Matt knew something was wrong the moment he stepped into the bedroom.

Calina was silently pulling against the ties holding her captive. That wasn't a surprise - she was bound to try to escape when his back was turned - but the way she was moving spoke more of a panicked struggle than a strategy to get free.

Her heart was also racing, and whilst he knew she could fake that response, he didn't think she could fake the adrenaline-laced terror seeping from her pores.

The beer bottle smashed against the hard floor as he ran to her side. "Calina? What's going on?"

There was no reply. Her mouth opened and closed but no sound emerged.

No air did either.

He placed a hand on her chest, but there was no rise as she breathed. With her heart pounding the way it was, she should have been gulping down breaths, but she wasn't breathing.

She wasn't breathing!

"Calina, breathe! You have to breathe!" His hands moved to her face. He cradled her cheeks as he leaned over her, his ear next to her mouth. But he couldn't hear any wheeze, couldn't detect any swelling of the tissues of her throat. Nothing to suggest her airway was blocked or closed over.

So why the hell wasn't she breathing?!

His fingers moved over her face, stroking the soft skin of her forehead, smoothing back the sweat-damped hair from her temples, trying to calm her in case this was some strange anxiety attack. "Callie, please," he pleaded. "You need to breathe, sweetheart. Just take a breath. Please."

Her chest remained still, even as her heart raced faster. Her back bowed off the bed as she fought against her own body.

But then her movements slowed. She collapsed back on the bed, and her eyes drifted closed. Her heartbeat stuttered...

"Callie!" Matt yelled, his own heart threatening to jump out of his chest with fear.

No. No, he couldn't lose her.

He couldn't lose anyone else.

He scrambled onto the bed, grasped her chin and tilted her head back. Then he closed his mouth over hers and breathed.

He felt the air as it passed from his lips to hers. He heard it travel down to her lungs, and sensed the movement as her chest expanded.

So he breathed again. And again.

His eyes closed in relief when her heart beat evened out and she regained consciousness. She tensed up as she realised what was happening, but with each exhalation, her body relaxed. Her mouth went soft under his as she stopped fighting for air.

As she started trusting him to save her.

He felt a warm tear as it ran down her cheek. He brushed the moisture away with his thumb, his heart breaking at her distress. "It's okay," he whispered between breaths, his thumb continuing to caress her cheek. "You're going to be okay."

And she would be - because he could finally hear Yelena in the building. The husky, accented voice was barking commands to the two people following her up the stairs. A few minutes later, he heard their footsteps in the hallway. Then his front door slammed open. "Calina?!" she shouted.

"In here," he answered between breaths.

He didn't lift his head as she raced into his room - he just kept breathing. He felt her cross over to the side of the bed, the petite woman somehow managing to loom over him as she took in Calina's condition. "What the fuck did you do?" she growled.

"I didn't do anything!"

"Yelena," another woman called from the doorway, her voice shaking with fear. "It wasn't him. They activated the 'Termination Protocol'."

"Those fucking bastards." Yelena growled. "Can you countermand it?"

The woman by the door shook her head. She held up the tablet in her hands. "This isn't linked to Calina's neural net - its just showing a read out from the device that is. She needs the antidote. Now."

"Katya," Yelena yelled to the third person on the team. "I need the injector. Quick!"

A third person came running, a small metallic tube clutched in her hand. "It's still experimental," she said. "Melina said not to use it unless-"

"We don't have a choice," Yelena said holding out her hand. "The aerosol won't work if she's not breathing." The other woman handed it over, then stepped back. Her hand came up to cover her mouth in shock as she saw Calina.

"Lean back," Yelena ordered to Matt.

He sat back on his heels, his hands balled into fists. Calina's pounding heart filled his ears, drowning out the sound of his own. Yelena depressed a button on the tube which extended a large needle. She raised it over Calina's chest, hesitated for a fraction of a second, then slammed it into the other woman's heart.

Calina froze, every muscle in her body going rigid. Matt held his breath, and prayed, please God, let it work. Please let it work.

A beat passed. Two.

Then Calina sucked in a breath, the sound ragged and harsh in the silent room. Matt bowed his head in relief.

"Thank God," one of the women - Katya - whispered.

"Get these off her," Yelena commanded. She started tugging at the tie around one of Calina's ankles. Katya worked on the other as Matt unlocked the cuff from her left arm. The moment she was free, Calina curled up on her side, her legs drawn up until she was in a tight ball.

Then she started to cry.

Gut-wrenching, wounded sobs, that seemed to come from the depths of her soul. Full of pain and grief and despair.

