Jaxon woke up, yet again from unconsciousness, and groaned in pain. The weight on her neck told her she still had the nasty collar on, and the cold soreness of her back told her that they hadn't exactly been gentle when they moved her. Now she lay on a concrete floor. She could hear whispers and when she opened her eyes to look around she found several people around her, though none of them were actually interacting with her. They were moving around her and talking to each other in hushed voices.

Looking around feeling her neck and wincing, Jax found that almost everyone around her looked as confused as she was. This must be the newbie area. It was a small room, more like a concrete box, chilly, with guards stationed around the area and guns in hand. They didn't look too nice.

When no one approached her, Jax stood and listened to the conversations going on around her. The pain in her leg made walking an awkward experience, but she didn't want to stay in the center of the room like a display, and she moved closer to the walls. She had a pretty good idea of where she was, but she could hardly believe it was this bad. A mutant camp. It was worse than she had heard or imagined.

Some of these kids looked sick, some bruised and battered, and some just dirty and thin.

Soon the guards were herding them, pushing and kicking at people who didn't move fast enough, and Jaxon had to hobble to keep up with the rest of the pack or risk another injury. After they were walked down a long hallway, occasionally pushed and hassled by the guards they passed, they were pushed into a much larger area. Jax judged it to be about the size of a football field, with what must be nearly a hundred people of mixed age, sex, and race.

The guards hadn't closed the gates yet and the older residents swooped in on the newer ones, looking for weaklings or anything useful. When one got to close and seemed a little grabby with her, Jax snapped at him. "Hey, back off jerk!"

((OOC: I am using this floor plan for the base. If anyone else wants to use it that is cool by me. I just need something for me to wrap my head around, lol))

A guard shoved the two of them apart, growling at them to quit. Usually the guards wouldn't stop any fights amongst the mutants, but with the gates still open they didn't want any trouble. The boy glared at Jaxon but he and the others moved away. There wasn't much to take from these new prisoners, so they didn't get anything in the short time they had mingled.

The newbs were shoved by the guards, forced to spread out and separate while a monotone siren sounded. The guards retreated and the gates closed with a rumble, the guards safely behind them.

Jaxon looked around. Guards in balconies in the four corners of the room, guns at the ready, small groups of mutants huddled together in about three larger groups, all wearing the same collar she did. Some were thinner, others had the look of bullies, some were dirty and had been in this place longer while others, like herself, were mostly clean for now. It was like a schoolyard only there didn't seem to be any teachers or rules. The door she came in was the only way out from what she could tell, and there wasn't exactly much going on in here. It seemed like a holding area.

Limping with out any real direction she was surprised when a little girl, she looked about five years old took her hand and pointed at her wrist. Jaxon looked down and saw a plastic bracelet for the first time. It had a barcode and a large number three on it. The little girl babbled at her in Romanian and tugged her over to the group. All of them had plastic bracelets and it looked like they all had the number three. That explained the groups.

Following the little girl, wincing when she had to step over someone's leg, she sat down with her. Looking at the faces around her, she smiled awkwardly. "Ugh… Hello?"

After a moment she realized most of these people didn't speak English, and sighed. One girl spoke some and was able to explain a little bit. The numbers indicated which sleeping area they were assigned to and there were three. Each group was let out of their sleeping area, herded into the food hall, where they were given trays of bad food by armed guards, then they were locked down in the big room. Each group went through the same process until they all ended up in the big room. Fed twice a day, and never enough at either according to the girl, the process was reversed, with each group being taken out of the big room, fed, then forced back into the sleeping area.

This wasn't circle time so when no one offered a smile or their name Jaxon wasn't surprised. This whole place was insane. How could people do this? Even if they thought mutants were animals, who would treat an animal this badly?

Almost as if talking about it made it happen, the guards started calling a number and one of the groups started to stand. Hustled by the men with guns it didn't take them long to move out of the large area and down the halls.

The only one who spoke even a little bit of English explained the camps in a hushed voice while they ate.

The guards and the inmates did the same things: wake up, herd into the mess hall, eat, herd into the holding area, wait, herd back to the mess hall, eat, then back to the sleeping area, sleep. Fights were common and Jaxon figured out why. There was nothing else to do.

Usually the fights were between the bigger people, with the smaller ones watching, but occasionally two smaller mutant would go at it. Never anything super violent or dangerous, but just a tussle, a wrestling match to relieve the constant bordom. No one laughed or smiled and it wasn't possible to play games or have toys. The second a guard caught you building something he took it away, usually with a kick or hit with the butt of his rifle for good measure.

