The Blue Phoenix

Chapter Seven

Wow, you guys have been so patient with this. Thank you for that.

I first started writing this book on an impulse. I have no story line, and I'm not super motivated to keep this going. I hope this is a sufficient explanation for the lack of updates, which I truly apologize for.

***

When you know something you've known for your entire life but you haven't known it until now, you get a very strange feeling. It is as if you are watching a compilation of another's life, and you have not your own.

This is how it felt. Was this her? With these memories had come thoughts. Thoughts she had forgotten before she could think them.

What kind of person had she been? What kind of life had she lead? This was her answer. From the youngest age she had been forced into the sick environment of HYDRA. Their tests, their programs, their medicines. She had no thought of it, no emotional reaction. It was very overwhelming.

There were more questions that could not be answered. Who was Mary Fitzgerald? A time traveller, she knew. Her mother. She also knew now when this thing inside her had been developed.

No. Not just a thing inside her. It was her in all the ways she was herself. To take it away would mean death, but not a physical one.

In what year was her mother born? Had her mother known what horrible things her husband had planned for their daughter? Would these questions... Ever be answered?

She needed to figure out what to do next. She could not go back to HYDRA. They would hide her life from her again. Or put her back where she would not be found.

She also felt as though she could not stay here. How long had she been alone in here?

Her stomach growled. It never growled. It was as if with the memories had come back normal bodily function.

She lifted her shirt and stared at the sunken metal plate she had revealed. What if she just... Rejected it?

She shoved her shirt back down, too afraid to dwell on it further.

Her gaze drifted to the glass of water on the nightstand.

She hadn't ingested anything orally since she hadn't had to. She couldn't really remember the sensation, even though she remembered doing it. Was it possible for her to actually drink?

She walked over to the bed and sat down, staring at it.

Her pulse beat wildly as she picked up the glass, and she felt as though her heart would fall to the floor.

She pressed the glass to her lips and tipped it back. Then she filled her mouth with water.

It was instinctual. She swallowed it, and her throat instantly yearned for more, as if the dampening liquid were a trigger.

The rest of the water was gulped down in an instant, then it was gone.

While the food from earlier had strengthened her and allowed repairs, this... This gave her life. Burning, shimmering life.

Her eyes turned to the barred window. Steel. What a feeble thing. So brittle.

Dark metal plates slid from underneath her skin in a flash, and she blasted through the steel bars and concrete with a firm slam of her elbow.

Jump.

She could feel the wind rushing past her skin. But it wasn't her skin, it was the armour. Just her second skin, doing its job. She could feel more than everything.

The armour half retracted and she was left exposed as she rushed to the ground.

At the last seeming second, she was jerked upward by her powerful thrusters.

"Whoooo!" She screamed in exhilaration.

Then she heard thrusters behind her.