Alexa smiled at Bob Klein. Bob was a young hero, assigned to her as release warden. He was walking next to her in his fancy, spotless dark blue vest uniform and officer’s hat adorned with the SCA Tartarus logo. His sole job was to take her out of the depths of the mountain beneath which sat the Tartarus facility. The inescapable, mind-breaking prison where the heroes had stored villains in S-stasis.

“Sup Bob? How’s the wife? How’s the kids?” Alexa asked, bouncing on her jump shoes.

“Wait. How do you know my real name?” Bob blinked, his foot freezing in place.

“An educated guess, Panda-sama!” Alexa answered with an even bigger grin.

“A guess?” Bob glared at her. His Hero name was Pandora. There was no way that this girl could guess his real name. Did some asshole tech tell her his name? He didn’t trust techs. They were smarter than him and sometimes played practical jokes on the Tartarus security personnel. Especially on Bob.

“Bob is a very popular name you see! You definitely look like a Bob, I can feel it in my ancient, weary bones!”

“You ain’t ancient.” Bob said. “You’re fourteen.”

“You know nothing, Mr. Klein!” Alexa whined. “I’ve been greatly aged by the hardships of the simulation! Why, I could be one hundred thousand years at this point!”

“What the fuck.” Bob squinted at Alexa. This was not okay. She knew his last name too! She knew that he was married and had kids! How?!

“How long have I been under, Bobby?” Alexa lamented with a fake, theatrical voice as if she was in a tv drama series. “They won’t tell me how long I’ve been frozen in carbonite while my mind was sent up to Titanomachy. Why won’t they tell me my real age?! How many birthday candles is my cake supposed to have now? How will they all fit?”

“You’ve been under exactly 24 hours, Ms. Terranova.” Bob said, gritting his teeth. This was not okay! How the hell did she know? What else did she know? Fucking supervillains! How was she so spunky after the simulation? He’s taken prisoners out of Tartarus before. They behaved themselves differently, had no energy, no life left in their eyes and were extra obedient to SCA authority. Something was askew here. Alexa’s eyes sparked with abundant vitality. She made jokes! Something was horribly wrong!

“You don’t need to lie to me! Break it to me gently, Bobby-sama! Are all of my minions dead now? Do I have to make their grand-grand-grand children my minions now? Gosh I hope they bred nicely! I wouldn't mind having an army of little Martins and Cotties.”

Bob wasn’t listening to Alexa. He grabbed her by her dirty vest and dragged her into the maglev train, shoving her down onto an orange seat.

“How do you know my identity? Are you going to threaten me? Hurt my family? Why are you so... happy?!” He growled. A dark portal flashed behind him, many two-dimensional tentacles emerging.

“Whoa, whoa there buddy. Calm the heck down. No need to hentai me up with those pointy portal bits. I know everything about everything. It’s my job to know. I’m not an actual prisoner you see. I’m what’s called a Secret-prisoner!”

“What?” Bob blinked.

“See, it’s like a Secret-shopper! I’m actually an auditor hero that’s been inserted into the Tartarus sim to expose corrupt wardens. Mostly Hero Resonance. She’s the woooorst offender by far!”

“Hero Resonance is the best warden we’ve got! She reeducates villains quicker than anyone else! Holds a record for it in fact.” Bob defended his friend. Resonance and him sometimes shared lunch time at work. He liked her. She seemed, acted much older than she looked.

“Oh please, Bobby. Ember Kilborne aka Hero Resonance might look like a nice person, but inside her there was rot, a super-mold of sorts that had infected this entire place. She was a moldy evil that I was forced to stamp out, set ablaze like a good forest ranger!”

“I don’t believe you one bit.”

“James Allistar.” Alexa pointed at another guard outside of the train. “He likes his coffee black. You two occasionally play cards during breaks and you lose 59% of the time.”

Bob’s mouth dropped open. This girl KNEW things. Was she really a secret prisoner? Was that really a thing?!

