ArchivedLogs:Prometheus

Prometheus
warning, there is accounts of violence and rape and terrible in these storys, read at your own discretion.
Dramatis Personae Alexis, Shane, Daiki, Kai, Sebastian, Ash, Dorian Siccavil, Kismet, Flicker, Parley, Vector
In Absentia	2014-01-06 These videos have flooded the news, been scattered far and wide across the internets, have been widely shared and distributed across most forms of media capable of displaying video and have been transcribed and documented in print newspapers as well. There are, ICly, a whole lot MORE of these videos in circulation as well, from other ex-labrats around the country; their stories are largely similarly D:. (Part of Prometheus TP.)
Location All across the medias
Alexis The room is -- perhaps a living room, somewhere. It's got a couple newspaper clippings on a wall, a few piney branches in the side of the frame that suggests a Christmas tree not yet taken down. A very /vivid/ bright magenta couch that the girl is sitting on, talking down into a webcam. She's young. Perhaps thirteen or fourteen though there's a certain wide-eyed look to her narrow pointy face that doesn't help her look any /older/ than her years. Her ashy brown hair is pulled back into a ponytail, and her lightly tanned skin is darker about the eyes in a manner that looks somewhat sleepless. Or a little masked. She's in a plain blue v-necked shirt, a gauzy blue-and-white scarf wrapped decoratively around her neck. "Hi, um." She smiles nervously at the camera, and then just shakes her head. "Hi. I turn into a ferret. I just want to start out with that?" There's an upward lilt to the ends of her statements that gives even her declarative ones an interrogative feel. "Not like a were-ferret or a giant ferret or anything like that, just. A little ferret." Even in sitting she's fidgety, restless, her hands constantly moving in her lap. "That's my mutation, that's what I do. That's /all/ I do. I turn into a ferret and anyone who's been around a ferret can tell you how threatening that is." Fidget, fidget. Her hands are still restless in her lap. She takes a deep breath, though, and starts again. "I just want that to be clear first of all, because when I was thirteen, I was locked up in the same facility that Vector was locked in. And they've been telling you lies about why they had /him/, but I'd like to hear them explain how turning into a ferret is a threat to anyone except me. My depth perception's kind of terrible when I'm ferrety and I've gotten stuck in the couch a /few/ times." She might be trying to make a joke; a small curl of smile pulls at her lips and then fades. "But I was locked in that place for a -- for a year, about. My family thought I'd died. I almost did. They cut me open a lot, I --" She unwinds the scarf from her neck; beneath there are ropy-thick scars running down, behind her ears, along her neck, disappearing beneath the fabric of the shirt. "They took pieces of me, the -- experiments they were doing were trying to take our powers. Give them to humans. But the process was horrible, they'd strap us down and inject us with -- I don't know it just burned. It just burned for hours. And it usually failed, I watched my roommate die just -- just shriveled up and helpless with one of their soldiers taking her -- abilities." She has to stop, here, still fidgety, catching her breath and hiding her face for a moment in her scarf. She's calm enough when she looks up again, though her black eyes are brighter than before. "But that's what they were doing. Not trying to control dangerous powers or keep anyone safe. Trying to /use/ our powers to make better weapons. That's what they were doing with Vector, and he didn't want to be -- I don't make a very good weapon, though, so I was mostly -- target practice by the end. I would have been dead by now if Jackson and his people hadn't come to rescue us. A lot of us would've been dead. But he saved my life." Shane "My dad is not a terrorist." Shane looks sharp, in his video, as he often does; neat-tied bowtie, slim-fit houndstooth vest over his dress shirt, black against his ocean-blue skin. The tiny blue shark-boy is seated in an armchair, not much behind him except paler blue walls. "And I want to tell you who he /is/, but I think maybe telling you who I am is the best way to do that." He holds up his hands, fingers spreading to show their webbing, sharp black claws prominent. "Because I'm a freak. I was born like this, me and my twin both. And the parents we were born to couldn't take that. For the first six years we were alive we spent most of our time in a crate. Like -- like a puppy kennel. And they'd toss in food and they'd hose us down when our skin started to dry out and crack and sometimes they'd let us outside long enough to clean it and shove us back in but they didn't know what to do with us. So when these people from the government came to say they had a place for mutants and would take us, I'm sure they were happy. We were -- /almost/ seven then, I think. We didn't exactly celebrate birthdays so it's hard to be exact." His smiles are probably disconcerting to most watching, quick and bright and inordinately toothy, a very sharklike abundance of very sharp teeth. "It's funny because at first we were kind of happy. We got beds -- /actual/ beds, we got cleaned up and hot