Chapter 121: R&R (Patreon)

In the beginning, there was no infrastructure to incarcerate supers, and authorities quickly realized that the current facilities were insufficient to the task.

Between 1970 and 1990 there were no less than fifteen hundred violent escapes by supers from prisons and jailhouses. That number represents 84% of the (successful) arrests made on supers. The other 16% simply chose not to escape.

Calls for more secure holding facilities became louder and louder, as cowls took to calling mundane holding facilities ‘spa day’ or ‘R&R’.

As time went on, holding facilities became more and more specialized and draconian, with capes assisting in the design and operation of the facilities.

They had solid walls, isolated units, full-body restraints, and multiple safeguards designed by the latest technology of Tinkers in the nineties, including shrink rays and compliance beams.

As measures to prevent escape became more extreme, so too did the escapes themselves. Between 1990 and 2000, there were over two thousand escape attempts, the average resulting in fifteen deaths. This represented 98% of the imprisoned cowl population.

In late 2003, in order to escape a facility designed to hold a cowl in dimensional bubble, Carbo blew up the facility, resulting in dimensional shrapnel that shredded nearly 1/3 of the population of Franklin City.

Responding to public outcry, Solaris gathered together a team of accomplished architects, psychologists, Behavioral analysts, therapists, hotel managers, masseuses, bartenders, alternative lifestyle consultants, interior decorators, prostitutes, Minders, and Tinkers, to set about designing a prison so sophisticated, so brutal, that no one would ever dare escape again. In 2015, they completed their masterpiece.

And it worked. No one has ever escaped from The Workshop.

- A brief History of supers.

***Chemestro***

“Sure, man, people escape all the time.” Killjoy said, waving dismissively.

“What do you mean by ‘all the time’?” Chemestro asked, frowning.

“Just the other day, Gyro finds out some mook is beating on his sister, so he walked out the front door and put the guy in a neck brace.” Killjoy said, taking a sip of his drink. “Course, then Solaris shows up and asks him some pointed questions, Hah. Guy’s lucky his sister went to bat for ‘im.”

“Why can people just walk out?” Chemestro asked.

“Because then nobody dies trying to stop ‘em. Except the puppy, I guess.” Killjoy absentmindedly stroked the puppy sleeping next to him.

Chemestro glanced down at eighteen seventy-four, who he had named after the brother he’d disliked the least. The droopy bulldog looked up at him and sneezed.

“I don’t understand.” Chemestro said.

“People need to feel safe.” Killjoy said. “Having a prison that exploded every couple months or chewed through guards like a meatgrinder did not do that.  Sure, this place disin- disa-“

“Disincentivizes.” Chemestro supplied.

“Yeah, that. It makes leaving a bitch, but it does nothing to actually stop you. If a prisoner escapes, they spin it as a scheduled release, or a work release, or just deny it ever happened. And with no casualties or major explosions, it’s pretty easy to do that.”

“And let me tell you something, way, way less people are actually escaping the Workshop than those hell-holes they had in the nineties. Especially if it gets Solaris interested in you.”

“That makes no sense, why would laxer security result in less escape attempts?” Chemestro asked.

“Ask me that again after you’ve had your ass checked for concealed weapons before and after every work detail,” Killjoy scoffed.

So is this extreme corruption, or simply the best solution to an impossible problem? Chemestro thought as he scanned the lounging cowls.

***Paradox***

Perry lay on his back, eyes closed, enjoying the fake sun on his skin as he allocated his stats.

Congratulations! You are now a level 8 Garage Tinker!

Paradox Zauberer (Perry Z.)

Class: Garage Tinker

Level 8

HP: 9

Body: 8

Stability: 20

Nerve: 12

Attunement: 37

Free Points: 12

XP to next level: 5958

Spells: Light (5/5)

Let’s see, five percent raised to the power of forty is 7.03, just high enough to pop level nine up to fifteen free points. That leaves me with nine points to raise my Stability.

…which would make the amount I have to spend at level 10 just barely enough to afford one multiclass specialization.

What if I did five to attunement and seven to stability instead? That would still close the gap between the two stats by one point and take Attunement up to 42, which would give me sixteen points at level 9… have to split that weighed in favor of Stability, so 9 stability, 7 Attunement.

44+7=51

1.05^51= 12.04 or 24 points, plus the standard one.

25 points to spend at level 10

That was enough for a multiclass perk, and a boost to one of his current Perks, or maybe a new one entirely.

Yeah, I like that.

Seven to Stability, five to Attunement.

Paradox Zauberer (Perry Z.)

Class: Garage Tinker

Level 8

HP: 9

Body: 8

Stability: 27

Nerve: 12

Attunement: 42

Free Points: 0

XP to next level: 5958

Spells: Light (5/5)

I never expected to get two levels in one day, but killing Neuron must’ve…really changed the game. I never would’ve thought that brain in a jar had that much influence over the future.

Perry had a stray thought wondering how much XP the cowls around the pool with him were worth before he quashed it. That was a dangerous, shortsighted, and evil course of action, and even though Perry might be pretty hard to kill, he wasn’t invincible.

