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#6
FEB 11 |
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“Doctor Spectrum”
A Day From Now
She lay in silence. It had been a few weeks since the incident with the Defenders. Her body had been slowly adjusting to itself, while she lay motionless in the Hospital Bed. She was under no illusions that she was “free.” SHIELD Agents swarmed the area, occasionally checking in on her in badly disguised uniforms.
She turned to face herself in the mirror that had been kindly supplied for her. She could see her formerly “attractive” face slowly melting into a hundred other colors. Blue eyes with yellow skin. Green features with red highlights. Purple skin mixed with blotches of Indigo and Orange.
She had no doubt in her mind that something was to come from the fractured Prism itself, polluting her body with its power. She sighed and strained against her bonds.
“Tt.” She smacked her dry lips together, trying to form some words. She gasped for some attention from a nurse, who quickly noticed her plight, and decided to leave her to suffer a bit longer.
Alice made a silent bet with herself that if she were to ever become loose, she would cave that woman's head in. With her bare hands.
“Doctor Nugent,” Came a voice from the doorway. Alice's eyes snapped upwards, dark circles of black with red pupils that swam through the dark blue features she'd adopted for a moment.
“I've come to talk to you about a very exciting opportunity,” The woman said. Alice said nothing, and simply turned her head to the side.
“Not ready for conversation? That's fine. I'll come back tomorrow, but I warn you...I'll be more persistent next time.”
12 Hours From Now
“It appears we've got something of a problem then, doesn't it?” The Agent said quietly, crossing her legs in the chair and leaning backwards. Alice said nothing, sitting upright in bed she looked at her restrained arm and then back at the agent.
“I would mention something about rights, but I feel we're a little far gone from that train. Correct?”
“You're a Smart one. Some sorta scientist or sumfin,” The Agent rolled her eyes, and narrowed one of them into a slit.
“Oh. You have a sense of humor. Wonderous,” Alice jeered, pulling her lips up in a sign of distaste.
“Well, sometimes you have to try and enjoy your work, don't you?” She leant forwards and shuffled the papers.
“Alice Nugent, Scientist. That's fun for you,” The SHIELD agent began. Alice scratched her face gently, pulling layers of black, white and blue skin away from her face.
“What is your name, Agent?” Alice asked, as she touched her hair, it's filaments changing to pure alabaster.
“Shionadnah Sharp,” The agent replied. She leaned forwards again.
“You were a scientist, Nugent. What area of expertise were you?” Shionadnah asked.
“Shauna spelt the simple way, or the complicated way?” Alice responded, a tiny smile on her Red lips.
“Complicated way. Apparently, the way I like it. Science?” Agent Sharp asked for the third time, irritation beginning to show.
“I was a Physicist. My PhD was involved in the focusing of lasers to accelerated and dictate the direction, velocity and intensity of photons in an accelerator,” Alice commented, in an off-handedly patronizing manner.
Agent Sharp nodded for a moment and smiled, scrawling something on the file before her.
“What are you writing?” Alice asked, trying not to sound too interested.
“That you're a patronizing clam-fairy,” Shionadnah replied. Alice's face dropped in confusion for a moment before she realized what she was doing.
“No, what are you really writing?”
“No. I am actually writing that. I'm drawing a little doodle of you eating a clam, like you were some sort of semi-crystal bed-bound retard bear, see?” The Agent lifted up her piece of paper to show exactly what she had written and drawn.
Alice felt her blood boil immediately.
“HOW DARE YOU!” She boomed, spittle shooting from her mouth in a multi-colored spray of hate.
“Taste the rainbow, right?” Shionadnah replied, calmly.
Alice seethed with anger, “You're nothing, you know that. A Career nothing.”
“I spent a year away from my school in England, living in Europe with my Dad. When I came back I had to do my GCSE's in a year. They normally give you three years to do them. I passed with 9 A's. I went on to do a Four A-Levels, and passed all of them with flying colors,” She paused for a moment, and continued gauging Alice's involvement. So far – Nominal.
“I ended up attending Oxford University, and spent my time there on my research project,” Shionadnah leaned back in her chair and placed the file on a fold out table.
