The world had shrunk to the confines of the elevator shaft, a cage of cold steel and groaning cables. Dust motes, ancient and disturbed, danced like frantic spirits in the single, flickering emergency light. For Natasha Romanoff, this cage was a victory stage. The metallic tang of her own blood was a minor price for the sight before her: Taskmaster, on his knees, the muzzle of her gun pressed firmly against the cold, grinning bone of his mask.
Her breath was a controlled, steady rhythm against the frantic hammering in her ribs. Every muscle was coiled, a spring of deadly potential.
"It's over," she said, her voice a low, gravelly promise. He'd mimicked her throws, her blocks, but he hadn't understood the strategy behind them. He was a perfect mirror, but a mirror couldn't see the wall behind it.
A low chuckle, distorted and electronic, vibrated from behind the skull mask. It was not the sound of a defeated man. It was the sound of a predator toying with its meal.
Then he spoke.
"Looks like the lesson's over."
Before the echo of her own words faded, the world inverted. It wasn't a block or a parry. It was something else entirely. It was anticipation. As her finger tightened on the trigger—a micro-expression of intent she hadn't even consciously registered—his hand was already there. Not slapping the gun away, but flowing around her wrist like water. He applied pressure to the radial nerve, a technique she'd used to disarm a dozen HYDRA agents. Her fingers went numb, the Glock clattering to the grated floor.
In the same seamless motion, he twisted. Her arm was forced into a lock she herself favoured, a brutal, joint-shredding hold that used the opponent's own structure against them. He didn't just mimic the move; he perfected it, adding a subtle shift in his center of gravity that drove a spike of pure agony up to her shoulder. She gasped, her body arching in protest.
He had not just copied her. He had downloaded her.
He shoved her back, the impact of her spine against the steel wall ringing through the shaft like a dissonant bell. She staggered, shaking her hand to bring the feeling back, her mind racing faster than her failing body. The fight was supposed to be over.
Improvise, her training screamed. New tactics. Unfamiliar styles.
She abandoned her usual fluid, evasive stance, dropping into a more grounded, Krav Maga-inspired form. A direct, explosive palm heel strike aimed for his chin. It was a move designed for shock and disablement, something she hadn't shown him yet.
It didn't matter.
He didn't mirror it. He intercepted it. He moved before her strike had even reached its midpoint, his own palm meeting hers in mid-air. But while her attack was linear, his response was a spiraling redirection, a classic Aikido principle. He flowed with her force, spun her off-balance, and drove his armored elbow into her ribs.
The crack was sickeningly loud in the enclosed space. Pain, white-hot and blinding, flared across her chest. Air rushed from her lungs in a pained whoosh. He wasn't just a mimic anymore. He wasn't just seeing her moves in real-time; he was running combat algorithms based on her entire history, predicting the probability of her next action with terrifying accuracy. Every feint was a data point. Every misdirection was a line of code.
She lashed out with a desperate leg sweep. He didn't dodge. He simply lifted his leg, letting her foot swing harmlessly under it, and stomped down hard on her supporting knee. Her leg buckled, pain lancing up her thigh. He had seen the setup, the slight shift in her hips, and knew exactly where she would be.
Her own strategies were now a cage closing in around her. The feint she used to set up a grapple? He ignored it and punished her exposed side with a series of brutal, short-range hooks. The disorienting spin to create distance? He stepped into it, closing the gap and slamming his forehead into hers. The world swam in a sea of black spots and flashing lights.
This wasn't a fight. It was a deconstruction.
He was a ghost of her own making, a perfect reflection armed with foresight. Every punch she threw was met with a block she would have used. Every kick was countered with a check she had taught herself in the Red Room. He moved with her grace, her efficiency, but it was amplified, stripped of hesitation or mercy. It was her style, weaponized against its creator.
Bleeding from a cut above her eye, vision blurring, she lunged, trying to close the distance for a chokehold—anything to stop the relentless, predictive assault. It was a foolish, desperate move, and he read it like a page in an open book.
He met her lunge, not with resistance, but with an embrace. His arms wrapped around her, one sliding under her armpit, the other snaking around her neck. Her blood ran cold. She knew this hold. She had used it on a Georgian diplomat in Odessa, a clean, swift, silent technique designed to crush the windpipe.
His grip tightened. The world narrowed to the pressure on her throat, the grinning skull mask inches from her face, its hollow eyes reflecting the frantic, flickering light. He wasn't just choking her; he was showing her. See? This is you. This is how you kill.
He slammed her backward into the wall again. Her head connected with the steel with a wet, hollow thud. The emergency light overhead sizzled, plunging the shaft into a moment of absolute darkness before flickering back to life. In that strobe-like effect, she saw him, inhuman and relentless. His own suit was scarred, a few plates cracked from their earlier battle, a dark smear of her blood across his mask, but he moved as if he felt nothing.
Her lungs burned. Blackness crept in at the edges of her vision. Her hands, slick with blood, scrabbled uselessly at the unyielding arm across her throat. Her movements grew sluggish, her frantic struggles weakening into feeble twitches. This was it. This was an ending she had never anticipated—to be unmade by her own reflection.
Just as consciousness began to fray, the pressure vanished.
She collapsed to the grated floor, a heap of bruised limbs and shattered pride, dragging in a ragged, excruciating breath that sounded like tearing silk. The air was thick with the scent of her own defeat. She coughed, a spray of red misting the dusty air.
Through a swimming, pain-filled haze, she looked up. Taskmaster stood over her, his posture relaxed, almost casual. He was not even breathing hard. He tilted his head, the skull mask a silent, mocking judgment. He had taken her apart piece by piece, analyzed her, and found her wanting.
He bent down, not to finish her, but to retrieve her gun from where it had fallen. He held it with a familiarity that made her stomach turn. He ejected the magazine, checked the chamber, and slid the magazine back in with the same economic, practiced motion she used a thousand times. It was a perfect, contemptuous imitation.
He didn't point it at her. Instead, he placed it gently on the floor beside her trembling hand.
He had won so completely, so utterly, that killing her was no longer the point. The ultimate victory was leaving her alive with the knowledge of her own obsolescence. He had beaten her at her own game, using her own moves, and now he was returning her weapon as if to say, It wouldn't have made a difference.
Without another word, he turned, pried open the elevator doors with a grunt of mechanical effort, and started to walk away.