Voices.

Lian Hui turned her head. Lying on the thin facility-issued mattress with one knee propped up and an arm thrown carelessly beneath the plates of her skull, she could hear speaking, introductions. A visitor had come to see the sideshows, to ogle at them from behind one-way mirrors. Interest quickly sublimated, she turned her head, feeling her bony wrist pressing into a pressure point. It was uncomfortable, but the prickly discomfort kept her mind minimally occupied. A heavy sigh escaped her lips, like a breath of tobacco smoke that rose and curled overhead in the spine of a question mark. Given another month, Lian Hui would be a spirit, deceased of boredom.

Beneath her bed where she lay were stashed the few possessions she had been permitted to keep. But she had quickly lost interest in her hoarded items. Only test-tubes which remained crystal clear since Lian Hui had no use for them in her cell. Not when she had no chemicals, no plants that could reduce a man to a writhing contortionist with just a touch. Nothing stimulating to play with. Even the mandarins she received in February during the Chinese New Year – always given in threes, even though they were supposed to come in even numbers – were genetically-modified to be seedless, crusty and crunchy. But if she had seeds, the cell would be quickly overrun with vines and branches. Maintenance and security would be dearly compromised. Lian Hui knew that, as much as her captors.

Lian Hui’s ears twitched at the mention of her name, but otherwise remained unresponsive as knuckles rapped concisely on the door to her cell. The story of her own life was given a muffled blurb, succinct and meant to suffice. Only, the man had glazed over the first chapters, as though Lian Hui had only sprung into existence as Aconitum. As though all of them had only started living when crime became their backdrops, their careers.

Sonder. The word sprang to mind, a bittersweet thing that rolled breathily off her tongue.

Two doors away, there was a crunch, and the weary sentence, “And...he's like that." And then, something was dialed and the door to Lian Hui’s cell flung open.

Lian Hui’s breath came out in a gust of wind. Slowly, she pushed herself upright, legs swinging to hang off the edge of the bed, toes brushing the cold floor. She could hear one of the prisoners – Cortez – lewdly appraising the second visitor – female – but her heart was beating in her ears as she contemplated the open door before her.

But the moment disappeared quickly, before the taste of freedom close could overwhelm her. It became just another shade of colour on a spectrum of vividity that was admittedly brilliant, but which she - impervious to colour and all its nuances - had no capability of appreciating. Lian Hui forced herself to stand. Otherwise, she would simply be locked into place where she sat, under the shackles of impassivity, locking her limbs and staunching any flow of care.

It was why she hadn’t resisted being taken into captivity years before when the jig was up, and why she had to remind herself to walk into freedom rather than remain unmoved.

But they were not liberated, Lian Hui reminded herself as she heard the name Elizabeth Dalton tossed into the air. Not truly. Free folk did not have supervisors to watch their every move and breath, did not have threats implanted beneath the skin, ready to implode at the first sign of insubordination. Lian Hui perched herself at the doorway, neither inside nor out of her cell. At the threshold between trapped and free, Lian Hui stood, peering up and down the corridor, spying at first glance a man who looked distinctly uncomfortable, another dark-skinned male with a defined jawline, and a tall slender woman at one end of the hallway.

The process of adaptation had been an easy one. Life was now about convenience, and, therefore, about compromise. He could make life convenient for others and they could make life convenient for him. His bare feet swung to the ground, and he felt the greenish grey paste between his toes. It gently retreated under his weight, but softy swallowed the soles of his feet around the sides. He was used to it.

A tap from behind the mirror (or, as they called it outside the cell, ‘window’) - Whatshisface’s stick. Apparently he had visitors, but that was their bad luck. They knew by now that he didn’t talk to Whatshisface. He could just about hear the man’s voice through the pane of glass, although he could only see himself staring back, wearing nothing but a baggy pair of shorts, hair unkempt, shiny tracks of sweat just catching the light across his body.

"Mr. Leon something something Stain. something something less violent patients. He merely suffers from something something.”

