NOVEL NEXT Chapter 4: Awakening
20th March 1987; New York City, New York
I wake up disappointed. I was so sure I was dead. I was so sure that my miserable existence had come to an end at the age of 16, that my pain would be over. I could barely breathe in the last few days; the pain was too much, and my only regret is that I couldn't finish my life's work. I was so close too; a few months and I would have created a fully working AI. I put my everything in that project, and I'm pretty smart girl If I say so myself, once in a generation genius specializing in computer science. When I was diagnosed with lung cancer, I knew I had to create my mark in the world. To be remembered as more than just a cancer kid, wasted potential.
But the pain was too much for me to concentrate, I could barely use a keyboard properly and I failed. Dying in pain, I was alone. My parents gave up on me as soon as I was diagnosed, unable to watch me die, and barely talked to me. Same with my friends. Though it's weird, I'm not as angry as I used to be. I accidentally take a deep breath, anticipating the usual pain. But nothing comes. My body is very sore and I feel weak but not nearly as weak as before. What's going on? Did they use some kind of experimental treatment on me? Freaking out, I open my eyes.
I'm still in a hospital. Is it the same one? I don't remember. How can I not remember? I notice there is a lot of things I don't remember, like my name, my face, or even my parent's faces. Is this some kind of selective amnesia? That can't be it. Maybe this is a side effect of the cancer or of the treatment? No, the cancer was in my lungs, which wouldn't affect my memories and none of the drugs have neurological side effects. Trust me, I checked. I realize after a moment that my thoughts are coming by fast. Very fast, in fact. I don't remember ever being able to think this fast. Like some kind of fog had lifted from my mind. I feel like my brain was like a laggy computer before, and now it feels like I'm using a gamer PC. Maybe I had a brain tumor on top of the lung cancer? Could explain the side effects.
I quickly take a look around and I see an IV plugged into my left arm, a doctor is looking at my chart next to my bed. I'm not plugged to any of my usual bags which is weird. The nurse, next to me, is using her phone. It's a flip phone, which is weird to see this day and honestly an insult to programmer like me. This isn't the time to start a rant. But I freeze when I see the phone's brand: "Stark Phone".
Shit, were the fuck am I? Ok, this is not the time to freak out. Maybe this is just a coincidence or maybe she's trying to prank people with it? I look around to see if I can find any other clues about my situation. I look around and I notice a newspaper. The presence of a newspaper in 2020 isn't what's making me gape, but the headline: "Howard and Maria Stark dead in a car accident". I finally look at the date which is 20th March 1987.
Looking at the doctor for any indication of this being a prank, he finally notices I'm awake. He smiles and says "Hello, my name is Doctor John Hamilton, what is the last thing you remember?" to which I reply "Nothing, I can't remember anything." I have to make sure I know all the facts and this is the safest thing to do. "Well, you were found next to an explosion in Manhattan. And don't worry about your memories, you had a concussion and temporary short term memory loss." He says kindly. Shit, I'm in New York. I was being treated in London as far as I know.
"No, you don't understand, I don't know who I am."
He looks puzzled and worried. He thinks that blunt force trauma in the head and my malnourishment are the cause for my amnesia. He also believes that I am the victim of child abuse. What the fuck! How do I have malnutrition and how the fuck do I know what he's thinking? Suddenly, I hear voices coming from everywhere. My head hurts, and there is suddenly too much going on at once. I scream, and everything goes black.
When I wake up again, it's night. I'm alone this time and thankfully, there are no voices. I sigh in relief and start thinking about my predicament. Seeing a mirror besides me I take a look at myself. The face that greets me is not mine. It's of an incredibly cute little girl, dangerously thin but with long wavy hair and emerald green eyes. Okay, this is freaky, how the fuck am I in a little girl's body?
Relax, let's approach this logically. There are three hypotheses possible. One, I'm hallucinating. Unlikely. A person hallucinating, no matter how many senses the hallucination tricks, can be affected by the real world. My doctors didn't try to get me out of it; there's no disturbances which means we can rule out hallucinations and delusions.
Second, I could be trapped in my subconscious and my mind is letting me live out my last days in my own Marvel universe where I have some special power. I'm guessing here it's telepathy. No, when I accidentally read Dr. Hamilton's mind, I learned some medical knowledge that I didn't know before. I know I'm a smart gal, but I definitely am not smart enough for my subconscious to create medical knowledge out of the blue.
Which leaves us with the final hypothesis. After I died, I somehow was reborn in another universe. It's curious that it's a universe that I'm somehow familiar with. The probability that I happened to travel to a universe that I know compared to one I don't in the entire omniverse is very low. There must have been an entity involved or something. I'll figure this out later. Now I need access to the internet. Is the internet even a thing in 1987? I need to confirm where exactly I am.
