Terror.

[Flux]

Flux laid on his stomach, hair wild from a long nap, staring blearily out of the one eye that wasn't obscured by his pillow at the Aryan Posterchild that was Klaus Heidegger. The Doctor was standing like he did, spine straight as an iron rod, staring down at Flux as though he were a loaf of fuzzy green bread.

The mutant boy had been rudely shoved awake with the muzzle of a plastic tranquilizer rifle only seconds before and had barely begun to think of sitting up when Picklepuss made a bold statement.

"Jericho would like to cut you a deal."

Flux was sure he'd misheard. He sat up slowly, listening to his joints groan, and rose to kneel in his bed.

"I have morning mouth," Flux grumbled thickly, licking the strangely fuzzy feeling off his teeth and testing for morning breath. His throat eased up as he yawned, and Flux stretched his arms to his sides. "Ok, so, now that I'm awake, let's start over. Mutanazi says what?"

[Doktor Klaus Heidegger]

Klaus sighed. Some days dealing with Felix Fletcher made the doctor want to put money into researching a way to medically shut someone the hell up.

"Jericho would like to cut you a deal. We have a unique problem, which requires a unique solution. We think you may be that solution. Jericho sometimes finds itself checking in patients with powers that are uncontrollable. We take these poor souls and we keep them safe from themselves and others. However, we have hit a snag."

Klaus cleared his throat and continued. "We have a mutant down Below that is one of these mutants with uncontrollable powers. As is standard, the room in which the mutant resides is heavily fortified with only one way in and out. In this manner, we are able to learn from the mutant without harming ourselves. The mutant is only really a danger to him or herself, and this is generally no concern of ours. However, the unthinkable has happened, and in this particular case one of our Uncontrollables has the opportunity to seriously harm another."

The doctor indicated the tranquilizer gun held by the accompanying guard. "If you accept this deal, we knock you out with this tranquilizer, collar you, and then place you in position to do your work. Once you enter the room, the collar deactivates, and you have full use of your powers, along with as many implements as we can shove through the door with you. When you succeed, I will reactivate your collar and we will escort you back to your cell."

The doctor reached for a set of paper documents in his pocket. "These are the rehabilitation papers we drew up for you when you entered this facility. If you win, we put your good deed down in writing for the parole board to see. If you refuse, you get to continue your life sentence here. If you lose, we donate your remains to our science."

Klaus extended a hand to Felix. "If you understand the deal and accept, we will shake on it and begin right away. If you refuse, we will leave you to whatever it is you do with yourself."

[Flux]

Flux's eyes narrowed, looking for the trick. It was too good an offer; it even had a little wiggle room there at the end for him to do a double-cross and make a play for freedom. There was a catch. Had to be. However, Flux was certain he could play it to his own gain. The guard who woke him raised his tranq rifle. Flux ticked off the points in his favor. A fortified room crafted of heavy metal? The promise of weaponry to assist him? How could he decline?

"Deal."

Flux had barely begun to grasp Heidegger's extended hand before three sharp needles hit his shoulder. Instantly, he was lost to darkness.

He woke an indeterminate period of time later in a hallway that was bathed red with slowly rotating warning lights. The door before him was built so thick that he doubted anything short of a tactical nuclear assault would shrivel it. He counted himself better than the nuke and smirked, standing up between the guards who had left him to lie on the floor.

There was no briefing, no preamble. Heidegger strode past Flux and entered a quick sequence of numbers and letters, scanned his hand, his retina, then slammed a huge red button underneath the keypad. The door opened and Flux was tossed bodily into the room beyond. He struck the floor and the door slapped shut behind him and the locking mechanism clunked with awful finality. Flux stood and examined his surroundings.

[Flux]

"Well," he sighed, "So much for weaponry.” His collar powered down with an audible whine, like a computer shutting down, and he counted himself lucky that Picklepuss had at least kept his word about that. Flux tested his body, stretching his legs and rolling his shoulders. The right was still sore from the tranquilizer darts, but Flux found it totally ignorable for the short term as his power came flooding back to him. It was like being reunited with a lover after a long time away, though he'd only be conscious for his powerlessness for perhaps a minute.

Flux stretched out his powers as he took in the room. It was enormous; the teen guessed it to be roughly the size of a sports arena, though he could hardly make out the ceiling and far wall in the dim lighting that came through the strangely organic walls and ceiling. He could feel...something that he could manipulate. It felt faint. Maybe the reinforced walls, floor, and ceiling were simply too deep in the organic matter for him to properly fix on. Though there was another thing. Some of the manipulatable matter seemed to be...moving? He hadn't expected that.

He smelled the air. It was dank, fetid. It smelled like fresh and drying blood. The odor was so thick he could even taste it. There was an undercurrent to the stink, a scent almost like saliva, like when you licked your hand and wiped it off. He sniffed again and thought he also got a hint of feces. “Why Picklepuss, what a wonderful new smell you've discovered.” He took two steps, wondering what on earth he ought to be looking out for, when the ground bucked underneath him and sent him flying about a meter and a half into the room. Flux landed steadily on his feet and looked back at what had done it. He'd been standing on an enormous human tongue.