“Speak up! I need that diagnosis!” Leon knew there would be no response. It had been agreed by all relevant parties that Whatshisface would deal with Leon Smythe only when nobody else could do it and that, in return, Leon Smythe would try not to antagonise Whatshisface. Still, sometimes it just had to be done - especially given that they were probably talking about his ’impulse control issues’.

“something something generate a corrosive slime something something"

As though on cue, Leon could feel a trickle of sweat run from his neck down his breast, where it gently congealed and clung to the hairs on his chest. He lazily wiped it off and flicked it at the mirror, where it splattered and drooped, visible only due to its pea-green hue. He couldn’t hear Whatshisface anymore. He must have moved on. Still, he’d probably be back. He had never once been presented as an exhibit without later being explored in the flesh.

He’d been prodded and probed so often that he’d given up on shame, as a concept, and was by now quite happy to traipse around his cell, or anywhere else he was permitted to go, totally or mostly naked. It made life more convenient. He didn’t have to worry about burning his clothes off and they didn’t have to worry about providing an infinite supply of clothes for him to burn. Even the powdered chalk that layered the floor was a concession to necessity; they had originally used a custom-built tiles that resisted the slime before realising that it wouldn’t simply drain and would leak instead into the corridor – the chalk collected and neutralised the slime and simply had to be swept up as and when. In return for behaving on ‘clean-up day’, he would get a say in who came to do it and access to privileges, as evidenced by the empty fast food wrappers and empty cans of soft drinks that lay about his cell.

With that in mind, he got up out of his hammock – another concession to convenience, for, while he tended to burn through mattresses, a string hammock allowed slime to drain – and stumbled over the unevenly smooth or claggy chalk ground to the door when it opened automatically, pausing only to swipe up a bottle of half-finished Gatorade. His adam’s apple visibly bounced as he glugged down the sweet yellow liquid.

He spent less than one second in the training area: it wasn’t just his own ‘guestroom’ that had opened, but everybody’s, meaning that the outside now contained both Whatshisface and Cortez the psycho – friendly faces only by the most perverse stretches of the imagination. Touching his neck, he hung back, lurking in the metallic doorframe and tried to take her in, but found his eyes constantly flicking back to Whatshisface and Cortez, just in case.

Cole - or as he was now primarily known, Fear - sat in his cell, propped up against the wall with a bent knee and his arm slung lazily on top. He listened to the jibber jabber outside, rolling his eyes as he was introduced to yet another person. Well, he'd say introduced, but it really meant lectured on. He couldn't see the ugly bastards outside as they stared in, examining him like a lab rat. None of the subjects could. Instead they had mirrored glass, which he thought was an unnecessary precaution. He simply stared at his reflection as the old man babbled on.

"Our first subject, Mr. Cole Erickson, AKA Fear." Marcus said as he tapped on the glass.

Fear smirked. He wasn't "also known as" fear, he was fear. He listened with deep intent as the doctor continued.

"Mr. Erickson is clinically insane, and has no memory of who he was before he took up the Fear persona. But, he is still highly intelligent at the same time. He is prone to violent outbursts as well. Approach with caution, but I suspect you can handle him."

Cole got up, and walked over to the glass, slamming his hands down on it.

"They say in space, nobody can hear you scream. It's funny how people lie, isn't it?" His voice came out as a hiss, the natural when he was having one of his "bursts". It always happened when he was being introduced to someone else. This wasn't even the worst of it. Naturally, it was ignored, and he moved onto the next prisoner. Of course, Marcus didn't call them prisoners. He just called them patients.

They finally reached the last patient, Dante Cortez. Cole hadn't really payed much attention to Dante. He was the usual Super Soldier, with the decreased aging and pure muscle power. Fear didn't appreciate that way of doing things. He liked manipulation; the ability to twist your opponent forever rather than temporarily harm them. Mental wounds are much more effective than physical ones. He'd learned that from experience.