showers and all the food we could want and a pond to swim around in whenever and people /talking/ to us like we were /people/ and in return we just had to sometimes follow instructions. Lift these weights, tell us when you hear these sounds, identify these smells, stay underwater as long as you can -- I liked that one, I pretty much never wanted to come out of the water then anyway." His hands fall to his lap; there's a rustling shifting underneath his collar that twitches briefly at the fabric. "It's hard to give any exact time when things started to change. My twin and I, we're stronger than most people and we heal a lot faster than most people and when you're trying to take those attributes and turn them into something the military can use, you want to see how --" He blinks, looks down at his hands, looks back up at the camera. "Anyway. At some point it stopped being lift this weight and started being, how fast can you take this person out. I think I might have been eight or so the first time they put me in a room with someone and told me to kill him. And I didn't and they started starving me and I still didn't. They started cutting me up a lot after that. I think they might have been checking into how my respiratory system works, having gills /and/ lungs is complicated, but they also just started hurting us to measure how fast we recovered. And I did -- get violent, after that. Not how they wanted I guess I just started attacking my handlers when they came in because I didn't want to get strapped down and cut open anymore and so they um --" His hand waves towards his mouth. "They pulled out my claws and pliered out all my teeth and then I couldn't really. Fight back so much anymore, I think they -- they made my twin watch, too, they." He exhales a slow hard breath. "We were there a long time. Years. And sometimes it was quiet, just. Weeks of nothing, and sometimes it was a whole storm of doctors and bright lights and being cut open and watching how we moved and how we fight and how we kill and. Then they moved me -- away from my twin and I think that. I couldn't take that I just stopped really caring about much I think I was out of control. I'd attack everyone I saw and they started just having to yank out all my teeth as soon as they grew back because I wouldn't. Do anything. Except hurt them, hurt anyone. I didn't really know how to be a person without my sibling there. They stopped using me to /do/ things and started just using me to -- there was another person there who could put life back in people if they were recently dead. So since I was kind of useless for following orders they just killed me. A lot. We heal fast so I could take a lot of abuse, it was useful for having someone to demonstrate other powers on. And once I was torn apart and dead they could just bring me back and start again. It was -- a lot of blood. A lot of pain." "And that's when my dad and his team broke us out. And two of his people died rescuing us -- every time there's always a risk, they've lost a lot but. But he came and he got us out of those cages and -- even after he took us out and got us somewhere safe I still was just a monster. B -- my twin was there and he and one friend I'd made in the labs, they were the only people who could even get close to me. I'd attack everyone. If they tried to get near me, if they tried to get near B. And Pa -- well, he wasn't Pa then he was just a teenager too then -- but he'd come every day to my bedroom and. He'd bring food and he'd sit across the room from me I um -- I hurt him kind of bad a couple times," he says with a sharp wince, a guilty duck of his head. "I kept expecting there to be pain, they'd cut open my head a lot and there was only just -- always pain but he just. He'd bring food and he'd sit and he'd talk to me. Sometimes he'd tell me I was safe and that I would never have to go back to another cage and that if I wanted he could help me find school and a place to live and actually get to be part of the world for once. And sometimes he wouldn't tell me any of that he'd just read a book or talk about -- about farming or about art or about going rock climbing or I don't know. Normal things. Normal things that I'd never gotten to do in my life. And I just --" His lips press together, and for a moment he scrunches his face up hard. His breathing is a little shaky when he speaks again. "When he got me out of there I was barely even a person. Just a lot of angry violent -- and he never was. Never answered that with anything except a lot of love. He didn't just save my life. He /gave/ me a life. A home, for the first time ever. He looked past the monster and took me into his home and gave me a chance to -- /be/ a person. The people at Prometheus, they want to act like we're all monsters, like they're doing you a favour by saving the world from us and -- and maybe it's true. We /are/ monsters. But we're monsters that they created. You put someone in a cage and beat them and starve them and cut them open and order them to kill and they'll be as much of a monster as you want, eventually. But it's people like my Pa who put an /end/ to the violence. And make us human again." Daiki Daiki sits in an armchair, pale blue walls behind him. He doesn't fidget. The teenager's posture is very straight, his hands folded in his lap, his silver-trimmed blue