The intel was good. Anne vouched for the young kid that had brought it in. He spoke in an accent so cockney, Mary could've swore he came straight out of a shitty london gang, but Anne told her he had simply grown up as an ipad kid watching too many BBC shows. Mary had thoughts about this, opinions on the failings of parents and the youth, but she didn't voice them. It would've taken too much time.
Regardless, he had said, "They's pickin' met'ahs up they is, I been followin' one for a while, some gurl who ken move shit wit' 'er mind is wot. She was taken -by force you see- in a bitchin' big black van. They's guys looked like SWAT, but they wasn't, they was real downright evil professional though. They didn't see me- I knows they didn't or they'd 'ave grabbed me too. Anyways- I followed 'em as much as I could, swear! Lost 'em in some cabin- cabin in the woods shit you might says. Anyways, they went in, but they never came out miss- never."
Mary thought it had to be something innocuous. Maybe a weird sex thing? Metas were always doing something weird. Best case scenario for Mary, they stumbled upn a secret vigilante hideout. Like a 'Justice League' but for crash outs with super powers. Worst case, it was just a dead end. But as she rode in the back of the pickup truck with her closest 'warriors' down the dirt path into the nature reserve, she knew her worst case scenario was rapidly turning into a 'best case.' Something was terribly wrong in these woods.
As the pickup hit another bump in the path and Mary bounced in the flatbed, she gripped the side of the vehicle so tightly she could swear she was squeezing a divot into the metal frame. Looking around, she tried desperately to ground herself. There was something her whole family, her four brothers and herself, used to do. It wasn't unique but it did work. The 5-4-3-2-1 method. The words of her brother, her dead brother, Marcus, echoed in her mind.
'What's five things you can hear?'
She could almost hear his soft, baritone voice. Almost. If she thought about it too hard, Mary knew the memory would quickly become drowned out by other, more traumatizing sounds. So, quietly, Mary whispered to herself, "F-five things. I hear, crickets, the truck, my breathing, the crunch of ice, and the demon."
Mary always heard the demon. Even if the demon wasn't speaking, Mary could always hear her. That infernal, damnable, horrible monster. Except- when Mary tried to listen for the demon in order to count it as a method in her grounding, Mary didn't hear the demon. Mary's head popped up and she looked about rapidly. Listening intently, she tried to pick out the sounds of Cicatrix from the noise, but failed.
"Something wrong ma'am?" Asked one of her warriors, one of the five Mary had brought with her. Tom Selerk. Ex-Army Ranger. Never explained why he wasn't still in the military, said they had 'creative differences.' Mary just hoped it was a lack of adequate pay and not a dishonorable discharge. He was a nice enough guy, with a face that still looked a little babyish despite his more than thirty years of life. Smiling at him, she responded, "Naw! Don' you's worry yourself. We's good."
But Mary wasn't sure if she trusted her own voice when she said that, even though Tom took her at face value and responded with a strong grin and a nod. Even shrouded in the darkness of midnight in their light polluted city, his face could still be seen in the gentle moonlight. Looking forward, Mary watched as the truck pulled up and parked in front of an old ranger station. What a ranger station was doing in the middle of a small, protected nature reserve just over the river outside of the city of Pittsburgh was anyone's guess.
Hopping out of the truck, Mary strode toward the front door as the others slowed exited the vehicle behind her. The light out front of the little log cabin was still on, but it didn't seem like it was 'open' per se. With a pause at the front door, Mary looked back to her companions. Tom, Anne, Morris, Bill, and Jason. All armed, all ready to raise hell. And all at once Mary wondered exactly what she planned to do here. Was she going to raid the place? That had certainly been the idea, but what if it really was a harmless thing instead? What if the kid had seen wrong and the meta just worked here?
Shaking her head to dispel those thoughts, Mary grinned at her people before turning to open the door. If it was a misunderstanding, they could just go home. They hadn't done anything wrong. Mary pushed on the door. It had been locked. It had been. It was not locked anymore. It felt as though she had pushed apart paper Mache. But the door, a steel frame with a tiny wooden veneer, snapped off its hinges and flung away from her. The next few moments were a blur as Mary was hit with a near instant panic attack.