The door to his cell opened and he strolled out, his slick, black shoes clanking against the ground as he whistled a tune to himself. Surprisingly enough, he was allowed his usual smart attire in his cell, at the cost of having a typewriter to amuse himself. He didn't mind. He'd write out twisted manuscripts and leave them all over the training yard for people to read. The other thing he was allowed in his cell was a secure harness that hung from the wall. He would take off his trenchcoat and hang upside down inside it, like a bat. He'd started doing so on the bars in the training yard, too. His brain functioned better when all the blood rushed to it. The same red dots that landed on Dante landed on him, too, as he walked over to his new supervisor - Elizabeth Dalton.

"Hello, Miss Dalton." He said with a twisted smile.

Faith lay on the bed in her cell with her arms under her head and stared up at the ceiling lost in her own daily musings. Since being captured she had settled into a steady routine, or as much of a routing as someone like Faith could have, which mostly consisted doing nothing in the middle of the day and being difficult when it came to testing etc. Of course 'being difficult' was what the lab people used as well as Dr Fisher but Faith just didn't like being tested and she made no attempt to hide it. This usually resulted in some form of discipline which only served to anger her further, they hadn't yet reached a solution and Faith would be just as happy if they never did. She hadn't chosen to be here, most definitely did not want to be here and so she wasn't about to make things easy on them. Especially since they controlled her with that damned thing in her and if there was one thing bound to piss her off it was someone else being in control.

She heard Fisher's voice and his cane tapping on the glass but she ignored it. This animal was not going to behave for anyone wanting to gawk at her, if they wanted her to do something then they could just as well open the door and let her out. A moment later the door opened and Faith raised her eyebrows, clearly someone up there was listening and had decided to help her out, though it decades too late as far as she was concerned. She stood and straightened her long flowing skirt and vest before padding towards the door. She had boots but chose not to wear them, in this concrete prison she preferred to be as close to the earth as possible. It was hard enough tapping the line here without any more restrictions. She could feel the line, humming along her skin, but it was a distance away and so made things more difficult. She wondered if that was just coincidence or something more, if she had been at full strength she might well have blasted the place up, control thing or not.

"Feeding time at the Zoo?" She drawled as she entered the corridor. "Oh wait, we got us here another visitor. Come to lookit us Freaks. Cher be a darlin and move along, it ain't Carnival yet."

She spoke flatly as though she actually didn't really care either way and in truth she felt only the mildest of irritations, fleeting as a fly landing on you before vanishing just as quickly. But that didn't mean it wouldn't build into something more very fast if she wasn't listened to.

Katelyn folded her hands in her lap as she stared listlessly at the hard wall of her cell. A heavy sigh escaped her lips. She found herself doing this a lot, simply staring into a corner of the dull room. She used to be extremely rowdy, always trying to jaunt out of her cell or wreak havoc on anyone who passed her cramped cell. Over time she was conditioned to the point of being mostly passive. She found herself extremely bored quite often. Because of her constant defiance, she never seemed to get privileges like some of those around her, which left her constantly looking to relieve her boredom. So, her normal day proceeded, Katelyn’s imagination running wild while she ignored the world around her, at least until she hear a tap upon her wall.

Katelyn’s head turned slowly, a look of curiosity crossing her face. Perhaps ‘Doc’, as she called him, was showing her off to another weird scientist. It happened occasionally, and Katelyn tended to make a joke out of it. Threatening to kill the new researcher and scaring them with her abilities were some of her favorites. A devious smile parted her lips as she stood to listen in. For a moment, Katelyn heard Doc talking.

“She can be somewhat childish, and has a stubborn streak to her. She has been somewhat less than cooperative with our researchers."

Katelyn smirked at this. She must have been right about it being researcher wanting to see Doc’s subjects. She proceeded to make a few model-esque poses, showing herself off as she was explained. As she finished her last pose, she pointed forth a single finger sending a jolt of Psionic energy towards the mirror. It left a small sizzling mark in the mirror where she had hoped the researcher had been standing. With that, she heard the Doc and his cohort quickly striding on to the next cell.

