Chapter Text
There is a batshit tinker holding the city hostage with literal ticking time bombs—in the streets, the hospitals, god knows where else—and Alec is beginning to wish he’d gone anywhere else.
‘Go to Brockton Bay’ he’d thought. ‘Highest rate of capes per person in the entire fucking country,’ he’d thought. Keep his head down, fake a powerset. The worst part is it had worked until this stark raving CUNT had ruined everything.
Alec jerks against his chains, furious. The emotion should be novel; it takes serious effort to push him into the normal spectrum of human emotion.
He’s never wanted to murder someone in cold blood before.
He bares his teeth as another surge of electricity or some bullshit tinker equivalent activates through the metal, body seizing tight—arching, unwillingly, until the current is passed.
It hurts. Pain is a constant companion. Even when his body slumps in the aftermath, all his muscles scream out in protest, aching.
And all he can think about is how he’s going to kill her and enjoy it.
Next to him, a girl screams, voice hoarse with it. Her hair, dark with sweat, sticks to her temples and cheeks.
Her eyes meet his again, tired and dull. She can’t handle much more of this. Alec jerks against his chains again. His wrists fucking hurt, the skin torn up around them.
The cut on his mouth had ripped open again with the most recent round of shock torture. The blood is coppery and sweet. He’d earned that one with his mouth in the first five minutes of capture.
The girl is shaking. Alec isn’t much better.
A voice comes over the speaker, nasally and high-pitched. Fury builds anew in him, tightening his jaw. The girl whimpers.
Bakuda says something on the speakers. Alec ignores her as best he’s able. He hasn’t been listening for a while now. He’s no Tattletale, able to piece together bits and pieces of her life and plans and weaknesses from the monologue.
He is Regent, and this dumb fucking cunt has had the arrogance and the misfortune to torture them from the other side of a glass window, a panel of controls in her cunty tinker lab.
Alec flexes his power, making her arm spasm sharply. Another rush of pain-flexing-mindless agony; the girl screams, raggedy, as Alec bites a hole through his lip to keep it in.
Bakuda says something damning, cooing about how he made her press the button with that little trick. She stays with them for a while—trying to make him scream.
Though he’s never been grateful for the asylum that raised him, he comes close today. As she activates the electricity over and over again, and he clenches his teeth and doesn’t scream—because he’s had worse. Maybe not physically, but emotional torture?
This is kiddie stuff.
His baby siblings can do better.
She slams the button down, or whatever wonky ass fucking lever situation is over there, and leaves the current on for excruciating minutes; much longer than the quick jolts of before.
“How do you like that, huh!?” She screams, hysterical with the need to see him break.
Alec comes down laughing, blood in his mouth, body carved from agony.
“Ahm-a—” He coughs, spits blood on the floor, grinning. “Amateur.”
The shriek he earns is music to his ears.
“I’LL SHOW YOU ‘AMATEUR’ YOU PUNKASS LITTLE BITCH—” Alec ignores her.
He laughs again, choking with it, unable to pull in enough air.
Looks up at the glass as best he can, blood on his face, an absolutely deranged expression probably.
He reaches out and grabs her, an inelegant fist of power; no finesse, just raw control, built up from the little twitches she’d ignored.
“Gotcha, bitch.” Alec drops against his bindings, exhausted. He doesn’t let her go, obviously.
She’s his and this entire stupid fucking experience is over.
“W-w-what’s h-a-ppening.” The girl says through chattering teeth. Bakuda had pressed the button for her too, trying to get Alec to scream, to give in, to beg.
Like hell.
“Don’t—worry.” Alec pants, hair matted to his forehead. “I’ve—got this.”
He flexes her fingers first, then up her arms. Forces her to her feet even as she panics and tries to fight him, to thrash against the control.
Just for fun, he squeezes her heart, a warning that makes her pain receptors set off like fireworks. Her efforts redouble.
Alec has her sit up, gets her breathing under control—she’d been furious at her failure to break him, worked up about it almost enough to make herself sick.
She looks at the controls and her power unfolds like a flower in her/his/their mind, whispering the meaning of all the tech in front of him, all the things she’d built.
He has her free them, the chains tied into the ceiling dropping them down. The girl screams as she hits the floor, pained sounds coming from her. Alec almost lands on his feet, but the blood flow has long since fucked from hanging so long, and he slips to his knees. He barely catches himself, palms biting into the bloody concrete.
He wipes blood away with the back of his hand, knuckles smeared with it. Ugh.
