Making a Hero

Prologue

My name is Brooke. I've had other names too. This time, I'm Brooke. I don't remember the name that my parents gave me, it was so long ago. I look about twenty five years old. I have looked that way for a very long time. 

My appearance is exactly average. Average height, average weight, average build. Plain faced, gray eyes, ash brown hair. I am unremarkable and forgettable. Most people don't even notice me. This suits me fine. I fled to Australia after my third escape. The choice of wide open spaces, or large crowded cities to vanish into.

 I spent a long time in Australia, discovering the nature of the new world that I had run to. It was hard to assimilate to a culture that I'd never known, with no prior knowledge of the language or history. I had trouble defining social cues, abiding by the unspoken laws of community living and establishing functional relationships.

I hid myself so that I was able to watch families grow and learn together. I assimilated much from the schools and workplaces of people, all while staying unnoticed. I was very good at observing humanity go about its business and I soon became equally good at blending in. Mostly, I just tried not to be conspicuous or suspicious.

I used my abilities only as much as I had to, acutely aware that they separated me from the rest of humanity. Sometimes someone saw me, or I inadvertently showed myself as different, and I would have to move on to a new place.  People fear what they don't understand. But the good thing about Australia, is that it's very big.

 When I escaped, all I wanted was to live, as undisturbed and as inconspicuous as possible. I didn't want to stand out or be noticed by anyone. I stayed hidden away for decades. I learned a lot about people, and myself in that time. But it was hollow, a vast emptiness in every breath of my false life. I couldn't endure the act.  

I've  tried, but I can't ignore my past. I can't pretend that everything's fine and that I'm normal. It's unbearable to live with the constant feeling of something unfinished. Normal people can't do the things that I can do. Normal people don't have the extreme history that I have. I am not normal. I don't fit in and there is no way that I ever really can. I fled my captors so many decades ago, but I'm not free and I'm still scared. I'm driven to do something about it or I'll never be at peace. So I started a new life. I have become someone different, someone real. For the first time, I feel like me. I'm ready to leave Australia behind. I'm ready to find, and face my past.

 I was abducted as a small child, by an alien race called the Kree. They are responsible for a number of abductions throughout the history of earth, and have a perverse interest in the human race. The Kree changed me. They turned me into something that wasn't human anymore, and I wasn't the only one.

It went from bad to worse when, by pure chance, a group of humans known as Hydra obtained me. They were extremely cruel, and that cruelty inspired them to create even worse experiments for me to endure than the Kree could have ever imagined. They made me do things that made them even less human than I.

 I regard the Kree with contempt, but I loath Hydra with unfathomable depth. The perverse things that they subjected me to made them far more evil to me than an inquisitive alien race, and I was going to ensure that they came to regret their actions. It was time to stop hiding, and start hunting.

***

It didn't matter where in the universe I might wake up, I would never do it gracefully. My eyes had crusted shut and I pulled the blankets tighter about me in denial. I was not handling jet lag well. It was very dark and the chill of the November weather permeated the air, making it feel more like a cave than a cheap hotel room. Grumbling about the chill, I rolled off the bed, flicked on the lamp and looked at the clock. Urgh, two in the morning. Brutal.

Rubbing my eyes, I pulled out a big map that I'd found at an information stall in the airport. It itemized all the popular tourist visiting locations, and contained helpful information for New York first timers. I had yet to get a mobile phone and so far wasn't in much of a hurry to do so. It was easy enough to get by without one. I perused the streets and memorized important locations. I didn't bother learning about any tours, opening times or activities. I wasn't here to have a fun filled holiday. I was here on personal business.

I pulled on some track-pants and staggered to the bathroom to wash my face. The flight to New York had been long and the culture shock had been... well, shocking. I'd binge watched hours of American television to prepare myself for my time in the Big Apple, but was still rather overwhelmed.

Manhattan was simply gob-smacking. Even though I only glimpsed some of it through through my fingers during a terrifying taxi ride to my cheap hotel, what I'd seen had been busy. The sheer amount of people was amazing! It was good that I'd booked the room in advance too, the city was crawling with people who were visiting their family for Thanksgiving, something that I didn't celebrate. I found myself being glared at with loathing and disgust by a cold, dangerous looking man who was sitting the hotel lobby, and openly leered at by an older couple by the elevators. disconcerted, I'd taken my backpack into my room and left a 'Do Not Disturb' sign swinging on the door handle while I fell onto the bed. Briefly, I had wondered why New Yorkers seemed so damn unfriendly, and then I'd fallen fast asleep.

