With a loud clank and then a hiss, the cell door swung shut, and I sat down in the middle of the hermetically sealed cell, cross-legged, to work on expanding my energy supplies.

  My wakeup and then the meeting had gone really well, right up until the BSA heavies had arrived and carefully informed me that they had to take me into custody.

  Yeah, five durability alphas dressed up in class five response armor simply marched right in and told me I was under arrest. To be fair, I had sort of expected something like that to happen, sooner or later, so I kept my cool. The real grumpy part, though, was that after the BSA Control Act of 2011, they were not required to communicate my offenses to me, or really have any sort of communications with me at all, including Miranda rights.

  At least they didn’t pull any of the terrifyingly large energy and projectile weapons and point them at me when I decided to come along peacefully. I wouldn’t say I was actually prepared for them to arrest me, but I knew it could happen, so I didn’t freak out. Of course, I instantly dissolved my armor into millions of tiny, neutral beads that were a bit more slippery than sand when they told me to disarm, and while I was pretty sure the BSA inspectors would vacuum them up later, I wasn’t losing much… I’d have to re-fabricate about a million quantum couplings later, but that was a minor task, and I was not about to wind up stuck in some basement endlessly fabricating gear for the BSA.

  I valued my freedom more than I valued their lives, which meant, in my opinion, I had the upper hand… even if they perp-walked me out of the building wearing pretty much nothing but a smile and a domino mask that I wore under the suit, just in case. My armor was NOT designed to be worn over clothing, so they could deal with all the appreciative glances and news footage themselves. I had nothing to be ashamed of except, perhaps, my swimmer’s manscaping, necessary for getting the most out of my suit.

  A quick check showed that some kind of widgeteer tech was interfering with the quantum energy reclamation in the building that they took me to. Expensive tech, which implied I was either in an alpha prison or a heavily fortified holding cell, but… I didn’t gain my energy from the chaos butthole, which means that scrambling the chaos field, as much as it would shut down the powers of a normal alpha, had basically no effect on me. The farm had been much more dangerous with that quantum reinforcing alpha they’d used to lock me down, but at this point, after my breakthrough, I figured I could overload that guy if I ever met him again.

  But here? If I wanted to walk out, I could. Heck, I could probably leave a bunch of Jake-shaped holes behind me if I wanted to. Of course, doing so would put me, personally, on the hit list of the BSA, which is why I hadn’t done so yet.

  So right now? I was just treating this as an opportunity to get a little rest and meditation time in. Working as a student assistant was time-consuming, and of course, I still had things I wanted to finish, but most of them could wait.

  After a few minutes, a pneumatic lock hissed, dropping a capsule with a disposable orange suit into the cell. I sighed, putting it on. They were really pulling out all the stops to make me feel like a prisoner. I had to wonder what they wanted? I guess I had a lot of things they could eyeball, and I didn’t want to immediately be added to the rolls of ‘kill on sight’ supervillains, but my patience did have limits… and if they tried to play too many games, they had better hope they had someone like Graviton available to lock me down.

  Yeah, I was kind of done with playing the weak and powerless gimp. I surely wouldn’t be strutting around like a class eight, but with almost a fifty-foot aura radius, and the energy to support it, I felt a little cockiness was in order.

  After almost two hours, I finally sighed. “Look, I know you are watching me and listening to me right now. I am being very cooperative, but with each hour that passes, the less cooperative I will become. I am getting bored, and a bored Jake might not care too much about what happens if he walks out of here.” I replaced the crappy disposable orange coveralls with a more comfortable and softer set of gray cotton coveralls, like I was used to wearing when I was working, and kinetically hovered myself halfway up in the air on an air shield.

  Really? How stupid could you be? I could literally see the benzodiazepines floating in the air. Trying to gas me? Obviously they weren’t trying to kill me, there were lots more lethal things that they could have sealed into the room, from carbon monoxide to simply dropping the hermetically sealed room’s oxygen supply, but I sat up, walked over to a bench, and sat down, closing my eyes and clearing the chemical cocktail from my lungs as quickly as it tried to assault me. What was this, the Middle Ages? Were they trying to get into my pants?

  After a few more minutes, the chemistry concentration dropped, and two guys, at least I assumed they were guys, walked in in a slightly modified set of heavy armor. I acted like I was limp, and they picked me up and carried me out of the cell.