tunic neatly pressed, his black hair trimmed short and brushed neat. His voice is calm and quiet when he speaks, and though much of his accent has faded there are still soft hints of his native Japanese tongue lingering in his words. "My mother died, when I was eleven. My brother and I spent a short while in foster homes, after this, throughout Washington state. It was tumultuous, but not terrible. I think I have it easier than most; my mutation is charisma. People tend to like me, as you might imagine this smoothes out many interactions in life. My elder brother was a telepath -- this does not smoothe out anything. People are wary of psionic abilities and, also, when his abilities first began surfacing he didn't know -- like many stories of psionically capable people that I have heard, he thought he was losing his mind. Hearing voices. When he figured out what it /was/ it didn't make things better, not many foster parents want teenagers with mind-reading powers. Prometheus picked us up when I was twelve, took us out of foster homes and into their labs." Briefly, his eyes close, a faint thread of tension working its way into his jaw. This small twitch and this small pause only lasts a short while before he draws a slow breath and continues. "A mutation like mine could be extremely useful in certain applications, I don't doubt. Automatically engendering people's trust -- if misapplied that could -- well, I'm sure they've thought of several places it would be useful. The problem is that it's erratic, and I have no control over how feelings manifest in others. I suppose I should say my power is magnetism, more than charisma. It's a pull -- most of the time, I make people like me. But when I'm hurt, or scared, or any strong emotion, really, it pulls stronger. Make people -- need me. Want me. And I can't control, and Prometheus couldn't control, how that turned out. But they tried -- to see how strong it could get, see what other parts of people's inhibitions it could override. And the answer is -- mostly all of them." In his lap, his long fingers clench tighter together. "I've seen people fight over me. I've seen people kill over me. I've been attacked -- when people have very strong -- passions." His eyes drop briefly to his fingers. "That are not reciprocated they often go to quite -- violent lengths to /take/ -- what they want. They put me, once, in a locked room with my brother. Both of us had just been through a rather grueling day of experiments, neither of us were at our peak. Scared and -- I was already in quite a bit of pain, it tends to make the attraction I create -- uglier than usual. My brother and I were very close. He was -- protective. Safe. I loved him a great deal, he was all the family I had. But they wanted to see if the artificial feelings I summon are strong enough to override even the deepest aversion to --" His eyes close again. Just for a moment. "In other circumstance, I think my brother would have died before he ever hurt me. But in there, he -- attacked me. Raped me. Though I suppose it might be just as fair to say that I raped him, my abilities leave little room for --" He shakes his head. "And the -- doctors," his lips press together a little distastefully on that word, "they watched. Took notes. Recorded what it was doing to his mind. And only let us out once they were done cataloguing just what happens when you torture me enough to make my powers spin out of control. I was thirteen years old when they stood and watched my fifteen-year-old brother rape me. He killed himself the next day. As I said, he would have died before ever --" He shakes his head, drawing in a slow breath. "They tell you that Jackson Holland is a terrorist. And it's true that he's broken into government property to steal people from their cages. Over and over and over, he's risked his life to do so. Over and over, they have tried to kill him for it. But when they say he is a terrorist, just -- remember what it is that he's /fighting/. Because I've seen terror, and he pulled me out of it." Kai Kai sits in a stuffed armchair in what appears to be a study. Or maybe it's a library. He doesn't look particularly intimidating; a small, Korean boy in jeans and a t-shirt with a Green Lantern logo on the chest. As thin as he is, he looks like a good wind might carry him off, especially the way he clutches at the arms of the chair. He chews at his lip as he stares at the camera, and when he speaks, it's in a low, accented voice. "My name is Kai," he says slowly, blinking at something beyond the camera. "And I was a person who Mister Jackson rescued from the laboratories." He shifts his weight, wrinkling his nose as he considers his next words. "Before Mister Jackson rescued me, I had been in laboratories for a long time," he begins. "The soldiers in my home country came and took me, first. Then they sent me to…" he narrows his eyes, thinking. "China, I think. And then Russia. It is hard to know for sure, because I never understood their language. Then I came here, to the labs called Prometheus." There's a deep breath, and Kai speaks again, a bit softer. "All of these laboratories wanted to know how my ability worked. My...I turn into a dragon," he says, looking a bit disconcerted at blurting it out like this. "And they wished to know how that came to be. There were many tests, and