The Bravest of Them All (Pietro Maximoff)

Part 1: The Project

Suddenly, I hear the wall rattle behind me and the overhead lights start to flicker. The wall behind me sends a hard shockwave and it actually cracks the concrete. I can feel it. Shattering of bone, tissue, nerves, and atoms of the human body being crushed from the inside out. But it doesn't stay damaged, it heals and become new.

I open my eyes and turn my body around to lean my ear against the wall to try to hear anything from the person I sense though it. I search through the wall for one of the people who are going through the same transformations as I have.

The first couple of days were the worst. I had outbursts that nearly destroyed this room because I couldn't keep my senses in check. I heard everything from the flickering of lights to the beating of organs of the guards through the tightly sealed door. I heard everything except 100x louder like it was all bullets against my ears and it overwhelmed me so much they had to constantly sedate me until a couple tests later where they had me practice to channel my powers to my emotions.

An outburst of something close to a cry and scream comes from the person on the other side of the wall. Now I can tell it's a male. I press my right hand against the wall and then come in contact with another small crack under my palm. What if it's—

The next thing I know, the lights shut off. I raise my hand to the light to turn it back on without looking away from the wall. Using my fingers tips, I trace the small crack that is no bigger than my thumb beneath the much longer one above it.

Then, the noises stop and I don't sense him anymore. Like he's not there anymore.

After a few minutes, I conclude that the person must have calmed down, so I turn around return to meditating.

A few minutes while I'm in my pose, I can feel an object in my grasp. My mind has set on an object and wants me to take it. I lift my hands upwards and feel the object's surface, the solidness of it as it makes it's way towards me. I open my eyes to see what the object was and before it made its way into my hands, I pushed it against the wall in front of me, fearfully.

The object's a gun.

My wide eyes watch as feet step towards the gun. A rough, wrinkled hand reaches down to pick it up. I look up and see a guard in a moldy dark green uniform. He raises the gun dead straight at my head. I earned, it didn't I? Guess someone filled him in on me otherwise he would have shot me for what I did.  How else was he not threatened by it?

Without any resistance, I hold up my hands in surrender and get myself on my feet before he has the chance to tell me to do so himself.

Guess it's time for my check up.

When a guard comes looking like some second-hand Arnold Schwarzenegger dressed in that dark gross moldy green uniform, it means they're specialized in security because they are the ones that have to escort me to the other side of the building where I receive my physical. The guards outside my room wear lighter green uniforms. They're the ones that escort me to my training sessions. Besides the fact that he entered my room undetected and that they usually use the same guard to escort me to my physical, those aren't the only reason why I'm confused right now. I don't understand why this check up is so close to the last one.

I follow the guard out of my cell only to be welcomed by three more guards who are all dressed the same way. They also all wear he same deadpan experience on their faces that read they're "serious" and "dangerous" and "don't mess with me" That's how they see me.

I keep my hands raised above my shoulders and walk the same, steady pace as the two guards in front of me while the other two keep on my tail. How do they know I would be willing to go?