I'll Be There

'All things aside, if it were a machine, or a chemical weapon that was being taken from me, I would do everything in my power to prevent it from being used,' Alex thought to herself as she shifted positions and turned so that she was lying on her left side.

'But it's not a machine that's being taken from me. It's mine and Steve's child and if I try to kill my child, then I'm definitely not the kind of mom that Steve thought I would be— but he promised he would never let anything happen to me yet here I am so maybe he's not the man I thought he was…'

She exhaled deeply as the words she had heard come to mind again: 'Once that baby is born, she's as good as dead.'

Alex bit her lip; the guard's words made her realize that she wasn't going to be able to be a mom—ever.

"He's not going to be a child," Alex stated, referring to her unborn son. "The minute he's born, Red Skull is going to use him to finally be able create his army of evil super-soldiers. He will be nothing but a weapon to Red Skull and everyone here— and I'm not going to let Red Skull have his weapon," Alex sighed as she made her decision.

"Okay…so how am I going to do this?" Alex asked herself, trying to come up with an idea.

She knew that women could perform self-induced abortions by throwing themselves down a flight of stairs or inserting coat hangers in their cervix, but she was in her cell most of the day so was very limited with what she could do; the only items she had in her cell were her blanket, a nail clipper that Annabelle had given her, some tooth paste, a toothbrush, a hair bush, a towel, and the uncomfortable mattress she was lying on.

"Fuck," Alex muttered as she kicked the bottom of the mattress in frustrations causing it to squeak.

"I have no way of forcing a miscarriage, I can't escape, and I'm going to spend the last three months of my life stuck here. hopeless and this damn mattress won't stop squeaking," she babbled as she continued to kick the bottom of the mattress.

'Wait a minute,' Alex thought as she sat up straight, an idea beginning to formulate in her head.

"The squeaking from the mattress is caused by weak springs within," Alex told herself as she fumbled to get the nail clipper she hid in her pillow case. Once she found the nail clipper she opened it in such a way that the file part with the hook end was sticking out. She stabbed the file into the mattress, using the hook part of the file to pierce through the upholstery. Once in, she jerked the nail clipper around so that she could create a small hole in the mattress. She repeated this process until she had a large enough hole. She began removing mattress foam and exposed the metal springs. She began to counter turn one of the springs so that it would uncoil and rise out of the mattress.

With much time and effort, Alex was eventually able to make one of the coiled springs into a crocked nine inch wire that stuck straight out of her mattress.

****Warning: Graphic content. Not for the faint-hearted****

"I guess this is it," Alex whispered to herself as she removed her shorts and underwear and positioned herself so that she was squatting just above the tip of the wire.

"I'm sorry it turned out this way, squishy. But I can't allow you to be used by some psychopath and this is the only way. If it were up to me, none of this would have happened and you and I would be back in New York eating pizza and watching movies with your dad not having to worry about you being taken from me, but that's not the case," Alex sighed, trying to hold back her tears.

Alex cringed as she began to lower herself onto the wire, using her right hand to guide it into her vagina. She gasped, wanting to stop as she felt the wire pierce her cervix followed by blood trickling down her inner thigh.

"No. I have to keep going," Alex told herself as he clenched her left fist and bit her lip in pain as she continued to insert the wire further inside her.

More blood began to slowly trickle down her inner thigh, but shortly after the wire was completely inside her; blood began rushing more rapidly, indicating that she had pierced through the fetal sac.

'You're not going to have him, Red Skull,' Alex thought as she inhaled deeply trying to hold in her cries of pain as she watched the blood cover her legs and feet and stain her mattress.

'…No one is now.'

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Annabelle began exiting the kitchen as usual with the meal that the chef had prepared for Alex: whole wheat toast and scrambled eggs with spinach.

"Do you have any bacon?" Annabelle asked the chef before she left, knowing that Alex loved bacon with her eggs and, nine out ten times, would refuse to eat scrambled eggs without them.

"Why are you asking?" responded the chef, paying no mind to Annabelle.

"Because I want bacon, obviously," Annabelle huffed. "So do you have any bacon or not?"

"No. You'll just have to find something else to snack on, guard," the chef replied.

Annabelle rolled her eyes before leaving the kitchen completely and making her way to Alex's cell.

As she got closer, she grabbed the keys attached to her belt and inserted one into the keyhole.