His hands shake as he buttons his shirt, ripping off the little wires stuck to him. The buttons are too small; he can’t manage it with the tremor. Eventually he gives it up as a bad job, stumbling over to his fellow captive.
Impressive how much can you can come to know someone through only eye contact and mutual torture. She’s bigger than him; not by much, enough to make it hard to help her to her feet, even with his muscles screaming out.
“We have to get out of here.” She gasps, voice still wrecked—hoarse from hours of screaming. “We have to—my phone—call—”
“Don’t—” Alec clears his throat, spits out more blood. “Don’t worry, we have time. The bitch isn’t going anywhere.”
“What—how? You stopped her?” Dark eyes look up at him, confused and exhausted.
“Yeah.” He says, shortly. Urgh, his feet are bare. The floor against them is gross and cold and abrasive.
“I can—” She grits her teeth, forces her breathing calmer to stop the stutter. “I can heal you.”
“What, really?” Alec looks to her, surprised. She’s leaning all her weight on him, both of them stumbling to the door.
“Of course.” She snaps. “Do I have your permission?”
“Sure, I guess.” Alec nearly does scream as a tingling sensation washes over him, muscles abruptly releasing all their stored tension, like a really good massage.
The ache vanishes, the tiredness recedes, and even the various cuts on his mouth heal.
“Shit, you’re Panacea.” He bites out. “Oh my god, that psychotic cunt. Was she trying to earn a kill order?”
“She has one.” Panacea says tiredly. “It was announced just before she got me.”
Interesting. Alec was going to enjoy that.
“You can’t heal yourself?” He asks, seeing her bruises and cuts are still very much present.
Silently, she shakes her head. Alec leads them into the control room where the bitch is waiting, eyes screaming her rage and terror. Well, tough for her.
Panacea flinches at the sight of her.
“I’ve got her.” Alec says quietly in the healer’s ear. “Complete control.”
“You’re a Master?” She tenses against him, still breathing hard. Maybe her ribs damaged? “Why not stop her sooner?”
“Believe me, I got her as soon as I could. It’s not instant.”
“Could you master me?” She demanded. He shot a look over to her, blue eyes baleful.
“Does it matter? I’m not. It’s physical, you’d notice.”
“Right.” Panacea huffed darkly. “Trust the Master when he says he’s not fucking with you.”
“I trusted the Striker 12 not to give me super cancer, so we’re even.” Alec says, exasperated. “Fuck. I’m going to have her deactivate all the bombs she can. What do you want to do?”
“You’re asking me?”
He led them to the nearest seating, half-collapsing on it. Even with the healing, this was some shit. He was hungry and stressed and still pissed off.
Looking at her hopefully conveyed what he thought of the stupid fucking question.
“Watching someone get tortured over and over again is not my idea of a good time.” He finally said. “I couldn’t leave you there, so—yeah, I’m helping you get out. Whatever that means.”
“I need to call—my sister. All of New Wave.” She took a moment, thinking about it. She looked much smaller collapsed down like this, about his age—too young to be smeared with blood and sweat.
“This place is probably booby trapped to hell and back.” Alec let his head fall back against the head rest, eyes slipping closed. Hunger and exhaustion pulled at him.
“You can’t tell?” Frustration in her voice.
“I’m not a mind reader.” He bit out. “I have her disabling the explosions. And the traps. I’m doing the best I can.”
“We can’t kill her.” Panacea said. “Unfortunately. She put bombs in people’s heads. Conscripts, civilians. People off the street. She needs to undo all that shit first. And—you can make her?”
“I can, yes. We’ll have to be quick, though.” He frowned. “The PRT can’t find out I do this.”
“What, secretly a Master? Have you been going around mastering people?”
“No. I’m trying to stay under the fucking radar. I—people are looking for me, trying to find me. Trying to make me go back.” He inhaled sharply. “I’d rather die.”
“Don’t be dramatic.”
“I’m not being dramatic.” He snapped, skin crawling.
“Shit, you’re serious. The PRT can’t help?”
Alec laughed.
“Are you joking? The PRT would throw me in the Birdcage for crimes I committed at ten years old with a gun to my head.”
She paled.
“It doesn’t matter what I do,” Alec said darkly. “The PRT will never help me, because my power is bad. Wrong, scary. Fucking terrifying to them. They won’t care that I fought tooth and nail to escape the asshole who used me—who made me.”
Cracked laughter out of his throat, raw despite the healing.
Panacea flinched back.