[Flux]

Flux snapped his head back around and looked again. Much of the near wall looked to be made of sturdy, deeply pink material. Gums. Flat, hard molar teeth were stuck in it, and the whole surface glistened with saliva. The flooring beneath him was also teeth and gums, but here and there enormous tongues flapped and lolled. He hadn't noticed them before because they'd been inert. But now, somehow, this organic room knew he was there, and had come alive. Something snuffled out in the distance.

He became suddenly aware of a churning in the floor. Somewhere beneath him something was beginning to work, contracting and contorting and rolling like a huge muscle. Parts of the floor began to move like waves. Flux had thought them to be more of the gums-like substance, but they looked more like skin when he stepped closer. He squinted in the dark and peered at it; enormous veins spider-webbed the entire organic room, changing color as abruptly as the material did. The snuffle sounded again, a little louder. Flux looked about but saw nothing. Gingerly he stepped onto the undulating flesh and found it difficult to move on, but not so much that he would be knocked over if he stepped carefully.

He began to pick his way across the room, searching for the person he was to rescue, mentally debating to himself about calling out. Even if the mutant being imprisoned had an uncontrollable power set, Flux wasn't about to fight a Brother or Sister if he could help it, and didn't want to risk attracting attention to himself with shouting. He stepped off the crawling skin and back onto the firmer terrain. Here it sloped very gradually, giving occasional rise to bumps that Flux couldn't help likening to ulcers. He crested one and stepped down on the other side, not noticing until too late that his foot had landed right on the tip of one of the tongues. It flipped him head over feet through the air, and the poor kid couldn't help but yell out. He landed with a hard impact on gums, bracing himself with a startled gasp as his head lurched within a few inches of a full mouth set into the organic floor.

“Whoa,” he swore under his breath as it tried in vain to bite him, “Watch what you're doing, magnet-man.” He pushed himself away from it, rolling to support himself on his elbows as he faced up. There, hovering above him and sniffing him intently, were a pair of enormous nostrils on the end of a long, muscled tentacle. The sight of it shook him so hard he couldn't raise his voice above a whisper. "Picklepuss, what the hell did you get me into?"

[Flux]

He began to quickly backpedal, scrambling to his feet as the tentacle followed him. He could see it was ridged on one side with hundreds of knobby bumps that moved and flexed as it chased him. A spine? Flux was grateful when it pulled back, but only for a short moment. Another tentacle, this one ending in an enormous, lipless human mouth, snapped in like a whip and opened wide. By reflex Jericho's first inmate activated his powers, trying to repel himself off whatever distant surface he was sensing and away from the mouth. Flux was thrown back through the room as the mouth closed in the air just where he'd been standing. He hit a far wall with tremendous force, winding himself so terribly that he could hardly breathe for a long moment. He slid down it to the floor and pulled back the sleeves of his shirt and the legs of his pants. There, strapped onto his skin, were four thin, flat coils of metal, so light he hadn't noticed their presence. But then, he'd been so accustomed to the iron bands he'd worn with his vigilante costume that their weight had never bothered him. So, Picklepuss had kept his word about arming him, too. Well, okay then.

“Okay.” he whispered, trying to will his voice to say it louder. It didn't. “Okay,” he whispered again, taking a deep breath. He inhaled in time with the tentacle-borne nostrils. He hadn't noticed them hovering just above him again. God, how could it be so quiet? The gigantic mouth cracked back into his vision, seeming to wear an alien grimace with no lips to give it true expression, and yawned wide as it prepared to consume him. Flux made to attract himself to the ceiling. The nostrils smelled him, twisting and tracking him, and the mouth tentacle whipped aside and struck him fully. Flux flew through the air, tumbling end over end until he managed to catch himself on a pillar of gums, gripping firmly and arresting his fall as he skimmed just over the top.

The endlessly sniffling nose loomed above him as he clung to the pillar just under the gargantuan tooth that capped it, and Flux took the moment to regulate his breathing and watch. It quested at him for several minutes before seeming to give up, retreating back beyond Flux's field of vision. Now, the convict could see that he was very near a wall, one of the walls that Jericho had built and that had become overwhelmed by the strange digestive materials. He reckoned it was further down from where he'd landed earlier, and was to the left of where he came in. The boy put his forehead to the pillar and instantly regretted it; it was coated in a thin film of saliva and had strange bumps covering it. He squinted at them and found that they were taste buds. So the nose had pulled back because the room could taste him.

