Brain Vomit

You had not eaten in two days, and the scraps you scavenged from the bottoms of Brooklyn’s dumpsters did little to fill the hunger gnawing at your gut—less painful, somehow, than the gaping, oozing wound hidden beneath your t-shirt. You did not know how much longer you would have to fight rats over food, how much longer you would have to swallow your retching just to bite into a slice of expired pizza.

Ahead of you, an old woman—her basket brimming with fresh produce, enough to make you salivate—grimaced when the greengrocer handed her an apple unlucky enough to be bruised.

With a wave of one hand, he dismissed her concern, tossed the forsaken fruit aside with the other, and offered her another one instead—redder, shinier, smoother.

You watched the damaged apple roll along the sidewalk with dull eyes, then scanned your surroundings before tugging the stolen cap lower over your head.

You did not think. Hunger drowned out reason and morality alike. You slipped a trembling hand from your pocket and closed it around the fruit without hesitation. Your dirty nails bit into the still-crisp flesh, and you savoured the sensation, already imagining your teeth doing the same.

The pocket of your jacket sagged under the apple’s weight, but you bore it gladly, thrilled at the thought of a proper meal after what felt like an eternity.

You walked away as your heart pounded in your ears, hot with embarrassment.

“Hey—you! I saw that! Get back here!” a voice suddenly barked behind you.

You quickened your pace. Soon you were running through the crowd, weaving past muttering pedestrians. You dared a glance over your shoulder and your eyes widened at the sight of the greengrocer’s furious face as he charged after you.

You cursed under your breath and darted down the first alley you found.

“Where are you, brat? Get back here! I’ll teach you some respect!”

You retreated deeper into the narrow passage until you collided with a stack of rotting crates. Rats scattered between your legs, nearly tripping you before rushing at the man, who swore loudly.

The apple clearly was not worth the trouble, for the man stopped.

Your heart hammered in your chest. You pressed a palm against it, trying to quieten it. All he would have to do was listen—hear it pounding—and your hiding place would be revealed.

“Whatever. I don’t have time for this shit.”

Crouched in the shadows, you watched him grumble for a while before turning back, still muttering to himself.

For a full minute, you remained frozen, afraid he might return. With help, this time. Then, when you finally understood that he was not coming back, you straightened and frowned.

His easy surrender triggered a familiar anger in your chest—one that had settled into your bones since your arrival here. If it had come to it, you would have fought tooth and nail for that apple. You did not have the luxury of giving up; your survival depended on it. That man could throw apples, oranges, and pears onto the pavement without a second thought, while you were left digging through trash because you had had the misfortune of finding yourself in the wrong universe.

Tears welled at the corners of your eyes, but you swallowed them down. Instead, you pulled the apple from your pocket and bit into.

Sweet juice burst across your tongue, a blissful distraction from your panic. You lapped greedily at the rivulets running down your chin, catching with your fingertips the drops your tongue had missed, and bringing them straight to your mouth.

You devoured the apple in five bites—core and seeds included, for hunger did not forge picky eaters—and almost immediately regretted your initial excitement when the last bite came too soon.

You nearly broke down when you realized you were not full. Worse still, eating had awakened sensations that hunger had numbed.

Your gaze drifted to the dumpster.

You wiped your mouth with the back of your hand, then rubbed your palms against your grimy pants.

Already regretting the decision, you hauled yourself onto the edge of the dumpster and swung a leg over, dropping into the heap of reeking bags. Burying your nose in the collar of your shirt, you ripped open the first one and started digging.

You spent several minutes hunched over, hands filthy, searching for something else to eat—anything, please—but found only mouldy leftovers, soggy cardboard, and empty wine bottles. For a moment, you considered returning to the market to steal something else, but the memory of the greengrocer had left a bitter taste in your mouth.

The last thing you needed was to more raise attention.

Frustrated, you almost tossed aside an empty cereal box when your eyes finally caught on the cardboard. There, beneath the grime, was a face you now recognized. A spark of interest lit your gaze. Without hesitation, you tore the box apart, keeping only two pieces: the photo of the man in a blue uniform and the text underneath.

You let the rest fall to the bottom of the dumpster, climbed out, and hurried home.

Home was now an abandoned basement in a crumbling Brooklyn building. The few teenagers loitering in the stairwell, dealing in all kinds of illegal goods, left you alone as long as you did the same—a deal that suited you just fine. You nodded to them and descended the steps swallowed by darkness. There was no electricity in the common areas.

Once inside the cellar, you went through a now-familiar choreography: two shoulder blows to force the door open, three blind sweeps along the wall to find the switch, then four precise steps to reach the shredded armchair facing the fresco.

