Panic Attack

Untitled Part 14

               "You did what?" Gamora practically shouted, striding over to where Rogers stood, ready to finally decapitate the man.

"What was I supposed to do?" He asked angrily, his lab coat had already been discarded disgustingly to the side, the man had practically torn the thing off the moment they entered the Nova ship again. "You told me not to give away our position and that's what I did."

Gamora felt pure fiery rage churn in the pit of her stomach, her knife already in hand and prepared to lunge at Rogers' throat. "I didn't mean electrocute him!" She seethed.

Rocket was back in their care, and at the moment, that was the only thing that mattered. But none of the guardians were able to overlook their trigger-happy comrade reduced to such a pitiful state.

She knew that Rocket had been tortured in the past, torn apart at the seams and stuffed with some new wire or another slab of metal and sewn together again only to go through it again the next day when the pain had barely worn off. But the amount of absolute shock she was feeling now, just thinking of the horrible state in which they had found him.

His fur was matted with sweat and blood and even torn out in some areas, his entire body lined with infected and scabbed over claw marks. The fur along his neck was practically all gone, burned with an electric collar no doubt, the skin still red and inflamed. The part that made Gamora, the woman who had witnessed and experienced enough torturous events to last her a lifetime and then some, bite her lip as nausea threatened to take over, were the red and swollen implants lining the creature's body.

It wasn't the fact that they were there in the first place, after all, the majority of her own skeleton consisted of metallic implants. No, what made her clench her fists and bite back a sorrowful cry upon seeing her unconscious friend was what they had been using the damned implants for.

It was enough to force one to endure the pain of mechanics and wires running throughout their entire system, and by the sound of it, the Halfworlders hadn't even thought twice about using anesthetics when tearing the raccoon apart and forcing the metals into his body, but electrocution?

She shuddered just thinking about it. Having heard Rocket's screams in the night, the troubled nightmares of their smallest partner suddenly meant something new to her. Neither she nor Drax had ever seen the implants before, Rocket always covering them with his jumpsuits and ready to blast anyone who dared question him with one of his newest inventions, but she couldn't say that she had been all too surprised at what she saw upon running into that room and seeing him lying shaking and afraid on that table, wires jutting out of him like he were a marionette doll.

"And what? Let them electrocute him instead? They would have killed him!" Rogers' shouting shook Gamora from her musing and the knife in her hand was clutched even tighter in her grasp. A hand stopped her from practically leaping across the table at the man and she turned sharply to find Peter's hand resting on her shoulder, biting back the reflex to simply stab at it to release herself.

"He's right Gamora." He stated plainly, removing his hand, eyeing the dagger in her hand warily as though he could read her initial intentions.

"You're siding with him again?" She shouted angrily, pointing an index finger at Rogers accusingly. "He could have gotten Rocket killed!"

"But he didn't. We told him to keep under the radar until we got everything shut down and that's what he did." Peter retorted. "Look, Rocket's back, and we've got another problem on our hands without you two biting at each other's throats."

Gamora felt herself stiffen upon the comment and Drax, who had hidden himself quite well from the recently unfolding situation between the assassin and her prey, looked up from his place at the front of the ship.