Hahaha yeah no she can't die yet

I still have like two more books left to write and a crapload of trauma for her to experience so let's CARRY ON

——

Ashley partially wished she didn't have to wake back up again.

It would've been much easier that way.

Unfortunately, here she was, slowly regaining consciousness on the mattress of the bed in her living quarters.  The memories of her terrifying

    It took several minutes for Ashley to register where she was or how she had even managed to get there, but the familiar view of the desk and metal door sparked her memory. The sight of the confining walls was certainly not welcomed to the teenager. She wasn't sure what was going on here, but it sure felt like some cruel form of a joke cracked at her expense.

"Hello, Jasper," Ashley rasped. She didn't even have to look up or listen for his footsteps to know that he was walking in. It was Jasper, after all, that man who was far too creepy to be normal and always seemed to know when not to make his entrances. Sure enough, just as she had said this, she heard his obnoxious footsteps clacking in the air. While she hadn't expected her voice to be normal after traumatically drowning, she hadn't realized it was going to sound that horrible. It sounded more like sandpaper moving on a chalkboard than a person speaking words.

    These footsteps, however, were not exactly as she remembered them. There was a certain sound about them that was not as sharp, causing the notes to hang dully in the air. It wasn't until she recognized the peculiarity in her own voice that she realized that it was actually her hearing that was impaired. The noise of everything was dampened, and at points, somewhat incoherent.

"Good evening, Agent Tanner," Jasper replied smoothly. For some reason, the fact that he could speak without complications completely sent Ashley over the edge of fury. She snarled at the bald man and forced herself to sit up, ignoring the pain that clawed at her muscles.

"Don't ever call me that again," she snapped, causing Jasper to momentarily lose his composure from shock at her outburst. "Whatever this stupid cult is, I quit. I'm out. Training is okay. Trying to kill me, though?"

She paused, coughing to clear her throat and to glare right into the soul of Jasper. There was no regulation to her breathing whatsoever— instead, it was rough, loud, and gravelly. "There's a line that lies between me working with you and me not. Do you know what you all did with that line? You sprinted across it like you had a goddamn pack of wolves hot on your tails and drug it through the mud."

"Ms. Tanner," Jasper interrupted but was smart enough to not avoid the title 'Agent'. "There's been some confusion. The incident was purely by accident. We had not intended for the obstacle to interfere with your test. You have our most sincere apologies."

"Your apologies?" Ashley echoed, fuming. "Your pathetic little apologies have less meaning to me than that poor excuse of a hack job on your bald head. An accident doesn't involve me having to fight all the way to the surface with a ball that probably weighs twice as much as I do chained to my foot without anyone helping! Did it not occur to you that someone could simply pull me out?!"

If Ashley had her voice, she would be screaming right now. Instead, it was coming out as a cross between a scratchy whisper and wheezing. Her face, however, said it all. Her eyes were ignited in unadulterated fury, and her skin had grown redder than it did when she exercised. 

"We weren't able to see you," Jasper replied slowly, clearly having trouble selecting the right words in order to not make Ashley even more enraged. "As a part of the test, we weren't permitted to interfere with your task until you surfaced. Seeing that it was only 100 feet and that it was you undergoing the test, we had thought that you would be able to handle it without any complications. If we had any idea of the trouble that you had encountered, we wouldn't have hesitated to get you out of the water."

"Surfaced?" She questioned. For just that split moment, her anger resided enough for her to speak semi-normally. "But I never made it to the top. How did you notice me, then?"

"You did break the surface," Jasper countered. "Though, it was only a part of your head and lasted for no more than a second. If you hadn't managed to complete the test, we most likely wouldn't have been able to reach you until damage had already been inflicted on your brain from the lack of oxygen."

"I can't believe this," Ashley softly groaned. "Either way, you all are the most incompetent group of people I have ever met before. Though, I know for a fact that you aren't stupid enough to send someone in to go free diving without monitoring them. If you believe for a second that I'm going to think that my drowning wasn't on purpose, then you're wrong. I'm fed up and ready to quit."

Jasper sighed upon realizing that nothing he said was going to sway her opinion. "Very well then. Though, before you are permitted to take your leave, you must consult Strucker first."

