Falling, Fallen

Chapter 14

RAQUEL'S POV

Wanda and I were about to leave the room when the guy whose name was apparently Tony spoke up, "Wait, Rachel!", this caused me to turn around.

"Since you are staying here and all, would you mind telling us about yourself?" he asked, I wasn't expecting such a question. I mean there was nothing wrong with it but after the whole Lucas thing, I wasn't expecting to get into all of that so soon.

"We tried to run a background check but after you were 4 you kind of disappeared from the system", he added. Everyone was looking at him with a 'not the right time' kind of face, but I didn't mind answering, that way I could get it all out of the way.

"Sure, I don't mind", everyone took a seat and looked at me to hear what I had to say. I always tried not to get personal with anyone so opening up to six complete strangers and two almost strangers felt odd, but I guess that if I was going to stay here they had to make sure I wasn't a criminal or whatever.

I took a deep breath before starting my story. "When I was five years old both my parents were killed while my brother and I watched, after that Charlie, Lucas and I went to live with my uncle Robert and his with Valerie. They were both some kind of scientists and they experimented on me and Charlie for years. When they wanted to start experimenting with Lucas we came up with a plan to escape. So we did but then my uncle had told the police that we had kidnapped Lucas and that we were a danger to him and to ourselves so we ran away to Sokovia". I paused and took a deep breath, it was hard for me telling the story, it brought back a lot of memories.

"How old were you when you escaped?" asked a red-headed woman.

"Charlie was sixteen, I was fourteen and Lucas was eight", everyone looked down to the ground, they realized that it was not easy for me to share, and it wasn't, since I didn't really know them I was avoiding getting into detail.

I took another deep breath and continued the story. "We had spent all of the money we had on the train tickets to get to Sokovia so we couldn't afford food or anything. Charlie and I took a lot of jobs but since we were underage they didn't pay us that well, we would often knock on doors to look for shelter and we did that for about a year. After that, we were finally able to afford an 'apartment', but it was more like a storage unit with a bed. Charlie had gotten a job but it meant that he would have to leave me and Lucas, since I didn't want him to go I started fighting in the underground fights and I was making more than enough money from them, but the fights started getting more and more dangerous and I knew that I couldn't keep fighting forever, besides, if Charlie had known what I was actually doing to get the money he would've made me stop. I was invited to a secret fight that had a huge reward payment, I figure that I would fight, win and then we could go to America and start fresh. I won the fight but they kidnapped me and locked me in a cell, that's where I met Wanda and Pietro. They would also experiment on me there but since the experiments weren't working they tried to kill me, Pietro saved me and left me at a hospital where I was in a coma for a while. When I woke up I was trying to find my brothers, we had made a plan that if my uncle ever found one of us, the other one would grab Lucas and go to Poland to wait for the other to come back. So I went to Poland to look for them, I was almost crushed by a train but Pietro saved me. After that, the city was advised to 'evacuate' so I returned to Sokovia to try and find my brothers. That's when the robots started attacking the city and you guys came, I found Lucas and he told me that Charlie had left to find me but he never made it back, Lucas died and after that, you guys took me here".

I was pushing back my tears and the whole team was looking at me, they felt bad for me, I hated when people felt sorry for me. Tony broke the silence, which I appreciated, "Thank you for telling us, we'll make sure to brief the rest of the team so that you don't have to explain it again. I'll find out if your brother Charlie is still alive and if he is, I'll help you find him". Everyone looked at Tony, shocked that he had offered his help.