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When she brought me to a small room instead of a training room, I frowned, looking confused.
“I took the liberty of getting you some clothing along with what you brought from your house,” she told me, gesturing at a pile of charcoal and teal clothing on the bed. “I’ll leave you to get dressed.”
I nodded, feeling the awkward descend upon the air. She turned and left, allowing the steel door to slam shut behind her.
There was a pair of shorts, a Nike tank, Nike shoes, and a couple of hairbands. I slid into them, reveling at the feeling of clean clothing. Then there was a knock on the door and I jumped.
“Are you ready?” Agent Romanoff’s low voice asked.
“Yeah,” I yelled back, and she twisted the doorknob, opening the door to see me twisting my long hair back into a ponytail.
“Let’s go,” she told me, and snapping the hairband into place I followed her.
When we arrived at the room, the doors slid open instantaneously.
“Welcome, Agent Romanoff,” the system greeted her in a pleasant automated voice. However, when I passed through it said, “Personnel not recognized. Provide identification or risk imprisonment.”
“Level 8 override: Romanoff, Natasha A,” Agent Romanoff said, and it struck me that Natasha’s name was very close to mine.
“Override: Natalia Alianova Romanov, successful,” the AI replied. She shot a guilty look at me, but then turned toward where the AI’s “voice”-if it could be called that-was coming from, and said, “Enter new trainee profile.”
“Voice signature sample.”
She nodded at me and I spoke. “Natalia Samantha Evans.”
“Voice signature recorded. Trainee full name: Natalia Samantha Evans. Is this correct?”
“Yes.”
“Trainee date of birth.”
“December first, 1997.”
“Trainee height and weight.”
What? “Five feet, eight inches,” I said, feeling bad about being taller than Agent Romanoff, “and one-sixty-five pounds.”
“Trainee profile complete. Natalie Evans may now proceed into the simulation room.”
Entering into the white room wasn’t all that intimidating. It was the woman standing next to me that radiated secrecy and made me feel on edge when I was around her, as if anything I did would make her whip out a pistol from somewhere on her black-clad person and hold it against my temple.
“If it’s me that’s making you nervous, relax,” she said, giving me a glance. “I won’t kill you.”
I allowed my shoulders to sink, but something inside of me was still tied in knots.
“We’re going to start with a basic mission,” she said. “There’s a group after you, and you need to get across the city and get this packet of information-” she suddenly held a manilla folder in her hand with “CONFIDENTIAL” across the front in big red letters, “-to Agent Barton, who will be in disguise. Your job is to not get caught and to pass the information on.”
“Am I allowed to change clothing?” I asked. “I thought we were actually going to be working out.”
She folded her arms. “What did you have in mind? We still will be training, if I see fit.”
I looked down at myself. “A leather jacket, babydoll teeshirt, jeans, and a pair of combat boots,” I suggested, and to my surprise they were suddenly on me as if I’d walked into the room wearing them.
She nodded, face devoid of emotion. “Not bad.” She looked up to the ceiling. “Standard testing set-up, metropolis set to…” She looked at me. “Name a city.”
I smirked. “Chicago.”
“Chicago settings,” she added, her eyes never once leaving me. “Information hand off, recipient in disguise Agent Barton, clearance 8.” She thought for a moment. “Difficulty: moderate.”
I gave her a taken-aback look, and the corner of her mouth twitched into a partial grin. “If it was easy, you’d be testing for the CIA.”
The room spun into colors, blurred at first like the lens of a camera, then clear as the lines and shapes settled. Finally, I was on Wacker Drive in Chicago, the top level of the drive.
“Ready?” said Agent Romanoff’s disembodied voice. “Go!”
I found myself holding the very same manilla envelope Agent Romanoff had been holding not moments earlier, and that there were crowds of people milling throughout the city as they would on a normal day. Certainly not New York’s traffic, but busy all the same.
“There she is! Get her!” someone yelled, and a chill rolled down my back as I realized that they meant me.
What’s always busy? I asked myself. Starbucks.
Running along the street, I ducked under a green awning and pressed myself into the shop, hearing the terrorists tearing along behind me. I moved towards where coffee patrons were receiving their drinks and knelt down by the bar. “Sorry,” I murmured to a confused barista. “Dropped a contact.” He moved closer and I held up a hand. “I don’t know where it went; don’t come any closer.”
Shrugging, he went on his way to continue making drinks for people.
I heard the terrorists talking to one another and quickly undid my braid, allowing my frizzy waves to fall in front of my face as I continued to “search” on the ground, pulling my jacket off and using it to cover the manilla folder.
“She’s not here,” one of them said, and I looked through a part in the corner of my eye to see one of the terrorists right by me. Jerking my head back so that I was looking at the ground, I continued to probe the tile floor with my fingertips until he left. Then I stood and, finding a $5 bill in my pocket, decided to look for a souvenir shop and get a hat and a hoodie.
Hair in a low ponytail under my new Bulls snapback and hoodie, I flipped the hood over my head, adopting a slower, more swingy gait.
