Adam Jameson sat calmly, composing Sudoku puzzles in his head. He had three so far, and could probably get another five puzzles out of the same solution. It was much more interesting than doing them the other way around.
He had been waiting for his trial for two months. It was taking a surprisingly short length of time, considering his crimes. He had shot three people and stolen three million dollars in cash. Then, about nine months afterwards, he had shot three people and stolen three million dollars in cash. When finally tracked down to the island where he had been living along with his workers, he had killed two of the soldiers sent to take him out and half-blinded the hero sent along with them. It had taken the power of Nightmare, the leader of the Metahuman Enforcement Division, to take him out.
But really, this was all playing into his hands. Being put in prison wasn’t contrary to his plans at all, in fact. After all, his highest priority was survival. After the pecking order was established, with himself firmly outside it, prison would be quite stable. As long as he wasn’t sentenced to death, which barely anyone was nowadays, he’d be fine. If even Wild Eyes, whose most recent escape from jail had resulted in 203 deaths, was only imprisoned, surely his own bodycount of eight wouldn’t give him the death penalty. Besides, he had quite a competent lawyer. He had been coached well for his part in the trial, already finished, and now all he had to do was wait.
So Adam sat and waited, quietly and calmly, with every confidence in the outcome.

“Mr. Jameson?” someone said, swinging open the door. Adam glanced him over - tall, thin, grey hair, glasses – and searched through his memory to see if he knew who it was. He found nothing there. Not an incredibly well-known lawyer, then, but that didn’t preclude being competent. He had never made a study of lawyers, after all. “Mr. Jameson, I’m Arnold Grey, and I’ll be your lawyer.”
“Hello, Mr. Grey,” Adam said with a curt nod from the other side of the glass. As a dangerous prisoner, Adam was allowed no contact with others. Rather than a simple prohibition, though, he was kept separate at all times by glass or walls. Grey was one of the first people he had seen since being brought to the facility, wherever it was. Meals were slid through doors, he had been forcibly escorted to a room that held nothing but a phone for his one call… Adam was pretty sure that they suspected him of being a meta-human. They couldn’t check, though, as doing a brain scan required the consent of the person being scanned, and he refused to give it. He wasn’t a meta-human. His powers would have manifested long since if he was. “Exactly why are you here?”
Grey raised an eyebrow. “I’m here to plead your case to the court, Mr. Jameson. If you would rather have a different lawyer, then–”
“No,” Adam interrupted. “Why are you here as in why are you doing this? Why are you working as a defense lawyer when you know that I am most likely guilty? You’ve defended many serial killers who I’m sure are guilty as well, and successfully too, judging by your very fine suit. Why do you do it? Is it the money? Why?”
“Death is wrong,” Grey said flatly after a short pause. “There’s no getting around it. No one deserves to die, not if they want to live. I take the cases of people who’re likely to receive the death sentence, and I try to get them out of it if I can.” The tall lawyer sighed. “To be frank, Mr. Jameson, I am certain that you are guilty and likely deserve anything that comes to you. But you don’t deserve death.”
Adam nodded after a moment’s thought. Grey would do. As long as he was competent. “I am indeed guilty,” he agreed. “I don’t think I deserve ‘anything that comes to me’, but then no one really does. Did I deserve to lose my job at the hands of the MED, to be painted with the same brush as Galen MacDammer? I searched, I truly did, but I couldn’t get a job again. I would’ve starved, Mr. Grey. I had no other choice.”
“So you shot three people and stole 3 million dollars,” said Grey, trying and failing to hide his surprise. The lawyer clearly hadn’t known that Adam had been associated with the infamous MacDammer. An advantage, perhaps? If Grey hadn’t known, the jury might not… “And then you did it again. Then you killed two of the soldiers sent to arrest you and destroyed one of Mad Cap Jack’s eyes.
“I did what I could to minimize risk - to me - and to maximize profit,” Adam said calmly. “I decided that with 3 million dollars I would be able to establish a secure source of food and comfort without attracting more attention than necessary, which I did. The deaths were necessary in order to obtain that money.”
“And the second theft was because…”
“The money ran out faster than expected,” he explained. “The first harvest wasn’t enough to feed me and my workers, so I had to purchase food to feed us all until the next harvest. I only needed five thousand dollars or so, but I decided that another stockpile of money would be a good thing to have – just in case.”
“But you were caught.”
“And you clearly know the story already.”
There was silence as Grey simply stared at Adam. Adam took pleasure in it – the lawyer clearly had no idea what to make of him. He was probably used to clients who were raving lunatics, psychopathic, or otherwise insane in some way. Adam was none of those things. He simply lacked any empathy for anyone or anything but himself.
That wasn’t to say he couldn’t see value in others, of course. The people he had hired to run the farms on the island he purchased were all good workers and necessary for his own survival as well as for the survival of the other workers, who were necessary for his survival… Some of them he could even appreciate as companions. Miriam Goldstein, for example, who had been in charge of the residential section of his island, was intelligent, witty, and attractive. He almost regretted turning down her advances.
Grey would be useful too. That is, if he could do his job properly. “I have a specific requirement, Mr. Grey,” Adam said after a few minutes, beginning to get bored with the staring contest. “My highest priority is survival, followed by my own enjoyment. The best way for me to get that, I have decided, is to receive a life sentence in jail, with no parole but no restrictions either. Do you think that you can get me that?”
Grey seemed to think about that for a few moments. “I think I can get you a life sentence instead of death,” he said after a while. “And no parole won’t really be a problem. A lack of restrictions, now that could be tricky. You have a very narrow range for me to aim for, Mr. Jameson.”
“But you can do it?” Adam asked again, although Grey seemed confident enough.
“I can,” Grey agreed. “I’ll get ready for the trial and prepare you on your part the day before.”
“Good,” Adam said, turning away in dismissal. “Now go away.”

Grey rapped on the door to announce his presence, then swung it open. “I’m sorry, Mr. Jameson,” the lawyer said, not sounding sorry at all. “The jury decided against you. You’re to be executed in three days. The electric chair. Would you like to file an appeal?”
Adam stroked his chin, considering. Appeals could stretch on for a year or more, extending his life. But the end result would likely be the same. It would take up much of his time and effort, too, even though it could be better spent on escaping before his execution. “No,” he said after a while. “No appeal.”
“Then the execution is set for 9:00 PM three days from now,” Grey said. “I wish you happiness in the last days of your life.”
Adam nodded absently as Grey left. Plans were running through his head – the layout of the cell he was being kept it, the resources available, the floor plan of the prison where he was held. Survival was the highest priority.

Adam swung the doors open and stepped in, slipping the pistol from the leather holster at his side and firing two shots in a single smooth motion. Both security guards fell to the ground before they could react, the sound of the gunshots ringing out and sending everyone scurrying. He lazily walked up to the nearest cashier.
“Three million dollars in unmarked bills,” he ordered calmly, the words slightly muffled by the clean white mask he wore. “Or I will kill everyone in this room, beginning with you.” For emphasis, he raised the pistol again and shot the third security guard as he ran in through the door from the stairs.
The cashier hesitated only for a moment before swinging the lead-lined adamantine vault open and beginning to shovel money into a sack. Adam smiled.

Adam swore under his breath again as the door to the electric chair’s room was opened and the guard prodded him to step in. His plans had failed, all twelve that he had enacted during the three days leading up to his death. Most had been shut down by the guards. Three had simply not worked, and a fourth hadn’t finished brewing. The acidic serum he had concocted from paint chips and the food he was given might lead to the escape of whoever was placed into his cell next, but hadn’t matured enough to eat through the bars before they guards took him away. A fifth had almost worked, but the prisoner in the neighboring cell had stolen the makeshift lockpick and tried to escape himself, then was recaptured by the guards. At least his last meal hadn’t been bad. The meatballs weren’t as good as the ones his Italian chef made, but they were acceptable.
He glanced around the room, just in case there was a way out, but nothing. The guards strapped him into the chair and began fiddling with the controlling computer. Adam glared. Finally, several long minutes later, the guard pulled the lever, and a tingling began to spread across his body, getting stronger and stronger until it was almost painful. After a moment, his eyelids began to feel heavy, and blackness spread across his vision.

Adam tossed aside the letter refusing his application. It wasn’t a surprise, but it was still annoying. At least his plan was going well. He had found qualified people to hire and was currently searching for a good island to purchase. He had found a fence willing to launder the money for him once he got it, and all that was left to do once an island had been found was the theft itself.
“Gerald, play the news headlines at low volume,” he ordered his AI as he turn on his computer and began to continue his search for a suitable island.
“Yes sir. Galen’s arrest and articles which have to do with him still dominate most news networks. Shall I expunge them?”
“No, play them as well,” Adam said after a moment. “But refer to him as MacDammer from now on.”
“Yes sir.”
'The recently opened stage show The Addams Family has been well received by most critics.' “Perhaps I should see it,” Adam mused. “I always liked the cartoons.”
'Olympus Industries’ new CEO, Roger Philips, recently filed for bankruptcy.' “He never was very smart. How did he get the job again?”
'The President, Randal MacDammer, has denied any relation to the now infamous Galen MacDammer.' “Of course he has,” Adam said absently. Hm. This island west of England seemed promising. A trifle small, though…
'Jim Parsons has confirmed the recent rumors of his homosexuality.' “Good for him,” Adam muttered. “Why is the sexuality of a celebrity news again?
'Lindsay Lohan has denied any recent drug use.' Adam snorted. Yeah, right.
'Galen MacDammer has disappeared from his holding cell. His whereabouts are currently unknown.' Adam frowned. Well, that was… unexpected.

Adam’s eyes snapped open as the tingling sensation faded slightly. It was still strong, but no longer painful. He grimaced. “Ouch…”
The guards exchanged a glance and spoke quietly to each other for a moment, then shut down the whole apparatus and began to reset it. The tingles faded from most of his body, now only present in what felt like his bones, and Adam tried to figure out what the hell had just happened.
Clearly, something had gone wrong with the execution. But what? The guards suspected the generator, quite obviously, but Adam didn’t think so somehow. He had felt the unmistakable tingling of electrocution, after all.
Perhaps they were right and he was a metahuman after all? With a very limited power – immunity to death by electricity. That would explain why it hadn’t manifested at puberty as was normal. But somehow Adam felt there was more to it than that.
Electrical powers which simply had remained dormant until actual exposure to electricity? No, he had been electrified before – the only difference here was the scale. Never had it been a fatal dose. While there were metahumans whose powers had only activated after being exposed to whatever they were aligned with – great heat, gemstones, metal – none of them had had to be killed by it.
Hm. There was a thought. Did his powers have something to do with death? Thinking back, Adam was sure that he had felt his heart stop – but he was definitely alive, and judging by the pounding in his head his heart still beat. But he had been electrocuted.
So his power meant he couldn’t die. Was that all? Immortality? It wouldn’t be very useful if, for example, he still aged but couldn’t die. Perhaps he was immune to aging now. If his powers had to be activated, which seemed to be so, then they were clearly death-linked. But he still felt the electrical tingling within his bones. Maybe he would always have some remnant of anything that killed him?
Adam decided that a test was in order, as the generator began to start up again. He focused on the tingles within him, imagined them moving around. He forcibly brought a strand of the tingling power within him up to one finger, then imagined that it leapt though the air to the neighboring finger.
A spark leapt between his fingers.
So, death-linked powers, and now he could, with some effort, control at least the electrical energy within his own body. If he was killed again, would he gain powers from that as well, or was this a one-off? Best not to test that, Adam decided, not even noticing that the guards were trying and failing to electrify him again. He would practice with these new powers, and then, when they brought him out to try and execute him some other way (which they were sure to do) he would escape.

“Good morning, Mr. Jameson!” Fred, the doorman, greeted him cheerfully.
“Morning, Fred,” Adam acknowledge, punching in the pass code on the sixteen-digit keypad to open the door. 2, 3, 5, 13, the first four prime numbers in the Fibonacci series. The door slid open with a hiss and he entered.
Adam walked through the lobby quickly and entered the elevator, punching in another pass code to activate it, and it swiftly rose to the eleventh floor, dedicated to his office. He was the head of the engineering department in Galen MacDammer’s firm, Olympus Industries, which was a leader in space and aircraft design as well as many other advanced technologies. They had built the International Luna Facility, which was mainly based on Adam’s own designs, and were the prime supplier of all space shuttles. The first orbital elevator, Old Faithful, had made MacDammer’s fortune several years earlier.
“Mr. Jameson, Mr. MacDammer would like to see you,” said his receptionist as he stepped out of the elevator.
“Tell him that I’ll be up in a few minutes,” Adam told her, hanging up his coat. He left his briefcase on his desk, made sure that he had no urgent email, and then headed back to the elevator to see his boss.
“What is it, Galen?” he asked as he stepped out into the well-appointed office on the thirteenth floor.
“I’m afraid we have a problem, Adam,” said the muscular Scotsman, turning away from the window to face Adam.
“What?” Adam asked eagerly. Problems were always interesting.
Galen smiled cruelly. “You’ll see soon enough. For now, let’s wait for everyone else to get here.”
Over the next few minutes, the other heads of departments trickled in. Arnold Marvane from H.R. came in next, followed shortly afterwards by Shannon O’Reilly from marketing and Melinda Cohen from manufacturing, chattering to each other excitedly. Only five minutes after Adam had sat in one of the lush armchairs scattered around Galen’s office, all 7 heads were there, ready to here Galen’s problem.
“What is it, Galen?” asked Isaiah Nader, the head of the law department.
“I have some bad news for all of you,” Galen said. “But there’s one more person we’re waiting for.
This spawned some whispering between the various heads, and possible scenarios ran through Adam’s head. Was Galen finally going to introduce his son, whose existence had been a rumor for nearly 4 years now? Was he going to introduce a fiancé, perhaps, or a new member of the board? A member of the government? Who?
The elevator doors slid open again and a slim man dressed all in black stepped out. His hair, his tie, his shirt under his suit jacket, everything was a perfect, light-absorbing black. Even his skin was as dark as coal, but his eyes were a burning red, visible even from behind the black sunglasses he wore. “Mr. MacDammer?” said Nightmare, the leader of America’s Metahuman Enforcement Division. “I’m afraid you’re under arrest.”
As murmurs broke out through the rest of the room, Nightmare cast those flame-red eyes across the department heads as well. “And all of you too,” he said apologetically.

