The Widow's Daughter ✔︎

Chapter Thirty

"Kira."

"Kira."

"Kira, you have to wake up." Somebody was shaking my shoulder roughly. I moaned and rolled over, not quite ready to open my eyes yet.

"KIRA!" Somebody screamed into my face.

"Agh, I'm awake!" I batted away the persistent hand and groaned, opening my eyes a fraction. The person who was shaking me was Evie, her long red hair dangling on her shoulders. Her eyes were nervous and tired-looking, her face gaunt and concerned. She appeared to be sitting behind me. A sharp pain throbbed in my forehead. I looked around, blinking dizzily - I was in a room. Well, a barn, more like it. It smelt of sheep and there were golden-yellow hay bales in the corner. I was tied to a chair. Evie was tied with her back to me. "Where are we?"

"A farmhouse somewhere," Evie muttered. She struggled against her bonds but it was no use. "Hey, Kira, care to do your super-strength thing? Get us out of these?"

I frowned and shook my head, trying to break the bonds. "I can't," I said, frowning. "They're too strong."

"Huh. That's weird." 

I nodded, remembering back to our little adventure through the woods. "Where were you? You and Ben ran ahead into the forest and just disappeared. Me and Peter were so freaked out." My eyes bulged. "Peter! Where is he?"

"I'm up here!" came a weak voice from overhead. Me and Evie looked up to see Peter dangling by his toes on the roof of the barn, tied to the rafters with the same unbreakable bonds as us. His face was super red. "I've been up here all night!"

"All night?" I wondered, trying not to snigger at how funny Peter looked right now.

"Yeah!" Peter struggled against his bonds, flailing in the air like some giant bizarre cocoon. "You guys were out for ages! I've just been hanging here!" He looked really sad for a moment and it took all of my willpower not to pat him on the head and give him a cookie. "They took my web shooters, guys. That was super mean."

"They?" I asked.

"Yeah," Evie said. "Didn't you see them? A bunch of people wearing gorilla masks. They were the ones who tied us up here. They took Ben. I don't know where he is."

 I looked around, trying to find any sign of my favourite genius small child. He was nowhere to be seen and I sighed nervously. "Dammit, Kira," I muttered to myself. "Should've kept my phone."

"Yeah, even I would prefer to be screamed at by the Black Widow than be stuck hanging upside down like this for twenty four hours," remarked Peter.

Suddenly, the doors of the barn slowly began to creak open, the groaning reverberation of rusty metal against splintering wood hurting my ears. Blinding bright light beamed through the doorway. I squinted at it: in the doorway stood six sillouhettes of people; five wearing gorilla masks, like Evie had described, and one looking tired and weary.

"Ben!" Evie cried, whipping her head around to the tired-looking silhouette. Ben smiled wearily at her before slumping down into one of the gorilla's arms. The lead gorilla, who was about my height, shut the door. The gorilla who had caught Ben chucked him like a rag-doll into Evie's lap. She grabbed him and pulled him close, stroking his hair. "What did you do to him?" she yelled angrily.

"A sleeping drug," one of the gorillas said snarkily. "He'll be fine in an hour or so."

The other gorillas stood over me and Evie, looming above us to assert their dominance. They were all wearing black. Now that I saw them up close, they didn't seem so tall and scary: in fact, only two of them were tall. The lead gorilla was about my height and the other two were shorter. The smallest one's mask kept on slipping off, it being too big for her head. "You guys are just kids," I breathed. 

"Hey!" one of the shorter gorillas barked. "No we're not! We're not kids! We're adults! Watch your tongue!"

"Shut up, Todd." the smallest gorilla hit Todd, the one who'd just been speaking.

"Jeez, Addison," Todd complained, rubbing his side. "That wasn't very nice."

The lead gorilla loomed above us. "Who are you?" she demanded, her voice low and strangely familiar. 

"Who are you?" Evie demanded back. 

"We asked you first," the lead gorilla replied, ripping something on a chain out of her pocket and dangling it in front of us. "And how did you come by this?"

I gasped. "That's my USB," I said, looking at it. The small watermelon dangled on a chain that rested in the lead gorilla's gloved fingers. "Give it back!"

The lead gorilla snatched it out of the air and pocketed it. "Actually, it's mine. It's my file, so, therefore, it belongs to me. Now I want a proper explanation of how you came by it!"

Evie sucked in a sharp intake of breath and swung around to face the lead gorilla. "Holly? Are you Holly Adams?"

The lead gorilla froze, her cocky demeanour dissolving. "Uh. No." 

I snorted. Something about those two words were so like me that I knew that it had to be Holly. "Yeah, right." I grinned at her, the gorilla who I was sure was, in fact, my triplet sister. "You're definitely Holly."

Before Holly could answer, a voice broke through the silence. "Hey! Is anyone gonna get me down?" Peter called from above. We all looked up at him. His face looked purple now, like a giant grape. "I'm going to faint!"

"Very well," said Holly, trying to make her voice lower, sound more grown-up. "Endie, get the loser down before he hurts himself."

The tallest gorilla, Endie I was assuming, flung out his bare, tanned arms and from his fingers shot a stream of fire, bright red and burning, towards Peter's bonds, cutting through them in no time. Peter fell to the floor with an "oof" and gasped, scrambling to get away from Endie. Me and Evie gaped at him. "You're a pyrotechnic?" Evie yelped, at the same time as I squeaked, "you're a firebender?"

Holly chuckled. "You get used to it," she said, leaning over us, a sharp penknife pointed at my throat. I gulped. "Now. Which of you dorks wants to tell me the truth first?"

"Can we at least see your faces?" Evie asked. "I mean, I kinda want to see the people who have captured us and brought us here, anyway."

The gorillas all looked at Holly. She nodded and one by one, they all pulled their masks off. I looked around the gathering - they were all kids. The tall firebender, Endie, had caramel-coloured skin and glasses perched on his Roman nose, his quiff of dark hair poking up. The girl next to him, who Holly had introduced as Afia, had dark skin and frizzy black hair poofing out in curly ringlets around her heart-shaped face. Her arms were lean with muscles and she looked like she could kill somebody without a second thought. The kid who had been talking, Todd, looked like he was about twelve or thirteen. He had floppy blonde hair that hung over his playful blue eyes. He was small and stocky, like a little garden gnome. The girl who'd hit him to shut him up, Addison, was tiny. She couldn't've been any older than eight. She had a sweet, babyish face, with long dark hair tied into a plait that draped over her small shoulders. The expression on said face was, however, anything but sweet. She was glaring at us with a scowl that could have killed Queen Elizabeth ||. Even tiny people could be dominating, I supposed.

Then it came to Holly. She looked quite different to the photo on the file: her hair was cut into a Natasha-length bob that hung at her shoulders and her skin was more tanned. Her eyes, blue-green and fierce, scowled at us. She looked like a mixture of me and Evie, but mostly like Natasha, and that kind-of made me want to throw something.

She flicked the penknife closer to my throat. "You gonna speak, dorks, or are you gonna get impaled?"

I gulped. "You might want to sit down for this," I said softly. "It's a lot to take in, what with Kristoff Agnelsson and all..."

"How do you know that name?" Holly's voice was dangerous, her eyebrows furrowed not in concentration, but in fear and anger. "And why would I have to sit down?"

I took a deep breath. "Have you ever heard of the Avengers?" I asked.