18: GIVE YOUR HEART A BREAK
"The beginning? Well, I was born on February 19th -"
"Very cute." Coulson interrupted, wiping the smirk from Maya's face.
A short silence followed as Coulson and Maya sat quietly at the desk in the interrogation room, the bright ceiling lights already making them both start to sweat. In the intense lighting, Coulson saw just how ill Maya looked; her cracked skin and bloodshot eyes were only intensified by straw-like hair and a yellowing complexion.
"…Fancy a glass of water?" Coulson asked, gesturing towards the jug next to him.
"Depends what drugs you've slipped in it to keep me at bay." Maya said.
"What do you take me for? We did all that while you were unconscious. Sorry for that, by the way, but needs must." Coulson said.
"…Well in that case, how can I resist?" Maya sighed. Coulson poured a glass and pushed it closer to her.
"I'm kinda tied up right now." Maya groaned, gesturing towards the cuffs on her hands. Coulson smiled, pulling a straw out of his pocket and placing it in the glass with a satisfied look. Maya glared at him for a moment before taking a sip.
"I'm only here to talk. Not an interrogation, a chat." Coulson said.
"Really, is that why there's clearly someone else watching on the other side of that one-way glass? Even for a top secret organisation, that's such an obvious cliché." Maya teased.
"Dr Garner is observing you with your best interests at heart. You don't look so good, Maya." Coulson observed.
"Wow, its observations like that one that truly show why you're the Director." Maya smirked.
"Maya, I just want to talk. You and me, finally talking this out. 'Open your heart to me, baby'." Coulson smiled.
"Never liked Madonna." Maya groaned.
"You've been hunting people and we've bene hunting you. I'm tired of this game and you must be too. I just want to understand everything, Maya, that's all." Coulson pleaded.
"You're talking to me like I'm a child, or a patient in an asylum." Maya spat.
"I'm talking to you like the strong, powerful woman I first met at that pier months ago. Before I knew what you could transform into. I want to talk to that woman, a woman I respected. I know what happened to your family and how that changed you but I don't understand those changes." Coulson said passionately. Maya stared at him for a moment.
"…What's your mother's name, Phil?" Maya asked.
"I'm sorry?"
"Your mother, what's her name?"
"…Agatha."
"And you two are close?"
"She died a long time ago."
"I'm sorry to hear that." Maya said and nodded to herself.
"Okay, I'll talk." She added, sitting back in her seat.
"…What was all that for?" Coulson asked.
"I was listening to your pulse; making sure you were telling the truth just then. You did. I trust you. Let's talk." Maya smiled slightly.
Coulson shuffled his chair closer into the table.
"Very good then. The beginning." Coulson said.
"You mean the beginning of Rage?" Maya asked.
"It's up to you; the beginnings of some stories are subjective." Coulson said, remembering something Andrew told him years ago.
Maya was silent for a long time as she gathered her thoughts. Coulson saw tears in her eyes and hurt in her face; for the first time since she was captured, the hurt wasn't coming from anything physical.
"…Have you ever been married Coulson? Had kids?" Maya asked.
"No, neither."
"Lucky you. I wish I hadn't either." Maya choked.
"…You…?"
"I know how horrible it sounds. How it must make me seem like a terrible mother, but…never having a husband and never raising a beautiful child is nothing compared to seeing them both die." Maya cried, breaking down slightly. Coulson sat there, giving her all the time she needed to gather herself.
"I imagine you know most of it. I wrote articles and I protested against The Young Gods, the street terrorists haunting my area. In retaliation they shot my husband, Glenn, and kidnapped my boy, Kaiden. Can you picture it, Phil? Opening my front door and seeing the love of my life lying in a pool of blood, his face frozen in a terrified grimace? They don't think he'd even been dead an hour. If I hadn't have worked overtime I'd have gotten home to be with him in his last moments; maybe even get an ambulance to him in time." Maya continued through her agony.
"I couldn't begin to imagine it." Coulson sighed.