“Mr. Grey, a pleasure to see you again,” Adam said with a smile as the lawyer stepped into the cell.
“Mr. Jameson,” Grey said curtly. “I see that the rumors are true. You are alive.”
“Indeed I am. The electric chair was a failure. What now?”
“They are deliberating,” Grey told Adam. “I suspect they will try to execute you at least once more, and if that fails then your sentence will become life in prison.”
Adam frowned. That possibility put a damper on his escape plan. “Do I have any say in the manner of my death?” he asked.
“You can put in a request, certainly.”
Adam considered. Lethal injection, a firing squad, and fatal gas were the other methods of execution used in American prisons. If his suspicions about his newly revealed power were correct, then he’d have to think about what abilities each might give him. But if he was wrong, and it would only save his life once, then he’d have to pick one which either gave him a high change of escape or which might let him survive anyway, due to his sudden electrical powers or his natural good health.
Lethal injection would have them strap him down and inject a mixture of a barbiturate and a paralytic into a major vein leading to the heart. He would become drowsy and lose first the ability to move his arms and legs, then the ability to move. After a few minutes he would fall asleep, and simply never wake up. Painless, effective, hard to escape from. Possible powers granted – the ability to secrete drugs, maybe. If he was lucky, something along the lines of forcing others to feel the effects of the drugs which killed him, so causing paralysis or sedation and later death. Not wonderful…
A firing squad would have him shot by ten men (actually nine, since one randomly selected man was given blanks instead of live ammo, as was customary) who would all aim for the head and chest. Painful but effective, and if he tried to escape there were nine men with loaded guns ready to shoot. Possible powers granted – the ability to fire bullets from some area of his body, perhaps. Again, not a very good prospect.
Fatal gas would have him wearing a gas mask which would deliver a similar mixture of drugs to him as the lethal injection, but in a gaseous form. Same potential abilities, maybe with the addition of some sort of breath-based power. Spewing the gases, not needing to breathe air, something along those lines. But he would have a higher chance of escaping, so…
“Mr. Jameson?” Grey said, interrupting his contemplation.
“Fatal gas,” Adam said. “I’d prefer fatal gas.”
During the two days it took for Adam’s second execution to be scheduled, Adam spent most of his time experimenting with his newfound abilities. He half-heartedly tried to escape using the acid, which had matured to sufficient strength to melt through the bars, but was caught and returned to his cell. That wasn’t important, though – his experimentation was. He soon discovered that he was able to manipulate not just the vast electrical power his body now produced, but also the electricity in the area surrounding him. This was augmented and guided by the electromagnetic sense he had gained. It was describable only as a cross between a headache, a taste, and a color – but he was able to make out, in great detail, the electrical currents around him.
This included, with some effort, the layout of the circuitry in his cells camera. After a few moments’ thought and a little time sketching them, Adam very carefully edited the circuits of the camera so that it didn’t pick up colors in the range that electricity gave off light in – thus making his powers invisible to the camera. He was thus able to experiment more freely, and any guards watching the security feed would merely think he was insane, which they probably already thought.
Another interesting thing Adam had found about his powers – they weren’t only electrical in nature. He could also command magnetism – which made sense, as both were actually just part of the larger electromagnetic force. It required a little more effort and thinking about 30o off-kilter, but he was able to create magnetic fields of considerable strength. After levitating the metal frame of the bed, which he could do for less than a second, Adam did some actual calculations and decided that anything over about 50 pounds was pushing his magnetic abilities. Within that limit, however, lay many things – including the ability to stop low-caliber bullets. As long as they were fired from a handgun, he should be able to generate a magnetic field strong enough to, over the course of a few inches, slow bullets to a halt. Larger or faster rounds would become much less dangerous, as well, although they couldn’t be entirely stopped. They simply had too much energy.
All in all, Adam was quite satisfied with the powers his death had given him. He merely hoped that the fatal gases which he’d have to breath in just a few minutes would have a similar effect.

Adam swung the doors open and stepped in, slipping the pistol from the leather holster at his side and firing a shot. The security guard fell to the ground before he could react, the sound of the gunshot ringing out and sending everyone scurrying. He fired a second shot as the other guard fumbled with his gun, sending him to the ground as well. He walked up to the cashier steadily, hiding his worries behind the mask he was wearing.
“Three million dollars in unmarked bills,” he demanded, the words slightly muffled by the clean white mask he had made from wood and stiff paper. “Or I will kill everyone in this room, beginning with you.” He saw, out of the corner of his eye, a third security guard come running down the stairs from the second floor, and turned to shoot him as well.
The cashier hesitated only for a moment before swinging the lead-lined adamantine vault open and beginning to shovel money into a sack. Adam smiled in relief. That had been easier than he had expected it to be.

For the second time, Adam’s eyes opened as his heart began to beat again. This time they had hooked a heart-rate monitor up to him, and he could clearly see that his heart-rate had flat-lined, and then, several seconds later, began once more, strong and steady.
As the technician sighed and began to remove the gas mask from him, Adam examined the new sensations which flooded his body. He could feel something new in his chest, and there was a new reflex somewhere in his head – it felt similar to swallowing, although he hadn’t triggered it yet. His whole body felt a little bit warmer for some reason, and his lungs felt more powerful. Breath-based powers, then, as he had suspected. His saliva, too, felt different somehow, though again he couldn’t imagine why. His mouth was slightly numb.
As he massaged his neck, where the straps on the gas mask had chafed, Adam heard the technician speaking into a walkie-talkie.
“Yes, his heart stopped, but then it started up again… no, no obvious physical changes… no, I don’t know if it will heal his wounds automatically, I doubt it… what? I can’t just… okay, I’ll just bring him back to his… the guard will do it? Fine, I’ll tell him.”
The technician walked over to the guard in the corner and began to talk quietly with him. Adam tried to listen in, but couldn’t hear any of what they were saying. After a moment or two, the guard nodded and pulled out his gun.
“S***!” Adam swore, raising his hand and releasing a bolt of lightning, zapping the guard and causing him to fumble to gun and drop it. He hadn’t wanted to reveal his powers. Clearly they weren’t going to just give him a normal life sentence – someone with power up above wanted him dead. Maybe the clerks had given him that guy’s money? Whatever the case, they would keep trying to kill him. Either he would get more and more power, or they would find some way to neutralize his ability and kill him for good.
As the guard spasmed, Adam beckoned, magnetically levitating the metal gun jackets and screws in the otherwise plastic pistol to bring it to his hand. Then he turned to the technician. “Don’t come after me,” he warned. “And don’t call for help. In fact…” Another wave of his hand short-circuited the walkie-talkie and made it useless. He even redirected the electricity in its batteries to make a shower of sparks, just because.
The guard seemed to have recovered, as he lunged for Adam’s arm and preformed a nerve strike of some sort before Adam could react, causing his arm to go numb and the gun to fall from his hand. Adam kicked it away before the guard could grab it, and managed to wriggle free.
The lightning bolts were only a temporary solution, he reflected, at least without a few moments to build power or some more time to fry their brains. He had tried to affect the electrical fields of the prisoner in the neighboring cell, but it seem his abilities couldn’t penetrate other people’s skin – he hadn’t been able to do anything with their bioelectric field at all. Some more time practicing might help, but for now, all he might be able to do was…
As the guard charged for the gun, Adam triggered his new reflex, and belched. A cloud of noxious green gas spewed from his throat, enveloping the guard. The guard screamed in pain as it touched his flesh, and moments later fell to the ground, unconscious.
Adam blinked. That had worked better than he had thought. Some sort of painful, fast-acting poison or sedative, clearly, which could be absorbed through skin – the guard hadn’t had time to breathe it in. At first it had looked like it might be acid, but there was no tissue damage.
He glanced at the technician, who was staring in fear and awe. “Stay,” he ordered again, calling the gun to him once more. Adam walked to the door, and a moment’s thought as all it took to decipher the circuitry of the electronic lock and force it to send the ‘open’ signal. The door easily slid open, and he walked out.

Adam swore under his breath in three different languages as he left MED’s headquarters. Galen MacDammer, that idiotic bastard, had gotten it into his head that his metahuman abilities (MacDammer was effectively immortal, not needing to breath, eat, or drink, being immune to disease, and not aging, along with having minor telepathic and telekinetic abilities) meant he should rule the world – or at least the moon. He had inserted designs of his own into the ILF. He had activated them, it seems, temporarily flushing all the air in it and killing everyone there, except for the one metahuman on the station at the time who hadn’t needed to breathe. MED had arrested him and he was now being placed into very secure confinement. The rest of the firm had been under suspicion as well, and even though they were decided to be innocent, it was unlikely any of the department heads would ever be employed again.
Adam continued swearing, branching off from the original Spanish, Latin, and Chinese into German, French, and Japanese. “Damn it all to hell!” he finished, after finally using all the swear words he knew in every language he was fluent in. What were his options now?
He was, all modesty aside, very smart. Some effort could probably get him any job he wanted, if he was qualified – but he only had degrees in the various forms of engineering as well as in general physics. Okay, so his experiences at Olympus Industries probably made him qualified for just about anything, but no one in their right mind would hire him without a degree in the relevant field. He didn’t have enough money saved up to return to college, even for the two years it would take him to get a degree in English or history, which would open up many other fields to him. He could apply for a loan, but who would loan to someone that had been under the MED’s suspicion?
Then an idea struck him. With a small, uncaring smile on his face, Adam Jameson began to plan.

As Adam exited the gas room, relocking the door behind him and then short-circuiting the lock, he thought back to what he had gleaned about the facility he was being held in.
It was likely in a remote location, since he had been brought via a series of three teleports, a plane ride, and another two teleports. That might have just been to throw him off, but his newfound electrical powers couldn’t sense any electricity for at least a mile outside of the facility itself. Again, that didn’t mean anything by itself, but the combination suggested that he was far from any normal inhabited land. Off the top of his head, he could remember several prisons that he might be in – all made for metahumans, of course, but he already knew that the other prisoners were metas.
The North Pole Prison was actually in a parallel dimension which had never developed sentient life. He didn’t remember much about the local life forms, but he was pretty sure that they had six limbs and all had some form of defense against the dominant predator, massive hunting birds which never touched the ground after birth. The sound of the last teleport might have told him if he was in fact in that dimension – but he didn’t have Gerald here to help him analyze any and all sounds he heard. The incredibly useful AI chip had been removed from his skull. He’d have to find a new AI. In any case, if he was in the NPP he would have to get to the prison’s teleporter to return to the prime Earth.
He might also be in the Atlantis Holding Facility. The AHF was an enormous submarine which sailed around below the surface of the Pacific Ocean. It was unlikely – although it had a teleport reception chamber, its constant movement made it difficult to reach via teleport. So he was probably not in the AHF.
He might also be in the NPS, the National Prison of Space. But since that had also been built by Olympus Industries, that was very, very improbable. Still, the floor plan did seem remarkably familiar…
Oh, of course! Now he knew where he was! He was in ILF, the International Luna Facility! Had his pride and joy really been turned into a prison? As Adam considered the floor plan and the familiar circuitry of the electronics in the walls, he was forced to admit that yes, he was in the ILF. Why on earth had they put him here? Well, no matter – he knew exactly how to get to the massive two-way teleporter, and he would be able to calibrate it to send him anywhere on Earth. Idiots.
Adam quickly made his way to the center of the ILF which housed its massive teleporter. He managed to avoid any guards, but was certain that his escape would be noticed soon. If they hadn’t already, that is. Still, they had shown some rather appalling incompetence before, so it wouldn’t be that surprising if they hadn’t noticed.
He peered around the corner to see how many people were in the teleporter room, then quickly pulled back. Eight. Shouldn’t be an enormous problem.
The best way to do it, he reflected, would probably be to incapacitate all eight of them with lightning, then use the teleporter while they were still spasming. Of course, he’d have to set it before entering, but he could do that while he was planning. He reached out into the circuits of the massive teleporter and began to carefully edit them, aiming the teleporter for the reception chamber near Philadelphia. There would likely be something there that he could use, and even if the soldiers who had arrested him had found that safehouse, he would easily be able to get into the city and learn what had happened while he was imprisoned.
He leaned out again. There were only six actual armed guards within – the other two were technicians. He decided that it would be best to disable their walkie-talkies in order to keep them from calling reinforcements, and drained the power from them, dumping the extra electricity into the teleporter itself. It wouldn’t do any harm.
He glanced up. He had easy access to the ventilation system from where he was, and could probably spew enough poison gas to take out everyone in the room. But it would be rather loud – their screams of pain would almost certainly attract attention. Oh well.
He took one last look, having finished recalibrating the teleporter remotely, to fix the positions of the occupants in his head. Satisfied that he knew where they all were, Adam leapt out, ready to unleash electric power on all of them.