Matt wanted to wrap his body around hers, take her in his arms and hold her tight. It was a primal urge, the need to soothe her distress and stop the awful sounds coming from her. Instead, he crawled off the bed, and melted into the corner of the room as the three women surrounded Calina.

"Shh, Calina. Its over now. It's over. You're back," one of them crooned. Another started stroking her hair. He got the sense of shared trauma, of four women bonded by something he could never imagine. The moment felt intimate. Personal.

It was no place for him.

He slowly, silently backed out of the room and closed the sliding door, giving them privacy.

He dropped down onto his busted couch and buried his head in his hands, suddenly exhausted.

———

Yelena emerged from his room a while later, as the sounds of Calina's sobs finally subsided. She perched on the edge of one of the arm chairs and clasped her hands between her legs. Matt was still seated on the couch, avoiding the damaged right side and hoping that the whole thing wouldn't collapse beneath him.

"Tell me everything." Yelena seemed to only have two settings - demanding and commanding.

Her brusk, condescending tone put Matt's back up and the last of his patience snapped. "I've already told you everything I know. Its my turn to get some answers." Matt pointed to the bedroom "What the hell was that?"

"The Termination Protocol. The mind control serum is so powerful that it over-rides the survival instinct. I've seen other Widows shoot themselves in the head and throw themselves into traffic because of it." She looked down and swallowed, as if reliving the memories. "In this case, they stopped Calina from breathing by blocking the respiratory centres in her brainstem. I've seen that too - all it takes is a swipe of a finger on a screen, and the subject suffocates."

"Subject?" Matt asked. "Mind control? What the fuck is all this?"

Yelena glanced back at the bedroom, as if debating what to say. The door was still closed, but Matt could hear the activity within. A hushed conversation in Russian was taking place, and one of the women was manipulating Calina's arm, attempting to reduce her elbow. Matt winced at the muted thunk as the bone returned to its normal position. Calina hissed in pain.

Yelena grimaced in sympathy. She must have noticed a similar expression on Matt's face because she tried to reassure him. "It's an old injury. Calina's elbow has been dislocating since she was a child. She's used to it."

"So you did grow up together," Matt said, still trying to get answers.

Yelena shook her head. "I'm going to let Calina decide how much to tell you."

"I think I deserve to know everything after tonight, don't you?" He gestured to his living room. To the debris on the floor. The cracked window, and damaged furniture.

Yelena raised an eyebrow. "We're all entitled to our secrets, Mr. Murdock. Do you dare to disagree?" The emphasis on the word 'dare' was a warning of sorts. She knew his identity too.

Had Calina told them?

Whatever organisation they belonged to - was it tracking him? Investigating him?

The frustration of not getting answers drove him to his feet. He rested his clenched hands on his hips as he stared down at the blonde woman. "Let's cut the shit. You know who I am, and you're threatening to expose me if I expose you. Mutually assured destruction. I get it. So there's no reason to keep me in the dark."

"You're right."

The response didn't come from Yelena. It came from the women standing in the doorway of his bedroom - Calina.

———

Everything hurt.

Her knee throbbed and the bruises littering her back and thighs ached. The cuff marks around her wrists burned and her head was killing her. Not to mention her elbow, which felt tender and fragile. The stretched nerves around the joint tingled and her forearm was numb.

But she was used to that. It was a recurring injury.

She was used to pain, in general. She could mask it. Ignore it. Battle through it. Pain was an old companion.

The tears, however, were a new experience.

She had never cried like that before.

The harsh sobs had escaped her unbidden, as if her body was rejecting this latest bout of trauma - too full from a lifetime of suffering and torment to keep anything else down. She had cried for what felt like hours, her throat raw and her eyes swollen from the effort.

When the tears eventually tailed off, leaving her breath hitching and her nose running, a tender hand stroked through her hair. "Are you alright, Calina?" Katya asked softly in Russian.

"I don't know," was her whispered reply.

"I understand," Katya said, helping her unfurl from her fetal position and sit up in the bed. "You don't have to work through it yet. Let's just fix what we can fix for now." She gestured to her right arm, which was hanging loose by her side.

"Okay," Calina said, looking down at the injured limb as if it belonged to someone else.

In a way it did.

"A little help?" Katya said to the Widow leaning against the wall. Anya had been alternating between checking the street below through the window and examining the stolen tablet. At Katya's request she crawled onto the bed and took Calina's upper arm in a firm grip.

"You remember how this goes?"

Calina nodded, letting out a sharp hiss of pain when the bone was guided back into place by the other two women. Then she rotated her arm a few times and made a fist, checking range of motion.