Flux retched, but took a deep breath and managed not to throw up. He shut his eyes against the visceral horror around him and listened. He heard no breathing aside from his own. He could hear a faint gurgle and a soft but rapid clacking. The boy looked down and saw the pillar dropped several feet before it met the floor to the left and right of the alien structure, but on the side facing the wall the floor dropped away into a trench lined with constantly chewing teeth. Beneath them, tongues waved and reached, eager for a meal. The thought that the room had evolved this trench just to catch and eat people seeking refuge from the tentacles flitted into his mind. He blinked hard, twice, and banished it, though his left eye continued to twitch. God, how could anyone survive here?

[Flux]

He clung to the pillar for many long minutes, feeling the strain in his calves and shoulders the longer he gripped it. His knuckles were starting to ache as well, but he refused to let go, even to magnetize himself to the wall behind him. What was he supposed to do now? He doubted if the person he was to rescue was alive. The whole room was a death trap. He shouldn't have trusted Picklepuss.

Flux shook his head and sucked in a deep breath, trying to ignore the ubiquitous scent of blood, and taking small solace in the fact that he no longer could smell the fecal matter he'd gotten a hint of at the door. He needed to move. Move.

"Move," he mumbled. "Move. Move. Move." He gathered his courage and flung himself up on top of the pillar. It bucked backward toward the wall and Flux threw himself into the digestion-arena, twisting in the air to look back. Another tooth that had been embedded in the wall had sprung forward to clap against the pillar he'd pushed off from. It defied physics and biology and sense. He landed heavily on an ulcer, causing the whole floor around it to contract and spasm, launching him at a nearly vertical angle.

He seemed to float in the air for an eternity as he saw the paired tentacles moving against him, painting him as a target and moving for the kill. Flux raised his arms to protect himself so energetically that it flipped his body upside-down, changing his angle to the whipping mouth and colliding with one of its front teeth. It recoiled at the impact, turning aside as if in pain while Flux angled off towards the joint where the wall and ceiling met.

The convict repelled himself from those surfaces, arresting his momentum, then carefully attracted himself fully to the high ceiling. For the most part it was devoid of the disgusting organic mess that comprised the rest of the room. It couldn't be often that anything entered the room that would have the capacity to fly. What little material had made it so high was thin and bore no parts for chewing or digesting food. The room had simply needed space to fill out. But why not fill the room? Why not simply make a single mouth at the entrance for consuming whatever was sent through? Flux had no further time to consider it. The nostrils had finally found him hanging upside-down on what little of Jericho's metal remained uncovered, and now Flux dropped like a stone to avoid it's brother sweeping in to take him. He attracted himself to the wall opposite the trench and clung to the ropey viscera he smashed against.

[Flux]

Intestines. He was hanging on miles and miles of gently-sagging intestines. There, four feet below him, was the mound of fecal matter he'd whiffed upon entry. Flux gagged and retched again, then moved his legs apart, pitched his body forward, and threw up right into the pile of it. Flux gasped and shook and tried to breathe, spitting repeatedly as he tried to rid his mouth of the remains of his prison food, hanging from the entrails because he didn't dare attract his arms to the wall and bury them in the viscera. He coughed as the stench overwhelmed him, stinging his nose and sinuses and making his temples start to throb. Flux blinked a few times to stop his eyes watering and lifted his head. The huge nostrils hung several yards from the pile, hovering with perfect stillness while beside it the nightmare maw bobbed impatiently, neither willing to risk damage to the intestines.

Flux hated his situation so much. The idea that he was safe here was no consolation. He scanned the area but found no living person in or around the pile of refuse. There were bones and bits and scraps of cloth and fur and hair in the pile. He could detect metal in it, but didn't attract any of it out of worry of accidentally getting the disgusting droppings in his eyes or mouth if it spattered. The mutant teen tried to call out, but his voice rasped in a harsh whisper before giving out with a pitiable squeak. Nobody was alive to hear him, anyway. He was sure of it. He ought to just leave...but if Picklepuss had been truthful about turning off the collar and arming him with metal, he was likely telling the truth about knowing when Flux had finished the job. Flux tried to take another breath for calmness, but his diaphragm protested and the boy began to dry-heave. He swallowed with an intense effort and stopped it. He was safe. He was, dammit. He was safe. He was frightened beyond all reason. He shut his eyes and tried in vain to think.

[Flux]

Flux's hands and arms hurt. His shoulder was starting to really ache from the impact of the tranq darts earlier. Still, he refused to magnetize to the wall or let go. He had to figure this out. It couldn't be a no-win scenario. It couldn't. It just...just couldn't! He would not die in this nightmare place. He refused.

“I'm not scared,” he mouthed defiantly, still voiceless and still feeling no bravado. He wished he had a quip, but who could quip at the horror that had developed here? What was left? What further effort could he make?

Flux had yet to see the wall opposite the entrance. Maybe there, the tentacles couldn't reach. Perhaps nobody had made it that far and so they hadn't evolved or grown that far. Maybe. Not likely. But he had to go. He had to at least see. Flux forced his eyes open and made himself breathe in spite of the foulest odor wafting up from under him. The tentacles were resting on the floor now, aligning with each other to take a slight resemblance to a human face. It made them that much creepier, and Flux shut his eyes and turned his head away. He wanted to polarize himself to the far wall and just be done with it, but the problem with it was the same as the problem with his cell; the far wall was too far from him for him to reach, just as the metal lay far beyond his access inside the plastic prison. He would have to brave the terror-room.

