They woke up in a small auditorium, chained at wrists and ankles to their seats in the front row. Wanda and Matt were there and feeling just as helpless as the kids.

They were in the front row facing a stage with a podium and microphone. Rick quipped, “I usually sit in the back row at these things, so the principal doesn’t see that I have my tie crooked.” Rhonda giggled at that, and hearing it made him feel better too. He was actually relaxing when a man came striding out of the wings and up to the podium.

“I call myself Dr. Incubator,” he said. He was dressed all in glossy black, from his mask to his boots, to the high collared cape behind him. “I do that because I take young mutants and put them through a forced growth process. The ones that survive are worthy of being on the forefront of evolution.”

‘Survive?’ thought Rick and he gulped. He heard Matt and Wanda struggling in their bonds. The man turned to look at them, “I see we have two members of Whateley Security here. Even though you are Baselines, we won’t kill you. We will put you back to sleep until we are done. Then you can escort the survivors to Whateley. We approve of Whateley in principle, you know, we just don’t think they go far enough to prepare mutants for a hostile world. The training we give here may kill about one third of our “students” on average, but those that survive are the strongest and most adaptable. A few even join us in our work afterward.”

He gestured and their charter pilot came out. His face was bare, so they recognized him but he was in a different uniform now. It was all matte black with a phoenix on the chest in shades of red and yellow.

“John here was one of our sleeper agents. He joined us after surviving the worst we could do to him and was allowed to be rescued. We had two agents adopt him and surreptitiously backed his education and training as a pilot. He brought us a fine catch, and now has his choice of staying with the core group or getting a new identity and becoming a sleeper agent again.” The mad doctor then hugged John, who smiled insanely at them all.

“Time for another nap, everyone!” They struggled but one by one they went back down into a deep sleep.

In a steel cylinder set up in a special room, Rhonda woke up slowly. She was awkwardly crouched in a confined space. 'Oh my Gawd!' she thought to herself as she remembered what had happened. 'I'm going to die,' she thought as she straightened up. 'I'm in no shape to pass a hard gym test, much less some mutant 'survive or die' test.'

She surveyed her surroundings; she was in steel tube with blank insides, a grill under her feet and open tubes under that, above her were a light, a camera lens and a speaker grill. 'Oh great,' she grumbled to herself, 'I get to die on camera.' Water started pouring in from below and she started beating on the walls of the cylinder with her fists and shouting, "Help!"

"There's no one that will help you but yourself." A sinister voice called from above.

It scared her so much she jumped in the water that was now rising over her feet. "Isn't killing me enough? Do you have to humiliate me first?" she shouted back. "Are you broadcasting this you bastard? Or are you just getting your jollies from seeing me naked?"

"You need not die. Just transcend your current limitations, and you will be able to free yourself. Empathy won't save you. Reach out for more. Your companion, Roberto, is pushing his strength to the limits and may yet free himself. Of course he might just tire himself out and die faster, but if he does, he deserves it. Which are you, Rhonda McIntyre? Are you dead wood to be left behind as mutants claim their rightful place? Or are you one of the strong? Show us what you can do, or die in your watery tomb."

Rhonda had an odd feeling that she was going to be rescued but put it down to wishful thinking. She punched and kicked at the door holding her in but nothing worked until with a click it opened and Rick let her out.

In another cylinder in the same room, Bobby woke up quickly and took stock. 'I'm naked!' he thought, 'and sealed into some weird tube thing.' The voice from overhead spoke, and he listened to a reiteration of their crazy manifesto, then shrugged. If he was as strong as he thought, he should be able to batter his way out. Eventually he did break out, and when he did he was glad to see that Rick and the girls were okay.

In yet another cylinder in the same room Maria wondered if they'd done anything to her when she woke up and discovered she was naked. However after checking herself as well as she could, she put that out of her mind. 'I need to concentrate on getting out of here first.'

When the voice from above spoke, she listened, "Yeah, you tell yourself that. I don't believe it. What survival purpose does my being naked and apparently on camera serve? Never mind, I don't expect a straight answer to that. Anything else you want to say or gloat over?"

"We do have the best interests of the race at heart. You evidently don't trust us or our word, and that's fine. We aren't doing this for praise. I saw you checking yourself, and I want to assure you that no one took advantage of you while you were unconscious. We just stripped you naked and stuck you in this cylinder for the first part of your test."

She rolled her eyes and thought to herself, ‘Of course he probably means that. Irony is wasted on him, and so is sarcasm.’ The water was reaching her knees just then so she concentrated on possible ways to escape.

'Okay, if I'm supposed to be an Energizer I should have an energy blast of some kind,' Maria said to herself. 'It would be nice to have peace and quiet to try this but here goes.' At first nothing happened, and she frowned, but fortunately, on her third try a beam of coherent light speared from one finger and through the steel shell surrounding her. She shouted, "Yes!" while grinning triumphantly. It might take a while, but this would get her out of the cylinder eventually. She made several more small holes in the cylinder, each glowing red briefly as the laser drilled through and the voice from the speaker encouraged her with such seeming sincerity, that it was hard to believe he would have let her die. Then she heard Rick's voice coming from outside the cylinder.

