Her city was burning. Hell’s Kitchen looked like an actual goddamn hell. And she was tired of it. Enough was goddamn enough. She’d spent the last five days detoxing and sobering up, and she still wasn’t 100% on her feet, but she could stand again. And the old familiar rage was coursing through her. That was enough to keep her going.
She couldn’t go after the Syndicate. She knew that much. She didn’t trust herself, knew that she wouldn’t be able to hold back after watching what they’d done to her family, her home, and to the people she cared about. They’d attacked nearly all her friends – and even if they hadn’t been able to touch Stark while he was wearing that terrifying white armor, they’d tried. Besides, they were a by-product, a symptom of the real problem. The real problem was the goddamn Panel.
In the five days when she’d been down for the count, when she wasn’t throwing up, she was researching. Combing through Stark’s database while he conveniently pretended not to notice. That access gave her a location. The Panel’s new headquarters. But it was the prison that really caught her attention.
The prison they would’ve certainly thrown her into, if they’d ever managed to get their hands on her. She was smart enough, clear-headed enough, to know that this city needed all the goddamn help it could get right now. Her powers were C-grade at best. She couldn’t do this alone. But the superfreaks they had locked up in that prison? They were the real goddamn deal. She couldn’t rescue the city, couldn’t save the world, but she could help the people who could.
She left a note for Stark, armed with apologies and explanations, and left her phone behind. She couldn’t take the distractions, honestly. Then she made her way through the burning, hell city, and found the enormous, grey building. No windows. Surrounded by a barbed wire fence.
Laughable. Or it would’ve been if she felt like laughing. Jessica reached forward easily and ripped a hole in the fence. She wasn’t subtle about it. She wanted them to know she was coming. They’d started this fight, and now it was at their doorstep.
Security was stretched thin – two guards at the door aimed at her, but she jumped, over their heads, and landed behind them. She knocked their heads together, and they both crumpled. Alive, but unconscious. Just how she liked her Strike Force Assholes.
Inside the doors, she headed for the stairs and went down. She’d work her way up. The air smelled like antiseptic and electricity, she could hear low rumbling voices. A few screams. The hell were they doing down here? She wasn’t sure she wanted to find out. But she swallowed hard, fighting down a new wave of nausea that had nothing to do with detox, and made her way into the shadows.
In retrospect, she should have seen it coming. She was a legally proclaimed weapon of mass destruction, she could probably blow up the whole city if she really tried. She should never have left the damn apartment. But Pietro had gone out there, probably to do something stupid, and Wanda had followed, because Pietro should never be allowed to do stupid things without supervision. She hadn’t overthought it for once, just don’t let anything happen to him, not again. You’ll be fine.
It had taken less than an hour for the Strike Force to find her. Chaos on the streets, armed men (or maybe women--she never got a good look at them), a sharp sting in her neck, and slipping into darkness. It was over long before she could put up a fight, before she could even warn her brother.
Wanda woke to light. Blinding, burning, white hot. Buzzing, pulsing, boiling. She moaned, squeezing her eyes shut again. Pietro, help, she tried. It hurts. But the bridge that usually led between them was gone, and her pleas fell to nothing outside of her own head. With her eyes still closed, she took stock of her surroundings: she was lying on something hard and cold--metal, maybe? There was a constant buzzing noise, the whirring of machines, the steady beep of computers. A lab?
And she hurt. Everywhere, a thick layer of sharp pain, and, deep, nothing. Or was it everything? Something was wrong, she was wrong. (Not that she’d ever been especially right, but this was wronger than usual.)
Once more, she opened her eyes, slowly this time, raising her head a fraction. The room around her shifted into focus: stark white and sterile. She was lying on some kind of table in a lab, hooked up to all sorts of strange wires and plugs. There were three men outside a large window, staring at her, watching, waiting. The world wavered in double, two labs layered on top of each other, just slightly out of sync. Wanda tried to sit up fully, but found herself strapped to the table, locked into the feeling that she had seen this all before-- in Sokovia, when she and Pietro....
A sudden wave of nausea shot through her, undercutting the pain, and she howled. The red threads of energy exploded out in all directions, sending a shockwave through the room, ricocheting off of the machines, bursting lightbulbs. When they cleared, she was on the ground, the straps ruined and hissing, only the thick plate-window still some sort of intact.
What had they done to her?
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