Adam was in his workshop, tinkering with a new airplane design, when there was a beep on the intercom. “Yes, Mr. Plare?” he said without looking up from the wing he was sketching.
“Sir, the new watering system you designed for the wheat seems to be working, but there was a slight snag with the turnover.”
“Did we lose any crops?”
“No sir, but the tractor was caught in a hose and something broke in the engine. It isn’t working anymore.”
“Bring it down to the workshop and I’ll have a look.”
Adam sighed happily. Even here, in this remote island where he was in charge, there was enough to keep him occupied. Most of the day-to-day work was easily handled by the foremen he had hired for each section of the island – crops, animals, and residential – but there was always some small mechanical snag that he could apply his skills to. He would of course prefer to be working in his field, but Galen MacDammer had implicated all of his top staff along with him when he fell. Working as a professional engineer was no longer an option. At least the skills transferred to automobile repair, and the rest had been simple enough to–
Adam’s train of thought was interrupted by the sudden, unmistakable sound of a large explosion. He rushed over the intercom and slapped the button for all channels. “What the hell as that?” he demanded.
“I don’t know!” came Alonzo Plare’s voice. “It wasn’t from Crops, I know that! There’s a big plume of smoke from the other side of the island, though!”
“Not Residential,” Miriam Goldstein insisted. “It came from above ground.”
“It wasn’t from Animals,” said Anthony Drumer, “It looks like it came from a mile or so off the north coast.”
Adam frowned. An explosion off the island, so not a mistake made by any of his men. From off the coast, but it was a plume of smoke, not of water, so it was from land – but there was no island a mile or so north. He trusted Drumer’s estimate, though, so what kind of explosion could cause a plume of smoke despite coming from above ground.
He began to get a sinking feeling. But it might not be… “Gerald!” he snapped. “Replay the sound of the explosion at half speed and compressed frequency!”
“Yes sir,” came the AI’s cool voice. A moment later, the sound began to play in his ears.
bzzzrrrrchhhhhBROOOOOOUUuuuuu
“S***,” Adam swore. That wasn’t a normal explosion. The electronic buzzing right before it, too low for a human ear to detect, signaled a dimensional transfer. The explosion meant that it had been a teleport from at least 1000 miles away, which was just in range for the California Metahuman Institute, which had one of the only teleporters capable of large-scale transfers. And the plume of smoke meant… “Mr. Drumer, get a telescope and look at the very top of the some, if you can.”
A few moments later, Anthony reported in again. “Most of the smoke is grey, but it’s sort of reddish at the top. Surprisingly flat, too.”
“Damn, damn, damn!” Definitely a teleport, and very large. The only possible explanation was that the government had figured out where he was and sent a task force through to get him. With an explosion of that magnitude it was clearly capable of taken the island with no trouble. All that having his men fight would accomplish was their deaths, and if he himself expected to get out of jail he would need to hire more men afterwards. They hadn’t done anything illegal, and they had worked well. “Damn it all. Mr. Drumer, Miss Goldstein, Mr. Plare – evacuate all workers down the emergency portal. It will take you to a facility in eastern Pennsylvania, not far from Philadelphia, and will contain transport into the city as well as an ATM from which you’ll be able to get cash from your bank accounts. Gerald will deposit your next paycheck there.”
“Thank you, sir,” they all chorused. After a moment, Miriam asked, “What about you, sir?”
“I’ll be fine, Miss Goldstein. Go.”

As Adam leapt out, he splayed out his fingers, palms down, releasing a burst of electrical energy towards the eight inside the room. Instantly, he flipped his hands over, clenching them into fists and casting out targeted electromagnetic beams to wipe their electronics and bring the guards' weapons to him.
It worked, mostly. Three guards managed to dodged his lightning, but only two of them held on to their guns under the force of his magnetic call.
Those two raised their pistols and began to fire, but like most they had terrible reaction times. Adam had already fallen backwards, below their heads level shots. He rolled to a crouch and brought up a magnetic field to repel the bullets as the guards adjusted their aim.
The gunshots would attract others soon, so there wasn't much point in being stealthy anymore. Adam began to move forward, belching onto the recovering guards and technicians to put them out more permanently. The two guards who still has weapons seemed to have figured out that their strategy wasn't working and were now trying to call for reinforcements. Meanwhile, the other guard had started to charge forward, but stopped when he saw the noxious green gas Adam was spewing onto the electrocuted ones.
Adam raised the guards own gun and shot him in the head. The magnetic shield, he noted, was one directional, and his own bullets had doubled in speed as they passed through. Useful.
Adam heard more guards begin to emerge from the surrounding corridors and growled angrily. He flicked his hands at each group of guards as they emerged, zapping them and then calling their guns. But more of them were able to dodge his bolts or hang onto their guns than last time, and now there were eleven guards, seven of which were still armed. He was still able to block their shots, but it was getting draining to hold up the field. He needed a plan.
His situation worsened when the teleporter's reception chamber began to whir to life. If another prisoner was being transfers in, there were be yet more guards. If not, then it was likely guards alone.
Well, he couldn't allow that. He raised a gun and shot one of the reception bulbs. Over such a long distance, there would be a good amount of spill for the teleport. The reception bulbs were made to attract the spill and recombine it with the main teleport before the materialization was complete. The bulb he shot was the one which caught metal - it was likely that any guards who arrived with weapons would either be disarmed entirely or their weapons would be missing pieces.
And just in time, too. The was a faint electric crackle and an enormous explosion, and ten soldiers appeared in the center of the chamber, surrounding someone he couldn't see. They were accompanied by a shower of sparks and metal dust. The broken bulb had done its job - right off the bat, Adam could see that most of their weapons would be useless, as they were missing pieces of their barrels, their stocks, and in one case everything but the grip. Many of the bullets were likely damaged as well, but it seemed that there was a little too much dust for the amount of metal that had disappeared from the soldiers.
As a harrowing laugh began to echo from the center of the cluster of soldiers, he realized why.

Adam waited patiently as his workers fled the island, monitoring the approach of the invaders on the hastily erected scanners. While turning the satellite dish to face downwards had ruined all internet capabilities and meant that resetting a teleport would be a dangerous proposition, it let him quickly write a program to check for the finder signals of internet-capable devices, such as the AI implants which all American soldiers were required to use at all times. Matched to a map, he was able to keep track of the location of every soldier that was approaching his island.
“Gerald,” he ordered, “link to the main computer and begin wiping all records.”
“Shall I back them up, sir?”
Adam paused for a moment to consider. If they were backed up, he could recover his research and tinkering for later use. But they had be backed up somewhere – a hard drive, even hidden, might be found and used as evidence, or simply stolen and used by the government. Gerald could save a few things, but most of the three-terabyte memory of the AI was taken up by its own essential programs and memories. He could turn the satellite dish up again and back them up to another computer in a safe house somewhere, but that would divest him of the makeshift tracker he had created for as long as it took to upload the files. He had quite a lot of things to save, after all… Adam made a split-second decision after glancing at his map and seeing that the soldiers were still a ways away. “Turn the dish back to position and upload essential files,” he ordered. “A copy of the installation disk for my personal operating system and video logs… 2, 7, and 13. Then turn the disk back and run the finder program again. After that, reduce everything to the smallest possible text file you can decode and save it to yourself. Priority is on video logs, followed by designs. Wipe everything as you copy it.”
“Understood, sir.” A moment later, Adam felt the gentle humming and heat in the back of his skull that meant all of Gerald’s attention was taken up. A few seconds later, the beacons on the map froze, not receiving location updates anymore

The laugh grew to terrifying levels, and the soldiers who had just arrived whirled to try and fire on the prisoner they had brought the rest of the guards, apparently having finally realized that it was pointless to fire small arms at Adam. The laugh suddenly stopped as everyone turned to face the prisoner, and then there was another explosion, smaller, and of smoke only. The soldiers began to shout in confusion, and the one of them screamed. It only lasted for a moment before being cut off with a gurgle.
"Everyone off the platform!" someone shouted. By the time the smoke cleared, though, the prisoner had apparently disappeared.
"He could be any one of us," called out the soldier who seemed to be in charge. "Be on your guard!"
"Ah, a shapeshifter," Adam murmured, still safe behind a magnetic field. The lead soldier - a sergeant, he noted - hurried over to him, keeping his gun trained on him.
The sergeant's eyes met his, and he heard a voice in his head. 'Play along', said the voice, and Adam understood immediately. The shapeshifter had taken the form of the captain, and it seemed had some kind of telepathy as well. He began yelling at Adam, something about getting back to his cell. Adam didn't respond consciously, paying attention instead to the conversation in his head.
'Who are you?' he thought curiously. He had never heard of any shapeshifter who was also telepathic. Of course, the telepathy might be something they kept secret, so…
'Gawain Blackstone', came the response. 'Better known as Wild Eyes'.
Adam sucked in a breath. Wild Eyes was a dangerous psychopath - he seemed same, but would happily kill anything or anyone around. He could transform into the likeness of anyone, and his true form, while rarely seen, was… terrifying. He had rarely been out of prison, but when he was the bodycount was always in the hundreds.
'I see you've heard of me', Wild Eyes said, sounding pleased. 'I have a proposition for you. You take the ones on the left, and I will take the ones on the right'.
Adam didn't answer for a moment. He didn't really have a choice. Wild Eyes would try to kill him if he didn't agree, and while he would come back it would still hurt. And then the madman might try and kill him again, maybe even finding a way to do it permanently. He had to get away…
Blackstone's eyes narrowed dangerously, and Adam realized that he had caught that thought. Best not to take chances, he decided, and took the initiative to escape.
A belch of gas and Wild Eyes stumbled back, coughing and waving it away from his face. "He's Blackstone!" Adam shouted, and dove aside. Sure enough, a moment later Blackstone's arm elongated, twisted, and sprouted long sharp claws as it raked the space where Adam had been standing moments before.
"Fool!" Wild Eyes howled, ignoring the rain of bullets coming down at him from the guards. "Now you die!"
Adam sprinted for the exit chamber of the teleporter as Blackstone's body expanded, taking on terrifying proportions, and activated it as he landed. He didn't even feel the hot sting on his shoulder until he was already gone.

Adam hurried over to his machining desk. He didn’t have any special weapons on hand at the moment, just a pistol, but there was a partially disassembled assault rifle he had been modifying. If he had done it right, it would be able to link to the long-distance low-mass teleporter in his lab and retrieve bullets to fire them at just under the speed of sound, rather than using a clip and explosives. It would come at the cost of greater heat, but a slightly modified version of the heat sinks he used in the International Luna Facility should absorb the heat from at least 20,000 rounds before he needed to swap it out. It would work for even longer if he used normal rounds, but the teleporter was supposed to randomly convert a single atom into energy in order to help power itself, with some of that energy being transferred kinetic energy when it arrived – launching the bullet without an form of loud explosive, although it came at the price of increased heat dumping. Silent but deadly – if it worked. Adam swiftly reassembled it and slipped in the heat sink, dumping the remaining heat sink he had manufactured into his pocket, just in case. He probably wouldn’t fire that many rounds, but it was good to be prepared. He had enough to do so, after all. Although they weren’t hooked up to the teleporter yet.
“Gerald, pause,” Adam ordered.
A moment later, the AI responded. “Sir?”
“Have you wiped the little teleporter’s program yet?”
“The one linked to the rifle? No, sir, I’m still converting your video logs.”
Adam glanced at the map – the beacons were moving again. Gerald had already finished uploading his operating system and the most important logs. The soldiers were getting closer… “Don’t wipe the teleporter’s program when you get to it, just leave it running. Also, divert as much capacity as necessary to bring up a small map of the facility and island paths in my field of view, including the locations of the soldiers.”
This time the AI’s calm, cool voice seemed somehow put-upon. “I’ll do my best, sir.”
Adam smiled coldly. If the soldiers were expecting to face little resistance, capturing farmers and a little geek running the place, they would be sorely mistaken. He turned on the reception chamber of his assault rifle, and blue lines of power ran along the barrel to the little heat sink in the back. The fluid itself glowed a faint yellow. As it absorbed heat, the light would shift along the spectrum until it was red. Then he’d have to eject it. “Gerald,” he said.
“Sir, I really am working hard right now–“
“They’ll likely destroy you if I’m captured, or at the very least take you away,” the engineer said, talking over the AI. “So, in case I don’t get another chance… thank you. You’ve been the best AI and companion I could hope for.”
”… Thank you, sir.”

