Phoenix

She was beautiful in every sense of the word.

Her hair fell in luscious waves around her petite shoulders and her skin was silky smooth that only accented her strong facial features. He pictured her eyes to be a swirl of colors that would mesmerize him for decades and a smile that could light up the darkest of rooms.

Steve stood on the other side of the thick window separating the two of them and placed his bare hand against the cool glass. He was still unsure on how all this happened, how she had gotten involved, and he wanted to know everything there was about the woman in front of him.

Yet nobody would answer his questions.

So here he stood with his blue eyes focused on the heavily sedated girl strapped to a chair in an upright position, her head lolled to the side as she dreamed about whatever her brain decided. He was so intrigued by her and could still picture the flames that engulfed everything within a fifty foot radius of her. He watched her rip a tank in half with her bare hands and throw a car into another.

How could someone so small, so beautiful, hold so much inside of her?

“She’s not going to wake up.” Steve turned to the voice and saw a man with a laboratory jacket sitting on his shoulders. His name tag read, “Jones” and his glistening green eyes darted to the girl Steve had grown attached to in a short period of time. “Her sedation is at a very high level that doesn’t allow her to be conscious unless they want her to be.”

“They?” Steve looked back to the girl with a furrowed brow.

“I should say he.” The man took a step forward so he was almost shoulder to shoulder with
the grown man. “The President.”

“He’s in charge of this? Of her?” Steve couldn’t cover the surprise in his voice and saw the man nod in response.

“She’s our most secret and deadly weapon. When all else fails, they send her in.”

“And when they don’t need her she stays strapped to that chair?”

“For the sake of everyone’s safety, yes.”

“How did she become like this?” Steve dropped his hand from the glass and fully turned to who he assumed to be a doctor or scientist. The man clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and let out a breath through his nose.

“She was a volunteer for a project, like you, that promised her greater power. Those running the project ensured her that she would help her country, save lives, and be offered a life much different from the one she was living.” Stopping to let the information sink in, Jones glanced to Steve before nodding toward the girl. “Her body took to the radiation better than they could’ve imagined. But there was something they missed in her transformation. She passed all their tests, destroyed anything they put in front of her, and got stronger each and every day.”

“What happened?” Steve could sense the bad that was about to be told and didn’t stop his eyes from looking to the unconscious girl.

“It changed her physically for the better.” The man finally turned back to Steve and sighed. “But it morphed her mentally into something nobody saw coming.”

“Morphed?” With wide eyes Steve gazed at the man in front of him.

“She’s not,” the man hesitated to find the correct word, “sane.”

“So you’re saying that she’s crazy.” It wasn’t a question. Steve could tell by the struggle the man was having to collect his thoughts that he was right. “Is that why she’s sedated? Because she’s crazy?”

“She’s more than crazy, Steve. She’s dangerously insane.”