A single bulb, nearly burnt out, dangled from the ceiling, casting such a weak orange glow that you had to squint to make out what lay before you—the work you laboured over day after day.

Everything you had managed to gather about the Fantastic Four—you had learnt their name on the fourth day here—during your wanderings was assembled there. Newspaper clippings, battered magazine covers, fragments of stolen reports. All held together with yellowed tape, bent pins, and scraps of glue scavenged from the trash.

You immediately added the two pieces of cardboard to the rest. The drawn portrait of Reed Richards joined the other cut-out photos. Just beneath it, you taped the small block of text, still legible despite its creases:

Start your day the Fantastic way! Eat Fantastic Four Cereals and grow up smart like Reed Richards, the world’s greatest mind!

You rolled your eyes—burying memories of a certain captain and his equally ridiculous slogans—before collapsing into the chair.

Most of your nights were spent sitting like this and letting your gaze drift over the mural of clues again and again until every detail was etched into your mind. Over time, you had formed an idea of who these Fantastic Four were: heroes of a world that seemed far less shattered than your own.

Aside from one or two articles mentioning trouble around an underground city named Subterranea, this New York lived quietly. A few isolated crimes threatened the peace now and then, but nothing resembled the endless catastrophes you and the rest of the Avengers had grown used to.

A sob shook your chest, catching you off guard.

Without realizing it, your eyes had settled on a photo of the four superheroes—proud, smiling, united. Something cracked inside you. The image summoned other faces. Sam. Yelena. Wong. Bucky. Thor. Natasha. Steve. Tony.

The dam broke, and your loneliness poured out.

You curled in on yourself in the chair, one hand clamped over your mouth to stifle your sobs, the other pressed against your wound.

You wanted to go home. You wanted it more than anything in the world.

You had never thought of yourself as unlucky. Not even when you nearly died in the battle against Ultron. Not even when you lost five years of your life to Thanos. Not even when he tore away, one by one, the people you loved.

How easy it was for men to revise their worldview, to betray their own philosophies.

Your gaze slid back to the photo one last time.

Yes, misfortune was real. All that talk of destiny and karma was nothing but naïve invention. How else could it be explained that those who held the power to grant your dearest wish were also the very ones who wanted to see you captured?

The wound on your abdomen reopened during the night.

When you brought your hand to it, your trembling fingers came back sticky, and you were carried five days earlier, to your awakening on Liberty Island’s dock. As on the first day, the pads of your fingers played with the fluid, but this time, you did not recognize the viscosity of blood.

You straightened up with difficulty in the chair—each movement tearing a short breath from your lungs—to examine the wound. As soon as you bent forward, the world reeled, and you had to clutch the armrests to keep from toppling forward.

Under the nearly burnt-out bulb, blood mingled with a thick, yellowish pus. The instant its acidic stench invaded your nostrils, you pitched forward and vomited a bitter bile that burned your throat. Your body found itself trapped in a cruel dilemma you could not resolve: your stomach contracted with each retch, and each convulsion unleashed a fresh wave of pain that spilled from your wound through the rest of your body.

The agony surged into your back, your shoulders, your thighs. You groaned. Your heart raced. Your head rang. You let yourself collapse back into the chair, unable to remain upright any longer. The moth-eaten fabric was cold and clammy against your skin—a brief relief for your feverish body.

You eventually fell asleep, exhausted by a battle you already knew you would lose. The reprieve, unfortunately, did not last. Barely an hour later, the fever wrenched you awake. Violent shivers seized you, immediately followed by crushing heat.

“No. Don’t leave me. Steve,” you whimpered, half-delirious.

A vicious cycle began. You would fall asleep, then jolt awake, brutally torn from the arms of Morpheus by the fever, only to fall back into their embrace seconds later.

When you woke up for the third time, you dragged yourself—or rather, almost crawled—to a water tap fixed to the wall of the basement and lifted your shirt. What you saw nearly made you throw up again. The flesh around the wound was swollen, burning to the touch, and streaked with purplish lines that vanished beneath mounds of yellow pus.

You tried to clean it with water, but the gesture tore a cry of pain from you and nearly made you faint.

When you woke for the eighth time, your face pressed against the damp basement floor and your body wracked with uncontrollable shivers, you understood that you could no longer bury your head in the sand. The infection was spreading. If you did not treat the wound, you would die.

So, in the morning—while still weak and nauseous—you dragged yourself to the nearest pharmacy. Pain had finally outweighed fear.

You moved forward with your hood pulled low, teeth clenched, aware of the many eyes lingering on you. You could not find the strength to care. Did they not have anything better to do than stare at a staggering woman? This New York was clearly not accustomed to crackheads.

