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Sometime after Isaac had managed to fall into a restless slumber, the door slammed open.
He startles away, grogginess clinging to his bones as two guards march into the room. Without a word, they grab Isaac by the arms and haul him to his feet.
“Wha- what’s going on?”He asks, voice slurred from sleep, stumbling over his words.
“You’re coming with us. Mimicry wants to see you,” is all that he gets.
As one of the guards works on moving Isaac out of the chains binding him to the wall, another ties a blindfold around his face despite his attempts at avoidance. He’s not sure, but he suspects the guard tied it tighter around his head in response to his weak attempts at ducking out of the way.
Once he’s rebound in handcuffs, Isaac is all but dragged out of the room he’d been kept in. Dread pools in his gut as he’s shuffled about by the guards, feeling suspiciously like he’s about to head to his own death.
“Where are you taking me? What are you doing?” His questions, predictably, are met by silence from his captors.
Isaac tries to keep a count of how far they walk and how many corners they turn but wherever they’re going, it’s either far away or they’re deliberately making it harder on purpose.
Eventually, though, Isaac hears a door open and he’s shoved into a room that’s markedly colder than the rest of the building. After a moment the blindfold is pulled off, and he winces and blinks in the bright light.
“Hello, Mr. Finch.”
Mimicry sits in front of him at a table, and it takes only a moment to realize that Isaac is in an interrogation room of some sort, the table being the only thing in the room. A one-way mirror sat behind Mimicry, and while Isaac didn’t see any security cameras that didn’t mean they weren’t there.
“Please, take a seat.”
While they had bound his hands, his legs were free, so Isaac carefully shuffles over to the opposite side of the table. The two guards who took him here leave the room, leaving him alone with Mimicry.
In the past, Isaac would’ve loved to have one-on-one time with a Hero like this. Though his focus was on investigative reporting, he was still a reporter, and some heroes were much more camera shy than others. Mimicry was one such individual, and few interviews with her were ever recorded.
Now, though, all he feels is a creeping dread as he takes a seat across from her. There’s still a headache behind his eyes from when she had slammed him into the wall, and he doesn’t know if it was a concussion or not.
On the table between them was a stack of paper, neatly placed almost exactly in the middle of the table.
“Why am I here?” Isaac ventures warily, setting his hands down on his lap, unwilling to take his gaze off of Mimicry. He doesn't see any weapons on her, but that doesn't mean she isn't dangerous.
“A negotiation,” the hero replies, level and steady. She gestures to the paper between them. “If you would be so kind as to take a look at that.”
She doesn’t seem actively hostile at the moment, so he leans forward, scanning the papers. It takes him only a moment to realize what it is.
“This is a contract.”
“A non-disclosure agreement, to be precise,” Mimicry confirms. Her hands are folded primly on top of the table, a pen held between her fingers.
Isaac stares at her. “And you want me to read this why…?”
“Read it and you’ll find out.”
An NDA. As far as he knows those sorts of contracts are used for military purposes, top-secret clearance and all that shady stuff the military does because it’s the military. The thought makes him squirm.
Carefully, Isaac pulls the paper towards him, squinting down at the text.
“I can’t read this without my glasses,” he says after a minute, cursing his far-sightedness. All the words looked like blurry lines of black. They were in small print, too.
“Oh?” The tone of Mimicry’s voice makes a stone sink in Isaac’s chest. “Well, unfortunately, they must’ve been dropped earlier. We don’t have them, sadly.”
Oh, that mother- Isaac thought, swearing internally. The pieces were clicking together in his brain and he didn’t like the outcome.
“I’m not signing anything I can’t read,” Isaac states, pushing the papers away. Idly, he wonders if he remembers the number for the lawyer that dealt with his dad’s possessions after he passed. Then he wondered if they would even let him have one. “Especially not without a lawyer.”
From the way Mimicry’s eyes narrow, he doubts it.
“Of course,” Mimicry replies easily, the rest of her expression hidden behind her mask. “We here at the agency have several amazing lawyers we can recommend to you, Mr. Finch.”
