It was Aron’s turn to deliver the evening meals to the…well, they were technically called specimens but he’d never been comfortable with that terminology. He wasn’t sure what he would call them if given the chance to rename them but ‘specimens’ just sounded too clinical.

“It sounds like we’re talking about mold in petri dishes,” he’d said to his boss when he first heard them referred to in that manner.

“It makes the work easier,” was his bosses reply.

Aron thought that was a rather cold and detached perspective, but having worked in the facility now for a solid year he understood that that was the point. No one lasted very long here without finding some way to ignore certain aspects of their work.

The meal cart was as tall as he was and twice as wide. It glided down the hallway on smooth wheels as he pushed it in front of him. Windowless doors flanked him on both sides. There were no handles or doorknobs on any of them. He stopped at each door and, using the small, sliding drawer beside the doors, removed the previous meal tray and replaced it with a fresh one.

The food wasn’t bad, or at least it didn’t look or smell bad. He’d never tasted any of it of course. There was never any way of knowing what might all be in it. Still, today’s lasagna, salad, cupcake, and cranberry lemonade looked enticing. Most of the specimens took their food without difficulty. It was only the new specimens who sometimes refused to eat, but that never lasted very long and once they started eating they never stopped.

Sometimes, Aron thought he could hear them. The rooms weren’t exactly designed to be soundproof but they had to be sturdy, incredibly so in some cases, and that didn’t lend itself very well to transmitting sound. Most of the sounds he heard seemed like banging, or sometimes shouting, although those were also usually the new arrivals. The longer they were here, the less he heard from them.

The facility itself was shaped like a massive hexagon. The various specimens were categorized and kept in wards that comprised concentric, long hallways that ran the full perimeter of the hexagon. There were seven levels in the facility and each level had three such concentric wards. The facility was built down, rather than up, so each level went deeper into the earth. He’d started out on the ground level, with the lowest security clearance, level 7. He’d been promoted a few times now and his current assignment was level 3. It didn’t mean very much in terms of what he did for work since that didn’t change, but it did mean better pay and he got to work with potentially more interesting specimens. Maybe even some that he’d heard of before they’d all been gathered and contained. That said, he still never saw any of them. Just passed food into their cells, did their laundry, and occasionally mopped out a vacated room. He never asked what had happened to the previous occupant.

Once he cleaned out a room that had something he couldn’t identify smeared across the walls like paint that formed the symbol for Terran, The Man Of Stone. Maybe the room had been his, but it also could have been one of his enemies since so many so-called villains had been gathered first. Once they were dealt with, the so-called heroes were next. The world just couldn’t keep up with the destruction they caused. So they were now kept and contained in facilities like this one all over the world. A simple, if somewhat morally ambiguous solution to a global problem.

Aron pushed another meal tray through its slot and turned to resume his slow march down the hallway.

An older woman was standing beside him, looking somewhat confusedAron started, jumping back and colliding with the wall.

“Geez lady!” he said as he massaged his shoulder where he suspected he’d soon have a bruise.

At first he thought she was one of the higher ups. They came through and did inspections sometimes, but then he noticed that she was wearing the simple brown jumpsuit they gave to specimens. Without missing a beat he reached down and tapped the small emergency button on his belt. The suppression team should arrive quickly and escort her back to whichever cell she came from. Escapes weren’t common, Aron had certainly never had to deal with one before, but he had heard of them happening from time to time.

“I’m sorry,” the woman spoke in a soft, almost whisper of a voice. “Did I frighten you?”

There was a gleam in her eyes briefly when she spoke the word ‘frighten’ and Aron focused on controlling his breathing and heart rate. In his training they’d explained that heroes, when they escaped, rarely caused problems or hurt people. Villains on the other hand, were less predictable. In both cases, however, remaining calm and staying in control of the situation was the best course of action.

“I’ve brought you your meal,” Aron told her, sidestepping her question and offering her a tray of food. It was a pretty common assumption among him and his coworkers that the food was drugged to help keep the specimens subdued and it was Aron’s hope that this was the case as he held the tray out for her.

“I’ve eaten,” she said and brushed the tray aside with a lazy wave of her hand. She stared hungrily at him instead.

Aron put the tray back on the cart and pushed it forward to the next set of doors where he resumed his duties of delivering meals. He wasn’t sure what else to do and he didn’t want to try and hold a conversation with her if he could avoid it.

“How long has it been?” she asked as she followed Aron down the corridor. She kept herself just slightly closer to him than was normally comfortable but made no move to grab or hurt him.

“I’ve been on my shift for about four hours now,” Aron told her, again trying to avoid her actual question.

The woman gave him a knowing, albeit unpleasant smile.