Flux whimpered, his breath a ragged strain in his chest, and started to clamber along the intestines like an ape. He kept his eye on the tentacle-nostrils as he worked along the wall, and as soon as he cleared the edge of the fecal mound they perked up, snuffling for him. Flux immediately repelled from the wall, firing himself out into the room's center at an angle that he hoped would carry him into range of the far wall. His luck ran sour and the boy landed on hard, pink, spit-slicked gums, tucking and rolling and sliding. Flux came up onto wobbling legs and continued his forward slide. Ahead a large mouth fixed in the floor stretched wide to accept his whole body. The Brotherhood mutant felt himself try to lock up and went with his power instead, magnetizing himself to the nearest metal. He rocketed toward the ceiling, dodging the whipping tentacle mouth by sheer luck, and then dropped his charge and fell onto the “neck” of it. It bucked him off instantly, hurtling him towards the far wall.

[Flux]

Blessed metal. It was there, entering into his reach. It wasn't the opposite wall, but it was almost better. It was small, weaponizable...maybe it was, itself, a weapon! Flux magnetized it to himself and saw a long tube with a handle and trigger rush at him from the dark. He snatched it from the air and examined it. The weapon was instantly recognizable to him from several iterations of military first-person shooters; a Rocket Propelled Grenade Launcher. His hope spot was crushed a mere second later; it wasn't loaded. Flux hit the ground and skidded, turning and taking a fresh jolt of fear as the mouth loomed large in his field of vision. Out of panic he repelled the RPG launcher wholesale at the mouth-tipped tentacle, which consumed the metal and lunged to take him next. Flux leapt back and repelled off the floor, soaring faster than the mouth could follow to his goal; the final wall. It was darker here than in the front of the room, so much so that he could barely see at all. He put his head back, expecting to rest it on skin or gums, only to have it thunk dully on the smooth wall behind him. Flux rubbed the back of his skull ruefully as he turned to explore this new development.

The wall wasn't metal. Whatever he was attracting to was beyond it. He could tell by the texture, and by the way his powers pulled incessantly at his forearms and calves. He wondered was there space beyond. Picklepuss had withheld and omitted as many truths as he had shared. It wouldn't have surprised him to find that there'd be another way to get in here or at least observe. Flux crawled up the wall, wanting to put distance between himself and the tentacles, and put his arm through a hole, scratching himself on the jagged opening. It was just wide enough for him to squeeze through, if he could endure some discomfort. Flux endured it swiftly and dropped to the floor beyond. Now, he was safe. Now, it would be okay. He began to walk through the narrow room, unsure of what he ought to do again, when lights suddenly came on. They were dim, just enough for him to see by, and Flux guessed it was to keep the mutants on the other side of the wall from knowing it was there. He turned to look at the wall, to see if it really was transparent from this side, and wished devoutly that he hadn't.

[Flux]

He could see now that the organic material coating the room was several feet thick on the walls and was several orders of magnitude deeper from what he'd been standing on before. However, the most horrifying sight to the mutant convict was that the entire nightmare arena was the body of a young woman, doubtless the mutant with uncontrollable powers that he'd been briefed on.

Her waist melded into the nightmare body with a sudden bulging and rippling of flesh, expanding out into the floor section so abruptly that long stretch marks marred her skin. The whole of her upper body was bright red, fading out to pink and even to white around her lips and eyes. She was hunched into the corner, head covered with an unusually long, thin arm, eyes scrunched tightly closed against...what? His action in evading her body? Her very existence? Her hair was shocked white, and Flux could only imagine it was the stress of dealing with what she'd become that had done it. Her face was streaked with marks from where she'd cried uncountable times.

The boy unconsciously took a step back, stumbling as something round skittered away under his feet. He looked; it was the RPG round he'd missed earlier. Though it must clearly be a dud, Flux repelled it away for safety's sake. The round impacted the one-way wall and detonated suddenly. Flux reflexively repelled the shrapnel from his body, a technique of luck more than skill, reflecting it all back to pepper the wall again. The mutant girl shrieked silently and Flux mimicked her as thin fractures began to appear in the wall. He cursed over and over silently, wishing he could stop them, when the wall finally caved in from the damage and the stress of having her enormous body pressed against it. She fell in a little bit, stopping herself with her hands, apparently oblivious to the shards of the wall as she lurched to a stop and opened her eyes.

Flux stared up into eyes colored richly brown, the only evidence of her old humanity. Her lips quivered and she started to hyperventilate a little. Flux continued to breathe slowly and deliberately. There was a long silence as she took him in and let her breathing fall into rhythm with her intruder's. Flux couldn't even move his eyes. At last she spoke, her voice loud in spite of being the same fearful whisper his voice had locked into since seeing her deathly tentacles.