"Get up, Alex, it's time for breakfast," Annabelle began she turned the key and began to open the cell door. "I wasn't able to get you any bacon, so you're just going to have to eat your eggs—"

Annabelle dropped the tray in her hands when she fully opened the door and say Alex lying on the floor unconscious and covered in blood.

"Alex, what did you do?" Annabelle yelled as she rushed to Alex's side, pressing two fingers against her neck to see if there was a pulse. She felt a faint pulse and let out a small sigh of relief before grabbing Alex and throwing her over her shoulder.

"Please stay alive. Please stay alive," Annabelle muttered as she rushed to the doctor's lab. She burst through the doors hoping that the doctor would be there, but she only saw two of the doctor's assistants prepping the machines that were supposed to be used later that day for another test.

"What are you doing? You're not supposed to be— what happened to her?" one of the doctor's assistant asked as he caught sight of Alex covered in blood.

"I don't know," Annabelle replied. "I found her like this. One of you go and get the doctor."

"I'll go get her," answered the second assistant as Annabelle set Alex down on the examination table.

"From the looks of it, the source of her blood loss is coming from inside her," the assistant said as he lifted Alex's long shirt to reveal a path of blood from her inner thighs coming from her vagina. "It's unusual for women at this stage to lose this much blood from a miscarriage and pass out so she must have somehow managed to use something to perform a self-induced abortion."

'Why would you do that, Alex?' Annabelle thought confused as the doctor's assistant fumbled with the ultrasound machine. Quickly applying the ultrasound gel over Alex's abdomen and watching the screen.

"Thank God the child's okay,"' the assistant sighed.

"You're worried about the child?" Annabelle asked in anger. "Worry about her. She's the one who's the priority! Do something to her!"

"I'm getting to that," the assistant replied as he put down the ultrasound equipment and pulled out ivy needles and tubes from the draws.

Annabelle watched as the assistant set Alex up with a saline solution like the doctor had when Alex has tried to starve her self.

"Doesn't she need blood?" Annabelle asked.

"My colleague will bring some when he gets the doctor," replied the assistant. "Now, if you don't mind, please leave."

"You're the one that did an ultrasound on her before giving her medical attention. There's no way I'm leaving."

"You're not a doctor. Now leave." Before Annabelle could protest, the doctor entered the lab followed by her assistant carrying three bags of blood.

"What happened here?" asked the doctor as she examined Alex.

"From what I can tell, a self-induced abortion," responded the first assistant

"You," the doctor said, gesturing to the other assistance, "set it up so we can do a blood transfusion."

"And you, set her up to the heart monitor," the doctor ordered. "We need to check her heart rate."

"You," the doctor began gesturing at Annabelle. "Get out of here."

"But—"

"Out!" the doctor demanded.

Annabelle clutched her fist before she made her way out of the lab thinking, 'Please be okay, Alex.'

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"The child seems to be doing well, but the mother's heart rate is decreasing," stated one of the assistants.

"How can that be?" questioned the second assistant.

"You forget that the child is no ordinary child. He has super- human abilities; he can heal himself, but by doing so, he's weakening his mother and he will continue to do so until she dies. We have to make her stronger."

"How?" asked the first assistant. "We already gave her the blood transfusion there's nothing else we can do."

"There is one thing," the doctor stated as she unlocked one of the cabinets and grabbed a small veil with blue liquid.

"What is that?"

"It's an unperfected version of the super solider serum. If I give it to her, her body will become strong enough to handle the child's healing."

"But we don't the side effects she'll have from it. The last person who was given that serum – it didn't end well for them."

"It's the only option we have. Now hold her still while I inject the serum."

The two assistants held Alex down by her arms as the doctor jabbed the needle into Alex's upper left arm, slowly injecting the serum. Alex immediately jolted, the sensation of the serum entering her body causing her to wake, and screamed in agonizing pain as the monitor beeped rapidly, indicating an increase in her heart rate.

"I said, hold her down," the doctor yelled, having difficulty injecting the rest of the serum.

The assistants pushed Alex back down and held her with a firmer grip as the doctor continued to inject the last bit of the serum into Alex's body.

Alex continued to scream in pain. The injection made her feel as if she were being pierced by the wire again, only a hundred times worse.

"It…worked," said one of the assistant in amazement as the monitor indicated that Alex's heart rate was back to normal.

Alex let out several deep breaths as an attempt to recover from the pain she felt had just experience.

"You two go get her guard. Tell the guard to clear herself of anything she could use to hurt herself," the doctor stated. "We need to make sure she doesn't try something like that again."