Chapter Text
The acrid smell of garbage and exhaust fumes hung heavy in the narrow alleyway behind the Westin Hotel as Ivy Monroe pressed her back against the cold brick wall. Her fingers traced the familiar weight of the tactical knife strapped to her thigh, a nervous habit she'd developed during countless missions. The shadows embraced her like an old friend, concealing her lithe frame and the deadly precision that had been beaten into her bones since childhood.
Fragments of her past flickered through her mind like broken glass—warm hands lifting her into the air, the sound of genuine laughter, the scent of homemade bread. But those memories felt like they belonged to someone else, some other little girl who had been loved and cherished before the Red Room stripped away everything innocent and pure. She had been only six when they ripped her from that life, thrusting her into a world of calculated violence where survival meant becoming a weapon wrapped in human skin.
The training had been relentless, methodical, brutal. They had molded her into something deadly under the watchful eyes of Alexei Alanovich Shostakov and Melina Vostokoff—handlers who played the role of loving parents while teaching her fifty-seven different ways to kill with her bare hands. Natasha Romanoff, eight years old and already carrying herself with the poise of a seasoned operative, had become the sister she'd never had. Yelena Belova, barely five and fierce as a wildcat, completed their makeshift family of broken dolls.
For three blissful years, Ivy had believed the lie. She'd called Alexei "Papa" and helped Melina braid her hair, thinking they were building something real, something permanent. The illusion shattered the day they were handed over to Dreykov like merchandise, dumped into the Red Room's true training facility where the pretense of family was stripped away along with their childhood.
Now, fifteen years later, she stood in another shadow, waiting to end another life. The mission parameters were simple: eliminate Richard Kettingburg, mid-level corporate executive, married father of two. The why didn't matter—it never did. The Red Room gave orders; she executed them with surgical precision.
Her earpiece crackled softly as Yelena's voice whispered through the comm in their native Russian. "Target's moving toward the hotel entrance. Black sedan, license plate Golf-Romeo-Seven-Four-Two-Nine. Two bodyguards, both armed."
Ivy's muscles coiled with anticipation, her breathing slowing to the meditative rhythm that preceded action. "Copy. Moving to intercept in three... two..."
The scream cut through the Atlanta evening like a blade through silk.
It wasn't a scream of fear or pain—it was something primal, animalistic, wrong. The sound raised every hair on Ivy's arms and sent ice water flooding through her veins. She pressed the comm device, her voice barely above a whisper. "Елена, ты это слышала?" (Yelena, did you hear that?)
Static filled her ear for a heartbeat too long before Yelena's voice came through, tight with an emotion Ivy had rarely heard from her sister—genuine fear. "Да, и это повсюду. Нам нужно остановиться и убираться отсюда." (Yeah, and it's everywhere. We need to abort and get out of here)
Everywhere? Ivy's blood turned to liquid nitrogen. Yelena never used that word lightly.
Abandoning the shadows that had sheltered her, Ivy stepped onto Peachtree Street and into a vision of hell.
The bustling downtown district had transformed into a nightmare landscape. Bodies writhed on the asphalt like broken marionettes, their movements jerky and unnatural. A businessman in an expensive suit had his teeth buried in a woman's neck, tearing away chunks of flesh while she screamed and clawed at his face. Blood sprayed in arterial arcs across the sidewalk, painting the concrete in abstract patterns of violence.
A teenage girl stumbled past, her school uniform torn and bloody, one arm hanging at an impossible angle. Her eyes were vacant, milky white, and when she saw Ivy, she opened her mouth in a soundless snarl, revealing teeth stained crimson. The thing that had once been human lurched toward her with hungry, grasping fingers.
Ivy's training kicked in before conscious thought could interfere. Her knife was in her hand, the blade sliding between the creature's ribs and into its heart with practiced precision. But instead of dropping, the thing continued its advance, seemingly unbothered by what should have been a killing blow.
"What the hell?" Ivy jerked the blade free and drove it upward, through the soft palate and into the brain. This time, the creature crumpled like a discarded puppet.
All around her, the city was eating itself alive. Cars sat abandoned in the middle of the street, their doors flung open, windows shattered. A city bus had crashed into a storefront, its front end buried in mannequins and broken glass. The driver was slumped over the wheel, his skull caved in, while passengers clawed at each other in the back seats.
