Aberration | Bucky Barnes

x. formula

CHAPTER SIX

Eloise was submerged in the gentle embrace of something wonderful. It could have been water, but it felt too silky, too soft to be such a plain and common substance. She could feel it pulsating around her, wrapping around her like a protective blanket. It was a vast and indescribable feeling, a magnificent state of mind. It was bright and beautiful, but as much as it pained her to think, it seemed to good to be true. 

The last thing she remembered was pain. Pain so intensely horrible she had thought she was being torn apart cell by cell. Consumed by the cold fire that burned through her veins, that writhed beneath her skin, and made her beg for death. 

Perhaps she had gotten her wish.

If this was death then she wasn't sure what she had been so worried about. It wasn't half bad to be floating somewhere between the sea and the sky. 

Then she remembered. 

The light was too blue to measure up to the warm yellow glow of the sun, a warmth she hadn't felt in ages. And that was it; she was cold, too cold. Cold enough to realize that she was still alive. 

Alive meant only one thing, she was still trapped. Trapped in the dark room, trapped in the heavy metal chains, trapped in her fragile broken body. 

She opened her eyes, relinquishing her claim to the light and accepting the darkness of the world she was falling back into. She expected the pain from her memories to return, but as she slipped back into reality the peaceful blanket of serenity came with her. Her skin didn't burn and her wrist didn't ache. She didn't just feel fine, she felt amazing. 

Eloise rotated her wrist slowly and experimentally. The movement should've sent white hot pain searing up her arm, but she experienced nothing other than more of the same blissful absence of it. She glanced down to the rest of her body, prepared to somehow find a way to break the chains holding her, only to find that there weren't any. 

She sat up abruptly, her thoughts racing to find a plausible explanation for the continuity errors she was finding in her mind. Her wrist should've still been broken, the thick metal straps should've still been weighing her body down, and when she stopped to think about it, the room should have been full of people. 

Eloise slid off the metal chair, her bare feet hitting the concrete gently. She half expected to collapse to the ground like she had all the other times she'd tried to stand, but she stood strong where she was. Something clearly wasn't right, she should've been doubled over from the sharp pains of hunger, but like with her wrist, she felt perfectly fine. The only thing that still bothered her was the sting of the cold floor. 

What the hell is going on? She wondered silently as she surveyed the room. Her surroundings were still in pristine condition, but something felt wildly off. Then her eyes finally zeroed in on what was wrong. Something was glittering all over the ground, reflecting the light that slipped through the cracks in the closed door. She stepped forward carefully and knelt to the floor. As she focused she realized what the wickedly sharp shards were. 

Eloise twisted her neck to squint at the ceiling, and two things struck her as odd. The first being that all the lights seemed to have had exploded, scattering sprinkles of glass everywhere. The second was that even in the less than adequate light, she could see everything in the room as clearly as if it was well lit. She clamored back to her feet, more confused than ever. 

After a moment she stumbled back as she felt herself slipping back into the cool embrace she had just woken from. Her eyes fell shut when the silky, oil like substance wrapped around her again. As soon as she was submerged she understood what had happened. Her mind expanded to fit her needs, and suddenly she knew things she shouldn't have been able to. 

The last thing she had remembered when she woke up was passing out during the experiment, but she could fill in the gaps now. She had succumbed the to pain mere moments before the process had finished. She had felt like she was being torn apart cell by cell because in a way, that's what had been happening. The formula was bonding with her blood, merging with her DNA. Rewriting the entire chemical makeup of her body. 

Eloise slowly came to understood she was the one who had shattered the lights, she had been the cause of the raining glass. She knew the shock wave that had erupted from her body when the merger was complete had vaporized the chains that held her, and any living tissue that had been unlucky enough to be in the room. The formula had fixed her broken bones and had revitalized her with it's own cosmic energy. 

Somehow the most miraculous part of it wasn't her mended bones or her lack of hunger, it was the fact that in the deepest corners of her mind, she knew she was no longer dying. The energy that danced within her had removed the clock set on ticking down until her demise. In a way, she had been reborn, because she was more alive than she had ever been before. 

As Eloise moved towards the door, she realized what the scientists had been trying to do, she accepted that the pain and the torment had been necessary. 

She could sense that somewhere in the building, one of the men that had engineered her salvation was still alive. She needed to go to him, to thank him somehow, but she wasn't sure if that was even possible. He had given her time and power, and even with the expansive knowledge she possessed, she couldn't figure out if there was an equivalent. 

She knew one thing for sure though, and that was where she would go the minute her debt was repaid.