Contessa stepped out of the door, patting away a few small tongues of flame on her suit. She should have phrased it better, Path to delivering information to Lung without being inconvenienced, instead of how to deliver it without being harmed.
"An interesting morning I assume." Doctor Mother said, crossing to the rack of neatly pressed suits on the wall and selecting one.
"Somewhat. A little adjustment to the Birdcage's second purpose." Contessa said, taking the suit.
"Oh? Was there going to be a breakout?"
"No. Containment of powerful Parahumans is the primary purpose. The secondary purpose is second triggers."
"Ah yes. Did we get the data we needed?"
"In part. The system works well. Put enough crazed and violent individuals together in an inescapable prison and you get a fair number of second triggers. An average of zero point nine a year. Dragons monitoring equipment hasn't really told us anything we didn't already know, but making already dangerous Parahumans stronger is only going to help when we need to fight Scion. Dragon has been social engineering, stabilizing the prison by carefully regulating where new arrivals arrive. It's good, kept some of the more powerful inmates alive, but it has now reached the point where I needed to destabilize things a little, to insure the rate of second triggers does not start to drop."
"Very well. What now?"
"There's a Tinker in New Delli who's about to cause a worldwide EMP. I need to recruit her before that happens. Door."
***
[Several Months later... ]
There is always a nervous tension as the elevator descends. Always a small group waiting to meet the newcomer. Is it a monster? Will they need to fight? What will their power be?
Cinderhands should have it well under control. He would greet the newcomer, explain something of the basics for survival here in the Birdcage. Then the new arrival would be escorted here, to you. That was important, it set the tone, let you stay in control. If the new arrival was a rabid animal that needed to be put down, you would deal with it.
The elevator opened, and the sticky liquid left over from the containment foam holding the prisoner washed out onto the floor before finding a grate to roll through. The elevator door closed as a large, tattooed Asian man stepped out, but it did not go back up, instead dropping into the incineration matrix that lay under the floor.
Dragon made a new elevator every time she sent a Parahuman down here.
You had long since stopped hoping to escape this place. There was a contentment to be found here, if one looked. A certain thrill to living on the knifes edge, ruling the monsters who were caged with you. That didn't mean you couldn't watch, analyze, study.
You turned your attention to the new arrival. Being physically impressive was easy, down here, nothing that could truly impress.
Comparing what you saw now to what you had seen on the news... that impressed. There had never been a picture of Lung's face on the television, but it wasn't hard to put together. There had been a trial, and you had seen parts of that. You'd known he might be arriving soon.
So... pyrokinesis, the ability to grow to scale with a threat... but he'd need time. You'd have to make sure not to give it to him, if it came to that.
Lung is still bleary, shaking of the sedatives. He is listening to Cinderhands, so that's a step in the right direction. He snorts when the introduction is over, but he follows as Cinderhands leads the man to your cell.
Lung eyes the bone littering the floor with annoyance more than anything. Unless he knows your power he will assume it comes from your victims, so that says something about his confidence. Stepping into the lions den.
Whimper moves to flank him, and you wave Spruce back towards the televisions. Whimper and Cinderhands should be enough to ensure to make him feel outnumbered without being threatened.
It would do until you had more of a measure of the man in front of you.
"Lung." You say calmly.
"Marquis." He responds, only the slightest slur from the drugs in his speech.
"I understand you are from the same city as I am? Perhaps Dragon thought we would have common ground?"
"Perhaps. I doubt it."
He's taking an aggressive posture, but it feels slightly forced. Perhaps he would prefer defensive, but feels that would be like blood in the water. Perhaps it is simple the drugs. He is growing, just slightly, bloodshot eyes locked on you. It would be a shame if things came to a fight, it took some time to get your cell neatly decorated.
"I suppose we will see then." You respond easily. It would be a severe pity to kill this man now. You want information, on your daughter specifically. You may even be able to send her a message... perhaps a unknown threat to her life. You'll have to think on it.