electricity in collars, and they even cut into me." He lifts the hem of his t-shirt, showing a long scar running parallel to his ribs. "This is a place where I was cut. I think they wished to know something about my lungs." He glances beyond the camera, then back at the screen. "The doctors in this Prometheus lab used me to guard the others. Even when Mister Jackson and his friends came to rescue us, they used me. I --" he breaks off, his brow furrowing. "They used me to kill and maim Mister Jackson and his group, with a thing which they placed in my head, and a needle full of bad medicine that made it hard to think clearly." He straightens. "But, even though I did such terrible things to Mister Jackson and the others, he was a good enough man to recognize that I was just as captive as the rest of them, and he got me out of there. And brought me to a good place where I can /not/ be a dragon for a while, and learn what it is to be a real boy in America." He smiles, then, and tips his head. "It has been very good, and I am very thankful to Mister Jackson for all he has done for myself and others." There's a murmured question from off-camera, and Kai blinks. "Do I think that Mister Jackson is a terrorist?" he echoes, wrinkling his nose. "No, because he is a good man who is nice to everyone, and wants good things for them. He's very brave, and an excellent artist, and --" he breaks off at another off-screen murmur, and shakes his head. "No, I do /not/ think he is a terrorist," he says firmly, sitting back and nodding solemnly. "He is a good man." Sebastian Sebastian does not look as dapper as his brother, when he appears on video. He's in a different location, sitting cross-legged on a bed with a black-trimmed white wall behind him. His cream-colored henley shirt does not obscure the slitted gills along the sides of his neck, and his clawed fingers brush restlessly against the thick-waled fabric of his corduroys. "I was six or seven when Prometheus took us. My brother and I'd only ever lived in cages so more cages wasn't new. But the things they did to us, the things they made us do --" He shrugs, jerky-twitching in a small hitch of very thin shoulders. "I didn't want to fight, at first, but they're pretty interested in how they can /use/ mutants to do better violence so they wanted us to -- do better violence. And at first they'd hurt me when I said no but that didn't work so instead they started hurting Shane. Hold him down, tear out his claws, pull out his teeth one by one and tell me that if I didn't listen to what they wanted from me, they wouldn't stop hurting him until he was dead." There's a lower rasp to his voice here; the gills at the sides of his neck start to flutter and he lifts his hands to press them back into place. "He was gentle. He was always the sweeter one of us. They got good at learning how to motivate me because I didn't want to have to hear him scream anymore." His shoulders are stiff and tense, and as soon as he lowers his hands his gills start to open again. His voice is breathier than before; it seems like a struggle to keep speaking. "I think they broke him. They transferred him to another facility but they told me he was dead. I think they broke /me/." "I met my Pa after they took Shane from me. Pa was just a teenager, too. In high school, when they brought him in. I'd been there for -- years by that point. I think it was sometimes easy to forget there /was/ a world outside those rooms. But he -- was always so /bright/. I don't mean the light thing although that's cool too, just. It was ugly in there. It was ugly it was bloody and it was really dark and he never was. He'd talk to everyone -- at meal times, he'd always be the one giving us /hope/. And no matter what they did to him he /wouldn't/ let them make him a monster. When he refused to use his powers to hurt another person, they cut out his eye. Just. No anaesthetic no -- just dug it out with a scalpel. And he still wouldn't hurt anyone. Kept encouraging us not to either. Because if one person's refusing then they can hurt that one person but if he's getting everyone, everyone in the whole facility to refuse to participate in their tests if they involved hurting someone else, then -- they can't just kill us /all/, I'm sure they'd like to but they spent a lot of money keeping us. And he did it, got everyone -- /better/, reminded us that we were better than what they wanted to make us. And that we could beat it. And get out. And no matter how much they hurt him for organizing the rest of us not to go along anymore, he kept at it." For a moment a small smile ghosts across his features, tiny and closed-lipped; unlike Shane he doesn't show his sharp expanse of teeth here. "And he was right. We did beat it. And get out. And he's been fighting ever since to help the rest of people still trapped and getting tortured and killed and he still to this day hasn't let them make him a monster. And that's what people like Malthus Rogers are trying. I saw him. Twice. Once after he tried to kill both of my dads. He told me and Shane to tell my dad to run away. Or Rogers would kill him. And the second time was after he saw my Pa in Prometheus. He -- shot Pa in the face, Pa almost died then too. But that time he told me -- he asked me and Shane. If /we/ would have killed him -- because Pa /wouldn't/. Even