Chào các bạn! Vì nhiều lý do từ nay Truyen2U chính thức đổi tên là Truyen247.Pro. Mong các bạn tiếp tục ủng hộ truy cập tên miền mới này nhé! Mãi yêu... ♥

18 - ALL IS REVEALED

BEING INTERROGATED WAS A STRANGE CONCEPT. Bruce explained to her that she was being interviewed, not interrogated, but she found that she didn't like it any better, and he had only laughed before going back to taking notes alongside Clint and Natasha, though Clint was doing most of the typing and researching while the others devoted their time to listening to her and working; Clint could multitask just fine, better than fine, but it was hard to focus on writing and listening at times.

After her initial statement about being unsure of whether her mutations were still in place or not, they had decided to try and back track through various channels, mostly trying to see if there were any defining features or characteristics that she could remember that could help them sift through the billions and billions of search results that had come up.

But, naturally, she came up short.

They were currently taking a break from yet another failed attempt at interviewing her—everyone but Bruce called it interrogating, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to point out to the trained assassins how dangerous it was for them to insinuate that their treatment of her was similar to their treatment of those they had in S.H.I.E.L.D. custody, but he was too tired to really try.

"We should try something different," Clint offered, facedown on Natasha's stomach, the woman staring up at the ceiling, her hands fisted in his hair.

"Good idea," Bruce sighed, struggling to breathe as he felt the pressure of keeping her alive weighing down on him again; it was a feeling he was unfortunately acquainted with.

She sighed, moving from where she was sprawled along the couch to lean against him, and he sighed, shifting so she could basically drape herself across him, closing her eyes to try and get some sleep, and he wrapped an arm around her to keep her from falling as she grew limp.

The group was found hours later fast asleep in the common area, two assassins and two monsters—though it could be argued that one happened to be both—all piled together and fast asleep, utterly exhausted.

"This is so sad," Arabella said, standing at the top of the stairs, looking at the scene before her, Tony and Steve standing behind her, "Tony, are we really crunched on time at this point?"

Tony reached out and squeezed her arm. "It's better if you don't know, Bella, it's just easier for everyone. But part of the reason why we're searching is so we can figure out how to save her. But also to screw those guys over, because fuck them."

She laughed, but stopped as she looked over at the woman whose name still had yet to be decided, tilting her head. While she had turned down Arabella's offer for fabricated memories, there was another offer she had yet to give.

"Tell me when they wake up," she said, both to the men still awake and to JARVIS who set an alarm.

"What're you planning?" Steve asked, watching as she made her way down to her room, saving up as much energy as she could.

She merely hummed in response, a foreboding energy filling the room, moving to circle around the woman who continued to sleep, wrapped in the sweet cocoon of darkness.

º º º

When she woke, she was immediately bombarded with sound, everyone seated in the common area in the midst of conversation which had gotten heated, arguing back and forth on the best course of action.

"—you really want her to relive and vividly remember traumatic moments in her life?" Tony demanded, and his hair was an absolute mess, his hands running over his jaw.

"I can make sure she forgets them later, but she can remember what those guys look like and anything she remembers about what they used on her or what the facility looked like," Arabella argued, and she seemed genuinely distressed to be going against Tony at the moment, but for someone so much younger, she was holding her own well.

"Are you sure this will be safe?" Steve asked, and he had been silent up until that point, thinking, "Because I understand what you're trying to do, Bella, but will you be successful?"

"I've done it before," she argued, crossing her arms, "I get I'm only eighteen, but remember, I've been with S.H.I.E.L.D. since I was seven, I trained with the X-Men for a bit, I know what I'm doing."

"It's up to her in the end," Natasha pointed out, motioning to where she was seated, watching them with wide eyes, trying to understand what was happening.

It didn't take too long for her to piece things together, however, and she found she was having trouble coming to terms with the fact that her memories were about to be brought to the surface and she would have to thoroughly face everything she had done with the clarity she had now. She would be able to see her masters' faces and remember what they had done to her, what they had made her do to others. There would be no hiding.

If she agreed to it, of course.

"Sweetheart, you don't have to do this, I can help with the search, there's no way people like that didn't leave a paper trail—" Tony tried, but he was cut off by Arabella.

