ic These Chains On Me (IC)

[Avenger Assembled]

Whistler folded his arms and stared at Gabriel, not moving but not otherwise backing down. For a moment Gabriel thought he was going to have trouble with this one, before Whistler moved his lips in a slow, deliberate speech that the Irish-American hero could read without being able to hear. Whistler pointed to where Singularity was sitting down inside her cell, face white but no longer panicking. It was hard to tell whether his powers had actually worked through whatever automatic sonic baffles kept Whistler in place, but the other man wasn't moving from the spot even with the glass around his cell still fully retracted. Behind Gabriel, the guards were trying to get their blasted-open panel working, but with no results. "Can't call out, can't get out with the two shafts blocked...this is a nightmare." One of the guards, the woman who had been working with Miss A earlier, said to Gabriel seriously, "Listen, man, I heard your friend hit the bottom of the elevator. The only thing down there is the reactor, and if he gets to that and overloads it with his pike, he can collapse the mountain. That's our last line of defense here, in case of a full Omega-level event. It'll kill everyone in the prison." she added frankly.

[Electra]

Miss Americana remained for a moment where she'd fallen, still gagging from the vivid depictions of violence and death Harrier had put into her head. He'd told her terrible things before, but not like this, and not with that tone of... of relish in his voice, as though it were something he missed. She routed auxiliary control nerves in her legs to pick up the slack of what had been overloaded by the EMP blast and pushed herself shakily to her feet, sick in body and soul. "Something's snapped inside him," she said, her beautiful voice oddly reflective, almost speaking aloud to herself. "I shouldn't have turned him down like that, or sent him away. I didn't know..." She pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead. "We have to stop him," she told Gabriel. "Whatever it takes. I want to believe that we can save him and repair him, but if we can't... he wouldn't want to live like this."

With that she turned and dove down the elevator shaft, following the path the Omegadrone had taken.

[Avenger Assembled]

There were two guards at the reactor; armored and armed by the best Freedom City had to offer. When a rampaging Omegadrone appeared at the bottom of the elevator shaft opposite them, with no more warning than the brief shriek of alarms from overhead, there was no time for anything at all. Harrier closed in with his jets roaring behind him and brought his pike forward into one's mid-section, cutting deep through vital arteries, then whipped around and on the backswing impaled the one behind him through the heart with a single shrieking stroke of his blade. With hardly a thought, as the first guard he'd stabbed collapsed, Harrier brought the pike forward and cut off his head. It was a brief moment of shocking carnage, but it was enough to do the job. "They shouldn't have stood in my way," he growled at a nearby security camera before striding through the open door, stuck open by the body of the second guard. From there, he disappeared into the heart of the pocket fission reactor that powered Freedom City's most secure prison, dripping blood as he went like something from a low-grade horror movie that was nonetheless all too real.

[KnightDisciple]

Gabriel raised an eyebrow as the older prisoner seemed almost...thankful. But he didn't have time to contemplate things as the revelation from the guards told him there were many, many lives in danger. Far too many. Almost as soon as Miss Americana had dropped through the floor, the hero in white and silver was racing through the air after her, the elevator shaft all but ringing with the tightly-leashed sonic energy he was using to propel himself down and after Steve. He didn't need to bull through any doors, and was airborne until he was almost on top of the "reformed" Omegadrone.

He'd seen the bodies outside, caught the briefest whiff of the scent of death. Harrier could not be allowed to continue.

"Looks like you've reverted to being the pawn of the likes of Steelgrave again, Steve. I won't let you kill this prison. There are good people here just doing there job, guarding these prisoners. Some of whom can be made better, who will server their sentence without dying. I'm going to do what you'd want me to do."

But even as he said the words and brought his shining spear in for a blow that just barely worked itself into a chink in the nightmare armor, he couldn't drive it too deep. He couldn't bring himself to actually try and kill a man he counted as a friend. A man he had encouraged, defended, advised, and prayed for.