You change your mind when Lung pushes Cinderhands out of the way to leave the cell. Aggressive, reckless, annoying. Yes a pyrokinetic is unlikely to be able to hurt Lung, you vaguely recall some sort of heat immunity to go along with Lung's own pyrokinesis. The fact that he is willing to anger an unknown like that means only one thing. Whatever information you want, you will need to get it now, before the man kills himself.
"One more moment, if you would." You say.
Lung pauses, and turns back to face you.
"I would very much like to be brought up to date on my home city, perhaps an interchange of information is possible?"
"Perhaps." Lung says slowly.
***
You note the tentacles feeding on the flesh before you absently. They are not important.
A master effect. These
heroes had used a master effect to keep your daughter in line. Unacceptable. You needed to find them, needed to tell someone. Perhaps Dragon could... no. If Dragon was going to do anything about it, it would be done. She would have heard everything that Lung had told you, before you killed him.
A simple tale. A woman in a suit and fedora had given him information on Amelia, and asked him to recruit her for his little war. Information that not even dear Amy had known. Lung had a preexisting hatred for the woman, and responded by ignoring her information and trying to kill her.
Later Lung had read the sheet, which told how Amelia had been brainwashed, both by her sisters Aura, and her mothers hatred and fear. Lung had even sent Oni-Lee to confirm what information he could circumspectly. Then he had simply not acted on anything.
That, more than anything, was why the man was now dead.
You notice several of your men getting off the floor, and consider it absently. A tiny part of your brain realizes that several of them have enhanced agility, and it was almost impossible an earthquake could shake the Birdcage. That left only powers over vertigo, or a trigger event. A second trigger wasn't unheard of in the Birdcage, though it rarely helped save the person who triggered. It could also be a form of attack...
Did it matter? Perhaps you should just let them kill you? You needed
out you had heroes to punish and a daughter to save. There was no way out, you'd looked, everyone had looked. There were attempts, there were losses. Dragon won.
You look at the few blood stains on the floor, and realize they are all that remain of Lung.
Absently you lift your hand and create a ball of flame in it. Feeling the fires inside you writhe and coil in response to your stark horror. Not at what you had done, but at the memories.
Amelia had come in to heal Lung, when Skitter had cut out his eyes. He had seen her, seen her downcast, controlled, exhausted. Pushed to do nothing but heal.
You snuff the flame as you grow. Then you snuff your growth as well.
You feel caged. A beast chained with a collar of fire. You throw your head back and howl. Above you, the ceiling melts, and a turret lowers to drown you in containment foam.
***
It's a few hours before Spruce feels safe enough to approach and slowly dissolve away the containment foam. You don't mind. You did need to cool down. You hadn't realized that the second trigger had been yours.
You experiment a little, back in your cell. You lack the fine control over distance that you used to have, instead seemingly having gained control over your own body at a cellular level. Range is a problem, you cannot maintain control of your bones at a distance like you could. You partially solve this problem by experimenting with your arm. You have certain pre-made patterns, instincts. A sort of tinker-pattern that lets you create super efficient biological structures.
You throw your arm clean across the room, let the bladed end sink into the opposite wall, then retract it.
A few of your men look at you, then look away.
No one talks about Trigger events. Second Triggers are worse. They respected you before, and a second Trigger isn't going to have decreased your power. You have time before they think your silence is weakness. Plenty of time really.
You roll back onto your bed and think of your daughter, comparing the bright, happy child in your memories to the drawn and haggard teen in Lung's.
You need to get out.
The defenses of the Birdcage are formidable. Breaching the walls themselves is easy. Foam turrets. Vacuum. Drones. More foam. A mountain of dirt, and those were only the defenses you knew about.
It isn't impossible though. There are Tinkers in here. Thinkers. Hundreds of Parahumans. There had to be a way, and you would find it.
Time to prepare then.
"Whimper, attend." You sit up, and Whimper stops reading his book and joins you.
"I um, need to worry boss? I know it must have been harsh, hearing that..."
"No more discussion. Have we given Roach to Glastig Uaine yet?"
