Trace

One

She awoke to the scent of disinfectant and sweat, the fumes stinging her nose and working their way through her brain, pulling her from the comatose state she had been in. The sharp smell did nothing to shake the grogginess away, nor the dull throbbing in the back of her skull. When she saw the man in front of her the first time, she didn't study him and pushed the thought aside, telling herself she was hallucinating; when she saw him for the second time though, her mind was filled with a sudden clearness that made her realise that, maybe, Thor really was standing in front of her.

He was sturdy and well-built with a mop of thin blonde hair, arms folded on his broad chest, veins visible and coursing with thick, purple blood. A blue muscle-top, trousers and boots adorned his body, a tattoo visible on the right of his neck and another on his right hand. She stared at him and steely blue eyes stared back, their gaze piercing through her and causing the throbbing in her skull to double in capacity. After a minute of uncomfortable silence, he walked towards her, his stride allowing him to reach her in a single pace.

Who was 'her'? She couldn't remember. Her mind was blank and slightly fuzzy around the edges, memories creeping around in the fuzziness but not etching their way in to break up the horribly familiar darkness. She tried reaching out a mental hand to snatch one but the memories always seemed just out of reach. Just out of range.

Instead, she focused on her surroundings. She was in a square room, stark white, like it was created from bleach. A row of small, round lights hung from the ceiling, draping the room in fake, fluorescent light. How she got here, she didn't know- there were no openings, no windows, no doors anywhere, just four white walls, a ceiling and a cold, hard floor. Silence ebbed into noise, itching into an uncomfortable buzz in her blank mind.

When the man spoke slowly and clearly, a Russian accent coated his words, plenty of pronunciation put on each. He broke the silence and she half expected the words to echo about, not disappear as soon as they were said."Imogen Rose Eringale."

Imogen. All at once, memories flooded her head. Familiar faces, her family, her brother. Names and places, tastes and sounds, smells and feelings. She remembered the day her world fell apart, the day the mutants came. The day her parents were killed. The smell of blood, the taste of smoke, the sight of her parents mangled bodies beneath the rock, the sound of that final word her father had told her and her brother, his voice still strong even as death pulled him to join the many others crushed by the meteorites. The sound of "run". But, still, the name sounded different. Detached. Foreign. Not like her other memories. Her name- Imogen- sounded like it belonged to someone else; a stranger, who wasn't her.

As the man- a vague reflection of the man worked it's way into her mind, the Norse-God Thor- or whoever he was- crouched beside her, so close she could smell his stale breath, she tried to shuffle away, but found she could only managed a few millimeters before being wrenched back to her original position, crouching on the floor. "How do you know my name?" she asked him, glancing at her body, only to find her wrists and ankles were out of her sight behind her. She recognized the cold feeling of bonds on her skin.

Thor laughed, a sound that was both harmonious and grating, like nails on a chalkboard coated with honey. "I know lots of things, Imogen, things you couldn't even guess at. Things that would scare you into having nightmares even when you're awake."

She barely registered what he said, despair and fear seeding in her chest, sending icy roots of panic through her nerves and veins. Her lungs wouldn't work; her breath came in short, sharp bursts and she gulped in lungful upon lungful of air but it felt as if no oxygen was reaching past her throat. Everything felt painfully small, painfully cramped. She had to breathe, had to stop panicking, had to clear her head, had to leave the ever-shrinking room.