“You wouldn’t know, of course. The perfect power. Made for heroics. Best healer in the world.”
A hurt sound of denial left her.
“That’s not true.”
“Whatever.” Alec shook it off. “Come on, you’re hurt.”
He helped her back up, accepting water from Bakuda when she brought it over. Alec sent her off to find food, taking in the details of the bunker as he did so.
He held the bottle to her mouth when her hands shook too hard to hold it.
“How long were we—in there?” She asked, when she had swallowed several slow, agonizing sips.
“At least a few hours, for me. It takes that long to establish control—stupid bitch shouldn’t have stayed so close to us.”
Amy snorted, then winced.
“She was clever. Didn’t get close to me—knocked me out, can’t do anything when I’m asleep. Woke up with you, in there.” She shuddered, eyes haunted.
“I’m going to kill her.” Alec said conversationally. “Don’t know when, yet. It’s nice that the PRT gave us permission.”
“She deserves it.” Panacea said quietly. “I was at the hospital. The bombs she makes aren’t normal explosions. People turned to glass, and worse. And then the first one came in with one sewn into his brain.”
“You can’t do brains?” Alec asked, and she looked away. “Hey, don’t worry about it. I don’t know if she can remove them, but she’ll certainly be deactivating them. Fucking tinkers.”
A ghost of a smile.
Bakuda came back with a handful of crackers and granola bars. She also had stolen a mook’s cellphone, Alec demanding it from him even as his stomach rebelled at the rank fear and hopelessness on the minion’s face.
Familiar. Nauseating.
“Here—call your family. I assume you have the numbers memorized?” She took the phone with heavy hands, nodding.
“What are you going to do? With her, with yourself?”
He grimaced.
“I’m not even wearing a mask.” He ran a hand through loose black curls. “I need a way out of this without the PRT finding out I stopped her.”
A skeptical look. Alec huffed a laugh.
“I know, not likely. Any chance you want credit? I’ve heard you threaten creative insults when people try to kidnap you.”
“Pass.” Panacea said dryly. “I could threaten her, but I couldn’t enforce it. She seems like the kind of crazy who would let the failsafes trigger—blow up all her hostages in the city rather than let me ‘win’.”
Alec hummed.
“Yeah, that’s true.” He acknowledged, then sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe a ‘new trigger’ stopped her. I’m not good at this plotting shit.”
“Well… do you need the bounty?”
“What?”
“The money. The bounty. Do you need it?”
“No.” Alec said. “I just want to kill her. For the torture.”
“Yeah, I know.” Panacea rolled her eyes. “But—and I can’t believe I’m saying this—if you don’t kill her, and she takes off the mask, it’s like… Bakuda just vanished. No more bomb tinker.”
“Just a random woman I have control of.” Alec frowned. “The PRT won’t stop looking for her. And if they put out a kill order, I’m sure they released her identity?”
He scowled. They loved to do that when a villain crossed ‘the line.’
The completely arbitrary fucking line that Alec had been born over, thanks.
“Yeah, they did. But…” She bit her lip briefly. “I can change her face. Her hair color. Shit, I could change everything about her if I had to.”
“… Will you?” Alec asked quietly. “Because that would be great, if we could get out of here. I can control her as long as I need to do in order to fix this clusterfuck, but I’m not about to do it for one minute longer than I have to.”
A battle took place across her face, emotions flitting across too fast to name. She looked at Alec intently, gauging him as well.
“Yeah… I think I will.” She reached forward and touched the tinker’s face. Under the mask, she’d started as a dark-haired woman of Asian decent, blue eyes and a handful of other features marking her as partially European somewhere along the line.
Before their eyes she changed.
Hair, becoming a limp, straw-like blonde. Nose, bigger; mouth, wider. Freckles appeared. Eyes a different shape, eyebrows a dirty blonde, the iris changing to a boring brown.
“Disturbing.” Alec commented tiredly. “Mind you, I don’t have room to talk.”
“It’s not like I’m doing it for fun.” Amy snapped. “Here, look—she’s shorter, now. I changed her DNA. Her bone density. Even her dental records won’t show her as being the same person.”
Inside, all the woman showed was fear.
It was making Alec sick to his stomach.
“Thanks.” He managed, then: “Fuck. I hate this.”
“You’ll get over it.” Panacea said dryly. “Now, you two need to disappear. Unless you can think of something better?”
“No, we’ll leave for now. I don’t have a mask or anything.” He grimaced.
Amy called Victoria.
Alec and Bakuda were long gone by the time they arrived.
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