My right leg dragged on the ground, blood slowly dripping down it and leaving a trail on the floor. On the walls, my right hand left bloody handprints as I tried to stop myself from falling over with how fast I was walking. My gut stung and blood was rushing out of it. Everything ached and I felt dizzy.

There was a piece of wood sticking through my right calf. I don't remember when that happened. Glass shards were also sticking in my hair and even in the side of my face. I don't really remember that part either. I had a vague memory of getting slashed with a large shard of glass. To be honest, I don't remember much of what went down. All I know now is that they were dead in that apartment.

I had a gun in the waistband of my jeans. An idiotic agent had let me grab his handgun and keep it. Now I had it. I had no particular use in mind, but one could never know what they might need.

People sitting in the hallway and going up the stairs gave me terrified looks. None of them dared speak to me though- I must've looked like a wild animal with my wide eyes and bloodied body. I'm glad they didn't speak to me because I don't know how I would react.

My bags were also awkwardly slung over my right shoulder- my left arm got awkwardly broken so I couldn't really use it. You would think that after years of having a metal arm, I'd know how to maintenance it. Well, I didn't. The bags would smack into the injured part of my leg every now and then, causing me to groan in pain.

On the first floor, I basically body slammed the door open, scaring some of the druggies sitting around on the floor. Like the other people, they stared at me with horrified expressions. One girl- no older than eighteen- was brave enough to approach me.

"Hey, dude, are you okay?" she asked. She tried to reach out to me, probably so I could lean on her, but I jumped away and kept going. "Hey! You need an ambulance!" she yelled after me. I didn't give her a response and just fell into the front doors and stumbled onto the sidewalk. There was nothing nearby. I had to go into a more public area if I was going to get a taxi and get to Doctor Strange's hospital.

That was the destination. In reality, that was my ultimate destination anyway, I just had to cut out the middle step.

So my crime scene was continued on down past a few more buildings onto the more populated city blocks. People steered clear of me, giving me looks of disgust as I passed. There wasn't a single care in the world. When I got to the big crowds, they moved away from me as if I were in a bubble that pushed them away. Well, I guess my bubble was my bloody appearance.

I wanted to drop to the ground and lose consciousness so bad, but my stubbornness pushed me to keep going to the street.

"Ma'am, do you need me to call 911?" I spun around to see another teenager, a boy this time, looking at me worried with his phone out. The other people around us looked scared- again- and kept their distance. I was so detached from reality that I didn't know what was going to happen. I felt so lost and scared.

It was at this moment that I stopped to think about what was going on. I was bleeding out on a New York City sidewalk with nowhere to go except a hospital where I'd more than likely get turned over to the authorities- no, to Ross himself. Nobody would know that I went back there. Wanda wouldn't be able to get me out, same with Sam or any of the others. I'd fry away in the Rift without a single hope of seeing safety or freedom ever again.

When the man started to reach out to me, I snapped back to reality and jumped away. "Don't touch me!" I nearly screamed. My broken left arm swung awkwardly at my side, and I clutched my bags to my chest with my right arm. "Get away from me!" That time I did scream, but it wasn't in anger- it was in terror. I was scared shitless and I didn't know what to do about it.

Rather than being sensible and accepting the ambulance offer, I stumbled out onto the street and in front of a taxi. The man slammed on his breaks and started to yell at me. I hurried over to one of the back doors and threw it open.

"Get out," I growled to the woman sitting in there. At first she looked mad, but then she screamed when she took a good look at me and scrambled out the other side. She was holding a few twenties in her hand, but she let them go and they fluttered to the floor of the taxi. At least she paid?

I nearly threw myself into the taxi, groaning at the pain that shot through my body. The driver turned around to, most likely, yell at me. When he saw the blood, his face turned from anger to fear.

"Woah, woah, do you need an ambulance?" he asked, the New York accent slipping in. Cars were beeping behind us but neither of us cared.