Adam grunted as he tied off the new bandage. His wound was healing well, but it had only just closed.
When he escaped from the ILF, he had been caught by one bullet by a guard who had he presence of mind to shoot at the escaping prisoner who had probably been lying to save his own skin. The fact that Adam had been telling the truth was beside the point. The bullet had misses any essential organs and in fact didn't even hit any muscles which would keep him from moving the arm, but it had confirmed that Adam's unnatural healing only worked on fatal wounds.
Actually, Adam wasn't even sure about that. Neither electrocution nor gas left any real tissue damage - none that he himself could detect, anyway. It was possible that the wounds which killed him healed as though they simply hadn't killed him, once he returned to life.
Regardless, his wound had caused him some problems. It turned out that another remnant of his second death was that his blood was now acidic - quite powerful, too. While it didn't hurt him, the first bandage he tried had melted. But he didn't want to leave it uncovered. The solution, when he found it, was to soak the bandage in his spit, which resisted the acid. Actually, he soaked it in water that he had spat into, since he didn't have enough spit to fully soak it. It worked well enough, though. And his spit was also an anesthetic, now, which was a bit of luck.
Adam washed his hands, finished with the rebandaging. The whole ordeal had been, on the whole, positive - he had discovered dormant metahuman powers, and now there were even more options open to him. He still needed to find a way to support himself, though. Most of the food in this safehouse had been eaten by his employees as they searched for new jobs in nearby Philadelphia. He only had about a week's worth of food left.
Just before he pulled out a lunch from the fridge, an electronic beeping came from the back of his head. He winced. "Bring up the message, Emrys," he ordered his new AI. "And use a barn owl's hoot as the default ringtone for unknown callers from now on."
“Sorry,” came the AI's voice, deeper and rougher than Gerald's had been. A moment later, a little window appeared in Adam's field off vision. He sat down as he appraised the man within.
Judging by the lavish background, they were quite important. The bookshelves were mainly filled with books on law and justice, suggesting someone with an interest in law. A lawyer, or perhaps a prison warden. There were other books, too, but they were likely part of a hobby. Architecture, castle designs, psychology, Machiavelli's The Prince? Adam couldn't imagine what single hobby might encompass all if those subjects. The assessment of the man as a prison warden was upheld by the paperweights on the desk: half a set of meta-cuffs, a little model of a skeleton in a jail cell. Nothing to tell him the man's name, though.
The warden himself was a slim man, with neither fat nor muscle. His hair, beginning to recede, was a light brown dusted with grey. He had a pair of half-moon reading glasses perched on the end of his long, thin nose, and the eyes above them were the brightest, clearest blue that Adam had ever seen.
"Are you there?" the warden asked. "I can't see you."
"A necessary precaution," Adam lied - he didn't have a camera hookup to connect Emrys to. "I wouldn't want certain people to find me, after all. People like you, for example."
The warden laughed a little, a light, lilting sound. Adam supposed it would probably bring warmth into most people's hearts. "Oh, my dear boy. You think I'm a prison warden, don't you?"
"That is my impression, yes," Adam agreed.
"I'm not - well, not really," the warden corrected himself. "It's true that I pose as one, but I'm not. More of a king, really."
"What are you talking about?"
"Let me introduce myself," said the not-warden, ignoring Adam's demand. "Hello, Adam Jameson. My name is Luke Corellon."
Instantly, Adam's mind leapt into overdrive. Luke Corellon had been well known about twenty years ago, when Adam had been a young kid. He was a dangerous metahuman, with powerful telepathic and empathic powers as well as the ability to leech life from others to empower himself. He had been operating quietly for centuries, sustaining himself on the life of others, but his scheme of telepathically implanting young metahumans with instincts to trust him so he could control them later in life had been uncovered. After a long and bloody campaign, he had finally been captured and sentenced to life in prison. And Adam got death for six murders and two massive thefts. There was no justice.
"How are you calling me from prison?" Adam said, then realized that Corellon must not be in prison, not quite. He said that he posed as a warden, after all.
"I've been running this place for years," Corellon said airily. "Metahuman prisons can't block all the powers all the time, after all. So instead they use addictive drugs to make the prisoners placid. If you don't want to use your powers, then you don’t."
It made sense, Adam thought. But drugs of that sort wouldn't work on everyone.
"However, those drugs don't work on the strongest minds," Corellon continued, confirming Adam's guess. "I was my normal self. But I soon realized that prison had its advantages.” Adam nodded – he had noticed those advantages himself. If one could be sure that they would be safe from the other inmates, prison gave you free food and lodging as well as things to learn and do. “I began controlling the guards. Weak-minded fools, especially since they were affected by some spillover from the drugs. I was able to arrange for certain friends of mine to be weaned off the drugs, and it wasn’t long before we were able to take over. Then it was a simple matter of using my telepathy and the shapeshifting talents of some other inmates to make it seem as though the prison was operating normally. I’ve expanded since – three prisons so far owe allegiance to me. But that’s not why I’m calling.”
“Why are you calling?” Adam asked curiously. If Corellon was telling the truth, and there was no reason to disbelieve him, then he would have little need of anything. By impersonating the warden and staging breakouts, he would likely be able to get almost anything he wanted. ‘We need more money,’ or ‘we need better weapons,’ and after the requests gets denied, one or two high-profile prisoners ‘break out,’ showing the need is real.
“Because we’re about to take over another prison,” Corellon said. “However, the only people I trust to run them for me – the Grey Gargoyle and Master Randalan – are already at the other two.” Adam considered this. The Grey Gargoyle he hadn’t heard of, but Randalan was another immortal metahuman – no powers aside from returning to life every moonrise.
“And you want me to…” Adam was pretty sure he knew what was coming.
“I want you to run the next one,” Corellon confirmed. “Well, I actually want you to do a mission for me so I can get a feel for you and make a final decision, but you’re at the top of my list. Wild Eyes brought you to my attention.”
“Oh, was he recaptured?” Adam asked.
“Why do you think he always is?” Corellon asked. “He’s one of my top operatives when I can’t get any new information on the outside. He was transferred into the ILF, where you were held, just for a few days so he would be able to talk to you and report back – but it turned out that you had a plan to escape already. He had to take advantage of it to maintain his reputation.”
“Reputation?” Adam asked. “So is he not actually psychopathic?”
“Only mildly so,” Corellon told Adam. "In any case, he pointed you out as being suitable, based on what he telepathically saw of your mind."
"And you want me to just… do this whatever it is for you, free of charge?" Adam demanded.
"Certainly not," Corellon denied. "Regardless of whether or not I decide I want you along for me, I'll get you assistance to do… well, whatever you want."
Adam nodded slowly. "And if you like what you see, then I'll let myself get recaptured and you'll see to it that I get put into this prison instead of executed?"
"Exactly," said Corellon. "It shouldn't be too hard. I'll swing you pointing out Wild Eyes as helping to recapture a dangerous criminal, which should be enough to get your sentence reduced to life."
Adam smiled. "Then we have an agreement."

Adam set up his lab in preparation for the approaching soldiers. He knew they would arrive soon, as Gerald had finished the upload and had turned the dish back down. Three soldiers were approaching now.
Adam considered his strategy carefully. His island was technically in international waters, but was on the very edge of U.S. territory. They could make a case for it being part of the States, so would likely be following procedure for an actual arrest, despite being military rather than police. That meant that they wouldn't fire unless he fired first, therefore resisting arrest. But if he could trick them into firing first, then he would be defending himself.
Of course, that meant he'd have to either dodge the bullets, or somehow block them.
Fortunately, he knew just how to do it. In the few minutes remaining to him before the soldiers would round the corner, he set up his experimental force field and activated it. It was completely invisible except from very acute angles, when it would bend light noticeably. The drawback was, of course, the enormous power drain it still caused. By shutting down the mechanics from most of the island and connecting the field to the main power grid, it should be able to run for a little under two minutes before the entire system was overloaded.
And just in time, too. Adam stepped behind the field, feeling his hairs stand on end as it charged the air, mere seconds before the trio of soldiers came through the door.
"Freeze!" shouted one of them, raising an assault rifle of some sort. "Drop the weapon!"
Adam ignored his prattle in favor of appraising the soldiers. The one with the assault rifle was a captain, but young and not very well trained, judging by the weak, unsteady grip he held the rifle with. He had his finger on the trigger, and was tense enough to shoot at any moment. He was close enough that he'd likely hit, but only by luck.
The second soldier was a corporal and held a shotgun, currently pointed at the floor at Adam's feet. His finger was loosely pressed against the trigger guard, ready to fire. If startled, he'd probably turn to face whatever startled him, raising the shotgun and firing at the same time. Clever. It wouldn't work with a pistol, or even a semi-auto, but the shotgun would splay its rounds in an arc across the enemy.
The third wasn't a soldier. It was a hero. Mad Cap Jack, to be precise. He was mostly human: his only powers were his supernatural reflexes as well as his surprising speed and strength, plus the vaguely defined ‘super-vision’: essentially the ability to see in all directions without turning his head. Mad Cap was mainly a tech hero, though: along with the gadgets and not-quite-cyborg enhancements he favored, he was an expert in the vague field of alien technological analysis. Essentially, he was very good at understanding strange technologies. Did they think he was an alien?
"Drop the weapon!" the young captain shouted again, voice unsteady. "Drop it or I'll blow your brains out, I swear I will!"
"Captain Maran, stand down!" Mad Cap snapped. "We're still in the U.S. He hasn't fired on us."
S***, Adam thought as Maran began to lower his rifle. The field would collapse soon. He had to get one of them to fire on him. "Knew he was chicken," he muttered, just loud enough for Maran to hear.
"Bastard!" Maran said, raising the rifle again and firing as Mad Cap gritted his teeth in anger. The bullets ricocheted harmlessly off the force field, but the noise startled the corporal, who fired just as Adam had suspected.
"Damn it," Mad Cap whispered as the soldiers calmed and stopped firing. He did a double-take when he saw that Adam was unhurt, but recovered quickly enough. He stepped forward, raising his open palms in a gesture of peace. "Listen, we don't have to fight. My name's Jack, and-"
"It's too late, Jack," Adam interrupted. "You've fired on an unidentified civilian who offered you no violence. What I'm about to do is just self-defense." It was timed perfectly: as he raised the modified assault rifle, the field overloaded the generator, and the lights cut out. He fired a quick burst of three shots at where the captain's head had been moments before, then threw himself aside as the corporal's shotgun roared.
A moment later, there was a chemical-sounding hiss and a flash of blue light that illuminated the area, casting reddish shadows around the platform Adam had taken cover behind. "Adam Jameson!" Mad Cap said loudly. "You have just murdered an innocent man!"
"He fired at me first," Adam whispered, letting Gerald relay it to the speakers, which were beginning to come back online. His voice would seem to come from everywhere, leaving his actual position a mystery. "That's not murder, Jack, that's self-defense. The way I see it, there’s no one innocent here. Not even you." He kept an eye on the side of the platform. The corporal would probably be coming around soon. Assuming that they split up and searched the half of the lab they were closer to, Mad Cap would be among the fuel canisters around now, while the corporal…
"You were already a murderer, Jameson!" the corporal said from the other side of the platform. "I just didn't think I'd see you do it-" he was cut off by a trio of bullets passing through his skull as he rounded the corner. While Adam's rounds, subsonic and not propelled by gunpowder, wouldn't give away his position, the corporal's were another story. The shotgun, fortunately pointed away from Adam, roared as the dying man spasmed.
"Corporal!" Adam heard Mad Cap call from the other side of the room. "What happened?"
"Oh, don't worry about the corporal," Adam whispered, his voice still echoing from the speakers. "He's certainly not worried about anything. Not anymore, that is."
"Damn it, Jameson!" Mad Cap shouted. "Just come quietly!"
"I thought you liked a fight?" Adam asked as he bent down to take a fragmentation grenade from the corporal's body, ignoring the splatters of blood. "Isn't that why they call you Mad?"
"Don't believe everything you read," Mad Cap said, almost too softly for Adam to hear.
Adam considered the grenade for a moment, then shrugged. He punched the triggering button and lobbed it in Mad Cap's direction, stepping around the platform a moment later with his rifle ready.
The was a muffled explosion from what looked to be an upside-down metal bowl, presumably one of Mad Cap's gadgets. The hero himself had clearly just tossed it, his hand still stretched towards the bowl. Mad Cap grabbed a metal disk from his belt and threw it towards Adam before he could aim and fire, and he stepped aside.
The disk began expanding into something as it fly past him, but Adam didn’t stop to see what it was. Instead, he brought the scope to his eye and aimed carefully. Just before he fired, though, Mad Cap flipped his hands outwards and there was a bright flash of bright blue light, blinding him. He fired, but when he lowered the gun and blinked away the spots, Mad Cap was gone.
Adam spun, quickly but smoothly, scanning for Mad Cap’s distinctive red suit with his rifle ready to fire. He spotted a flash of red and pulled the trigger, but it was just a hologram, produced by another one of the damn metal disks. Meanwhile, Mad Cap slammed into his side, tearing the gun away from him and slamming a disk into it – the rifle was ripped into two pieces as the disk spun like a buzzsaw.
Mad Cap tossed the two halves of the rifle aside with a growl. “Now surrender, Jameson,” he said.
“Never.”
Mad Cap tossed another one of those metal disks at Adam, but this time, rather than sidestepping, he caught it as it began to expand and tossed it back at the hero. It finished expanding and several long metal ropes exploded outwards from it, clearing trying to wrap around Mad Cap, who dove backwards and rolled back to his feet.
Adam snatched a power drill from a shelf and threw a flask at Mad Cap, who blocked it with a large round shield that had just expanded from yet another disk. The hero charged, trying to shield-slam Adam, but Adam stepped to the side and pulled the shield forward, trying to drill into Mad Cap’s side with his other hand. Mad Cap twisted, releasing the shield for a moment and rolling around Adam’s arm, then grabbed the shield on the other side and used it to twist Adam’s arm, forcing him to release it.
Adam stepped back, observing the angry hero impassively, then subtly slipped a laser pointer into his hand. He brought the setting up to the maximum, which could cause mild burns, as his other hand more obviously groped around the shelf behind him. When he threw a rack of test tubes at Mad Cap, it came as no surprise, but his charge did.
Even with his incredible reflexes, Mad Cap was too startled by Adam’s sudden attack to do anything but try and hold him off with the shield, but Adam’s hand slipped around and stuck the laser pointed in his face. Click.
Mad Eye screamed in pain and thrust the shield forward, forcing Adam back, and clutched at his damaged eye with the other. Adam smiled. He had gotten the laser right into his enemy’s eye, partially blinding him.
There was a rush of air and a burst of heat, somehow accompanied by the entire lab darkening, as someone grasped Adam’s head, ready to snap his neck. “Surrender, Jameson,” ordered Nightmare, who had clearly just teleported into position. Adam silently cursed, and went limp in the more powerful hero’s grasp.

