A/N: This chapter, focuses entierly on The Experiments as they learn what Redfern was able to discover about their DNA. Phoenix doesn't make an appearence in this chapter, but she will return in the next chapter, as will CRU. However, let's talk about this chapter and the tensions building between The Experiments in the wake of Phoenix going missing. Rather than me telling you, just read the chapter and find out for yourselves, and don't forget to read, review and enjoy.
Heather loved photography. This love had developed into a habit of taking constant photographs. She wasn't exactly living the Andy Warhol dream by taking pictures with her iPhone, but Heather was addicted to using the ever-changing magic of filters.
Heather flicked through the photos on her phone with a ghostly smile. To her, they were pieces of her memory, even if they were pointless things like a plate of Chinese food, they all meant something. She was grossly sentimental like that.
She lingered on the photographs of Phoenix.
Heather came across a photo from six months ago that brought an even brighter smile to her face. It was taken when The Experiments had stayed in Manhattan for the week of Christmas. The photo showed the six of them posed in front of the giant Christmas tree at the Rockefeller Centre.
It was Heather's favourite picture. Looking at the picture, you couldn't tell that they were a group of Superhumans. They looked like nothing more than a group of high school friends, posing for a stupid picture. They looked like a normal group of teenagers for the first time in their lives.
The sliding door to their hotel room balcony opened abruptly, causing Heather to jump in surprise. She held her phone close to her chest as she stared up at Wanda. The other girl saw Heather holding her phone protectively and nearly backed away.
However instead, she sat down across from Heather at the small glass table. "Are you alright?" Wanda asked cautiously. "You've been avoiding the rest of your team for most of the day."
Heather sighed and placed her elbow on the table, leaning her head on top of her hand. "I can't stand the amount of hatred radiating off them," Heather confessed. "Josh is ok but…Bella, Sam and Mark haven't said a single word to me since yesterday. Every time they look at me, there's malice in their eyes."
"They don't hate you," Wanda tried reassuring her.
"No. They hate what I've done," Heather corrected her. "They think that I made the wrong decision."
"Do you think you made the wrong decision?" Wanda inquired.
"Yeah," Heather responded, her voice crestfallen. "I don't know what I was thinking. We rely on Phoenix so much, we expect her to do everything. Sometimes I think we forget that she's just a human being. God, CRU could be doing anything to her right now."
"Phoenix is strong, I'm sure she can handle herself. She seems stable enough," Wanda attempted to reassure her.
Heather scoffed. "You don't know anything about Phoenix do you?" Heather criticised darkly.
"I know her history within Hydra," Wanda stated. "Hydra made experiments of us both, and I know firsthand what it feels like to suffer at the hands of men like Doctor Blake."
At the mention of his name, Heather slammed a hand against the table. "You don't even know the half of what she suffered," Heather hissed. "For ten years she was locked in an underground facility and tortured by Doctor Blake, because of that, she is suicidal, self-destructive and has a barrage of metal disorders. Don't compare yourself to her."
Wanda kept her silence as Heather slumped back in her chair. In a fit of anger, Heather kicked the table and knocked a glass to the floor, shattering it to pieces. Wanda flinched at the sound, and her hands moved of their own accord, red energy lifting the shards of glass off the ground and flinging them at the wall opposite to where the girls were sitting.
"You can't control it," Heather whispered in realisation as Wanda clutched her own hands to her chest. "You were given full access to your powers all at once, and you never had time to develop them or learn to control them like we did. Your powers are unstable."
Wanda lowered a trembling hand and avoided Heather's eyes. "It's difficult," Wanda confessed. "Mostly I can contain it, but sometimes, it is a struggle."
Heather shifted in her seat and leaned over the glass table, eyeing Wanda carefully. "We share an ability. Telekinesis, moving objects with our minds. It didn't take me that long to obtain control over it," Heather argued, before she came to a realisation. "But you have more abilities than our entire team combined."
"Telekinesis, neuro-electric interfacing, mental manipulation, psionic energy, telepathy. The list goes on," Wanda explained. "It's too much power for one person to have."