Her blank and listless expression returned soon after he left; Katelyn found herself leaning against one of the tough walls of the tiny cell she spent her life inside. She glanced around the blank room a bit, rubbing her head as she pondered her fate. Which is when the unexpected happened.
Katelyn’s eyes widened as the heavy steel door to her box shaped prison swung open, and with the sound she heard, it wasn’t just one of the cell doors. An inquiring expression came across her as she stepped away from the wall she was leaning on and peered out the door.

She barely even remembered what the outside of her box looked like with how little she was brought out. A glint of hope came over her as she had faint thoughts of freedom, despite the impossibility that is was. She stepped outside with a smirk across her face as she peered up in the direction of the little lasers that started to swarm around her. With a quick wink to the positioned snipers, Katelyn peered around, her gaze only met with that of the other inmates. She soon peered at the girl which the Doc had just called one of the other inmate’s supervisor. Katelyn cast a cautious yet curious look to Miss Elizabeth Dalton, though remaining silent and unmoving as she watched.

There are endless stories about entering the underworld. You can go for your own reasons, and with the best (or worst) of intentions, and the gates will stand open to you. When you enter that subterranean plane, you might be welcomed, or you might be tempted, or you might be tricked, and little of that matters...as long as you stay. You only find how much trouble you're in when you actually try to leave, because while you may enter the underworld freely, there will be a price to return to whence you came. If you return - and you enter with no guarantee that you will - you return changed, and something is always taken from you.

These thoughts swirled through Elizabeth's head as she stood in an elevator, her artificial hand toying with the badge on her jacket. She felt like hundreds of meters of rock had gone by, and her ears had already popped once from the pressure change. The car moved with the speed of a freight elevator, and Elizabeth began to wonder if she were trapped inside an anonymous, brushed-metal purgatory. She breathed out a sigh of relief as the car slowed further, stopped, and the heavy door slid aside with a small hiss of equalizing pressure. She couldn't help but smile as she saw a pair of large men in crew-cuts standing just outside, bulges under their jackets almost shouting out how heavily armed they were. If she'd wondered if they knew who she was - or had been - Elizabeth certainly had her answer now.

"Welcome to the Project, Miss Dalton," one of the two men said, "If you'll-"

"Special Agent," Elizabeth cut in.

"Excuse me?" The man said.

"My title is 'Special Agent,'" Elizabeth said, her voice clipped but even.

"Project staff don't have titles," the man said.

"I'm aware of that," Elizabeth said, "And I'm sure you're aware that I am not part of the Project's staff. You'll address me appropriately, thank you."

The man grunted, looked at his partner, and shrugged. With a gesture, the two turned away from the elevator and down a hallway leading further into the underground complex.

Making friends and influencing people, Elizabeth though, We're off to a great start.

Kilometers of flat grey metal hallways stretched out, branching off apparently at random. Everything looked heavily reinforced, with isolation doors a meter thick in places, ready to lock down different areas. Elizabeth found herself wondering what the end-game might be in the event of a dedicated prison break, considering the kinds of individuals they apparently had incarcerated here. As she passed another huge blast door, she looked up, letting her eyes follow the door's outline. The doorframes were marked with bumps, small against the door's bulk but still the size of basketballs.

Explosive charges, she thought, They'd bring the roof down. There aren't too many of us who don't need to breathe, after all...

More corridors, more walking, more silence from her two escorts, and Elizabeth finally arrived at what looked like an office door. The two knocked, then pushed the door open, making their way inside. Elizabeth followed, and allowed herself a smirk as the older man - Fisher - told them they could go.

You've traded one cell for another, Elizabeth thought, You'll have no real power down here. But at least you'll get to dress better.