"All good?" Katya asked.

She nodded again.

"Is there something we can use for a sling around here?"

Calina looked around. "I don't know. I have something at my place-" She froze, remembering what she had left on the floor of her bedroom. Who she had left.

"What is it?" Katya's worried tone caused Anya to glance up from the tablet she was studying again.

"There's a body next door," Calina whispered - although, given they were all speaking in Russian, it didn't matter if Matthew could hear or not.

She explained about the tranquilliser, the stranger who had administered the serum, and her subsequent escape.

"We'll take care of it," Katya assured her.

"I need to let Yelena know." Calina scooted off the bed, her bruised thighs and sore knee protesting the sudden movement. She gingerly made her way to the door, where she could hear Matthew's frustrated voice.

"Let's cut the shit. You know who I am, and you're threatening to expose me if I expose you. Mutually assured destruction. I get it. So there's no reason to keep me in the dark."

Calina slid open the door and answered him. "You're right."

———

Matt looked up as Calina took a few shuffling steps into the living room, pain evident in the way she held herself rigid, and he cursed himself again for hurting her.

"You're right, Matthew," she repeated. 'You deserve to know."

She said something in Russian to Yelena. Yelena looked at her sharply before nodding. Calina took her place in the chair, then the three other women gathered their gear and left his apartment. The one holding the tablet paused briefly to look him over with an evaluating stare before closing the door behind her.

"What was that about?" he asked Calina.

She gave him a tiny smile. "Anya's been looking forward to meeting you."

"So, Anya, Yelena and...Katya?"

She nodded. He waited for a verbal reply but none came - she obviously knew one wasn't necessary. Had she been humouring him all this time? Playing along with his blind act from the beginning, always knowing that he could perceive the world around him?

God, he had so many questions. He barely knew where to start.

But he had to do this carefully. He wanted - no, he needed - answers, and she had promised to give them. But she looked like a spooked rabbit, her fingers twisting together nervously as she perched on the edge of her seat, seemingly ready to bolt from this conversation at the slightest provocation.

"More friends of yours from school?" he asked, aiming for a low ball question. But he couldn't quite keep the snide tone from his voice as he repeated her lie from one of their very first conversations.

Although maybe it wasn't a lie, because she responded with another nod. "In a way," she clarified. "We were all raised in the Red Room together. It was a school. Of sorts."

"What do you mean?"

"The Red Room was a place. But it was also the name of a program. A training program - one which started during the Soviet era. Some of us were orphans. Some of us were stolen from our families. But we were all brought to the Red Room and housed together. And from the moment we could walk and talk...they trained us."

"Trained you to do what?" Matt asked, though he feared he already knew the answer.

"To become spies. And assassins. To become Black Widows."

———

"Black Widows," Matthew said.

Calina couldn't gauge his reaction. She was normally so good at reading people, but his affect was so blank. His voice devoid of emotion as he repeated her words.

She nodded. "Have you ever seen a black widow? The spider, I mean?" Not waiting for a response, she continued, her voice tripping over itself with nerves. "They're pretty small. Almost innocuous-looking. But they're dangerous - especially the females. Their bite is venomous to humans. That's what we were trained to be. Invisible. Easy to disregard. But deadly."

"And you're all women?"

"Yes." A wry smile graced her lips. "Men have been overlooking women for centuries. Dreykov and his predecessors just weaponised that misogyny."

Matt leaned forward, suddenly intent. "Dreykov? Is that the guy who was controlling you tonight?"

"No, Dreykov's dead - and the Red Room is gone. Only the Widows remain. We've been left to pick up the pieces...and to try to find ourselves in the wreckage."

"Is that why you came to New York? To find yourself?"

"Yes. I wanted to see who I was away from that life." She sighed and rubbed at one of the marks around her wrists. "It hasn't gone well."

He frowned. "Do you mean because of tonight, because-"

She interrupted him. "No, not just tonight. I haven't really been able to be myself here - or find out who that is. I've just been lying the whole time. To you. To Mrs Schneider - to everyone I've met, basically. And I haven't escaped my old life either. I feel like all I do is relieve everything. That's why I don't sleep at night - I can't get past the things I've done."

"But you didn't do them voluntarily, right? It was mind control."

She tried to explain. To get him to understand why it wasn't as simple as that. "When we were children we underwent standard psychological conditioning-"

"You mean brainwashing," Matt said. His mask was slipping now, the anger evident in his voice and his clenched fists.