"Fine with me. I'll be more than happy to give him a piece of my mind," Ashley rolled her eyes, knowing that there wasn't a thing the despicable man could say to keep her from wanting to leave.

Jasper took the cue to leave, but turned back to face Ashley before leaving the doorway."Medics will come by soon to evaluate your condition. Until then, wait in here while I wait for Strucker to have an opening."

    Ashley cursed her luck as she watched her medics walk in. Much to her disappointment, given that she wanted to speak with Fitzsimmons about the whole ordeal before she quit, her doctors were indeed not the brilliant duo but instead some random people she had never seen before.

    With much less caution and delicacy than Jemma normally practiced with Ashley, the medics carried on with their procedure and observed Ashley's condition. This not only pertained to the side effects from her drowning but the multiple broken bones that Jemma had identified yesterday. (At least, she assumed it had been yesterday. She had no clue as to how long she had been unconscious after the incident.)

    You've got a pretty harsh case of pneumonia," the person who she took to be as the head medic suddenly concluded, setting down the instruments she had been using to study Ashley's health with. "As well as what seems to be some brain trauma and temporary impaired hearing. Any rigorous activity will be suspended for the day due to pneumonia, as well as decreased cognition and coordination."

    When Ashley saw that the medics were already packing their equipment and leaving, she called out to them.

    "Wait! Aren't you even going to check my radius? Surely something can be done about that and my other broken bones while I'm resting."

    The doctor simply returned Ashley's question with a hardened glare. "Your bone will heal itself."

    "Not properly!" She fired back, looking down at her bruised and angled forearm in disgust.

    "I missed the part where that's my problem."

    With that, her so-called 'doctors' disappeared, leaving her with nothing in the form of help except for a couple of painkillers. Even those, unfortunately, seemed to be useless, since they barely even made a dent in the throbbing migraine she had. 

~

"You did what?!"

"Well, I'm not sure if it's exactly the same thing," Peter rambled, tossing a book that he had been scouring for the way too long to the side. "But the description of the ability is the same thing as what happened that day..." The brunet trailed off, thinking back to what happened to him in the alley that Ashley had been kidnapped in. Upon touching her AirPods, which she had likely had in her ears during the abduction, he had been sent into visions of the scuffle that had occurred between her and the man in black that kidnapped her.

    Seeing the past of an object was far from his usual capabilities, though. He had originally shrugged it off and considered it a new ability he had acquired from the spider bite, but when it didn't occur with him touching any other objects, he began to suspect something was amiss.

    From there, Peter began to speculate that it wasn't something that came from his end of powers, but rather, hers. He was already aware of her telekinesis, mind manipulation, enhanced agility, and her access to any information, but it was certainly possible that there were other powers she possessed that he wasn't aware of. After all, it wasn't like she had exactly told him about her capabilities...

The teenager had poured over endless articles, books, and websites about what the combination of her abilities could mean, but ended up coming short of an answer. While powers like hers—minus the one about knowing seemingly everything, which he had to admit was rather peculiar—existed in some other enhanced people, he hadn't managed to come across anyone who had all of them at once.

He had been taking a mental break from his endless research to binge some Star Wars with Ned when an insane, yet possible, idea struck him. Ned had been left sitting on the couch in confusion as Peter sprinted to his bedroom and hunted down a book he hadn't touched in years.

Nearly an hour later, he had resurfaced with a limited edition version guide to the powers of the Force that both he and Ned had picked up from an event several years back.

"...I think I experienced a Force echo."

"A what now?"

Peter sighed, gesturing for Ned to look at the page that he had been reading for several minutes. He gestured to a paragraph and said, "Force echoes. They allow someone to see the past of an object that they touch, especially if the object has been in contact with people strongly aligned in the Force."

For safe measures, Ned reread the paragraph after Peter had explained it, then looked back up at the brunet. Confusion was prominent in his eyes as he stared at his friend, waiting for him to drop the act and admit that he was just messing around. However, there was no humor laced into Peter's eyes.

"Dude, do you know what this could mean?"

"The Force might be real."