knowing that Rogers wanted to kill him, kill all of us, Pa wouldn't. He asked Shane and I if we thought that made Pa foolish and Shane said it just made him a good man." His gills flutter again quickly; he has to pause for breath before he can speak again. "Malthus Rogers said to us. Directly. That he also thought Pa was a good man -- and that that was /why/ he intended to kill him. That video of his -- it's just the same thing as the labs. Trying to hurt Pa to make him into a monster. But he'll never be. Malthus Rogers couldn't stand the idea of a mutant who was a good man. Couldn't stand the idea of the public /seeing/ a mutant as a good man. But he's not just. A good man. He's the /best/ man I've ever known and there are a whole lot of us who won't let people like Malthus tarnish that." Ash When the video starts, Ash looks up from his seat on a stool, wearing a cream button down shirt over brown slacks. Behind him, the walls are brown, maybe a mocha color, with a neat row of framed photos - five by eights - that are nigh impossible to make out on camera. "I have no good way to try to tell you this story. I've stopped and restarted the recording so many times now, I've lost count. The point is that I am a mutant. I was kidnapped by my government when I was seventeen and dropped in the Prometheus Labs as a prisoner and a victim of their 'scientific research.' They did everything they could to expand my powers beyond the feeble earth moving I did as a teen, and then kept me drugged when they couldn't control me. They cut into my head and installed a micro chip that fired off my mutation (and a number of other bodily functions) when they wanted to - but it wasn't ever something they could control. It was always explosive or implosive, so I was useless to them until they could fix that. I was kept drugged and drooling a lot after that, subject to whatever surgery they thought was informational. But then I was rescued by a group of people who were rescued before. "It seemed like a good idea, you know? Rescuing people because they know what it's like in there, horrors I can't describe, words feel hollow when I try. I've been on three different teams now, but most importantly, I was on the team that rescued Vector." Here Ash pauses, his expression growing more intent. "They are lying to you. That Malthus Rogers and every other news source that tells you that Jackson Holland Zedner is a terrorist is not telling the truth. We had no idea who was in that facility. We have very little personnel intel when we go in - generally just an address, a rough layout. People in these areas, no names. Hell, we don't even know how many guards would be. On my own rescue, they found people that they've lost as part of some type of retaliation or reclamation effort by Prometheus, and when these people were found, the teams were surprised. "All I can say is that we didn't know. We just feel people need to be rescued. We know what Prometheus does to mutants in their control and we know the pain they go through. No one deserves that." He lets out a deep breath and scrubs at his face. When he starts speaking again, he's quiet, almost scared. "I've lost two years of my life to Prometheus, and nearly everything I used to be. Now people are being arrested for standing up and asking everyone to treat us like people, not lab animals and it just isn't right. I have to say something. They're trying to paint us a threat, but I'm just a guy, a construction worker. Jax is a warm hearted hippie who feeds the poor and takes in strays. We're all people, after all. Please. Don't let them make you fear anyone. We all need to stop being afraid." Dorian Dorian is sitting crosslegged in a standard computer chair, his heavily scarred hands clamped nervously on his ankles in an attempt to keep him from fidgeting. He's dressed neatly, in a plain black t-shirt and a pair of new, pale blue jeans; his feet are bare, although when he wiggles his toes, it is possible to see the membranous webbing between each digit. His hair has been parted, the unruly mop of dark curls tamed into some semblance of order, leaving the fuzzy little half circles of his ears visible atop his head. Bouncing nervously in place, he draws one long breath, still not quite ready to look at the camera. The room around him is neatly appointed, with a warm yellow color on the walls, and a few tasteful pieces of artwork visible on the walls; cool sunlight illuminates the room, streaming in from a window off camera. At last, Dorian looks up at the camera, and offers a nervous smile, "Um… hi. I'm Dorian." He reaches a hand up to ruffle his hair, the lines of scarring glinting in the sunlight as he rakes dark nails through his hair. "When I was ten years old, men came to my house, and promised my parents that they could get me education, and treatment for my condition," he says, dark eyes fixated on the camera in front of him. "I'm a mutant. Um, I suppose I'm more than just a little kinda like an otter, really. I can hold my breath for a long time, and have… had," he glances down at his hand, frowning, "Webbing. On my hands and feet. I'm playful, and friendly, and like people, and talking to people. I… I'm not dangerous, or threatening, or scary. I just want to be around people, and have friends. Sometimes I could make people want to play, too. To