Caroline Stark

Salton Sea Research Facility

Thank you for choosing this story to read, really appreciate it and hope you enjoy it :)

Just for reference it takes place a few months after Liz moves away in Spiderman Homecoming. Some of the maths may be wrong but bear with me and feel free to tell me if it is or if I have any typos etc.

I don't have an update schedule but I'll try and update regularly.

Again tysm for choosing this story!!!!

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I walk out of science class with Bruce, my mind spinning, as usual. All alone, as usual.

Science class is just the two of us, and only when he has time so the schedule is pretty erratic. It's the same with all my homeschooling classes, except Nat's combat ones, those are daily and punctual. Aunty Nat is pretty cool, and most of the time I love her classes, but they tire me out so much.

Yup, I live at Avengers HQ. I have done ever since I was rescued from research labs in Salton Sea, Salton City, California. That was where I spent some of the worst four years of my life. The fact that I said some of should give you a pretty good idea about how wonderful my life has been so far.

I was born in Manhattan in New York where I lived with my parents until I was seven. I don't remember them much because they died in a car crash three months before my eighth birthday. I was also in the car crash, but I survived with a scar in my neck as an ugly souvenir.

Everybody thought it was a miracle, because I didn't even have a scratch on me other than the scar, but I guess you could say I didn't exactly see eye to eye with everyone else.

My parents were dead. I didn't have any close relatives to take me in. I was an orphan.

People used to refer to me as poor thing quite a lot back then. They would whisper among each other, sharing the juicy gossip about the little girl in the car crash. Poor thing, poor thing.

During the next couple of years I was chewed up and spat out by various different foster families who lived all over the US, but I'd always seem to end up at the same shithole whenever my new 'parents' wanted to get rid of me; Middletown New York Foster Home, a run down hell hole in a ghetto New York town full of messed up kids up to their knees in drugs, booze and cigarettes.

I hated it there. I hated everyone and everything in Middletown. But it wasn't like the foster families were much better.

At ten years old I saw the back of Middletown for real, but what was coming was much worse.

I got fostered by Mike and Trinity Lessing, a coupling of an alcoholic and a poor girl who made all the wrong decisions.

Mike liked to drink. And he liked to drink a lot.

When he was drunk he would beat me up, and Trinity would watch us and cry and cry and cry, because she could never stop him. She would try, but it would never make a difference. He still beat me black and blue.

Mike was also a gambler. He gambled away the family heirlooms, the rent, the furniture, his life savings. And one day he gambled away me.

A doctor from a 'research' facility was conducting experiments on chimpanzees and monkeys, all kept under wraps of course, lest animal cruelty extremists or activists should find out.

The doctor was researching how to change the way mammal brainwaves moved and connected with things external to the mind. Chimps however, we're not seeming to be that effective. He needed a human test subject.

Mike played a couple of games of cards with him, and soon he became really drunk. He struck a deal with the doctor, thinking the experiments were just a load of hippy crap.

They weren't.

From that day onwards I was dropped off every Saturday at the research facility at nine and picked up at five. It wasn't long before the work at the research facility began to take a toll on my body and my mind. I developed central heterochromia (several colours in each of your eyes) and incurable mild iron deficiency anaemia (a deficiency of iron in the blood that results in dizziness, passing out, headaches and nausea).

I lost weight. Deep shadows started to form under my eyes. The symptoms got worse and worse.

And eventually Trinity couldn't take it anymore. She'd had enough of the abuse, and the drinking, and the experiments. And she stood up to Mike.

She could've just ran away with me while he was sleeping off one of his legendary hangovers, but she decided to stand up to him and fight back.

Mike killed her in a fit of drunken rage and sold me off fully to the experimental research facility, which soon moved to Salton Sea, away from prying eyes and remote and abandoned so that patients couldn't run away.

I stayed there for four years, and I quickly became the favourite.

I was the first patient to develop telekinesis and the strongest at it. I was fed more, smiled at, not abused as much as the other girls, or raped by any of the creepy doctors.

When the Avengers rescued me, all the other girls were shot by the doctors and their records, as well of most of those of the lab, burned or destroyed.

Dr Harmond was assigned to take care of of me. But I was the favourite, the scientific breakthrough, and Dr Harmond hesitated. So I killed him, snapping his neck with my mind. I can still remember his face, he looked almost surprised at me, like he would expect better.

Since then I've been homeschooled and hidden away from the public for my own protection. Apparently the people from the lab are still out there, and neither my telekinesis or combat abilities have been deemed strong enough for me to be able to fend for myself.

One day, it's Tony's plan to introduce me to the public as a child of one of his many previous affairs who ran away from an abusive mother. I would go to private school to avoid too much publicity and always be driven to and from everywhere. Controlled maybe, but at least I'd get to meet some people my age.

When this is all going to happen is unclear though, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't getting tired of the same old routine over and over again.