Perhaps that distraction is why his second blow skittered off the blood-red armor.

[Electra]

Miss Americana reached the reactor antechamber seconds too late to save the guards there, giving her only a front row seat to the carnage. She fell back for a moment as Gabriel raced past her, suppressing her own nausea to lay down a plan. Extending her powers into the web of communications that linked every part of the prison, she communicated by radio to the main guard tower. "This is Miss Americana," she said tersely. "The freed Omegadrone Harrier has gone insane and is attempting to attack the reactor core. Gabriel and I are trying to stop him. If I signal you, you need to activate the EMP blast built into the prison defenses. I know it's a last resort!" she snapped over the inevitable protest. "But it's better that the electrical systems go down, even a few prisoners escape, than this whole prison turns into a blackened crater. Wait for my mark."

Switching channels, she tapped into Gabriel's earpiece. "I'm coming in there to try and take him out with you," she told him, her voice icy calm. "But if it goes bad, I'm calling down an EMP strike from the prison itself. His armor is vulnerable, it should damage him badly. The problem is, it'll take me out too, so you'll be facing him alone if he doesn't drop. Communications will be down, lights, maybe ventilation for a few minutes. You'll have to be ready and move fast. Here I come."

As she spoke, Miss A flew through the door at top speed, her red, white and blue lasers targeted pitilessly as she fired on areas where she knew the Omegadrone was vulnerable.

[Avenger Assembled]

"What were you expecting, Gabriel?" sneered Harrier as he raised his pike high, staggering under the impact of Gabriel's spear and Miss Americana's laser blasts. "Some pathetic fantasy of redemption and renewal, where a murderer of tens of thousands could be accepted among the heroes of Freedom City!?! Perhaps in the name of your dead god?" He laughed, his voice full of bitter, mad hate. "No, it doesn't end that way," he said fiercely, speaking as much to the still-live cameras over their shoulders. "It ends in the only real truth. Suffering, agony, and death, terrible and everlasting. And if I die bringing such a fate to the thousands of criminal scum of Freedom City, so be it! With one blast, I shall slay them all!" And with that he raised his pike and plunged it deep into the heart of the reactor control systems, sparks erupting from the ceiling as the system began to overload. "And this place shall be my TOMB!"

[KnightDisciple]

Gabriel gave nothing but a terse nod as Miss Americana came into the room. He'd hoped they'd be able to slow Steve down, but not yet.

His eyes widened fractionally at Harrier's insult toward his beliefs, the friendship he'd always thought they shared, before declaring that "all was as dust". He was too slow to prevent him from striking the reactor, but it didn't instantly go up. He needed to buy time for Miss A to either shut it all down, or fix the system.

"I accepted you. From the first time we met. I broke bread with you. Gave you advice. Cared for you as a friend. In the name of that friendship, I won't let you finish this, Steve. I won't let you kill these people."

With those eerily calm words, he drove his spear in even further into the not-so-reformed Omegadrone. With his weapon still in there, he raised on hand and pummeled Harrier's back with sonic energy, before finally extracting his weapon. Without turning to Miss A, he spoke two words.

"Do it."

[Electra]

The beautiful heroine blanched for a moment at the bald words, but it was obvious to both of them what had to be done. With the reactor already partially compromised, they couldn't risk another attack on it. "Don't worry," she told Gabriel cryptically through the earpiece. "I'll be okay." At the same time, on a second channel, she connected to the guard tower. "He's at the reactor. Do it now!"

Mere feet away now, she thought she could just make out Steve's eyes behind the featureless Omegadrone mask. I'm sorry we couldn't fix you, she thought, but didn't dare say it aloud for fear of alerting him. She took a deep breath, braced herself-- and suddenly the world was a maelstrom of blinding light, overwhelming noise, and pain so intense she was sure she'd die of it. She smelled the acrid smoke of burning circuitry and realized it was her own "insides" melting, and then she was away, thrown out of the light to tumble through an equally intense darkness.