There was a high sceurity area, the others talked about it and every now and then Jaxon was able to listen in and figure out what they were talking about. No one in these groups had been there, but they had seen others come from it. After all the gates to all the room were just bars and that let the mutant see into the halls all the time, though it was with a limited veiw.

Jaxon made a few friends before they were herded into their sleeping area, though friends wasn't really the right word. Compatriots might have been more appropriate but for now, Jax liked to call them friends, it was easier. They spoke minimal English and the little girl who had first pulled Jax aside didn't speak any. But they knew each other's names and could communicate if only roughly.

The little girl was Jaxon's favorite. Yhelena. She was still a little girl, despite the collars and the guards and the prison. Some how she was the only one that still seemed slightly happy. Jax found out why and it made her so angry: Yhelena had been in the camps practically since they were first created, brought in as an infant with her mother. Her mother had died, and Yhelena had taken nearly all the older females as replacements.

Jaxon had tried to use her powers. Wanting to test it to see if she could get out of here. It wasn't more than a hopeful wish, after all, how many other people were in here that had probably tried the same thing. But she needed to do it for herself. And she was shocked. She tried once more and found that the shock level was the same no matter the amount of power she tried to use. She was tempted to release the floodgates on her power, but wasn't quite brave enough for it. The electric jolts were painful and Jaxon had never cared for pain.

So she found herself sitting on the ground, dirtier than when she arrived and very much feeling the need to bathe, with a little girl on her lap, watching some boys wrestle.

Jaxon wasn't sure if it was a credit to her adaptability or if it meant that she was weak-minded, but other than the increasingly frequent scuffles with the guards, she wasn't finding it hard to survive after a day or two. Survive was the key though. She definitely wasn't thriving. She could see her hip and rib bones, she knew that meant she would be getting sick soon, and her already pale skin had turned even more translucent, making it easy to see all the blue veins under her skin and making every little bump into a large bruise.

She tried not to complain. There were others who had been here longer and had more to complain about. Jax had seen the guards beat an older man… the next day he didn't wake up. Apparently while the mutants were out of their cells and safely locked away, people came in and cleaned, in a generous use of that word, because the body was gone when they got back.

Jaxon got the feeling that there was more to this underground prison that she or anyone on this level knew. There were rumors of other levels, some said they were like this one and some said they were different. There were whispers of breakout, though most people would rather whisper about a possible rescue. The ones who had been here the longest weren't hoping for either, they wanted a painless death. Jaxon found herself among the ones that wanted a rescue. And damned if they weren’t going to help if one started.

Jaxon was now nursing bruised ribs, a black eye, and various other injuries she didn't even want to think about. What had started as a small scuffle had ended with the mess hall in a brawl and the guards wading in and hitting everyone no matter their involvement, shock collars suddenly humming away.

Jax rolled over on the crappy mats that passed for bed around here, wincing as her back burned and tingled. She wanted to cry, to let the pain out somehow, but the tears wouldn't come. So she sighed, her eyes looking around the room lit only by the security lights that cast soft red glare over the room. Others were sleeping, shifting with their own aches and pains.

She shivered and wrapped the too thin blanket around her and met the eyes of another person who happened to be awake and looking around. Neither of them smiled, instead there was a pause, then both eyes moved on with only that slight bit of acknowledgement.

The tension had been building, and there was still a tingle in the air. Something was up. Nothing anyone could put their finger on, but everyone's instincts were tingling and making them jumpy.

Jaxon was running. Dirt roads, dark skies, and prowling creatures just beyond her sight. Her feet hurt, her heart was pounding too fast, and the pit of her stomach was lurching while a steady rock of pain settled behind her belly button. She wanted to call for help be there was no one there, and no one she knew who would come. She was being hunted.

She didn't know where she was. Jax barely knew who she was; the fear was so heavy and cloying. She couldn't hear anything except her heart and her heavy breathing. She felt like she was spinning, or maybe the world was spinning around her… it didn't really matter, because she had to keep running. Running down roads she didn't know, going to someplace that might be safe.

Heat, moist hot heat hit her face, and for a moment she thought she felt teeth. Power swirled around her. Then she knew she did. The back of her neck was on fire, sending shooting bolts of pain up and down her spine, making her brain ache and roll. Something was chewing on her neck…

Suddenly she was shaking, bolting upright and colliding with something. Panic and pain glazed her eyes but she didn't see the dirt roads and darkness. Instead it was a different kind of nightmare. One with too many people crammed in a room made of concrete, with armed guards watching your every move.