  I decided I might as well have fun with this.

  They strapped me into a gurney with what I suspect were intended to be unbreakable straps. I mean, I wanted to point out that they weren’t nearly as durable as Orcules’ skin had been, but that would have given the game away. Ooh, a terratrium collar. I had been wanting to find out what terratrium was made of, since it was supposed to be some kind of supermetal, so I stripped a few layers out of the inside of the collar.

  I was a little disappointed to find out that it was actually considerably weaker than the composite I’d made my mark four suit’s armor plates out of, but I was getting used to disappointment. It was pretty good stuff, clearly assembled by a non-mechanical method, like a meta’s power, but it was not something really worth memorizing, although, of course, I did.

  Interesting, I’d guessed that they were wheeling me to an operating theater, but it turned out it was more like an interrogation chamber. There were two additional baseline humans there, a woman and a man, and both of the alphas in the armor were high-durability women, one of them a class three superstrength, and the other one a class four density increaser.

  “How long?” the man, dressed in what I guessed was a suit, asked.

  The female, I guessed a doctor because of the lab coat, answered, “Just a few moments. The prozopan isn’t intended to last very long, and he has enhanced biochemistry.”

  I gave them just enough time to stew, and then yawned hugely, opening my eyes.

  The girl was pretty cute for a baseline, mid-thirties if I had to guess, but she had sort of a hard look that, where I grew up, generally meant ‘ex-hooker who would happily slit your throat if you disrespect her.’ Or maybe it meant that she had slept her way to the top or was trying to be competitive in the man’s world of unauthorized biochemistry. I didn’t know, but I did know she looked like a mean one despite her beauty.

  The guy, on the other hand, almost oozed charisma, but it was that sort of advertising executive charisma, or maybe like a business lawyer who knew he had your balls in a vise. It was the ‘look at what a nice guy I am, but I could destroy you in a second’ look.

  “Good morning!” I said cheerfully. “What a nice little nap. I am kind of hungry. Does this place have a continental breakfast?”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed, and she started to answer, but the day trader wannabe answered. “Hello, Mister Doyle. My name is Special Agent Andrew Marquesse.”

  I nodded slowly in my collar, “Cool, so we are breaking federal doxxing laws now? I don’t see any BSA agents or local law enforcement around, except for those two alphas in the Gerenon suits. Tell the heavy one she needs to tread lightly, at her density, she could drive some of those terratrium shards into her feet and not even notice, terratrium necrosis is a nasty way to go, even with enhanced durability.” I glanced down at my collar. “Ohh, looks like you have terratrium touching my bare skin too. Kidnapping and attempted murder so far. What’s next? Is my skin turning colors yet?”

  Andrew shook his head, looking a bit nonplussed. “No, the terratrium is sealed. And you were arrested and detained as part of the 2011 threat reduction act.”

  I sighed, “Terratrium sealant is crap. That’s why they stopped using it. Terratrium has an acidic value, which means you have to reapply the sealant every four months. Have you been attending to its regular maintenance? I am pretty well off right now, but I bet whatever agency you belong to could make me rich when I sue you.”

  “Mister Doyle, you don’t seem to understand your position.”

  I laughed, “Sure, I do. You have detained me under the 2011 act, which allows you to secure me if I am deemed a federal threat or federal asset without any immediate announcement of what law I have violated. However, now that you believe I am safely restrained, you still have to explain what laws I am being detained for using alpha abilities in the act of violating.”

  I continued cheerfully, “As soon as you have detected that I am conscious and coherent. I am pretty sure that I am both conscious and coherent right this moment, and in fact, I was two hours ago when you stripped away my freedom, which is already something that is worth a hefty lawsuit and possible criminal prosecution for unlawful imprisonment.”

  “How do you know that?”

  I gave him the eyebrow, “Seriously? I am at the Kellar Academy. If I couldn’t recite that act backwards and forwards, I would have failed basic law enforcement. Now, under what pretenses am I being held?”

  He shook his head, “National security.”

  I smiled a little, “So you are refusing to tell me what I am being charged with, and then making a claim of national security for that information? Please, what are you a special agent of, mister special agent? Special school? Special education? Special Olympics? Because I know you can’t be a BSA agent, you aren’t a special investigator for the Army, and the CIA is three old farts in an office getting drunk and talking about the good old days when they could shoot tourists in the head to start wars.”

