Blood. Dark red and rust-smelling. It marked the tiles and the walls and the case files. Danny Barton's jaw fell slack the moment her eyes landed on the lab assistant's body, sprawled across the floor. Her eyes were locked on the man's lifeless form, lying in the growing pool of his own blood. A slew of emotions swept through her: shock, disgust, fear. Anger.
Staring down at her hands, bloodied and scarred, Danny started to grow even angrier. She was caught in a rage that she wasn't capable of controlling. Her eyes flickered to a figure in her peripheral; Dr. Titus Reddik stood smirking. Seeing nothing but red, Danny all but growled out, "What in the hell did you do to me!"
A sardonically narcissistic smirk appeared on Reddik's face. Something in his eyes glistened. "I cured your cancer, Ms. Barton," the doctor replied smugly. "Child, if anything, you should be thanking me!"
Danny bore daggers into him, feeling her blood boil; growls built up in her chest. In the back of her mind, she felt different. Throughout all the testing and the therapy – the most torturous days – Danny had felt a change. She always figured it just to be the drugs. Danny had passed out so many times from the pain of her doctor's supposed cancer treatments that she wasn't sure if everything she remembered was true.
After all, doctors were supposed to help their patients, right?
Finally, Danny spoke to him again, emotion clear in her words. "I would rather have six months left in my life than... than…" She trailed off from the eminent threat that danced behind her lips. What the hell is wrong with me?
An initial shock rang through Danny's entire body as a new voice came from the recesses of her mind: Kill him. A new, dark voice in her head, it was. Kill him, it kept chanting.
Anger rolled past the lingering confusion. Danny's mind worked faster than it ever had; drawing conclusions to problems she's never had to factor. All other feelings, notions, and emotions ran dry and desolate as the anger built up inside the very pit of her stomach.
Rage continued to grow in her heart as Reddik howled in laughter, realizing what was becoming of her. Danny watched his movements as she felt sweat begin to trail down her neck. In the back of her mind, she indulged herself in thinking of ways to get rid of his body and — I need to stop.
From the tests the mad man had run earlier on in the week, her body was teetering on the edge of exhaustion. After months of radiation therapy and blood tests and off-the-record experiments, Danny was surprised she hadn't dropped dead already. The latest of the countless treatments — as the unjust doctor had called them; nearly drowning her alive in a tank of radioactive gamma residue — had nearly done her in.
The nightmare didn't stop there, as she was moved into a... She didn't even know what to call it. All Danny remembered were the needles and the nearly endless pain. "Your cancerous cells are depleting," Reddik had told her once. "Your body will start to regenerate; you'll be cured in no time."
Kill him. All she felt was anger; an urge she was unable to bury. All that continued to cloud her mind were two words: Kill him. Danny ground her teeth together to the point that it hurt; the sharpness of the pain dissipated when she snarled.
Reddik suddenly froze stiff, fear clearly written across his features. "Oh, come on, child," the doctor challenged. "I saved your life. I made you. You can't possibly kill me." Her eyes locked on his dull ones as he reached for some sort of weapon in a nearby desk drawer. The realization that Danny wasn't going to listen to his words appeared to dawn on him.
One step forward; one shot broke through the tense silence. Reddik had shot at Danny — and completely, utterly failed. Another threatening growl escaped her lips. He said something about her making a mistake, that he was her maker. Danny crept closer to his figure now pressed against the far wall.
"There have been no mistakes, doctor. You must reap what you sow." Those words escaped her lips without hesitation. Internally, Danny felt as if her mind wasn't just her own; that it was shared with something else. Everything felt fuzzy and her head was pounding, but rage continued growing in her chest.
Claws, much resembling thin daggers, broke though the epidermis of the backs of Danny's hands; four to count. The crimson red of her blood dripped to the stark white tiles. She halted her steps, gazing at the claws made of hard bone and an alien metal that rounded off to a sharp point. They reminded her of that Wolverine, to an extent. Danny began to wonder if—
A clank echoed in the laboratory and grabbed at her attention. Wide eyes first searched and then darted to the corner nearest the door. His lab coat billowed from movement as Reddik squeezed behind a bookcase for cover. Yet another blood-curdling sound flitted freely past Danny's lips; however, it was not a growl or a snarl, or anything in between. She had laughed a laugh that was not hers; a laugh that was frightening, menacing — bone-chilling, even.
It was then that Danny blacked out.
The next thing she remembered was running. Somehow, she felt no fatigue, no pain. Danny no longer felt the crushing rage that had consumed her, didn't feel the weird presence in her mind anymore.
A car passed by, its bright headlights pulling her out of a daze. Danny stopped for a split second before following it towards the concrete jungle.