"Even then it wasn't over; hours agonising and worrying after I realised Kaiden wasn't home. As soon as the policeman came to my door that evening I lost it; I remember the sound my knees made as they hit the floor. I remember not being able to hear what the guy was saying because I was crying so loud. If I hadn't have arranged protests outside of my house they would never have found out where…y-you know where they found my baby, Phil? By the side of the road, just tossed out; they don't think the car even stopped to put him there. Lying on the side of the road. In the cold. In a black… a black b-bin bag."
Coulson dropped his head at Maya's words.
"…They didn't bother me again after that; they knew I couldn't put up a fight. But I swore on my family's graves that I'd get them. I didn't know how at the time, but I swore I would make them pay. I wanted to make a difference, Phil, I truly did. So I started thinking about how I could do it; I couldn't go back to protesting and writing after everything – I needed a new path. I thought about starting my own company, then it occurred to me to start my own organisation. I would have to raise the funds somehow, of course, but I knew I could do it one day. I wanted to tackle problems like The Young Gods and stop anything like that, stop any people that posed a threat to my home. And what was all over the news at the time? Inhuman attack after Inhuman attack. They became my starting point. An organisation that tackled Inhuman threats somehow, but you see the thing is that I understood what others didn't – so many people seem to forget that there must be, MUST be, Inhumans out there who mean no harm. I needed to consider them too. Then it all fell into place; if there were good Inhumans, they could also be the solution. Use their powers to tackle the bad Inhumans, fight fire with fire. All the other key ideas I had for R.E.S.C.U.E. were formed around that idea." Maya explained.
"And all this was before you went through terrigenesis?" Coulson asked. Maya nodded.
"My plans for R.E.S.C.U.E. were already in place by then, yes. After I had that golden idea, I needed to work on myself. Get past the trauma and the pain and the anger and become a new woman who could sell this organisation and get it funded. I read more, I exercised more, I started eating healthier – including buying vitamins and…fish oil. I try it for the first time, hated it and then all of a sudden my body started seizing up. I was terrified. My skin started to turn to stone and the next thing I knew I couldn't move; I could barely think. I thought I was going to stay that way forever." Maya said.
She took a sip of her water and sat up straight.
"I think it focused on what was driving me, you know, when I changed. It felt my anger and – well, my rage – and used that to create the Inhuman I became. After the rock fell away and I could move again I didn't feel any different, but then I felt itchy all over. Next thing I knew, my skin was turning blue and I became this creature, this thing; I still felt like me yet when I moved and talked it felt like someone else. It's hard to describe the feeling." Maya revealed.
"…and then you found out the identities of The Young Gods?" Coulson asked.
"…Yeah. It started off by accident. I just happened to see a woman in the street; something inside me drew myself to her. I got inside her head and read her thoughts and I realised she was one of them. I followed her all day then that night I changed, chased her into some woods until I caught up with her and killed her, just like that. It was so easy. I know it's disgusting, but it felt good to do it. To see the life leave her eyes like she saw the life leave Glenn and Kaiden's. I looked through her things and found out her name; got home and wrote down everything I remembered. That was the first file on The Young Gods I had. I snuck back into her house and all this information was screaming at me; her emails and phone; it told me all her recent and most used contacts. I used her social media to work out her daily routine and retrace her steps and tracked down the people she interacted with the most. It was when they all met up in one place that I knew I'd found them all. I followed one of them home, a guy – I can't recall his name now – and I chased him into this sort of barn house place. I killed him too. And I'm still glad I did. Once I had their faces imprinted in my memory I found them online and built up files on them too. Except the elusive Grant Ward, of course; I got all that from you." Maya explained.
"You manipulated the information out of us." Coulson said.
"Yes. I did."
"So, you'd gone through terrigenesis and tracked down The Young Gods. When did R.E.S.C.U.E. come into full fruition?" Coulson asked.
"When I jokingly asked the mailman to tidy my house while he was working hard and he actually did – without stopping – I thought something was up. When he spent the next few days mowing my lawn and taking out my trash I realised I must have some kind of psychic, posthypnotic suggestion power going on. That gave me the confidence I needed to take R.E.S.C.U.E. further. With that kind of power, why not go to the most powerful man in the world?" Maya recalled.
"And that's how The President got involved and endorsed you."
