Most powerful Hunter in Marvel Universe - Chapter 12

Chapter 12: The Caged Bird Speaks

The helicopter’s rotors had faded to silence minutes ago, leaving only the gentle crash of waves and the whisper of wind through broken deck railing. Veer stood with his hands in his pockets, staring at the horizon where Tony’s aircraft had disappeared. The sun was beginning its descent toward evening, painting the sky in shades of amber and rose.

Natasha hadn’t moved from her position beside him. She’d been quiet since Tony left—the kind of silence that felt heavy, weighted with unspoken questions.

Finally, she spoke.

“Why him?”

Veer didn’t turn. “Why him what?”

“Why teach Tony Stark Nen?” Natasha’s voice was carefully controlled, professional. But underneath, Veer heard something else. Something that might have been hurt. “You’ve known me for three months. You’ve trained with me every single day. We spar. We talk. We live in the same house. But Tony visits once, and within an hour you’re opening his aura nodes.”

“Are you asking as a SHIELD agent,” Veer said quietly, “or as Natasha?”

The silence stretched. When she answered, her voice was softer. “As Natasha.”

Veer turned to face her then. Natasha Romanoff stood with her arms crossed, green eyes searching his face. She looked vulnerable in a way he’d never seen before—like she’d taken off one of her many masks and wasn’t sure if she should put it back on.

“Tony Stark is free,” Veer said simply. “He doesn’t take orders from anyone. His heart is clean.”

“Clean?” Natasha’s laugh was bitter. “Tony Stark built weapons that killed thousands. He—”

“He built them believing they were protecting people. When he learned the truth, he stopped. Immediately. Completely.” Veer held her gaze. “That’s what I mean by clean. Not sinless. Not perfect. Clean. Uncomplicated. He knows who he is and what he wants. There’s no control structure above him, no handler pulling strings, no organization that owns him.”

Understanding dawned in Natasha’s eyes. And with it, pain.

“Your heart is clean too,” Veer continued. “Maybe the cleanest I’ve ever seen. But you take orders. You report to Fury. You file daily surveillance reports on me. You’re a bird in a cage, Natasha. That’s why I won’t teach you Nen.”

The words hung in the air between them like smoke. Natasha’s arms tightened across her chest, and for a moment Veer thought she might walk away. But she didn’t. She stood there, absorbing the truth of what he’d said, letting it cut where it needed to cut.

“My heart isn’t clean,” she said finally. Her voice was barely above a whisper. “I’ve killed so many people, Veer. More than you can possibly imagine. More than you killed in that terrorist compound. More than—”

Her voice caught. She turned away, facing the ocean, and Veer saw her shoulders tremble slightly.

“More than anyone should have to carry.”

The pain in those words was real. Raw. This wasn’t Natasha Romanoff the spy, the assassin, the Black Widow. This was just Natasha, and she was breaking.

Veer moved closer, positioning himself so he could see her profile. Tears tracked down her cheeks, silent and steady. She didn’t wipe them away.

“That’s exactly why your heart is clean,” Veer said gently.

Natasha’s head turned sharply, eyes wide with confusion.

“You regret what you did,” Veer explained. “Every kill weighs on you. Every mission leaves scars. You remember their faces, don’t you? The people you’ve killed. You carry them.” He paused. “On the other hand, I never regret. Three hundred fifty-one people died in that compound, and I sleep perfectly fine. In that sense, I’m much worse than you.”

Natasha stared at him like she was seeing him for the first time. Really seeing him. She searched his face, looking for deception, for manipulation, for the lie underneath the words. But there was none. He meant it.

“You really believe that,” she whispered.

“I know that.”

Something shifted in Natasha then. Some final wall, some last defense mechanism that had been holding back the truth. She uncrossed her arms, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, and took a shaky breath.

“Can we go inside?” she asked. “If I’m going to tell you this, I need to sit down.”

They moved to the living room. Natasha curled into the corner of the couch, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them. Defensive body language, protective posture. Veer sat in the armchair across from her, giving her space, waiting.

The story came slowly at first. Halting. Like each word had to be pulled from somewhere deep and painful. But once she started, she couldn’t stop.

The Red Room.

Veer knew the basics from the movies—Soviet training program, turned little girls into assassins, brutal conditioning. But the movies had been sanitized. Toned down. Made palatable for audiences who needed to see Natasha as a hero, not a victim.

The reality was worse.