Inside the pharmacy, you wandered the aisles for a while, feigning the hesitation of an ordinary customer while you took stock of what you could steal: an antiseptic and an ointment, perhaps. Bandages would be harder to hide, but did you have another choice?

“Do you need any help, miss?”

Without lifting your head, you answered: “No, thank you.”

When the pharmacist’s footsteps faded, you slipped the items beneath your clothes, your hand hesitating over the large box of bandages before you finally took them as well.

Your gaze met that of a man. You immediately turned on your heel and fled, heart pounding, praying the stranger would take pity on you and not report you to the pharmacist. You did not have the strength to run.

It took you longer than usual to reach your building and, at last, the basement. In the stairwell, through blurred vision, you vaguely noticed that the boys who usually loitered there were gone, but the thought withered as soon as it bloomed. Your wound burned too fiercely for you to care about anything else.

The basement door gave way under your weight on the fourth shove of your shoulder, but the impact tore a groan from you and set your entire body ablaze, with—at the eye of the cyclone—your abdomen. It took no less than nine fumbling attempts to find the switch. As for the four steps to the chair, they became a staggering progression.

When you reached it, at last, you pulled your treasure from your pockets and started to remove your shirt, but a strange sensation stopped you short. Tilting your head, you gently let the fabric fall back over the raw wound.

As casually as possible, you crossed the basement to the tap. Water burst forth. Its splashing smothered the silence. You bent to wash your hands, letting the water pool on the floor and soak your shoes.

A blue reflection appeared in the puddle.

With a flick of your hand, you diverted the stream and hurled it at the mass lunging toward you.

Reed Richards recovered quickly from the surprise and stretched out an arm to grab you, but you jumped aside and raised a shield of water around yourself.

The superhero’s hand struck the wall.

“How did you find me?”

He clenched his jaw, as though speaking to you pained him greatly.

“There was a report,” he admitted. “Half an hour ago.”

The man from the pharmacy.

“Of course,” you muttered.

“We do not want to hurt you. We hope to resolve this issue peacefully.”

“Bullshit,” you growled immediately.

A bead of sweat trickled down your forehead.

You did not know how much longer you would be able to keep the water in a solid state. Already, cracks were appearing in your shield. In places, the water turned clear again and dripped to the floor. A voice in your head—one that sounded like Steve’s—reprimanded you for the opening you were giving to the enemy, but Reed, fortunately, seemed none the wiser.

Had you been healthier, you would have laughed at the irony.

“Aren’t there supposed to be four of you?” you blurted out, desperate to distract him. “’m almost offended. You paint me as a terrorist, yet I’m not even worthy of the whole package?”

“This is no laughing matter. Twenty-three people are dead because of you.”

Reed’s words snapped through the air.

Twenty-three.

You had not known. The number made you sway, and your shield liquefied a little more.

“I didn’t mean to,” you said weakly. “I didn’t want to—Let me go,” you finally pleaded. “This has never happened before. I promise it won’t again. I am not a murderer.”

I do not kill innocents, is what you wanted to say. Many Hydra agents had died beneath your waves, but you carefully kept that to yourself.

“I am afraid you give us no other choice.”

Reed’s fist struck the shield. The water shattered, pulverized into thousands of droplets that immediately rained down over you both. You turned to flee, but pain speared through your abdomen. You collapsed with all your weight, your jaw slamming violently against the floor with a dull crack.

You screamed in agony.

Reed did not hesitate. His arms stretched and closed around you, binding you in living chains. You struggled, but your body no longer obeyed. Every movement awakened the wound in your stomach; every breath burned your lungs.

You were spent. Your body responded only in jerks of consciousness. Your head was heavy. Each breath scraped your chest raw. Your vision darkened, and the floor seemed to vanish beneath your feet despite the hold that kept you upright.

Don’t tell me you’re giving up, Tideborn, Bucky Barnes’s flat voice echoed in your head. I’ve trained you better.

Reed’s arms continued to tighten around you. He was going to squeeze you to death, you realized.

You closed your eyes and focused on this warm body, so close to yours. You strained to hear the familiar sound of the ocean. People mistakenly believed it existed only on the shoreline or in the hollow of a seashell, but one did not need to go far to find waves.

Beneath flesh, beneath muscle, in the blood, everywhere, water moved. You clung to that current, to that great canal and its tributaries, and drew from the groundwater of the human body.

Suddenly, Reed’s grip loosened around you. The superhero brought his hands to his throat as an unprecedented flood poured into his lungs.

The moment he released you, you let go as well—you did not want to kill the man, only weaken him—and staggered toward the door.