Goblin Slayer: Gwen Stacy Returns

Chapter 2 Awakened

Blood dripped down her naked body, all she could hear was the thumping of her heart in her ears, it drummed louder and louder. Every breath hurt her chest, a sharp pain stinging her lungs and causing her to wince. But she couldn't stop, the muscles in her arms tensing, they were strong. Too strong. Gwen could remember being so weak, but now she had all the power. All of it. And now she knew why her chest was hurting, she was screaming. A guttural animalistic scream that escaped right from her throat and her eyes were wide. Her fists trembling and slamming over and over into the corpse, of a scaly creature, it's yellow eyes looking up at her as if it begged her not to kill it. Gwen didn't stop.

How many years had it been? That she was a slave to Miles Warren. Trapped in this lab, experimented on. The man was obsessed with brining her body back to life, but it stemmed further. He wanted her to never be harmed again, he used what he could to build her muscle, to make her heal, to make her senses sharp. It was a painful process.

"I will cure you, my love. You will be mine forever."

She remembered him saying, as he would fill her body with substances that burned inside and out, like acid eating her cells alive, boiling her blood. And yet it did not destroy her. It strengthened her. But how often she begged for death. The pain was too much for her to bear.

But it wasn't the pain that made her snap. It was the memories that kept returning.

It was Peter. Peter's warm brown eyes staring into hers, his soft chuckle whenever she made him laugh. And his strong arms holding her close. How long had it been? Without her? Gwen needed to escape. She would not allow herself to be this man's experiment and slave any longer.

"I was never yours... Professor Warren. Never."

Those words made the man angered, he had turned into a monster. Gwen only... defended herself. How she overpowered him she didn't even remember she just knew he had to die. That the pain had to stop. That she had to finally escape and leave this place. The woman breathed raggedly, she now took a look at what her rage had amounted to. His chest was caved in, the bones snapped and broken inside him. The blood poured out of him and covered her hands. It was all over the place. Gwen had never seen so much blood. Tears streamed down her face.

It was over.

Gwen stood, and staggered away from the body. Her body trembling as she went and grabbed one of his lab coats. She quickly covered herself. Gwen had been stripped of her humanity when she drew her first breath in years. She had been naked the whole time. Ready for his experimental tools, the instruments that brought her to life but also caused her so much suffering. She shuddered just thinking about it, quickly wrapping the lab coat tight around herself, zipping it up. It's white color stained with his blood.

She made her way to where she always saw him enter. Her hand touching the doorknob and turning it. Had she been captive so long he was comfortable leaving the door unlocked?

As she stepped out, she found herself climbing an endless amount of stairs. Until finally she made it to the top of a floor of an abandoned building. She could hear the sounds of cars driving by, and sirens in the distance. The city... so close to escape this whole time. But underground she did not hear a single thing.

Gwen opened another door, now stepping out. And breathing in the New York air. Her bare feet on the concrete and people quickly avoiding her. She must have looked like a zombie to them. But she knew she had to go home. The woman walked, her memory had returned better than Warren had ever expected. Gwen was able to walk all the way back to her home, where her family lived.

A memory came to mind, her father, dying in the arms of Spider-Man.

Spider-Man killed me. No... No Peter would never. It's Miles... he put that thought in my head. I must... fight against it.