Blue eyes moved in front of her and Jax jerked back, hitting her had against the metal support for the bunk above her. It was the little girl she had met her first day. "Hey… Yhelena…" It had been a dream, all a dream. Now if only this dream would end… Yhelena babbled at her, then mimed shaking her again, sending new jolts of electricity to new places, making Jax realize where the chewing sensation had come from.

Reeling her power back, feeling the shocks slowly fade but leaving behind the twitching and tingling, she tried to smile at the little girl. "I was dreaming. Thank you for waking me up…" The smile was barely there, but it was there and the girl nodded despite not knowing what she had said. Kids could do that; know what a person was saying without understanding a word of it. Resilient.

This was not going well… It hadn't been going well to start with, after all who calls 'getting thrown in mutant prison' going well, but ever since her dream, Jax had been getting shocked more and more frequently. It was as if each shock wore away the fragile walls of containment that she had built to control her powers.

Which meant that her power slipped more… which meant that she got shocked more… It was a vicious cycle. And the worst part was that she wasn't the only one noticing. The other mutants noticed of course, but they couldn't do anything about it, and they knew what it was like. It wasn't as if Jax was using her powers on purpose. But she didn't think the guards would see it that way.

They had been watching her more closely, their guns more ready. She even saw fear and anger in their eyes when she accidentally pulled a half formed creature. After that even the other mutants were looking at her strangely.

They might move her soon. Or change her collar. Or start experimenting on her… or worse things that Jax didn't even have the ability to think of. It was starting to take nearly all her concentration to not use her powers. Every time she relaxed, power leaked out. Obviously she hadn't been getting much sleep, which made her control even worse, but it did weaken her power slightly. Too bad it also weakened her.

((OOC: I do not speak Romanian. I googled a Romanian translator and found something called Babylon. I hope it isn’t too terrible of a translation.))

Jax stood in line with the others, waiting for her food. Everyone shuffled along slowly, the line monotonous, eyes vacant, faces blank. Slop was slung on trays and then the trays were mostly flung at the mutants. If it went to waste on the floor or on their clothes, oh well, that was their problem.

Like the others, Jaxon looked like hell. She was also daydreaming, if it could be called that. She wasn’t thinking of anything in particular, just… being. She was trying to not see the walls and the glares and the guns and collared mutants. Bad move.

Soon she felt the hot and cold shocks on her neck and someone screamed. Not really a surprise since there was a visible but intangible creature, one that looked like a walking shark from a bad SyFy B-movie. Gripping the collar, uncaring if she dropped her food, she tried to lessen its contact with her skin.

Her eyes closed as she tried to pull the power back, tears gathering along the tight seam of her lashes. She felt hard hands at her elbows, a sharp jab to already sore ribs, and heard a rough angry voice. Since she didn’t understand a word of Romanian, Jax made up what she imagined him to be saying.

1*”Putin Catea… Noi va vom tine te-ai sa vezi pe cineva care va face sigur voi inceta sa mai foloseasca puterile tale!”
”We are tired of your shit! We kill you now!”

It wasn’t funny but for some reason Jax wanted to laugh. It was like that bad Japanese game show on Spike tv. MXC? It didn’t really matter, but the fact that she thought they were going to kill her and that she thought it was kind of funny would weird her out later.

After dragging her through the halls and into an elevator that she hadn’t seen before, they threw her in a room by herself, a viewing window in one wall… She was on the side where she could only see herself. But there was a feeling of relief as the collar stopped shocking her. The release of pressure at not having to hold back her powers.

((Actual translation= 1* “Little bitch... We'll take you to see someone who will make sure you stop using your powers!”))

((OOC: They ARE speaking Romanian in this post, but for some reason I can’t copy and paste translations, so it is just going to be in English))

On the other side of the glass, the guards were informing the adapted of why Jaxon had been brought out of the pens and into the observation.

”Hey Stefan, this one has been causing trouble in the pens. Crazy shit man, mutant animal ghost things. The shock collar isn’t working so we are going to take it off and put a stronger one on. You might just end up putting her with the other trouble makers. I think she speaks English too. Might be one of those Xmen?”