Resting the urge to roll my eyes, I sat up and shook my head. "Take me to the Metropolitan General Hospital," I breathed out. My leg throbbed more and more and it took a lot of energy to stop myself from screaming.

"Are you sure?" he asked tentatively. "It might be safer-"

"Now!" I yelled. He jumped and quickly started to speed away. "Straight to the hospital. Don't get any funny ideas. The minute I'm out of the car and the door is shut, you drive away. Drive far away and don't tell another soul about this," I said in a stern voice.

He nodded vigorously. I didn't feel bad but he did look pretty scared for his life. There was no need to tell him about the gun, because it looked like he wasn't going to argue much.

As we drove, the pressing issue of my bleeding gut came back with a searing pain. I sucked in a breath between my gritted teeth and tried to figure something out. The main thing was to stop the bleeding, so I needed something to press against it. I looked in the front to see if the taxi driver had a discarded jacket or anything, but no luck. I turned to my own jacket and carefully pulled it off.

Once I got it off the useless hunk of metal attached to my left shoulder, I balled the jacket up and pressed it hard against my abdomen. I let out a small cry of pain at the pressure. The driver looked at me in his mirror quickly before looking away and back at the road.

I ignored him and focused on my other injuries. My face would be fine, I figured as I brushed pieces of glass out of my hair. My leg hurt like hell, but the wood was stopping me from bleeding out completely so it was staying. My left arm was, like I said earlier, a useless hunk of metal for now. So, my only worry seemed to be my stomach, and that was being taken care of.

Well, my biggest worry was actually being found and taken to the Rift where I'd spend the rest of my life and not even be brought to a hospital to be helped.

The driver pulled into a drop-off area- right in front of the ER doors. "Thank you," I huffed out, and then managed to heave myself out of the car. The man was very confused at my words. I mean, that was fair seeing as how that was the kindest thing I said to him during the entire time we've known each other.

As soon as I slammed the door shut, the driver sped off and ignored the people trying to wave him down. I stumbled on into the ER and grabbed everyone's attention. Doctors and nurses alike surrounded me, and a redheaded female nurse was the one who started speaking to me.

"Ma'am, we need to get you to surgery right away," she said, then barked something to the others.

I made it this far, I was going to get what I wanted. "No, I need to see Doctor Stephen Strange," I managed to get out. "Please, I need to see him-" I cut myself off from how much pain I was in. It was a miracle I was still even standing. If she still didn't want to agree, my next thought was to pull the gun out. That was last resort though.

There was a hesitation with the nurse's next words, but she finally nodded. "Okay, if I get him down here will you please get into surgery?" she asked. She sounded frustrated, which was fair, so I nodded. "Thank you, okay, Doctor Barrows!" A female doctor came over and then she started to call out other names.

Other doctors and nurses started to crowd around me and get me onto a stretcher/gurney looking thing. They started to cut off my top and removed the jacket from abdomen. Another doctor cut off my right pant leg, right above my knee, and then continued to cut off the section around the wood. Some nurse started looking at my face, mumbling things to himself and then saying other things out loud to someone else.

If I hadn't passed out, I probably would've had a PTSD induced panic attack.

~~

Coming to was maybe the weirdest thing I've experienced. Why? Because it was peaceful. The only other time I woke up peacefully was when Wanda used her powers to help me sleep- that's it. Either they gave me some strong medication or I was just so drained from everything I didn't even have enough energy to have nightmares.

I pushed myself to wake up more; I hate being in such a vulnerable state around people I don't know. When I was sat up enough, I could see a chair in the corner of the room. On it, my cut up jeans, bloodied jacket, and cut up shirt. Only the jeans were worth wearing again, and I sighed. Under the clothes, I saw my bags sitting there. They may have been rifled through, but there wasn't much other than some food, a stolen laptop, a few articles of clothing, and a picture.

My focus moved to trying to gain more consciousness. The waking up from this point on was pretty manageable, and I was feeling better five minutes later. My abilities were charged up enough that I could even feel some of my injuries start to heal faster.

