We built the maze, but am I a rat?

[Atragon9 0]

Tina Lawton was sitting in her office, deep in the Antares complex, on level B5. She was going through the progress report on "The Prisoner," as Mr. Thasus wanted him to be called ("I am not a number, I am a free man!") She knew there was a very deep, personal connection between Charles and this man that he has been torturing for all this time. She knew it, just like she knew that Thasus was brilliant, and quite insane.

It has been ten years since Charles discovered that she had a talent for telepathy, for empathy. He had his own special ability - moving objects with his mind. Somehow he had parlayed his telekinesis and intelligence into a massive business concern that pulled a lot of the strings of public endeavors, while staying in the shadows - the Antares Group. She had grown up in the shadows, always being shunned by others because she knew what they were feeling, what they were thinking. Not Charlie Thasus, though, he never shunned her, he reveled in her mutation, he called it her expertise. He hired her as a special assistant for his business dealings and his massive fortune ballooned, thanks to her insight into his business rivals, partners and clients. She knew it was unscrupulous, but she loved that her expertise was truly making her valuable and important to a major corporation, to a thriving business, to Charlie.

He could not hide anything from her and yet he did not avoid being in her presence. She knew how intricate his thoughts were and she knew how obsessed he was with other people of special abilities, other experts. Over the years, she became his second-in-command in all but the public face of the Antares Group. That public face wasn't even Thasus, but a pompous PR drone that could be controlled when necessary, but truly thought that he was running one of the sector's largest philanthropic foundations. Meanwhile, deep below the surface of Titan, in a secretly constructed sub-complex, Thasus and she were running tests on people with special expertise. They had collected a great deal of research data in trying to find out what makes their brains so unique and so powerful. It was all going well, until the latest test subject - The Prisoner.

Tina had been so used to knowing all that Charlie was thinking, that she had slipped out of the habit of scanning him. He could not hide anything from her and she knew that he knew. What she didn't realize, in her gap of scans, was everything he was doing to prepare for the collection of The Prisoner. Once he was their "guest," she scanned Charlie again, to try and fill in the missing pieces (he hardly talked about his plans with her, assuming she knew all the details he did). She was shocked at the lengths he had gone to, in order to capture this man. Causing thousands of deaths on Earth, after allying with K.E.N. (as a patsy), to set them up for destroying the Terran weather system, all timed to coincide with the man's arrival on Titan. The labyrinthine plan of Charlie's was stunning, and shocking. Still it did not prepare her for what he was doing to this man.

Planting his DNA on a corpse to hide his capture from Starfleet! Keeping him in solitary confinement! Subjecting him to sensory deprivation! Keeping him on the verge of starvation! Toying with his emotions with the enhanced holosuite! Shocking!!

But then Charlie started to take large biological samples from the man, far beyond the amounts needed for their usual research. Now, the insertions of the cortical, cardiac and spinal shunts! He was hurting The Prisoner just for the sake of the pain, to cause despair, hopelessness. He knew the man from many decades ago, there was a shared horror that had molded Charlie into the man he was today. It was right about then when she realized that Charlie had been using some of the research in expertise that Antares had collected, to put up walls in his mind. She found them and probed through them, with some difficulty. He didn't let her in for long, but what little she saw scared her more than any street gang ever did when they found out she was "a freak." She still has the bruise on her hip and head from where she hit the wall when he realized she had probed into his mind's dark recesses and threw her across the room with his expertise.

Charlie isn't eccentric, isn't off-kilter, he is a sociopath - and he has her under surveillance around the clock. She noticed a change in the body types of the project assistants that are around her all the time. Definitely a shift from ectomorphs to mesomorphs. She is convinced that she cannot get away from Charlie without some sort of outside help and considering she is working in a secret facility deep underground, where is that going to come from?

Just then, an alarm sounded throughout the complex and this time it wasn't a drill...