  “Project Triton.”

  I snickered, “Huh, you guys blow up any planets recently? Or was ours enough for you?” Everyone knew that the Q-bombs were Project Triton’s baby, which is why the whole thing was disbanded in the 90’s. Well, supposedly disbanded. I didn’t know if these two fruitcakes were actually part of a hidden program or just nutballs reliving the past.

  He was not holding his calm very well; that innate charisma was dropping down to nothing more than a good hairstyle. “No. You are being conscripted. Project Triton has full rights to acquire any resources deemed threatening or necessary to full National security. In this case, the local energy constant has reduced in your proximity, which is deemed an emergency resource.”

  “Add to that the proven ability to keep national security assets alive, violations of the Darpa technological security act, and an ability which, while technically qualified as a tier seven threat, could conceivably be assessed as tier nine, due to the facility with which it pierced a tier seven kaiju’s defenses, and you are a very dangerous and important asset to your country.

  “Tier nine? I thought the threat level only went up to eight.” I asked, curious about his delusion.

  He shook his head, “In common nomenclature, it goes to eight, but the true scale goes up to tier ten, because we have discovered a threat that could potentially be a tier ten. Technically, there are tier eleven and twelve, as well, but those are philosophical, unless you suddenly develop the magical ability to blot out the solar system.”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  I looked thoughtful, “So if you think I may be tier nine, why risk my goodwill by locking me up?”

  The doctor lady looked at me like I was an idiot. “Obviously, because discovering your weaknesses in case you turn into a true threat is just as important as securing your cooperation.”

  I sighed, “Welp, this has been fun and all, but I am going to have to turn down your offer.”

  “What offer?”

  I shrugged against the restraints. “Your offer to join team Triton. I have a lot more important things to do than spending my life healing broken-down widgeteers and going after kaiju that aren’t threatening anyone. If they try to make landfall, I will happily turn them into chum, but I already know how to save my planet, and you warmongers with q-bombs aren’t part of it.”

  The man shook his head, recovering a little of his aplomb. “I am afraid denying your duty isn’t an option. You are being conscripted by the laws and authority of the renewed United States of America, by special commission of the president and the Joint Chiefs.”

  I nodded thoughtfully, “And where is the paperwork declaring this conscription? I don’t have orders from the president and joint chiefs. I just see two people making spurious claims and acting like they are part of a security organization that was very publicly disbanded, oh… forty years ago? I am not sure what consortium you are working for, but tell them they have to do better next time. I wasn’t born yesterday.”

  Whew. Well, when I slipped the cuffs this time and faded through the floor, at least, I wasn’t stopped by some power that reinforced them. It was possible that these jokers really were part of some government organization, but there were ways such things were done, and I was pretty sure trying to dose me up with happy gas while I was down for the count wasn’t a part of it.

  It only took a couple of minutes for me to be out and far enough from wherever I was being held that I felt safe enough to emerge. Wherever I was was weird; I didn’t find any subsurface arcologies at all. There was subsurface transit, which was a given, and looked to be fairly well maintained, but it wasn’t until I finally popped up above the ground and rematerialized in the open air that I realized the truth.

  There was a 500-foot-tall monolith barely a mile away, with a long pool in front of it, and beside it, another piece of Greek-style architecture.

  I almost wanted to drop to the ground and start ranting about how the damned fools had done it, but without giant monkeys around, the joke wouldn’t have been nearly as funny.

  It was the Washington Monument.

  ***

  “Excuse me.”

  I glared upwards at the words and saw a vision. Long blonde hair, a body that redefines the concept of perfect ten, a face that could launch a million ships. Giant, slowly beating wings. Great. They were trying to find my weakness. Good attempt, if I hadn’t been warned.

  “Hey Granny...errr… Angelique. Fair warning, I recognize emotional manipulation. No offense, but I will consider it assault and react badly.”

  She sighed deeply. I guess in forty years, you learn how to turn almost anything into a sexual assault. Still, I wasn’t going to rip her wings off just for trying, and it was probably just a habit. That might be considered a slight overreaction, and I’d kind of instantly become public enemy number one, at least among teenage boys.

  “Can I talk to you?” she asked in that musical lilt that had fueled a million adolescent fantasies. Right, her second power was sonic control, not pheremones. No wonder she could end most fights without throwing a punch.

