MERCURY | mcu [1]

𝟭𝟲 | 𝗹𝗲 𝗳𝗶𝗻

When Lorena next opened her eyes, she had to shield them from the fluorescent light that penetrated her eyelids. She tried to raise her arms, but they would not move.

It took a moment, but whatever restraints had been bounding her wrists released, and she raised an arm above her eyes.

She blinked her eyes furiously.

When finally she could open them, she looked around at the beds that lined the walls, the bright lights that hung from the ceiling. Somewhere in the room, music was playing.

She recognised the song. California Dreamin'. Nineteen sixty five.

She remembered when that had been released.

She listened to it for a moment, her mind uncharacteristically quiet. No thoughts, no memories. Just the song.

Then it came flooding back.

She didn't know where she was or how she had got there, but she had believed herself to be dead. The last thing she remembered was floating above the toppled Chimera building. She remembered Nico, buried somewhere beneath it all. Her father's dead body. Isabella walking on the surveillance.

Chimera was gone. No more assassins. No more missions. Stavros' research would have gone down with the rest.

No more experiments.

She looked around the hospital wing once more. Aside from a single nurse, she was completely alone.

There was a dull ache in the back of her head now. She closed her eyes once more, hoping the horrors would leave her be, but they remained, incessant, replaying behind her eyes. The act of killing her father played over and over in her mind, met by Nico's final moments, his anger, hatred, pure wrath at Lorena for his last few breaths.

She only opened her eyes again when the nurse approached.

'Good morning,' he said, checking the monitors beside Lorena's bed.

'How long have I been here?' Lorena asked. Her voice wasn't fully working.

The nurse checked his watch. 'A day or so.'

Lorena nodded. She remained silent while the nurse busied himself with whatever checkups he had to do, then he excused himself and disappeared into an office off the end of the room.

The hospital walls seemed to stretch on forever. Now that she were alone, it seemed longer, bigger, emptier. It wasn't overly huge, only six beds lined each wall. The ceilings were high with long windows placed strategically between the beds. Pale sunlight spilled through in long rectangles, bathing the room in a milky white glow. One warmed Lorena's face.

She didn't know how long she lay there. The nurse pottered around her, checked in and provided her with some food. At some point, her clothes had been changed.

She winced as she pulled herself to sit, accepting the dinner from the nurse. It tasted like cement, but she was so hungry she didn't care. Every movement took a great effort, even raising her spoon to her lips.

By the time darkness had fallen and her nurse had been replaced with another, she'd replayed her father's and brother's deaths so many times in her head, she could remember every detail of the scene. Chimera's fallen building stories below had imprinted behind her eyes, and when she closed her eyes to sleep, she was tormented with Nico's face, telling her she had betrayed him, her father's mangled body being thrown into the rubble, Isabella's kind smile distorted by flames and dust.

She woke with a start several times throughout the night. She'd begun to notice shapes forming in the shadowy corners of the hospital, rising up and watching her, haunting.

The nightmares would never cease. She would never be free from the torment, the last forty five years of her life had been nothing but violence and death.

Death followed her. It was a storm that raged around her, relentless in its egregious wrath. Her hands were stained with the blood of thousands of people, innocents and the guilty alike.

She was more than what they had made her to be: a weapon. For now, she was free. Free from their violent rule, free from the death, the murder, the blood.

She had been offered a second chance. Mercy wasn't even on the list of things she deserved.

After everything she had done, the nightmares were a small price to pay. A terrible, but small price.