Now that I was awake, I was ravenous. I stuffed the map away, confident that I'd remember everything I needed. I shoved my feet into my shoes, grabbed some cash and pulled on my coat before I took myself out in search of a big feed. I got out onto the street and experienced a touch of nostalgia while I looked about me. I found myself reminded of my first time venturing in to the city. The bright lights, the sounds, the people. Everywhere around me was energy that flowed and ebbed through the streets. Quite an experience for someone who was used to living in a cell.

I found an all you can eat place that was close to where else I wanted to go, and while I was eating my way through everything on offer, I considered my game plan. It was unlikely that I could touch the Kree. A solitary human against a race of technologically advanced aliens with superior intelligence? That wasn't likely to end in my favor, definitely biting off more than I could chew.

The Kree had been responsible for me for over a century. It had been a meager fifteen years that I'd suffered at the hands of Hydra, and those years were more brutal and more personal than any of my time with the Kree had been. I felt that Hydra deserved retribution more. The Kree are alien, they studied and experimented on me to learn about the human condition.

I was no more than a lab rat to them, and it wasn't so hard to accept their curiosity. Hydra are a human organisation, yet they had no problem subjecting me to many inhuman procedures which they enjoyed immensely. I found that unforgivable.

Hydra were more readily accessible, the Kree were not, though I knew that they had observatories in hidden locations across the globe, it would do me no good to go hunting for those without superior technology. The problem being that even though I wanted to take Hydra down, I didn't know anything that was actually useful.

When I'd been locked away by them, the man in charge was Lieutenant Von Strucker. A cruel man who had always looked smug. I'd googled him and found nothing. I knew that Hydra had squared off against Captain America during in WW2, but while he had resurfaced, frozen in ice, Hydra remained mysterious. There had been a few conspiracy theories online, something about them infiltrating a major government branch of defense, but there was so much contradicting information that it was hard to take any of it seriously.

Overall, I'd decided to follow facts over conjecture and instead of going to Virginia and browsing through Pentagon files, hoping to find something about an altercation with Hydra, here I was in New York, hoping to find valuable information by way of The Avengers and their much adored leader, Captain America. I figured that since it was fact that the Captain had been a major pain in Hydra's ass during the height of their power, he'd have to know something. The Avengers had been all over the news across the globe since the attempted alien invasion a few years ago, and had gathered extra exposure after some incident with Sokovia. They were the media's very favourite thing. The whole world adored them, for good reason. Even I owned avengers merchandise.

I figured that if I could find the Avengers headquarters, I could occupy their computer systems and gather the information that I wanted. If I was lucky, there would be files on Hydra and where to find them. Of course, I had no idea where the official headquarters of the world's most adored superheroes might be. It made sense that the location would be kept confidential. Not just in case someone with sinister intentions attacked, but to keep crowds of crazy fangirls from mobbing the heroes. It was still inconvenient though.

It wouldn't be easy to find them, but, as I left the restaurant and stared up the street at the tower illuminated in blue and emblazoned with the name STARK... I had a good idea on where to start.

***

The Kree were very thorough with their work on me. They were very inquisitive and I was subjected to many things to satisfy that curiosity. They learned a lot about pain thresh-holds at the start and wasted no time in breaking me, and then fixing me, and then breaking me in a different way. I endured points, blades, blunt objects, searing heat and burning cold, flames, liquid. I was inflicted with every kind of wound imaginable. I had healed from every type of injury before I grew out of my childhood.

During the following years, they studied my immune system. I was exposed to more sicknesses than could be counted. I wished for death, but they never let any illness progress that far. When they'd reached their conclusions regarding my ability to recover from a variety of things, they began to try more drastic experiments. Exposing me to dangerous elements, poisons, controlled injections to study my physical response. They showed zero interest in anything aside from my physiology. I was just flesh.

