Dane Bromwich, better known to the world at large as EmCee, winced, as the needle punctured his skin.
“Bro, that stings.” Dane complained, as he fought not to jerk his arm away.
“Listen kid, I’m not your bro.” John Wilson, aka Scalpel, didn’t even look up from his work. “I didn’t realise you were under the impression that this was going to tickle.”
“It’s not that. It was just a shock, you know. It’s my first time.” Dane said.
Wilson pulled the needle away from the twenty year-old’s arm. “Did you hear that boys? It’s his first time!” He shouted, to the other two men sitting in the room.
“You’d best be gentle then Scal’, it’s gotta be special.” The largest man in the room, Jack Beck, formerly known as Seizure, laughed, clapping the other man on the back.
“Yeah, a girl always remembers getting her cherry popped.” The fourth man, James Wood, aka Jamais Vu, added.
“Th… That’s not what I meant!” Dane insisted, his eyes going wide as he started to stammer.
“Of course not. Now do you want me to finish this or not?” Wilson demanded.
“Of… Of course. Everyone else on this rock has ink, I want it too.” Dane said.
“Then hold still and stop your whining.” Wilson continued tattooing the young criminal’s arm, as the other two convicts continued sniggering.
“How do you even get this stuff in? I mean, I know the needles are contraband. How come you’re not in The Hole?” Dane asked.
“Half the guards here have tattoos. Free, because they let me keep doing what I’m doing. I’ve got a good business going here. Which reminds me. You’ve got my payment, right?” Wilson stopped his drawing for a moment.
“Of course. Ten boxes of cigarettes. They’re all in my bunk right now. Kinda hard to move all at once, they’re wise to that, you know?” Dane replied.
“The guards don’t know as much as you seem to think kid. They don’t know about my guy who works the mail room, and the guy in the laundry. Between the two of them, I can get anything I want. Ink is easy. One of my guys has connections in LA, he’s an ex-Rocksteady guy. You’ve heard of them?” Wilson paused for a moment. “Anyway, he got caught in his first few months, so the drugs hadn’t kicked in past the point of no return. He’s practically normal, that’s why they allow him to work laundry. Anyway, he knows a guy on the outside, gets me all these homemade inks. Nothing too high-quality, it’s all full of impurities. It gets the job done.” Wilson continues his tattooing. “Beck, go to the kid’s room and get me my cigarettes, I need to get them to Sun Shi Quan before he throws another tantrum.”
“You got it.” The giant replied, heading straight out the door without another word.
“Sun Shi Quan? Wasn’t he on Blackblood’s crew?” Dane asked, between winces.
“I owe the guy a favour. You won’t ask any more questions if you know what’s good for you.” Wilson said, holding his needle in Dane’s arm a little longer than he needed to.
“Got it.” Dane said.
Before the conversation could continue, Beck was back in the cell, empty handed.
“What are you doing back?” Wilson asked.
“Guards’ orders boss, everyone has to be in a cell. They’re moving someone through.” Beck replied.
“I wonder who that could be.” Woods muttered underneath his breath, as the guard walked past, pulling the cell door shut, as he counted the inmates.
“Who else?” Wilson replied, not even looking up from his work.
The door from the maximum security wing opened up, and a pair of guards walked through, armed with their state-of-the-art carbon-fibre tazer guns. Behind them two more guards dragged the motionless body of a man, dressed in the same prison jumpsuit as all the other convicts in the cells overlooking the main walkway. Behind walked two more guards, armed the same as the first.
“Damn! Is that…?” Dane trailed off.
“Yes. It is. They parade him through here every few weeks on some trumped-up excuse. He’s drugged up to the eyeballs, can barely breathe on his own when he’s like that. They think that he’s an example to us. If we step out of line, they’ll do it to us too, that kind of thing.” Wilson explained.
“But still, that guy is the hardest of hardcore. I can’t believe he’s right there, and he probably doesn’t even know it.” Dane said.
“He was supposed to be in Gitmo weeks ago. Guess that’s off the cards though. Turns out it was his old crew that did the breakout there. Maybe they’ll come here next.” Woods said.
“Gauss doesn’t have a crew, James. He uses people. He doesn’t have allies, he has servants. Most of them don’t live to tell the story.” Wilson said.
“Then how do you know?” Dane asked.