"Telepathy," Heather repeated what Wanda had said in a distant voice as her mind started swimming.
Before she could even begin to ask her any questions, the sliding door was yanked open with a strong force. Josh leaned through the opening, his eyes searching for Heather as he wore a panicked expression on his face. Immediately, seeing his worry, Heater leapt to her feet.
"Sam and Mark," he announced. "They're fighting. Again."
Heather groaned loudly just as the sounds of shouting and banging reached their ears. Heather ran into the hotel room and was faced with a chaotic scene. Mark and Sam were inches apart from each other's faces, the veins in their neck reaching breaking point as they screamed at each other. Bella was trying desperately to pull Mark backwards by tugging on his shoulders, but he continued fighting against her in an attempt to land a punch to Sam's face.
It wasn't hard to guess what they were arguing about.
"YOU DONT CARE ABOUT HER AT ALL!" Mark screeched in accusation. "THEY COULD BE TORTURING HER RIGHT NOW!"
"AND WHO'S FAULT IS THAT?" Sam demanded, shoving Mark backwards and placing a metre of distance between them. Mark pushed back immediately, and closed the gap between them by throwing himself at Sam's, thrashing his arms wildly.
"YOUR FAULT. ITS YOUR FAULT!" Mark howled in answer, becoming increasingly more hysterical, spit flying from his mouth as he screamed.
"NO ITS YOUR FAULT!" Sam thundered.
"STOP!" Heather cried, attempting to force herself between the two boys and push them apart.
Mark fought against both forces pushing him back, he lunged past Heather, almost throwing her backwards as he tried clawing at Sam's face. Bella changed positions, and tried pulling Mark away by grabbing his right arm. Driven by a blind rage, Mark swatted at Bella with his arm, hard.
The strong force of Mark's hit was enough to knock Bella backwards, and her head connected with the side of the end table next to the bed, before she fell to the ground. Their fight came to a standstill, as Sam immediately moved to Bella's side to check that she was alright.
Mark's shock at what he had just done kept him rooted to the spot, allowing Heather the opportunity to put him in an arm lock and press him up against the wall face first.
"This ends now," Heather announced coldly, addressing everyone in the room, in particular Mark. With Mark secured, Heather turned her head to Bella, who was now stirring as Sam helped her to sit up. "Are you ok?"
A deep gash ran down the side of her face, from a space just above her right eyebrow and running down her cheek, stopping just before her ear. Blood was dripping from the wound, but thankfully, it wasn't flowing at an alarming rate. The deep red colour of the blood contrasted harshly against Bella's unmarked porcelain skin.
"I'm fine," Bella responded, fixing Mark and Heather with an acidic glare.
"Sorry Bell," Sam murmured an apology as he inspected the gash on the side of her head. "Things got out of hand."
"It's not your fault," Bella reassured him, squeezing his arm comfortingly while she shot Mark a murderous glare. "You're not the one who stopped caring about everyone else because they're too emotionally invested in their obsession."
Bella's comment struck Mark in a low place and she knew it. Mark turned away from Bella's icy stare and looked down in shame. With blood now starting to drip faster from the gash, Sam hurriedly retrieved the First Aid kit and handed it to Josh, who began meticulously treating Bella's wound.
Satisfied that Mark had cooled down, Heather released him from her arm lock, allowing him to slink away to the bed in the far corner of the room, where he sat quietly with his hands in his lap. The silence was long and heavy as Heather stood in the centre of the room with her arms folded, watching as Josh quietly wrapped a bandage around Bella's head.
The silence shattered as Phoenix's burner phone, sitting on top of the desk in the corner of their room, started ringing loudly. Heather froze for about a second, before she was able to process what was happening and ran for the phone. As she picked it up, she furiously mashed the accept call button.
"Hello?" a woman's voice asked cautiously on the other end of the line. "This is Amanda Redfern, who am I speaking to?"
"This is Heather, I'm one of the Superhumans you met two days ago," Heather informed her, resisting the urge to bite her own tongue in disgust as the word Superhuman left her mouth. At the urging look of her fellow team members, Heather placed the phone on speaker and placed it on the desk in front of her.