Maybe I should raise my stability more after level 10. There’s a possibility that the total difference between stability and Attunement is what’s causing problems, and not simply the ratio.

Plus when I do more soul-surgery, Stability is going to become a keystone stat, affecting the number of spell-frames I can safely store inside myself, making it  possibly more important than Attunement, which simply dictates their strength.

On the plus side, Stability doesn’t create outward indicators of exponential growth. Perry would appear to have stalled out to the outside world. And that would be handy now that Solaris had a dossier filled with god-knows-what on Perry.

When I first discovered how fast I would pop off, I didn’t want to take the slow-and-steady, hiding-my-growth route, but the YOLO route involves killing as many people as possible to outpace Solaris’s suspicions.

And I just don’t wanna be that kinda guy.

Perry sighed and stretched his toes.

Besides, once I figured out that I’m gonna go nuclear one day whether I like it or not, the YOLO route lost a bit of appeal. I’m in no rush.

“Paradox!” A voice barked.

Perry peered through a lazily cracked eye at the figure looming above him.

“Eh?”

It was a slender young man with brown hair and a rather impressive scowl, wearing a beret made of folded newspaper, painted black.

Role.

Oh right, I arrested him.

Beside Role was a doberman puppy, standing at rigid attention with its own homemade beret.

“Role?”

“That’s Captain Role to you, prisoner!” Role said, pointing at the laminated newspaper badge on his chest. “I’m in charge of keeping order in this facility!”

It was true, Role did have the responsibility for making sure everything ran smoothly, and Perry couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t, but Perry did have one pressing question.

“Where’d you get a newspaper?” Perry asked. Perry wasn’t even sure they made those things anymore.

“I got my hands on a bit of burlap twine and some dimes.” Role said. “And now I’m the Captain of The Workshop!”

Wildcard powers are a bit tougher for the puppies to register as misuse, I suppose,Perry thought, glancing at the Doberman puppy in a beret.

“Good for you, I guess.” Perry said with a shrug. “Whaddya want with me?”

“On your feet, prisoner you’ve got an important visitor.” Role nudged Perry with a paper-mache nightstick. It seemed a bit odd that the captain of the guard used a nightstick made of paper, but Perry rolled with it.

Role made a static sound with his mouth before speaking into his palm, fingers curled as though they were wrapped around a walkie talkie.

“I got Paradox, bringing him back to visitation.”

“Ten-four Captain, Room 314” A voice responded from Role’s palm, causing Perry’s eyebrows to raise. Role’s abilities had clearly granted him all the powers of a guard captain.

Perry allowed Role to guide him down the labyrinthine halls of the workshop. They passed by a row of rooms with luxurious king-sized beds and fluffy pillows, cushy furniture and silk sheets, the kind Perry would expect in the swankiest of hotels. Most of the doors were open, but a few were closed.

“Hey, what do I gotta do to get a room like that?” Perry asked as they passed. His bunkbed was…fine, but it wasn’t great either.

“Those are the conjugal visit rooms,” Role said, stonefaced.

“No shit?” Perry asked, craning his neck to gawk as they passed the five star accommodations.

“Calm your chi. You’re in the conference room today, where prisoners meet lawyers and such.”

Perry clicked his tongue in disappointment before Role guided him past a waiting area cordoned off by a thick sheet of Tinker-made glass. On the other side, Perry could make out dozens of friends and family of the incarcerated filling out paperwork and waiting in line in a painfully bureaucratic process.

There was a separate line in front of another desk with a big sign over it labeled ‘conjugal visits’, with a few men and women anxiously waiting. The unpowered family members of cowls.

I wonder how they keep the books here, what with cowls families being off-limits? Encryption? Willful ignorance? An oath of secrecy? Or does the clerk not know what they’re clerking for?

Role guided him down a small side hall to a little metal door, pushing it open and gesturing Perry to go inside.

“Hey, Role,” Perry paused before going inside.

“Eh?” Role

“What do you do in your off-time from being captain of the guard? Go out and visit a night club? Go home to your family? Take a long walk on the beach?”

“Don’t be an idiot, I watch sports.”

“At home, right?”

“I…” Role frowned for a moment before shoving Perry inside. “Don’t try your mind games on me, prisoner.”

The door slammed shut, nearly catching Perry’s heels.

“Role tried to become a guard captain a couple weeks ago as a means to escape,” Solaris’s bass voice emanated from the table at the other end of the room.

The strongest super in the city sat across from Perry, leaning back in his chair with his fingers interlaced over his stomach in a physical demonstration of ease.

Well, it doesn’t look like he’s gonna kill me, but who knows? Perry thought, approaching the chair and sitting down.

“He got caught up in the guard captain schtick, and his new sense of duty prevented him from escaping!” Solaris said, wiping a tear from his eye. “He might’ve even forgotten he was a prisoner! God, wildcards are a riot.”

“It was weird remembering him being both the captain and the cowl at the same time,” Perry admitted.

“Right?”

Solaris sobered, straightening in his chair and locking his gaze on Perry. Perry’s skin went cold.