Her shoes clicked on the dull metal corridor as she walked beside Fisher, each step a syncopated counterpoint to the older man's stick. Direct to the cells, each considerably larger than those she'd been familiar with. And inside each one, a different face, a different story, most of them certainly worth more than Fisher's droning repetitious introductions. Elizabeth found herself caught by the woman Fisher introduced as Wong Lian Hui, but pulled herself away before her mind could get wrapped too far around that particular axle. After his introductions, Fisher touched a few buttons and the cell doors banged open, the loud buzz of magnetic locks filling the air for a moment.

Elizabeth took a deep breath, let the inevitable indifference, the puerile, pointless posturing roll over her, but only for a moment. There would be no point in allowing that to continue, and she felt that today her patience might not be all she could hope for. So, she took a breath, let the air out through her nose, then spoke.

"Good afternoon," she said, and she made a point to make eye contact with each of the others, "As Doctor Fisher has said, my name Special Agent Dalton, and I'm with the FBI." She clasped her living hand in her artificial one behind her back, paced to one side, "You all know why you're here. I won't pretend you all consented to this, but under the circumstances that's less relevant than it could be."

"Now, let's talk about why I'm here. There are a couple of reasons, but the biggest one is this." She smiled a sunny, almost playful smile, "There's a give and take here, a check and balance. A carrot and a stick, if you will. I think you've all been told - quite likely at length - about the stick. I'm here to offer you the carrot." She stopped, looked at each one of the prisoners - the patients - again, those who would meet her eyes.

"There are enemies that we can't fight with the strength of nations," Elizabeth said, "Threats that we can't trust the Heroes of this world to defeat. There are those who have no rules, and those with whom no reason, no threat, no overwhelming odds will stop. Sometimes, there will be things that have to be stopped before anyone else even knows they exist. And that's where you come in. You all have power, strength that can be applied toward the greater good - even if nobody else knows about you, what you did, or how you did it."

"That means we let you do what you've always done - but under our guidance, under our rules. You'll have access to all your old equipment, but you'll be monitored and tracked. Your behaviour and movements will be recorded. As long as you treat the carrot with respect, we won't have to discuss the stick." She paused a moment, "And you should know, this isn't a graduated system; I'm talking about a one-step program. You get one chance; this chance." Elizabeth smiled again, a quick, lightning-strike expression.

"And now, I think, we'll hear from Doctor Fisher," Elizabeth said, turning, her artificial arm moving in a theatrical flourish, "Since he has the details of the first mission we'll be undertaking."

Cole had been the next one to enter the room as Dante got his armour on. He resisted the urge to smirk - armour wasn't needed for him, only skill. He strapped his knives into the inside of his trenchcoat, and slotted his dart gun into the gun-shaped piece of leather strapped to the other side of the interior. His darts were slotted just underneath it, long strips of leather separating each one categorically, and the categories being sorted out alphabetically. It was like second nature for him now. He adjusted the clunky backpack and hauled it onto his back, testing the weight. It was decent enough for him. He shuffled his waistcoat about, before jumping onto the plane.

---

"Ah, I did miss these under the radar drop offs these black op missions had..."

Fear listened with excruciating pain as Dante rambled on about his old black-ops missions. He sat there, messing about with a throwing knife as the Super Soldier droned on like an old grandpa telling stories of his youth. How he longed to throw a knife at him and make him jump out of that door...

The all-clear signal went, and Dante walked over to the lowering door. He finished his story as he readied himself to dive.

"...Don't worry, we're not getting paid, so I didn't mess with your chutes."

"Trust me, soldier boy, if it weren't for these damn bombs, I'd have thrown you out of this plane ages ago." He smirked as Dante dived down like a missile. He dived down afterwards in an eagle-like pose, his parachute popping out like a bottle cork behind him. The jungle came closer into view, and he assumed a mid-air standing position just before landing. The parachute only just avoided landing on him, and he hauled the backpack onto the floor.

