Black Widow: Pale Little Spider (2002 series) #3

Flashback: Yelena Belova is in combat training with Lt. Col. Pyotr Starkovsky when he suddenly overpowers her and gets her in a hold. Yelena is upset, rebuking herself because Natasha Romanova would not have made that mistake. Starkovsky tells her that mistakes and Romanova do not matter, he is making her into the Black Widow. Yelena snaps back to the present, asking Nikki to take her to see Petra, who impersonated Yelena for Starkovsky’s fantasy. Nikki reminds her that Petra would not have done anything Starkovsky didn’t ask her to do but Yelena still wants to see her….

Detective Val Dobrova arrives at the club, looking for her partner Maks Golitsyn. Petra greets her and leads her downstairs. Then Petra shoves Dobrova into a wall, breaking her nose, then chains her up and pulls a bag over her head, citing her “secret mission….”

Yelena and Nikki arrive at Petra’s room to find a black widow style hourglass painted on the door. Yelena breaks down the door and they discover the corpse of Detective Golityn, slaughtered and castrated. Yelena spots her stolen files tacked to the walls. Petra enters, now insane and thinking she is the Black Widow. She accuses Yelena of failing in her training, afraid to become the Black Widow and so Petra will take her place, whipping out a gun and shooting Yelena in the chest. But the Kevlar in her outfit protects her; Petra holds the gun to her head, demanding that Yelena call her the Black Widow. Yelena refuses, overpowers Petra and breaks her neck….

Yelena is taped up by Dr. Lika Medvedev and she dons her Black Widow outfit to meet with the General. She presents her report, returning the missing files, and the General declares her handling of the case adequate, telling her to report the next day for a briefing on a mission in Chechnya. She departs, then Nikki, in GRU uniform, enters and submits her report: A few setbacks aside, once Yelena Belova asserted herself as the Black Widow, her performance was flawless. But she has a warning: If Yelena Belova ever learns that the whole thing was an exercise, that her superiors had Starkovsky killed to force Belova to become the Black Widow, she could go rogue and they would have to kill her. The General notes that should that happen, they can always make another Black Widow….