"We have agents on this, Tony, and no one's found anything definitive yet, there are thousands of leads to follow and we don't have that kind of time," she pressed, and for someone so young, she knew how to hold her own in an argument.

Bruce sighed, watching them all argue, finding his own calm before raising his voice to get your attention. "Stop! Natasha's right, at the end of it all, it is her choice. Tony, I understand where you're coming from you bring up an important point, this be potentially traumatic, but Arabella is right, we're running out of time and we need to find another source, but we can't neglect the psychological effects. So, please, stop fighting, we're all just trying to keep her alive."

"You could just let me die," she pointed out, hating that she was the cause of the conflict in the group.

"Absolutely not," everyone shouted.

She immediately averted her gaze, turning her attention down to her hands, wringing them as she listened to the others finding common ground; while she was glad that they were resolving their conflict, especially with the help of Bruce, she felt a strange sensation blooming through her chest, radiating from her heart.

"Don't yell at me," she said, catching their attention, "I don't like it when you yell at me."

They all softened, sharing a guilty look with each other, and that was the end of the conflict entirely. The others all turned to Bruce who sighed softly moving to touch her arm, and she pulled away instinctively, not realizing what she was doing until it was too late.

Before she could say anything about it, Bruce changed the subject. "What do you want to do?"

She sighed, raising her head to look at Tony and Arabella. She didn't want to remember her masters or anything she had done, but it was clear that dying wasn't an option, and she didn't want to die painfully. She had been having more frequent episodes, and while she often forgot during the time she was okay, the pain was excruciating.

"They could be doing this to other people," Steve pointed out, everyone turning to look at him, "It doesn't necessarily have to affect your choice, we'll find them, but no one else would have to get hurt if we do."

That was when she remembered why she had been caught in the first place. She didn't necessarily want to use the word 'caught,' as she had learned the connotations of the word and was learning to expand her vocabulary, but the fact of the matter was that she had been caught because they had sent someone else to do the reconnaissance, because they were training someone else. 

She felt another spark in her chest, an angry kind of feeling and she wouldn't know the word for it until a few days later when she would ask Bruce about it, but the feeling was jealousy. As sad as it was to say, as much as she was glad to no longer be under her masters' control, she didn't like the idea of them using someone else.

She had been their most prized possession and she had been replaced.

"I want to remember," she said, feeling her hands ball into fists, "I want them to stop."

Maybe this was what made her a monster. Not what she had done, but what she was inside. Despite all they had done to her, she didn't want them finding anyone else, she wanted to continue being special to them, essential and needed. She missed them.

She didn't want them in her life, never again, but she missed them. 

"Okay," Arabella said, sighing as she stood, stretching and yawning, "I'm gonna go meditate for a bit, I need all my energy to make sure I do this well. But get ready, we're gonna be making progress."

But that didn't mean it wouldn't be painful.

º º º

She was with Arabella in the room, but everyone was right outside the door, ready to jump in and take notes and help if need be, though Arabella was recording the entire process to make sure nothing was missed.

"Okay," she said, the two sitting as comfortably as possible, though the girl immediately moved to kneel in front of her, reaching out to place her hands by her temples, "I'm going to go into your mind and bring out all your memories. Things won't rush towards you all that once, they're going to come up the way normal memories do, but what's going to happen is that you're going to be able to think back to everything that's happened and see them more clearly, even stuff that happened when you were much younger, that's what we also want to focus on, but we especially want their names or specific details as to what they did to you."

"Why are you telling me this?" she asked, trying not to let her heart race, "Why can't you tell me later?"

Arabella chewed on her bottom lip, sighing softly through her teeth. "Because you're going to have some trouble controlling them. That's what happens when you start to remember things, they pop up without your control, and since you have trouble remembering things, it's going to be difficult. So just keep in mind what you want to search for, okay?"

She nodded and closed her eyes when Arabella gave her the motion, shuddering when she felt the girl's cold fingertips on her temples. She searched for a signal, but was given none, feeling nothing until there was a cold sensation that shot through her body.