---

From the outside, the EMP was less flashy, but still quite dramatic. In the same instant, both Harrier and Miss Americana froze for a moment, then began to jitter as though in the throes of simultaneous seizures. The air began to fill with the acrid smoke of burning electronics, and then all the lights went off. The vents shut down too, plunging the room into silence but for the sizzle and pop of circuits and an eerie electronic wailing that sounded uncomfortably like a scream of pain. Harrier seemed to be going off like a fireworks show, his terrible mask lit by the explosions of his own suit and mechanical parts. Even that ended after seconds, leaving darkness and silence.

Another few seconds more, then a grating of gears from inside the wall led to the rise of a handful of flickering mechanical emergency lights. Harrier was facedown on the far side of the reactor, smoking from several places and unmoving. Miss Americana was still close by, laying on her back with her hair pooled on the floor around her head. Her eyes were open, her face drawn taut in a horrible rictus grin. She was deathly still.

[KnightDisciple]

As the electricity surged around both Harrier and Miss Americana-

'Is she some sort of cyborg?'

-Gabriel took a couple of steps back, dismissing his lightning-rod-waiting-to-happen spear and covering his eyes. When the "excitement" had died down, he looked around the darkened room, his mastery of sound helping him pick up details the light missed. He moved first to Harrier.

"For what it's worth, Steve, I'm sorry, but..."

He frowned. This...Steve had described what Omegadrones were like before. This wasn't quite right. He couldn't quite suss out what was going on, but he was suddenly less sure he'd faced the true Harrier in combat just now. Which was...not really very encouraging. Before he could contemplate it, his eyes shot open in worry, and he scrambled over to Miss A.

"Oh bloody hell I almost forgot about you ma'am I'm so sorry and-"

He stopped. She was warm. Too warm. Too still. Not just dead, but almost...He pulled her shirt up enough to look at the odd burn. A burn like many others over her...its?...body. She wasn't just "not human" or "a cyborg", she seemed to be even more artificial.

"What?"

Steeling his resolve, he pried away the, yes, panel. Showing melted wires and the like...that looked somewhat maybe possibly like the equipment in her own lab!

"She's a bloody robot? What?"

He turned and scrabbled back over to "Harrier", poking and prodding more. There weren't easy-access panels, but it was more and more clear it wasn't right (as much as an Omegadrone could ever be "right"). This was also a robot, though a different design.

"He's a bloody Terminator. What."

And suddenly he was on his feet and dashing for the elevator shaft.

[KnightDisciple]

He skidded to a halt just before reaching the opening to return to...well, the higher levels.

"She...no. No one can know. She kept it secret. Either she's dead, and deserves better than what they'll do to her. Or she's somewhere, and so she's still got a secret to keep. I can't let it get out. Not like this."

He went back to the now-defunct Miss A robot and carefully straightened its limbs, smoothed its garments, and finally closed its eyes. Picking it up in his arms, he was surprised it wasn't heavier.

"Huh. You're no more than a lass your size would be. Certainly not a hernia-maker like that blighter over there. And despite you being deader than a doornail I'm talking to you. Maybe I'm going crazy today myself..."

He'd found a small alcove well over to one side of the room, out of the way. He'd have to come back for her-it later. For now, there were other matters to attend to. He paused only briefly next to the...thing...that had impersonated Harrier. Just long enough to spit on its wrecked corpse. In a blur he was gone, up the shaft and back into the same hallway he'd left an eternity of a couple minutes ago. His gaze was grim in the dim lighting as he looked at the guards.

"It's done. The thing that-no, wait, no time. Just...have someone from the infirmary get down there ASAP. The attacker was stopped. Oh, and, uh, maybe a couple repair technicians. The reactor took a hit. Now..."

His gaze drifted upwards.

"I would imagine my services will be appreciated for a bit around here?"