"It's imperative that I speak to Phoenix, I have the results from the tests she requested," Redfern announced, her voice harsh and cracked through the mobile phone's speakers.
Heather looked between her team members before sighing loudly. "Phoenix isn't here," Heather decided to come out with the truth rather than coming up with a lie. "She was kidnapped by the group of people that were after us at the military base."
There was a dead silence on the other end of the line before Redfern spoke in a low tone. "You'd better meet me at my apartment. Grab a pen so you can take down the address."
After inputting Redfern's address into Google Maps, The Experiments were easily able to figure out the best way to get there. However, they were unable to come to a decision on their method of getting there. Since Bella, the only one capable of driving, had a head injury, an argument ensured.
Josh refused to let Bella put her hands anywhere near the car keys for fear of a concussion, despite Bella's best effort to insist that she didn't have a concussion. Bella managed to convince most of the group that she was ok, but Josh refused to give up his ground until Bella walked for twenty meters in a straight line down the hallway outside their hotel room.
Due to this delay, it took them longer than they liked to reach Dr Redfern's apartment, and upon their arrival, Redfern expressed how she felt about their lack of punctuality. "What did you stop for a Starbucks or something?" She demanded as she opened her front door to let them in.
"We ran into a small issue," Bella answered with a snide remark.
Seeing the bandage on her head, Redfern scoffed. "Are you sure, because it looks more like you ran into a wall."
Dr Amanda Redfern's apartment opened onto a hallway that greated them with brown carpet and cream coloured walls. On their left as they walked in was a kitchenette, across from it, a door that looked like it might've led into a small cupboard or a laundry. Further down the hallway, there was an open space living area.
Dr Redfern gathered them around the dinning table in the living area, where an expensive laptop was set up in the centre of the table, looking out of place amidst the simplicity of the apartment. As she loaded something onto her laptop, Redfern cast Wanda a weary glance.
"Do you want your friend here for this?" Redfern questioned. "Phoenix left her outside of the room last time if I remember correctly. And if I'm being honest, I don't trust The Avengers."
Heather looked to her team for support, but Wanda answered the question for her before she even had a chance to hear The Experiments' opinions. "I'll keep watch outside," she offered, before walking out of the apartment and closing the door quietly behind her.
Redfern watched her leave with a wary eye, and the second she heard the door being closed, she turned to the teenagers. "I have results, but…" she trailed off in the middle of speaking and shook her head. "I'm not sure where to start."
"Start from the beginning," Heather instructed. "What are we?"
"To apply a technical term, I think Superhuman is most appropriate term to describe you," Redfern answered. "In some sense of the word, you are humans. But at the same time, parts of your DNA have enough irregularity to suggest otherwise. The amount of mutations in your genes is more than I've ever seen in any other living creature to date."
"Is it dangerous?" Josh asked cautiously. "These mutations, are they going to kill us?"
"No, that's what's remarkable about your genetics," Redfern answered, sounding excited as her hand movements grew more exasperated. "Your DNA and your genes have accepted the mutations and they've become integrated into your chromosomes. All six of you, have evolved as a result of whatever serum you were all injected with."
"That's impossible," Sam shook his head. "Evolution on a massive scale like this doesn't just happen because of a serum. It would take thousands of years of biological processes for humans to reach this level. Doctor Blake couldn't have achieved that in one lifetime."
"You're right, it should be impossible," Redfern agreed. "Which brings me to my next point. I found traces in your DNA of what caused the mutations. At first I thought I couldn't analyse it because it was too strongly integrated into your base pairs, but then I realised, that the traces I found, were traces of chemicals that I've never seen before in my 20 years as a biologist."
The room fell quiet as the Experiments took time to process what Redfern was saying. It hit Sam first, he covered his mouth and turned away from the group, unable to look at any of them. Sam's reaction was enough to stir fear within the others, who frantically looked to Dr Redfern for an explanation.
"Alien," Redfern clarified, her excitement dropping off entirely as she became completely serious and delivered the news in a flat tone. "There are elements of your genetics that are completely foreign to all human knowledge. This means, the information I've compiled on your DNA is limited."