relax, and be happy, and play." Dorian shakes his head, "My parents didn't have much. And I'd been kicked outta school, so the offer of getting me school? It… their prayers were answered. They said they'd miss me, that they'd see me soon. That they'd get to come visit." He pauses here, shivering briefly, "My parents loved me." "But… the people that took me away made them break that promise. I haven't…. I haven't seen my family in nearly ten years. I don't remember when I got to the labs. I just remember being alone. Always alone, isolated," he continues, wrapping his arms around himself in a hug, ruffling the dark fur on his bicep. "There were surgeries, procedures, tests. I don't remember clearly, it is all sorta fuzzy, and hazy, and just… I remember pain. So much pain, and so lonely," Dorian whimpers, pulling at the hem of his shirt, "I had to prove how long I could stay under water. How long I could hold my breath. And then when that wasn't good enough, they cut me." He lifts the hem of his shirt, revealing a large X scar that goes from shoulder to hip across his abdomen, interrupting the tawny fuzz that covers his chest and stomach; he pulls the shirt back down, hugging his arms around his stomach. "There were other things. Samples taken. They cut the webbing of my hands out. Never seeing a friendly face, or a kind word. I started to think that… that my life before was just a dream, that it wasn't real." "Eventually they let me around others again. But that was almost worse. I was a toy, a thing to be passed around as a reward, or as some pittance of comfort, following tests. I was a plaything, to the scientists, to the other prisoners," Dorian shudders, bowing his head, the tiny ears flattening into his slightly rumpled hair. "I don't actually know how old I was the first time another prisoner... r...raped me," he stutters on the word, biting his lip, "But it wasn't the last time. Not everyone plays nice." He isn't able to look at the camera when he speaks, though a muffled sniffle suggests he is crying. "I was moved around a lot. Forced to watch terrible things; to see friends, and room mates, and children, and grown ups, all of them be tortured. They wasted away and died, or die screaming in agony. Begging for mercy that was never given. Expected to offer comfort… and companionship…" his babbling falls silent, and he hugs his abdomen again, hunching his shoulders and pulling himself inward, as a frightened child does. He finally looks up again, his dark eyes damp with tears, "Mister Jackson /saved/ me. From all of that. From the testing, and the terror, and the isolation. Nearly ten /years/ of that. He gave me back my life - he's given me the chance to actually go to school, to learn." At this point, Dorian runs both hands through his hair, shaking his head and having to take a moment to gather himself. "No one should have to suffer this, through the torture and cutting and horrors and terror in those labs. No one. He rescued us from that nightmare, and taught us that there was still good in the world, that there was hope." He then fixes a solid, determined gaze at the camera, although he is visibly trembling, "Mister Jackson is a hero." Kismet The video begins with the young man settling back into textbook seiza against the backdrop of a plain white wall and a fingerspelling poster. His skin is dark and his hair buzzed short save for a single braid hanging down from somewhere behind his right ear. He wears a heather gray hoodie and black gi pants. "Call me Kismet." Dark brown eyes bore into the camera. "I fled the family of my birth when I was thirteen. I found another one, one that didn't take my abilities to mean demonic possession. One that helped me to flourish on my own terms. Prometheus took me from that family in 2012." Hands resting on his thighs, he does not fidget or shift. "I saw a lot of awful things in those labs. Most of it was petty, everyday cruelty. You might not think much of it at all, except that it happened constantly. Breaking our spirit was just a means to an end there. The only way to make it better was to cooperate, and the best you could hope for was neglect. "I was only there a little over a year, and during that time I had it better than most, considering how much I pushed them. I never stopped trying to escape, but I doubt I would have made it out alive on my own. Mr. Jackson and his people risked their lives and their freedom for ours, and not a one ever asked for anything in return." His expression softens just a touch. "I have known callous, violent men, in the labs and out. Mr. Jackson is nothing like them. He is a good and kind man." He actually shrugs. "That's it." Leaning forward, he reaches for something beneath the view of the camera, and the video cuts out a split second later. Flicker Flicker is dressed neatly in his video, khakis and a ribbed dark sweater with the collar of a button-down beneath it. His clothing is not particularly eye-catching; his /face/ tends to be. Features one clean-cut and boyish, now he bears a pitted etching of scars that melts fully half his face into a twisting waxwork of uneven skin. He's sitting on an upturned milk crate; behind him there is only blank wall, paneled in pale wood. "It's hard to really know where to start with all this." There's a small flush to his cheeks, an awkward duck