She was vaguely aware of movement around her, of shouting, and of guns firing. Her men were firing, someone inside had also fired, Mary had moved her hand and a shield of immense strength materialized before her without effort. Bullets struck it in explosions of sparks and shrapnel, but Mary could barely notice it. Her breathing quickened, shallowed, and matched with the rapid pumping of her heart. Grasping her head desperately as her boys flooded into the small room to secure it- she tried again to ground herself. It was Brian's voice this time with his forceful tone and intense New York Italian accent.
'Cahlm down Mahry, wha's 4 thing's you's see.'
Four things to see, four specific things, focus, focus Mary. She looked up again, gripping her skull tightly, and focused on the room around her. Aloud, she listed, "I- I see, fuck. I see a desk, it's got pencils n' shit on it, uh- I see a body- n-no, two bodies. They's dressed in black, body armor, rifle, def not park rangers. My boys- they're here, they're ok. And I see- I see- an elevator...?"
In the back of the room, center of Mary's pinhole vision, was an elevator. The park ranger office that wasn't at all a park ranger office had an elevator cleverly disguised as a utility closet among the standard bathroom doors. It would've been missed by the average person, but Mary had spent enough time screwing around in her own building's elevator shaft to know what the general shape of one looked like. The door was too large, and the closet too well supported. Breathing deeply and slowly, Mary looked at the concerned faces of her companions.
Strength returned to voice as she barked out, "Tom! Jason! You's two stay here! Send me the signal if we's gettin' unwanted company! Anne, Bill, Morris, on me!" And she flawless fell into her position of point-woman as she approached the elevator. Something was wrong, something was very, very wrong, but Mary couldn't tell exactly what it was. It wasn't the heavily armed guard, it wasn't the building, it wasn't even the secret elevator. No- it was something else, something that grasped and screamed and panicked within Mary's very soul.
Entering the elevator, Mary quickly noticed a keyfob by the buttons. A keycard would be needed to start the damn thing. Luckily, Anne had already looted the dead guard's corpse and pulled off his. Mary smiled at this. She had good people. Anne activated the fob and pressed the button marked 'down.' The elevator safety cage slowly shut and within seconds, the group had descended the freight elevator into a large security check-in room.
It looked a lot like the check-in and check-out of a prison. Mary had been to prison once, visiting, and the similarities were striking. There was a small man in black body armor, just like the men upstairs, sitting behind a chair. He didn't say anything as he stood up, gun pointing towards the group. And Mary didn't say anything as she misty stepped directly before him, one hand on his gun, another one his throat. She squeezed. He died. It was like crushing a grape.
Morris shouted, "Jesus Christ on bike Mary!" But his voice sounded far away, like he was shouting from across a large, empty field, and wasn't practically standing right behind her. Mary turned to look at him, covered in blood, and ordered, "Focus up." Before turning back toward the steel door. She reached down to the desk of the dead man and pressed a button. With a quick 'SHINK' the steel door guarding the rest of the facility opened up.
What was first seen was a large, open office area. At least, it was going to be an office area. Unassembled cubicles, assorted boxes, and new office computers still in their boxes were strewn about the entire room. To their right, a door marked 'Security' and, to their left, 'Surgery.' Mary gestured for her boys to move left while she took right. She would brook no arguments, and her boys gave her none.
Before she even reached the door, Mary could hear something through the haze clouding her mind. Someone on the other side of the door was shouting, "Mayday mayday we are condition red! Hostiles have entered the lab and we have casualties, send the-!" Mary didn't let the man finish. The door to security had to be at least two inches of steel, but under the pressure of her fingers it might as well have been a single sheet of construction paper. It folded as she tore it off, showing four men crouched behind an overturned table with guns trained on the Warlock.
The shield was before her before their bullets left their guns, and one of the four was killed by ricochet before she pointed a finger at the remaining trio. Perhaps he was the lucky one. Down in an instant as his buddies burned to death in a flash-inferno. Mary felt nothing as the power left her body, which was strange. Everything felt all at once muted and hypersensitive. This was the panic attack, she concluded, it had to be. Harry's high pitched little voice came next. The voice of a man not yet through puberty in the body of a man already past 30, or he would've been, if he was still around.
'Name three things ya can touch, cmon, you's already halfway there.'
Mary spoke meekly as she turned away from screaming men, their voices meaningless in the madness that was whatever the hell was going on around her. "Threee things~ yeah, ok. I feel, the cold metal of the door. I feel, the cool breeze of the ac. And I feel- I feel-." She Felt, "Powerful... Oh, oh fuck- oh my god oh fuck-!" It had finally hit Mary like a ton of bricks dropped from the top of the empire state building.
