Chapter 2: The Horrors of Home

Kara was back in Toronto. She would've clarified York, a suburb of Toronto. But it'd been a part of the city proper since 1998, when all the inner suburbs were merged into the old City of Toronto. York was just east of Etobicoke, another inner suburb merged into Toronto in 1998. Etobicoke was the suburb she lived in with her mom before and after joining the Canadian superhero team Beta Flight, the feeder team for Alpha Flight. She'd heard one of Etobicoke's city councillors was crack dealing when she was a kid, allegedly. She didn't have time to pay attention to the crack scene when she was a teen, however, with all her heroics.

Many landlords were deeply suspicious of Kara Killgrave, the supposed super-villain. But, willing to pay the right amount of exorbitant rent for a newly built unit and with restrictive conditions, she was able to procure a midrise apartment unit in a York neighbourhood several blocks from the Toronto Transit Commission's subway's Line 1 (Yonge–University).

The violet skinned woman strolled down a mixed-use street and stopped at a pet shop. She entered the street facing front door, generating a jingle from the door shop bell. She looked at some of the pets and her eyes transfixed on a green eyed, black-and-white cat.

She spoke to the clerk.

"Hi, ma'am, I'd like to buy this cat. How much?"

The late twenty-something clerk stared nervously at Kara.

"Is that something you really have to ask?"

"What?"

"Like, is it even going to be voluntary? Can't you just walk out with it? With your commands?"

"Listen, ma'm, I'd like you to … uh … *voluntarily* just check out this cat. Is that doable?"

Kara's voice was sighing and her face was straining with annoyance.

"Um … sure."

Our purple ex-con walked out of that incredibly awkward customer service interaction with a cat. She'd call him Mr. Wigglesworth. She needed something else around the place, after all, for the lonely years ahead.

Kara strolled back to her new apartment. Got out the cat food and water, set up the scratching post and litter box. She had set her collection of Mint condition Canadian coins on a shelf next to an assortment of 1980s and 1990s punk records.

She looked out at the bustling street and sighed. She didn't want to do anything.

She caught up on some news. She saw pictures of Jean-Paul and Kyle. They looked so … content. So … happy.

She petted Mr. Wigglesworth on the belly, got some great purring for that. For much of the evening, she had classic Nirvana hits playing. At 11:00 PM she went to bed. Time in bed with her thoughts were not pleasant.

She saw it in her dreams. Her time at Neverland.

"Oh gawd, no. WHHHYYYY?!"

Kara remembers being in the camp. She was deemed one of the "useful" ones. She would survive for experimentation. She had no idea where Laura and Goblyn were, but every day she hoped they were okay. She was close friends with the two from her Beta Flight days, they were basically family.

She vividly pictures the squalid conditions, the cramped quarters, and the dead-eyed lineups of prisoners awaiting meagre rations. She could see the bones of Neverland inmates, including herself, from time to time.

"Move along, purple mutie" one of the guards shouted at her.

"Actually, we have other plans for this one."

A bald, middle aged man in a lab coat issued this statement. He had brown hair, was short and stout, with a wrinkled face and an incredibly bushy moustache.

"Of course, Dr. Windsor. Whatever you say."

Two assistants escorted her to a launch pad and into the helicopter. There were two other mutants in there. The chopper took flight over the boreal forest.

"Forty minutes until destinati – woah!"

Suddenly, blasts took the copter down. Kara was left unconscious in the crash. She woke up 20 minutes later. A powerful mutant must have been trying to liberate the copter, but that went severely awry.

Kara spent a dozen days trudging through the brush before crossing into a highway. There, she slowly deciphered where she was and found her way back to Etobicoke.

Arriving back at the apartment, she pounded on her mother's door. Melanie opened it.

"Kara! You're back! Where have you been?"

"Mom, where's Goblyn?! Where's Laura?!"

"No idea – they disappeared the same day you did."

"We have to find them! Now!"

The Purple Girl … nay, now closer to woman, spent weeks and weeks of 15-hour days tracking down any lead on Goblyn and Laura. All attempts to contact Alpha Flight members failed. None were available or traceable at the time.

Eventually, she learned of X-Man Beast's expeditions to the defunct Neverland site. That is when she learned about it.

"What, Dr. McCoy?! You can't be serious! No … not them! It shouldn't have been them. It shoulda been me!"