of his head as his fingers fidget with the hem of his sweater. "I'm sure you're going to hear a lot of stories about Prometheus and how many lives it's ruined. And I guess I could tell that, too. Because they did -- take me off the streets when I was fifteen. I was sleeping, I'm -- quick so I'm hard to catch when I'm awake. Fell asleep on a park bench, woke up in a lab. Spent nearly two years there. Being cut open and beaten and stuck with needles and forced to demonstrate what I do for them until I'd black out from not being able to even stand. And I had it /better/, better than a lot of people who had enough dangerous potential that they were forced to do horrible things to other prisoners. Better than people who /didn't/ have potential they found useful and were just used as test dummies for mutant powers they did want to weaponize." His hands pluck at the fabric of his sweater again and then fold in his lap. "But, you know. for almost two years I was tortured and I watched other kids. Other people being tortured. Drugged and vivisected and raped and killed in a lot of ways but --" His teeth sink down against his lip, for a moment. He lifts a hand -- just as melty-scarred as his face -- to brush fingertips against the side of his head. "But I'm thankful. I mean, yeah, I'm thankful to Jax for rescuing me from there but I'm thankful that I /was/ there at all. Because if they'd never picked me up, I'd never have known. Never have known that these torture labs existed. And when you live through something like that, when you /see/ something like that, when you /know/ there's people being kidnapped and locked up and treated like labrats to be used and discarded, I don't -- I don't think you /have/ a choice, really. I started helping Jax in what he did because -- after you hear all these stories, after you know what's going on. How /can/ you just sit back and pretend it's not happening? And yeah. They took two years of my life, they gave me scars --" His fingers flutter towards his face, "that I'll wear forever but there are /hundreds/ of people out in the world right now who have a chance to /have/ a life that's not just torture and then being discarded. And that's something I don't regret. I only regret the hundreds and hundreds /more/ who we haven't had a chance to get to yet. Because they deserve better than --" His fingers brush along the side of his face and fall back to his lap. "But at least there's no more pretending, now." Parley The camera slides gradually into auto-focus, clarifying vague color blobs into an office window seat overlooking downtown New York. Parley is leaning back in a chair, in a black V-neck shirt and charcoal gray sports jacket, the faint dusting of tawny fur visible climbing the sides of his neck. With eyes steady and half-mast, his fingers are loosely tented over the rim of a coffee cup with the Heroes for Hire logo emblazoned on it. They drum a few times before he begins speaking. "My mutation is -- empathic transmission. I pick up, clarify and re-express sentiments. Essentially," the side of his mouth twitches, "I'm a universal translator. It's not a particularly riveting ability. There was never any tragic accidents or cataclysmic events caused by it. -- /I/ was interested by it, obviously. And curious. And pursued internship at a laboratory in Pennsylvania that specialized in genetic research. I /wanted/ to learn more about the X gene, and the changes happening inside my body." There's a long pause, as he looks blankly at the camera. Then says calmly, "So. I volunteered to become a test subject." He drums his fingertips together pensively, presses his tongue against his upper lip for a long moment, "I didn't understand, in the start, why the other mutants we were experimenting with didn't seem as," again, a grim brief smile, "fascinated as I was. And by the time I learned - mn. You can't really understand the casual nature of it all. It was simply a fact, that your body wasn't allowed to be private. I've been shaved, strapped down, gagged, blindfolded, - that was just as an introduction. To test the parameters of my abilities. They push you. Utilize you, and when they're done -- I had a tail, once." He doesn't bother to climb to his feet, absently rolling onto the side of his up and turning to raise up the back of his shirt where a half-dollar sized scar rests at the base of his spine. "It was broken, before it was removed. With sessions of balance and motorskill tests in between. I'm sure their findings have gone to use." He settles back into his seat again, "It was more strenuous, for my psionic abilities. I have immunities to many forms of psychic interference. It's something they'd been hoping to reproduce for a very long time. There's so much we don't know about the human mind and how it works. Even the tools and technology /available/ are so limited they often had to use other telepaths to even explore it. I was subsumed. Stretched open. Invaded. I've been compelled to perform acts -- that. I had great motivation to resist. Little races against other psionics, to see how quickly I could shrug out of influences. Before I did harm. Before I /let/ myself be harmed. Sometimes, I managed to in time." He shrugs, scratching behind an ear, saying flatly, "Other times, I was not. And I'd come back to myself, bloody, or screaming or