The two friends stared at each other in silence at their revelations, only faltering from each other's gazes to reread the description in the book. Both Ned and Peter had grown as white as a sheet and couldn't find the words to express their disbelief.

"There's no way," Ned argued suddenly, coming to his senses. "It has to just be psychometry. As much as we love Star Wars, it can't be real, dude."

"I've thought about that too," Peter thought. "But there's something about it that falls short of what happened in the alley. If it really was psychometry, then why can't I do it with other objects too? Why did it only work with an object that Ashley had on her during a traumatic experience?"

"I don't know," Ned admitted. "It's just hard to imagine something like the Force being an actual thing in the real world."

"To be fair, does the Force sound any less believable than a radioactive teenage kid who got bit by a spider and is now magically ripped, can stick to walls, and can sense danger?" Peter half-joked. However, underneath his joke, his mind was still racing from all the different thoughts crossing his head. If his reasonings turned out to be true and it was Ashley who had caused the display of the Force, then how could she have possibly been using it? Why would some teenage girl like her be able to control something that was thought to be entirely fictional?

"Don't forget the hypnotizing females part," Ned added quickly.

"C'mon dude, that's not even-"

"Have you tried it yet, though?" Ned remarked with a grin. "Can't say you don't have it until you've tried it. You should totally use it on Ashley."

"What?"

"What?"

Peter blinked slowly at Ned's suggestion, but he refused to let himself picture that scenario.

"I'm going to ignore the fact that you just insinuated that I would even attempt to hypnotize a teenage girl that's my friend. Just because she's smoking hot and smart and..."

"Okay, okay. Let's just move back to the part where we are arguing about whether the Force is real or not," Ned said, successfully shifting the conversation away from the topic that had quickly grown awkward for him. "Like, wouldn't that mean that the rest of Star Wars would be real too? Like Jedis and Sith and all that crap?"

"I don't even know," Peter mumbled, thinking back to all of the movies and shows about Star Wars he had ever seen. If the Force could be a real thing, then it would be very likely that the rest of what he priorly imagined to be that fictional universe would be real, too. Even things like...

"Oh my God, Ned!" the brunet yelled, jumping up from his bed and causing Ned to nearly fall over from shock. "You're a GENIUS!" He couldn't understand how he hadn't seen this sooner?! Telekinesis, mind manipulation, physically enhanced, and the potential ability to use the Force?

    There was only one reasonable explanation.

    "I mean, I totally am, but what exactly did I do?"

    Peter stared at his friend wildly, throwing his hands up and running them through his hair in bewilderment.

    "Ned. We're friends with a F*****G Jedi."

~

    "I've been told that you are considering backing out of our deal."

    Strucker looked up, bringing his pale face out of the shadows and into Ashley's view. In any other circumstance, this would've creeped Ashley out to no end. This time, rather, it egged her on even more to set loose all of her resentment and wrath on him.

    "I tend to not remain in contracts when the other person is a scumbag who has no issue with violating the terms," she coolly replied, looking down at him snidely before taking a seat.

    "Oh, Ashley, you're going to break my heart. You wouldn't really go as far as calling me a 'scumbag' after all that I've done for you, would you?"

    Ashley couldn't tell if he was faking his sentiment or if he was being genuine.

    "I'm going to break your heart? Pardon my lack of not giving a flying crap about your feelings, but I think they were invalidated the moment your so-called 'training' broke several of my bones and drowned me to death."

    Her sudden surge of confidence was rattling for Strucker. In hindsight, drowning her to test her endurance and mental capacity was probably not the best idea if he wanted to keep manipulating her to do his bidding.

    "There's nothing that can make up for the trauma you have unfortunately gone through," Strucker agreed. "But you have to understand that all of it was done in your best interest. Have you not grown stronger in your skills and learned of what you truly are during your stay here?"

    She had to admit, the man did have a point. Being restricted from her powers and forced into such rigorous practices had developed her in both strength and skill far faster than any training that Natasha or S.H.I.E.L.D. had ever put her through.

    Was it really worth it, though? Aside from wanting to protect the innocent from S.H.I.E.L.D.'s homicidal plans with Project Insight, Ashley had grappled with the pain with no real promise of ever being able to see her friends and loved ones again, just to fulfill her desires of knowing who she used to be.