For someone as demanding as Adam would have thought Corellon would be, the mission seemed surprisingly simple. He was to get into a well-protected hideout belonging to an old enemy of Corellon's called the Ancient Falcon and kill him. Yet another immortal metahuman, but not when Adam was done.
Falcon's hideout was guarded by well trained soldiers with assault rifles - plastic, as there were many metahumans with magnetic powers. The bullets they shot were plastic too, and they all had excellent powered armor. Mechanical protections included well made security systems, laser patterns around the grounds, and ultrasonic mapping of the compound, which would show people's locations on any maps. Produced by Olympus Industries. MacDammer had never really card who bought their products.
All very good stuff, which was why Corellon hadn't killed Falcon yet. Fortunately, Adam knew a way around all that. The hideout was an old hideaway of Falseface, another shapeshifter, and a loyal customer of Olympus Industries. Falseface was well known for only ever having one-way teleporters - no reception chambers. Less well known was that it was because all his bases were set up as reception chambers everywhere, limited to his own network. Adam knew because he had overseen the installation of one such base. Hooray for Olympus Industries' checkered past.
It had taken some time to get there, about two weeks, but Adam now stood in front of an ordinary-looking cave which contained who-knows what.
While Adam still remembered the floor plan of the base, he had been there before Falseface had put in his notoriously-unpredictable security. He closed his eyes and did his best to feel out what kinds of electronics might be in the base. A moment later, he swore. There were many areas in the base that he couldn't sense - the result of Faraday cages. In fact, the only part he could sense was easily recognizable as an old laptop. The walls were all blocked from his senses. It was probably to protect them from EMPs, but it worked against him as well.
So Adam proceeded into the cave slowly and carefully. He found numerous traps: a segment of the floor which collapsed into a pit filled with snake skeletons; an area which was crossed with deadly lasers, which was where he discovered that his green smog was highly flammable (although an electrical spark was simply conducted through it when he tried igniting it with his powers); an electrified metal door. He made it through them all easily enough, although it took time. In fact, it was nearly two hours before a trap caught him.
Adam was walking along the tunnel, keeping a careful eye on a part of the ceiling which had a square seam. He was so occupied by watching the obvious trap that he didn't notice when he crossed the infrared tripwire and the real trap activated. A much better concealed hatch in the wall flipped open and a Gatling gun began to fire. Adam managed to dive aside and create a magnetic shield to slow the bullets down, and actually dodged most of them. But it was an old gun, beginning to rust, and the bullets were no longer accurate. One came directly at him as he stood to the side, went right through his shield, and slammed into his chest.
Adam stepped back and coughed up blood. It didn't hurt, he noticed. That would be the shock. He blinked slowly, and felt his legs give way beneath him. The bullet must have stuck his heart, he thought, and now he was going to die. What would be get this time?
As his eyes closed, Adam hoped that he would heal.
A mere moment after his eyes closed, they snapped open again. Adam could feel something crawling across his chest, cool and surprisingly comforting. He glanced down and saw that metal was stretching across his body, extending from the bullet wound.
He grinned and stood as the transformation accelerated. This wasn't too bad at all. A moment later, the metal enclosed his head, and he took stock of himself.
He wasn't encased in a metal shell, he realized, but rather his skin had become metal, and thick enough to cover his clothes as well. It seemed that some of his insides changed too - he was about two inches taller, and he was pretty sure that his bones were now metal. With all this weight, he surely was much stronger - Adam guessed that he now weighed about a ton, and if his strength had stayed constant (in proportion) he would be able to lift that much as well. But when he tested his other powers, trying to toss lightning, it failed.
Adam frowned, and stepped away from the Gatling gun which was still firing at him, bullets bouncing off unheeded. Had he lost the powers he had become so familiar with? Or perhaps they were unavailable while he was metal. If he transformed back, perhaps he would have them once more. Assuming he could, of course.
Fortunately, when he tried to she'd his metal skin, Adam felt it melt away into nothingness, and once more his senses expanded (not that there was anything to sense, here). As he retained his new height and could still feel metal bones, Adam guessed that the metal simply wasn't conductive, and blocked his electrical powers.
He concentrated for a moment, and felt the metal crawl over his skin again, beginning from the slight scar which was all that remained of the bullet wound. This time, Adam tried belching gas, and smiled when it came out just as thick as before. In fact, in this form the gas was propelled farther than normally, and in a tighter cone.
Well, the metal form simplified his journey. He stopped checking for traps and simply continued along the tunnel, ignoring the automatic guns and occasional pits, although he had to climb out of those. It went fine until he was suddenly engulfed in flames.
It seemed, sadly, that the thick metal which insulated electricity so well didn't work as well against heat. Adam silently screamed in pain as blisters and burns erupted across his body, the metal only aggravating them even more. He collapsed, feeling the metal begin to melt, and closed his eyes into peaceful oblivion.
Of course, a moment later he woke again, feeling refreshed and perfectly comfortable as he bathed in flames. There was now a reservoir of heat in him that he felt he could tap into just like the electrical power, and he stood easily as the flamethrowers ran out of fuel and died down. A moment of examination made him realize that the heat mostly resided at the base of his neck, in about the same place as the gland which produced gas. As he experimentally blew that gas, it ignited instantly. Hm.
A flick of his fingers sent a wave of heat out, so hot that the air burned for a moment. It didn't go as far as his new fire breath, but it seemed more controllable. Unfortunately, when he tried to manipulate atmospheric heat, Adam found that he could only project his own heat, not control other sources as he could with electricity.
Adam transformed back into his flesh form to see if he could use fire like that. But no: when he shifted it around it refused to leave his skin. It seemed that his normal skin was now a very good insulator, opposite the metal. And when he tried to bring it out of its reservoir to ignite his gas, the heat ran into a blockage of skin, possible a flap of skin or muscle which separated the gland from his throat, and the gas came out without burning.
So, Adam reflected, he essentially had two sets of powers that he could swap between at will, given a few seconds to shed or grow the metal. He could be a fire-using strongman, or a weaker electricity user. He smiled. How versatile. Adam transformed into metal and smashed through the locked door at the end of the long tunnel, and was finally inside Falseface's hideout.

Adam had just graduated from college. He had earned degrees in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Structural Engineering, and Physics. He hadn’t earned degrees but had studied extensively in thermodynamics as well as chemical and nuclear engineering. During the four years he had spent at Roche University, he had built working catapults, crossbows, and pistols. He had practiced with bows to gain a better understanding of projectile motion. He had been able to work with the foremost minds in every field of engineering: Malcolm Beethoven, Arnold Cohen, even Miriam Hawking. There were few aspects of the physical world he didn’t understand.
But despite all that, he had no idea what he wanted to do with his life.
He had no direction, nothing to do. His goals up to his point had been to acquire knowledge. He had always assumed that he’d find something to believe in, something to aim for, to strive to achieve. But everything had come perhaps too easily to him, and he had nothing to do. He could do anything he wanted – he had an eidetic memory, could play nearly any instrument with perfect precision, and had an uncanny eye for detail in painting. Art or science, everything was open. If he only knew which way to go.
So he returned to his parents’ home, wondering if perhaps they knew what he should do.
“Welcome home, Adam,” said Father, smiling and embracing him. Adam simply stood their stiffly, as always, but it had never bothered Father.
“We’ve missed you, son,” said Mother, joining in.
They gave him nothing.
So Adam spent his time in the library, reading technical books voraciously. He still hoped that something in there would trigger recognition within him. Within a month, however, he had torn through nearly every scientific text they had, making notations and corrections in many of them, without finding inspiration. But the library did, in the end, provide his salvation.
“Hey, are you Adam Jameson?”
Adam looked up at the unfamiliar speaker and automatically categorized him. Tall, well-built, with broad shoulders and bright red hair the flowed down past his neck, the man, perhaps a year older than him, had a thick Scottish accent. His eyes were a startling green that contrasted strongly with his hair, and they were possessed of an inner fire that made it clear that this was a man with a vision. “Yes?” he asked.
Uninvited, the newcomer sat across from him. “My name is Galen MacDammer,” he said, smiling. Something seemed off about the smile, something predatory rather than friendly. “I’ve heard that you’re the most talented engineer to come out of any university in years. Even Miriam Hawking is raving about you. Too bad no one knew where you were.”
Adam nodded in agreement, not bothering to argue with the praise. It was clearly flattery, but it was also true. False modesty had never struck him as desirable, anyway. “But you tracked me down, I see.”
“I did,” MacDammer said, smiling again. Adam had to fight off the impression that the Scotsman’s teeth should be pointed. “Can you guess why?”
Adam took note of the fire that burned within MacDammer’s driven eyes and glanced at his clothes and possessions. He had relatively nice clothes, not too formal but not inexpensive – probably silk, and the dark blue polo and black pants would have gone well under a suit jacket. He was carrying a bag over his shoulder. Although it was tightly packed, Adam doubted that it was filled with books he intended to borrow – what little he could see of them looked more like loose papers, a few notebooks, and some thick bundles. Altogether, Adam judged him to be a man with a decent amount of discretionary funds, and the desire to acquire more. And if the drive clear in his eyes was any indication… “You want to recruit me to help you found a start-up company,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“That’s right,” MacDammer agreed. “Not just any company, though. I mean a company which drives the world into the next great age of humanity. Britain led the European world into the Age of Expansion, and America led the world into the Nuclear Age. I want to lead the world into the Space Age.”
“Commercial spacecraft, then,” Adam said. “New and efficient fuel sources, orbital bases, perhaps a lunar module…”
“Everything,” MacDammer clarified. “I want to perfect that teleportation system being tested at Roche right now, I want to crack the genetic secrets of the emerging metahumans. I want to unite the world.”
“That’s an ambitious plan,” Adam said, impressed. “You’re going to run into a lot of problems.” He considered. “Where’s my part in all of this?”
“You’d be one of the department heads,” said MacDammer. “Head of Engineering. It would be the largest department, I expect, at least once we get going. It’ll be just you at first.”
“So I’d have full control over how pretty much everything gets built?” Adam asked. “I’d be the one creating whatever products we start with?”
“Obviously I’d have input, but yes, mostly it would be you. Later on, I’d probably give artistic control to someone else, but they’d be working around your designs to make it look pretty and attractive.”
Adam nodded. The problems that would arise would provide an interesting challenge, if nothing else, and he could see himself getting caught up in the man’s dream. It was an attractive offer, overall, and he was pretty sure they could pull it off. MacDammer had powerful charisma, and that added to his own considerable talents… “Alright,” he said. “What first?”
Galen pulled out a sheet from his bag, and laid it out on the table. “I was thinking a functional space elevator would be a good way to make ourselves known…” he began.

There were no traps in the hideout proper, and Adam curiously glanced around before he headed to the teleporter. There was a small armory, from which he took a pistol, some ammo, and a fragmentation grenade; a bedroom, which also contained the laptop he had felt from outside; and a workshop, which held some outdated counterfeiting equipment and a few rather high quality disguise elements. After all, Falseface couldn't change his hair or body shape, only his eye color and facial features. Wigs, false moustaches, fake fat for various parts of the body… it was all very professional looking. Then again, Falseface had been rumored to be an actor before he became a criminal, so perhaps the high quality of his tools wasn’t such a surprise after all.
After a few minutes glancing around, Adam walked to the teleporter and powered it up. He was immediately able to connect to the reception network in Ancient Falcon's base, so it seemed that Falcon hadn't realized it was there. Either that or he had started to use it to his own advantage, but hadn’t blocked the incoming teleports from other teleporters in Falseface’s network.
Corellon had said that Falcon usually held court around 3:00 in the 'throne room', and that was only five minutes away now. After setting up the teleporter to reach right in front of the throne, Adam poked around at the frag grenade, which had an electric detonator, and set in up to explode after three minutes, which was slightly longer than the teleport would take. He placed it on the pad, activated it, then sent it over. After a moment, he sent himself.
As always, he was rather bored by the interminable wait in the blank white space outside proper existence, and amused himself by creating Sudoku puzzles in his head. After a few minutes, he transformed into metal and got ready for landing, his impending arrival heralded by the electrical currents which flowed through the Outside Place beginning to swirl around him, unseen but clearly felt.
BROOOOOOUUuuuuu
He burst back into the world already surrounded by broken bodies and puddles of blood. The man sitting in the throne, however, who could only be the Ancient Falcon, was perfectly fine.
Falcon was a regal-looking figure: he wore a fine suit of deep blue and a matching tie, with a clean white shirt on underneath. His hair, a dark black with solitary white hairs scattered through it almost like stars, was cropped close to his head and topped with a thin silver circlet. His eyes were black all the way through, no iris or whites at all. His hands were pushed out in front of him, and they were projecting some sort of pulsing force which had clearly blocked the shrapnel from the grenade.
Some sort of telekinetic power, then, Adam assessed, and either very fast reflexes or the ability to react to things before they happened. Along with those, he had an unknown number of other powers, and, having lived for nearly 500 years, was likely highly intelligent. Adam was glad that there was no one else in the room. Well, no one alive, he corrected himself, noting someone’s cleanly severed face lying in front of him.
He rose from the kneeling position he had landed in and experimentally puffed a blast of flames at Falcon as the immortal rose from his seat. As he had suspected, Falcon was already pushing his hand to the side and releasing a blast of that pulsing energy, sending him into the air and out of danger. Definitely preflex. Falcon had started to react before Adam had finished breathing in, and would have no way to know what the breath meant.
Falcon flipped a hand in a sweeping motion, and another wave of pulsing clear energy came out - Adam could feel it disrupting the Earth’s magnetic field. This wave, though, curved in the air, swinging around to send pieces of shrapnel and larger debris, like bodies and limbs, at him. Adam ignored this attack, thrusting an arm forward and releasing a tightly controlled beam of heat at Falcon. As he hoped, Falcon didn't dodge, since it was actually aimed slightly below him. The flames washed over the stone floor at made it glow red hot - Falcon jumped into the air, straight up, in pain. Adam smiled in satisfaction and leapt forward, hoping his considerable strength would let him reach the immortal and grab him, preventing his preflex from helping.
But Falcon was too fast and too smart. He pushed forward and sent more of that clear energy at Adam. This, however, disrupted the magnetic field differently than the others had, and the differences surprised Adam enough to not dodge in time.
The energy struck Adam like a hammer, and he instantly felt pain like he’d never felt before. It engulfed his mind, worse than any death he had experienced, and he felt his thoughts slowing.
“A pity,” he heard Falcon say. “You seem quite good at your job. I almost wish you worked for me.”
It was a pity, Adam thought sluggishly. Why was he working for Corellon instead of the great man who now stood above him, again? He couldn’t remember…
Falcon smiled cruelly. “Do you have a name, assassin?”
“Adam Jameson,” he said with some difficulty. Something was off about this, but his mind was working too slowly to figure it out. The pain was too great…
“Are you always made of metal, Adam Jameson?” Falcon… no, Master, asked Adam. “Turn into your normal form, if you can.”
Adam heard Master’s voice distantly, as though through an old radio, and obeyed with difficulty. After a few moments, he managed to find the mental switch which controlled his powers, and the metal skin melted away.
Almost immediately, the pain lessened greatly. His Master had given an order, and he had obeyed: it was almost a euphoric feeling.
Master smiled. "Good," he murmured, and Adam rejoiced. "Now. Take a pistol from the floor."
Adam crouched down, taking a pistol from where it lay on the ground. There was a bit of shrapnel stuck in the handle, and it dug into Adam's hand, making a painful rivulet of blood, but it was nothing compared to the pleasure of obeying Master.
"Put the barrel to your head."
The cool end of the gun barrel felt good on his skin, thought Adam. Master was so smart.
"Pull the trigger."
What a good idea! Adam began to curl his finger. Click, went the trigger, past the safety guard. Just a bit more, because his Master -
What the hell am I doing? Adam suddenly thought, feeling as though his brain had just come out of a tar pit. He dropped the gun as though it was hot iron, stepping away from it hurriedly.
Master - Falcon - Adam was still having trouble thinking - snarled. "Damn it!" A rush of shame overcame Adam. He had disappointed Master-
"No!" he shouted, thrusting his arms forward and releasing a wave of electrical power. Falcon twitched and stumbled backwards.
"You bastard!" Adam swore, calling the gun to his hand and bringing it to bear on Falcon's head. He squinted, making sure that it was aimed properly, and…
He couldn't fire. Why would be even want to fire? This was his Master! Wise and powerful and…
… and marked for death at his hands…
… and smart and his Master…
… and in his head…
"Drop the gun, Adam Jameson," Falcon - Master - Falcon ordered. "Drop it!"
… and he should really drop the gun, Master said so…
… and Falcon was in his head…
"Get out," Adam whispered.
Falcon's faint smiled faltered. "What?"
"Get out of my head!" Adam shouted, and pulled the trigger.
And felt unimaginable pain.