She felt hot and cold all at once, but it wasn't uncomfortable, rather the opposite. She felt as though she were asleep, yet awake, encased in a cocoon of energy, neither particularly warm nor cold, and her head began to pulse. 

At first, there were no thoughts at all. No thoughts, no memories, just pure empty.

Then everything came back. She came into herself, as easily as she did after the first slip second of waking up in the morning, but soon found herself thinking to events that she did not remember up until that point, but was more than certain that she had lived.

The sensation of remembering was strange.

It was as if her mind had jumped and pounced upon something that was passing by in a flash, pinning it down and analyzing it, only to find that it wasn't as foreign as it once was, every other aspect about it that hadn't been looked at at that moment still being known, as it had been analyzed once before.

She remembered her missions first, because of course she did. Not all of them, not all at once, but she found that the first things to be remembered were the most recent missions she had done. 

She could hear the man she had killed who was on the phone with his wife, promising that he would be home for their anniversary, that he was at church but would be home once he arrived, though he didn't know why the man was late.

She remembered when she had staked out his routine, remembering how he had been running for office, whatever that meant, and how he was campaigning for affordable health care and better education and to fight against injustice such as sex trafficking. How his son adored him and his daughter respected him. How he would always bid them goodnight and how his daughter hadn't snuck out with her boyfriend, instead choosing to ask her father for his permission, to which he happily complied with the promise she would call him if she decided to drink.

The entire mission had been compromised on account of the boyfriend nearly catching her hiding place, but the fact of the matter was, as she realized once she remembered, was that she killed man who didn't deserve it.

She remembered even more of her missions at that thought alone, which had triggered the memories, and she tried to fight past them as blood began to stain the backs of her eyes, even as she closed them. She searched for what Arabella told her to remember, though it was hard in of itself to remember what Arabella had told her to remember.

Then she remembered being strapped into a seat, her entire body feeling as though it were on fire, and two men whose faces were covered behind surgical masks looking down at her, screens filling the room around them.

"—you expect to manipulate her mind?" one of them asked, sounding wholly shocked, and the voice rang perfectly recognizable to her, where it previously wouldn't have.

"The others were unsuccessful because we're making all the wrong changes. If we have yet to awaken the dormant X-Gene, we can synthesize other mutations. We're looking for something that can make us money, and until we can work hard enough to sell them, we need to find something else to use," the other explained, and she remembered not even trying to fight hard against her straps, but she remembered that she would have before, just not anymore.

"What are you thinking?" the first man asked, in agreement with the other man.

"Enhanced physicality and senses. She'll be perceptive to danger and have an acute ability to calculate variables and have the physicality to be able to accomplish anything. Add to training, and we have a perfect mercenary," the second man explained, sounding not only proud, but excited; in a demented way, it was an adventure towards the unknown and, as a scientist, he had to pursue his curiosities.

"How will we do it?" the man asked, and the two turned towards her.

"Well, we'll just have to find out."

Her memories shifted then, before she could remember the excruciating pain of yet another round of failed experiments, shifting then to her sitting at a table, her masters going through files with her sitting right there, knowing that they had broken her in to the point where she could hardly fathom leaving.

They hadn't made the compliance or the secondary drug yet, but that was what they were working on. It was secondary to them fully completing the synthesized mutations. The peak physicality was equal parts chemicals and drugs and a certain trigger within her mind, and they were still incomplete with the senses and inhuman thought processing speed.

She focused on this thought, pushing down the rising flashes of blood and knives and red stained plastic bags that continued to rise at a rapid rate, trying to focus on the names that were written continuously over all the papers.

She struggled for some time, as it was all blurred, but she had a feeling Arabella had been able to see she was concentrating as she was soon given even more clarity within her particular memory, able to now clearly see the names, even if they were small and far away.

She wrenched herself out of her memories, forcing her eyes open, even as she continued to be bombarded, struggling not to scream at all the death and destruction that played just behind what she could see with her eyes.

"I remember."

º º º

It took a grand total one day. 

One day of intense searching on the part of Tony, the agents, and the person that Natasha and Clint had enlisted the help of to find them. It was difficult to watch, though she could hardly do all that much watching, what with being crippled with the decades of memories that she had to sift through.

