Carmine Jewels ║ Wanda Maximoff

Chapter 21 - Back To Your Roots

It had been a mistake to open up her mind to the tendrils because now, they wouldn't stop bothering her. No matter how hard she tried to shut them out, it was as though her mental blockage had broken, allowing them to slither through the cracks and fill her head up with noise.

Even when she was in her cell, completely alone, they were still there.

It was as though they were persistent in connecting with her, poking at her like an annoying five-year-old that was begging for attention. But she didn't want to connect with them, didn't want to hear them. All she wanted was for her head to be left alone. Sure, it hadn't been exactly quiet before either, but at least it had only been her own voice nagging her back then. Now, there were too many to count.

Thanks to them, her head didn't feel like the safe space it had always been. The place which she could disappear into when the outside world became too much to handle.

It was better, she had noticed, when she was in a more distant corner of the fortress. Then the voices weren't as loud. It made sense. Lesser people, lesser thoughts. So, Keira had actually asked to be moved to another cell, pleading that her sanity depended on it, and Alexandra had graciously, surprisingly, accepted the request without protest.

After the whole experimentation with the gem in Loki's scepter and the cryosleep, things had taken a turn for the better for Keira. She was allowed daily showers now, although supervised, of course. She was offered proper food, not just the grey oatmeal and moldy bread she had been forced to live on before. Slowly but surely, she could feel herself becoming stronger instead of just deteriorating.

The new expansion of her crystallite powers, she had gotten a handle on pretty quickly. If it was because of the chemical solution she had been doused in, or just the fact that she had gotten to sleep for a month straight, she didn't know. But whatever mental block she had before, it was gone. And with that, new abilities had come to light.

Now, she was not only able to conjure both shields and spears, but she could also break them off her body in order to use them in combat. If she ever managed to escape, or more likely, get rescued, then she would have to tell the Captain that she had been wrong before.

She could be harvested now. Or at least for as long as she stayed concentrated. Because once her focus was lost, which was more often than not, the broken-off pieces turned into dust. Also, she wasn't sure if her biological diamond would be deemed pure either. But she didn't really care about that.

The dream of her getting out had practically left her head completely. There had been no attacks on the base, and according to what Keira had been able to gather from the guards and Alexandra, nobody was looking for her either. So clearly, she didn't matter anymore.

Alexandra had been very pleased with the results, overjoyed at having one surviving subject that also had acquired extra powers. Although, she still wished Keira to push herself more when it came to her mindreading capabilities. To be able to dig deeper, not just hear the present thoughts or see flashes of old memories. No, she wanted her to be able to choose which thoughts to read.

But it was hard to do so as it was hard to find willing subjects who wanted their minds scrambled. Keira didn't know where they had gotten him from, but a couple of weeks ago, or she thought it was weeks at least, she had been presented with a man in the lab.

According to Dr. Stroup, who was one of the doctors that assisted Alexandra with the experiments, the man had volunteered for the project.

Keira had been very skeptical about it though. The man's face had been gaunt and pale, and he had been trembling from head to toe. But after being told to enter his mind, to search for past thoughts, she had done so.