Adam spent most of his time on the island fixing the various problems that cropped up, as they did. The tractors were particularly prone to jamming, but the crop dusters and the canal system also broke occasionally, taking up much of his time fixing them. He refused all help, except when he needed an extra pair of hands for reasons of brute force. After all, there was no pointing in solving the problem if you needed help to do something you could do alone. Only if he truly couldn’t solve a problem after a week of working on it, he swore, would he accept assistance.
In most of his spare time, he tinkered with various projects. The teleporter that he had nearly perfected while working at Olympus Industries still had problems, such as requiring a large area for reception, and spilling over when the teleport was over a long distance. He was unable to solve these problems, as although he managed to reduce the size of the reception area significantly he couldn’t eliminate it. He also played around with the designs used in Old Faithful, the first working space elevator, which had lifted humanity to the moon as well as lifting Olympus Industries to the forefront of the technological era.
Adam worked on more dangerous designs as well, though. He kept an assault rifle in his workshop and applied various modifications to it: changing the pattern of the rifling, modifying the barrel’s length, even altering the size of the bullet’s firing charges. Most of these made it useless, unfortunately, and he had to reverse them.
Along with these whimsical projects, Adam had to plan for contingencies. Worried that someone might trace him to the remote island, he used some of the leftover three million to pay for a safehouse to be constructed not far from Philadelphia, with a reception chamber locked to a very secure password. He had it stocked with large amounts of long-lasting food, so that all of his workers could escape to it and live there until they found new jobs. It was a long shot that it would be necessary, but he didn’t want them to become criminals because they agreed to work for him. His parents had taught him the problems that arose when there were too many criminals, and problems had to be avoided when possible.
Another project that began to occupy Adam’s time was the hunt for Galen MacDammer. After MacDammer’s disappearance from the prison he had been kept in as he waited for his trial was still a mystery three months later. Adam used the satellite dish topping the island’s small mountain to access the internet and hack into government security feeds, watching the cell from every possible angle repeatedly, trying to figure out how he had done it.
MacDammer had, apparently, last been seen by a guard walking along the cell. The guard glanced in and saw him meditating, as he did – Adam had come across him doing it many times over the years they worked together. The guard had apparently seen it before, because he shouted something at MacDammer, who ignored him. Adam had found an angle which showed the guard’s lips on the wordless camera: it was simply obscenities, berating MacDammer for the murder of so many important people that had been in the ILF at the time. Then the guard turned and left. A few minutes later, the camera feeds all shut down at the same time, and when they resumed several minutes later, the guard’s neck had been snapped, and MacDammer was gone.
It was almost certain that MacDammer had accomplices, but there was no apparent way for them to do it. The camera’s covered nearly every angle of the building, even the insides of the wall. No shrunken metahuman had crawled around to cut a wire, no hacking had brought down the network. In fact, the camera’s resetting had been identical to the scheduled maintenance rebooting which happened every couple days at midnight, but for the fact that every camera shut down simultaneously, whereas normally they rebooted one at a time in a random pattern.
After nearly a month of scrutinizing it, Adam finally figured it out. MacDammer had somehow amplified his normally minor telepathic powers by meditating, and influenced the guard’s absentminded tapping on the keyboard when he returned to his desk. He caused the guard to accidentally send a command for the whole electronic system to reboot. The camera’s had shut down first, then the lights, then the cell’s electronic lock. The guard went to investigate and make sure MacDammer was still in the cell, but couldn’t see in the pitch black cell area. MacDammer had snapped his neck, guided by his sense of the guard’s mind, then escaped as the lights came back on. The camera’s came on after that, once the Scotsman was gone already. To all appearances, a perfect breakout.
It was all guesswork, of course, but Adam was confident in his logic. He could see no other way for MacDammer to have escaped on his own, and he almost certainly couldn’t have arranged accomplices to rescue him. The cell had been built too well to allow MacDammer any contact with outsiders, and the man’s arrogance wouldn’t have let him consider the possibility of his defeat and thus lead him to hire others to rescue him in case. It had always been up to Adam to devise contingency plans.
Of course, Olympus Industries had never needed any of the contingencies he made. Perhaps Galen’s luck had simply ran out for the first time.
In any case, having worked out how MacDammer had escaped, Adam still had no idea where he had went. Internet trawling brought up dozens of sightings all over the world, slowing tapering down over the past several months, just as would be expected for false alarms. Panic leads people to see the criminal everywhere, but when he doesn’t reemerge they become complacent again.
After a few months, Adam was forced to turn from this puzzle to solve the problem of food.

Adam didn’t really come to himself after this death until he had made his way back to the hideaway outside Philadelphia. It had been a strange experience – he couldn’t remember much from after Falcon had struck him with that strange, pulsating force. Everything was fuzzy from then on, an unfamiliar sensation for Adam, who’s memory was normally eidetic. He could vaguely recall the sensation of a gun barrel against his head, and the sharper memories from after his waking gave him clues. He had killed Falcon, using a pistol to shoot his head. Then… well, he had been laying with his head in a puddle of blood. Had someone else shot him? Then why the enormous pain, the only thing he could recall from the whole incident with perfect clarity? Besides, he had died from a gunshot before.
A few minutes examination of himself helped Adam decipher the mystery. He had a small scar in the back of his head with a matching scar between his eyes – the same places that the bullet had penetrated Falcon’s skull. This gave him the clue that solved it. Falcon had some power which linked him to people, something which allowed mind-control of a sort as well as making any of Falcon’s wounds appear on his servants. He had linked to Adam, but he had fought, and ended up shooting Falcon. The telepathic linkage had caused Adam to take the same wound. The pain, presumably, was caused by either the damage to his brain, although that was unlikely based on what Adam knew of anatomy, or by the wound coming through what must have been a damaged link at that point.
Having solved the mystery, Adam still wasn’t sure what powers might have come from this death. He could feel nothing new within him physically, and there were no electrical disturbances around him – at least, none that wasn’t causing deliberately. That seemed to eliminate any powers coming from the brain or any new physical powers. Perhaps a mental ability of some sort? Maybe he would be able to do the same thing to others as Falcon had one to him? It wasn’t an attractive thought to Adam, who liked to believe that he could get the loyalty of others without mind control. Fortunately, he seemed to have no new reflexes. So that limited it to a more passive power.
He was forced to stop this line of inquiry, however, as a headache began to interfere with his thoughts. Adam took a dose of painkillers, pulled Emrys out so the drugs wouldn’t affect the circuits, and lay down to sleep.
He was woken a few hours later by an incessant beeping coming from the tiny speakers included in Emrys' chip. He stood, thankful that his headache had receded, and slipped AI back into the slot in the back if his skull. "What is it?" he demanded.
“Urgent message, sir,” said Emrys. “Corellon has been calling every few minutes for a half hour or so. You just missed one.”
Adam considered. It might give him an advantage to appear to have a position of strength over Corellon, despite the other's superior resources and influence. Corellon's attempt to contact him made him seem desperate, not commanding as he should. He would answer the next call, Adam decided: after all; he wanted to work with Corellon. But he'd offer no explanation for the long time it took to answer.
Beepbeepbeep. “Here he is again, sir.”
"Bring him up," Adam said, sitting.
"Jameson!" Corellon demanded. "What took so long?"
"Sorry, sir," Adam said, knowing full well how insincere he sounded. "Your mission is done. Are you satisfied?"
Corellon paused. "You didn't have any trouble, I trust?"
"I died three times," Adam said flatly. "I got over it."
"Two of my closest advisors died of sudden gunshot wounds about three hours ago," the fake warden said after a pause. "Would you know anything about that?"
"They were controlled by Falcon," Adam guessed, fingering the scar between his eyes. "Everyone he controlled received the same wound that killed him. A hole about the size of a nine-millimeter, going from right between the eyes to the back right of the skull?"
"Yes," Corellon agreed. "I guess that you've proven yourself. I'll send an agent over , if you give me the coordinates of your reception chamber." Adam did so, and the other nodded. "Might I ask what you plan to do?"
"You might," said Adam, "but I wouldn't answer. Might I ask who you're sending to help?"
"You might," said Corellon with a smile, "but I wouldn't answer."
Adam shut down the connection and walked over the his small reception chamber, using his electrical powers to activate it as he did. He made sure that the reception bulbs were on as well, as he didn’t know where Corellon’s agent was teleporting in from.
BROOOOOOOOOUUUUuuuuuuu. Reddish smoke burst from within the small chamber, swirling around the arriving agent. Adam heard a cough from within it.
“Long range,” Adam murmured, noting the length of the explosion that accompanied the teleport. “Emrys, you have a recording of it?”
“Of course.”
“Run a decoding program on it to turn the electronic buzz into a text string, and do the same with the explosion itself,” Adam ordered as he waited for the agent to recover and step out of the chamber. “I’ll analyze them in detail later.” With some leisure time, he would probably be able to use music analyzing software to determine the range and direction of the teleport, which would give him the actual location of Corellon’s prison base.
The agent stepped out of the reddish smoke still swirling within the reception chamber and smiled at Adam. He blinked in surprise and recognition. It was Diana Mare, a super-strong acrobat who had gotten a great amount of press after brutally murdering her wife and their adopted children. She had evaded the MED for nearly three years before being caught.
“Good to see you again, Adam,” she said, stepping forward with a radiant smile.
Adam frowned. Again? He had never met her. Suddenly, he got a sinking feeling in his stomach, only reinforced as Mare sighed.
“Oh, silly me,” she said, voice sinking from Mare’s high and lilting voice into a deeper, more menacing tone. “You just know her from the news, don’t you?” She shook her head, still smiling a little. “Ah well.” Suddenly, she lunged forward, arm elongating grotesquely as enormous claws sprang from her hand.
Adam fell backwards, shifting into his metal form as he did, and the claws merely scraped along the metal uselessly. A moment later, however, as the arm began to retract back into Mare’s body, now bulging and warping into the terrifying form of Gawain Blackstone, he glimpsed the claws shift slightly, becoming serrated. The metal wouldn’t protect him much now. Still, it was better than nothing…
Wild Eyes laughed, a harrowing sound that chilled Adam to the bone, as smoke began to billow around him, obscuring him from view. A moment later, the arm shot forward again. Adam leapt aside, the super-strength that came with this form the only thing saving him from the serrated claws.
Adam whirled to keep an eye on Wild Eyes, but the smoke was dissipating, and Wild Eyes had disappeared from the cloud. “Damn it,” he whispered, and glanced over at the outward teleporter. It was no good, though. Too far away, and Blackstone would simply follow him. He could try to set up a scrambler to randomly change the destination after he had disappeared…
Adam felt a thud and a lance of pain as something struck his back. He turned and saw several spikes, short, thick, and serrated, flying towards him from a cloud of smoke. He reflexively raised his hands and sent out a wave of heat, burning them up before they could reach him. The smoke began to clear, revealing that Wild Eyes was once again gone.
“Damn it!” Adam swore, turning for the door. He began to run, but something huge and heavy slammed into his side, knocking him to the floor. Adam caught a bare glimpse of burning red eyes within the cloud of smoke before he took a deep breath and puffed a hot cloud of flames over the psychopath.
For a moment he thought it had worked, but then he heard Wild Eyes’ harrowing laughter once again. The flames died down, showing a distorted, blackened skull, grinning grotesquely at him. Flesh began to grow over it, but smoke wrapped around him once more before Adam could see his true form.
Adam kicked out, pushing Blackstone off him again, then scrambled to his feet and ran for the door again. Before he reached it, though, long, scaly arms wrapped around him and threw him aside.
He struggled to his feet again, and saw Wild Eyes standing in front of the door in what was generally agreed to be the madman’s favorite form. Tall and slender, with shoulder length hair of pure white and large, glowing eyes that shifted through every color of the rainbow. “Alright, Adam,” he said with a smile.
Adam felt something probing at the edge of his mind, and a headache began to grow. He must have gotten immunity to telepathy after all. It seemed that it gave him headaches, though. As the fire hadn’t worked, Adam shifted tactics. He allowed his metal skin to melt away, leaving him free to use electricity, and began building up a charge. Now he just had to keep Wild Eyes talking. “So,” he said. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Just testing,” Blackstone said with a smile. Adam noticed that his teeth were sharp, and he seemed to have two rows of them rather than one. “Making sure you’re all you’re said to be.”
“I am,” Adam said, and threw the bolt of lightning. It was stronger than any he had tossed before, and the flash of light nearly blinded him. The accompanying roll of thunder almost deafened him. But he just managed, thanks to the enhanced senses all metahumans had, to make out Wild Eyes morphing a large hole in his body which the lightning passed through cleanly, not striking him at all.
“A good try,” Wild Eyes said as the peal of thunder died down. “But you won’t get me. I’m the best.” He walked forward. “Come on, let’s–“
He was interrupted by Adam belching out a cloud of noxious green gas. Through the haze, Adam saw Blackstone raise a thin eyebrow, then smoke began to curl around him, enveloping the toxic gas. When the smoke cleared a moment later, the gas was gone, and the madman continued. “I’m here to help you, Adam,” he said. “I was just making sure you wouldn’t slow me down.”
“Fine,” Adam snapped, fighting off the chill that ran up his back when he realized that the whole time, Blackstone had simply been playing with him. He had been completely outclassed.
“So what are we doing?” Wild Eyes asked.
Adam smiled.

