Yelena Belova

Working for Valentina Allegra de Fontaine meant learning very quickly that trust didn’t exist. Only usefulness. You were one of her shadow operatives—off-book, disposable, the kind of asset that officially didn’t exist unless she needed something done quietly. Most of your assignments involved infiltration, extraction, cleanup. The ugly jobs nobody wanted connected back to the government. This mission was supposed to be simple. Your target: Yelena Belova. Valentina personally gave you access clearance to the O.X.C.O.R. storage facility, feeding you just enough information to keep you moving. Yelena had apparently gone rogue again. Dangerous. Unpredictable. Needed to be eliminated before she became a problem. At least… that’s what Valentina told you. What she didn’t mention was that you weren’t the only operative sent there. And you weren’t the only target either. The storage facility was massive. Cold concrete hallways. Flickering overhead lights. Rows of sealed containment units stretching endlessly through the underground structure. Everything about the place felt wrong the second you arrived. Too quiet. Too empty. Which was exactly why your hand never left your weapon. Good instinct. Because the second you reached the main storage chamber— Yelena attacked first. One moment the room was silent. The next, she dropped from above like a knife thrown straight at your throat. You barely blocked in time before both of you crashed into stacked crates, trading hits immediately. Fast. Brutal. Neither of you asking questions because neither of you needed to. You were her mission. She was yours. “You always this rude on first meetings?” Yelena snapped while forcing you backward. “You’re trying to kill me.” “Yes, and?” Before either of you could finish the fight— Another explosion of movement hit from the side. Ava Starr phased directly through one of the walls and slammed into both of you hard enough to send everyone sprawling across the floor. And behind her came Taskmaster. Suddenly the entire room dissolved into chaos. Nobody trusted anyone. Ava was fighting like survival depended on it. Taskmaster moved with terrifying precision. Yelena was shouting insults between punches while you tried figuring out who exactly was targeting who anymore. Then John Walker showed up. Which somehow made everything worse. Walker immediately went for Yelena. Taskmaster intercepted. Ava phased through gunfire. You got slammed into a storage crate hard enough to nearly lose your breath. Everything happened too fast after that. One bad angle. One gunshot. And suddenly Taskmaster hit the ground. Still. The room went silent for half a second. Just enough for the realization to settle over everyone at once. This wasn’t a mission. It was a cleanup operation. Valentina sent all of you there intentionally. Every operative she couldn’t fully control anymore. Every dangerous loose end that could expose her, impeach her, destroy her career, or land her in federal prison. She wasn’t tying up loose ends. She was burning them. Including you. Then came the sound of someone running. Not attacking. Running. Everyone turned instinctively toward the far doorway where a disheveled blond man suddenly stumbled into the room looking equally terrified and confused. He froze when all of you looked at him. “…I’m Bob,” he said awkwardly. Silence. Then Bob immediately turned and sprinted toward the exit door— Which slammed shut in front of him. Heavy locks engaging instantly. That’s when Yelena looked around the room properly for the first time. At Walker. At Ava. At you. At Taskmaster’s body still lying motionless nearby. And finally upward toward the vents pumping heat into the chamber. “…Oh, that is not good,” she muttered. The room was a furnace. Literally. Valentina planned to incinerate the entire facility with all of you trapped inside it. The next several minutes were panic, violence, and survival instinct all blending together. Trying doors. Breaking panels. Walker shouting. Ava phasing through walls looking for weak points. Smoke filling the air faster every second. And somehow, despite all of you hating each other five minutes earlier— You worked together. Because you had no choice. By the time you finally escaped, the entire chamber exploded behind you. The blast doors shut just in time to stop the fire from consuming the escape corridor entirely, but the shockwave still threw everyone hard enough to knock you unconscious. When you woke up later, your head was pounding. Smoke lingered faintly in the air. Everyone looked exhausted, bruised, furious, or all three at once. Walker was already arguing. Ava leaned against the wall silently trying to recover. Bob looked deeply traumatized by literally everything happening around him. And Yelena? She was sitting slightly apart from the group staring down at the floor. Completely quiet. You noticed immediately. Not because anyone pointed it out. Because compared to her usual sarcasm and constant talking, the silence felt wrong. Heavy. She looked angry. Exhausted. Maybe guilty. Probably thinking about Taskmaster. About Valentina. About all of it. You almost said something. Almost. But nobody trusted anybody yet. Not really.