"YELENA!" Ivy's voice cut through the chaos as she spun in a desperate circle, searching for her sister among the carnage.
She spotted movement three blocks down—a familiar figure with platinum blonde hair, moving with the deadly grace that marked her as family. Yelena was fighting her way through a crowd of the infected, her twin knives flashing like silver lightning as she carved a path through grasping hands and snapping teeth.
Their eyes met across the battlefield of Peachtree Street, and in that moment, twenty years of shared trauma and unbreakable bonds spoke louder than words. They ran toward each other, two deadly women cutting through chaos like synchronized dancers.
Ivy ducked under grasping arms, her elbow connecting with a creature's temple hard enough to shatter bone. She spun away from clutching fingers that left bloody trails on her jacket, her knife opening throats and piercing skulls with mechanical efficiency. A construction worker with half his face torn away stumbled into her path, and she planted her boot in his chest, sending him crashing into a fire hydrant.
Twenty feet. Fifteen. Ten.
Yelena vaulted over an overturned hot dog cart, her boots connecting with a creature's chest in a perfect dropkick that sent it flying into a shop window. She rolled to her feet, hair whipping around her face like a battle flag, and grabbed Ivy's outstretched hand.
"This way!" Yelena shouted in English, her accent thick with adrenaline. They sprinted south, away from the worst of the chaos, their synchronized footsteps pounding out a rhythm of survival on the blood-slicked pavement.
Behind them, Atlanta burned. Sirens wailed in the distance, punctuated by gunshots and the inhuman sounds of feeding. Smoke rose from a dozen fires, turning the sunset into an apocalyptic orange that painted everything in shades of hell.
They didn't stop running until the sounds of carnage faded to a distant rumble. On the outskirts of the city, they collapsed against the wall of an abandoned gas station, their chests heaving, sweat and blood mingling on their faces.
For long minutes, neither spoke. Ivy stared at her hands—hands that had killed three people tonight, people who were already dead but walking. Her knife was slick with black blood that didn't look quite human.
Finally, Yelena broke the silence. "что, черт возьми, это было?" (What the hell was that?)
"I don't know." Ivy's voice was hoarse from screaming and running. She stood on unsteady legs, her tactical mind already shifting into survival mode. "Нам нужно найти укрытие. Мы можем воспользоваться этим хаосом, чтобы навсегда покинуть Красную комнату." (We need to find shelter. We can use this chaos to leave the red room behind for good)
The words hung in the air between them like a prayer. Freedom. After twenty years of being weapons in other people's hands, the world had ended and given them the ultimate cover to disappear.
They found sanctuary in a Korean convenience store six blocks from ground zero, its metal security gates intact and sturdy enough to keep out the wandering dead. The owner was gone—fled or killed; they didn't ask which. They barricaded the back door with shelving units and settled in to wait out the storm.
Days blended into weeks, weeks into months. The outside world went silent—no news broadcasts, no radio chatter, no contact from the Red Room. For the first time in their lives, Ivy and Yelena were truly alone, and the silence was both terrifying and liberating.
They watched from their window as survivors trickled into Atlanta, drawn by the promise of government aid and military protection. They watched those same survivors flee screaming when they discovered the city's new residents. The infected had multiplied, spreading through the urban sprawl like a virus, turning Georgia's capital into a feeding ground.
The sound of fighter jets screaming overhead was their first warning. Ivy grabbed their emergency pack while Yelena kicked out the back door. They had maybe ten minutes before—
The first bomb hit downtown with a sound like God's hammer striking an anvil. The shockwave shattered windows for miles, and the mushroom cloud that rose over the city center looked like the end of the world.
They ran. Through suburban streets lined with abandoned houses, past schools where children's laughter would never echo again, through parks where playground equipment stood like monuments to a world that no longer existed. They didn't stop until they found the treehouse—an elaborate wooden fortress built by some long-dead father for children who would never play in it again.
For months, they lived like forest spirits, descending only when their supplies ran low. They learned to move silently through the new world, to read the signs that meant danger, to distinguish between the shambling infected and the more dangerous survivors who had kept their minds but lost their humanity.
