A/N: Fair warning, McNamara is a bad guy in this story. I'm sorry, I love him too, but I could just see him doing some pretty nasty stuff for what he believes to be the 'greater good'. Plus, he's dramatic as hell.
...
They talk for the rest of the day, although it's hard to track the time in here with no windows. The others explain to her how long they've been here for, share their theories on who exactly PEIP are and what they want.
"I overheard General McNamara saying that there's military potential for the research project." Ted mutters.
"They always say in the lab that it's for medical research." Charlotte comments.
"They just want us to think that it's for the greater good. Trying to justify that shit, it's sick."
"Maybe they just don't want us out there... in the outside world." Paul suggests, looking at the floor and picking at a loose thread on his shirt.
"What, it's all a power play? I don't buy it." Ted disagrees.
"There might be something to do that." Bill interjects. "Heck, maybe it's all of the above."
"So how did they find out about you guys?" Emma is still in awe at the concept of others.
Charlotte shakes her head wordlessly. "My husband Sam... I told him the truth one day, and... he was confused, didn't even realise I'd be in danger if he reported it-"
"We all know he didn't give a crap, Charlotte." Ted says scornfully. "Your husband didn't want a crazy for a wife, so he called an ambulance. PEIP found out somehow, maybe intercepted the call."
"They can do that? That's probably how they got me. I was travelling and I had to book a flight home..." A picture is forming in Emma's mind.
"Well, I got caught out of my own stupidity." Bill sighs. "I took my little girl Alice out to the park one day, but she's a fast climber and she got to the top of this tree before I could stop her... she fell and all I could think to do was grow out the branches and the flower bed to catch her."
"Oh my god, was she ok?"
"She was fine, but there were about a dozen bystanders. She's with her mother now, I hope." His eyes are wet and Emma almost regrets asking.
Emma turns to Paul, who has remained quiet. She tilts her head questioningly. "It was a long time ago." He says. "When I was seven, I had this dog, and he ran out into the road - got ploughed down by a car before I could stop him." He slips into the memory, holding his hands out in front of him. "He was still alive, but whining and... God, he was hurt. So I just... fixed him. And the people who'd been driving the car, they sort of - freaked out. Called the police I guess. PEIP showed up."
Emma feels her stomach drop to the floor. He'd been taken as a child, like Jane was always afraid she would be. She glances over at the others and sees Charlotte silently crying, Paul's grief spreading to her.
"God, that's awful." She whispers. "Those sons of bitches." Anger wells up in her but she doesn't feel the usual pressure of her powers.
"I'm ok." Paul insists. "Lonely though, until Bill showed up. Then the others." He smiles.
"So you grew up here?"
"Well I wouldn't put it like that." He laughs awkwardly. "I didn't exactly have family meals and play catch with General McNamara."
Emma thinks of how her parents wanted to send her away, when she first started showing her power... God, what if they had? If Jane hadn't stepped in? She supposes she'd have grown up here with him.
The conversation moves on to talk of how things work here - meals, shower time, trips to mysterious other rooms to be studied. But Emma keeps thinking about how close things had been, how different her life could have turned out. She thinks about it all evening, until they start turning in for the night, and then she thinks about it some more, lying in the top bunk of the spare bed, until she falls into a restless sleep.
...
She is woken by a shrill ringing. "F*ck." She mutters as she flies upright and smacks her head on the ceiling. The others are all sat up in bed too, stretching and yawning.
"Morning." Bill smiles at her. "It's alright - just wake up. Someone will be through in a minute to take us to breakfast."
She climbs down from her perch and combs her fingers through her hair, rubs the grit out of her eyes. She feels drained before the day has even begun. She's just rolling up her pant legs so they don't drag on the ground when the door to the room swings open. A tall man with curly shoulder length hair dressed all in black strides in.
"Good morning." He announces. "I see you've all met Emma, our newest recruit." He turns to her. "You can call me General McNamara. I'm sorry we had to take you by force, girl, but you'll settle in here soon enough." He turns and leads out of the room again, and bizarrely the others all follow. They told her last night about the cafeteria, but she just thought there'd have been more... build up to it. He doesn't even tell them where they're going, they all just know.
She sticks close to Paul as they troop through the corridor, which she is horrified to see if lined with what seems to be some kind of SWAT team. She tries not to shy away at the firearms being pointed at her head, but its hard to say the least, even when Paul doesn't seem bothered.
The 'cafeteria' is only a minute or so's walk away, and is small and cramped. There is just one table with benches either side, and they all take their seats to eat the porridge already set out there. Once they are sat down, Emma feels she can risk a question.
"What the hell is going on?" She directs at McNamara.
"You are here to contribute to a great cause, Emma. You have defied us for two decades, wasting your life and doing nothing but hurting those around you, but now you finally have the chance to give back to society, a society that you have plagued for your life up to this point."