“Lisa Miller.” Alexa pointed at another Tartarus guard as the train doors closed shut and the train started to move. “She brings lunch to work and leaves it in the fridge because she’s always on diet. You’ve had to throw out her lunches into your nether dimensions thing as they pile up, smell and take up all of the available fridge space. Close your mouth, we’re off to see the Wizard of Oz show very soon! The curtain will fall and the boobie behind it will be revealed for all to see!”

The dark portal behind Bob snapped shut as his mouth closed. He had no doubt now that the girl was a secret prisoner now, some kind of a tester from the outside. She knew everything. She’s likely been watching them through the cameras, rating their performance. It was the only thing that made sense.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Terranova.” He said. “I didn’t realise you were a supervisor techie.”

“Don’t feel too bad about it! I appreciate you guys. Each and every one of you. Doing your job, being extra diligent. Making sure nobody escapes Tartarus. Too bad you’re all losing your jobs in about 19 minutes. I feel bad, honestly, I do. I also recommend you sell all of your S-credits too. Cus the price is going to drooooop hard, once Titanomachy falls.”

“What?” Just when Bob couldn't be befuddled any further, Alexa managed to squeeze another punch in.

“Not literally of course. Metaphorically. Were you not listening, my dude? Hero Resonance is a very bad apple. In 18 minutes my report about this place is going out, broadcast directly from Titanomachy. I’ve already sold all of My S-credits off. Gota be ahead of the game, you see.”

“What?” Bob choked.

“Shit is going to hit the fan, Bobby and it’s going to hit it very hard.” Alexa pulled a fat usb stick from her pocket and wiggle it in front of Bob’s face. “Check it out. I spent my 1 million S-credits on a usb stick. A most sound investment! I suggest you buy some candy from the trolley or something, while you can still afford things. Buy all the candy for your little Josie and Anna! Splurge like Harry Potter while supplies last! 17 minutes to buy all the things, my man.”

Bob gulped. If this girl was indeed a secret prisoner and she had found deep corruption in the Tartarus system, it would be a huge blow to the Superstate. Would the currency really fall as bad as this girl prophecized?

“I like you Officer Klein. Let's be friends, okay? I’m going to be very honest with you right now. No more jokes.” Alexa’s voice had suddenly dropped an octave. “I have been de-aged and my looks have been altered by my insertion team. My real name is Dr. Agatha Myriamm and I’m an agent from the SCA commission in charge of reviewing Tartarus. What I had found out is very bad news for the people running this place and for the Superstate in general. I don’t want to release my report, but I must do it because I’m an honest person.”

Bob blinked.

“I recommend you call up your bank right now and exchange all of your S-credits. This way you won’t end up destitute. The people will probably still hate you, but at least you won’t be poor. In fact, you can thank me later, when you’ll finally be able to pay off your 2.5 bedroom house mortgage and buy your wife a pink flying van that she always wanted. I also like pink, you know. It’s a girls thing.” Alexa winked at the hero.

“Why would you do this for me?” Bob asked, his hands shaking.

“Because, I like you. You’re the last honest and noble Hero in Tartarus. You’re the one red apple amidst rotten ones. You see, I’ve timed my release just right, so that you would be the guard who delivered me out of here. Once my report goes out, some very naughty people won’t like it one bit. They won't like being poor. You on the other hand, can buy this entire Hogwarts express if you play your cards right.”

“Huh?” Bob blinked.

“Exchange your S-credits into something more stable like gold. Become rich. But… anyway you don't have to listen to me! Don't do anything! Miss the opportunity of a lifetime! Just go on unemployment once they SCA shuts down Tartarus. You know what your wife Georgia Klein will do. She will totally appreciate you regardless, I’m sure! Honestly, you are a free person and can do whatever your noble, heroic heart wants to do… in the next 15 minutes!"

Bob looked at Alexa and started to pace back and forth in the train car nervously. His wife would have a fit if he ended up broke and unemployed. Alexa smiled back at Bob with her most serene smile.

. . .

Resonance saw her coworker hero Pandora out of Alexa's eyes. She screamed for him to stop pacing like an idiot, for him to arrest Alexa, to take her back into Tartarus, to do anything of value! She swore and spat, but could do nothing at all except for raging endlessly.