"Yes. But the moment we 'graduated' they administered a serum. One that altered us - chemically - and allowed them to tap into our brain functions. It meant we could never refuse an order. We could never deviate from our missions or allow our own consciences - what was left of them - to interfere. We were stripped of emotions, of everything that made us human. But we were still aware." Her voice hardened as she admitted the most repellant aspect of the control. "We were still aware of everything that we were doing. We still remember everything. We're just not sure which parts were orders and which parts were us."

"So tonight, our fight..."

"I remember it all."

She could hear the crunch as her head connected with the fragile cartilage of his nose. She could feel his firm abdomen beneath her fists as she pummelled against the muscular mass. She could see the desperation on his face as he pleaded with her to come back, and she could taste the blood in the air as it spilled from his wounds.

At the time, she just hadn't...cared. He was an obstacle. An impediment to her mission. Not a person. Not a...friend. Not the man she cared about. Just an element to be removed from the equation. There was no emotion involved. No conscience or empathy. She was effectively a sociopath, unbothered by the pain she inflicted.

It was only once the serum cleared from her system that all that suppressed emotion came flooding back.

Now every memory of that fight was coloured by her thoughts and feelings. She hated that she inflicted pain on him. She felt guilty for coming to him for help and putting him through that. She was terrified of how close she came to killing him. Another few seconds of suffocation; a knife that landed an inch more to the left...if he hadn't been such an amazing fighter, it could have gone so horribly wrong.

And that made her feel sick to her stomach.

She didn't know if Matthew could gauge the expressions on her face. Or whether he heard the racing of her heart, or whether shame had a detectable scent...but through whatever means he used, he managed to pick up on her feelings. "Is that why you won't look at me?" he asked softly.

———

Throughout her explanation, Calina's eyes had settled everywhere but on him. She'd bowed her head to look at the floor; fixed her gaze on her hands as they twisted in her lap. She'd surveyed the destruction of his apartment, had stared out the window at the neon light of the billboard...but had never once looked at his face.

Which may have been for the best. He wasn't sure he could hide the rage he was feeling, and he didn't want her to misinterpret it.

He was angry at this Dreykov guy, and the program that had systematically snatched young girls and brainwashed them into being killers. He was angry at whoever had taken control of Calina's mind again tonight.

But he was not angry at her. Not anymore.

He was just so glad that she had trusted him enough to come to him tonight. That he'd been able to stop her from completing her mission. For Governor Benson's sake, of course. But more so for Calina's. He didn't want her to have to live with any more deaths on her conscience. Not when she was so obviously trying to separate herself from that life and start anew.

He understood better than most how precious second chances could be.

"Yes," she whispered, finally raising her head. He could detect the faint taste of salt in the air from her unshed tears. "All I can see is the bleeding I caused."

Matt swiped his hand under his nose, the blood from his busted nose tacky on his fingers. He could feel the line of dried blood beneath his nicked ear, and the shallow knife wound in his chest was still oozing.

He must look a mess.

And looking at him must just remind Calina of everything she'd done whilst under that controlling serum.

"Would you feel better if we both got cleaned up before we...talk some more?" he offered.

She nodded, and wiped at her cheek as a tear finally escaped.

"Why don't you use the shower first? I can go next door and get you some clothes-"

"No," she said sharply. "I mean, you should go first. It's your shower."

He nodded and got to his feet. She did too, her dress rustling softly as she stood. He cocked his head, remembering the feel of the sequinned material beneath his fingers as they'd fought. He reached out and touched the loose fabric at her side. "What are you wearing?"

"Oh," she said mournfully, running her hand over the garment. "A party dress. I was invited out tonight by a...friend. I was supposed to go dancing."

I was supposed to go dancing.

Her voice as she said those words was so small and sad. And it upset him more than the evidence of her physical wounds. It was as if she had lost something precious to her tonight - the life she'd been trying to build.

So much about her made sense to him now; her enthusiasm for books, her pride in baking, her wide-eyed delight at the taste of hot chocolate, her addiction to shopping...they were all new experiences for her. She was like a child encountering the world for the first time, finding wonder in the mundane and the things everyone else took for granted.

Like tonight. Going out to a club on a Friday with friends was a regular occurrence for most people in their twenties. But it was something new and wondrous for Calina. She must have been so excited.

And it had been ripped away from her.

Instead of a carefree night of fun and dancing, she'd been thrust back into the world she'd tried to escape, forced to fight for her life and for control of her own mind.

Calina wiped another tear from her eyes. "I was deluding myself," she whispered to herself.

But Matt heard the words.

Heard the world of sorrow encased within them.

And his heart broke for her.