A weird old folder with a strange papers in it

Alex coughed violently as he sat up, pain shooting out wildly over his entire body. "Ahhh...." he looked down at himself, seeing his entire outfit covered in dust. "fuck me..." he could already hear his mother's complaints now. "Can you seriously not clean up an attic without dirtying yourself up in the process? Well, I suppose this is a good opportunity for you to also take care of the laundry and get into a bath." He felt his teeth clench at the imaginary scolding. Any nice memories he had had about his mother were slowly watched away with the reality of her current self. Sighing to himself, Alex decided it was better to just get this over and done with instead of sitting around and reminiscing about the past.

He began feeling around on the floor, trying to find the picture book to sort it into the "keep" pile. After fiddling around a while, he assumed he had found it. It wasn't until he pulled it up and got a look at it that he realised it wasn't the picture book at all. It was a strange black folder, filled with a bunch of papers that seemed to have been collecting dust. He looked around, seeing one of the knocked over boxes had been opened from the fall. The folder must have come from there. At first. Alex assumed it was his dad's. Some old paperwork he had stored up here and forgot about. But as he got a closer look, he realised the papers inside were in Russian. Now, his dad was a smart man. Could pull off insane calculations in his head in mere seconds. Could put together an entire motorcycle with nothing but his wits and a rusty screwdriver. But one thing he could not do, and one of the few actual complaints Alex's mother ever had about the man, was speak Russian. So the folder clearly couldn't have belonged to dad, leaving the only other possible owner being mom.

Alex never knew what his mom did for work. When Alex's dad was alive, Natasha had been a housewife, spending all her time at home making sure everything was nice and neat, making sure Alex did the homework he was supposed to and always made sure dinner was hot and ready for when her husband came home. After dad died, she had said something about getting back into the job market. Alex hadn't really been listening, to caught up in grief. All he knew was that a few months after dad's passing, she would start heading to work in the morning. Thinking back on it, that was around the time she really began getting more cold and strict towards him. That aside, even if it did belong to mom, it still wouldn't make any sense. They clearly can't be from work. They were in some old dust covered box collecting even more dust themselves. Why are they in Russian? Were they from back home? Maybe it was something boring, like the paperwork she had to do to immigrate and she was keeping around for fond memories. But something inside Alex screamed at him that this was something more than just sentimental treasure.

He opened the folder up, reading the papers inside. Despite being born in the US and having never once stepped foot on Russian soil, Natasha had made sure to drill her native language into Alex as a boy. "This is your heritage young man," she would respond whenever he whined about not wanting to do "extra homework" as he called it. "I will not let you become so out of touch with your roots that you can't even speak your mother's tongue anymore." At the time, Alex remembered being so pissed at her. But now, he was honestly kind of grateful.

"M-Mission..." he sounded out aloud as he struggled to remember the after school lessons with his mom. "b-brief. Mission brief." Mission brief? The hell did that mean? Surely that couldn't be right. He opened up the folder to read the papers within. He was far from fluent, and there were plenty of sections that he straight up just couldn't read, but from what he gathered, this seemed to be some kind of dossier. Like the type you'd see in some old spy movie before the main character is shipped off to some foreign exotic country. Alex struggled to wrap his head around it all. What the hell did any of this mean? Was his mom some kind of... Russian spy? The thought left his mind as soon as it entered. Be realistic. This wasn't some cheesy thriller from the sixties where his hot, foreign honeypot mom was sent over to america to seduce his oblivious, bumbling father into spilling state secrets. Atleast, that's what Alex continued to tell himself as he continued reading, desperate for a much more reasonable explanation. But as he got to the last document, that fantasy seemed all the more real.

"Sleeper agent activation code: 'The white bear slumbers under the eagles nest.'"

Alex felt lightheaded, the attic spinning around him. Was it really true? Was his mom really a Russian spy? Was the only reason he existed in the first place the result of a years long honeypot? He didn't want to accept it, but all the pieces were there. Like how a bombshell like mom would get with someone like dad who, while not looking repulsive, was clearly WAY out of her league.

Alex suddenly slammed the binder closed. "Nope. uh-uh. This is ridiculous. There's no way mom is a spy! I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation to all of this." He tried to reassure himself with, but that lingering doubt continued to fester in his mind. The idea that what he assumed was fact. Then, a thought entered his mind. Since the binder clearly belonged to his mother, surely there was no harm in asking her about it, right? Just to prove decisively to himself that this wasn't what he thought.

Going downstairs, Alex found his mother on the couch, reading a book and drinking a smoothie. Lounging around like a queen while she worked him like a dog.

"The next words out of your mouth better be 'Mom, I am finished cleaning the attic.'" She said with a stern tone, not even bothering to look up from her book.

Alex felt really nervous all of a sudden. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all. What if that binder and all that "code word" stuff was just some sort of roleplay stuff she had put away when dad died? But he calmed himself down quickly. What's the harm in asking? He could always just play it off if she got confused and then hurry back up and clean again.

"Well? Were you planning on just standing there?" Natasha asked, snapping Alex out of his panic. Her voice made it clear he was getting on her last nerves.

Well, now or never.

"T-The white bear slumbers under the eagles nest."

He cringed a little as he said it, starting to believe all of this less and less. Natasha just sat quietly on the couch, not moving a muscle. Alex just continued to stand still and wait for what might possibly be the biggest he had ever seen from his mother. But it never came. Instead, Natasha dropped her book and smoothie, letting the ladder fall to the floor and spill everywhere. But she didn't seem to care, as if all that stuff no longer mattered to her. She shot up at the speed of a bullet, startling Alex a little, and brought her arm to her forehead in a salute. Elbow cocked at the perfect angle, back fully straight pushing out her chest even more than usual, she stood fully at attention, her grey eyes staring forward into thin air.

"Agent Natasha Volkov, ready for orders sir." she said in an even, straightforward tone, standing perfectly still.

Alex's mouth hung agape, still in disbelief at what he was seeing. Surely not, right? Surely this was all just some sort of prank... right? Surely she was going to drop the act any minute now and scold him, right?! But as the clock ticked by, seconds turning to minutes as Alex still hesitated to even breath, his mother continued standing there, ready for her orders.