"They experimented on me for a full year," she said, remembering how the two had deliberated on what they were doing after they hit the one year mark with only experimenting on her, "A year and three months, but they were successful, but then the training started, and they took these homeless people from the street and forced me to kill them, and I did."

The others who were unable to help search were avoiding her, not wanting to have to hear all that had happened. 

Arabella had thought she had to put herself through it, but Steve had all but dragged her away with the explanation that she had brought the memories but didn't have to suffer as well. 

Steve hadn't wanted to hear, simply because he had seen too much death and had too many memories of his own to sift through that he couldn't afford to try and shoulder another person's memories; it took a lot of conversations with Bruce for him to accept that he wasn't being selfish for wanting to keep himself safe.

Bruce stayed with her, though. It was hard for him to stomach and, at times, he had to leave to meditate and distance himself, but he was willing to listen to her, though she had still yet to discover that, by talking, she was opening herself up to remembering more.

She did continue to remember more. She remembered more and more as she continued throughout the rest of that day, then the next, tossing and turning in bed, raising the volume on her TV to try and drown out the thoughts, trying to focus on the show, though she was unable to as the memories were too strong.

When she finally did get to sleep, she found that, for the first time, it wasn't the blissful void she had come to crave. Instead, it was filled with the memories she desperately tried to avoid, but she was unable to control the memories that rose.

She was plagued by years and years of death and murder on her hands, remembering all that she had overlooked, all that would have been important to consider had she had the opportunity to, the countless lives she had taken for no reason other than she was told to and her masters were paid.

"Hey, you're okay, you're okay—"

She was startled awake by Bruce, but it took her more than two minutes to realize that she was awake, only catching herself when she realized she had shoved him away, only to freeze when she saw he had started to turn green, panicking immediately and pulling away.

"No, no, it's okay," he said, stumbling towards her from where he had been pushed, pulling her into his arms as she struggled to breathe, still crying from earlier when she had been asleep, "You're okay."

"What are you doing here?" she asked, though she held onto his arm that was wrapped around her, hiding her face in the crook of his neck, trying to breathe.

"You were screaming. JARVIS warned me you were having really intense night terrors," he said, rubbing her arms and holding her, both of them trying to control their breathing, his arms still tinged green.

She sniffed, shuddering softly as tears continued to fall. "I don't want to remember this anymore. Not this well."

"JARVIS, call Arabella over here," Bruce said immediately, and the AI didn't respond, though it was clear that he had, as the young woman in question arrived not five minutes later, looking tired but concerned, stepping lightly inside and catching the both of them.

"Push the memories back to where they were," he said, and it was still kind, but there was no question behind it, only a command.

"It's not that simple, she'll still have the residual memories that she gathered from remembering," Arabella explained, sighing softly, "Once you do something, you can't fully reverse it, it's like a scar that's left."

"That's fine, but it's breaking her, you need to push them back," he said, continuing to hold her, and she pulled her head away from where it was hidden to allow Arabella to place her fingers on her temples.

She felt the sensation again, and felt as though she was about to pass out, though the memories stopped. Her mind was quieting and she found, when she began to search for what she remembered of her masters' faces, she couldn't see them as clearly, and she had trouble remembering more of her missions than what she had already learned.

It was good enough.

"Thank you," she croaked, and Arabella nodded, wiping away a tear from her cheek, the young woman heading to her room without another word, letting out a shaky sigh, nodding towards Bruce before she left in a silent understanding.

"Okay," Bruce said a few minutes later, ready to let her slip back under the covers, "Get some sleep."

"Stay with me," she said, tugging at his sweater, not wanting to let go, "I don't want you to leave."

Bruce froze, looking utterly terrified. He hadn't been close to people in some time, he hadn't allowed himself to, he didn't want to hurt them, and it was already great progress to live in the Tower with only a few people, but now there were more people constantly, and he didn't know if he could do this.

But she was still crying and looking up at him, so tired and so scared, and he could do nothing but slide under the covers and pull her close to him, because she had remembered the machine that synthesized human contact and had told him how much she enjoyed going there, though she hadn't remembered it until then.

"We're gonna find them," he whispered to the silent room after her breathing had evened out and she had fallen asleep, "They're not going to get away with what they did to you."