Mary felt powerful. Powerful like she had never felt before. There was something so intensely strong in this building that it drowned out the pain of men dying, of men burning to death! Their energies, pulled into Mary's small frame, were like trickles of water added to a flowing stream. What the hell was going on here? As her mind began to race, she heard her name called from the other room. It was Anne, "Xозяйка! You come see this-! Now!!
Mary rushed over to the other side, passing by the offices and unfinished cubicles without much thought. Entering into the 'Surgery' room, Mary was greeted with a wave of nasty smells. There was definitively the scent of blood, that was for sure, and vomit. A quick glance confirmed it was Morris, and Mary looked over at him to see if he was alright. He didn't respond from his bent over position, but Bill gave her a thumbs up. Turning to Anne, Mary noticed she was holding a small clipboard, like a doctor.
Anne handed it to her, and Mary's stomach dropped. It was a list. There were names on it, followed by powers and likely true identities. Metas.
'Name: Konnor Hart, MetaMutation: Levitation, Status: In Custody, Test Log: Conscious Dissection of calf muscles to stimulate levitation while restrained, unsuccessful. Perhaps mental block prevents usage- or power is not concentrated in calves. Test Suggestion: Dissect spinal column next. Graft spine fluid into mice to attempt to recreate power from dna strands.'
'Name: Albert Robertson, MetaMutation: Flashbang, Status: In Custody, Test Log: Attempted forceful activation of power VIA electrical stimulus. First attempt unsuccessful as subject lost consciousness from the pain. Second attempt showed promise after subject was forcibly kept conscious with the assistance of chemical compounds A, J, and E. Test Suggestion: Flashes seem to originate from glands located near the inner arms. Attempt removal of glands while subject is conscious and reapply electrical stimulus.'
'Name: Ryan Harris, MetaMutation: Cut-up, Status: In Custody, Test Log: Subject retains feeling and partial control of body parts even when disconnected from torso. Experimentation had proved the main body retains receptiveness to heat and cold as we froze and burned his extremities. Test Suggestion: Begin to remove organs next, what is the limit of what he can keep alive even when removed and disconnected?'
'Name: Phoenix(pseudonym), MetaMutation: Heat Manipulation, Status: Unacquired, Test Suggestion: Lock subject in specialized crematorium box, gradually increase heat until an upper threshold is reached and subject begins to cook alive. Do not kill by accident, further testing will be requested by Dr. E.'
Mary slammed the clipboard down, her heart pounding in her ears and her chest seizing in pain. They were experimenting on Metas, they were torturing metas. Looking over, Mary finally noticed what had caused her poor boy Morris to vomit. There was something on the table, a human heart, still beating. Mary reached out, ever so gently, and picked it up. As her fingers wrapped around it, she could hear a scream.
It was JimJam's voice, finally, that spoke to her now. His jovial tone that she remembered was replaced with something far more serious as Mary walked out of the surgery room and toward the sound of the scream,
'What's two things you's can smell?'
"I smell- I smell terrible things, JimJam. I can smell pain, and suffering. It's so thick, it's thick like you's never believe." Mary spoke aloud as she approached the backroom. It was marked 'Cell Block' and barred with an intense metal cage. The steel bars were something out of a prison from a bad old film, and they held up about as well as twigs stacked into a rough shape. Mary's free hand brushed them aside as she entered. There was a man, a final guard, standing at the back of the cell block. In one hand, a pistol, in the other, he held a small woman- a girl- at gunpoint.
"Stop or-!" Mary did not let him finish. She was before him in an instant, before his eyes could even finish blinking, and she had shoved her hand through his chest. Grasping his heart, she ripped it out and held it aloft before his quickly fading eyes. Comparing it to the other, she asked, "How does it feel?" Before crushing the guard's heart like it was made of play-slime. The hostage girl crumpled to the ground alongside the dead man, her legs unable to hold her body up due to the dozens of metal pins Mary now noticed were struck in them.
Turning away from her, Mary observed the cells. Only seven of them were occupied, but there were far more than seven cells in this area. Some of the cells held men and women she recognized from the clipboard, some she did not. This was it, this was the source of the wrongness, of the darkness that consumed this entire structure. This was the origin of the terrible power that flooded Mary's body.
