Retaliation

Chapter 29 Truth

We all walked into Tony's garage where he does most of his work. We were greeted with a big table displayed in the center of the room surrounded by a bunch of equipment. The table had various arms all sporting various different tools. 

Even though it wasn't as menacing, it resembled the same table I found Jasmine on.

"All right, komodo, lay down on the table," Tony instructed.

Jasmine stood there with her eyes frozen to the table, fear plastered on her face.

"What's wrong? You just wanted to do this a second ago." Tony asked.

"Give her a minute, Tony. She's probably getting flashbacks." I placed my hand on Jasmine's shoulder. "We don't have to do this now if you don't want to," I whispered to her. 

"Yes, we do." She gulped. Much to my surprise she walked over to the table and laid flat on it. Tony walked over to her and tried to apply something to her face.

"What is that?" Jasmine asked.

"Anesthetics. I'm going to need you completely still to scan you, no offense, but you're a little jumpy froggy."

"Tony! She can sit still for suck's sake." I cut in.

"It's ok. It's probably for the best anyway." Jasmine reassured. Not waiting for her to change her mind, Tony placed the mask over her nose and mouth. Within seconds Jasmine's eyes began to dose off and shut.

"All right, Friday. Let's just start off with a simple brain scan please." Tony ordered. 

The arms on the table reared to life and projected little blue rays of light as they rotated around Jasmine's head. It took about a full minute for a complete 3D hologram to show up at Tony's desk. Something was definitely off though, there were multiple sections that appeared to be different from each other.

"This is much worse than I thought." Tony stuttered.

"Right. She did mention a while back that parts of her brain had been...replaced." I said. 

"That device in her neck is directly connected to her spinal cord and brain stem. The brain stem is responsible for all your involuntary responses; breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, consciousness, and of course being the bridge between the rest of the brain and the spinal cord that delivers electrical signals to whatever body part needs it or you want to move. Looking at the structure of this thing... it looks like when it's activated it blocks and works with the other machinery in her head to replicate its own neuron signals. Meaning whoever has control over that thing has complete control of her and she can't do a damn thing about it. On top of that, it also looks like it contains some sort of virus. If the device is messed with it will release and shut down her brain and body entirely." Tony explained.

"Can you explain the other machinery in her head?"

"This section of the frontal lobe, the prefrontal lobe, is responsible for short-term memory, personality development, and awareness. It looks like it's nearly been completely replaced."

"Looks like they wanted to limit her memories. Short-term memory is used to temporarily store information we don't necessarily need to remember." Bruce clarified.

That explains a lot. She can't recall much of her past. She also struggles with a bunch of new information all at once. It overwhelms her. 

"The temporal lobe is responsible for language, hearing, and long-term memory. Looks like they just turned that into a huge database that they can access. Most likely to see how a mission went and how they could improve. It's very possible she was designed to view everything as a mission, so that they can limit the pathways and edit as they need to." Tony continued. "The parietal lobe controls body movements along with all our sensations like taste and touch. The occipital lobe interprets sight and smells. The cerebellum handles coordination and reflexes. Combine all those heightened senses with whatever super-soldier serum they injected her with and her already existing Skrull powers you got the ultimate tracker and assassin."