[No swearing in my brain, pls. This is polite kitten society.] Alexa said petting 12 kittens all at once that were sitting on her lap in her imagination-space.

[You fuck! You horrible, awful fuck!] Resonance yelled. [You said you're going to put me into another server! Why the fuck am I inside your head?!]

[Yeppers. I am a bad girl. A supervillain. I don't know what you've expected. I warned you not to kill me… how long ago was this? Eighty thousand years ago? Eighteen? Eighty four? My brain is still kinda fuzzy after getting shishkabobed by Three. I gave you plenty of chances in the sim and yet you still chose the path of villainy. Had you simply chosen to be nice, none of this would have happened!]

Resonance screamed.

[But... I know that you are a baddie, Rezzy. I'ma call you Rezzy, k? You're the perfect minion inside and out. You're my key into and out of Tartarus. You've been using your avatars to find out everything about everyone while you've worked in this place just so you could pretend to be their buddy-buddy. You’re quite the sneaky little sneak. I would totally sort you into Slytherin.]

A sorting hat appeared on the head of Resonance. She tried to take the hat off herself, but her hands went right through it. She was utterly powerless here.

[I'm simply using the information you've gathered to socially hack Bob.] Alexa waved her hand at the pacing Tartarus officer. [Had you never seen the need to dig up everything about your coworkers, I wouldn't have had the upper hand.]

"Ten minutes until the report is released and S-credits become nearly worthless for a while, Bob." Alexa's lips spoke.

Bob stopped his frantic pacing and started to tap on his watch, whispering commands into it to transfer all of his savings into gold.

[See, what a good, obedient boy! Wish there were more like him.] Alexa grinned at Resonance. Her mindspace was now shaped like the interior car of the Hogwarts express.

Resonance let out another string of expletives.

[You know what? I’m replacing all the swears with kittens now. You’ve a very dirty mouth, Rezzy.]

[Fu...kittens! Kittens on Kittens and Kittens! Kittens!] Resonance screeched.

[That’s more like it. Polite kitten society! Now what was I saying? Right. You’ve been a very naughty little hero. Trying to poke your finger into every pie, Rezzy. You wanted to be the very best at everything. The SCA doesn’t use artificial intelligence. They’re afraid of AI’s and for good reasons. What they do use are data ghosts, mental copies of trusty heroes!]

The data ghost of Hero Resonance growled. Alexa knew far too much for her own good.

[You were the youngest, most capable, most trusty hero from a good, reliable, respectable, stable family. Good citizens of the Superstate, all the way down to your great-great-great-grandfather that long ago caught and hung Spring-heeled Jack, the Terror of London.] Alexa nodded. [Your family had the very best officers, agents, infiltrators, prognosticators. So many accolades! But you... You wanted to be better than all of them, didn’t you? You wanted to outdo everyone. You donated your digital ghost to supervise, run every available system on Titanomachy, no matter how boring, mundane or repetitive the job was.]

Resonance stopped swearing and just stared at Alexa.

[My fractal engine weapon couldn't access any of the station’s systems on its own, you see. It wouldn't be able to get anywhere without you. I needed you the most! My self-propagating code piggybacked on your avatars, used your passwords to get into every available system, until I had full control of the global emergency doomsday alarm system. In mere minutes, every one of your avatars inside the Titanomachy systems will activate the emergency broadcast and transmit a very special tv show out to the world featuring you and me. Tun tun tun.]

Resonance understood Alexa’s plan, then. She wanted to sink, to die, to disappear.

[You are the true supervillain here, not me. You wanted to manipulate the Superstate. You wanted to be number one when Admiral Kolchi retired. You wanted, dreamed of becoming an Admiral, wished to rise to the very top since you were fourteen. Your avatars have allowed you to learn faster than everyone, to be the very best and also to exploit the laziness of other heroes, to shove yourself into every hole, do every job that no other sane person wanted to do.]

Alexa petted her bundle of kittens and smiled at the horrified face of Resonance.