The plantations didn’t provide quite enough food, thanks to a low rainfall that year. There was enough for everyone, as long as it was rationed properly, but only just. Adam was forced to spend the rest of the carefully stockpiled money to purchase long-lasting foods, canned meat and vegetables, in order to have enough.
However, Adam had wanted to have some money still stockpiled as a safety net in case the whole thing fell through, or if they had little rain over the next year as well. So he began planning a second theft, hopefully as successful as the first one.
As he planned, he had to make several trips into the city where he planned to make the second theft, Atlanta. He scouted out the bank carefully, making many trips to deposit and withdraw trivial amounts, only a few hundred dollars at a time. He got to know most of the clerks well enough during the month he did so, eventually deciding on a time to do it when most of the clerks working would be rather timid fellows. It was on one of these trips that he discovered where Galen MacDammer had hidden himself.
“Hello again, Mr. Wilson,” said the clerk cheerfully, greeting Adam by the false name he’d been using. “Deposit or withdrawal?”
“Withdrawal,” Adam said, smiling at the clerk and leaning against the counter. “How are you, Susan?”
“Oh, I’m all right,” she said, smiling back. Adam was pretty sure that she had a slight crush on him, although he’d never been too good of a judge. Still, it could be useful, so he was taking pains to encourage it. “So, who are you voting for?”
Adam blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“The election?” she prompted, clearly expecting him to know what she was talking about. “For president?”
“Oh, yes…” Adam said, trailing off. He hadn’t paid attention to politics even before retreating to the island. He knew the basics of each party, but had no idea who was running. He had never even voted. However, he saw that Susan was wearing a button which said ‘Clinton: Another 4 Years’. “Sorry, I lose track of things sometimes. It’s Clinton for me.”
“Same,” Susan said with a brilliant smile. “Um…” she bit her lip.
“Yes?”
“Would you like to come over to my apartment tomorrow night and watch it with me?”
Adam hesitated. He had planned to do the theft tomorrow night. But then again, with the election apparently looming, it was likely that the bank’s employee schedule would be shuffled, and he’d have to figure out when the same clerks would be working. He could probably convince Susan to show him the schedule if he went to her apartment, though… “I’d love to,” he finally said, and Susan somehow managed to smile even wider.
The next night, he met Susan at the bank and followed her directions to drive her to her apartment. It was a small, two-room apartment, with one room serving as media room, kitchen, and dining room, while the other was the bedroom. The apartment shared a single bathroom with the other three apartments on the floor. Cheap but serviceable, Adam thought approvingly as Susan struggled with the key.
As they sat down on the ratty old couch, Susan leaned over onto Adam’s shoulder. He shifted uncomfortably and glanced around, looking for anything that might be a schedule. But over the next few hours, he couldn’t stop it, and could do nothing but wait while Susan rested on him and slowly fell asleep.
Eventually, however, Clinton won the election, and Susan roused herself as the reelected president came forward to give her acceptance speech. She seemed quite proud of herself and her success, and Susan was obviously pleased. Adam was more concerned by the bodyguards standing behind President Clinton, though. Specifically, the one with his eyes closed, breathing deeply and regularly.
The hair had been died black and cut shorter, curling in on itself, and he was less muscular than he had once been – more emancipated. The eyes seemed sunken, and he now wore a goatee. Rather than the plain polo he typically preferred, he now wore a proper suit, and he had a small earpiece just like the actual bodyguards for the president. But despite his disguise, Adam still recognized him as Galen MacDammer.
Susan seemed to notice his sudden discomfort. “Are you alright, dear?”
“I’m fine…” Adam muttered. “I just realized that I know one of her bodyguards.”
“Were you friends?”
Adam snorted. “Once upon a time.” MacDammer opened his eyes as Clinton stepped back from the podium, stumbling slightly and seeming rougher somehow. MacDammer, however, looked as though a great weight had been taken off his shoulders. As he opened his eyes, Adam noted the fiery passion he still had, making his bright green eyes the center of attention despite his position behind the President. MacDammer seemed to realize this, as a moment later he turned his gaze downwards, shading his eyes and fading into the background again.
“I have to go,” Adam said, standing.
“Are you sure?” Susan said, looking up. “It’s late. You can stay over if you like…”
Adam shook his head. “No,” he insisted, “I have to go.” He ignored Susan’s blathering about the couch being uncomfortable but the bed being large enough for two, and strode away, closing the door behind him quietly but firmly. He had to think about this new information.

“So let me get this straight,” Wild Eyes said after Adam had explained the plan. “We’re going to kill Galen MacDammer, who you’re pretty sure is controlling the President of the United States?”
Adam nodded.
“And we’re going to do this by making our way into the White House, where he’s masquerading as the President’s lead bodyguard?”
Another nod.
Blackstone considered this. “The White House has some of the best security on the planet,” he commented. “I could get myself in easily, but it’ll be tougher to get you in there.”
“Fortunately, that won’t be a problem,” Adam said with a hint of a smile. “You see, the security was contracted out to Olympus Industries, and I designed it personally.”
“I know that security, though. EMP-shielded, no incoming teleports within several miles, adamantine-plated walls, the works. There’s a solid adamantine box which even I’ve never been able to get into, just in case the President needs to retreat even further. You might know how it’s set up, but you won’t be able to get through.”
“I designed the security personally,” Adam said again. “It does have weaknesses. Only a specific set out powers can get through, though.” He smiled. “Through pure chance, however,
I have that exact set of powers.”
Wild Eyes seemed skeptical, but they used the teleporter to get to a small safehouse owned by Corellon not far from Washington, walking the rest of the way in. Blackstone rambled on the whole time they walked, apparently about anything which came to his mind, but Adam was forcibly reminded of how dangerous he was when they came across a hitchhiker trying to get a car to stop. Before he could say a word, Wild Eyes had sliced the poor girl into three pieces, and moments later was absorbing the pieces, his body distending grotesquely for a moment before the mass was fully absorbed. Adam decided that he didn’t need to know exactly how the mad shapeshifter’s powers worked, despite his normal curiosity.
Eventually they arrived in DC, and Adam led Blackstone to a closed-down pool business several miles from the White House. “The systems used in the White House’s security build up a great deal of heat,” he explained. “Since we hadn’t developed heat dumps to deal with it well enough yet, I had a pool built which had several hot tubs. The heat is carried along a network of pipes to heat the tubs in the business. Of course, Olympus Industries is bankrupt now, and apparently had to sell this building. The heating will still be running, though.”
“So we’ll follow the pipes back?” Blackstone asked.
Adam nodded. “There’s a small walkway, just in case any maintenance needed to be done. Of course, the pipes leak so much heat that a very expensive suit would have to be used to protect the person from the heat. Either that or being immune to the heat. I assume that won’t be a problem for you?” Wild Eyes just snorted dismissively.
Adam led him to a hatch in the basement and transformed into his metal form, tearing it away and revealing a ladder down into the darkness. He slid down it, the shapeshifter following a moment later simply by jumping. It was pitch black, so he puffed out a tiny spark of flame and cupped it in his hands, using the fire as a lamp. It barely lit up the ground around him and certainly wouldn’t help Blackstone at all, but he seemed to be having no trouble.
“About halfway along we’ll run into a detour,” Adam said. “There’ll be an EMP-shielded area, with heat shielding and vents to protect the electronics that lock the adamantine door. I’ll have to go open that myself while you wait.” Blackstone nodded.
When they reached a fork in the tunnel, Adam went left and told Wild Eyes to go right, then wait at the apparent end of the tunnel. Adam followed his fork until he passed through a perfectly sealed door, which hissed after he closed it. Bluish gas swirled around him. While it was possible to protect against the level of heat in this area, it was difficult and expensive to do more than a small, sealed room: like this one.
Adam transformed back into his normal form. It was a little hot for comfort, but he wasn’t going to be there long. He felt around in the ceiling until he found of the vents which kept air flowing over the electronics. Like the rest of the room, it had a Faraday cage, a light metal mesh embedded in it, protecting from EMPs, and blocking his electrical powers as a bonus. Not a problem, though. Adam pursed his lips and blew gas into the vent, causing the thicker gas to be pulled along and over the electronics. It would be heating it up faster than the air, and in a moment…
The vent popped open, pulling in more air, and also opening up a hole in the Faraday cage. Adam quickly reached through and used his powers to edit the circuits, causing the adamantine door in Blackstone’s side of the fork to open.
When he left the sealed room, transforming back into metal as he did so, he found Blackstone waiting for him, eerily silent and with his eyes glowing an eerie yellow, which slowly shifted to green as he stared.
“What?” Adam demanded, beginning to feel creeped out by Blackstone’s staring.
“You were taking too long,” Wild Eyes said, and turned to leave.
Adam followed him, stepping around him when they reached the fork again to take the lead. When they reached where the other fork had ended, there was a crack in the wall, which Adam pushed against, using the weight of his metal form to swing it open. Adamantine was strong, but it was also heavy, and didn’t like to move.
Blackstone followed him as he was led to a long ladder, leading up to a trapdoor. Adam paused before he began to climb. “Once we reach the top,” he said, “we’ll be in the back of the equipment maintenance room. After that, I bow to your superior stealth abilities. But remember, we’re only here to kill MacDammer. Anyone else should be avoided if possible rather than murdered.”
Blackstone sighed. “Just one person?” he pleaded, sounding almost exactly like a child asking for a few more minutes with a favorite toy.
“No,” Adam said firmly. “Come on.”
They climbed the ladder easily enough, and Adam tore away the lock, melting it away and letting the liquid metal run down the ladder to where it would go unnoticed, deep below the White House. He pushed open the trapdoor and climbed out. Seconds later, a fast-moving cloud of smoke burst from the trapdoor and soundlessly landed beside him, clearing away almost instantly to reveal Wild Eyes looking like a drab, boring security guard.
The shapeshifter cocked his head to the side and closed his eyes, apparently listening to something Adam couldn’t hear. He felt a tickle in the back of his mind and a slight headache, though, and guessed that Blackstone was using the little telepathic powers he had to locate MacDammer. His suspicions were confirmed as Blackstone said “Follow me,” and began moving off through the building.
Surprisingly, Wild Eyes obeyed Adam’s order for no one but MacDammer to die, and avoided all others. The one maid they had to pass, he silently and expertly choked into unconsciousness, even inviting Adam to take her pulse to make sure she was still alive. Before long, they stopped right outside the oval office.
Wild Eyes nodded towards the door. “Your man is in there,” he said. “If he’s competent at all, he’ll have noticed me, but won’t be saying anything: can’t give himself away. No one knows how he’s controlling little miss Hillary, after all.”
“How exactly is he doing it?” Adam asked. “In your opinion as a telepath of, I would estimate, similar power?”
“He’ll have subtly influenced her over a long period of time,” Blackstone guessed. “It might not even have taken that long, but eventually she’d be used to functioning with his mind guiding her. He’d be able to plant words in her mouth, make her do pretty much anything he wanted, but she’d think it was all her idea. She might feel a little awkward when he’s not paying attention, but she probably wouldn’t even notice the difference. His powers will be attuned to her now, as well, and won’t be a huge amount of use on anyone else, either.”
Adam nodded. It seemed to line up with what little he had seen, on Election Day. Clinton had been eloquent and charismatic during the speech, while MacDammer was controlling her, but afterwards had stumbled and seemed… well, average. Plain. As though she was used to operating with a crutch, an experience orator to guide her diction and tone directly. Perhaps she had been nearly as talented before MacDammer as she was with him controlling her, but without the crutch she had become used to she would be more normal. “Alright,” he said. “Remember, MacDammer is the target. You take out the other security guards – non-lethally – while I go for him.”
Wild Eyes shrugged. “You’re the boss, boss.” He saluted sarcastically, then swelled and began cloaked in smoke. Adam simply turned into metal and punched the door.
Beyond, Clinton was sitting at her desk, signing papers, while MacDammer stood behind her with his eyes closed. The other guards were arranged in a loose semi-circle, seeming completely surprised by the sudden appearance of a man made from metal and one of the most deadly serial killers in recent history.
Wild Eyes cackled with glee, rushing around the room and slamming into the guards, ignoring the hail of bullets that struck him as he cracked skulls and choked guards. The President was trying to hide under the desk. Adam, however, focused on MacDammer, who had opened his eyes. He seemed confused, looking at Adam.
Adam transformed back, stalking forwards slowly. MacDammer’s eyes flared with recognition. “Adam? Is that you?”
“Yes, you son of a b****,” Adam snarled. “You took everything from me with that harebrained scheme of yours. Now I’m going to take everything from you.”
MacDammer backed away, holding out a hand in a gesture of peace. “Now wait, Adam. It was just insurance. I didn’t want you dead, but making the judge sentence you to death was–”
Adam raised an eyebrow. “That was you too? I was referring to your clever idea of murdering everyone in the ILF. My station, that I designed. No matter.”
The Scotsman tried again. “Please, can’t we settle this peacefully.”
“No.”
He sighed dramatically. “Well, I tried.” Suddenly, as Wild Eyes stepped back, all the guards unconscious, MacDammer pulled out a long syringe of greenish fluid and pressed it against his arm. A moment later, he grinned fiercely and stood a little straighter, eye’s blazing.
Adam’s eyes narrowed. That green fluid…
“Elanoamphetamine,” MacDammer confirmed, narrowing his eyes cruelly. Also known as meta-steroids. It temporarily boosted a person’s powers by shutting down the part of their brain which regulated how they used them, but came at a hefty cost. Along with being powerfully addictive, it caused your powers to actually decline in strength as you used it: eventually, not only would you be useless without the drug, but your powers while using it would be slightly weaker than before you had ever used the drug.
All in all, a dangerous and highly illegal substance which sensible people wouldn’t use in the first place. But if MacDammer was only going to use it once, it gave him a great advantage.
Adam stepped forward and swung a first at MacDammer, trying to end the fight quickly. But, boosted, the Scotsman easily ducked around Adam’s arm, and he tried to attack his mind – the sudden migraine was a clear indicator. Adam swung again, this time from a different angle, and brought his feet into play as well. But he was clearly moving too slow for MacDammer, who dodged again.
Adam decided to shift strategies, and puffed out a blast of flames at MacDammer. However, he pushed his hands forward and spread them, and the flames split around him. His meager telekinetic abilities had also been boosted by the elanoamphetamine.
Adam shifted again, transforming back to flesh and tossing lighting at the Scotsman. He seemed to flicker, dodging each with unnatural speed. And the migraine still pulsed over Adam’s head, hampering his movements. But he knew what to do.
A few more lightning bolts forced MacDammer into position, and Adam breathed in deeply through his nose. He wanted a big cloud, too much for MacDammer to be able to push aside all of it. Another bolt, one which would miss MacDammer, to make him think that he’d begun to succumb to his telepathic powers, and then he began blowing, a steady stream of noxious green gas. He was able to deflect some of it, but unlike the flames the gas had mass, and it was clearly a struggle to move so much of it. After almost a minute, moments before Adam ran out of gas, MacDammer missed a small streamer of it, and it touched his skin, sinking in immediately. Only a second later he began screaming in pain.
Unfortunately, it seemed that his screams also focused his mind, because at the same time, Adam’s telepathic walls came tumbling down, and MacDammer’s mind flooded into his.
You idiot! he screamed within Adam’s mind. Can’t you see? I was trying to stop him! LOOK AT WHAT HE’S DONE TO YOU!
And memories that had been locked deep within Adam’s mind burst free.