"Who are you?" she asked. "You don't look like a scientist or a guard."

[Flux]

Flux shook his head nine times before he swallowed the lump in his throat and found his voice hiding behind it.

"I'm not," he wheezed, his voice still refusing to crawl up into a normal volume. "I'm an inmate at Jericho's Federal Mutant Prison."

"There's a prison?" she asked incredulously, eyes sweeping the orange prison uniform with a new understanding.

He nodded. How long had she been down here, that she didn't know that!? "I was the first inmate. I'm a terrorist. A felon. A...murderer." Ordinarily he spoke the boast hatefully, chest swelling and spine straightening with pride. This time it sounded hollow, and he took an involuntary half-step back as he finished, body turning slightly to guard his vitals from her.

"I...see. Then..." The giantess looked at him with shining eyes, her voice carrying her hope to his disbelieving ears. "Then, you can kill me! If Klaus can't cure me, you can at least do that!"

Flux shook his head again. "No." Her eagerness was appalling to him. He couldn't kill her, even if she was this enormous horror. He'd never killed any mutants, just mundanes, and even them he hadn't killed directly.

"YES!" she insisted, "You can! You have to! I can't live this way anymore! All these months, my body eating the livestock they send in to keep me alive, and even consuming the scientists and guards that come to study and cure me! I can't keep on! I can't control it! KILL ME!" Her soft shriek sent a strange sensation crawling up Flux's neck. He took a deep breath and reminded himself that he had nothing left in his stomach to vomit up.

[Flux]

Flux shook his head again, arms spreading in a helpless gesture. "No," he protested. "I can't. How could I? All my victims were killed by blunt force trauma. I can't crush or beat you; your body is too huge. I have no weapons to stab or shoot you, and if I did, where are all your vitals in that...that mess?" He regretted the words as he spoke them; she seemed genuinely stung by them. "My power is to magnetize metal. Beyond that, I have a...kind of secondary power that lets me sense useable metal, but...that's it."

His would-be victim sniffled piteously. "There has to be something you can do. You have to. Can't you pull the metal off the wall or something? Please try," she begged.

Flux sagged, turning to the wall on his left. It bore the observation room's only door, another thick piece of work like the one entering the arena. He planted his feet and reached his fists out to it. The door creaked, bending out to him, but it wasn't long before Flux was sliding across the floor to it. He dug in, leaning back, but it was no use. He turned to the wall behind him, but it, too, resisted his efforts. So much for beating the nuke.

"I can't," he gasped, feeling small and defeated. "It won't shear. I can't. I'm sorry." The girl whose own body horrified her burst into fresh tears. Flux's throat tightened, but no tears of his own would come.

[Flux]

Flux's face reddened with shame and anger. His heart raced with fresh fear. If he couldn't kill this girl, could he ever leave? Would he be stuck in here with her until her body consumed him against her will? Silence reigned in the space between her sobs and his own uneven breathing. Soon those sounds were lost to his hearing, tuned out as he came detached from their fates. It was there that he heard an enormous, steady thumping. Flux took only a minute or two to figure out the sound's source. It was her heart, beating steadily, pumping blood through the whole room. He covered his eyes with his hands, tuning out his vision, listening, feeling...

"There's iron in your blood," he whispered. He uncovered his eyes and met hers. "Somehow, the iron in your blood is enough for me to manipulate. I felt it a little when I first came in."

"I think you were using your powers on it some," she responded bitterly. "It was...un...comforta...ble." Her eager desperation returned afresh in the wake of her realization. "Draw out my blood! Use that! Please!?" She tucked her arms behind her back, arching it to give him a clear view of her chest. "My other organs have shifted and grown, but my heart is still right here. Pull out metal and stab my heart! I promise not to scream."

Flux felt bile rising in his throat again as he stared a hole in her left breast. A gigantic heart to stab and bleed out. A whole room full of metal particles to weaponize. He dry-heaved once as he reached out to her, drew a breath, and pulled. Blood oozed out of pinpoint holes in her chest and stomach. Flux tried to shut out the sight, focusing his vision closer to himself to watch the metal coalesce in air and not focus on how much it had to hurt. She was biting her lips hard, eyes squinched shut, and made not a single sound. He shook his head to make his eyes move away from her face. He couldn't let this metal touch his wrists.

Flux bonded the metal together into several rough spheres, each sized approximately like a basketball. They floated obediently just out of reach of his fingertips, bobbing gently as they held a fine balance between being attracted and repelled from one another and the criminal teenager that commanded them. When Flux was sure it was enough, he stopped drawing metal and yanked his right hand back in a fist, keeping his left pointed towards her. The motion caused the gentle tension to snap taut, crafting the orbs into jagged spears. He chanced a look at her face; she had one eye open in hope and horror at what he'd made from her blood.

"Don't stop until you hear it stop beating," she admonished, then shut her eyes and took a deep breath in anticipation.