  I shrugged, “Sure. I assume the kidnappers were official in some way? I am kind of pissed off about that; it was rude, especially the drugging part, and it will take me hours to get back to school.”

  She pressed a button on one of her wristbands. They probably had one of the low-band transmitters in them, but you could actually stuff a lot of potential communications codes into a fraction of a second transmission with computer assistance. No celebrity would risk rotting off their limbs just to send a message.

  I figured it meant ‘all clear, I have this under control’ or ‘I have him stopped, get the snipers into position’. Then again, with her sonic control, she could probably just send messages to snipers directly, so the button might have been for my benefit.

  I sighed and sat down on one of the benches. It was old, but surprisingly looked like it was in pretty decent shape, a bit like Angelique herself, I suppose. At least any snipers would have to be very far away and probably hidden from a low position, which would make the shot a lot harder.

  “I uhh… have to apologize for that,” she said, settling on the ground. Don’t get me wrong, her wings were big when they were spread out, but I had a pretty good grasp of physics. Whatever she used to fly, it wasn’t caused by her wings. Probably some sort of gravity nullification or telekinesis, I was going for gravity nullification, since she did, in fact, seem to use them for acceleration and control. Of course, videos of her picking up armored cars complicated things slightly.

  Once again, more evidence that the traditional power control paradigms were a load of crap. ‘flying’ was one of her powers, pheromones were another, but realistically, there were probably hundreds of sub-abilities tied into each. I was on guard against it, and could probably neutralize it like the gas they’d tried to feed me, but I would consider it assault.

  “You? Apologize?”

  She nodded, once more transmitting the motion to her magnificent breasts. Okay, I was self-controlled, but even I would admit that sending her to negotiate on their behalf was probably a masterstroke. Even knowing she had decades of experience in using her body as a manipulating tool wasn’t enough to stop it from having an effect. “Yes. On behalf of the Renewed United States government.”

  I shrugged. “Good diplomacy. So, did they hurt anyone?”

  “Did who?”

  “Whoever picked me up from Kellar. I was wearing my armor, and unconscious, surrounded by my team after a… power twitch that I had to wake up from.”

  She shook her head, “No. The ummm… special unit that has been keeping an eye on you said you said you were unconscious but stable. So the unit sent to retrieve you spoke with your powers teacher, Jupiter. He laughed and said good luck, but that’s Jupiter for you, so we transported you here. It was determined that it would be best to keep you unconscious until a special team could be assembled to negotiate with you. That clearly did not work, so they asked me to intervene before something… unfortunate happened.

  “Unfortunate?”

  She nodded, “You get angry and wipe America off the map.”

  I started laughing, seriously?

  “I’m sorry?” she said after a few moments.

  I just sorta of waved at her, laughing hard enough that I was tearing up before finally calming down enough to gasp out, “Me… blowing up America.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

  I finally managed to stop laughing, taking a moment to slow down my gasping. “Oh, you had a psychic watching me. Let me guess. She could only catch parts of what we were talking and thinking about, and panicked.”

  She nodded slowly.

  I shook my head, breathing heavily for a few moments. “I am sorry a celebrity like you wasted your time. It’s actually nice to know you are more attractive in real life than you are in your pictures and videos. Thanks for satisfying my curiosity, but I am afraid you are wasting your time.”

  She furrowed her brow slightly and shook her head, “Why do you say that?”

  I shrugged, “My power may be molecular control, but it’s not all that, and it’s a bitch to recharge. Can I make giant robot armor? Sure, if I have all the materials for it, lots of time, a mountain of food and radioactives, and lots of help. Not that giant robot armor would help against tanks… It’s more of a kaiju deterrent than a weapon. A good tank would tear it apart. I don’t invent things, I just make them smaller.”

  “I can sort of teleport, very, very slowly. I can molecularly simulate some elemental powers, very, very weakly. I can’t fly; I can just run on hardened molecular plates. Did I help beat a Kaiju? Yeah, but it was a very weak one.”

  “A real alpha Kaiju would have had enough innate power resistance that I would have barely been able to peel off a layer of dirt, but for some reason, the one I fought was big, but had almost zero innate power resistance. Honesty, just using your wing clips probably would have cut it into pieces. It was TECHNICALLY a class five or six, because of its size, but realistically? I’d barely call it a class 3.”