“And how much longer do you think you have?” she asked.

Aron counted out the seconds in his head to help him maintain his calm breathing and to bring his heart rate back down.

“I’m a career man,” Aron explained, “I’m working my way up the old fashioned way.”

“So you want to be here until you die?” She took a step towards Aron.

“Retirement’s set at sixty here,” Aron gulped and tried not to appear too scared as he backed away from her. “I’m thinking a beach house for me at that point if my investments pan out.”

She continued to approach and Aron pressed the emergency button yet again. There were security stations throughout the facility and he didn’t think it should be taking this long for them to reach him.

“You got a family?” Aron asked her out of desperation to distract her.

She hesitated and her eyes glanced down briefly.

“I love hearing about people’s family,” he told her.

“I don’t have a family,” she said with bitterness.

“Everyone’s got family,” Aron prodded her. “We all come from somewhere.”

“Well I come from nothing!” she snapped, and as she did, a memory came to him from the years before the collection began.

There had been a woman who had just sort of appeared. No one knew who she was or where she’d come from. Some accused her of being an alien, others thought she was some sort of genetic experiment gone wrong, and no one knew if she was trying to be a hero or a villain either. Sometimes she showed up and rescued people, other times she caused brutal devastation for no apparent reason. It was actually because of her that the whole collection movement gained traction. She was simply too powerful, too unpredictable to be allowed.

And she had been the first specimen. She was also suppose to be on level 1 in the most secure cell of them all. Dozens of heroes had been slaughtered in the effort to capture and contain her.

“You know,” Aron spoke without meaning to and his voice sounded foreign to him in his ears, “I never knew my parents.”

“What, did your mommy not want you?” she asked with heavy sarcasm as she took him by the shoulders and began to lift him off the ground.

“No, I was kidnapped,” he said, hoping against hope that she’d let him live and so he kept talking to try and distract her. “I was born in Nigeria but someone kidnapped me. There are adoption agencies there that pay people for young babies they can then adopt out to people in America, claiming them to be orphans.”

The woman did in fact stop and stared questioningly at him. “Why would they do that?”

“They charge fees for the adoption.”

She lowered Aron back down to the ground though she did not release her grip. An anger in her eyes glowed and something like fire flickered to life.

“Did you exact your revenge on them?” she asked, much to Aron’s surprise.

“What? No,” he stammered, “I mean, what could I even do?”

“I don’t know,” she said and locked eyes with him once again, “but you people sure were swift when I showed up. I guess I just assumed you were all so devoted to vengeance.”

Aron felt the pressure on his body increase as she began to squeeze him.

“Please don’t hurt me,” he gasped. It was his final option. She would not be distracted, security had not yet arrived, and so he appealed to whatever compassion she might have. It could also backfire on him. If she turned out to be particularly sadistic, then pleading would only encourage her to make it worse.

“Won’t you fight back?” she said, still increasing the pressure on his shoulders.

Aron wasn’t in any serious pain yet but he knew she could snap him like a twig.

“I did,” Aron told her. “I tried to distract you, tried to calm you down, but now I’ve lost and the fight is over.”

“So you’re just going to roll over and die like all the others?”

Aron wondered who all the others were. Was she just referring to the people she’d killed in general or had she been making her way up the facility, killing as she went?

It was hurting now. Aron’s ribs were beginning to flex painfully and his shoulders were threatening to dislocate soon.

“Just do it and be done,” Aron said through gritted teeth.

She held his gaze. The fire in her eyes burned up into her eyebrows and some of the longer flames even licked up to her forehead. The pressure on him eased, however, and she released him.

“You have real spirit,” she said in suddenly calm tones. “With further training and development you may prove quite powerful.”

Aron stared at her in utter confusion. Was she letting him live after all? Was she just insane and he happened to get lucky with her caprice? Before he could puzzle it out any further the security team came around the corner and took up their positions. Aron released the breath he’d been holding and staggered over to them.

“She’s from level 1, I think,” he told them, but they weren’t looking at her. They were looking at him.

“Take him,” the woman said and the security team moved as one to subdue Aron.

“What are you doing?” Aron demanded as he tried to fend them off. “She’s a specimen! Take her!”

Aron was tackled to the ground and several strong hands  pressed him down to hold him still. The woman knelt down beside Aron’s head and spoke to him.

“I was,” she said, “for a brief while. But, like in so many ways, I don’t play by your rules and the methods used to contain me proved to be…ineffective. Rather than fighting me again, the powers that be decided to work with me.”

“What are you going to do with me?” Aron asked as he was lifted by the security team, now bound hand and foot, and began carrying him down the corridor and away from her.

She just smiled and tapped one of the doors beside her.