º º º

When she woke up, it was deep into the afternoon, bordering on evening, and JARVIS alerted her to go straight to the lab, as Bruce and Tony had been able to get ahold of her masters' work. It had shocked her, but she had done as she was told.

It seemed some things never did truly change.

The minute she stepped into the lab, she was bombarded with explanations and requests.

"Here, please change into this—so what was difficult was that there have been many people who have tried to awaken the X-Gene and acquire mutations, but there are only a handful—well, maybe multiple handfulls—that had the intention of enslaving mutants and making them servants, others simply wanted to use them for personal gain or to achieve power and success," Bruce explained, nearly changing her himself before remembering himself and going back towards the screens, continuing to fiddle with things she couldn't understand.

"And with the help of you and your memories, we were able to track them down and we found out that they've been doing this for a while, and we've found that they've been talking with some other people who are trying to awaken the dormant X-Gene, but there's nothing definitive and we can't go after everyone, but we were able to get ahold of some of their research that they stupidly posted on the internet and while it's not directly related to you, it's the same principle, so we're gonna get you fixed," Tony finished, patting the table for her to hop up on and she did just as much once she was changed, lying down as she was always told to.

"So it's still a work in progress, but we've made some significant changes, so we're going to do just a few more tests, then keep you here under observation while we finish up, so you're going to basically be contained here—just for now—but...we're going to make sure you're okay," Bruce said, pausing to lean over her, reaching out to stroke her cheek fondly, his palm pressed against it, and she smiled, leaning into his touch.

Then she felt a familiar stabbing sensation, but at her back. She could hardly scream as the familiar yet still excruciating white-hot pain overtook her, causing her to spasm and tense, falling off the table as she tried to get away from the pain.

Then everything went dark.

º º º

"They've been in there for nearly two weeks," Steve pointed out to Clint and Natasha as they ate breakfast, Arabella still in the shower and freshening up after training.

"Yeah, but because of all the stress from her memories, her episodes have gotten a lot worse, they've had to work with her going through them constantly, and they're running tests and working on the fly," Clint pointed out, continuing to drink from the coffee pot.

"I know, I'm just worried," Steve sighed, continuing to eat the large array of food in front of him, "I've heard that she's still doing her studies and searching for a name and all that. I'm just worried why it's taking so long, those two are the greatest men of their generation."

"Thanks, man," Clint mumbled, but he was nodding in agreement, "But honestly, yeah, but maybe that's 'cause, you know, it's a person and not a robot?"

"It'll be fine," Natasha said, though it was hard to tell if she meant it, "She still has some time, and you know Bruce would rather die than let her die."

There was something underneath her words, but the two opted not to ask, as they didn't want to have to deal with smirks and cryptic messages from Natasha; besides, they had a feeling they knew what she meant.

While the three conversed about what Tony and Bruce could be doing, the two men were in fact finishing up the various medicines needed to fully combat the negative effects of all the chemicals that had been pumped into her to synthesize her mutations in various ways.

They had learned that hers was a perfected system of the outdated way they decided to go, hearing rumors of them finding other ways, as well as being able to now successfully awaken the X-Gene through more natural, yet still inhumane, ways and that the news had been spreading.

Nevertheless, the two continued to focus on the task at hand, though they continued to keep in mind that while her heightened senses had been the first to go once the serum keeping her mutations intact was fully flushed out of her, her physicality and sharp mind were still intact, though were depleting, as was seen when she was studying at a slower pace than she had been previously, though not due to the content.

If they were successful, they would be able to stabilize her and her mutations—whatever bastardized form they took—but without the need for a serum, instead making it so her body adjusted and registered it as the X-Gene rather than something to deteriorate; it took her body some time to be able to, what with all the chemicals pumped into her, but even those would soon become adjusted to.

"Are you ready?" Bruce asked, approaching her from where she was continuing to study, having just finished her name throwing session with JARIVS, "We're going to just put you to sleep and we'll get started."

She nodded, setting her tablet aside and lying down on the table. "Bruce?"

"Yes," he said, prepping the lab and the area for the procedure.

"If I die—" she began, but he cut her off.