Lian Hui peered out from where she stood at her threshold, taking in the other recruits of the programme. She caught the flickering blue eyes of a blonde-haired girl for an instant, before her attention was turned to Elizabeth Dalton. She spoke almost cheerily of helping to be helped, of chances - or rather, a chance. Intriguing, how the authorities had made the first move by capturing them, and now pretended this was similar to a game of chess between them and the inmates. Make the right moves, and stand to gain. No, the playing field was far from even; the inmates were no players, only pawns. Lian Hui listened impassively to their mission, feeling her feet carry her into the corridor. At once, quivering laser-points were trained on her. The inmates had yet to exit the facility, but precautions were still being taken to corner their unleashed and collared hounds while they were still home.

A drug cartel was mentioned. Lian Hui imagined heat rising in an explosion, feeding on old wood, cocaine, and lives. Questions rose in her mind, like the smoke and ash that would soon be, as Cortez voiced immediate displeasure. Would there be casualties? Would they encounter stumbling blocks to nullify? And where, in all of this, would these individuals band together? Lian Hui peered around herself, as Cortez left through a blast door, at the prisoners with a master they were now to please. Cooperation would be a new lesson, after years of singular operation.

Lian Hui followed through to the armoury. She did not know what she would find. She had had few weapons to call her own, a sparse and scattered collection. She walked the perimeter of the room before she came across a suitcase lying benignly on a shelf at eye-level, tagged with the words 'L. H. Wong // Aconitum'. A canvas bag was propped up against it, similarly labelled, and unzipping it revealed a compartment with clothes that had been her disguise, and another with five daggers neatly sheathed on a belt and a smooth pistol.

Content with the weaponry haul, Lian Hui swung the straps over her shoulders. With her back to the rest of the room, she swiftly tugged off her prison-issued garments and pulled on the clothes she had found neatly-folded - combat trousers, a simple shirt and black leather vest - before moving onto the suitcase and ran her fingers over it. It was a black case, sturdy, with a combination padlock. Lian Hui toyed with the numbers, hands working deftly to the first code that came to her mind, like a thought that had been waiting to be formed.

The lock clicked open.

She cracked the lid open, and pursed her lips to hold in the breath that would not expel. None of the chemistry equipment it held was personally familiar to her, but she knew their purposes, if not their contours and edges. But those she soon would too. Test-tubes, autonomous Bunsen burners with their own gas canisters, beakers, measuring cylinders - the foundation to any laboratory were there. But so were micropipettes, syringes, and even sealed canisters of corrosive chemicals, though Lian Hui was far more inclined towards the few colourful leaves and blossoms packed away in vacuum-sealed packets. There were vials too - some already filled with liquids Lian Hui would need but a sniff to identify - and a secure drawstring pouch she now recalled contained powder that would burn and blind upon contact. Her last discovery, here with her now, to complete a circuit that had been broken. Now, delayed, Lian Hui could feel the time she had lost creeping back on her, devoid of memories and sensations that should have coloured the memories, but were instead missing and grey.

Lian Hui locked the suitcase once more, and boarded the plane, deciding that perhaps the chessboard was not destined to be entirely dull.

As they flew in the plane, Cortez busied himself with whetting his blades, and sharing his stories. Before Lian Hui could feel a flicker of doubt, he hastened to clarify he had not committed sabotage. Lian Hui gazed at him, waiting for disgust or perhaps worry to gnaw at the insides of her cheeks and leave them raw with distrust. But the emotions didn't come, and eventually she looked away to put the briefcase into the backpack instead.

When it came time to jump, Lian Hui lined up with the rest, an eye open for demonstrations. Her parachute was strapped onto her, light and tight against her spine, as though to impress upon her that her life would - in just under a minute - lie cradled in its canvas sheet. She allowed herself a moment of stillness to peer into an abyss of height and fog, before she took a step, and hurtled toward ground.

Diagrams and graphs and curves she had encountered in Physics textbooks once upon a time - in a bid by Manchineel to see her pick up another science - flashed in her thoughts. Terminal velocity, zero acceleration came to mind as the Earth came into focus. Indistinct shapes began to take on meaning to form trees and mountainlines again. As Lian Hui felt her speed come to a constant, and saw the ground come closer and closer, she groped for the string and tugged it.