In the final cylinder, Rick woke up disoriented. He was leaning against something cold and hard, and his feet were wet. He opened his eyes and looked around. 'I'm sealed into some sort of tube,' he thought, 'and I'm naked!' It was all steel from what he could tell, and the wet feeling was because water was bubbling up from below through a grating. When he looked up he saw light, a camera lens and a speaker grille. He tried creating sand, but it didn't stop the water flow.

“A little sand will not help you now. Reach for more power, reach for more strength, reach for a miracle. Transcend your limitations or die here.” The voice spoke the sinister words in a creepily excited tone.

“Why are you doing this?” Rick shouted. “This is wrong! No matter what your goals are, this is wrong, it’s evil!”

“The good doctor does important, necessary work, and we are his support organization. Yes, he sometimes kills people, but the end justifies the means if the end is survival. And all of us are people who not only survived one of his little tests, but found new strength from the experience, and want others to have that epiphany.” There was a pause before the voice continued, “We force mutants to realize their potential or die. We may seem evil, but the world is not black and white, and some day you may agree with us. We could have killed you all while you slept, but that is not our purpose. You will only die if you are weak or stupid.”

Rick beat on the opaque lid in front of him as the cylinder slowly filled from pipes by his feet, but it didn’t open. He pushed with all of his might, and, nothing. He panicked briefly, then forced himself to become calm. He concentrated, and more sand appeared but, not in the right place. A few more tries just produced sandy water.

“Water seeps through sand all the time, you know. You’ll need more than that to escape. If you can escape that, there is a way out past all the locked doors and guards. Freedom can be yours if you can just get this box open. Fail, and it will be your tomb,” the voice intoned.

Rick realized that the speaker was watching him and that the cylinder was probably only well lit for that reason. He imagined being trapped there in the dark and shivered. ’I have to hold it together!’ he thought to himself. ‘I need to get free and help the others.’

Rick strained his brain looking for some solution. ‘Maybe I have powers I haven’t tried yet?’ he thought. ‘It’s possible. They weren’t able to test for anything I didn’t already know I had, and some mutants have a variety of powers.’ Meanwhile, the water was creeping upward, and had made it up past his knees. He started trying everything he could think of, and hoped that Powerhouse would wake up and save them. He didn’t want to chance that, however, and furiously tried to do various things to the water. “Move!” he shouted, and concentrated, but nothing happened. He tries to call forth an energy blast, but nothing came out.

“Oh come on … You’ll have to do better than that if you want to live!” the sinister voice chided him.

Rick got angry and focused his rage on the water. He realized it was a bit irrational but right then he hated water with a passionate fury. He tried to beam that fury into the water and something happened!

The water starts bubbling, and at first he thought it was boiling, but quickly realized it was not getting any hotter. The level started dropping slightly, even though more water was coming in and Rick smelled ozone. In a flash of intuition he realized what he was doing. He was separating the water into Hydrogen and Oxygen. He concentrated and tried to speed up the process. ‘At least I don’t have to worry about air’ he told himself as a plan formed in his mind. He would later realize that too much oxygen is as dangerous as too little, and that if he hadn't been an Exemplar he would have died from the stunt he had in mind.

As he destroyed the water, more flowed in and the air pressure inside increased. Applause sounded from the speaker, “Bravo! You’ve found a new power. It may not get you free, but it looks like it will keep you from drowning.” Rick kept his smile to himself; it seemed to him that the man behind the voice was not thinking creatively enough. ‘Thank you Doctor Thunder’ he thought, ‘I just hope I manage it in time to help the others.’

After a while that seemed endless, Rick’s ears popped and he started pushing on the door while continuing to denature the water as fast as it came in. The door popped open and he stepped out hurriedly. He looked around to see who else was free. Nobody else was in the room, and all the other cylinders were closed. A closer looked showed only one of them was intact, though. The one closest to him had several small holes in it and water was pouring out of the lower ones, the next one over was intact, and the third had several fist sized dents.

A laser beam poking a new hole in the nearest cylinder, reminded him of what his first priority should be. He knocked on the cylinder, “It’s me, Rick. I’m going to try and get you out of there, so don’t shoot for a minute, okay?” He heard a muffled response, and hoping it was a yes, he stepped in front of it and looked for a way to open it. It was only meant to be secure from the inside, so he easily had it open and Maria rushed out into his arms.
He hugged her, then blushed at the feel of her nakedness against him. “I need to go rescue the others.” he said while disengaging.

“Yes, of course,” she said, equally embarrassed as she realized her condition. Then there was the groan of tearing metal and Bobby forced his way free.

"Good to see you made it out, too!" Rick called out.

Bobby raised a fist and replied, "We bad! Takes more than a few perverts and a mad plumber to kill us!"

Rick smiled at that and went to the final cylinder, "Rhonda? We're going to get this open and let you out. Don't worry about a thing!" Then he set her free and got his second naked hug of the day. 'I could get to enjoy this sort of thing,' he thought. 'However now is not the time' and disengaged gently from Rhonda. "Sorry, but we aren't home free yet."

Looking around the place he saw that in addition to the cylinders, the room had one narrow steel door and a circular hole about 4 feet in diameter opposite the door and low on the wall. He also noticed that water was still pouring from the cylinders. It was almost ankle deep and getting deeper.

The voice they'd heard in the cylinders was suddenly back and chuckling, "No, it's not over yet. Not by a long shot. There are choices ahead of you. The first is to force the locked door, the second is to take the tunnel. But you'd better decide fast, because the water hasn't stopped and the tunnel is low."