This- was pain. Expertly crafted and perfected among eight innocents for the express purpose of immoral scientific exploration. If Mary had any doubts before that her abilities could thrive on other's pain even better than Mary's own, they were dashed away at this sight. This absolute pinnacle of human cruelty filled Mary with more power and strength than she had ever known in her life. Even more than when she first silenced the demon.
Then, as Mary gently placed the heart back into the open chest of the man probably named 'Ryan,' everything finally clicked into place for her. She couldn't hear the demon here. Not even when she tried. The pain, the power, blocked the voices out. Suddenly, Mary was consumed with an uproarious laugh that echoed through the facility and up the elevator shaft. It was so loud that Mary wouldn't have been surprised if she could be heard from outside the cabin, but she doubted that was the case.
Reaching down, Mary gently picked up the poor girl and pulled out the pins in her legs. She screamed, Mary didn't care. With unkind hands and good intentions, Mary forcibly healed the breaks in the girl's body. She passed out from the pain, but that only made it easier for Mary do to her 'healing.' Carrying the girl out, Mary handed her unconscious body to Anne. Anne, who had stood in the doorway, asked gently, "Xозяйка- what- what we do?. Smiling at her comrade, Mary ordered, "Get these poor bastards into the truck. Have Morris grab anything of value- drugs mostly- and let's go. I'm going up- they's called for backup. I'm gonna welcome them home."
Anne didn't return Mary's cruel grin, but nodded solemnly at her leader. Mary wordlessly returned to the elevator and ascended up into the main cabin. Her boys hadn't scarcely started to ask what she found down there before the loud rumbling of large trucks on dirt roads could be heard outside. Waving her boys back, Mary strode out to meet the crew that had come to help their dead friends. Holding out her arms, Mary took stock of the three blacked out SUVs unloading more than a dozen extremely heavily armed men in full black combat armor. They didn't say a word as they trained their weapons on her, but Mary broke the silence for them.
"What's one thing you's can taste?!"
Eight seconds.
That's how long it took Mary to tear each and every one of those men to pieces with her bare hands. Eight seconds. Oh they were not silent as Mary attacked. Their guns blasted loudly in the night, silencers doing little to keep the noise down due to the sheer volume of their fire. They were not silent either as Mary ripped them apart, their screams painting a glorious musical for the Warlock. She felt like Adam Smasher- and these peons were the shit eating edgerunners that had overestimated their strength before her.
As she practically bathed in their blood, she screamed, "FREEDOM!! I TASTE FREEDOM!!"
Freedom.
Regardless, he had said, "They's pickin' met'ahs up they is, I been followin' one for a while, some gurl who ken move shit wit' 'er mind is wot. She was taken -by force you see- in a bitchin' big black van. They's guys looked like SWAT, but they wasn't, they was real downright evil professional though. They didn't see me- I knows they didn't or they'd 'ave grabbed me too. Anyways- I followed 'em as much as I could, swear! Lost 'em in some cabin- cabin in the woods shit you might says. Anyways, they went in, but they never came out miss- never."
Mary thought it had to be something innocuous. Maybe a weird sex thing? Metas were always doing something weird. Best case scenario for Mary, they stumbled upn a secret vigilante hideout. Like a 'Justice League' but for crash outs with super powers. Worst case, it was just a dead end. But as she rode in the back of the pickup truck with her closest 'warriors' down the dirt path into the nature reserve, she knew her worst case scenario was rapidly turning into a 'best case.' Something was terribly wrong in these woods.
As the pickup hit another bump in the path and Mary bounced in the flatbed, she gripped the side of the vehicle so tightly she could swear she was squeezing a divot into the metal frame. Looking around, she tried desperately to ground herself. There was something her whole family, her four brothers and herself, used to do. It wasn't unique but it did work. The 5-4-3-2-1 method. The words of her brother, her dead brother, Marcus, echoed in her mind.
'What's five things you can hear?'
She could almost hear his soft, baritone voice. Almost. If she thought about it too hard, Mary knew the memory would quickly become drowned out by other, more traumatizing sounds. So, quietly, Mary whispered to herself, "F-five things. I hear, crickets, the truck, my breathing, the crunch of ice, and the demon."
Mary always heard the demon. Even if the demon wasn't speaking, Mary could always hear her. That infernal, damnable, horrible monster. Except- when Mary tried to listen for the demon in order to count it as a method in her grounding, Mary didn't hear the demon. Mary's head popped up and she looked about rapidly. Listening intently, she tried to pick out the sounds of Cicatrix from the noise, but failed.