There was also enough energy for me listen a little closer to conversation out in the hallway. I searched around for a conversation to focus on, skipping over ones that didn't involve me to find the doctor who did help me.

"Stephen, she had a gun." Yep, that was me. "Of course I was going to come up and get you! I was surprised she was even still standing when she came in- I wasn't about to let her efforts go to waste."

The other doctor, Stephen Strange I figured, let out a long sigh. "Christine, you don't negotiate with criminals, especially ones like her who are wanted by a lot of different governments." My body stiffened and I lost focus on their conversation. They knew who I was. It was going to happen eventually, but maybe the naive part of me hoped they would think I was some other girl with a metal arm.

I hurried to find their conversation again and ignored the headache I was getting. "The FBI is on their way over to get her, so please make sure she's still sedated. Besides, you need to check her post-OP vitals." That was the nurse. So now the FBI was coming to arrest me. I was not going to let that happen.

Doctor Strange was about to come in here and do his doctor thing, so I could talk to him about removing my other more murderous half and my abilities. If he didn't know how to, then maybe he would know someone else. And if not... I don't know.

The door to the room opened and Doctor Strange entered briskly and shut the door quietly behind him. He hadn't turned to face me yet, so I just watched as he did. Now that I was actually looking at him while conscious, I noticed he was taller than I thought.

He turned around and looked at me, freezing when he saw I was awake. The two of us stared at each other for a couple seconds. He looked a bit worried while I probably looked terrified. The FBI were on their way to get me, so I wasn't going to be the calmest person around.

Doctor Strange cleared his throat and moved towards a binder at the end of the hospital bed. "Miss Silva, good to see you're awake. How are you feeling?" In the hallway, he sounded arrogant and very annoyed with the nurse- Christine. In here with me, he sounded a bit more considerate.

I cleared my own throat and tried to sit up a bit, pushing back the pain I was feeling in my abdomen. "Fine. Just a little sore I guess," I answered quietly. He nodded and wrote something down in the binder, then closed it and set it down. I hoped that that meant we were done here and I could talk to him about what I wanted.

"Do you have any questions?" he asked. Now, I knew he meant medically since I had no idea what they did to me, but my mind went a different route. I chose to believe he knew why I wanted to see him.

Taking a deep breath, I looked at him and asked, "Can you help me?" His face changed to confusion instantly. "You're one of the best doctors in the world- if not the best. And that's what I was looking for."

He nodded, and it was like pieces of the the puzzle started to fit together. "That's why you requested me specifically when you came stumbling into the ER severely injured?" I nodded. "That's mighty brave of you, seeing as how you're one of the most wanted criminals in the world," he said. I could see that my words inflated his ego just a bit more.

Resisting the urge to roll my eyes, I continued. "Fine, I'm a bit desperate," I admitted quietly. "The thing is, I don't even know if you can help. If you can't, then I'm not staying a minute longer."

One of his eyebrows raised at my inadvertent invitation to challenge. "You don't think I can help?" He scoffed and shook his head lightly. "Like you said, I'm 'one of the best doctors in the world- if not the best.' I'm willing to bet that I can help you," he said with a small smirk and some annoyance in his tone.

This time I very openly rolled my eyes. "You don't even know what I need help with," I brought up.

"Then tell me."

"I need you to get rid of my abilities and the soldier inside of me."

He was silent for a minute, and I could see him trying to process everything. "So... you're asking me to remove the orange magic from you and what?"

I took a deep breath and finished his sentence. "And the triggers Hydra put in my brain to turn me into the soldier that I was for years. I don't want them anymore- hell, I never wanted them," I said. I sighed and looked at my right hand as if fidgeted with my left one. "All I want is to have a normal life. Can't exactly have that if someone could turn me into a murder machine with a few simple words, right?"

Doctor Strange looked at me as if he was trying to figure me out. Like he said, I was one of the most wanted criminals; I was wanted by several governments around the globe. And here I was, asking to get rid of all that 'power' I had. I can understand how someone so simple minded could get confused.

