“Prison break, great,” I muttered.

“What are you gonna do?” Ryan asked.

“I’m supposed to be a hero,” I reminded myself. “I need to stop the prison break.”

Within seconds of the alarm sounding, another prisoner stood in front of my prison cell. He was a large black man with a scar bisecting his left eyebrow, and he pressed his hands against the bars.

“Hey there, spoon-benders. Are you gonna get in on this?”

“No thanks, Shaman. I’m perfectly comfortable where I’m sitting,” Ryan said with a nervous smile.

“That wasn’t a question, Lockpick,” Shaman said to Ryan. The man unlocked our cell with a key, and I wondered how he had managed to acquire one. “We’re all in this together now. They’re gonna kill you too if things go south.”

Shaman pressed open the cell door before slamming his fist into the locking mechanism. After three powerful blows, the metal bar that attached to the lock was bent at a severe angle, preventing the door from ever closing again.

“Come on,” Shaman said, walking away and leaving the door to my prison cell ajar.

As Shaman walked away, I began considering my options. Half a dozen prisoners had entered the center of the cell block, and all of them had unknown superpowers. Theoretically, I could just start throwing chunks of concrete at them, but one of them might be able to counter them. Considering this, I decided to bide my time until I figured out what all of their powers were.

“Why did he call you Lockpick?” I asked after a few seconds of silence passed.

“Huh? Oh, it’s a nickname him and the other Legion members came up with when I mentioned that the only real use my power has is lockpicking.”

Ryan sighed before continuing to speak. “I guess we have no choice. We should probably remove our collars in case they figure out how to turn them back on.”

Almost casually, Ryan reached up to his neck and tore his collar in half. The steel of the collar warped and shattered as the muscles in his arms flexed powerfully.

“Jesus! You can do that!?” I shouted in surprise.

“Yeah, I’m a mutant. Aren’t you?”

“Uh, I don’t know. I can’t remember anything earlier than noon today.”

“Wow, that’s pretty bad but not unheard of among Enhanced Humans. Kingfisher and Calypso claim to have forgotten most of their childhoods.”

I wondered if they were lying too. The truth, that I was from a world where superpowers only existed in fiction, would be far harder to explain.

Ryan walked over and began helping me remove my collar. As we fiddled with the beeping device, he said, “Enhanced Humans is a catch-all term for humans with powers, but ninety percent of them are mutants, people who are born with their powers. Mutants can awaken to their power at any point in life, and the only commonality between mutants is that they are all much stronger, faster, and more durable than the average human.”

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Straining with effort, I said, “If I were a mutant, I’d be able to tear this collar off with my bare hands, right?”

“Yes,” Ryan confirmed. “You must have acquired your power some time after birth.”

I tried to reach for the bomb collar with my power, but my conjured hand fizzled before it could get close to my neck.

“Shit!” I swore. “Why can’t I get it off with telekinesis?”

“That’s the Mandeville Limit,” Ryan said like he was explaining a simple topic to a child. “We can’t use our powers within ten centimeters of a human cell.”

“Hmm,” I muttered. My world had a similar concept, though it was called something different. That would prevent me from using my power in an especially grotesque way, but it didn’t limit my lethality considering the extreme momentum I could build up with inanimate objects.

With the sound of tearing metal, my collar came undone at the clasp. When the two crescent moon shackles came far enough away from my flesh, my telekinesis activated automatically. In a blur of violent movement, the two shackles were thrown and flattened against the wall at blinding speed.

“Okay,” I said, breathing heavily. “Let’s go see what the others are planning.”

As Ryan and I approached the small group of prisoners standing in the center of the cell block, Shaman said, “Hey, kines. I see that you’ve decided to join the Legion’s righteous mission of liberation. This is Forgemaster, Speaker, Salieri, Ganymede, and Falcon.”

Including Ryan and me, eight prisoners had left their cells. A few of the prisoners had stayed in their cells, though most stood in the center of the block. The man introduced as Salieri was furiously drawing some kind of technical diagram on a large piece of paper, and Forgemaster glared at Shaman as he spoke.

“Oy, Shaman,” Forgemaster interjected angrily, “most of us aren’t on the Legion of Evil’s side. We just want to break out of here.”

The Legion of Evil? Oh my God.

“Right, you all have the right to be wrong,” Shaman said. “Either way, this is Lockpick and the new guy.”

“I’m Macro-Kinetic,” I said, introducing myself. “Not to sound like an idiot, but what’s the Legion of Evil?” I absolutely had to learn about the Legion of Evil as soon as possible. Any organization that could include the word “evil” in its name and still have members deserved to be studied.

The other prisoners groaned loudly, and Shaman’s eyes lit up. “I’m glad you asked. We are an organization dedicated to the end of anti-mutant repression. Our goal is true equality between the mundane and the enhanced. Imagine a world of true meritocracy, where the most deserving always win.”

“Uh huh,” I said noncommittally. “But why the word ‘evil?’ Aren’t you poisoning the well with that name?”

“‘Evil’ just means ‘self-interested,’ you see? Is it not the right of every man to be self-interested? The Legion of Evil believes that we should not be expected to use our powers for others. Rather, we should only be obligated to use our powers for ourselves.”

“When you put it that way…” I muttered.

“I’m done,” Salieri said, finally looking up from his diagram.

The prisoners moved to gather around the diagram Salieri had just finished drawing, and I followed them. I soon realized that the drawing was a perfect map of the Chateau, and our present location was marked with a large X.

“Is that right, Salieri?” Shaman asked. “Are we really underwater?”

“Yes,” Salieri, a nervous teenager, said. “The prison continues above our heads for about ten meters. Above that is more than fifty meters of water.”

“That’s a Hell of a swim,” Forgemaster said.

“We need to go for the elevators,” Shaman said authoritatively.

“Good luck,” Ryan said derisively. He pointed over to the only entrance to the cell block. For the first time, I noticed that four machine guns were pointed at the entrance. “How are we supposed to get out?”