"Amazing how a simple power can make guards personally escort you to the President himself. One chat with him and he co-founded and funded the whole organisation, enlisting some of his best men to work for me and R.E.S.C.U.E. We spent a few months creating a brand, recruiting and building offices on the sly, but we did it. When a database was created I transferred the files I had on The Young Gods to it - in an encrypted file in case anyone wanted to leak my past, of course. Then I made one about "Rage" to avoid suspicion; by that point I'd already had private investigators dig into each individual and find out if they had children then convince them to forget they'd ever looked into it. I felt this urge inside of me to take their children from them like they did from me." Maya explained.
"And so you attacked the theatre, the school, the fairground…we'd worked all that out." Coulson said.
"With Rage's attack in the public eye, I made the President 'come to his senses' and 'realise' it was time to publically announce R.E.S.C.U.E. to the world as its new saviour. With the announcement, the Young Gods fled but I tracked all their families down; by that point I had all the information on their daily lives I needed. And the rest is history, especially the part where you outed me and R.E.S.C.U.E. collapsed into oblivion." Maya said angrily.
"Yeah, not too sorry about that part, actually." Coulson said.
"If only you were, Phil." Maya sighed, wincing in pain.
"And what about this? When did this all start?" Coulson said, referring to how ill and dishevelled Maya looked compared to when they first met.
"I don't know what's happening to me, Phil. After a few months I would change then feel a different energy inside of me. I could shoot bolts of electricity or regrow a limb or breathe fire. Then as time went on, with that new surge of energy came a stab of pain; every time I change I feel weaker. Then it started to affect me when I transformed back. I…I don't understand what it is. It feels like death. I just feel drained all the time. I can barely stand for too long these days. And yet people call these kinds of powers 'gifts'." Maya explained, the exhaustion clear in her voice.
Coulson stared at her, concerned.
"Rage used to be bulletproof." Coulson noted.
"Rage used to be stronger, too. I keep gaining this new abilities yet other seem to die out, like a cycle of life and death." Maya said.
"So…regeneration, in a sense?" Coulson suggested.
"…It doesn't sound quite so painful when you put it like that, but all that gets regenerated is a new type of pain." Maya groaned, wincing in pain yet again.
"Your pain medication we injected might be waring off. By the looks of it, you couldn't fight even if you wanted to." Coulson said, concerned. Maya didn't respond, she remained staring at the floor, a glaze over her eyes.
She was barely Maya Anderson anymore.
Suddenly, a voice crackled in Coulson's earpiece. He got up and paced around the room.
"Sir, you need to get to the lab. Now. It's urgent." Jemma stated. Coulson had rarely heard her sound quite so worried…and almost scared.
"I'll be right there." Coulson said, opening the door and turning back.
"I'll get someone to bring you some food. And Maya? I'm truly sorry about your family." Coulson said solemnly.
"Thank you." Maya whispered as Coulson headed out. Andrew followed him out of the room and into a corridor.
"I ran out of paper listing the issues I picked up on during that conversation." Andrew sighed.
Coulson said nothing in response, rushing to the lab as quickly as he could.
…
"What's wrong?" Coulson asked as he rushed into the lab, where Jemma and Fitz nervously stared at him.
"We've been looking at the new blood and DNA samples from Maya. Or Rage. Both of them, anyway." Fitz stated.
"And?"
"Over the past few months, the DNA has broken down in a reaction. As some cells die, cells which carry the genetic code for the abilities Rage loses, new cells regenerate in their place, carrying the genetic code for the new abilities Rage unlocks. That explains why some aspects of Rage are getting weaker despite it gaining new abilities." Jemma explained.
"What does that mean? Why's this so urgent?" Coulson demanded.
"The reaction that causes the DNA to break down and regenerative is radioactive. Meaning Rage and Maya herself is radioactive." Jemma said, and Coulson's face drained of blood.
"We've run a simulation, and the reaction is only getting stronger and stronger, hence Rage and Maya's depleting health. Eventually, inevitably…the radioactive reaction will be so strong that it will ignite all the chemicals in Rage's system." Fitz revealed.
"So that means -" A petrified Jemma began.
"-She's a walking, talking radioactive bomb." Coulson finished, terrified. Jemma and Fitz nodded nervously.
"And it could go off anytime, anywhere." Fitz said.
"Everyone on this plane is in serious danger." Jemma warned.