"Look," he started, grabbing my attention. "I don't know how this kind of procedure would go. There aren't exactly other people out there with your... problems, meaning they don't need to be solved. You'd be the first case of this kind of thing." I huffed in annoyance and sat back in the bed. He wasn't wrong.

He started to walk over to the bedside, alarming me. "How about I give you some more medicine and then check back later, yeah?" he asked. His tone was casual as if I were just another patient, but his heart rate reminded us both I was not.

I shook my head. "No, you just want me to be so drugged up that I won't be able to fight the FBI agents when they come for me," I said in anger. Doctor Strange looked at me slightly surprised that I knew that, before I threw him into the wall. The air got knocked out of him and he was slumped on the ground coughing for a bit.

While he tried to recover, I pulled everything off of me and got out of the bed. Adrenaline made the pain and wooziness go away and I was able to focus on just getting my pants and shirt on. I had to dig through one of my bags to get a good shirt, and just went with my weird cut-up jeans. My shoes and socks were on the floor next to the chair, so I up put those on. I was genuinely surprised at how neatly my things were placed.

Doctor Strange groaned lightly on the floor, reminding me of his presence. My head snapped over in his direction to see him trying to get off the floor. I panicked and backed away slightly, then put my hand out to lift him up and hold him against the wall. He could still breathe, he just couldn't move.

"Why did you guys care for my stuff? You put everything in here gently, folded my clothes even. Why?" I asked. I was shaking because, "oh my god, was I holding this doctor hostage." My eyes were wide with panic and I was shaking enough to where I thought I might lose my grip on him.

Even so, with the situation he's found himself in, Stephen Strange was calm. He was honestly calmer than I was. "We are doctors, we care about our patients. Sometimes that means being kind to their stuff. Even if they are an internationally wanted criminal," he said, and if he could move he'd totally shrug.

I wanted to squeeze him tighter, but then I heard something out in the hallway and focused in on it. "We got a call that Reyna-Rose Silva is here?"

"Yes she's in room 113 over there."

Keeping my hand up, I walked back over to my stuff and used a bit of mind willing to get everything I needed gathered back up into my bag. My left arm was still out of commission, so I'd have to let Strange go to grab my stuff. He stared at me intently, trying to figure out my thinking.

With a small tilt of my head, the door to the room opened very slightly. Strange saw, and he looked confused. Not even a heart beat later, I let go of him and grabbed my stuff. He went straight to the floor, a bit confused, and I bolted out the door, terrified for my life.

"Hey!" I heard someone behind me yell. With a quick glance, I saw three FBI agents start to run after me. There was no way I was going to slow down and listen to them, that was pretty obvious. The agents chased after me as I pushed doctors, nurses, and patients alike out of my way. At some point, they started getting smart and just hurrying out of my way when they saw me coming. Or maybe it was the FBI agents that scared them into moving. It worked for me either way.

My left arm awkwardly swung around as I sprinted away. I finally had enough when I got to some stairs and just used my right arm to hold my bags and my left arm against my chest.

At the stairs, I ended up just jumping down the middle. Thank god they only put me on the 3rd floor. With a little help to cushion the fall with my abilities, I was able to just keep running. I heard shouts behind me and knew I was almost free.

Unit an Asian man in an FBI uniform stood in front of the main exit. I skid to a stop before I could crash into him and his gun. "Miss Silva, you have no where to run," he said. He sounded pretty confident in that. I, however, was trained to find the lie in that statement.

The elevator dinged over to my left, and I glanced over to see the doors opening and people- not FBI agents getting off. I looked back at the man in front of me and smirked. He caught on to where I was going when I was already running over to the elevator.

"Hold the doors!" I screamed, and a terrified doctor held them open while I hurried inside, slamming into the wall. "Go!" I screamed again, and he moved his arm so the doors could close. The FBI agents were too late.

The elevator stopped once before it got to the top floor. My guess? Everyone was too scared to continue riding in an elevator with me.

