Caroline slipped into the room on her own. Helen was hidden behind a pile of boxes just outside of the cell her family was entombed in; she and Caroline had agreed that Jacob would be the one to free his family. Caroline was confident he'd want to...if she could find him.

As good luck would have it, he was sitting in the main room...but so was Syndrome. "Hi, Dad. Hi, Jacob," she said with a smile, holding out her arms. Jacob ran over to give her a hug.

Syndrome smiled. "Hi, baby. Any luck in finding ElastiGirl?"

"Nope." Caroline took a deep breath. "Dad. I was wondering...well, shouldn't Jacob learn how to work the controls in the cells before the--execution? I was going to take him down to that cell and show him how to work the knobs, what they do, the effects they have on people, and all that."

"Sure, baby, that sounds like a great idea," Syndrome said. One of the screens caught his eye. "Hey, what's it doing?"

Caroline looked. It was running a slide show with white quotes; things like Keep your eye upon the doughnut and not upon the hole and Don't tell me the sky's the limit when there are footprints on the moon and one of Caroline's favorites, Socrates was famed for wisdom not because he was omniscient but because he realized at the age of seventy that he still knew nothing. "Dad, it's a screen saver. It runs through a bunch of quotes I've compiled over the years."

"Wow." Syndrome's full attention was captured by the quotes parading before him, and Caroline, hardly daring to believe her luck, led Jacob out of the room.

"Caro," he whispered urgently as they got outside. "We aren't really going to hurt them, are we?"

"Of course not," Caroline assured him quietly. "I just needed an excuse to get you away from Dad. We're going to rescue them." She flashed him a grin. "Actually, you're going to rescue them. I'm just going to tell you how to do it."

Jacob grinned and gave her a bear hug.

They emerged into the hallway just outside the cell. Caroline knelt down in front of her brother. "Now Jacob, listen carefully. When you go in, the console has a series of buttons on the lefthand side. The one you want to push is the large green one with silver speckles. Once you press it, they're going to drop, so make sure they're okay. You got all that?"

Jacob nodded in determination. Raising his chin firmly, he walked into the room and up to the console. Caroline stepped back to stand with Helen as he reached out a hand, hesitated, and then pressed a button. With a fizzle and a clang, Dash, Violet, and Bob fell to the ground in a heap. Bob especially seemed unable to move.

"The cell suppresses powers," Caroline murmured to Helen. "As long as they're in there, Dash can't run, Violet can't use a force field or invisibility, Jacob can't shift, you can't stretch, and your husband's extraordinary strength is gone. In fact, from the look of it, he's got no strength at all."

Jacob was worried, and that overcame his fear. He crossed the room and knelt next to his father--his real father. "Are you okay?" he asked in concern. "I'm sorry...there's technology in this cell that prevents people from being able to use their powers. Caroline explained it to me once, but I wasn't really paying attention."

Violet straightened up, then helped Dash to his feet and glanced curiously at Jacob. "Who are you?"

Jacob's eyes widened. Somehow he'd expected his family to know who he was right away. "You don't recognize me?" he asked in a rather small voice.

Caroline couldn't stand for that. She and Helen came in as Violet and Dash struggled to help their father up. "It's been ten years, you know. And you didn't recognize them at first either."

Jacob looked over at Caroline, crestfallen. "Oh, yeah."

Bob slowly raised his head. "Jack-Jack?" he said weakly.

Jacob nodded. "I like Jacob better, but yup."

Bob tried to stand, reached out to give his youngest a hug, but he really didn't have any strength. He collapsed against Violet and Dash again. Helen hurried over to support him, and Jacob looked up in fright, wanting to do something.

Caroline quietly reached into a steel box on the wall and pulled something. The lights shut down on the console and overhead. Bob straightened quickly, strength coursing through him suddenly. "What did you do?" he asked her suspiciously.

Caroline held up something small and green. "Pulled the fuse. All the electricity in this cell has gone off, and nothing electronic works. Including the Triumvate."

"The--"

"There are three modules that are usually used to drain powers," Caroline clarified. "We call it the Triumvate."

"We?" Dash repeated with a frown.

"Me and Caroline and Da--" Jacob stopped mid-word and looked up at Caroline. "Caro, what do I call him? He isn't my dad and I can't remember what his real name is."

Caroline put her hand lightly on his shoulder. "Syndrome."

Jacob nodded. "Right. Syndrome."

Bob paled. "Syndrome? He's alive?"

Jacob and Caroline both nodded.

Bob studied Caroline, suddenly suspicious again. "You don't look much more than nineteen. What are you doing here anyway?"

"I'm fifteen. And I'm here because Syndrome's my father and he's all the family I've got."

Bob froze. One look at his face and Jacob knew Caroline had been right--Bob hated her because her father was Syndrome. Before anyone could say anything else, Jacob reached up and took her hand. "Caro?" he said in a small voice. "C-can we go outside? It's awfully dark in here." It wasn't all pretending either; the dark really did scare him. And the shadows fell over Bob's face to make an effect truly terrible.

"Sure thing," Caroline told him, rumpling his hair slightly. She led them outside the room. Jacob felt a little better; in the fluorescent lights, Bob looked less angry, just frightened.

Helen spoke up before Bob could. "All right, we're all out. What do we do now? How are we going to get out of here?"

"Without Syndrome catching us?" Violet added.

Jacob was a little surprised that no one was making a big deal out of the fact that he'd been found, but he met Caroline's emerald eyes briefly and understood. There would be time for reunions later, when they were all safe.

"Okay, let me think," Caroline mused. "If I can get into CC, I can call in a 44-19 and clear everyone out of here...then you could just get a jet and go. And if I went in running and breathless, I could use the excuse that you guys escaped from your cell...this way."