At once, her navel was lurched back as the parachute opened in a flutter behind her. She heard the wind roar in her ears, scrape her cheeks, as her lungs struggled to reclaim the breath that had been jolted out of her, until - steadily - she came to a drift over the jungle.

She had been right. She hadn't been frightened by the fall. She couldn't feel adrenaline rushing in her veins, no thrill of stepping into Death's arms, only to wrench away at the last second, that would leave her worn by the time she reached solid ground again. Not for the first time, Lian Hui wondered where the fear, the excitement, was as she glided over a clearing.

She hadn't found an answer when she landed, and so she occupied herself with unclipping the parachute. It lay sprawled over twigs and leaf litter, and keeping it promised to be only a hassle. Lian Hui tugged at the corners to fold it once - twice, and then disposed of the attempt entirely. She produced the belt of knives from her bag to buckle around her waist, and tied the drawstring pouch along, tucking in a few discrete vials. The belt came with a holster for the pistol, and that too was added to the ensemble.

Finished, Lian Hui turned to the others who had landed, to ask, "Where to now?"

Faith crossed her arms and glowered at their new 'supervising agent' this Elizabeth Dalton, looking all prim and proper in her smart suit and official badge, she did not appreciate being ignored and this FBI darling had done just that. Not the best way to convince her to be all friendly and play nice, but then Dalton didn't have to, all she had to do was remind them of the stick as she called it. The little devices snuggled away inside Faith, ready to cause all manner of hell on her body before killing her, that could be triggered the moment she misbehaved. Which was such a damn shame as she did so like to misbehave.

She pushed back the anger, not making it go away just keeping it at a simmer and ready to boil, and listened to the good doctor explain what he wanted them to do. As much as she wanted to fry them both where they stood she knew it was pointless, she might be reckless but she wasn't suicidal, she was too weak without a stronger line to tap into. So for now she would play nice and plant this little bomb for them, though why they needed her for that she had no idea, but the moment the opportunity presented itself she was leaving. After all she knew someone who she needed to kill, those she was with would be safe as long as they didn't turn on her, and Maya had already had enough time to go to ground.

She followed the others into the locker room and grinned when she opened the locker with her name on it. She gently stroked her dark red leather suit as though it were an old friend. She slipped into it easily and fastened the various belts and buckles before sheathing her Sai in their custom made sheaths at her waist. Her Tanto, as always, went into the thigh sheath and in the space of moments she was ready. She debated for a moment whether to wear the mask, everyone already knew who she was so it was not much of a disguise, but then she slipped it over her head and eased it into position. Without it she was just Faith in a suit, but with it she let the Furie out. Many thought it was just an alias but it was more than that, to Faith she was Furie and Faith Mackenzie was just an alias. She grinned again,it had been too long since she had been able to let loose the real her, her smile was not a pleasant one. Behind her eyes the rage still burned.

Once they reached the jump point Furie was eager to be out of the plane, she hated planes and flying as she was cut off from the Earth and her power. Thousands of feet in the air she was too far up to sense the lines and that made her vulnerable and she did not like it one bit. Even at the prison she had had access to one, albeit a weak one. But up here there was nothing. She strapped on the parachute and with a wild laugh she leapt from the plane following the others down. She had never parachuted before and she liked it straight away, it was such a rush that she almost forgot the lack of power running through her, almost. She landed somewhat inelegantly, running a few steps to slow down without falling, before she disconnected her chute. She stepped away from it and stood, arms slightly away from her body and her eyes closed, a slow satisfied smile spread across her lips as her hair began to move on its own accord as though there was a current running through it. She opened her eyes and energy seemed to crackle behind it. She felt renewed, invigorated and powerful. This was a strong line indeed and she would make good use of it.

"Much better." She drawled rolling her neck from one side to the other. "Furie's gonna have herself some fun."