Eventually they began experimental procedures on my molecular structure. They would pick me apart, atom by atom and create something that was entirely different, and then they would rebuild me, like I was a mere jigsaw puzzle. They forced radical changes, I would be made of flesh and blood and bone or I would be made of gold or diamond, gas, sand, steel. My genetics were no longer fixed, I'd started as human, but that could change according to their whims. I could be any animal, change into any plant, I could even be liquid. Sometimes they didn't force a complete change. They just gave my human body attributes. So I could be mostly myself, but with steel skin, or animal eyes.

There was an accident that affected my physical appearance. I had been taken apart and was present only as a large cluster of cells when there became an issue with their computing systems. They lost all the data on my original form and had to rebuild me using a stencil of human DNA that was based on the averaged out attributes of humanity. I no longer looked like I belonged anywhere in particular. It took a long time for the repercussions of that accident to become evident.  

I was changed into so many things, that I became detached from myself. An unintended consequence perhaps, but while they broke down my body, my soul found a way to survive. It was a surreal experience. Learning to exist in two forms, and they never realized that my spirit and my body could become separate. That I could be one whole, or two halves.

Physically, they owned me, but I could leave the torture, the clinical indifference. I could roam beyond the sterile rooms, and discover more than they ever intended me to. They were too arrogant to think of the human ego, let alone consider that it might find a way to exist without physical form. In this, I found freedom, and I found Hope.

When Hydra stole me from the Kree observatory, in the beginning they had no idea what they had found. I was the opportunistic grab of a praise desperate Hydra soldier. They didn't know what I was capable of, only how they had found me and so they took no chances. Their technology was primitive compared to the Kree, but it was effective. The collar they fixed around my neck, had fine wires that had plunged through my skin into my spinal column. From that very moment, I had become Hydra's puppet.

Entirely unable to exert any willpower of my own. I was more frightened and angry within Hydra's confines than I ever had been with the Kree. The Kree were all I had ever known. I had come to understand their language, their science, their society. Hydra were foreign and terrifying. When I wasn't being actively controlled, I was sedated, I couldn't even free my soul under these circumstances. I was more trapped my own kind than I had been with the aliens who had made me this way.

Hydra wanted to weaponize me once they saw the extent of my capabilities. They tested my physical health and abilities, took DNA samples and subjected me to many medical procedures. They tried to communicate, but in the beginning, I didn't comprehend their efforts. They pushed the limits of my molecular control, forcing me to fight to survive. They reveled in my versatility and were excited at the possible applications. I noted that the biggest difference between the Kree and the humans was their attitude. The Kree were indifferent to me. I had no identity to them. Hydra however, were actively cruel, subjecting me to humiliations, and taking their failures out on me. Their active delight in my pain terrified me.

After escaping, it took a long time for me to overcome the things that I had been through. It was hard to live a normal life, when being kept in a cell was all I'd known. I'd spent longer as an experiment and slave, than most humans lived. And even when I'd learned to live a free life, the fear of being found and subjected to it all over again never really went away. Neither did the anger, or the outrage, or the guilt.

I knew that I would never enjoy freedom while they were still out there, and I was sure they were. It was too much to hope otherwise. All of my lives had been spent looking over my shoulder, and always ready to run.

***

The cab dropped me at Stark tower. I stood at the base, staring up, desperately trying not to doubt myself. I had to do this. There was no other way. I had nothing else but this. This terrible plan. This terrible, badly thought out, incredibly risky plan. I took a deep shaky breath. No, no I could do this. I was an old hand at reading computer data, sourcing information. It was easy. Nothing I hadn't done hundreds of times before.

I tried to calm my jangling nerves with a few deep and even breaths, and then slouched down against the wall of the building, resting my head on my knees. In and out. That's it. Easy. After all, all I wanted to know was the location of the Hydra Base. I had my doubts about Tony Stark having that kind of information, Hydra were Captain America's problem, not Iron Man's, but I had to start somewhere. Even if there was nothing regarding Hydra in Stark's data storage, there might be a lead on where I could find what I was looking for.

“Crazy.” I muttered to myself. One lonely little Aussie was just going to ferret around in Iron Man's computer systems. Easy. No worries at all. Because Tony Stark is just a creative genius who creates technology that's way more advanced than anything I've been able to get my soul on in the past. Shit.

