Natasha shifted her position slightly, getting a better angle on the entrance.
She couldn't make much out by looking through the narrow windows of the warehouse's upper level, but she could tell one thing.
He was fighting.
An actual fight, not just him knocking everyone out with whatever telepathic ability he had.
"He's putting the work in himself," Barton had a comparatively clearer view from his position.
"Probably to test out the bone thing," Natasha made the obvious conclusion.
She watched a shadow cross an upper window at speed, followed by several gunshots.
The noise inside peaked briefly, then stopped entirely.
Within two minutes, he walked back out through the main entrance, adjusting his jacket with one hand and holding a duffel bag in the other.
The bone mask remained, albeit cracked, revealing some of the lower parts of his face.
For a moment, he stood still, picking at his jacket. He was removing leftover bullet shrapnel.
Seemingly satisfied, he moved away from the warehouse at a relaxed pace.
Natasha watched him go.
"Orders stand, no engagement." She reminded Barton immediately.
"I know," he responded calmly.
She decided to let it go. Despite what the man had said to Barton, he wasn't such a low-level agent to let his personal feelings bungle a mission.
Below, the red-eyed man turned a corner and disappeared from her sightline. As she shadowed him, she noted that he wasn't taking the direct route to his apartment.
"He's varying the return," Barton noted.
"Standard counter-surveillance pattern." Natasha finished his thought.
"Nat," Barton spoke her name. She knew his question.
"He hasn't made us, just cautious."
He moved calmly, now having removed his mask, revealing his green eyes.
That detail had thrown them off for a while, searching for a black-haired man with red eyes, only for him to show up as a blonde with green eyes, a fact that had delayed their search.
The duo continued to follow the man until he returned to his apartment, at which point they moved to a safehouse in a neighbouring building.
As Barton set his bow down, he began going over his details.
"Marcus Alexander. Twenty-three. Logistics employee."
"Mm."
"You believe it?"
Natasha thought about the identity of the man they were tailing. The file was well-made, even by her standards.
"The identity is clean," she finally decided. "Too clean."
"Fisk's work?"
"Most likely. The paper trail goes back far, but the early years are thin. School records, medical history, they're lacking."
"So it's fabricated."
"Yeah. Whoever made it did a good job, but they were clearly working backwards, filling in a past rather than recording one."
"So we have nothing before he met Fisk?"
"We have nothing before about two months ago, which for someone supposedly twenty-three years of age is impossible."
Barton remained quiet, processing the information.
"No accent, and no regional tells." He began anew.
"No," she agreed.
"Doesn't move like someone trained in any system that I recognise either." He leaned back against the wall with his arms folded, deep in thought. "The bones thing, the eyes, none of it matches anything we know of."
"Fury's going with the idea that he's a mutant."
"Coulson said the blood came back clean."
"It did." She pulled up the file on her S.H.I.E.L.D. tablet, going through what information they had. "Nothing came up. No genetic markers, no anomalies, nothing that serves to explain anything we've seen. That's an answer in itself."
"No family history either. No parents, siblings, cousins, nothing." Barton continued.
"The file lists parents, albeit deceased. A car accident ten years ago, buried in a cemetery that exists, with headstones that do exist, belonging to people who lived real lives."
She breathed before continuing.
"They just didn't have a son."
The identity he had made for himself held up well, but after a thorough investigation from S.H.I.E.L.D.'s most elite agents, it fell short.
They moved on to a different topic.
"He's been doing this for a while," Barton spoke, clearly referencing his nonchalantness when it came to raiding dangerous criminal hideouts.
Natasha agreed with him, adding on to his idea.
"Since before New York, no, since before anywhere we can find."
Barton was quiet for a moment, staring at the floor with the focused expression of someone working through a problem that kept producing more questions than answers.
"The criminal operations," he said. "How many do we have confirmed?"
"Fourteen across five boroughs," Natasha said. "Those are just the ones we can directly attribute. The actual number is probably higher."
"All the same pattern."
She nodded her head, describing the events that occurred in the incidents. "Single perpetrator, no shots fired, no fatalities, men found unconscious without explanation. Cash taken, but he left the drugs, weapons and whatever else. All he takes is money."
"Which suggests he needs it. The guy arrived in New York without a penny to his name, most likely." Barton came to a logical conclusion before continuing further. "The New Mexico thing is what bothers me most. He didn't just stumble in on it; he knew what would happen, well before we did."
Natasha nodded her head in agreement. His abilities were certainly impressive, but what really shook her, and more importantly, Fury, was his foreknowledge of the New Mexico debacle.
He knew that something would happen. He drove from New York to Mexico specifically because he knew Thor was going to land there, days before it happened.
Clint was likely thinking the same things as her.
"You think he's like Thor? Another alien?" He proposed a new theory.
To Natasha, it seemed far more possible than him being a mutant. Some kind of advanced alien who had landed on Earth with future knowledge, yet was also dead broke.
"Not sure." She was dissatisfied with her own lack of conclusion.
"We need to get authorisation to move in on him. We aren't going to get any answers just watching him like we are now."
Natasha wasn't sure if it was his anger speaking, but even if it was, he was still right. She felt it was unlikely that they'd gain any insights without approaching him.
Naturally, she'd have to do the approaching, seeing as he was already well aware of Barton.