“Sure, and they’ll tell me that this ‘arrest’ is totally legal and not at all unlawful and unconstitutional and that I definitely won’t be talking about my article to anyone, least of all the press, after I’m released.” Those lawyers are absolutely in the pockets of the Agency. He attempts to cross his arms over his chest, remembers he’s in handcuffs and moves to set them on the table instead. “I’d ask for a phone call, the way you’re supposed to, but something tells me I won’t be getting that.”
“The way I see it, Mr. Finch,” Mimicry states, leaning forward and resting her head on her hands, “Is that you either sign that contract and get back to your nice, civilian life, or we find and trash every single paper you wrote in that article.”
Issac can’t hide his wince at that, eyes flickering down towards the paper. Theoretically, he could start over from the beginning… it’d just take another three years to work on it. But it’s much preferable than an NDA.
Somehow, though, he doesn’t think that’s an option.
“I don’t care. I’m not signing anything.”
Mimicry slams her hands on the metal table, making Isaac jump as he stands and looks over the table at him.
“You forget, Mr. Finch, that just because it would be a hassle to kill you doesn’t mean we can’t do it,” she hisses out. “So either you sign that contract-“
Her words are cut off by the shrieking of an alarm as the room is suddenly flooded with red light. Mimicry and Isaac both freeze, and Mimicry curses before hastily exiting the room, the door clicking as it locks.
“Hey, what’s going on?” He shouts as the door closes, but predictably, he receives no answer. Isasc fidgets in his chair, wincing at every turn of the alarm.
It’s not a fire alarm though, thankfully. The tune is one he’s much more familiar with, one that rings out across Prism Port on a regular basis.
A villain attack.
Someone was attacking the Prism Port Hero Agency. Or, what Isaac assumes is the Agency. For all he knows he’s been shuffled off into some sprawling and abandoned building that’s been repurposed to deal with people like him.
He gulps, sinking down in his chair. With the door locked, there’s not much he’s able to do except wait. Shouts sound outside, followed by the heavy thumping of footsteps.
Isaac isn’t sure how long it goes on for—there’s no clock in the interrogation room and he easily loses track of time—but it’s long enough that his headache is beginning to turn into a migraine when he hears shouting from outside.
But then the shouts are followed by the rapid tat-tat-tat of gunfire and the humming buzz of powers being used. Shouting turns to screaming. Isaac straightens up, alarmed, and winces when he hears something thud against the wall outside. A cold sweat forms on the back of his neck.
Moments later, the door slams open, banging against the wall with a loud, metallic crash as though someone kicked it in. Isaac jumps, nearly falling out of the chair as two people rush in with--oh god they have guns. Large ones.
“Don’t shoot!” Isaac blurts, holding his hands in front of his face as though that would help protect him against bullets.
Silence greets him, and Isaac tentatively peeks out from behind his hands. Two people dressed in all-black, loose-fitting clothing with bird masks covering their faces are staring at him, the guns lowered. Isaac gulps.
“I-I’m just a civilian,” he stammers out, feeling his heart thudding in his chest. “Y-you can j-just l-leave me… leave me be.”
One of them grabs a walkie-talkie that’s hanging on a utility belt loaded with pockets and clicks it on in a burst of static. “Cristatus here, going for Siren. Room B-134. I repeat, room B-134.”
“Affirmative,” another voice crackles from the other end. “I’ll be there in a minute. Just have to take care of some business.”
Oh god. Isaac wasn’t sure what was going on here, but he did not like the sound of that. Gulping, he tries once again to reach for his powers, only to yelp when the handcuffs crackle to life in a burst of electricity that sears his wrists and knocks him out of that concentrated state.
He closes his eyes, wishing he was all just in sort of a bad dream, or better yet, pretending that Luke was here to rescue him.
The guards don’t leave, and about ten or twenty minutes later, another person walks through the door. She’s wearing a dark blue dress that hugs her body, low-heeled boots that don’t quite match in terms of aesthetic, and--like the guards--has a mask over her face. Only, this one doesn’t cover her eyes, which are a dark shade of blue and lined with heavy makeup.
Isaac’s heart slams in his chest, a staccato rhythm that he’s sure everyone in the room could hear.
“Well, hello there,” Valeria Metz, the Siren of Prism Port--one of the most dangerous villains in the city--all but purrs. “Looks like someone needs a helping hand, hmm?”