11Chapter 1: Eval
Notes:
En prise: chess term for a piece in a position to be taken.
Eval: chess shorthand for "evaluation."
The windows of their room gave an expansive view of Cairo, currently bathed in a rusty glow from the sunset. It would be dark soon, and it was too risky to use any form of artificial light, so Wanda and Scott would have to finish their game of chess soon, or they'd have to resume it in the morning.
She shifted her eyes from the window back to the board. If she pulled her knight forward, would he notice it would leave her rook vulnerable to his queen?
Scott Lang was a decent chess player: a bit impetuous, but also incredibly sharp.
She decided to take the risk.
Steve, Nat, and Clint were playing cards on the floor nearby. Their conversation had drifted into the assignments they'd done for S.H.I.E.L.D., and speculation about which of them might have been ordered by HYDRA.
"Oh, and I was sent to assassinate Bogdan Utkin, but he died before I could get to him, so that doesn't really count," Clint said.
"Really? I met him once, shortly before his death. He seemed like an okay guy, for a professional blackmailer, though a little too assertive for my taste," Nat said.
"What did he die of?" Steve asked.
"Heart failure, the poor old thing."
Clint raised an eyebrow. "Really? I heard it was multiple stab wounds to the back."
"That's what doctors call a contributing precondition," she stated.
Scott snorted, indicating he'd been paying more attention to their conversation than the game.
"Your move," Wanda reminded him. She already knew what her next move would be, and was getting impatient.
Scott didn't notice her exposed rook and moved his queen forward. "Check."
She pulled a pawn up to block. For a second, she had an acute wave of missing Vision. He never would have overlooked her exposed rook.
But she would probably never play chess with him again.
She pushed those thoughts away.
Scott pulled his queen forward, preparing to put her in check again. She moved her knight into position.
Suddenly she felt a change in the mood of the room. Someone was rippling concerned confusion. She gkanced up. Everyone looked the same, no one's expressions revealed the disturbance.
But Nat had just looked at her phone.
Wanda moved her bishop across the board. "Check."
"Huh?" He examined the board and saw what she'd just pulled. "Huh."
She had him on the run for the rest of the game, checkmating him in a few more moves.
"Good game," he said, flashing a smile that managed to be boyishly innocent and smarmy at the same time. "Want to play again?"
"We don't have time," she said, waving toward the window with its fading light.
Sam arrived with dinner a minute later, as Wanda and Scott were clearing the chessboard.
"Who won?" he asked.
"Wanda. She murdered me."
"She has a bad habit of doing that. I think Vision's the only one who regularly beats her."
Wanda looked at Nat, wondering if she would contradict him, but the spy didn't seem to be listening.
"Nat and I are pretty equally matched," she said.
"I can only beat you when we've been drinking, or when you're severely sleep deprived," Nat said.
Of course, being severely sleep deprived was Wanda's normal state these days.
"What's for dinner?" Steve asked.
"Shwarma."
By the time they'd finished dinner, it was dark. The men soon turned in for the night. It was Wanda's habit to stay up reading—by the light of the moon when the moon was out, or by streetlight if they were staying in a place where a streetlight shined in—until she fell asleep with book in her hand. Closing her eyes to sleep was when the memories came.
It had been nearly a month since Steve rescued them from the Raft prison, but the fear was still there, right beneath the surface—the panic, the memories, the straitjacket, the shock collar, alone in an empty cell, days and days without seeing a human face, never seeing daylight...
The place she'd be sent back to if they were caught.
Tonight it was too dark to read, so she sat at the window looking out at the lights of the city for a while.
Natasha wasn't sleeping either.
Wanda couldn't hear people's thoughts, she could usually only pick up their strong emotional states. Nat's mind was calculating as if she was playing a chess game.
Wanda left the window and stood by her. "What is it?" she whispered. "Is something wrong?"
"No," Nat started, trying to reassure her before changing her mind and deciding to be honest instead. "I'm not sure."
"What happened?"
"There's a darkweb message board I check, one I was familiar with from my...previous career. Job offers of the strictly cash and no-real-names variety."
"Okay." For internationally wanted fugitives, money was a concern. They needed cash for food, fuel for the Quinjet, and bribes. The men did odd jobs in remote corners of the world now and then, but Nat had been their main breadwinner, sometimes slipping off for days at a time and returning with enough to keep them going for a few more weeks.
"Tonight I saw this, sent to my private inbox." She handed Wanda her phone.
There are those of us who remember the great debt we owe you, and wish to show our appreciation to you in your hour of need. If you are able to make it to the following address at 23.00, 19 July, there will be a briefcase containing €40000 waiting for you.
"This address is in Vilnius," Wanda noted.
"Lithuania, one of the few European countries that isn't a signatory of the Sokovia Accords. Makes it apparently less likely to be a trap."
"But you think it is a trap?"
"I don't know. The wording of this message is weird. It's dissociative. It's like whoever wrote it learned how to send secret messages from reading bad spy thrillers."
"It is weird that there's no hint who wrote it."
"That's not the weirdest thing," Nat said.
"What's the weirdest thing?"
"No one who even knows about that site should have been able to guess that screen name is me."
"Weird."
"Yes."
"What are you going to do?" Wanda asked.
"I don't know."
"Want me to go with you? I could get a read, and help out if things go bad."
Nat shook her head, her expression saying she'd already considered that idea. "If it's not a trap, it will be a dead drop, and there will be no one there for you to read. If it is a trap, it will be rigged to spring for all of us, and I'll have a better chance of getting out alone."