I projected my soul up and out of my body abruptly, my physical self tilted lazily to the side. Like a drunk person passing out. As good cover as any I suppose. I then entered the tower and located the computer systems. It wasn't hard. Stark's computer was literally everywhere. I let my soul settle in and began to reach out to the entire system.

The very first thing I learned was that this was not going to be the cake walk that I had predicted. The computer's name was Friday. She was a breathtakingly complicated piece of programming that was tainted with Stark's soul, and she was not at all expected. I had believed that I could come into this unopposed, but she knew that I shouldn't be there. She immediately began restricting my access, and she set of the alarms, alerting people in the building that the systems were being hacked. Which was more or less right.

I was torn between delight and horror. I hadn't anticipated any resistance at all, and had never encountered any before. The prospect of this nearly alive entity being here was exciting, but also a major hurdle. Instead of leisurely browsing through information, I was going to have to fight for it, and I was going to have to be fast. I pushed my way through her barriers and tried to lock her out, unfortunately she pushed back at me just as hard as I pushed at her, and I was forced to do some very fast multitasking. I was barely able to skim over the data, my grasp becoming increasingly tenuous while I tried to fend her off. I managed to block any outside access, but for every lock I threw up, Friday was ready with a lock pick. If somebody gained outside access to the system, they could help Friday force me out, I couldn't allow that to happen before I'd gained what I needed.

I intensified my presence, it was a struggle, but I managed to integrate myself more securely within the system. Becoming more powerful within the programming than Friday could handle. She never paused in her effort to flush me out, and she doubled her attempts to grant outside interference. I turned the bulk of my attention to the information stored within, it was just a matter of time before Friday was successful in outing me, so I had to get down to what I came here for.

Most of what I encountered was to do with running Stark Industries, old tech, new tech. The arc reactor. Clients, business associates. The kind of stuff that, while interesting, was about as useful to me as a pancake recipe. Friday continued to niggle at me and I could feel external attempts to break in to the system, the outsiders were getting very close to breaching my lock outs and snatching my control. It had to be Stark himself, I didn't think any else would be capable of breaking through my shut outs except the man who had created the systems. 

It was frustrating. I had expected Stark tower to have some information that I could use, but there was nothing here that wasn't directly related to running this business. Though a portion of his business dealings did pique my curiosity, nothing here was worth constantly having to fend off Friday for. I tried to access employee files, hoping to find addresses and contact details, but Friday was prying me off her systems bit by little bit. Stark had created an incredibly tenacious program. I could only assume that the combination of Stark's genius and the rubbing off of his soul had something to do with it.

Disgusted at being thwarted, I acquiesced control to Friday and retreated entirely from the system. I hadn't retrieved what I had set out for, but I hadn't come away entirely empty handed. The few tidbits that I'd gleaned were going to provide food for thought. Disappointingly, it looked as though I was going to have to go to Virginia and look into the Hydra conspiracy leads, because Stark Tower had turned out to be a surprising, but ultimately useless source of information.

I returned to to my physical self, As soon as my body and soul were completely synchronized, I jolted to consciousness with a gasp. Panicked, I ignored the slight weakness that the separation had caused and I staggered up and began to run. Nobody in that tower was likely to believe that my arrival, and Stark's systems being hacked were coincidental, and I wasn't stupid enough to hang around thinking that I could lie my way out of trouble.

I glanced over my shoulder as I bolted away and saw dark shapes pouring from the building entrance to take up pursuit. Bloody Stark. Bloody Friday. I hadn't counted on having to run, I hadn't counted on even being noticed. Now it was all shot to shit, and I was fleeing down the street. Stealth had been the entire basis of my plan. I wasn't in any shape to be running, let alone if things came to a fight. Trying to think fast on my feet, I could feel anxiety and fear creeping through me, causing my molecules to vibrate with unease. I'd taken off running directly away from the tower's entrance, the same way I'd gotten there. There was a park off this street, about two blocks away. If I could just make it there, I might be able to hide and survive this pursuit.

I hadn't had evil intentions when I broke into the data files, but Stark didn't know that, and there was enough information in those files to do serious damage to the business if it got into the wrong hands. I was in heap big trouble. Iron Man would be out for my blood over this, and it definitely wasn't the way I'd intended for things to pan out.

