Cog had his drone ready when they brought in the third prisoner. He watched quietly

as they took her leather clothes, mask, and weapons. They dressed her in a hospital

gown and retreated from the room. Lusts were denied by the senior officer. The word

Becker was used as some kind of warning. They locked her in and went about their

duties.

Cog went to work sabotaging the security, using the cameras and microphones to play

a loop of their victim sleeping. He ordered the drone to take vitals as he thought about

the next step of his plan. He had to wake the prisoner up.

The drone scanned the room. They hadn’t left anything that might be used as a

weapon except the blanket on the bed. That meant there weren’t any drugs present.

Cog ordered the drone to administer a small electric shock. It was the best he could

do at the moment.

The woman woke up instantly. She snatched up the drone before it could flee out of

reach. She looked around at the cell. Her face was expressionless. That didn’t bode

well for her mental preparedness.

“Can you hear me?,” asked Cog through the drone.

“Yes,” said the girl. She stared at the drone, noting the cameras for eyes it used.

“We are prisoners in a facility in an unknown location,” said Cog. “I have a small

plan to bust out of here. Do you want to come along?”

“Yes,” said the third prisoner. She put the drone on the ground.

“Do you have any powers that might be helpful in an escape?,” asked Cog.

“No,” said the woman.

“Why did they bring you here?,” said Cog. “They are going to try to change our

minds so we will fight for them.”

“No,” said the woman. She stood and looked at the door. “When do we leave?”

“I don’t know,” said Cog. “The other prisoner has been put under a nullifier to turn

off her powers. I am waiting for her to generate enough power to fight. Can you

fight?”

“Yes,” said the prisoner.

“When we get ready to go, I will open the door. There is a motor pool three levels up,

and south of your cell. Can you get there on your own while we break out of our

cells?,” asked Cog. The drone registered a small trace of amusement on her face.

“Yes,” said the woman. Cog noted she was compacted muscle compared to the other

human woman. She also held herself as stiff as a board. Dark hair was messy from her

handling.

“There are powers here too,” said Cog. “I will do my best to draw them off so you can

escape without anyone noticing you.”

“No,” said the woman.

“Excuse me?” said Cog. He mentally braced for an argument, and then wondered how

he could have an argument with someone who only spoke in binary.

“Kill them,” said the woman. The monotone was the same, the expression the same,

but menace had crept into her bearing. “Kill them all.”

“No,” said Cog. “We escape. Then you can come back and do whatever you want.

Once it goes in the pot, the objective is out.”

The woman didn’t say anything for a long time according to Cog’s chrono. She stared

at the drone. She sniffed the air.

“Will wait,” was all she said.

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Cog took that for a victory for the moment. She could obviously do something. They

wouldn’t have secured her if she couldn’t. He put the question in the back of his

mind. He had to check on the other prisoner to see how much longer she needed to

charge up.

“Finch,” said the woman.

Cog paused. What did that mean? Finch was a Earth bird. It was a songbird. It was

deemed harmless by the humans.

“I am Finch,” said the woman. “I will wait.”

“Don’t worry,” said Cog. He placed Finch in for the placeholder he had been using

for the drone. “They want two more of us before they do anything to us. We’ll be

gone before Four and Five get here.”

“Yes,” said Finch. One hand clenched into a fist.

“Now that we understand each other, I am going to check on things and make sure

we’re ready when the chance comes,” said Cog.

“Yes,” said Finch. She relaxed her hand as she looked around the room once more.

Anything could be a weapon if you had the right attitude.

And she was trained to have that attitude.

Cog ordered the drone back to the communications. He needed to do a check on what

their captors knew. Then he had to get over to the other prisoner and tell her what was

going on.

He didn’t like that Finch didn’t have a usable power. It would make things easier for

them if she could walk through walls, or had some kind of lightning speed.

She might be useful as some kind of distraction. He didn’t like that she wanted to kill

the people here. She might break from the plan to satisfy her urge. That placed him

in danger and he didn’t like that at all.

He sighed. He didn’t have a choice. He had to work with what he had. If she started

killing everyone in the place while roaming around on her own, there wasn’t much

he could do about that.

He was giving her a chance. That was the best he could do.

He had to look after his own tentacles before he worried about someone he was

planning to use as a distraction.

He didn’t like the fact that she could be using him as a distraction so she could

commit mayhem when she was let loose.

She didn’t have any powers. What was the worse she could do?

He decided not to think about that. Chicago had several masks without powers on

both sides of the fence in its past. The damage incurred by their battles was not

something to sneeze at.

He hoped he wasn’t unleashing a monster.

The drone fitted itself into the tap it had made in the enemy’s communication gear.

The chatter was not good. Somehow Four and Five knew they were looking for

Watson Security, and for Captain Mercer. Observers had them to the east of the

facility. They acted as if they knew where they were going.

Cog winced. Did he wait until Four and Five were captured, or did he break out now

and cause enough problems that the last two prisoners weren’t that important. Things

were getting way too complicated for his liking of simplicity.

Performing a rescue in hostile areas was not something he wanted to contemplate

doing. His shipmates were better at that sort of thing than he was. He was just there

to make the engines run.

And now he was on his own with two humans who might be able to get him out of

there so he could head back to his nest under Chicago.

Getting out of his cell seemed more advantageous than waiting for the last two to be

captured and then the mind warping to start.

In his opinion, it was better to be able to run away than being pinned in a room.

And running away seemed better than being magnetically depowered by the lunas

running the place.

Cog ordered his drone to inform the other two what he was doing as he thought about

how to take down his own door. It should be as easy as having his drone open the

door from the outside.

He didn’t want to depend on the other prisoners to free him from the magnetic cage

if he didn’t have to do that. They might not be able to get to his cell.

On the other hand, if he could get to the security center after getting out of the cell,

he could shut down all the mechanical aspects of the building which would make his

escape all the more easier. He wouldn’t have to depend on the others to follow a plan.

The gadgeteer might find a way to force him from the command center and cage him

up again.

Cog considered the problems ahead. His first inclination was to run. That was the way

of his people. He knew that was opposite of the other two prisoners. He could tell it

in the way they carried themselves. The nameless woman sat on her bunk, trying to

summon her power. Finch waited by the door with blanket in hand.

He wondered what she could do with a blanket.

He decided that an escape attempt would be better if the powers were out chasing

Four and Five. That meant only normal humans would be in the base with them. That

would make things easier for an escape.

The others agreed with his assessment. The nameless woman felt it would make it

easier to ambush the powers when they came back.

Finch just said “Yes,” when he told her about the change in plan.

Cog wouldn’t be surprised if she killed one of the humans before they overcame her

again.

So they had to wait a bit more. He could do that. He decided to have the drone work

its way to the edge of the command center. Plugging into the system there would give

him realtime information about what their captors were doing.

And he could use that against them when it was time to go.