AN: Hey guys! Sorry about the short delay in updating. My sister had a small cancer scare a few days ago, so I've been spending extra time with her. anywho, enjoy the chapter! (:

ELIZA

Sterile rooms.

Needles.

Tubes.

Drills.

Blood.

These are the images that float through my mind during this tortured drug-induced sleep. I try to force myself to wake up, but I can't. It's like being trapped in a giant, black, shadow-filled bubble. The memories from the lab are like pictures, framed and hung on the bubble. Everywhere I look, a new picture appears. The ground. The ceiling. Everywhere. Absolutely everywhere.

Even when I close my eyes. They're still there.

The memories.

Unforgettable relics of my past.

"Eliza."

A voice. Not mine. It echoes through my bubble.

"Wake up."

Waking up. I like the sound of that.

My bubble begins to vibrate uncontrollably, the framed memories shattering into thin air. Suddenly, my bubble pops.

"What the..?" I jerk out of my disturbing dream.

Reality pours back into my consciousness. It appears to be nighttime. I'm still in the hospital room. Alex is standing in front of me holding my backpack. Sigh. That's a lot like what Bess did before she tried to...

"Why do you have my backpack?" I ask warily, slowly sitting up as the world stops spinning. "And what's up with the outfit?"

"Sara has unleashed her inner genius," Alex starts. She launches into a story about how Sara apparently helped steal this Tesseract thingy. The story ends with her declaring we need to run away. "Oh, and the outfit was a gift from Tony."

"Last time I heard somebody say we needed to run away, she ended up dying," I mumble. Alex obviously didn't hear me. She's too busy ripping various IVs and heart rate monitors off my body. Suddenly, she pauses.

"Please tell me none of that was keeping you alive."

I look down at myself silently. After a few seconds, I look up and say, "Nope. All good."

"Why are they even keeping you here then?" Alex asks as she rummages through my backpack and hands me some clothes.

"Bruce is paranoid," I declare, going under the covers of the hospital bed to change into a sleeveless black SHIELD jumpsuit. "I'm not even sore anymore!" I emerge from the covers and strap on the black boots Alex drops in my lap. "My stitches have dissolved - " Alex shoots me a knowing look, which I return with a scowl, "for the most part... and my hands aren't murdering me!"

"Still good enough for me," Alex decides as I grab my backpack, hop off the hospital bed, and walk towards the door.

"Woah there!" she grabs my hand as I move to turn the doorknob.

"What?" I ask, shaking off her hand. "Aren't we leaving?"

"Yeah... But we can't go that way. Too many guards."

"Then what are we supposed to do?"

Alex glances at the window, and I get the message. "You can't be serious."

She nods, then walks over to it and starts sending pulses of electricity to disable whatever electric security locks SHIELD probably has on it. Once she's satisfied, she opens the window and motions for me to follow her. I reluctantly walk over and look at the ground through the open window. "We're 2 stories up!" I exclaim in fear.

Alex says nothing as the bottom half of her body turns into bolts of pure electricity. In the blink of an eye - literally - she's standing in the grass outside and staring expectantly at me, who is holding onto the windowsill with a white-knuckled grip. "You've seriously never jumped from this height before as a tiger?" Alex whisper-shouts.

"I have," I shakily reply, "but that was before some mad scientists thought it was a good idea to play around with my genetic makeup."

"Just jump already!" her impatience is growing.

I sigh in defeat, then will my body to take on its other form. My bones make unnatural popping sounds as they shift into those of a large cat's. Before I know it, I'm staring down at my large black-and-white tiger paws. I momentarily cringe, forgetting that the government goons had completely ruined my fur until now. Deciding now is probably not the greatest time to be worrying about my appearance, I place my front paws on the windowsill and am greeted by Alex's shocked face from 2 stories below.

"You look totally - "

"Different. I know," I finish Alex's sentence with the best eye roll I can muster as a tiger.

"Are you coming, or not?" Alex starts pacing.

"I'll be right down."

I take a deep breath, focusing on where I'll land, then bunch up my hind legs. The sheer power and adrenaline that comes with being a tiger courses through me, and I suddenly feel like myself again.

I am the human tiger.

King - er, queen - of the wild.

Screw lions.

I jump down from the window with ease, then trot over to Alex. "Now what?" I ask.

Alex grins devilishly. "We're gonna steal a car."