  “My superpower involves pushing molecules around. Do you know how fast I can ‘teleport’? Two hundred and fifty miles an hour. That means TEN HOURS to move from coast to coast. Oh, and I would have to stop about every hour to meditate and eat my weight.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know why you people keep trying to boost my power rating. At best, I would be a class three or four, but everyone keeps telling me my potential is higher and higher. Could I make a nuke? Sure, so could every kid with a basic knowledge of fission. There was even a movie about it once, a kid building a nuke, and it’s been proven in real life six times. The best part? If I blew off nuclear fission, it would probably kill me too, and I am surrounded by the most beautiful and nicest women in existence almost constantly.”

  I shook my head. “Your idiot psychic probably overheard a conversation I was having with senpai Bob where he was trying to convince me I had world-changing power, and overreacted. He was basically trying to bullshit me about the value of choosing the hero track, and I was arguing with him because I’d rather not play the costumed retard. I am still planning on sort of a hero track, because Kaiju attacks suck, but I won’t be a celebrity or a man-whore. That’s it.”

  She looked at me closely, “You believe that.”

  I laughed, “Yeah. I am not going to pull a Tetsuo or Doctor Evil. Do you know what Doctor Evil’s problem was? He never got laid except like… once to make Scott Evil. I like this planet, I like girls, and right now, my biggest concern is trying to sell armor to the government that will help them kill Kaiju, and finish my school. Oh, and figure out who I want to spend my future with.” I gave her a side eye. “Because I refuse to be a whore.”

  She sighed, “This again. I’m not a whore.”

  I nodded, “Sure, you aren’t. Whores get paid per customer.”

  She laughed slightly, shaking her head, “Nope. You, like so many others, remember that video. That’s the only thing you think about. Sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t look like that naked, because that wasn’t me. Little Miss Silverpubes was paid a great deal of money to make that video; she’s a class three replicator, but she, and everyone else, has never seen me naked.”

  “Huh?” I asked brilliantly.

  She snorted, “No one has ever seen me naked. No one ever will.” She glanced at her rather scanty costume. “I hate telling this story, but you are a class nine, or maybe a class four male. Tell you what, if you answer a few questions for me, I will answer them for you. And you don’t have to worry about the national guard, I already called them off… if what I suspect is true, they wouldn’t help.”

  “Deal,” I answered, feeling like an extra in a true-crime story. “You first. Explain.”

  She shrugged, “I was raped at an Elvis concert. It was my own fault; I led the guy on, but when it came time, I froze and went silent, and he didn’t. That’s my origin story. I prayed for deliverance and became an angel. Honestly, I don't blame him; he had no idea I was suffering a nervous breakdown.”

  She shook her head, “It sounds simple, but it wasn’t. I became an angel, and no one was able to have at me again. You know how sometimes your powers are innate, sometimes they respond to your need, and sometimes they just… are? Mine responded to my need. I gained the voice of command, and no male can ever touch me sexually again. I don’t want to explain it, and I don’t miss it, but I was stupid enough to trust a publicist.”

  “And?”

  She shrugged, “And he hired a meta porn actress who could shapeshift. And it worked, much to my disgust. In less than a month, I was picked up by the Prometheans, and I can stop almost any crime without even resorting to violence, except in certain cases. But… I was humiliated, and fired him, and found out he made more tapes that he threatened to release.”

  She sighed deeply. “I refused to cooperate, and he released them. But I couldn’t call him a liar or disprove their authenticity without a series of actions that would destroy my reputation and career, so I let it go… and it worked, and all it cost me was my pride. Now? It’s been over 50 years. He’s been dead for over a decade, and Ladygram is retired and living somewhere out of the country. Now, it cannot be fixed. Just trying would make me look like more of a slut than even the tapes did, and I profited from my sin.”

  She shook her head. “That is my tale of woe. I am not a real angel, obviously, and I can’t fight it or argue it or even expose a dead man, and even if I did, it would ruin any faith in me, call my arrests of some REALLY awful metas into question, some of whom can live for hundreds of years and have sworn vengeance on me and humanity in some awful ways, and…”

  I nodded slowly, “I get it.”

  “Do you?”

  I snorted, “Obviously. And I believe you.”

  She looked shocked. “You do?”