ARCHANGEL (Marvel Fanfiction)

Chapter 4. Who She Is (Pt. 1)

            Elizabeth Pearce lived in an orphanage in Manhattan since she was a baby. She was a lively and happy girl with beautiful appearance. She never knew her parents, but it wasn’t a problem. Elizabeth loved her family in the orphanage more than anything.           

One day, when she was six years old, a woman and a man came to the orphanage. They claimed that they wanted to adopt a child, and they were immediately smitten by the pretty and cheerful Elizabeth.­

            Elizabeth didn’t want to go. She begged her housemother not to let her leave, but she couldn’t do anything. Her friends and caretakers sent her off with teary goodbyes, and Elizabeth cried during the whole ride to her new home.

            Her home was actually very nice and big, but somehow, it felt cold. Her new parents treated her well, escorting her to her room, already decorated beautifully. They told her to call them “mother” and “father”.

            Three days after she moved, her parents told her that she needed to come with them.

           Where? She asked.

           Your new boarding school, they answered.

            They took her to a place where everything she saw was grey walls, and also some adults passing by. She was taken to a room filled with bunk beds where a few children just like her were waiting nervously.

Her parents escorted her to a bed which had a label with her name on it, and told her to wait for the teacher to arrive. They said goodbye, and left through the door, closing it behind them.

            Not long after, a man in dark green uniform came in, introduced himself as their homeroom teacher, and school will begin the next day.

            Their lessons were mainly about Hydra, combat and spying skills, and also language lessons. They went through strict physical trainings.

            Elizabeth remembered that she had to do what they called The Golden 20- 20 squats, 20 push-ups, 20 sit-ups, and 20 rounds of full speed running. For a six years old girl, that almost killed her on her first day, but as time went by, she had gotten stronger.

            Her routine trainings then implemented by combat trainings. She learned martial arts and chose sword skills as her concentration of study. Every day, every lesson, they needed to repeat the same sentence over and over again.

            “Hail Hydra.”

            By the following year, she had noticed the change in her body. She was all muscle, her face is a little skinnier and looked more serious. In that year, they started to take the children to their labs, one by one. It’s a gift, they said. Equipping them for their future.

            Elizabeth did not like it when they injected her backbone with various liquids. She would feel a very bad ache all over her body, especially during nights. She cried in her bed, trying not to make a sound, because Hydra was very strict over sleeping schedule. Even though her bones felt like it was ripping apart.

            Some of her cabin mates disappeared one by one. Her homeroom teacher told them they were discharged out of incompetence, but what incompetence? Some of them were the best students.

            A few weeks later, Elizabeth noticed two bumps in her back. It was getting worse and worse, they swelled really bad and from inside them there were something like a thorn growing out.

            She was afraid and she told this to her homeroom teacher, whose in Elizabeth’s disbelief, showed the expression of pure joy. She was immediately brought to the lab and they examined her, then injected her with more liquids.

            Elizabeth felt more pain that night, more than ever. She screamed, trying to claw her back. The thorn ripped through her skin and made it bleed. She was again brought to the lab and they gave her some painkillers. They put her to sleep for a few weeks.

When she woke up, she realized to her horror, that a pair of wings grew on her back. Not the beautiful kind of wings. They were like the wings of a new hatched birds. No feathers, only skin, and it looked terrible.

She went hysterical. A few lab doctors came in, trying to calm her down. They said feathers would grow on them eventually, and Elizabeth would look just like a magnificent bird.

And it was true. Just a month later, her wings were already covered with feathers. Elizabeth felt a little better, and they told her to learn to fly with those wings. It took much effort to do that.

They did not stop their experiment on Elizabeth. She was then put in a metal box, exposed with radiation, and injected with more liquids all over her body. It was very painful. When she came out, her whole body glowed with yellow light.

The trainers helped her to control her powers, while being monitored with the lab doctors. One day when she was on training in the lab, the alarm of the building went off.

That was the first time she saw those kind of chaos during the 3 years she spent in Hydra. Everybody panicked. She didn’t know what to do and sat still on the bed table, when a group of people barged in, shooting at the doctors. They all had a symbol of an eagle on their uniform.

Then they spotted her at the center of the room, pointed guns at her threateningly. Elizabeth was shaking with fear.

The one who seemed like their leader reached out his hand, slowly walking towards her, promising to help. She would not be an experiment object anymore. She wouldn’t feel pain from now on. Elizabeth felt her throat choked as tears running down her face. She just realized how relieved she was and how much she hated the experiments. She took the man’s hand, and he carried her outside.