Kara would cry and scream for forty minutes thereafter. She couldn't stop thinking of those innocent, pure, friends of hers gone for good. Why couldn't it have been her? Why? Them? Why?

When she found out Madison Jeffries, an effective father to her during the Alpha Flight years, was involved in building the facility she couldn't take it. She was nauseous and vomited.

He was brainwashed? Why didn't he resist harder? Why wasn't his will more resolute, stronger? Inexcusable!

She stopped talking to her mom after that. That woman had done nothing to stop this. She couldn't trust her. She couldn't trust anyone, particularly anyone in a position of power.

Every time she left her small apartment in Etobicoke, where she was staying at the time, it was impossible to avoid crowds. To see people on the street, going about their daily businesses, willfully oblivious of all the horrors. They were responsible, too. They let this happen. And they would let it happen all over again. It made her stomach churn thinking about it, day in and out.

It was around this time that retired federal civil servant Gary Cody was entering the news as a political player. Cody was a bureaucrat with Department H, which oversaw the Alpha Flight team back in the day. He was apparently no longer content to work behind the scenes, but wanted to be a Member of Parliament, nay, a Prime Minister. This new Unity Party he was leader of talked a big game. But it sounded so dishonest, so suspicious, and so full of BS. This guy must have a hidden agenda.

But everyone on the street, in the pubs, and on the TV was absolutely lapping this stuff up. These wilful idiots, the lot of them. Again. none of these folks could be trusted to do what's right for them, to see the truth, and to stop horrors before they came to be reality.

There was one person who did seem aware of all the horrors beneath the surface, though. A soldier who suffered experimentation, who had an adamantium exoskeleton, named Citadel.

He knew there were secrets. He knew someone was behind Cody. But he didn't have proof. They needed to get that. The mainframe. That is where they'd get the proof.

They devised a plan. Citadel would cause a distraction at La Grande Dam. Kara Killgrave would acquire the mainframe, filled with evidence of the Unity Party's nefarious plans, from CanAm headquarters in Montreal.

It was all going so smoothly. Until Alpha Flight, until Northstar, Guardian, and Snowbird, ruined everything. Snowbird knocked her out. She was caught and neutralized by Department H. Later, the Unity procedure was performed on her. It was a very painful, digit-reducing form of brainwashing.

The Unity Party, a pawn of the Master of the World, formed government. In the end, they would brainwash innumerable people, imprison political enemies, and plunge the nation into chaos during the Serpents War. Soon enough, Alpha Flight itself would be deemed an enemy of the Unity government and Kara would be part of a brainwashed team assembled to get them.

Northstar sped by the compound a few days before Kara suffered through the Unity procedure. He was looking for his sister. Even though KARA WAS RIGHT, he still refused to free her! She warned them what the Unity Party was up to, could have averted catastrophe, and yet still got no respect and no help from Jean-Paul. He was smug and self-righteous about her extreme methods. Given his past, it was sure as hell rich to hear Northstar condemning extreme methods! Because of his gross inaction, she had to endure the Unity procedure.

Alpha Flight later captured Kara, after she was sent to defeat them in her brainwashed state. They unceremoniously plugged her into their own machine, meant to cure people of the Unity brainwashing. She was used as a spare part, a battery and a piece for this machine. After her deprogramming, she received no thanks for her foresight or essential, if involuntary, role in undoing the Unity brainwashing. She was instead charged with multiple felonies and sent away.

Alpha Flight failed to act. Authorities failed to act. Everyone failed to act. She had to act, she had to make them act.

MEOW!

Suddenly, Kara was awakened from her state of semi-sleep. Mr. Wigglesworth was making a noise. Was something amiss?

A man in black tactical gear charged into the bedroom. He was wearing a gas mask and started firing bullets from a pistol. Kara ducked immediately and then tackled him by the torso. They were locked in struggle, but the intruder grabbed a taser and started to electrocute Kara at the side of the stomach. She was losing the momentum and the man managed to push her out of the window, where she fell four stories onto the sidewalk – cratering it.

From the fourth story, the assailant spoke into his radio.

"Mutant A4351 neutralized. Moving onto to mutant Z4591's associate."

Blood started to spill over the sidewalk. Kara faded out of consciousness.

"Urggghhhhh"