seizing or…" He makes a short, sharp laugh-sound, "/soiling/ myself, and we'd start over again." He pushes his cup aside and sits forward. "It's the magnitude of it. It's not a prison term. It's not a rehabilitation. It's a charnel house - a one way road. And when you die, there is no grave, no notice to next of kin, no final earthy remains. You're forgotten. It's worse than watching someone realize that, if they're fully capable of communicating at the beginning of a test, and I've been brought into the room, there is a high likelihood they won't be by the end of the test. -- The three years I was there, I tried to remember the names of the dead, that I kept-" white teeth that are only faintly sharper than they should be, grit softly, "talking to the very end. But it's not just that I couldn't remember all of their names." His lips close again. "It's that I lost count, after a hundred." He leans back again, reaching for his coffee once more with an expression of - kind of bland distaste. "So. No, I don't really think 'Is Jackson Holland-Zedner a terrorist' is the right question we should be asking. I think more pressing would be 'Why is he the only one?'" Vector Vector's face is a familiar one, most places -- across the country and across the /world/, his image has been widely distributed. #1 most wanted, possibly the most hunted man on earth in the wake of the million and more dead worldwide from his zombie plague. His face has been splashed far and wide across the earth with every law enforcement agency everywhere instructed to bring him in on sight and rewards offered for information leading to his capture. In his video, though, he doesn't seem particularly threatening. Boyish, heavy dusting of freckles standing in sharp contrast to his pallor, large grey eyes shadowed by deep sleepless circles and a softspoken demeanor. He's in a grey polo shirt, short-sleeved, and there's not much to be seen in the background of his room. A plain wooden chair, a plain wooden desk. "My name is Andrew Kinney," he says, calm and quiet, "although I think most people know me now as Vector. It's not a name I chose for myself and this is not a life I chose for myself. Until a year and a half ago, I was in grad school at Columbia. I was engaged to be married and I had a really quiet --" A brief tiny smile pulls at his lips, dies soon. "-- A really /boring/ life full of numbers. Even my fiancee started getting yawny when I talked to her about my thesis." "It's true that I store diseases. And it's true that the horrific plague that killed so many people originated with me. There is nothing I can ever do to make up for all those lives --" His voice grows a little hitched; he takes a short pause, a short breath, to steady it. "Before Prometheus kidnapped me from my life and locked me in their labs, I had -- potential to be dangerous, but only as dangerous as the diseases I already encountered. I could give you a bad cold but I'd certainly never /want/ to. When I was in their labs they exposed me, deliberately, to every deadly pathogen they could find. They drugged me, they manipulated me telepathically, they cut open my head to mess with my brain and unlock more horrifying potential than I'd ever even dreamed of having before. And they did this on purpose, because they wanted me to create for them new deadly diseases. They wanted weapons for war. And they wanted a disease that would target mutants and wipe them out." He lifts his hands, pressing his fingertips to his eyes. "When Jackson Holland came to that facility, he had no idea what I was. He knew what Prometheus was, he knew what kinds of tortures they get up to. And when he found out what I was capable of, he --" He takes in another shaky breath. "That's a decision nobody should ever be in the position of making. In Prometheus's hands, I /was/ being turned into a weapon. That is why they had me, and why they took my abilities and /made/ them into something horrific. The recent plague that devastated New York and spread across the world /was/ an attempt to engineer genocide. Prometheus was trying to fabricate a disease to kill everyone who carries the X-gene, and in the process they used me to create horror. And even then it would never have gotten out, but Malthus Rogers and his soldiers tried to kill me -- the sickness was a horrible accident, being shot at, my powers just --" Here he stops again, tense, biting down on his lip and looking away from the camera for a moment. "I couldn't watch the news and sit back and let them frame an innocent man for the horror Prometheus has made. For the horror /I/ made. I needed to set the record straight. Jackson and his people, they don't even know where I am. They're not working with me, they're not in contact with me. And I would turn myself back into custody in a heartbeat. If someone could assure me that there was a safe -- a cleanroom, a safe place where none of the death that lives inside me would be able to get out and hurt another person, I would go. I would spend the rest of my life locked up somewhere safe, I would die if they wanted to put me to death. But I won't go back to those people to be used deliberately to fabricate more death. There has been so much of that already. And Prometheus will keep trying to create it. And I hope to God that men like Jackson keep trying to stop them."