His words, unprovoked insults, knock the wind out of her sails entirely. "You bastard. You can't do this... I didn't ask to be here!" She hisses, flicking one hand in his direction until she remembers the cuff.
"You are not in your right mind. This is what's best for you, and for us. Now you will stop talking back to me, or there will be consequences." He is infuriatingly calm, right up until she spits at him.
Charlotte audibly gasps and she sees Bill looking away right before the sting of a slap spread across her cheek. She stares at the General in shock.
"Do you understand?" He demands.
She nods numbly. You mustn't let the Bad Men get you, she hears Jane in her head.
Great. Just great.
...
There is at least consistency in this place, she learns. Wake up, breakfast, experiments, lunch, back to the cell, supervised showers if they're lucky, dinner, go to sleep. The experiments are always the worst part of the day, of course, but as Emma realises early on, there are two specific brands of terrible.
Days in the ring, she learns quickly, are difficult. She is taken into a warehouse like arena, and her cuff is removed before her powers are tested, pushed and probed. She likes having her ability back, even if she gets the flooding sensation of pins and needles when the cuff is taken off after so long. But it doesn't make up for the way she is forced to use it, all day, to lift heavier and heavier objects, to stop projectiles flying her way, once to throw some poor test subject across the room. They want to see what she can do, test her limits, and by the time she is done for the day she is entirely exhausted, sinking into bed with a bone deep weariness.
Days in the lab are worse.
She fights it the first time, when they strap her down and start taking blood samples and swabs and pulling and prodding. They force her into an MRI scanner, and the noise in there is deafening. She squeezes her eyes shut and thinks about Jane, and Tom and Tim. When they finally let her out, she punches wildly at the first person she comes across, who immediately smashes her head against a nearby desk and wrenches her arm behind her back. Hot blood gushes from her nose, and she coughs and splutters as they wrestle her back to the cell to avoid swallowing it. They throw her in and lock the door behind as always. She shouts out a couple of curse words as their footsteps recede.
"What happened?" Paul is the only other one in the room - he rushes to her side. She just shakes her head. "The lab?" He guesses. "Oh, Emma, I'm sorry. I should have warned you-"
"You didn't know." She sniffs, wincing at the pain in her face.
"I think it's broken." His hands hover like he wants to touch it but is holding back. "Can I help?"
"I don't know how you can." She shrugs, but sits down on the floor with him when he gestures anyway.
"It's what I can do." He whispers conspiratorially. "My power."
"What?" She whispers back.
"Remember when I told you about my dog..." He trails off and then tries again, seeing the distance in her gaze that comes with shock. "Let me show you?" He offers instead. When she nods, he places his hands gently on her face, then moves two fingers to the bridge of her nose.
She braces herself for the crack of him resetting it, but instead she sees a light blue glow, and feels an intense heat spreading across her face. Paul hums absent mindedly, moving his fingers every now and then. After about ten seconds, he gasps, and his hands fly to his own face - blood is dripping down his chin. He takes a few long breaths, and then reaches for a handkerchief from his bed, handing it to her.
"Feel better?" He smiles, and she does. She really, really does.
"Did you just... heal my broken nose?" She isn't sure why she is sceptical, given her own situation and all she's seen and heard.
"Uh huh." He takes another scrap of cloth and wipes at his own face. "I can fix people. That's my thing."
"But it hurts you?"
"Yeah, there's a temporary transfer of the pain into my body. But I don't get the injury permanently, just a reflection of it, the sensations. And then it goes."
"That's incredible."
He blushes. "Thanks." He mutters.
...
Paul is incredible, Emma decides. He is honest above all else, and kind to her more than she could ever expect of someone raised in a place like this.
"He doesn't remember a lot of it." Char tells her one day, when its just the two of them in the cell. "The world, I mean."
"He was so young. Does he talk much about it?"
"Not at all. Sometimes I just... have a look, to see what he's thinking about when he's especially sad." Charlotte studies her hands.
"You read his mind?" Emma starts.
"It's not like reading, more like... hearing. But it's out of context, and I can't get specific words. Just... impressions."
"That's cool." She says. And kind of scary, she thinks. "Don't do that on me though."
"I didn't mean to make you feel uncomfortable." She apologises.
"No, its fine." There's a light whirring sound - air conditioning kicking on. The pair sit in comfortable silence for a while. "Did he ever try to escape?"
Charlotte looks upset suddenly. "It's one of the things I can never hear. It's just... not in his brain. Or he's doing a real good job of blocking it out."
It isn't until later, when Emma is watching Paul pick at his meatloaf in the cafeteria, that she really resolves to figure him out. What does he do in the ring, for example? All she can think is that they take him to a hospital or something; they surely wouldn't hurt one of their own just so he could heal them, unless they trusted him with that. And why has he never tried to escape? Doesn't he want to? Its almost all she's been thinking about for days. And she needs everyone to be on board.