"Something wrong ma'am?" Asked one of her warriors, one of the five Mary had brought with her. Tom Selerk. Ex-Army Ranger. Never explained why he wasn't still in the military, said they had 'creative differences.' Mary just hoped it was a lack of adequate pay and not a dishonorable discharge. He was a nice enough guy, with a face that still looked a little babyish despite his more than thirty years of life. Smiling at him, she responded, "Naw! Don' you's worry yourself. We's good."
But Mary wasn't sure if she trusted her own voice when she said that, even though Tom took her at face value and responded with a strong grin and a nod. Even shrouded in the darkness of midnight in their light polluted city, his face could still be seen in the gentle moonlight. Looking forward, Mary watched as the truck pulled up and parked in front of an old ranger station. What a ranger station was doing in the middle of a small, protected nature reserve just over the river outside of the city of Pittsburgh was anyone's guess.
Hopping out of the truck, Mary strode toward the front door as the others slowed exited the vehicle behind her. The light out front of the little log cabin was still on, but it didn't seem like it was 'open' per se. With a pause at the front door, Mary looked back to her companions. Tom, Anne, Morris, Bill, and Jason. All armed, all ready to raise hell. And all at once Mary wondered exactly what she planned to do here. Was she going to raid the place? That had certainly been the idea, but what if it really was a harmless thing instead? What if the kid had seen wrong and the meta just worked here?
Shaking her head to dispel those thoughts, Mary grinned at her people before turning to open the door. If it was a misunderstanding, they could just go home. They hadn't done anything wrong. Mary pushed on the door. It had been locked. It had been. It was not locked anymore. It felt as though she had pushed apart paper Mache. But the door, a steel frame with a tiny wooden veneer, snapped off its hinges and flung away from her. The next few moments were a blur as Mary was hit with a near instant panic attack.
She was vaguely aware of movement around her, of shouting, and of guns firing. Her men were firing, someone inside had also fired, Mary had moved her hand and a shield of immense strength materialized before her without effort. Bullets struck it in explosions of sparks and shrapnel, but Mary could barely notice it. Her breathing quickened, shallowed, and matched with the rapid pumping of her heart. Grasping her head desperately as her boys flooded into the small room to secure it- she tried again to ground herself. It was Brian's voice this time with his forceful tone and intense New York Italian accent.
'Cahlm down Mahry, wha's 4 thing's you's see.'
Four things to see, four specific things, focus, focus Mary. She looked up again, gripping her skull tightly, and focused on the room around her. Aloud, she listed, "I- I see, fuck. I see a desk, it's got pencils n' shit on it, uh- I see a body- n-no, two bodies. They's dressed in black, body armor, rifle, def not park rangers. My boys- they're here, they're ok. And I see- I see- an elevator...?"
In the back of the room, center of Mary's pinhole vision, was an elevator. The park ranger office that wasn't at all a park ranger office had an elevator cleverly disguised as a utility closet among the standard bathroom doors. It would've been missed by the average person, but Mary had spent enough time screwing around in her own building's elevator shaft to know what the general shape of one looked like. The door was too large, and the closet too well supported. Breathing deeply and slowly, Mary looked at the concerned faces of her companions.
Strength returned to voice as she barked out, "Tom! Jason! You's two stay here! Send me the signal if we's gettin' unwanted company! Anne, Bill, Morris, on me!" And she flawless fell into her position of point-woman as she approached the elevator. Something was wrong, something was very, very wrong, but Mary couldn't tell exactly what it was. It wasn't the heavily armed guard, it wasn't the building, it wasn't even the secret elevator. No- it was something else, something that grasped and screamed and panicked within Mary's very soul.
Entering the elevator, Mary quickly noticed a keyfob by the buttons. A keycard would be needed to start the damn thing. Luckily, Anne had already looted the dead guard's corpse and pulled off his. Mary smiled at this. She had good people. Anne activated the fob and pressed the button marked 'down.' The elevator safety cage slowly shut and within seconds, the group had descended the freight elevator into a large security check-in room.
It looked a lot like the check-in and check-out of a prison. Mary had been to prison once, visiting, and the similarities were striking. There was a small man in black body armor, just like the men upstairs, sitting behind a chair. He didn't say anything as he stood up, gun pointing towards the group. And Mary didn't say anything as she misty stepped directly before him, one hand on his gun, another one his throat. She squeezed. He died. It was like crushing a grape.
