JADE (young justice/robin)

39. the meta gene

Taos
April 1, 13:28 MDT

jade.

My first thought when my eyes began to open was, "I'm not dead?"

I was careful to not open my eyes all the way; to only leave narrow slits so I could assess my surroundings. It wasn't much use, though. I still had no contacts in and everything was blurry at best. It looked like I was in some kind of medical lab or room. Maybe I was still on the ship?

Garfield and M'gann found me, but I can't remember what happened after that. Where am I?

Better to be safe than sorry. From what I could barely see, a tray of medical utensils were set up next to me. Good, something sharp. From what I could feel, my right arm was tied to the bed. Partially restrained, not as good... And from what I could hear, there were people around me. One at my side, another—maybe two— elsewhere in the room. Great. People to poke with all the sharp stuff.

I took a few seconds to figure out whether I could move quick enough of not. If my limbs would be able to manage putting up a fight. I wriggled my toes beneath the sheet, clenched my stomach beneath my shirt. I seemed to have enough control of my movement for now.

I didn't wait another second. My hand grabbed for the biggest scalpel it could find, as my leg hooked around the neck of whoever was next to me. The force brought their head down onto the bed, pinning them beneath my knee. I held the scalpel up menacingly, only to find Dick trapped beneath me.

You're alive. Thank God.

"You seem better," Dick said, still struggling beneath me.

"Sorry." I lowered the scalpel and removed my leg from above his neck, muttering another pathetic, "Sorry."

"It's fine. I'm glad you're awake... I, uh, brought you these. Thought you might need them."

Dick held up the black rimmed glasses I only wore at home. I used to only need them for reading, knowing it would probably would get worse as I got older. Who would've thought illegal drugs could speed up the process?

I slid them on, finally making the other two blurry figures out to be Wonder Girl and Robin. She was holding her hands up to her mouth, while he stared at me like a gaping idiot.

"You wear glasses...." Robin said slowly. "Nerdy."

And you wonder why I don't wear them out of the house?

I took in my surroundings now that they were finally clear. Definitely a hospital room, though, I had no idea where. They had all kinds of monitors hooked up to me, along with a massive bag of IV. The line for it trailed all the way into my right hand that was fixed to the bed railing.

"Oh, sorry," Dick following my gaze and removing the restraint. "When you got here you wouldn't stop... jittering. So we had to fasten your hand to keep the IV in."

I wondered how long I'd been here. How long the spasms from the pod lasted. How long had I been gone in total?

I held my now free hand up. "Take it out."

"Maybe we could wait a little longer," Dick suggested. "Just until you're stronger?"

"I'm fine," I muttered again, trying to keep my volume low while other people occupied the room. "Take it out."

He listened this time, removing the IV. Immediately I moved to get up and I could see all three of them shift in their spots; probably in case they had to catch me. I lowered my legs out of the bed one by one, spotting the damage my time in the pod had left over. I could only see the ends of it reaching the top of my knees, but when I pulled the medical dress a little higher I saw where the lines had branches from.