“I have a side line currently in the Xenibological processes of three alien species, one of which has an organ designed explicitly to counter-act Gravity. I'm currently working on my second Thesis on Polytrope Geometry in relation to Specialized Relativity and Hyper-Dimensional Fractal Imaging.”
She paused, as Alice's face slowly dropped from its high Horse.
“Why are you with SHIELD?” Alice asked after a few moments of silence.
“I'm not with SHIELD. Or SWORD, or ARMOR. I work for someone far more dedicated to Science than that,” She replied, as Alice struggled against her bonds.
“Who then?”
“I represent Project PEGASUS, and we've heard about your little incident.”
“Yes, I rather imagine you would do,” Alice responded, turning her head away from the more accomplished Scientist.
“We've come with something for a proposition for you,” Shionadnah picked up another document from the table and tossed it towards Alice.
“I'm sure, as a scientist, you've heard of an area called Cryptozoology,” The Agent asked. Alice nodded slowly.
“Pretend Science.”
“Ah, a Skeptic. Really? After all you've seen you're going to be telling me about prevent science. How's that arm working out for you?”
Alice said nothing as she scowled at the Agent.
“We want you, not to lead a little group, but to be our...investigation wing,” The Agent ran a hand through her short Red hair.
“Investigation Wing?”
“Yeah. We tell you about something and you go and capture it so we can poke it and study it.”
“Why would I do that? What's in it for you?” Alice asked, not bothering to open the documents before her.
“What's in it for us? We're dedicated to trying to find new sources of Energy. Be they biological, mystical or...Geological...”
“You want to study me,” Alice responded, a hint of anger in her voice.
“We want to study your arm. You just happen to still be attached to it,” Shionadnah replied, with a smile.
“If I say no?”
“We sedate you and I get out a little light saber thing from my bag, cut your arm off, and probably spit in your mouth while you're out.”
“So, this is Academic then?”
“Yeah. I've already spat on you while you were asleep once before, so, you know. My fun is spoiled...” Shionadnah rolled the thought around in her mouth with her tongue before she gave a cheeky smile.
“We'd let you out, you know?” The Agent said after a prolonged period of silence.
“What terms?”
“Holidays, Playing Tricks...”
“For Goodness...” Alice was quickly losing her patience.
“For all intents and purposes. You'd work for us, but you'd be free. You're allowed to potter around the Complex, go outside and catch some rays. You can make friends, or not as is more likely, or you could just sit here and get...well...SARS or something.” Alice tutted at the younger woman and looked at her arm.
“Why are you after...Cryptids?”
“To try and find better energy sources. If these things are living undetected they A) know how to survive without being seen B) Possess some sort of Magic AKA Undiscovered/Analyzed Energy or C) Someone is hiding the things. So...You In?”
Alice paused for a moment and sighed, leaning forwards a little.
“I need to think about it,” She responded after a few moments. Shionadnah smiled and nodded.
“Okay. You can have some time to think about it,” The Agent got to her feet and walked out of the room, sighing loudly, and walking towards the door of the ward flipping open her phone.
“I've given her the Proposal.” She said after waiting for the ringing to cease, “I think she understands what we're asking – I don't think she realizes there's more to it than that. No Sir, I don't think we'll have much of a problem with her after this. She's clever, but she's a scientist, not a Detective.”
Her body melted away, transforming her thin, lithe figure into a slightly more filled out Blonde woman in a white coat.
“She won't see this at all.”
Now
“THIS. IS. SCIENCE.” She screamed at the top of her lungs, as her crystal fist beat the man's face into the ground. Teeth and bone matter, mixed with soft flesh and spurts of blood mixed with the fractured joints of her Crystal arm. She snorted, and leaned backwards a condescending sneer pasted across the face.
She wiped her mouth with the back of other hand, and pulled her Mask back down to cover her face. It was her standard costume, almost a Venn diagram of colors across her chest, only without sleeves. She snorted underneath her mask and marched forwards.
“This is something different,” She commented quietly, taking a few steps towards the Cave opening before her. A man stood in silence, his costume mirroring hers but without a lower part of the mask. His grinning face was all that she saw. The only other difference, the most jarring one, was the complete lack of color on his costume. It was pure black and white.
