Exfiltrate 1.1
I woke up and immediately wished I hadn't.
I was still in the vehicle that was transporting me from prison in Boston to the Birdcage, still up to my chin in containment foam. Still alone, still trapped in a narrow, confined space, and still utterly unable to move.
Truth be told? I was a little surprised that they hadn't provided a recording of Emma or Bonesaw taunting me, since they'd managed to make this journey my personal hell in every other respect.
I also had to pee.
I couldn't even use my power to distract myself. The vehicle I was trapped in was moving too quickly for me to get a handle on any bugs in the areas we passed through. Worse, there was a tinker device somewhere in the truck and it was suppressing my power in much the same way Leet's swarm machine had jammed it during the fight against Coil.
And, finally, the psychiatrist in the prison infirmary had prescribed a drug intended to reduce my allegedly aggressive outbursts, and it made me slower, more quiescent than I had every right to be under the circumstances.
An antipsychotic.
For not being calm enough about one of the world's greatest "heroes" brutally taking my team apart so her organization wouldn't have to change a little.
For being less than content about being railroaded in a slapdash farce of a trial.
For reacting to being broken, humiliated, and stripped of everything in front of my father.
Fucking laughable.
Maybe I was crazy. Crazy to have thought I could be a hero to begin with, crazy to think the Protectorate was trustworthy, crazy to think I could have started to reform it.
Maybe this world was so fundamentally fucked up that treating someone who wanted things to work the way they should just this fucking once for psychosis was the right thing to do.
The truck slowed and turned, then slowed again. Less than fifteen seconds later, it came to a stop.
Despite the haloperidol, my adrenaline spiked. We were already there? Had I really been asleep that long?
I heard the locks on the door being undone, and I braced myself. I didn't know what was going to happen, but I'd be ready to act the moment I saw an opportunity.
The door opened. I wasn't sure what I'd expected, but the aggressively normal man who was peering at me through large frame glasses . . . wasn't it.
He was in his late thirties, clean-shaven and short-haired, dressed in a light blue dress shirt and tan slacks. I would have said he was tidy, but the pocket protector in his left breast pocket pushed him into fussiness. Something about him seemed . . . off. Nobody who dressed like that would naturally be in the business of prison breaks.
"Are you with Dragon?" I blurted.
He looked surprised.
Apparently not.
I tried again. "Who are you?"
"We've met, after a fashion," he said, hoisting himself into the truck. "I'm the Number Man."
I blinked, still trying to make him mesh with my expectations of what was going to happen to me. "The Birdcage has an accountant?" I asked stupidly.
He looked thoughtful. "Not to my knowledge."
My drug-crippled thought process eventually caught up. "Cauldron," I spat.
He sprayed something from what looked like a can of mace on the yellow containment foam, and it started to dissolve. "Yes," he said.
No, I thought. The Birdcage suddenly became a lot more appealing. It was true that Lung and Bakuda were there, but so was Panacea—another reminder of the system's incompetence—and she could make bugs.
"Why are you kidnapping me?" I asked.
"Kidnap?" he asked. "Most would call this a rescue, considering that the alternative is death in the Birdcage."
"I'll survive until the end of the world regardless of where I go," I said, giving voice to one of the thoughts that I'd used to ground myself in the days between Alexandria's destruction of the Undersiders and my trial. Whatever happened, I still had a role to play and I still had to prepare. "I know too much about Cauldron to think that a 'rescue' from you will work out in my favor."
"I recommend withholding judgment until your understanding of our operations comes from us and not Echidna," he said. "We pride ourselves on our ability to reach mutually satisfactory arrangements."
The containment foam finished dissolving, and I found myself having to lean against the side of the van to help support my weight. My legs were asleep.
"Is that so," I said. I flexed my feet to help restore circulation. "Forgive me if I don't take your word for it."
"That's reasonable," he said. Satisfied I was free, he turned and hopped out of the truck. After a few seconds I followed him, doing my best to ignore the pins and needles in my legs, and took in my surroundings. The truck had been parked inside the warehouse. Despite the Tinker device interfering with my control, I could still sense the thousands of tiny lives surrounding us—worms underneath the floor, cockroaches in the corners and under boxes, termites in the walls, spiders and their prey distributed throughout.
Why would they go to so much effort to send me to the Birdcage only to prevent me from arriving? Maybe Alexandria had told the truth about Cauldron distancing itself from her, and the two had different agendas. I admittedly was curious about what they'd have to say. If nothing else, they were powerful and I could try to talk to them about finding Jack Slash.
Still, I was free here and now, and even in hand-to-hand combat I figured I had a shot against an unarmed, middle-aged man whose power, if he had one, was bank accounts. If I could tackle him, I could take the keys and drive the truck somewhere else.
I selected his lower back as my target. He was distracted, saying something about a door, and I charged him. My legs protested, but I built up some speed and flung myself out of the back of the truck.
He sidestepped me completely, and I ended up crashing headfirst into a white refrigerator that hadn't been there when I'd started moving.
"Watch your step," he said blandly.
I picked myself up.
He was smiling slightly, damn him.
I didn't give him the satisfaction of massaging my forehead to check for damage. I knew it would swell and bruise within the hour, and I'd tend to it later, if I got a chance to be alone.
I looked around. Where had the warehouse gone? I reached out with my power to get a better grasp of my surroundings, but—nothing. Not a single bug in my entire radius.
Humans were not that clean, ever, so that left me with only one possible conclusion: either we were in space, or whoever cleaned the building we were standing in had superpowers.
I didn't comment on my inability to use my power—he probably already knew, anyway—and studied my new surroundings. I was standing in a kitchenette that opened up into a larger room where a white chair set before a white desk with a white laptop. Behind it, white pillows with white pillowcases sat atop a white bed with white sheets and a white comforter. A white door opened off the kitchen area to a bathroom which contained only white fixtures and was stocked with white towels and hygiene products in white bottles.
The layout and furnishings put me in mind of a hotel room designed for long-term stays, but the color scheme screamed something more like prison or psych ward. The spartan interior décor and lack of windows combined to give me a general sense of unease. Did they mean to be so sinister?
"Is there something about being evil that forbids you from using color?" I asked.
His smile became a warmer, bigger one. "That's a question I encourage you to ask at the meeting tomorrow. I'd be interested to hear the answer myself."
"Meeting?"
"Yes, our founder wants to talk with you about how you'd like to occupy yourself the for the next two years. I'll collect you a little before eight. Door." A portal opened. He stepped into a similarly featureless hallway and was gone before I could give voice to any of the half-dozen questions that sprang to mind, not the least of which was what time it was now.