Poetic Justice (Soft Robotics 2.0)

0.04(gravity)

When I was 13, I was a high school senior, and a boy in my class invited me to my first party. I snuck out of my mom's apartment, because I knew she wouldn't have given me permission to go. When I showed up, the address was an empty construction site in Queens. It was an hour-long train ride home, and I cried the whole way back.

My socks snag on the sidewalk. I didn't have time to put on shoes before I climbed out the window. I step onto the bright, maintained grass of a university park, taking a shortcut toward my lab.

When I was 19, I was working in a lab at MIT for my PhD research, and one of the undergraduates told me to follow him into the storage closet—that was the first real life penis I ever saw. I screamed and somebody let me out, but the other guys in the lab thought it was funny.

The Stanford main campus is dead this time of morning. As I walk, I slip my phone out from the waistband of my shorts. There are several missed calls from Colin, Steve, and Tony. There are two others from unknown numbers, which must be Meridian's lawyers. I ignore all of them and open a video file.

When I was 22, I went to DC to work for SHIELD. I didn't have my own office, and Brock Rumlow never used his, so he let me work there when I wanted peace and quiet. Sometimes people have ulterior motives: I lost my virginity on his desk. That went on for two months. I think I might have been in love with him. Sometimes people have ulterior motives behind their ulterior motives: he kidnapped me for HYDRA. They locked me in a basement laboratory for two months in hopes that I'd recreate the super soldier serum.

Ever since then, I've made sure to correct my impulse to trust people, but I still can't help but feel like stomped dog shit now, as I watch Rumlow being escorted out of prison.

I replay the video. I cup my hand above the screen to block out the pale sunlight. It's my 54th watch of the same 8 second clip. I captured it from last night's surveillance footage. It's the reason I didn't get any sleep. I swipe my thumb to ignore a text from Colin. Then another from Steve. Tony calls me again, but that's nothing out of the ordinary. I ignore that too. In the video, Rumlow is handcuffed and flanked by two guards. As he crosses past the last gate of the prison, he looks up at the dark sky of last night with a satisfied intake of breath. At least, I assume he feels satisfied. His face is scarred now. There was an explosion when Tony, Steve, and Natasha came and saved me. I wonder if it still hurts, but I realize I don't care either way. I don't feel vengeful; I just don't want him to hurt me again.

I look up at the orange and pink sky. The moon has abandoned me completely. I shiver. It's chilly—it's an early morning of late April, and my shorts are tiny. The warm sandstone buildings are squat and square, with red roofs and curved archways. There are rows of neat palm trees. I had never seen a palm tree before I moved here two years ago. Sometimes I miss the freezing cold.

The computer science building is called Stark Hall. I think he must have paid for it. Obnoxious. I'm usually the last person to go home in the evenings, and I tend to leave the back door unlocked out of spite.

I also leave the back door unlocked for times when I don't have my keycard. Times such as now. I go inside.

My lab is on the second floor. I put my own security system in place (the university is not aware of this). I scan my fingerprint and my eye (if someone's already cut off my finger and ripped out my eyeball, then they've already won, and they can have my robots). The lab whirs and groans to life when I enter. The mechanical blinds over the window shoot up to let the sunlight in, and blue light glows from screens. A hologram projects from a control table in the center of the room. Usually that hologram is my structural designs for IVY, but today it's showing me a map of Stanford with three blinking dots clustered together a couple blocks away, labeled Romanoff, Rogers, Stark.