Morris shouted, "Jesus Christ on bike Mary!" But his voice sounded far away, like he was shouting from across a large, empty field, and wasn't practically standing right behind her. Mary turned to look at him, covered in blood, and ordered, "Focus up." Before turning back toward the steel door. She reached down to the desk of the dead man and pressed a button. With a quick 'SHINK' the steel door guarding the rest of the facility opened up.
What was first seen was a large, open office area. At least, it was going to be an office area. Unassembled cubicles, assorted boxes, and new office computers still in their boxes were strewn about the entire room. To their right, a door marked 'Security' and, to their left, 'Surgery.' Mary gestured for her boys to move left while she took right. She would brook no arguments, and her boys gave her none.
Before she even reached the door, Mary could hear something through the haze clouding her mind. Someone on the other side of the door was shouting, "Mayday mayday we are condition red! Hostiles have entered the lab and we have casualties, send the-!" Mary didn't let the man finish. The door to security had to be at least two inches of steel, but under the pressure of her fingers it might as well have been a single sheet of construction paper. It folded as she tore it off, showing four men crouched behind an overturned table with guns trained on the Warlock.
The shield was before her before their bullets left their guns, and one of the four was killed by ricochet before she pointed a finger at the remaining trio. Perhaps he was the lucky one. Down in an instant as his buddies burned to death in a flash-inferno. Mary felt nothing as the power left her body, which was strange. Everything felt all at once muted and hypersensitive. This was the panic attack, she concluded, it had to be. Harry's high pitched little voice came next. The voice of a man not yet through puberty in the body of a man already past 30, or he would've been, if he was still around.
'Name three things ya can touch, cmon, you's already halfway there.'
Mary spoke meekly as she turned away from screaming men, their voices meaningless in the madness that was whatever the hell was going on around her. "Threee things~ yeah, ok. I feel, the cold metal of the door. I feel, the cool breeze of the ac. And I feel- I feel-." She Felt, "Powerful... Oh, oh fuck- oh my god oh fuck-!" It had finally hit Mary like a ton of bricks dropped from the top of the empire state building.
Mary felt powerful. Powerful like she had never felt before. There was something so intensely strong in this building that it drowned out the pain of men dying, of men burning to death! Their energies, pulled into Mary's small frame, were like trickles of water added to a flowing stream. What the hell was going on here? As her mind began to race, she heard her name called from the other room. It was Anne, "Xозяйка! You come see this-! Now!!
Mary rushed over to the other side, passing by the offices and unfinished cubicles without much thought. Entering into the 'Surgery' room, Mary was greeted with a wave of nasty smells. There was definitively the scent of blood, that was for sure, and vomit. A quick glance confirmed it was Morris, and Mary looked over at him to see if he was alright. He didn't respond from his bent over position, but Bill gave her a thumbs up. Turning to Anne, Mary noticed she was holding a small clipboard, like a doctor.
Anne handed it to her, and Mary's stomach dropped. It was a list. There were names on it, followed by powers and likely true identities. Metas.
'Name: Konnor Hart, MetaMutation: Levitation, Status: In Custody, Test Log: Conscious Dissection of calf muscles to stimulate levitation while restrained, unsuccessful. Perhaps mental block prevents usage- or power is not concentrated in calves. Test Suggestion: Dissect spinal column next. Graft spine fluid into mice to attempt to recreate power from dna strands.'
'Name: Albert Robertson, MetaMutation: Flashbang, Status: In Custody, Test Log: Attempted forceful activation of power VIA electrical stimulus. First attempt unsuccessful as subject lost consciousness from the pain. Second attempt showed promise after subject was forcibly kept conscious with the assistance of chemical compounds A, J, and E. Test Suggestion: Flashes seem to originate from glands located near the inner arms. Attempt removal of glands while subject is conscious and reapply electrical stimulus.'
'Name: Ryan Harris, MetaMutation: Cut-up, Status: In Custody, Test Log: Subject retains feeling and partial control of body parts even when disconnected from torso. Experimentation had proved the main body retains receptiveness to heat and cold as we froze and burned his extremities. Test Suggestion: Begin to remove organs next, what is the limit of what he can keep alive even when removed and disconnected?'
'Name: Phoenix(pseudonym), MetaMutation: Heat Manipulation, Status: Unacquired, Test Suggestion: Lock subject in specialized crematorium box, gradually increase heat until an upper threshold is reached and subject begins to cook alive. Do not kill by accident, further testing will be requested by Dr. E.'