I'd barely made it one block before my body began to completely protest my sprint. My muscles burned, my lungs were stinging and I could feel my heart beating in my throat. My stomach began prepping to empty itself of my meal from earlier. I tried to figure out the logistics of barfing on the run when I heard a tinny voice demanding that I stop. I had one more block to go, I would not be caught and trapped ever again. I pushed myself to go faster disregarding my pain and though I dearly wanted to look back at Iron Man, I kept going.

I was hit in the back by a repulsor blast. Stark had actually shot me! Jesus things had gotten real, fast! The searing punch of energy burned through my clothes, my skin bubbled and blistered. I was thrown forward off my feet. I landed hard on my elbows and knees, gasping hard with sweat and tears streaming down my face. The pain in my back was so intense that I nearly passed out. Between the repulsor blast, the impact of hitting the road, and the grit now embedded in my skin, everything was stinging.

I scrambled up and something flew past me, flicking up my hair. I glanced up to see Iron Man before me, hands held ready to hit me in with another repulsor blast if necessary. My heart rate hit the roof, and the adrenaline rush triggered by the threat of being shot at in the face by the Iron Man blotted out the pain and exhaustion.

“I don't know how you got into my systems in the first place, but it looks like your little snatch and run didn't work out.” he said casually, his stance the exact opposite of casual. I threw my arms up in a defensive position, then I took a deep breath and shifted my molecular structure to the strongest substance that I knew of. Clearly, it was game on.

“Something made painfully obvious by the fact that I've got Iron Man riding my goddamn ass.” I retorted, my voice nearly as metallic as his. I hoped that he wouldn't hear the blinding panic in my tone. I suddenly charged forward, catching him off guard, and slammed my palm up into Iron Man's chin with all of the force that I could muster. My shift had given me the extreme strength and resilience of the metal that I had adapted into my molecular structure.

He lifted off the ground and went backwards in a graceful arc, hitting the ground with a very heavy, very painful sounding thud. I didn't hang around to watch him recover, I charged onward to the park.

I was running on pure desperation and adrenaline, which would soon wear off and then my body would just give out, I had to reach the park before that happened. I could hide, if I could just get there. I mustn't have caused too much damage to Stark's suit with my strike, because he shot at me again, but the blasts were just absorbed into my body and didn't even affecting my stride.

I knew he could fly faster than I could run, but at the moment, I was as strong as any superhero. I scrambled to a stop behind a parked car, and after quickly observing his trajectory, I heaved it up into the air directly at him. I heard the collision, but was already running for safety.

I finally got to the park, slamming directly into the chain-link fence that surrounded it. I slumped against it, I was starting to get tunnel vision and my arms and legs weren't responding like they should. I cursed myself for my lack of fitness and I cursed Stark, for having an intelligent system. I should have been undetected and able to walk away, instead of running to save my skin! There was no way I was going to be able to climb over the fence, glancing over my shoulder, I saw that Iron Man had shaken off his collision with the car and was resuming the chase.

Desperately I kicked at the bottom of the fence and then dropped and rolled under the warped steel, but as I got back to my feet, I came face to face with the pretentious golden Iron Man mask. He grabbed my arms to keep me from bolting again. I felt bile rise in my throat, caused through exhaustion or fear, I couldn't tell, and I leaned forward and vomited all down the front of Tony Stark's very expensive, infamous Iron Man suit.

“Oh my god that's disgusting!” He exclaimed, the horror evident in his tone. Fatigue was affecting my focus and my change began to fluctuate, I had to concentrate very hard to bring myself back into the shift. “That's Vibranium!” Stark exclaimed, noting the change “But how did you... have you... are you?” He spluttered while I lolled in his grip. My knees sagged and my head fell back. I breathed hard, summoning the dregs of my remaining strength.

“Ta daaaa!” I breathed before I very suddenly straightened my knees and shot forward, my head snapping Iron Man in the face with a powerful head butt that buckled his shiny armor and sent him to the ground in a knocked out, tangled heap of hot-rod red, gold and puked on suit. I dropped to my knees and let the shift go, returning to my normal human self.

I crawled back under the fence and into the street. Stark was in no condition to stop me now, and the other pursuers from the tower were nowhere to be seen. I didn't need to hide in the park, I just needed to get to a bed. Very wearily, and with one last glance back at the maimed superhero, I hailed a cab and got the hell out of there.