The elevator stopped at the floor just before the top, so I moved to the side before the doors could open to hide and see who it was getting in with me. They stepped in and I saw it was an FBI agent. I had no time to slip out behind them because they turned and faced me as the doors closed.

Without thinking, I punched him hard in the face, causing his head to fly to the side. He fell into the side of the elevator and I took this opportunity to throw him up into the ceiling to knock him out for sure. I had to kick him a couple times to make sure he was actually knocked out and not faking it.

At the top floor as soon as the doors were open, I hurried out. Nobody got on the elevator so when the doors closed, I knew it would be a few short minutes before some FBI agents would find their unconscious comrade and come up to find me. I searched around for a door leading to the roof. When I couldn't find one, I looked for an open window instead. Or at least a window I could open.

I saw one at the end of a hallway, so I jogged over to it and looked out. Down below, there was a building that was short enough for my plan. This was going to work, I had myself an excellent plan. Well, I mean, it's not excellent, but it's literally all I had.

Walking backward from the window, I tried to make sure I'd have enough room to run. It would be weird, but I was going to somehow use my useless metal arm to break the window while I can't even use it. This would be interesting.

People were in the way by the time I was ready to run, but it was fine since they'd most likely move the minute I yelled for them to. Everyone in the way was on their feet, so no wheeling or hopping or crutching out. There were no carts or tables or any other large objects. I was golden.

"Grab her!" I turned to see the FBI agent from downstairs hurrying out of the elevator with a couple of his buddies. And they were all coming for me. Oh good.

I had no more time to think. Grabbing my left arm and bags with my right hand and facing forwards again, I started to run. "Move! Get out of the way!" I yelled as I started to run. People moved instantly, hurrying into rooms with open doors or just going flat against the wall.

At the window, I basically threw my left arm into it in order to smash it, and then I was in the air. My right hand went under me in order to help keep myself afloat long enough to land on the other rooftop.

Everything felt so free as I hurled through the air. FBI agents shouted behind me, probably yelling to get people in the air and in the other building. Both would take some time, and that's all I would need to get out. For the briefest moment I actually thought I could get through this.

The searing pain in my abdomen halted all my thoughts instead. My right hand moved to grasp it as I grit my teeth in pain. And then suddenly, I was falling faster. I didn't have enough time to even think before I made a hard impact with the rooftop. A pain-filled scream tore from my throat as I suddenly remembered that I had a hole in my leg.

For a minute, I just laid on the roof in horrible pain. I held my leg up in a ball against my abdomen and tried to stop the tears from coming down. After I was able to gather enough strength, I got up and limped out of there.

~~

It was cold tonight, and my horrible condition didn't help. There was no doubt that every hospital in the area would be monitored by the FBI; they were hoping I'd come in and try to get helped again.

There was also no doubt that I needed the help. My stitches on my abdomen had come undone when I made my hard landing, so I picked up some medical stuff from a corner store and did my best to tape it all up. With my leg, well I didn't know how to explain it. There was a weird hole in it- right by the bone- so I had to be extremely careful on it. My landing didn't exactly help.

Even with the hospitals being guarded, I had a destination in mind. It was maybe the worst place for me to go, but I had literally no other options at this point. Right now, I needed someone who could help with my medical stuff and my mechanical stuff.

I was in the alley way next to my destination now. The next thing to do was to fly myself up to the landing zone and I could walk into the old common room I used to love. My body ached and protested the entire time, but I managed to get up there. My landing was better than earlier, but it still wasn't very good. I stumbled a bit from trying not to further injury my leg, which caused me to fall over entirely.

Rather than getting up, I just stayed on the ground. FRIDAY had probably alerted Stark by now anyway, so he'd be out shortly. I just had to try and stay awake for the time being so I could tell him what was going on. Hopefully he's coming soon though, because I don't know how much longer I can keep my eyes open.

"What the hell- Silva, what are you doing here?" I finally closed my eyes.