"Don't talk like this, this is going to work," he said, because they had calculated it, the percent error was practically non-existent, there would have to be something truly catastrophic that they hadn't considered for it not to work.

"Just listen," she argued, and he did. "If I do die...I'm really happy that I met you. And thank you for keeping me alive for this long."

He looked up to see Tony stepping into the lab, fully rested and ready to work. He nodded towards him, then looked down towards her, giving her a kind smile, as he always did, because he was Bruce Banner.

"You're welcome. But you're not dying yet."

With that, the procedure started.

º º º

Bruce sighed as he stepped into the lab. After they finished, they allowed her to keep sleeping, as she would be asleep for two days, which was coincidentally for how long he had slept, and he was now going to check and make sure that everything was still okay. JARVIS had been put as a guard to alert them in the event she was collapsing or something terrible had happened, but he hadn't, which meant that, at any case, she was stable.

That didn't mean she wasn't still dying. But she was stable.

He entered the lab, shocked to find her sitting up and awake, staring down at her tablet and working. He looked around, wondering if Tony had gotten there first, but like JARVIS had told him, Tony was still asleep.

"How long have you been awake?" he asked, in lieu of a greeting, and he decided not to hug her until he knew that everything was okay for him to be able to.

"Three hours," she responded, giving him a smile, "I feel great. I didn't have an episode when I woke up." That was what tended to happen.

He gave her an encouraging smile, mumbling his congrats, but didn't get his hopes up; just because she didn't have an episode didn't mean that she wasn't still dying, it just meant that, perhaps, the procedure had kept them at bay for some time.

The two fell into silence for some time as he worked, the sound of them tapping against screens being the only noises, as well as soft breaths. But that didn't last for too long, as he could see her fidgeting and glancing over towards him every few moments.

Then, "Bruce."

"Yes," he replied, looking up from the various screens he was reading, still searching for his answer, allowing them to sift through automatically, as they were Tony's machines and knew what he was searching for.

She licked her lips, glancing around before taking a deep breath and sighed. "I've chosen my name."

His heart skipped a beat and his stomach fluttered, and he wanted to tell her to wait until he was sure whether or not she was still dying, to tell her to wait until he was ready, but this wasn't about him, this was about her, and if she wanted to tell him now, he wasn't going to do anything to stop her.

"You want to tell me?" he asked instead, because he was shocked that he would be the first person to tell, "Have you told anyone else?"

"I chose it after I woke up," she explained, taking a deep breath, "And after all you've done for me, you should be the first one to know."

He nodded, moving to stand next to her, the two facing each other, and he gave her a kind, encouraging smile, and that seemed to do the trick as she took one more deep breath, letting it go, relaxing visibly.

She opened her eyes, giving him a smile that she was still unsure about.

"My name is Marnie."

Bruce smiled, tilting his head, not wanting to say it just yet. "Why that name?" He didn't ask with judgement, he asked with care.

She was still smiling, shrugging. "JARVIS and I have been talking and we have been going over name meanings, and I wanted to find a name that suited me through the meaning. But then I realized that, if I hardly know myself, there was no point. So I searched for a name that I felt the most myself with. It just fit."

His cheeks were hurting from how wide he was smiling and he stepped back and reached over towards the screen he had walked away from, scanning through its contents, feeling her gaze on him as she looked on.

He face nearly split in two as he turned away from the screen to look at her, his heart soaring to the point of bursting from his chest.

"Congratulations, Marnie. You're going to live."





AUTHOR'S NOTE

This was an uber long chapter, but after all the shorter chapters, this one deserved a pretty good length. Also, I know this book is gonna be so fucking short, we only have six chapters left, but the entire story takes place in the span of three months so like...I mean...? A lot of my fics are gonna be like 25 chapters and I feel as though that's not right, but whatever, there are others that are a lot longer, so who cares, amirite, we get a pseudo sequel for this fic so I mean...

Also, I'm just going to say it right here, these guys have connects with Ajax from the Deadpool movie series, and while I know that's not MCU, I've put them in the same universe in this series, as I have a Deadpool fic and that is connected in the same universe.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed!

Bạn đang đọc truyện trên: Truyen247.Pro