“I got an email from Neuron shortly after he died.”

“Oh?” Perry asked, sweating bullets.

“You see, Ben and I worked together a lot in the nineties. Times were a little different back then. Real psychos popped up like daisies left and right. The social contract for supers was just being formed. Drainers didn’t have any role models to teach them to restrain themselves, so they usually wound up flying off the deep end.”

“Back then, it was safer to just kill them.” Solaris shrugged. “Wildly unethical, but safer.”

“I’m not a Drainer,” Perry said.

“Do you not take potential from others to enrich your own?”

“I do.” Perry said. It was more nuanced than that, but he could tell that Solaris didn’t want a whiny kid arguing the point.

Solaris gave Perry a weighing look.

“Of course, you know we take Drainers under our wing nowadays. Closely monitored, but alive.”

Perry felt a flutter of hope.

“Like Plagius.”

“Forget about Plagius. Let’s talk about you.”

Solaris leaned forward and clasped his hands together.

“In your honest opinion, do you think you will be a danger to the planet?”

Perry considered his words for a moment. Solaris was already suspicious. If Perry got caught in a lie, the super would simply snuff him out.

“If I wanted to…I probably could be.” High-level Perry could probably make a world-ending nuke pretty easily.

“What guarantee do I have that you won’t?” Solaris asked.

“I can raise my Stability.” Perry offered.

“And that means…what?” Solaris asked.

“My tolerance to crazy,” Perry said. “I have four stats that I can raise, and that’s one of them. It keeps me sane, normal. Stable.”

Solaris’s eyes widened subtly. “That’s interesting. Is it your highest one?” Solaris asked, leaning forward attentively.

“No, sir.”

“I see.”

Solaris leaned back and tapped his finger on the table, contemplating Perry.

“Have you ever experienced a sensation where nothing exists outside the room you are currently in? Ever hallucinated the Earth fading away, leaving nothing but the stars?”

“No sir,” Perry lied. Something inside him knew he COULDN’T answer ‘yes’ to that question. Solaris would definitely kill him.

Solaris grew silent, staring at Perry for a solid minute while Perry’s heartbeat gradually ratcheted higher and higher.

“I want Stability to be your highest stat before the end of the year. This is non-negotiable.”

“Yessir.”

“…Alright, that’s all.” Solaris said, relaxing. “Send in the other one.”

Other one?

The door unlatched and Chemestro walked in, his puppy panting along beside him, seemingly constantly out of breath. Not like Chuck, who was far superior in every way.

Surprised they didn’t give him a Doberman.

“Sir,” Chemestro said, standing at attention as soon as he saw Solaris.

Perry groaned and slumped back in his chair.

“Now let’s talk about your stay here. You’ll both be released in five days, but tonight, I need you both on Amber Hardy’s show. You’ll be giving her these prepared statements," Solaris said, sliding two manilla folders across the table.

Pery grabbed his and opened it up, his Nerve allowing him to speed-read through the entire thing in a matter of seconds.

“This is total horseshit.” Perry said, tapping the, to put it lightly, embellished account of their battle with Neuron.

Perry just hid in the rubble until he had a clear shot with a homemade laser cannon. There was none of this kid rescue operation stuff. It made it look like Nexus knew what they were doing, and weren’t just flying by the seat of their pants the whole time.

Hell, Nexus didn’t even know the kids existed before a few days ago.

“It istotal horseshit,” Solaris said with an amicable smile. “And you’re going to deliver it. As. Written. He tapped the folder in Perry’s hand to punctuate his words. “Because a convenient fiction will allow Neuron’s children to live normal lives, if they choose to.”

Gah, using the kid card on me. It was true, though. The script made Nexus seem a little more all-knowing than they actually were, but it also firmly painted Neuron’s children as victims, not active participants or super-powered science experiments.

“Fine.” Perry said.

“Understood.” Chemestro said, tucking the folder under his arm.

“You’ll be on in about half an hour. Memorize your lines before then.” Solaris said. “Paradox, you can go. I want a minute with Chemestro.”

Perry waved and headed back out, finding Role waiting to take him back to the pool.

***Chemestro***

Chemestro sat down, waiting while Solaris seemed to gather his words, rocking in his chair.

“Chemestro. Do you think you’re capable of killing Paradox if you had to?”

If I didn’t have the requirement of doing it in secret?

“…Yes.”

“Well, then I’ve got a new assignment for you. I want you to be Paradox’s Anchor. I want you to stick close to him, and if he shows signs of losing touch with reality, I want you to end his life.”

“Sir.” Chemestro said, nodding.

“Dismissed.”

***Solaris***

He lied on the last question, Truthslayer whispered into Solaris’s ear.  Why didn’t you kill him?

“Because I’ve never seen someone who’s seen The Tide acting that…normal. Maybe this kid’s got something special we haven’t seen before. Maybe there’s something we can learn from him.”

Or maybe he’s going to be the last nail in the coffin, Truthslayer said.

“Maybe. Maybe…” Solaris said, taking a sip of coffee.