Dallas Williams enters the SOLITAIRE Medical Facility — currently housed in a repurposed shipping container. “Are you ready for your first day?” he asks Dr. Tompkins. Tompkins nods, “I’ve prepared all the injections.” He gets up and walks to the door. “Lets get going”.

They leave the container, and cross the site to another container repurposed as a temporary building. This one has been reinforced with steel plate welded to the outside. Three people are standing outside, under heavy guard. They are shackled, and are wearing collars with blinking lights. There are two men and one woman, all appear to be of aboriginal origin. The men are somewhat “wobbly” on their feet, like they are drugged.

Tompkins says to Williams “Only two of these get injections. Where’s the other girl?”

“She’s locked inside. She’s too heavily sedated for the work gang.”

The two men file by, one by one, prodded by the guards to get their injections. The woman lunges at Tompkins, and instantly the green lights on her collar turn red, there is an electric “sparking” sound, like a giant TASER going off, and she drops to the ground. The guards pick her up and drag her off. The other two walk docilely behind, stumbling occasionally, watched by other guards.

Tompkins and Williams enter the prison building. There are additional guards inside, and another heavily reinforced cell, with double doors like an air lock. Williams says “You go in alone and administer the injection. We monitor from outside.”

“What happens if something goes wrong?” Tompkins asks.

“Never mind. What you don’t know she can’t rip from your head and use against us.”

“That is not very reassuring!”

“You’ll be fine. We’ve been giving her double doses since she turned Dr. Smith into a radish. She’ll be out like a light.”

“Double? Isn’t that excessive?”

“Ask Dr. Smith. Oh, wait, you can’t because she turned him into a mindless, gibbering vegetable!”

Dr. Tompkins enters the cell through the double doors, which are rigged so only one can be open at a time. In the cell there is a woman chained to the bed, lying semi-conscious. We see it is Cassandra. He walks up to the bed, administers the injection, and leaves the way he came.

“There, that wasn’t so bad after all.” Williams says as he emerges.

“Tomorrow I’ll take some blood samples. I want to run some detailed analyses. Based on my previous work, I think I might be able to block her powers without knocking her out. Our percentages will be higher if we can get her into the work gang.”

Williams looks surprised. “Seriously? We were lucky to take her down when she took out Smith, and she was still pretty groggy.”

Tompkins continues, “It will depend on the exact messaging channels used. Telepaths are different from other supers, as the pathways are entirely within the brain, but her genetic sequence will tell us the chemical messengers involved, and then we can tailor a drug cocktail to disrupt them without effecting general motor skill. The two brutes are a different story, as their super powers ARE motor skill. They’ll have to remain doped up.”

The three prisoners are led to an open-pit mine, covered by a concrete and glass dome. They start to dig. One of the men looks about, groggily, and, seeing no guards nearby, whispers to the woman. “Why do you fight them?” he asks, slurring his words. “Its always the same.”

She responds, “‘That which does not kill me makes me stronger.’ I am learning to endure the shocks. We WILL get out and return to our nation!”.

We’re still on for Friday, as far as I know.

-DCZ