I could hear walkie-talkies around me, and tilting my head to the side I saw the same type of terrorists, clad in black and wearing dark wraparound sunglasses. How typical. Snorting and shaking my head, I continued to walk, wondering how I’d find Agent Barton, especially if he was wearing a disguise-
“There she is!”
Without a moment to confirm my suspicions, I dashed through the crowd, cutting through the packs of people like a spoon through ice cream fresh out of the freezer. If you’ve never experienced that, then allow me to tell you this: it doesn’t work.
Giving up on trying to shove past people, I saw some yellow-and-black striped barricades off in front of me to my right. Extracting myself from the crowd, I ran towards them, hearing the pounding strides of my pursuers behind me. With a glance over my shoulder, I see a clean-cut man who looks no older than 25. Whipping back around, there’s a barricades perpendicular to the direction in which I’m travelling. Adrenaline flowing through my veins, I think of a crazy solution.
Jump them.
And so, like an Olympic hurdler, I push off of my right leg, sticking my straightened left leg out in front of me and tucking my right one behind me, neatly passing over the barrier. I want to whoop in joy, but there’s a reason they barricaded the sidewalk: they’re working on electrical, and I have to carefully watch my footsteps lest I electrocute myself. Even though I’m in a sim, this all feels real and I don’t want to accidentally step on a very real wire that could still electrocute me. I don’t know how far my powers stretch, and I certainly don’t want to find out now.
The next of the makeshift “hurdles” is coming up, and I push off just as hard as I did the first time, clearing this hurdle by merely an inch as I leap from where the underground lines are exposed back to pavement.
There. Three more, and I just have a straightaway to run. I bound over the first, nearly miss the second because of its proximity to the first, and leap over the third. I dash, feeling the concrete punch my toes as I spring forward, and I’m free-
Bricks slam against my head as someone in just as sketchy a hoodie and snapback as mine throws me against a wall. I bite and screech, but they hiss a warning and I fall silent as the black-clothed agents sprint past.
“What do you want…?” I ask fiercely, all the anger I can muster, trailing off when the figure before me pulls off his glasses, hat, and hood to reveal Agent Barton.
“You have the file, I take it?” he asked.
I nodded, stunned, and unwrapped the jacket from around it to reveal a slightly bent file. “Here,” I breathed, handing it to him, and he gave me a proud smirk.
“Good job, kid,” he said as the colors blurred around him. Suddenly, we were back in the white cube that was originally the sim room, and only Agent Barton and I, standing in our original positions, were left as proof that what I’d just experienced had actually happened.
Together we walked out of the room to meet Agent Romanoff, Agent Coulson, Agent Hill, and a tall African-American man in a long, black trench coat stereotypical of spy movies.
“How did you do that?” Agent Coulson asked, shaking his head slightly as he looked at me.
“What?” I asked, genuinely confused.
“Leaped those barriers. I was going to ask the same thing,” Agent Hill replied.
“Adrenaline?” I guessed. “Look, if you think I’m some sort of superhero like Captain America-” I saw Agent Coulson’s eyes light up and made note of that, “-then I’m afraid you’re mistaken. I’ve only noticed an attraction to shiny, hot things like fire and electricity.”
“Those were construction barriers,” the man in black (no pun intended) said. “Meaning do not cross, stop, don’t go.”
“I understand that,” I answered. “But somewhere in my adrenaline-hyped mind it was okay to jump those, physical capacity not factored in.”
“Physical capacity factored in?” he asked, folding his arms.
“Physical capacity factored in, I’m an Olympic hurdler, I guess,” I said. “The only thing that mystified me was how Agent Barton here grabbed me if you insist I’m so physically advanced.”
“He’s a full-blown agent,” Agent Coulson added in. “He has skills you wouldn’t believe.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Kid, what kind of weapons do you think secret agents use?” Agent Barton’s arms were folded too.
I shrugged. “Guns.”
He nodded, having expected my answer.
“Y’know what I use?”
I shook my head.
“A bow.”
“Like, bow and arrows?” I asked.
He nodded, smirking.
“Awesome,” I replied. “Teach me!”
He continued to smirk and nodded. “Someday, kid,” he said. “Right now, you still have a ton of writtens to do.”
“Writtens?”
“Yeah.” He looked at me from behind his glasses. “Written tests.”
I sighed, having forgotten about them. “Right.”
“Can you do them?” Agent Romanoff asked me.
“Yeah, I guess,” I shrugged. “When the adrenaline buzz ends.”
She tilted her head at me motioning for me to follow her, and we left the agents and director.
“You’ll do fine,” she said. “If I can expect anything from you, they’ll be keeping you here and start your training in no time.”
We reentered the room and I saw the same agent. “She ready now?” he asked, quirking an eyebrow, attention turned toward Agent Romanoff.
“She is,” I answered, and his gaze turned back to me as he raised his eyebrows, smirking and nodding before dropping the packets in front of me with a loud smack and giving me three yellow pencils and an eraser.
“Let Agent Garrett or me know when you’re done,” Agent Romanoff said, giving me a cool glance.
“Or if you need a potty break,” he added. As the door closed I heard the sound of skin-on-skin contact, and Agent Garrett cried out.
I cracked the first test, the linguistics, and began writing when I saw a page in French.