    But that was it— that was the part that she had managed to miss in all of her prior reasoning.

    She had chased after her former self for so long, but did it really matter now? Why couldn't she just accept the fact that her past was in the past, and that she shouldn't do anything about it? If she hadn't been so hellbent on figuring out who or what she was, she'd still be back with Natasha, Steve, Peter, Liz, and Spider-Man. She and her S.T.R.I.K.E. team could work towards dismantling Project Insight secretively and restoring the peace in S.H.I.E.L.D.

    Instead, she got stuck with broken bones, being drowned to death and somehow being brought back alive, a diet that consists of not nearly enough substance, and enough solitude from anyone that she remotely cared about that could last her a lifetime. And for what? The only thing she found out about who—or more so what—she used to be, was that she likely looked hideous and shared less in common genetically with Earthern humans than they did with a roach.

    All she had received was disappointment, and her reckless pursuit of a version of herself that no longer existed was entirely to blame.

    Maybe it was too late now, but she had finally learned her lesson. There's no point in chasing her ghosts.

    Right here, right now, she's 5'5", female, blue-eyed, white-and-blue-haired Ashley Tanner, who has several people in the world that she has grown to care for. Perhaps she used to have a different name or a different structure. But now, none of that mattered.

She had a new identity that was worth staying in the presence for. She just wished she had realized that sooner.

"The funny thing is, Mr. Strucker, I can't bring myself to care," Ashley spat tauntingly with a smirk. "You wanna fight me, then fight me. You'll know where to find me. But you'll never find me naïve enough again to work alongside you."

"If that's how you want to play it," Strucker relented, shrugging and examining the cuff of his sleeve. "Then that's how we'll play it. I just really wish we could've played nice, Ashley, but then you had to go and ruin everything."

With a mere nod from the man, each guard surrounding them jumped into action. Ashley had expected this, however, and put her newly-learned evasive techniques into play. By playing her cards right, she managed to dodge the strikes and shots of multiple armed men and even swiped a keycard from one of them. As soon as she knocked out the guard stationed by the door, she used the card to unlock it and sprinted out.

If she remembered correctly, there was a rotating shift of three men every 17 minutes to and from designated stations. If she turned certain corners within given time slots of approximately four seconds, then she should be able to bypass the majority of the security and get to the stairs quickly enough.

Of course, an elevator would've been lovely, but the chance of that having controls that Strucker could use was too high, so she decided not to risk it.

Her heart was racing uncontrollably as she wound her way through the halls. So far, she'd only come across about five men who had been priorly alerted of her presence, but the rest seemed to have either not been enlightened in her escape or had been unsuccessful in tracking her. Dread pooled in Ashley's gut each time she peeked around the corner of a hallway, half-expecting to run straight into a man perfectly capable of beating her into the ground in the absence of her abilities.

It's okay, she forcefully thought to herself. It's just the Lemurian Star all over again. Tons of jerks on my tail, but I'll manage to get away.

About five turns and sprints later, Ashley found herself staring right at the stairwell door. How she had managed to make it here unscathed and in perfect timing was beyond her, but she refrained from celebrating. That could come as soon as she was far away from this godforsaken place and safe from the reaches of Strucker and his little soldiers.

The teenager was nearly trembling in adrenaline and nerves as she pressed the card against the scanner and waited for the click of the door unlocking.

It never came.

She harshly swiped it against the scanner a multitude of times again, each time rattling the doorknob progressively more forcefully, to no avail.

Her heart dropped straight through her stomach as she picked up on the sound of a herd of men, including Strucker, turning the corner and entering the hallway she was standing in. They all stopped towards the end at Strucker's command.

"It appears there is one lesson that didn't quite stick with you, I see," Strucker commented in a snarky tone. "You didn't think three steps ahead of your enemies, Ashley. I'm disappointed in you. You see, the thing is, I knew you would come straight to the stairwell. You've been led past it several times, so it would make sense that you know this area well enough that you would feel confident in coming here. Why bother trying to chase you when I can just cut off your access to door locks and corner you?"