"No sir. He's still locked up in P block."
"Very well."
You leave, walking briskly. One man, Swashbuckler if memory serves, almost falls over trying to get out of your way quickly.
Unsurprising. Your new powers were frightening. The feeding tendrils in particular, and none here had been spared the sight of you feeding Lung. The whole prison probably knew by now. It was a minor issue, the other cell block leaders would not move against you without more information, and you had time to persuade them that you either weren't a threat or to much of a threat to handle.
You reach P block, note the bar that had been welded over the door by Cinderhands, and try to use a bone shard to break the bar off.
You fail. Old instincts, you would have to re-learn quickly.
Instead you reach out and snatch away the bar with brute strength. It takes very little effort, and you are aware you could make yourself stronger should ordinary enhanced musculature fail to be up to the task.
As you walk in you note that Roach still hadn't finished his last meal. The body of Doorstop is only partially eaten. You swing the door shut behind you.
Roach was a Changer/Brute. His secondary form was armored, with a mouth that split four ways and dripped a digestive venom. The armor was fairly weak, and not truly an issue when fighting him. The main problem lay in that he could swap between forms at will, and healed fully whenever he changed.
Your fight is brief and bloody. He swaps forms at will? Destroy his brain before he can think to change. His execution was inevitable, his kind did not survive long down here. Not without far more power than he possessed.
This time you focused on using his power while you killed him. You get images, ideas. You already had an armored form, but now you have another one. You know where to bite to spread your digestive juices quickly and...
Annoying. He really had nothing you did not already have. He could only change with mass he stored... elsewhere, and he ate to replenish that. You are very similar, actually. Perhaps your trigger pinged of him.
Your armored form is better, the single bite Roach inflicted showed that you heal, rather than needing a new body on taking damage, and you can feed more quickly with your tendrils than with his mouth. In short you really didn't need his abilities. Nevermind, you still had information, you could take memories from others when you killed them. You could take powers from others when you killed them.
Useful. Dangerous, but useful. If you could grow to match the Faerie Queen herself...
Uaine had never seemed bothered by being in a prison, and you had long suspected this was because she could leave should she chose. If you could do the same...
You notice the fire is gone as soon as your mind turns from fever dreams of escaping to see your daughter again.
You try to summon flame, and fail. A little experimentation gets the fire back, but leaves you stripped of your new armor, and your mouth normalizing.
So... you could use your personal biokinesis to copy one power at a time. Annoying, and it slightly dashes your hopes of matching the Faerie Queen, who could copy three.
The obvious next test would be to see if you needed to kill someone. You bend, and touch Doorstops arm.
The tendrils appear, devouring the dead boy, but you get nothing. You cannot turn to immobile stone, even if you shove aside Lung's power to make room.
Annoying. Perhaps it didn't work on the dead.
The thought occurs to you that Uaine may take offense. Your trump ability is very similar to hers. A mistake not to consider that first. Still, the fact that you are not yet dead means that there is a fair chance you can salvage the situation. Somehow.
You ignore the bloodstains on the floor and fall back into a simple boxing stance.
Power. You had it before, you have more of it now. Between them all, hundreds of parahumans should be able to find a way to beat a single Tinker, only infighting, posturing and power-plays had stopped that from happening.
If you could get enough people working on things... you had a chance. There were things that had nearly worked before.
You look at the deep grooves that your new organic blade has cut into the ground, and smile grimly. You'd been focusing on not breathing during the exercise, and you had managed to avoid doing so, but your body did still need oxygen. You could store a little extra inside yourself, if you concentrated, but probably only enough for five or ten minutes. Fortunately one of the men in your cell could control oxygen, none of the other gasses, just oxygen. He had used it to leave his victims gasping for useless breath as they died.
It would happen. A few days to get used to the changes to your powers, a few more of careful reconnaissance. If you had to eat every Parahuman in this prison and kill Uaine herself it would happen. Despite your rules, despite your promises. Or perhaps because of them. You would see little Amy again, and this time, you will see her
protected.