I'm not in a position to do anything right now so I just focus on my telepathy. Maybe if I control it, I can get answers that way. Plus, I'm really nervous and don't see myself going back to sleep. Now, how do I activate it? I think I read a comic about meditating to be able to improve control over telepathy.
Now, let's think about inner peace.
Inner peace.
Inner peace.
Shit, it's been 30 minutes and I'm too distracted and I'm pretty sure I don't know how to meditate. Okay, let's try something else. I close my eyes and imagine candle. I concentrate on the flame. I picture the flame growing. Something is happening. It's like I'm sending away some sort of energy and getting feedback. Holy shit, that's a lot of feedback! I feel like a thousand people are screaming in my ear. No wonder Jean Grey went crazy. What the actual fuck? I need to get rid of the noise. I remember in a TV show called Legion, about a technique Xavier's son used to manage this. I imagine a speaker on full volume and a remote controlling the volume. I slowly turn down the volume and the voices slowly fade away. Good to know TV was actually good for something.
Now that I have it under control, let's try to focus on a single person. There's a nurse sitting outside my door and I slowly try to focus on her. I imagine the energy as a small tentacle that enters her mind. She's thinking about me and worried about my probably abusive environment. She doesn't feel that going to an orphanage will help me recover from it. I try to go deeper. She suddenly gets a headache and decides to leave and get an aspirin.
After that, I decide that it would be a bad idea to keep doing this to nurses and doctors without proper control as they could accidentally kill a patient because of me. I'm ecstatic about this working and decide to try something else a little less harmful: Mind Sensing.
It's a technique where you sense the minds around you, their intent, and their emotions. I slowly exude my energy in a dome, slowly going through the hospital and I can feel every person inside. I can feel the patients and their family's fear. The determination of certain doctors. I extend my dome's radius to across the street and then through the entire block. Not bad for my first day.
9th May 1987; New York City, New York
It's been a few weeks since my awakening, and I have been looking for people with negative intent and learned to properly use memory extraction. I even started to learn skills from the thugs I used, like lock picking and pickpocketing. I even entered the mind of a doctor who was stealing drugs and selling them for profit and even killed a few patients for the Italian mob. The hospital doesn't need junkie mob doctors so I tried copying his medical knowledge. Which worked splendidly, by the way. I had him hide all the money that he got illegally in a bag and hide it so I can steal it later. Hey, don't judge me, I'm an abandoned poor abused orphan girl and I need money if I can survive. I then erased his memory of the money and had him confess to the cops and brought in evidence of his wrongdoings.
Since cases like mine take at least two weeks before I'm discharged and sent to a hospital, they agreed to lend me a computer hoping I'll remember something or at least know enough to continue living normally. Funnily enough, the laptop they gave has similar specs then mine before my death. I guess they have better tech here. Well, I am in a universe where iron man will exist in a few years so that makes sense. So far according to my research I'm in a mix between the MCU and marvel comics. Tony Stark looks like Robert Downey Junior but Charles Xiaver exists and so does his school. After a not so legal researching, his school seems under constant surveillance from SHIELD, the CIA and the military. By the way, they're not as advanced in cyber security, thankfully. So, SHIELD was founded by Peggy Carter and Howard Stark. Hydra is still hidden inside SHIELD. Captain America is under ice, and his story seems to be the same as his MCU counterpart. The same can be said with the winter soldier. On the magical side of things, Stephen Strange has stopped being a neurosurgeon for some time now. I guess, we're dealing with the occult from the comics which is pretty terrifying.
So, mutants exist, and I guess I am one. Though I hope I'll be able to stay under the radar because I don't want to deal with Trask, Stryker, Xavier or Magneto anytime soon. I'm gonna have to train myself to conceal my presence and proper control over my abilities.
It's been over a month now and I'm finally being discharged. My body having regained my weight abnormally fast which baffled the doctors. I guess I have some kind of super regeneration, it does explain how my predecessor survived considering the worrying number of scars on my body. The social services lady is admitting me to an orphanage in Queen's, and I chose the name Morgan Smith for now so that's what they're calling me. I might have made her put me in one of the best orphanages around. It's not much but compared to some of the orphanages on the list, it can be described as fancy. Each orphan gets a dorm room and a private bathroom. The neighborhood is safe and there's a small park just outside in case we want to play and it's close to the library. It seems like a good place to train myself until I decide to leave permanently. Now, it's time for me to prepare.