FALLEN ─ marvel

VII. Erased

Chapter Seven
Sam

I open up my eyes and the first thing I see is a bright light. Once my eyes adjust, I look around and find myself in what looks like a hospital room. But looks can be deceiving; the hospital bed I'm in has large metal cuffs attached it it, which are keeping me from getting up. The doctors walking around aren't tending to the other patients in the room, they're just observing them as they wither in pain, some of them screaming so loudly it's deafening to my ears, and they're not doing a damn thing to help them. That dart they hit me with must have had some powerful drugs in it, there's no way someone could sleep through the torture going on in this room otherwise.

On either side of me are Jade and John, who are both starting to come to as well. I see the panic in Jade's eyes when she sees that she's strapped down, and I hear her whisper to herself: "Not again, please not again."

"Honey," I say groggily. "We'll be fine, I promise we'll be fine."

One of the doctors notices us awake, and strides over towards us with a clipboard in hand, looking very collected and nonchalant. He's a man of Chinese decent in his thirties, with furrowed brows scanning over whatever is on his clipboard. When his dark eyes glance up at me, he forces a smile, saying disturbingly calmly: "Good afternoon, I'm sorry for the noise, we couldn't get you your own room since you blew up an entire wing of labs, so we had to shove you in here."

"How-how could you?" Jade asks, her voice strained and breathless, still in the process of waking up from the drugs. "Why is the government experimenting on people? You-you have to know this is wrong."

The doctor shakes his head. "You're not in a very good position to ask questions, Ms. Rosales, or judge us for the decisions we are making to protect our country."

"HYDRA took me and experimented on me, they gave me powers and used me in the name of defending what they believed in. You're no different."

"I doubt a HYDRA agent would understand a single thing we are doing here," He tells her, speaking to her like she's a child who just said something naive. "We are doing this to protect our people against threats like HYDRA and you."

The door to the room opens and a woman around the same age of the doctor enters. She looks like she might be a doctor as well. She's white, has long brown hair pulled up in a ponytail, glasses, and piercing blue grey eyes. She glances at the three of us and then to the male doctor, informing him: "The three subjects are nowhere to be found, Theo, and we didn't find the vehicle the Avengers used to get here. The subjects must have stolen it to escape."

This frustrates the male doctor, but he smiles at the woman. "Thank you, Lorelei, we'll deal with them later. Right now I need you to go get some memory serum for lab fifty nine. Three doses."

I glance at Jade and let out a laugh of relief, she does the same. The kids escaped, they got free. I don't even care that we got captured, I'm just happy it wasn't in vain. I hope those kids stay safely hidden away, because these guys won't stop until they find them. These people clearly don't want anyone finding out about this project, those kids are a security risk.

"Doctor Fai," A nurse says from the other side of the room. The screaming in the room has stopped and one of the patients the other doctors have been observing has passed out, his body covered in sweat, his body still shaking. He doesn't look any older than twenty. "He's ready to go to the containment room."

Doctor Fai nods. "Good, hopefully this one will actually develop something, if not, Ross won't be very happy. Take him away, I'll be there in a moment."

"So Ross is in on this," John says with a shaking chuckle, his body shivering from the effects of the drugs. "Why doesn't that surprise me."

"Secretary Ross has done nothing but fight for the lives of our nation and the world," Fai responds curtly. "You should show him some respect."