The facility she was staying at for her treatments was a good few miles from the edge of New York. She was huffing, her breath condensing in the air around her. Danny didn't know where she was heading; to whom she was going; why she even kept going. She just kept carrying on.
A quarter mile into the heart of the New York City, she slowed. Honking cars, running engines, broken roads; crowds of residents and tourists, laughter and shouts and crying; the bright lights, the continuous murmurs of voices... Add it all up, and one gets a migraine. It all was a grand change of scene from her home state of Iowa.
Danny absentmindedly walked along the busy sidewalks for a couple blocks. Her mind was thinking of fifty things at once, and normally it would give her a headache, but for once the thoughts didn't. It was like she was having a disassociation from her own mind. And to think that today was supposed to be the day that would have changed her life for the better. Cancer treatment was all it was, not some happy-go-lucky experimentation getaway to get turned into a... whatever the hell that thing was.
"Watch it," someone hissed when she bumped into them.
Danny didn't pay attention. Her thoughts were scrambling around one epiphany: I need to find someone. Someone who knew how to help, and knew what it was like to feel as if the world was backing you up against the wall. The problem was that she didn't know where to start. Danny held her head as more bystanders pushed past, each going different directions.
To say that Danny's had a rather traumatic life was an understatement. When she was five-years-old, her parents had been in a fatal car crash. She and her older brothers were sent into the foster care system; they fought hard to stay together. It took only a year before Clint and Barney, thirteen and sixteen at the time, decided to run away and took Danny with them.
She remembered three good years of living at some circus with her brothers taking care of her, until they lost her again to the system. From age eight to twelve, she was fostered by a wonderful young woman named Pepper Potts before she started working at some fancy tech company.
Danny vaguely remembered bouncing around in foster homes and schools after that. She was sixteen years old when she was diagnosed with cancer, and when The Workshop approached her foster family with treatments, she was all but thrown through the gates of Hell.
The young woman's train of thought was cut short when someone rudely shoved Danny off to the side and out of her way, causing her to trip over herself and fall into the thick dirt in the mouth of an alley. It was quiet there. Except for the city sounds that continuously rebounded from the walls. Danny ran a delicate hand through her hair.
That was when the feeling came back – the feeling, the instinct to kill. Danny felt her hazel-grey eyes burn, and the small puddles of liquid in front of her glowed as her irises turned a sharply bright green. Those same eyes tracked the steps of the companion as Danny mounted her feet, the retractable claws itching to come out from the backs of her hands.
Twenty minutes later, Danny found herself sitting on a discarded crate in the same alley; her expression passive; her eyes staring blankly down at her bloodied hands. Her arms started shaking involuntarily, and soon so did the rest of her body. She tried her best to ignore the corpse at the back end of the narrow street-end.
Apart from what just transpired, Danny's mind was beginning to piece together the situation from mere hours before.
Was it a nightmare? The monster that was born from the recesses of Danny Barton's mind — it had taken full control. She just... Danny was forced into the backseat of her mind and watched as she sought out the crazy, manic scientist like a predator would its prey.
Danny could remember watching as she ripped Dr. Reddik to shreds, watching the blood as his screams continued not to reach her. The doctor was directly on Death's doorstep when he had the chance to shoot Danny at point-blank; the bullet just grazed her shoulder by an inch or two. Her muscle and skin regenerated within heartbeats, emitting disgusting sounds as it did so.
Dr. Reddik's hoarse and cynical chuckle made Danny curious. His voice was like gravel as he spoke to her. "You have no idea what you're capable of, Barton," Reddik said, laughing the while. "You're the world's next nuclear warhead."
True hatred had made Danny glare at his nearly lifeless form. Another rush of white-hot rage had washed over her. With a swipe of a precise hand, bare shoulders stared at her. A thump resounded in the newly empty and quiet room. Blood had stained the girl's clothing. Something warm and wet had sprayed on her face, and the worst Danny feared was answered: More blood — his blood.
It was then that she came to her senses. Wide eyes stared at the mess of muscle and bone where Reddik's head used to be. Danny's hands flew to her mouth, smothering a scream as she regained control of her person. The claws had retracted; already-healing scars the only evidence of them ever being there. Danny was near tears as she forcefully shoved the door open with a strength she never had. Loud sirens and warning calls flooded her hearing.
She ran. Danny bolted out of there like a flash, dodging and knocking over the guards running towards the laboratory's direction. In the back of her mind, Danny felt pretty sure that an nineteen-year-old wasn't physically able to run at such a speed, or bring down fully-grown men.
Quickly finding a back stairwell, Danny made haste to get to ground level.
With great fervor, she ran.