"Maybe I didn't think ahead as much as I should've," Ashley agreed. "But there's another important lesson that I think I've managed to grasp by now. Always have a backup plan."

During his prideful rant, Ashley had successfully calculated the distance between the walls and determined that they were close enough together to where she could propel from wall to wall and make it to the ceiling. From there, she pried the vent screen away from its hinges and threw herself up inside, all the while using her senses that were somehow managing to surface despite the dampener to evade the bullets being fired at her.

She had to admit, having even just a sliver of her abilities back felt good.

~

Turns out Ashley had needed more than just a plan B.

While she had virtually no sense of time, she was sure that it had been many hours that she had been stuck crawling around the crammed vents. Every time she reached what appeared to be an exit, a swarm of guards was stationed right below her. Even with her potential advantage of surprise, she would still be far too outnumbered to even think about taking them on.

Ashley had even tried smashing or cutting a hole through random sections of the vents to try escaping into a random room that she wouldn't be expected in, but it turned out that the metal they had used in the construction of the vents was incredibly strong and durable.

Here she was left, muscles and joints aching with every movement and her breathing way too shallow. The hope that she had of escaping had grown dim—flickering out in the waxing darkness.

"You can come down now," she heard Strucker's voice echo out. Ashley looked down to see that she had been hanging over the edge of a vent opening with the execrable man staring up at her. "If you and that genius brain of yours haven't figured it out yet, I have you entirely surrounded and trapped."

"Yeah," Ashley growled weakly. "I think I came to that conclusion about four aggravating hours ago."

A drilling sound rang through the metal, and it dawned on Ashley that Strucker had been talking to her to distract her from the fact that men had pulled away some of the ceiling and were taking spinning blades to the surface of the vent. Upon realizing this, the teenager tried pushing herself to crawl away from the vent opening once more, but found herself unable to. Her muscles had finally given out.

She felt pathetic as she laid there helplessly, left to only await her impending downfall. Within moments, the men had cut through multiple sides of the vent and were working on the final section. Without warning, the bottom of the metal duct gave out and sent her falling to the ground. She crashed harshly into the floor, and a loud crack from somewhere in her body—she hadn't been able to feel her limbs enough to determine exactly where—echoed throughout the room.

Ashley groaned into the ground, planting her head face down as she refused to meet the eyes of anyone else. She felt ashamed for having been defeated, but there really wasn't much else she could've done. This structure was built like a fortress.

Strucker didn't bother to spare any words for her and instead gestured to a man standing to his left to drag her along. He obliged, roughly gripping onto Ashley's right upper arm, causing her to whimper in pain and also writhe in disgust at the contact. As he hauled her across the ground with no regard for her pain, it quickly became apparent to Ashley that it was her left leg that she had broken.

Lucky her.

For some reason, her vision grew splotchy and dark. She lost track of all the turns and twists they made before they finally came to a dim corridor with creepy walls of metal bars and concrete.

Lovely. It appears that I've finally been promoted to an inmate.

"Oh Ashley, you aren't an inmate," Strucker chuckled darkly, causing Ashley to realize she had accidentally spoken out loud instead of to herself. "You're our servant, now. You belong to us."

Before she could retort, they swung open a heavily barred door and tossed her inside the pitch-black room. All she received was a smirk from Strucker, before he slammed the door shut, being sure to lock it behind him.

A feeling of dread crawled up the back of Ashley's spine, making its way through each and every nerve and all the way to her brain. Slowly, due to both her fear and her intense agony, she turned to face the back of the cell. While she was only met with a curtain of pitch black, she could sense the presence of a dangerous being somewhere against the wall. Her heart was thumping wildly as she frantically scanned the cell, searching for the threat to her safety.

    "Welcome to Hell," a voice amidst the darkness flatly greeted in an accent entirely foreign to Ashley, looking up to her through eyes of red, flaming fury. The fiery light of the eyes pulsated and vaguely outlines some features of what appeared to be a feminine face. "You're gonna wish you had a way back."

Yeah, she was screwed.

Ugh

That took me forever and I'm bloody exhausted

BUT NOW TIME FOR THE EXCITING PARTS HEHEEHEHEHEH

Hope y'all enjoyed :)