When their food finally ran out, they descended for the last time and began the long walk toward an uncertain future.
The highway stretched before them like a river of abandoned metal and shattered dreams. Cars sat in neat rows, their occupants long since fled or devoured, their contents picked clean by previous scavengers. But Ivy's trained eye spotted what others had missed—a water delivery truck tucked behind an overturned semi, its cargo still intact.
"Jackpot," Yelena breathed, her Russian accent making the English word sound exotic.
They broke the seal on the truck's rear doors and found dozens of five-gallon jugs, their contents still pure. Without ceremony, they stripped off their filthy clothes and poured the clean water over their heads, washing away months of grime and the psychological weight of survival. The cold water on her skin made Ivy feel human again, reminded her that she was more than just a weapon wrapped in flesh.
They were refilling their canteens when the scream split the evening air.
This wasn't the inhuman sound of the infected—this was pure terror, young and desperate. A child's voice calling for help in a world that had forgotten how to answer.
Ivy and Yelena exchanged a look that contained twenty years of shared experience. They'd been taught to prioritize the mission, to value strategic objectives over individual lives. But they'd also been children once, afraid and alone, and some lessons ran deeper than training.
They vaulted the highway guardrail and plunged into the Georgian woods, following the sound through undergrowth that tore at their clothes and branches that left scratches on their arms. The sun was setting, painting the forest in shades of amber and shadow, and they both knew that darkness belonged to the dead now.
The screaming led them to a small clearing where a little girl—maybe nine years old, with dirty blonde hair and a torn Disney princess t-shirt—was backed against a massive oak tree. Five infected shambled toward her with the single-minded hunger that defined their existence. Their clothes marked them as a family once—a man in a mechanic's jumpsuit, a woman in a floral dress, three children of various ages. Now they were just predators following the scent of warm blood.
Ivy moved like liquid death, her knife sliding into the base of the largest creature's skull with surgical precision. Yelena took the next two with a spinning attack that would have been beautiful if it wasn't so deadly, her twin blades opening their necks in perfect synchronization. The remaining infected—small ones, children who had been about the same age as their intended victim—hesitated just long enough for Ivy to end their nightmare existence with quick, merciful strikes.
The little girl slumped against the tree, her chest heaving with exhausted sobs. Ivy knelt in front of her, forcing her voice into the gentle tones she remembered from her own stolen childhood.
"Hey, sweetheart. You're safe now. I'm Ivy, and this is my sister Yelena. What's your name?"
"S-Sophia," the girl whispered, her voice barely audible. "I can't find my mommy. I can't find Mr. Rick or Mr. Daryl or anybody."
Ivy's heart clenched at the raw hope in the child's voice—the desperate belief that somewhere in this dead world, people who loved her were still looking. She examined Sophia carefully, checking for bites or scratches that would doom them all, but found only minor scrapes and the hollow-eyed exhaustion of someone who'd been running on adrenaline for too long.
"Okay, Sophia. We're going to take care of you, I promise. If we find your family, that's wonderful. But even if we don't, we won't leave you. You're stuck with us now."
They found shelter in a abandoned cabin as full darkness claimed the forest. Sophia devoured their emergency rations like she hadn't eaten in days—which, she told them between bites; she hadn't. She'd been lost in the woods for three nights, surviving on stream water and the handful of berries she remembered her mother teaching her were safe to eat.
"I heard them calling my name," she said, her young voice carrying impossible weight. "Mommy and Mr. Rick and everybody. But every time I tried to find them, I got more lost."
As Sophia finally fell asleep between them, Ivy stared up at the cabin's ceiling and wondered what they'd gotten themselves into. Two former assassins and a lost little girl, trying to survive in a world where the rules had been rewritten in blood and chaos.
Tomorrow, they would begin searching for a group that might not exist anymore, for people who might be dead or scattered to the winds. But tonight, they were a family—broken, dangerous, and held together by nothing more than the human need to protect something innocent in a world gone mad.
Outside, the dead wandered through the darkness, but inside the cabin, three souls who had found each other in the wasteland of civilization slept peacefully, dreaming of tomorrows that were no longer guaranteed but still worth fighting for.