Mary slammed the clipboard down, her heart pounding in her ears and her chest seizing in pain. They were experimenting on Metas, they were torturing metas. Looking over, Mary finally noticed what had caused her poor boy Morris to vomit. There was something on the table, a human heart, still beating. Mary reached out, ever so gently, and picked it up. As her fingers wrapped around it, she could hear a scream.
It was JimJam's voice, finally, that spoke to her now. His jovial tone that she remembered was replaced with something far more serious as Mary walked out of the surgery room and toward the sound of the scream,
'What's two things you's can smell?'
"I smell- I smell terrible things, JimJam. I can smell pain, and suffering. It's so thick, it's thick like you's never believe." Mary spoke aloud as she approached the backroom. It was marked 'Cell Block' and barred with an intense metal cage. The steel bars were something out of a prison from a bad old film, and they held up about as well as twigs stacked into a rough shape. Mary's free hand brushed them aside as she entered. There was a man, a final guard, standing at the back of the cell block. In one hand, a pistol, in the other, he held a small woman- a girl- at gunpoint.
"Stop or-!" Mary did not let him finish. She was before him in an instant, before his eyes could even finish blinking, and she had shoved her hand through his chest. Grasping his heart, she ripped it out and held it aloft before his quickly fading eyes. Comparing it to the other, she asked, "How does it feel?" Before crushing the guard's heart like it was made of play-slime. The hostage girl crumpled to the ground alongside the dead man, her legs unable to hold her body up due to the dozens of metal pins Mary now noticed were struck in them.
Turning away from her, Mary observed the cells. Only seven of them were occupied, but there were far more than seven cells in this area. Some of the cells held men and women she recognized from the clipboard, some she did not. This was it, this was the source of the wrongness, of the darkness that consumed this entire structure. This was the origin of the terrible power that flooded Mary's body.
This- was pain. Expertly crafted and perfected among eight innocents for the express purpose of immoral scientific exploration. If Mary had any doubts before that her abilities could thrive on other's pain even better than Mary's own, they were dashed away at this sight. This absolute pinnacle of human cruelty filled Mary with more power and strength than she had ever known in her life. Even more than when she first silenced the demon.
Then, as Mary gently placed the heart back into the open chest of the man probably named 'Ryan,' everything finally clicked into place for her. She couldn't hear the demon here. Not even when she tried. The pain, the power, blocked the voices out. Suddenly, Mary was consumed with an uproarious laugh that echoed through the facility and up the elevator shaft. It was so loud that Mary wouldn't have been surprised if she could be heard from outside the cabin, but she doubted that was the case.
Reaching down, Mary gently picked up the poor girl and pulled out the pins in her legs. She screamed, Mary didn't care. With unkind hands and good intentions, Mary forcibly healed the breaks in the girl's body. She passed out from the pain, but that only made it easier for Mary do to her 'healing.' Carrying the girl out, Mary handed her unconscious body to Anne. Anne, who had stood in the doorway, asked gently, "Xозяйка- what- what we do?. Smiling at her comrade, Mary ordered, "Get these poor bastards into the truck. Have Morris grab anything of value- drugs mostly- and let's go. I'm going up- they's called for backup. I'm gonna welcome them home."
Anne didn't return Mary's cruel grin, but nodded solemnly at her leader. Mary wordlessly returned to the elevator and ascended up into the main cabin. Her boys hadn't scarcely started to ask what she found down there before the loud rumbling of large trucks on dirt roads could be heard outside. Waving her boys back, Mary strode out to meet the crew that had come to help their dead friends. Holding out her arms, Mary took stock of the three blacked out SUVs unloading more than a dozen extremely heavily armed men in full black combat armor. They didn't say a word as they trained their weapons on her, but Mary broke the silence for them.
"What's one thing you's can taste?!"
Eight seconds.
That's how long it took Mary to tear each and every one of those men to pieces with her bare hands. Eight seconds. Oh they were not silent as Mary attacked. Their guns blasted loudly in the night, silencers doing little to keep the noise down due to the sheer volume of their fire. They were not silent either as Mary ripped them apart, their screams painting a glorious musical for the Warlock. She felt like Adam Smasher- and these peons were the shit eating edgerunners that had overestimated their strength before her.
As she practically bathed in their blood, she screamed, "FREEDOM!! I TASTE FREEDOM!!"
Freedom.