Natasha spoke about being taken as a child. Not recruited. Not volunteered. Taken. She’d had a family once—a sister named Yelena, younger by three years, blonde and bright and everything Natasha had tried to protect. They’d been placed together in a fake family as part of a long-term intelligence operation. Three years of pretending, of almost believing the lie was real.

Then they’d been extracted. Returned to the Red Room. Separated.

“They made us fight each other,” Natasha said, voice hollow. “Not sparring. Real fights. To the death, sometimes. They wanted to see who was stronger, who had more potential, who would break first.”

She described the training—ballet mixed with combat, elegance and violence intertwined. Chemical conditioning that rewrote neural pathways, made killing as natural as breathing. Psychological torture disguised as education. Girls who failed disappeared. Girls who succeeded became weapons.

Veer listened without interrupting. His expression remained neutral, but inside, fury was building. Not the hot, explosive kind. The cold, calculated variety. The Zeno Zoldyck kind.

“I graduated top of my class,” Natasha continued. Her voice had gone flat, reciting facts without emotion. A coping mechanism. “Youngest ever to complete the full program. They gave me my first real assignment when I was twelve years old.”

Twelve.

“There was a man,” she said. “A scientist. Defecting to the West. They wanted him dead, wanted to send a message. But he had a daughter. Nine years old. Blonde hair, blue eyes, loved drawing pictures of flowers.” Natasha’s voice cracked. “I killed her first. Made him watch. Then I killed him slowly.”

The tears were flowing again, but she kept talking.

“They told me it was necessary. Told me she would have grown up to be an enemy. Told me I was protecting the motherland. And I believed them, because that’s what the chemicals did—they made you believe.” She looked at Veer with red, swollen eyes. “I was thirteen when I stopped believing. But by then, I’d killed forty-seven people.”

Forty-seven people. Before she was old enough to drive a car.

“Yelena,” Natasha whispered. “My sister. I left her there. I defected, I escaped, I joined SHIELD and became one of the good guys. But I left her in that hell.” Her hands clenched into fists. “She’s still there. Still under their control. They use chemicals now, Veer. Sophisticated compounds that suppress free will, that keep the girls compliant. Yelena is out there somewhere, killing for them, and she doesn’t even know she wants to stop.”

The room fell silent except for Natasha’s quiet crying. She’d carried this alone for years. The guilt. The shame. The knowledge that while she’d escaped, her sister was still trapped.

Veer stood up. Natasha looked up at him, confused, as he walked to the broken deck railing and stared out at the darkening ocean. He stood there for a long moment, processing, calculating.

Then he turned back, and he was smiling.

“Let’s go save your sister.”

Natasha’s eyes went wide. For a moment, she didn’t breathe. Couldn’t breathe. Her mouth opened, closed, opened again. No sound came out.

“What?” she finally managed.

“Your sister. Yelena. Let’s go get her.” Veer said it like he was suggesting they go get groceries. “The Red Room has her. We’ll take her back.”

“You—” Natasha stood up, hands shaking. “You can’t—they’re too powerful. They have resources, networks, chemical weapons, trained assassins. It’s not just a facility, it’s an entire organization. We can’t—”

“We can.” Veer’s smile widened. “I can throw cars. You can create afterimages. We make a pretty good team, I think.”

“This isn’t a joke!”

“I’m not joking.” Veer’s expression turned serious. “Natasha. Hey. Look at me.”

She did. Through tears, through disbelief, through the first fragile stirrings of hope, she looked at him.

“Are we not friends?” Veer asked quietly.

The question hung there. Simple. Direct. Cutting through all the complexity, all the spy games and surveillance reports and hidden agendas. Friends. The thing they’d been dancing around for three months, never quite acknowledging.

Natasha’s face crumpled. She nodded, unable to speak.

“Then we save your sister,” Veer said. “That’s what friends do.”

Natasha crossed the distance between them in three strides and hugged him. Not a professional embrace, not a tactical maneuver—a real hug, desperate and grateful and trembling with emotion. Veer wrapped his arms around her, feeling her sob against his shoulder.

“Thank you,” she whispered into his shirt. “Thank you, thank you, thank you—”

“Don’t thank me yet. We haven’t done it.” Veer pulled back slightly, meeting her eyes. “But we will. I promise.”

For the first time in three months, Natasha didn’t file a report to SHIELD that evening.