Corellon nodded and stood, passing by Adam on his way to the door. He knelt down and smiled at Adam. "I'll see you later, little guy," he said with a smile, and held out his hand in a fist. Adam met his eyes, a bright, clear blue, and Corellon whispered.
"Trust me. Obey me. I am your master."
Adam smiled and bumped his own fist against Masters. Master smiled and rose, tipping his hat towards Mother and Father as he left.

“What to major in…” Adam muttered, looking through the brochures for each major in Roche University. They had offered him a full-ride scholarship, and as they were the most prestigious college in the nation, he had accepted. But he wasn’t sure what he wanted to learn. Everything, but what to focus on? He had no idea what he wanted to do with his life.
Ah well. He could easily go in undecided and figure it out later. Just then, he heard a silent voice from within his mind.
Adam.
He knew that voice. “Master,” he whispered.
I will have need of your talents, Adam. You will enroll in Roche in all three forms of engineering they offer as well as it physics.
“Yes master,” he said obediently. “Is that all?”
Take as long as you need to earn all four degrees. Don’t worry if it takes a while longer than other students spend in college.
A pause. You will express worry and fear over the breakout which will make headlines next week, Master continued, and be impressed by the system which get built afterwards to hold Wild Eyes in better, desiring to learn more about how prison systems work and fail. Oh, and Adam…
“Yes, master?”
You can forget this conversation. It’s not important.
Adam blinked, and slipped out the application for Roche. He’d get degrees in engineering and physics. It might take a little while longer than others students spent in college, but that was no reason to worry.

The warden himself was a slim man, with neither fat nor muscle. His hair, beginning to recede, was a light brown dusted with grey. He had a pair of half-moon reading glasses perched on the end of his long, thin nose, and the eyes above them were the brightest, clearest blue that Adam had ever seen. And, as Adam regarded him, he was overcome by a strange, subservient feeling, as though the warden ruled over him. It was Master.
“Say nothing,” Master commanded. “You will not know who I am until I tell you. You will listen to me respectfully and, after some consideration of my offer, you will agree.” He paused. “Forget what I just said, and return to yourself.
“Are you there?" the warden asked. "I can't see you."
"A necessary precaution," Adam lied - he didn't have a camera hookup to connect Emrys to. "I wouldn't want certain people to find me, after all. People like you, for example."

“Speak nothing but the truth to me,” Master commanded as he appeared in Adam’s view. “You will explain why you took so long to let me contact you, then forget you did so.” He paused. “Forget what I just said, and return to yourself.
"Jameson!" Corellon demanded. "What took so long?"
"I was recovering from my latest death, and took some painkillers to help. I had to remove my AI so they wouldn’t affect his circuits,” Adam said obediently, then blinked. “Sorry, sir,” he said, knowing full well how insincere he sounded. “Your mission is done. Are you satisfied?"
Corellon paused. “You didn’t have any trouble, I trust?”
“Only a little,” Adam said. “Nothing I couldn’t handle, although I wish you had told me what Falcon was capable of.” He paused, blinking. “I died three times,” Adam said flatly. “I got over it.”

Adam blinked, returning to himself as MacDammer screamed on the floor in front of him. A moment later he went very still, and Adam, bending down to take his pulse, found that he had died.
The gas must have reacted badly with the elanoamphetamine, he thought, still almost in shock from the things he had just remembered. Corellon had been manipulating him all along. In fact, he had been one of the very children who he had taken control years before, leading to his capture sending him to jail in the first place. Corellon must have been keeping track of him for years, nudging him towards one thing or another, grooming him to serve.
But no more, Adam swore. He would end it tonight.
“Well done,” said Wild Eyes, coming forward and clapping him on the back.
Adam’s eyes narrowed. The long-standing fear and hatred he had had of the psychopath… that too, had come from Corellon. How much else of who he was today was because of the bastard’s manipulations? MacDammer had known, he thought. He had been trying to break the memories free while he had a chance of overcoming Corellon’s powers, on his first dose of elanoamphetamine.
Now that he knew the source of his fear of Wild Eyes – in fact, now that he acknowledged it at all – he could overcome it. Blackstone wasn’t invincible – he couldn’t be. He liked to teleport around the battlefield, but his smoke didn’t really help much in concealing him, only making him more mysterious and dangerous. He could attack at a distance, either by launching spiny projectiles or by extending his limbs. He was immune to many things, and healed very quickly from them – bullets, flames, poisonous gas… he simply ignored them, letting the fact of their uselessness intimidate.
But there was one thing that he hadn’t ignored, Adam realized. There was one thing that, rather than absorbing, Wild Eyes had dodged. Lightning. That must be the answer.
But Adam’s lightning wasn’t strong enough to kill, not on its own. He would need something else to help him take out Blackstone, if he could. His eyes fell on the President’s desk, a sturdy thing on long metal legs. They would do.
Adam whirled, sending a weak blast of lightning at Blackstone, who threw himself to the side, confirming his suspicions. He transformed into metal for a moment, tearing off the leg, then turned flesh again and electrifying it.
“Oh, we’re fighting again?” Wild Eyes said, smiled widening. “Wonderful…” He morphed outwards, smoke curling around him to hide his form from view, and suddenly lunged forward, clearly not realizing that the metal leg Adam now held could do any more damage to him than a simple bullet could.
Adam sidestepped and drove the leg upwards into Blackstone’s heart.
The psychopath screamed in pain, his flesh beginning to bubble and melt outwards from the leg. Adam watched in awe as the powerful shapeshifter was reduced to a screaming puddle of goo, loosely held together around a metal table leg.
“Electricity must interfere with whatever he uses as a nervous system,” Adam murmured as Blackstone finally fell silent, still bubbling. “I’ll leave him here for the police to pick up. Assuming he survives.” He walked out calmly, heading for the outgoing teleporter the White House had. He bypassed the hefty security on its systems entirely, setting it up to drop him in his safehouse by editing the circuits directly, then hopped through.
Several minutes later, he was deposited in his safehouse, and immediately opened up the file of Wild Eyes’ incoming teleport that Emrys has saved. After only an hour or so of work, Adam had pinpointed the location of Corellon’s base: it was in Arizona, and the only prison in Arizona with both the capacity to hold metahumans and a teleporter was the hub of the United States prison system, the ‘Burning Box’, outside Phoenix. It was famous for its powerful energy shields which blocked any access without using the teleporter. It was famous for its powerful energy shields. which blocked any access without using the teleporter, as well as tinting the whole place red and giving it its nickname. There was no way in without using a teleporter hooked up to the government’s network.
Of course, many teleporter’s on that network had lousy security. Adam waltzed into a police station which had a teleporter, and five minutes later had access to the government’s network. The teleporter had some blood on it, but that was okay. He’d only be using it once, after all.
Adam quickly set the teleporter to send him to the Burning Box, disappearing into limbo just as more police burst into the station. They’d likely follow him through the teleporter: he’d have the advantage, though, as he could easily take them out while they were disoriented by the trip. That was assuming, of course, that there were no metahuman guards on the other side. Any guards would likely be masquerading as human, even if they were actually metahuman prisoners recruited by Corellon, as any visitors to the prison would be coming through the teleporter. Adam would probably be able to take them out before they took stock of him or activated their powers.
As he waited in the plain white space outside existence, Adam did his best to deduce what sort of control Corellon had over him. He only had a few memories to work from, so it was hard to say with certainty, but he could make a few basic assumptions. Clearly Corellon was able to give him commands and force him to obey. He had mainly done it aloud, though, and the one time Adam remembered getting the commands telepathically had been before Adam’s powers had woken. Adam would stop by the prison’s hospital wing and stuff his ears with cotton to prevent him from hearing.
Corellon had demonstrated the ability to look through Adam’s mind as well, or at least to look through his eyes: he had known that Adam was trying to decide what to major in at college, after all, despite being far away. When he had next spoken to Adam, after his first and second deaths, Corellon had quickly given the commands, but had shown no power to see Adam’s mind. This was supported by their most recent conversation, after Falcon’s death: Corellon had needed to ask Adam what had happened. So while he would surely know of Adam’s approach, he wouldn’t be able to see what Adam did, for whatever that was worth.
Corellon’s other powers would also be dangerous, though. While his telepathy was apparently limited and the empathy would probably be of little use on Adam, whose emotions were dim if present at all, the ability to leech life would be problematic. As far as Adam knew, though, Corellon couldn’t leech life unless he was actually touching the victim, so avoiding contact would solve that. According to a documentary he had seen on the immortal telepath, it took about a minute per year of life stolen, so a short time of contact would also be safe - Adam was in the prime of his life, after all. It was also possible that Adam would be able to block that power entirely by transforming into metal, but as he didn’t know whether it would do it or not Adam resolved not to test it out. For all he knew, it would accelerate the draining.
Fortunately, Corellon’s list of powers ended there. He lacked telekinesis as MacDammer had had, and he had no offensive powers besides his telepathy. While it was likely powerful enough to eventually break through Adam’s new ‘immunity’ to telepathy, especially given the link they seemed to share from long ago, even before breaking through it would give Adam a splitting headache. While Corellon would possess the same physical and mental enhancements all metahumans had, Adam shared them, and Corellon was physically older than Adam. His power to steal life might perhaps make him younger and closer to his prime – Adam had never found out if it simply extended Corellon’s life or actually gave him youth – but even at his best he would be on an even footing with Adam, who could transform into metal to overpower Corellon physically.
BROOOOOOOOOUUUUuuuuuuu
Adam burst into the world and instantly sent out a wide wash of electrical energy, hopefully stunning any guards. As he looked around, though, he saw no one: not guards, not prisoners, not prisoners masquerading as guards. It was rather quiet, in fact. And somehow familiar.
As he walked the empty halls, stopping by the infirmary to find it stripped of everything down the cotton balls he had planned to plug his ears with, Adam identified the feeling. It was the same disquieting feeling he had felt from his island, when Nightmare had marched him through the empty halls to get to a teleporter and take him to prison. The island had been empty because Adam had sent everyone else to safety, leaving him the only person on the whole island. The only living person, anyway. Nightmare was rumored to have died and returned to life in order to hunt the wicked down. While it had likely been something similar to the activation of Adam’s own powers, Adam hadn’t heard Nightmare breathing except when he needed to speak, and he had stood unnaturally still while waiting for the teleporter to start up.
So, Adam was the only living person in the area, or so said the quiet feeling that permeated the area. Had Corellon fled, bringing his servitors with him?
No, Adam decided, realizing that he had a faint headache, that was simply what Corellon wanted him to think. He had keep in mind that along with his great strength, Corellon had had centuries to learn subtlety with his powers. Although Adam’s emotions were faint, they existed, and Corellon was playing upon them masterfully. Concentrating, Adam was able to separate the foreign emotion from his own, finding as he did that he had a slight desire to return to the teleporter and leave. He didn’t want to go up to the warden’s office on the top floor. It wasn’t a strong denial of the idea, just a slight inclination not to go there.
So he did. He climbed the stairs, finding his way to the warden’s office by considering, at each turn, which way he wanted to go the least, and going that way. It was surprisingly easy, and became more so as he got closer. Corellon was becoming panicked, and trying to influence Adam more, perhaps thinking he had been a little too subtle. Adam rubbed the back of his head and wished he had had the foresight to take a painkiller before coming here.
Finally, Adam found the warden’s, and found that he really, truly didn’t want to go into it. The contents frightened him. Yes, he thought, nodding firmly, Corellon was inside, and he didn’t want Adam there. He transformed into metal, sighing in relief as the pressure on his skull lessened, and slammed his shoulder into the door, forcibly opening it.
“Corellon,” he said curtly, stepping through.
The aging telepath stepped backwards, eyes wide, then grinned triumphantly. “Halt,” he commanded, his voice reverberating in Adam’s metallic ears.
Adam grimaced, feeling his migraine worsen, and found his legs stopping on their own. He took another step, with great effort.
Corellon’s eyes narrowed angrily. “I said, stop. You are my servant, Adam Jameson,” he hissed, every word causing Adam pain as he tried to keep moving forward. “Return to your normal form,” he eventually ordered, seeming to realize that the metal was interfering with his powers.
As Adam was changed against his will back to flesh, the pain redoubled. He found himself kneeling.
“I didn’t want to break your mind, but it seems inescapable,” Corellon commented, walking around Adam, apparently calm and confident that he had one. “Perhaps you had a reason, though. Why did you do it, Adam? Why did you kill my servant Gawain Blackstone?”
“Your manipulations had been revealed to me,” Adam heard the words tumbling from his mouth, and was disgusted with himself. “I remembered you–“ With a surge of strength, Adam managed to clamp his jaws shut, muffling the rest of his explanation.
“You still resist?” Corellon demanded. He sighed. “I really hate doing this… it feels good, but it’s just so bad for me.” He stepped behind the desk and pulled open a drawer, removing a slim syringe of greenish fluid.
Elanoamphetamine, Adam realized. He was going to boost his powers in order to break down Adam’s resistance completely. But then he internally smiled, seeing the path to his victory. When Galen had taken a dose of elanoamphetamine, a tiny amount of Adam’s poison breath had been enough to kill him. The same would surely apply to Corellon.
Of course, after Corellon gave him an order he had no chance of resisting. But there would be a slight delay between when the chemical flowed through Corellon’s veins and when it took effect, Adam thought as he watched Corellon inject it into his arm. First it would be being pulled back towards the heart, Adam though. Then… he strained his memory, searching for what anatomy he knew… the blood would pass through the lungs, picking up more oxygen. Next it would return to the heart, to be distributed throughout the body. So around now… he pushed as hard as he could against Corellon’s mental hold, and managed to puff a single streamer of gas. Immediately afterwards, the elanoamphetamine took effect in Corellon’s body, as the telepath sighed in relief and stood a little straighter.
“Tell me,” Corellon ordered, turning to face Adam again.
Adam opened his mouth to tell his Master what he desired when he noticed a small cloud of greenish smoke drifting towards the exposed skin of Master’s neck. Master hadn’t noticed it yet, but Adam knew that it was dangerous. He was about to tell Master to be careful when the smoke touched Master’s skin.
Adam blinked in relief as the bonds around his mind lifted. Corellon was screaming on the floor, and moments later went limp. How anticlimactic, he though. I would have thought that perhaps the link between him and me would kill me, just like Falcon’s link with