Chapter 23: The Name

The name was Natasha.

I had known it since the afternoon before, since the PAK-7 inventory report and the three-gram discrepancy and the ghost of a deleted log entry shaped precisely like someone who had thought ahead, and I had carried it through the night and through the morning and through the service elevator and into this room, and I had not said it until now because saying it meant it became the only thing that had ever been true.

"Natasha Romanoff," I said. "The Black Widow. Former S.H.I.E.L.D. director. The person who called Helen Cho directly rather than through FRIDAY, before this room had been unsealed, before anyone else in this corridor had thought to call a medical professional at all."