"Alien DNA, we have alien DNA?" Mark demanded.
"Not quite, alien in this sense simply means foreign," Redfern explained. "It doesn't mean that you have the DNA of a creature from another planet, it means we don't know where these aspects of your DNA originated from and we don't know their properties."
"So you have no idea what the serum that did this to us is composed of," Heather simplified.
"You didn't let me finish," Redfern held up a finger, obviously keeping more information up her sleeve. "I was able to identify one chemical composition that played a role in your changes. It's easily recognisable in the biologist community, especially for myself, who has spent the last several years researching superhuman abilities."
Once again, Dr Redfern hesitated, waiting to see whether or not The Experiments could come up with the answer themselves. Josh sighed in exasperation, and waved his hands in an effort to prompt Redfern to speak. "Just tell us already," he demanded.
"The Super Soldier serum," Redfern answered. "The formula that created Captain America. That exact serum is a part of your bodies. Over the years, scientists have tried to recreate the serum, and have come close. But the serum used on you, is an exact replica to the one used originally on Captain America."
"How did the Doctor get his hands on the original formula?" Sam questioned. "I thought all information was lost with Erskine and Captain America himself."
"That's what I thought to, but there have always been rumours that Steve Rogers' blood was kept by the S.S.R," Redfern explained. "Among the scientific community, its always been a bit of an urban legend. I guess it was true after all, and whoever designed your serum somehow got their hands on a vial of Captain America's blood."
"Phoenix always said that the Doctor modelled his serum after the Super Soldier Serum," Josh spoke. "I guess she was more right than she thought."
Heather took a minute to sit down on one of the dining chairs at Redfern's dinner table. While she sat, she tried to stabilise her breathing and get a firmer grasp of the situation. Once she felt that her heart rate was back to a normal pace, she once again rose to her feet.
"What else do we need to know about?" Heather questioned her voice hauntingly calm.
"I was hoping you'd ask me, because I found something else while I was examining the original research that you gave me," Redfern answered. "All six of you had MRI scans done, and you all had your emotional responses tested extensively. Were you informed of the emotional patterns that could be seen between all of you?"
"Yeah," Mark answered bitterly. "We've all been diagnosed with a mental disorder, so people have guessed that it's because the serum caused an emotional imbalance in all of us."
"That's one way of putting it," Redfern muttered, before she cleared her throat and spoke clearly. "This serum has enhanced you to the point where all of you are physically perfect. However, at the same time, the serum has broken down your emotional capabilities. Mood swings, recklessness, a higher chance of suffering mental disorders. The ramifications of this fault are serious, and I think you're already suffering because of it."
The Experiments remained quiet, shooting each other guilty looks as Redfern's words brought back certain memories for each of them. Sam's eyes in particular, met with Mark's, and the two of them quickly averted their gazes to their shoes after a brief second of ashamed eye contact.
"I can keep researching with what you've given me," Redfern offered, seeing their crestfallen expressions. "But that summarises everything you need to know."
"A perfect human is someone completely free from faults or defects," Heather stated darkly. "That's what the Doctor was trying to achieve when he gave us his serum. This is what happens when you try and create something with no flaws. It becomes a spectacular fuck-up."
"I could never understand why Phoenix locks away her emotions," Bella reminisced, her voice distant. "Now I know, it's because she's been taught that her emotions are her greatest defect. The one thing stopping her from being the perfect human that the Doctor wanted her to be."
Dr Redfern stepped closer to her laptop, and cleared her throat to draw The Experiments' attention back to her. "How long has it been since Phoenix was captured?" Redfern asked.
"She was taken just after we left your lab," Josh answered, casting Heather a quick look as he did so. "Phoenix got grabbed just before we managed to escape."
"That's almost two days," Redfern stated, shaking her head in disappointment. "She's most likely dead by now."
Horrified gasps echoed around the room as The Experiments reacted to her words. "She's not," Bella argued, refusing to accept a word of what Redfern was saying. "If you knew Phoenix's history, then you would know that the people who captured her aren't going to kill her."