[Flux]

Flux, the murderer, began to hyperventilate. There was magnetic power all around him. His power. He had it all under control; no element would move without him making it. His spears would not pierce flesh without his commanding them to do so. This girl, his Sister, could not prevent the power that had spread through her body from killing the people around her. The difference struck him powerfully now, and he felt the weight of the responsibility, the burden of taking a life, for the first time. His whole body shuddered, but the spears that floated abreast of him didn't so much as quiver.

Flux, the terrorist, cast a sidelong glance at her face. It was full of apprehension and fear, but there was the slightest tug at the corners of her mouth, in spite of the way her teeth had clamped down on her lips. She felt relief and hope for what he supposed was the first time in...oh, in time immeasurable! He and his spears gave her a gateway out of horror, into the paradise of Heaven, or at least, the blank nothing of a death with no afterlife.

Flux, the mutant, the boy who styled himself superior, grunted fiercely through clenched teeth as he let his weapons fly with a forward thrust of his right arm. He watched them pierce into her chest fully, disappearing and leaving behind small fountains of blood. He heard her gasp, a small, short "oh" of surprise, then slashed his hands apart as if tearing open the enormous sliding doors of this room. Inside her body the spears fragmented, shearing off into smaller pieces and rending her torso as he pulled them back, reformed them into spears, and fired again.

He shut his eyes and did the whole cycle over. Once...twice...thrice...over and over, until he lost count, losing the whole of reality in the steady rhythm of his arms, in the motions that aided him in mentally envisioning his powers. He heard nothing, saw nothing, smelled and tasted nothing. Not even his shoulder hurt.

Something wet seeped into his prison shoes, soaking his socks all the way to his toes. Flux stopped his striking and opened his eyes taking a deep, rattling breath. The long spears waited patiently for him to throw them again. He could hardly see their silver in front of his eyes in the dim light. He looked to his feet and saw that blood had filled the observation room, finally gathering enough to reach his ankles. The boy turned his head up and slightly to the side, reluctantly seeing his handiwork. Her chest was entirely shredded, organs and muscle and bone and skin hanging loosely from the rest of her torso. Her neck and chin were cut severely, but the rest of her face was pristine. Impossibly, she was smiling peacefully.

[Flux]

The boy stared at the girl's face for a long time before turning a full circle, unable to bear looking at his gruesome task's result. He sighed heavily and felt a strong desire to go home and forget the whole event ever occurred when he came around and saw the tentacle-mouth lying a short distance away in the observation room, resting on it's side, teeth and tongue stained from the rising blood. Out of panic he loosed the spears at it, watching them sink into the tongue and gums of the thing. It had come to the defense of its owner and been stopped only just in time. Reluctantly Flux looked up at the top of her now-sagging body and found the nostrils hanging limply over the side, directed right at him. He felt sick and the panic reached a crescendo in his heart as he repelled himself into the air, then attracted himself across the room in stages by the slowly draining blood in the gigantic corpse. The door came into sight at last and he threw himself through it, landing hard. His right arm crumpled and he fell onto his side, coughing in the sterile air of the hallway. His collar powered on with a whine, halting his powers so abruptly that a migraine exploded in his temples. He threw up a runny substance onto the floor beside him and coughed and choked, struggling feebly against the metal bands that continued to stick him to the floor. The warning lights were off now, and the bright lights that replaced them stung his eyes so terribly that he could hardly see through the water that filmed them over. Still, there was no mistaking the silhouette of Heidegger leaning over him.

[Doktor Klaus Heidegger]

"So, I see you have been successful," the doctor said.

Heidegger wore an amused smirk that by now had become trademark. There was never a doubt in his mind.

"And no doubt you now realize the entirety of the situation."

There was a pause as Klaus watched Felix closely, mentally hypothesizing any damage of symptoms of illness he though his only inmate was likely to have.

"Having seen what used to lie beyond that door, are you still convinced that all mutations are beneficial and superior?"

Klaus waved a lazy hand that the guards accompanying him should tranq Felix. The doctor was sure it was unnecessary. Felix was in no condition to mount an escape. Still, procedures must be followed, and it was yet one more opportunity to reinforce to Flux that he was powerless at Jericho.

Klaus looked on as two orderlies placed Felix on a gurney. He followed them back to the mutant's own prison cell, and removed the metal bands and the collar. The implements left just as Dr. Sumpter arrived.

"He should be coming around soon," he said to the psychiatrist.

"Felix, Dr. Sumpter is here. We will be making sure you are physically and mentally sound after your ordeal."

Klaus would prefer to go back to his experiments, but his government contract required that Felix remain hale and hearty in body and mind, lest the mutant be capable of suing on grounds of cruelty.

[Flux]

Flux pushed himself up on the gurney and checked for metal. Plastic, everywhere. His cell. He coughed and groaned, sitting up and feeling the weariness and fatigue in his body like chains and weights around his neck and shoulders.