“What did he tell you about asking questions?” Woods smacked Dane on the back of the head.
“No. It’s fine. I’m done with his tattoo anyway.” Wilson said, pulling away, revealing a stylised image of a microphone. “You want to know how I know about the way Gauss treats the people he works with?”
Wilson opened up his jumpsuit, revealing his bare chest below. The flesh was puckered, criss-crossed with scars. “We worked a couple of gigs together. I liked to cut people up, he like to hurt them. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Then he decided we were through. Just like that. So he started cutting on me with my own scalpels. If someone hadn’t called the cops, and had anyone but the Boomers shown up, I’d have been dead in a gutter, instead of dragged up into court, and then brought here.”
“Woah. That is so messed up. Worst thing I ever did was boost a couple of stores man.” Dane said.
“Fascinating.” Wilson said drily.
<><><>
Hours passed, as Gauss lay in his cell, waiting for the drugs to wear off. As time progressed, he found himself gaining more and more strength. First, he could move under his own strength, then he could sit up. Once he could stand, he also felt his powers coming back to him. His mastery of magnetism was what defined him, without that, he would just be another human.
Of course, in this cell, he was little better than another human. Built entirely from plastic, and furnished with plastic and rubber blends. Everything they had put in this cell for him was completely useless to him. The cell was encased in an electromagnetic field, that disrupted his abilities, stopping him from being able to affect anything outside of the field. Just outside the field, in the passageway leading to the cell, was a guard station with a metal detector, to stop anyone from taking any metal in. Foolproof. Or so they thought. But Gauss had a secret.
Gauss had metal.
As he felt his powers return, he reached out, searching for his one beacon of hope. One tiny fragment of iron, barely the size of a pea, was all he had. It sat, hidden, inside his mattress. Those idiots had brought it to him. For months, the guards had been coming to him, to feed him, to beat him, to do whatever it was that struck their fancy. And with them had come the precious, precious metal. They brought it in, those arrogant fools. Tiny traces went unnoticed by the metal detectors, but not Gauss. Gauss could feel it inside their bodies. Under their skin, in their tattoos.
It had been easy to extract the iron, the tattoos were always fresh, so the guards didn’t notice the stinging pain, as Gauss slowly but surely drained every molecule from the ink, everything he could use, and carefully moved it from within the guards’ clothes, into Gauss’ ball. For months he had been biding his time, building his ball. Building his weapon. It was time for his revenge.
He looked up, as the door swung wide open, a pair of guards stepped through, tapping their plastic batons into their open palms menacingly.
“Is it three o’clock already gentlemen?” Gauss mocked.
“Damn right it is. Time for another beating, you sick son of a bitch.” One of the guards said, as he lunged forward.
Gauss didn’t move, didn’t even flinch. He let the guard hit him in the solar plexus with his baton, knocking the wind out of Gauss.
“Is that the best you’ve got?” Gauss taunted, as the guard began to pummel at the villain’s body. “Surely a big strong man like you can hit me harder than that.”
The second guard dragged his partner away, before giving Gauss a beating of his own. The second guard wasn’t as careful as the first, allowing himself to take a few swings at Gauss’ head, where someone might see the marks. He didn’t care, the lowlife deserved it. Another hard swing to the head, and Gauss was on the floor.
“Not so clever now, are you?” The guard asked.
Gauss struggled to his feet and looked the second guard in the face, before spitting at him, the combination of saliva and blood dribbling off the guard’s face. “My turn.” Gauss said.
“Wh-“ The guard didn’t finish his sentence, as he felt his flesh begin to tear, as the tiny metal projectile ripped through his body, before continuing on its path, and straight through his partner.
“Lock him in!” The second guard shouted, as the ball of metal split into two, the projectiles slicing through the guards like they were meat in a blender.
“I guess I win.” Gauss said, as the two guards dropped to the floor in pieces.
He looked to the doorway, where another four guards were rushing to get the door shut. He smiled, before destroying the hinges with his iron balls.
The guards rushed at him, but were again thwarted by the shrapnel that Gauss controlled so well. Within moments, they were all shredded on the ground.
Gauss dropped his projectiles, as he stepped through the electromagnetic field around his cell.
“Now the fun begins.” Gauss said, as he tore the metal detector from the ground, and began to break it into smaller fragments.