“I see the usurper has come to claim my final trophy,” The man said, pulling his arms free from their folded position behind his back, descending down the steps towards Alice.
“You see, when your little...gem, broke not so long ago, I found myself without my own considerably abilities. I was no longer bound to the spectrum itself, the Electromagnetic radiation that I had made my home within was no longer able to receive me. I was a general without an army – My friends here, they stayed with me, but I was no longer their Messiah, and if I am honest with you...I miss that.”
“But now the Prophecy is fulfilled. It was spoke in the Book of Spectrum, that I will be reborn after my greatest humility is brought upon me – You are here to bring the Colours back to my world?”
Alice smiled and stepped forwards.
“I am,” She replied, Red and Orange flushing through her features as her Crystal hand clattered against the side of his head, sending him flying onto the ground.
“I bring you Red!” She whispered, her Geological fist bouncing his face off the ground sending a jet of blood from his nose onto the floor. He gasped for air, as he fumbled to try and pull his mask off to catch his breath.
Alice rammed her heel down into the back of his neck, pinning his face in the dirt.
“Let's get this straight. This Crystal is mine. It's always mine. It's part of me now, and your pointless little Monochrome idea is just..disgusting. I don't understand why you're around but all I want is your artifact, so...just hand it over and this doesn't have to be any harder than it is.”
“What artifact?” He asked, gasping up towards her. A few of his teeth littered the floor.
“You know exactly what I am talking about.”
Her frustration was getting stronger, as she felt this waste of space was giving her the run around.
“Just give it over and I'll make sure nothing too terrible happens to you.”
“I don't have anything!” Alice applied more pressure to the back of his neck. He gagged and screamed in pain.
“Please! Please! I have a daughter, a family! There are people that need me. I'll give you anything!”
“You know what I want,” Alice said, pushing her other hand to her ear, “We're having some problems here. Any idea where this Artifact might be?”
“The only intel we have is that this joker has it, Alice. Get it out of him, or just end him and trash the place,” Alice sighed and turned around slowly, her heel grinding in the base of the man's neck, a soft snap replacing his screams which bled into silence.
“I'm looking for the Article in question now,” Alice asked. She walked through the intricate network of Caves, she glanced around. There must be something in here, something that would be what PEGASUS wanted.
Her anger was starting to get the better of her as she began throwing furniture around.
“Where the fuck is this crap?” She yelled, her Crystal fist smashing through a desk, as pieces of technology and brightly colored glowing fragments encased in plastic dropped to the ground.
She smiled to herself, looking from her arm, flooding with colors to the floor. She knelt down slowly and picked up a fragment of plastic, examining its contents.
“Finally,” She put had hand against the blue-tooth phone against her ear, as she felt a small pressure against her back.
“Shionadnah?” Alice asked, before the blue-tooth skittered against the ground. A soft spattering and dripping of blood gurgled from Alice's throat as the end of the stick pierced her body, and clunked against the soft, sand covered ground.
Her eyes widened, as her fingertips, both crystalline and flesh touched the end of the wooden pole that had penetrated her. A second gurgling cough revealing the trauma that she thought she had got past. Her life was rushing to meet its end, and she'd done nothing of note with it since she received the Power Prism.
She was adrift, completely and utterly. Her anger was washed away with fear and despair. Her eyes welling up with a mixture of saline and blood, as she felt the world roll onto its side, or rather, she lolled onto her side.
Her eyes couldn't quite roll enough to get a visual on her attacker. All she could make out were slender legs, underneath leather trappings with an almost ethereal glow emanating from any gap in clothing.
Alice opened her mouth to speak, but her throat was too full of blood to produce any noise other than faint, soft gurgling. It seemed as though it were taking an age for her to die.
A thin, perfect hand reached into Alice's field of vision to pick up the Blue-Tooth headset. Perfect painted fingernails and glowing bioluminescent fingertips gripped the technology as Nugent's vision failed completely, fading from color, to monochrome, to finally black and Ultimate White.
“Alice Nugent is no longer in your services,” A woman's voice spoke down the phone to the PEGASUS agent.
“Who are you?” Agent Sharp demanded. A cunning smile warped its way across her lips, as she prepared to respond to the angry agent.
“We are Spectrum,” Came the slow, dry reply.
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The End...
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