE. CANNOT COMPUTE PHYSICS.

Taskmaster dropped Natasha and tried to copy Veer’s stance. The figure tried to flare aura.

Nothing happened.

“You can copy moves,” Veer said, looking into the skull mask. “But you can’t copy Nen skill, unless you open aura nodes.”

Veer squeezed.

He didn’t crush the skull—he knew who was inside. He just applied pressure to the temporal points.

Taskmaster convulsed once, the armor rattling, and then went limp.

Veer released the grip. The heavy armored body crashed to the floor.

Natasha slid down the wall, coughing, massaging her bruised throat. She looked up at Veer. He stood over the defeated Taskmaster like a god of war, his aura slowly receding.

“You took your time,” Natasha rasped, a weak smile forming.

“I had to walk,” Veer said, dusting off his coat. “Elevators are down.”

He reached down and pulled Natasha up. He checked her neck.

“You okay?”

“Bruised ego,” she said. “She copied the Echo, Veer. Instantly. She used it better than me.”

“She’s a mimic,” Veer nodded, looking at the unconscious Antonia. “A photographic reflex genius. But mimics have a limit. They can only copy what is humanly possible.”

He kicked the shattered knife on the floor.

Veer looked down at Taskmaster.

“We take her too,” Veer decided.

“What?”

“This is Dreykov’s daughter,” Veer said. “The one you ‘killed’. If we save her… we clean your ledger.”

Natasha looked at the unconscious figure. Tears welled up in her eyes again.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Let’s take them all.”

Veer hoisted Taskmaster over his shoulder effortlessly.

“Let’s go. The Red Room won’t be happy we broke their toys. I expect the big guns will be here soon.”