"Are you okay, Felix?" Sumpter asked. "You've had a busy day. You've done that poor girl a huge favor."

"I did Jericho a favor," he rasped back. He cleared his throat and found it painful. "The hell happened to my voice?"

[Doktor Klaus Heidegger]

"All that vomiting and retching has spat up your stomach acids. It is easily fixed. Plenty of water and some antacid, then you will be fine."

In fact, Klaus already had some basic Pepto-bismol and a plastic cup of water on a small plastic rolling cart. He handed the two things to the only inmate and spoke while the mutant took his medicine.

"You did do Jericho a favor today, that is true. Nevertheless, Dr. Sumpter is correct. You did indeed do that mutant a favor. Ever since I halted upkeep, the subject showed signs that her powers were forcing her to cannibalize herself and even began to pick through the waste to look for anything that might have been missed."

Klaus looked down upon Felix with an expression that showed detachment and passivity towards the entire ordeal. "You understand that the only way out for that particular case was to end the subject's life. I would have given her the latest gene cleanser my team has developed, but it must be injected directly into the bloodstream. Administering it as a gas is difficult and requires nearly fifty times the dosage that would be needed in the liquid form. Swinging an untested medicine into near-mass production for the sake of testing it would have been a waste of time and materials. Of course, no one short of you could have gotten close enough to administer it. Of course, had I asked, you would have refused."

[Flux]

Nothing the scientist said was untrue, to Flux's knowledge. It made the boy mad to realize it.

"Even when her body was normal-sized, she was afraid," offered Dr. Sumpter gently. She flipped open a small file-folder and summarized the notes. "Her power first manifested as a mouth on her stomach. She kept it hidden until the family cat tried to crawl up her shirt and was promptly eaten by it. Then, she revealed the mutation to her father and they enrolled her here." The psychiatrist smiled, trying to be reassuring. "A few days after the incident, she put on a little weight and grew a tiny cat mouth on her hand. Her body assimilated the cat's digestive system and some of it's flesh. When she finally made it to Jericho, the cat mouth had grown to cover her palm and was trying to chew her fingertips off, as she'd denied it anything to eat. It was truly an unfortunate thing for a fifteen-year-old girl to deal with it."

"You and your mastery of understatement," Flux spat, sliding off the gurney and going to the corner where a small shower was installed for his use. He managed to pull the plastic handle that started the water without touching it with his hands and stood under it the cleansing flow. "Did you think to put some stuff from the bath cart on that?"

The question was supposed to be scornful, but the warm water was a comfort he couldn't deny. His voice just sounded small.

[Doktor Klaus Heidegger]

Klaus gave the cart a push, and it sailed over to the captured criminal.

"There."

Klaus watched Felix's posture, and took in the tone of his voice. Dr. Sumpter would make more out of it than he could, but apart from what seemed like basic muscle fatigue, Flux's body would be just fine. The condition of his mind was up to Dr. Sumpter.

"Are there any further questions for me or Dr. Sumpter?"

[Flux]

Flux snatched a soap bar off the cart and started to furiously work on his hands, kicking off his shoes and using his feet to remove his bloodied socks. He could still feel the girl's body around him and smell the scents of the arena. His hands felt especially dirty, having gripped gum tissue and intestines for so long. He scratched at the bar with fury, getting soap under his nails, scrubbing, scrubbing...

"Felix, are you okay?" prompted Sumpter.

"NO I'M NOT!" The effect of the shout was diminished by the damage to his throat, but the look he gave them both conveyed his hate well enough. "You set me up. If I died, you wouldn't have needed the prison. Since I lived, you get to...to clear her body out and get your facility back. And if we'd killed each other? Hell yeah, you just won the damn lottery, didn't you Picklepuss? Well too bad. I'm alive. And yes, mutantcy is a blessing, always! You thought this little mission you dreamed up would make me doubt that? If anything, it shows me that neither of you know how to deal with mutants, really. You're scared and bitter and you're pushing us to self-destruct as hard as you can. Well, fuck you. When I get out, I am going to get you both."

He threw down the soap bar and shucked off his wet prison shirt and flung it at them. It landed back-up, the black stencil-letters standing out hard on the orange. JFMP0001T5.

"See that serial number!? That's mundane fear. That's proof to me that you're desperate to shut us down, turn us into numbers and prisoners and subjects and pronouns so you don't have to deal with us. Well I've got a name. FLUX. A proper mutant name, to hell with your mundane bullshit! That girl had a name, too! If not a good mutant one, then at least she had her crap mundane name. Now what was it!? You sorry bastards probably don't even know."

Dr. Sumpter looked up and met Klaus's eyes as Flux dropped his pants and started to scrub his whole body. Her gaze was a question: Do you want to tell him, or should I?

"Waiting over here," Flux prompted.

