"Hey are you okay?" A young boy frowned down at her.
"Y-yeah. My knee hurts though." She looked down at her knee. It was scraped and bleeding.
"You'll be okay. At least it's not broken!" He smiled at her and lifted her bike. She tried to smile but it waivered and soon a few tears escaped.
"Don't cry. You've only got a scrape!" He reached out his hand to her. "My name is…"
A young woman jolted awake with a startled shout. Her surroundings were unfamiliar. The walls were bare with a long window to one side of it. There were monitors all around her, and there was a steady hum in the background. She panicked, unsure of where she was, and tried to get out of bed. She held her ribs as she felt a sharp pain searing up her left side. A nurse looked scared as she noticed the young women had awoken, and grabbed a needle. She ran over, intending to hold her down. The scared woman raised her arms ready to push the nurse away, but there was a moment of blackness in her vision. Suddenly wires were torn out of her flesh, and the nurse flew across the room, hitting a chair with a sickening crack as she fell. With no hesitation, flux tore out the last of the wires from her arms and tried to run. The pain in her ribs once again shocked its way through her entire body and she found her legs giving away as she fell towards the floor.
Within moments there were several men at the door, large guns pointed at her as she tried to sit up.
"Where am I?" She yelled at them. She coughed and blood dripped from her lips. She licked them tentatively, tasting the metallic bitterness, confirming that she was bleeding internally, before raising a hand to wipe away the blood. She was beyond fear now. Her body was shaking from adrenaline, pain, and whatever had been in the intravenous therapy she seemed to have been on.
"Settle down Flux. You should be resting. I am surprised that you are awake already." A gray haired man grimaced at her. His eyes were slanted and yellow in colour, and his skin had a translucent gray quality. He was almost alien in feature, and yet was fully humanoid in shape and size.
"What are you talking about?" She panted and closed her eyes as her vision became bleary. "Where am I?" She repeated again.
The man pursed his lips and his brow furrowed together; he looked confused. "Please don't be afraid. It seems you may have forgotten what's happened. If you would allow us to help you, I'll explain your situation." He walked over to the unconscious nurse and took a hold of the needle she had. To Flux the nurse looked dead the moment she landed on the floor. She was confused looking at what happened to the nurse. She never made any contact with her and yet something had thrown her across the room.
Flux eyed the man suspiciously as he neared her, but could do nothing more than pant and hold her ribs as she sat on the cold tiled floor painfully.
"I am Dr. Brock. You may call me Doctor though." He kneeled down beside her and gently pushed back her long brown hair to reveal her pale neck. It almost seemed uncharacteristic of him as he had looked so vile moments ago. "This will take the pain away."
Flux eyed the needle; it had the same blue substance that was in the IV she tore out. Having no energy to question or fight back, she closed her eyes and did not flinch as she felt the needle pierce her skin. Within seconds her body had stopped shaking, she felt warmth throughout her body. Her eyes felt heavy, and she could only see the darkened silhouettes of two men coming to lift her up.
Flux panted heavily as she held her rib cage. "You're not so tough you know. I'm just going easy on you!"
A middle-aged man smirked back at her. He was large and tall, his skin was tan and slightly rugged, and his hair dark but tousled from their fight. "Flux, you've gotten too cocky for your own good!"
She landed a punch square on his jaw before ducking out of the way and rolling to the left. He was weary now; she could see she could take him down. She was about to kick him from the side when suddenly she found herself entranced with a memory. It was of a beam of light hitting her in the chest. In that moment all she could see was white, and the man she was fighting had taken her moment of distraction to land a kick to her thigh, causing her to fall backwards and hit her head. The light in her vision had disappeared and she closed her eyes to shades of black.
Flux's eyes fluttered as she tossed her head side to side.
"We'll have to modify her chip. It seems as though the program reset itself- wait…"
"Yeah, you can bring him in."
When Flux awoke, she could feel herself being held down. Panic began to build again, but she looked around, and realized that her surroundings were more familiar to her. It was the same room as earlier, but there were two men at the door, their uniforms were tight and black, she had seen them before. The weight on her body was nothing but straps that held her from moving, and she calmed down slightly, realizing it was probably because of how she had awoken the previous time.
Her thoughts strayed to the nurse for a moment, and she suddenly felt guilty.
"You woke up confused before. Do you know where you are now, Flux?" She saw a man approaching her. It was the man from her dream. This time he was clean, his hair pushed back neatly. She looked at his face closely. He was handsome no doubt.
She searched his face for a moment, trying to bring to thought any memory of him other than the fight, when a name appeared despite her foggy memory. "Shade?"
He smiled and rested a hand on her shoulder. "That's right, partner." He stared at her for a few moments. "The Doc. thinks you have temporary amnesia from hitting your head. You'll be fine though. I'm sure you'll regain your memory soon enough. Hopefully quickly, we need to continue our training."
She looked away and tried to think of how she may have hit her head.
Sensing her confusion he answered, "We were training. I broke your femur and you ended up hitting the ground really hard. Sorry about that. Looks like you're recovering well though. That blue stuff really works." He gave her a grin.
She stared at the unlit cigarette that played at the edge of his lips. Her dream really happened; she could vaguely remember the same cigarette in his lips throughout the entire fight. She furrowed her brow together. "Could you undue the straps? I am not planning on taking off anywhere, at least not until I feel better."
He grinned. "Now why would you do a stupid thing like that? There's nowhere to go." Shade slowly began to take off the straps that held her down, and when he undid the last one, she took in a large breath of air before exhaling slowly.
"We're in space, aren't we?" More memories began to flood back.
"Yeah, we are. Everything will make sense soon though. Just relax for now." He bent forward and gave her a kiss on the forehead. "See you around."
Flux could only lay with an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach when he kissed her. It did not feel right. She closed her eyes trying to shut out all thoughts, blaming her memory loss for her worry, but her mind travelled back to the white light she had imagined hitting her chest.
'It was probably from when I hit my head…' She thought, concluding the delusion was nothing more than the byproduct of her head trauma.
A/N: Friendly criticism and reviews are welcome. I can take a tough review on how to effectively fix and improve on my writing, because as an aspiring writer I need all the help I can get.
Thank you to any and all followers and reviewers!
Disclaimer: The Marvel characters, names, words, worlds, and other associated things with Marvel used in this story are not owned by me. My fictional characters are not a part of Marvel. This story is purely fictional and is not in any way affiliated with the Marvel comics. It is a story that is fictional and written solely for entertainment, not money, and nothing more.