"I didn't come to a conclusion based on Phoenix's history," Redfern looked at Bella as if she was missing out on a joke. "My conclusion, is based on what I've learned from Phoenix's genetics, and most importantly, her behaviour."
"Wha-?" Heather started to question, but was interrupted by Redfern turning her laptop around.
As The Experiments leaned in to look at what Redfern was presenting them with, they saw an image of security footage on the screen. It was of Phoenix, from when they were in Redfern's lab exactly two nights ago. Mark was the first to glance up at Redfern in confusion.
"I'm going to play the security footage for you and I want you all to keep a close eye on Phoenix," Redfern instructed, her hand moving towards the mouse to press play on the video. "Tell me what you see."
The grainy black and white video came alive as Dr Redfern pressed play. On the screen, Phoenix was shown to be watching Dr Redfern at her desk, analysing the information they had given her. Phoenix's focus on Redfern broke, she turned her head to the left. She was looking frantically around her surroundings, her chest rising and falling rapidly, her hand started to shake. Her strange behaviour stopped immediately when Dr Redfern called for her attention.
The video stopped at that point, and The Experiment's eyes travelled upwards from the computer screen to an expectant Dr Redfern. "I don't understand," Sam muttered. "She looked like…she looked like she'd seen something. Something that terrified her."
"I've seen her look like that before, we all have," Heather stated, looking back and forth between her other team members, testing to see if they had recognised it as well. "That's exactly how Phoenix looked when the video of Doctor Blake in the Databank first started playing. Something in the lab triggered a flashback."
"It wasn't something in the lab. It was the lab itself," Redfern corrected her. "You said that Phoenix was changed into a Superhuman by a madman, so she was experimented on wasn't she?" Heather nodded softly, and Redfern sighed. "Experimentations take place in a lab. I can only assume that my lab bares similarities to the lab in which Phoenix was experimented on. Does Phoenix have a problem with enclosed spaces, or white walls and clean workbenches? Has she ever shown discomfort at being in a hospital?"
Sam groaned and covered his face with his hands. "Holy shit," he came to a realisation, gasping quietly. "The science labs at school, Phoenix refuses to go in there under any circumstances. I never even thought anything of it before."
"But she was always spending time in the Research Labs at the Avengers Tower," Josh argued.
"Stark's labs were open space labs, with glass floors and walls, and the workbenches were never clean, they were always stacked high with clutter," Heather pointed out. "But what has any of this got to do with Phoenix most likely being dead?"
"Phoenix quite obviously suffered from PTSD," Dr Redfern pieced together her information "From what you've told me, I assume her PTSD stems from years of being imprisoned and experimented on. You told me that the people who were after you want your abilities. That means if Phoenix has been captured, then she is currently being imprisoned and experimented on."
"Oh god," Bella moaned, a whimper rising in her throat as she covered her mouth with her hands.
"Do you know what PTSD can do to a person?" Redfern questioned, continuing to speak despite Bella's muttering. "If Phoenix was being triggered just from standing in a lab, imagine what she's suffering by being placed in the exact same situation that caused her trauma in the first place."
"I told you!" Bella spat angrily, directing her rage toward Heather who had closed her eyes and was shaking her head. "You decided to abandon her, knowing full well that she has PTSD! Out of all of us, Phoenix is the one who has suffered more than we can even begin to comprehend!"
"I'm sorry," Heather mumbled. "I didn't think…I-I thought that."
Heather couldn't even finish her sentence, and stopped altogether, tears beginning to fall from her eyes. A lump formed in the back of her throat, preventing her from saying anything more. Josh moved to Heather's side and placed an arm around her shoulder, squeezing her close to his chest in an attempt to comfort her.
"I refuse to believe that Phoenix is dead," Sam denied Redfern's claims, tears pooling at the bottom of his eyes.
"Phoenix would be suffering from unrelenting flashbacks as a result of the countless number of triggers surrounding her. The crippling fear and anxiety would take hold. Her memories would run parallel to whatever she's experiencing," Redfern used her words to describe a vivid scenario. "Her heart, wouldn't be able to take the stress. Her entire body will give up, and she will collapse. That is, if she doesn't take her own life first."