Instead, she sat with Veer at the kitchen table, laptop open, planning. They researched flights to Russia. Looked up hotels in Moscow. Discussed logistics with the casual efficiency of two people who’d infiltrated enemy territory before.

The plan was simple to the point of absurdity: they would make themselves visible. No hiding, no disguises, no covert insertion. Book everything under their real names. Stay in a nice hotel. Walk around the city openly.

Make it easy for the Red Room to find them.

“They’ll come,” Natasha said with absolute certainty. “The moment they know I’m in Russia, they’ll send someone. They don’t forgive defectors.”

“Good.” Veer booked two first-class tickets to Moscow for the following morning. “Let them come. We’ll be ready.”

“You understand this might start a war.”

“With who? A secret Soviet program that officially doesn’t exist?” Veer shrugged. “They can’t exactly file a complaint with the UN.”

Natasha almost smiled. “You make it sound simple.”

“It is simple. Not easy. But simple.” Veer closed the laptop. “We go to Russia. We make noise. They send people. We beat those people. They send better people. We beat them too. Eventually, someone with actual authority shows up to negotiate, and we negotiate for your sister’s freedom.”

“And if they don’t negotiate?”

“Then we keep beating people until they do.” Veer’s expression hardened. “I’m very patient, Natasha. And very hard to kill.”

They caught the morning flight from Los Angeles to Moscow with a connection through London. Sixteen hours of travel time. Natasha slept most of the way, exhausted from the emotional confession the night before. Veer spent the time meditating, cycling his Ren, preparing mentally for what was coming.

The System had been silent since Tony’s training session, but Veer could feel his synchronization percentage ticking upward slowly. 64.7% and climbing. Every moment he spent thinking like Zeno Zoldyck, acting like Zeno Zoldyck, the merger deepened.

He wondered sometimes what would happen at 100%. Would Paramveer Singh cease to exist? Would he wake up one morning fully believing he was Zeno Zoldyck, father of Silva, grandfather of Killua, legendary assassin of the Zoldyck family?

Would he care?

Probably not. That was the terrifying part. At 100%, he wouldn’t care that he’d stopped being himself, because there’d be no “himself” left to care.

So he’d cap it at 99%. Stay human. Stay Veer.

Hopefully.

They landed in Moscow on a grey afternoon, the city sprawling beneath them in a mix of Soviet-era architecture and modern development. March in Russia was cold, the air sharp with the promise of late snow. Natasha pulled her jacket tighter as they exited the airport, breathing in the scent of her homeland with mixed emotions.

“It’s beautiful,” Veer observed, watching the city slide past their taxi window.

“It is,” Natasha agreed quietly. “People always talk about Russian winters, Russian harshness, Russian brutality. But they forget—we have summer too. Art. Music. Literature. Beauty.” She stared out at the passing streets. “I loved this country once. Before it turned me into a weapon.”

“Maybe you can love it again. After we fix things.”

“Maybe.”

They checked into the Hotel Metropol, a five-star establishment in the heart of Moscow, all gilded luxury and old-world elegance. Veer booked a suite under his own name—Paramveer Singh. Made sure the reservation was flagged in every major database, visible to anyone looking.

Natasha did the same. Natalia Romanova. Not Romanoff. The Russian spelling. Her real name.

“How long do you think it’ll take?” she asked as they settled into the suite.

“For them to notice we’re here? Already done. For them to send someone?” Veer checked his watch. “Six hours. Maybe less.”

“That specific?”

“I know how these organizations work. They’ll verify we’re really here, pull our files, convene a meeting about whether we’re a threat, argue about the best approach, and then send a small team to assess. Six hours is optimistic, actually. Might be twelve.”

Natasha sat on the edge of the enormous bed, looking around the suite. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the city. Marble bathroom. Sitting area with antique furniture. The height of luxury.

“This feels wrong,” she said. “Walking into enemy territory like tourists.”

“That’s exactly why it works.” Veer opened the minibar, examined the contents with interest. “They’ll expect you to sneak in. Use false identities. Hide. The fact that we’re not hiding will confuse them. Confusion creates hesitation. Hesitation gives us time.”

“Time for what?”

“To see the city. Try the food. Enjoy ourselves.” Veer pulled out a small bottle of vodka, considered it, put it back. “When’s the last time you visited Moscow as just Natasha? Not as a spy, not on a mission. Just as yourself?”

Natasha thought about it. “Never. I’ve never done that.”