[Doktor Klaus Heidegger]

"Her name was Rosanna Hughes. Her case file number C0N5UMPT10N," Klaus said in a dangerously quiet voice. "I marked her thus because of her mutation. So she must have had one of your so-called 'proper mutant names.' As for that number," Klaus continued pointing at the suit, "that is the Federal Government's way of keeping track of you, along with the countless other prisoners held in detention facilities across the country. Don't worry, that number doesn't make you anything special."

Klaus looked around at the cell in which he stood and smirked. "But this cell does."

[Flux]

Rosanna Hughes. Rosie Hues. Her skin had been bright red. Flux wondered if her parents had intended the pun as he gritted his teeth and felt a sick tingle crawl through his chest. He distracted himself from it with another dig at Heidegger, letting it fly through the man's talk about the federal prison system.

"You mundanes come up with some terrible mutant names."

Flux washed his hair vigorously, considering the cell. Klaus was right about it being the only special part of his detention. With metal kept carefully away, he couldn't mount an escape. Without superhuman strength, Rosanna couldn't have escaped the arena she'd been forced into. They must've found some way to keep her from the entrance. Probably with guards. He thought about the suppression collars. Did they not work on someone with a physical mutation like that? Or would that have spoiled the thrill of poking and prodding for a reason why the girl's body was going insane like that? He stood under the water, letting the soap slide off his body and into the drain on the floor. He still felt dirty. He chose not to address the point of the cell and went back to scrubbing.

[Doktor Klaus Heidegger]

Klaus shrugged. "P4TCHW0RK was already taken."

Klaus clucked. "Do you wonder why I did it? Why I kept her locked away down there? Why I did not collar her to prevent her mutation from getting worse?"

[Flux]

"So what, you're psychic now?" Flux grumbled. "I don't want to hear another word out of you. You can't justify yourself to me."

"Felix," said Dr. Sumpter quietly. "You need to listen. There was a good reason. We're not the monsters you want us to be."

"Then try harder at it," he snapped.

[Doktor Klaus Heidegger]

"Collars do odd things to these kinds of physical mutations. When the X-Gene shuts down, the body rejects the changes made to it. Unlike you, who just loses power, people whose bodies are altered by their powers can endure some extremely painful side effects. People with mild physical changes--Officer Stern, or your accomplice Geryon--don't experience that. Officer Stern's eyes are overly-dilated, which is not a problem, and Geryon controls his physical change like you do your magnetism. But, in the case of Rosanna Hughes, we found her body rejected the cat's biology. It was the most singular and extreme case of auto-immune disorder I have ever seen."

Klaus chuckled. "So I had no choice but to keep her alive and her mutation fed. With her family watching over my shoulder I couldn't haphazardly assign her a regimen of the latest gene-cleanser. In fact, I was pretty confident that any attempt at nullifying or removing her X-Gene outright would force her to endure the unbearable pain of her body trying to remove the foreign body parts from her system. And you, of all people should be aware of laws against cruelty."

Felix would often cite cruelty when Klaus denied him things. Klaus, of course, had to cave in these instances because the grants and other monies given to him to maintain the facility and prison were too precious to lose. But Klaus would soon have the last laugh. He always did.

[Flux]

Aaaand there it was. The word he'd thrown into the faces of guards and doctors and lawyers since he entered the prison system had come around full circle to bite him. Yes, yes, Flux supposed that the trauma of having her body temporarily reject her physical mutation would've been terrible cruelty. Was it worth it though? Would it have been less cruel to put her through that? Flux shook his head hard and bathed himself a third time. He couldn't believe what he was thinking. Denying a mutant their mutation was never right. There was sure to have been a way to help her cope, make it controllable.

"Whatever. Get out."

[Doktor Klaus Heidegger]

Klaus smirked and shrugged. "Continue to delude yourself, then."

Klaus left without another word. Felix would see his way eventually.

[Flux]

Dr. Sumpter sat on the bed with her hands folded, trying to show Flux some sympathy without looking at him. She kept venturing little questions, trying to find one that would set him talking, but it seemed that he'd become determined to stay quiet. As he did.

"Felix, you've been washing for almost forty minutes," she said at last. "You're clean. You're going to scrub yourself raw."

"Fine by me," Flux answered.

"Felix, it isn't healthy to do this. You need to get out of the shower and take a breath and face what you saw and what you've done."

A guard advanced and took the cart, pushing up the handle to the shower flippantly to stop the water, then unceremoniously flung a towel onto the teenager's head. Reluctantly, Flux dried himself, then managed to catch the new uniform that fluttered to him next.

"I still feel gross," he complained.

"I imagine you will for a while, but the fact of the matter is you're perfectly clean. Whatever dirtiness you think you feel is in your mind now." She looked up at him as he stood over her. "You need to face this. You need to accept that you did a good thing for a girl whose mutation caused her to suffer. I know you won't talk about it right now, but when you're ready, tell a guard and I'll come listen." She stood, and he immediately threw himself onto the bed.

"Bye," she said with a shake of her head. The door's rotating lock thunked behind them as they left. For the first time, it sounded terrifying.