Hex Protocol
Coulson had been told, in vague phrasing, that the Raft was reserved for sensitive assets only. That term had taken on a new meaning once he’d learned who else was down here. Bruce Banner—still in Hulk form—was being kept docile down here, though Director Fury hadn’t volunteered what cocktail of science or sorcery made that possible.
So, whatever this place was, it wasn’t a prison in any conventional sense. It was a vault built to house problems too dangerous, too political, or too humiliating for SHIELD to acknowledge anywhere else.
And apparently, Natasha Romanoff was now one of them.
Maria Hill had personally summoned Coulson to observe today’s cross-examination, the latest in a string of exhausting, fruitless sessions. That didn’t surprise him. He’d helped draft Natasha’s initial SHIELD evaluation years ago and his conclusion back then still stood: when it came to interrogation, Black Widow was a fortress.
She was what the analysts liked to call a “thimblerigger,” a neat little euphemism for someone who could twist the truth so subtly that you didn’t notice what she’d taken from you until she handed back your empty hands. Natasha could do it under pressure, too—physical, psychological, emotional—it didn’t matter. She’d been trained to weaponize her composure. She could bleed, shake, scream, and still make her captors believe it was their idea to stop. Coulson had seen it firsthand.
Which was why he really hoped he wasn’t about to watch some hammer-fisted operative try to beat cooperation out of her. That kind of spectacle never ended well for anyone, and he suspected morale wouldn’t survive many more public displays of SHIELD eating its own.
Still, he wasn’t convinced Deputy Director Hill would care either way. Over the years, he’d come to learn that the most ruthless agents tended to be women, and Maria Hill had never given him a reason to doubt that assessment. But then again, maybe ruthless was what it took to sit where she sat.