“Then let’s make this a working vacation. We save your sister, but we also see the sights. Eat at good restaurants. Maybe visit a museum.” Veer smiled. “Life’s too short to only experience places through mission parameters.”

Despite everything—despite the danger, despite the Red Room, despite knowing assassins were probably already being dispatched to kill them—Natasha laughed. Real laughter, bright and genuine.

“You’re insane.”

“Probably. But I’m also right.” Veer gestured to the window. “Look at that view. We’re in Moscow. One of the world’s great cities. Home to the Bolshoi, the Kremlin, St. Basil’s Cathedral. And yes, also home to the people who trained you to be a killer. But that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy the architecture.”

Natasha joined him at the window. The city spread before them, vast and ancient and beautiful. Sunset was approaching, painting the sky in shades of purple and gold. Church domes caught the light, glowing like beacons.

“I’ve forgotten how beautiful it is,” she whispered.

“Then remember.” Veer put a hand on her shoulder. “We’re here to take back what they stole from you. Your sister. Your childhood. Your choice to love this place on your own terms. So let’s take it all back.”

They spent the evening walking Moscow’s streets like ordinary tourists. Red Square at sunset, the vast open space surrounded by architectural wonders. St. Basil’s Cathedral with its colorful domes, looking like something from a fairy tale. The Kremlin walls, red brick and ancient power.

Natasha played tour guide, pointing out landmarks, sharing history in her native Russian. Veer listened, asked questions, absorbed the culture around him. He’d traveled extensively in his previous life, but never to Russia. The country felt different than he’d expected—colder, yes, but also more vibrant. More alive.

They ate dinner at a small restaurant Natasha remembered from before her defection. Traditional Russian food, served in generous portions. Borscht and pelmeni and black bread. The owner recognized Natasha—or thought he did—but said nothing. Just served their food with a knowing smile.

“Does he know?” Veer asked quietly.

“Probably suspects. But he won’t say anything.” Natasha sipped her tea. “Russians understand discretion. It’s a survival skill here.”

Walking back to the hotel, Natasha was more relaxed than Veer had ever seen her. The constant tension she carried, the ever-present alertness, had softened. Not disappeared—she was still scanning rooftops, marking exit routes, tracking potential threats. But underneath the professional paranoia, she seemed almost at peace.

“Thank you,” she said as they entered the hotel lobby. “For this. For all of it.”

“Thank me when we have your sister.”

“No.” Natasha stopped, turned to face him. “Thank you for seeing me. Not the Black Widow. Not the spy. Me. Natasha.” She reached out, squeezed his hand briefly. “I haven’t been just Natasha in a very long time.”

Veer squeezed back. “You’re welcome.”

They took the elevator to their floor in comfortable silence. Entered the suite. Natasha went to shower and change. Veer settled onto the couch, activated his Gyo, and scanned the room methodically for surveillance devices.

He found three bugs—Russian intelligence, probably FSB—and one tracker on Natasha’s luggage. He left them all in place. Let them watch. Let them report. The more information the Red Room had, the more confident they’d be. Confidence bred mistakes.

Natasha emerged from the bathroom in comfortable clothes, hair damp, face scrubbed clean of makeup. She looked younger without the careful presentation, more vulnerable.

“They’re watching,” Veer said, gesturing to the bugs.

“I know. I saw them when we checked in.” Natasha curled up in the armchair. “Should we—”

“Leave them. We want to be found.”

“Right.” She was quiet for a moment. “Do you think she’ll remember me? Yelena?”

“Honestly? I don’t know. The chemicals might have affected her memory.” Veer met her eyes. “But even if she doesn’t remember, we’ll help her remember. That’s what we’re here for.”

Natasha nodded, blinking back tears.

They sat together in the luxury suite, watching Moscow’s lights glitter through the window, waiting for the Red Room to make its move. Two weapons forged by different systems, now working together to break one.

Somewhere in the city, in a facility hidden behind legitimate fronts and bureaucratic obscurity, the Red Room was receiving reports. Natasha Romanova had returned to Moscow. She’d brought company—an unknown male with suspicious capabilities.

Decisions were being made. Assets were being mobilized.

The game had begun.

Veer smiled in the darkness. Let them come. He’d killed 351 terrorists without breaking a sweat. The Red Room would learn what Zeno Zoldyck’s successor could do when he fought for someone he cared about.

The grind continued. But now, it had purpose.