Stefan, a stout little man looked through the glass, then turned to sign the paperwork to transfer the girl to his sector. ”Maybe. I don’t like coincidences so for now let’s assume she is. Thanks boys.” If she did speak English it was very likely that she was one of the mutants that had been causing trouble for the government; bombings and illegal transport of mutants across the border. Subverting the government. Stefan had been glad to put his human abilities to work to stop these criminals.

The guards left after removing the girl’s collar, and Stefan just watched the her. She looked tired. Not that he cared, but it was interesting that she looked like she was about to fall asleep. That wasn’t the usual response when a mutant was first put in this room.

Jaxon actually was nodding off. This was the first time in a few days that she had been able to relax enough to even think about sleeping. Was being the key word. A short ugly man slammed open the door and Jaxon jumped. Then he was speaking to her in bad English.

“You speak English?”

Jax nodded, blinking at him and trying to stop her heart from pounding at being woken so suddenly. The man dragged a chair from the corner and sat on it with the air of a man who thought himself superior. But Jaxon was a Kane, no matter her birth or what she looked like now. He didn’t exactly look threatening in a bad polyester suit.

The man pulled out a file and began speaking to her, and she forced herself to listen. “You are mutant. You are here because you have crimes. Are you mutant who helped with bomb?”

She blinked at him from where she was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall. “What? I don’t have crimes… I didn’t have anything to do with the bombing either.”

The man marked something in his file before he looked at her again. She wouldn’t be surprised if the file was fake and he was just using it to try and act like he had something on her. “Then what are you, American, here for if not for attacking government?”

”I was here on business for my family. Which, by the way, is going to destroy you for this. And when I tell the American Embassy, you had better watch it, I’m not just some nobody.”

The man continued as if he heard that all the time, which, if Jaxon thought about it, he probably did. “I am sure. What are your powers?”

Jaxon glared at him. “What if I don’t want to tell you?”

The man ignored her glare and smiled. “Then I hand you to man who won’t ask to find what he wants… He hurt you instead. I don’t mind that way. I watch.” He shrugged. “I find out someway.”

Grumbling under her breath she rolled her eyes, giving in. “Fine. I don’t know what you would call it but I make things… monsters I guess.” She gestured vaguely.

The man hummed and nodded. “Is there attack planned for here?”

Her shoulders slumped. ”Are we back to that? I told you, I don’t know anything about anything. Even if I did, it’s not like it would be current I’ve been in here so long….” She shrugged then fixed a stare on him. “But I hope there is an attack planned. Not like I want to stay here in these lovely accommodations…”

The man glared at her now. “You are lucky we let you to live. We could just shoot you.” He straightened his clashing tie and cleared his throat. “Are you Xmen?”

That got Jaxon’s attention. “Xmen? No, I’m not. But I know them. I’m from New York. You have Xmen here? Oh, you are screwed!” Jax started laughing, for the first time since she arrived.

Obviously, saying that didn't please the man. "We have it under control. Now… What do you know of Xmen?"

Jax sighed and thumped her head softly against the wall behind her. She wasn't getting anywhere with this. "Look. I'm a New Yorker. I know a lot about the Xmen. More to the point… Are you going to let me go anytime soon? Or do I get to sue the entire country of Romania for false imprisonment, inhumane treatment, and discrimination?"

The man chuckled. Which actually bothered Jaxon. "You don't understand. You never get to leave here. None of you mutants do. No one is coming to save you."

Jaxon didn't like the sound of that. And she was starting to get angry. Without the collar on, she realized she might be able to get out f here on her own. Optimistic? Definitely. Realistic? Not really.

She should have known that the guards wouldn't have left her in here, alone with this man, if she actually had a chance at escape. And when she reached for her power… It was gone.

"What did you do to me? My… my powers are gone!"

The man nodded. "Yes, that is true. Sadly powers come back. That is why we alone in room." He made a note in his file before motioning to the mirrored glass. Jaxon, was now afraid. Before she had been angry. In the other area with the mutants, she had been afraid. But this was a panicked fear.

She had never wanted her powers, and they still caused her trouble and she occasionally hated them, but they were hers. She had grown to like them. Not having that power lurking in her mind was disconcerting, disorienting, and diminishing. She felt smaller without them, though she had never felt larger when she had them. Strange.

The guards came back in, grabbing her and trying to put a new collar on her. Jaxon was shrinking away, horrified at the squat little man and trying to avoid the new shock collar. After a moment of frustration the guards used a hand held taser, her body limp as they put on the collar, though she was awake and somewhat aware.

"Put her in with the other odd ones." He left the room, leaving the guards to half drag, half carry Jaxon out and to her new cells.