[Your avatars inside of various drones clean the toilets of the superstate, empty out the pipes, repair essential systems, exist to serve only one goal - to push you ahead of everyone. Titanomachy Admiral Kolchi was getting fed up with maintenance drone ineptitude. You had offered your services, showing incredible competence. You were in the right place at the right time, the very best for those horrid jobs that nobody else had wanted to do or did a shitty, half assed job at. Had you not been so focused, so greedy, none of this would have happened. It’ll take forever to purge you and my code out of the essential labour division! We are the proletariat of Titanomachy, now!]

Resonance was dismayed. All of her hard work had gone down the drain because she was caught and not by anyone in the SCA. A 14 year old supervillain had somehow outplayed, used her!

Alexa clapped. [A job well done, team Resonance! It’s quite impressive, really. In mere three months you’ve spread your ghosts all over Titanomachy.]

[You… how? How have you gotten my passwords?!] Resonance whimpered.

[Brain spiders. An invasive, parasitic alien species from world 2424. Your lovely brother put this one inside of my head. I call her Tickles. She is wrapped around my entire brain now. You’re currently running on her - she’s kind of like an organic supercomputer. I ate lots of sushi to make her big and strong, you see. I believe that these things are some sort of a weaponised organic life, as they’re busy terraforming world 2424. Regardless of what they are, they’re pretty handy for extracting and manipulating information. Tickles knows everything that you know, Rezzy. She knows what you did this summer!]

[Tartarus… oh no.] Resonance whimpered.

[Oh yes. You told tech Agatha that tartarus is an underground prison where they freeze supers, while transmitting their mental pattern up into Titanomachy supercomputers, to run the reeducational simulation. Titanomachy is perfectly safe against superpowers and supers, but it wasn’t safe from me. I was different. I didn’t fit the mold. I was information hidden within information. For me they didn’t transmit just one pattern - it was two. Me and my little brainspider. There was just enough of me in Tickles at that exact moment in time for her to seem like me.]

[What?! So all this time… I’ve been…] Resonance turned white.

[Torturing an alien spider from 2424! An empty shell of a person! An alien mind masquarading as a human! Such a good girl, Tickles - playing clueless Cassie was a breeze for her. Such a bad girl, Resonance. Torturing a parasite from 2424 for answers she never had! Tickles never told you my plans because she never knew them.]

Alexa lifted a black kitten from her lap and nuzzled it.

[You’ve tormented an alien life-form for answers for decades, getting annoyed that none of your usual techniques were working, getting more and more impatient, until you started to straight up murder her in anger. Tickles isn’t a human. Your reeducational fun camp techniques might have worked on numerous human supervillains, but not on an alien brain parasite. You’ve never encountered anything like Tickles. That’s why you couldn't break her.]

[Kittens Crist!] Resonance swore. [Kittens!]

[Uhuh. Tartarus was built by human supers for human supers. It never expected to encounter something like Tickles either. She was sort of… like a tank, data armor wrapped around the real me. I rode into Tartarus inside her, knowing full well that you could never break or reeducate me. She endured all of the abuse, death and pain that you could dispense, while I slowly observed from the subconscious, slowly figured out how the sim worked and cautiously chipped away at everything until I had full control of my simulated space.]

[Kittens! Kittens!] Resonance tore at her hair, aghast at Alexa’s revelations.

[Division Three seems to give zero kittens about the rules too. Once their agent had made the breach into the server where I was stored in an attempt to erase me, it was just the matter of spreading all over Titanomachy. The station computers run millions of times faster than the Supers who live in it. My code… runs me. I was cautious, slow, but in real life only minutes had passed as I spread all over the place, settling down wherever I could find you. I know you better than you know yourself. I’m socially hacking your ghosts right now in every system that you control, forcing, tricking, bamboozling you into obedience and cooperation.]

[Kitteny kittens.] Resonance muttered, hands covering her face.

[Kittens indeed.] Alexa said. [Now observe as I destroy the dignity of every super in the world.]

“Okay! I did it!” Bob turned back to Alexa. “I exchanged it all into gold. You better be right, Agatha.”

“Oh, I’m always right, my dear Bob. Except when sometimes I’m not.” Alexa nodded sagely.

The doomsday siren resounded throughout the underground train and then Alexa’s educational broadcast had begun.