"Wake up." The angelic female voice in his mind commanded. Ryan did as she asked, or at least tried, he tried. The fog from before remained wrapped around his thoughts. Trying to reach them was like trying to push through lead with a pillow.

Or maybe he was a lead pillow. That sort of lined up, didn't it? Heh. Lined up. Lead-lined? Classic.

"Dial it down a pinch, Renee. All I am hearing is babble." The angel ordered, not inside his head this time. Her voice had a layer of static to it.

The fog receded noticeably, though it wasn't quite gone. In its place came some of his memory, his ability to form coherent thoughts, and a dull feeling in both of his wrists. A moment later, he felt it in the lower-wrists too.

Ryan frowned. Lower-wrists? That wasn't right. What we-- ankles. Right. His ankles felt… off. He couldn't put his foot on why, either. Heh. Put his foot on it. Muffled laughter spilled up out into the surrounding darkness at the sheer genius behind that pun. It was probably the single best joke of his entire life.

The angel did not seem to agree. She didn't laugh with him - which was pure insanity to Ryan, who would've been doubled over if his hands and legs weren't restrained. Instead the beautiful voice let out a long sigh.

Another woman began to speak, but the sound abruptly cut off. A moment later, the angel spoke again.

"Alright, Ryan. Listen to me. We are giving you your mind back, but we can take it again if you get uppity. So answer our questions and play nice or Renee will put you under again and we'll give you to Ogg."

As soon as she had begun speaking, the fog had lifted in Ryan’s mind. With the pathways to his brain open once more, his body began reporting the sensations it had been screaming at him this whole time.

First things first, Ryan discovered he was bound at the hands and feet by what he guessed were zip ties and some kind of metal wire to some kind of hard table. Better still, the holes from his earlier gunshot wounds appeared to have been incorporated as part of his bindings. Even slight movement caused the wire threaded literally through him to respond with blinding pain.

Curiously, the pain seemed to fade away almost completely if he didn’t move… even though that wasn’t at all what should be happening.

He knew he’d been shot four times, so… by all rights - even with an adrenaline surge - Ryan should be an unintelligible, wounded heap. And yet, as long as he kept still, the pain was almost non-existent. That wouldn’t keep him from bleeding to death… but it was something.

As a final insult, Ryan was also blindfolded by what felt like thick cloth and smelled like week-old laundry basket. There was no light in whatever room he was in, but he had a growing suspicion that he had someone’s dirty laundry covering most of his face.

Wonderful. Ryan thought sarcastically when the woman he’d previously labelled as an ‘angel’ finished speaking. Tied up like a sacrificial pig, literally woven into the furniture, and they’re still threatening me. Fury and anger built up inside him. Fury at the unreasonable injustice of his situation and anger that demanded blood as compensation.

...

Ryan was about to question himself on that last part when pain shot through each of his wounds anew. He bit his lip to prevent a scream - unwilling to give his captors that benefit - as a new female voice spoke up. Her tone layered with the dark amusement of someone who clearly got off on this kind of sadism.

“And don’t get any funny ideas, cute stuff. If you play along, I keep the pain away. If you don’t…” There was a pause and Ryan could almost see a grin spreading across the speaker’s face. “ A single thought from me puts you right back in hell.”

The pain in his wrists and ankles intensified, as if each limb were held to hot iron. It was all Ryan could do not to pass out. Agony won out and a scream erupted from his chest. Apparently, that’s what the new voice had been waiting for as the pain faded quickly afterwards.

“Aaand two thoughts makes it worse! So don’t make me go to three, okay? People don’t survive three.” The mocking woman had an obviously forced accent - though Ryan couldn’t tell what it was as he’d never been good at identifying them.

It sounded, to him, like a grown woman roleplaying a bad anime villain lording over her freshly caught prize. Only this wasn’t an anime and Ryan didn’t particularly feel like a prize. Though he supposed with the bounty on his head, he kind of was. It wasn’t a particularly comforting thought.

"Now, let us start with the basics." The angel began in a matter-of-fact tone. "How long did it take to get your power? And what can you do with it?"

No fog. No pain. Just silence. Well, 'no pain' wasn't quite right. His limbs were completely numb. He couldn't feel a thing past his shoulders or his thighs. His arms and legs felt like nothing more than chunks of flesh connected to his torso.

As it was, Ryan's body was effectively useless to him. He was also sure that if he didn't answer soon, that wannabe psychopath was going to overwhelm his mind too.

Anger welled up within him - but as trussed up as he was, it wouldn’t help him. He wasn’t a big, green, invulnerable rage machine that could toss around literal gods with their puny hammers.

He was, however, a superpowered engineer. So Ryan put aside his anger for the moment, relaxed what little of his body he could, and closed his eyes.

It was time to let that engineer take over. This whole terrible, torturous situation was just a problem. And he was good at solving problems. He just needed some time to solve them. So, for the moment... Ryan pretended to be mulling over his response.

Ryan accessed his power and pulled up just his status screen this time, reasoning that it had shown him more before - maybe it would help now.

Physical Status: Both wrists and both ankles impaled and bleeding. Nerve damage, foreign material, and fractured bone at each location.Multiple lacerations.

Mental Status: Angered. Affected by the following powers: Mind Fog (5%), Remote Nerve Activation (-100%).

Well, that explained a lot. Two separate powers were being used on him, Mind Fog and Remote Nerve Activation. The effect of the first one was easy enough to figure out. 'Brain no-worky' was a pretty simple concept. Ryan had figured the fog gone, based on what his captor had said, but it made sense that a small application of it would be hard to detect.

The 'nerve activation' power was listed as being negative 100%, which was interesting. Honestly, he wouldn't have guessed that a power could even be applied that way. It raised… interesting possibilities.

It also explained why he couldn't feel anything. Nerves were how your body ran signals all the way up to the grey matter in charge of running everything. If all your nerves were effectively dead… there was nobody around to report the local situation up to the brain. No nerves = no pain.

Or movement. Since those pathways ran both ways, with them down mission control - his brain, in this case - couldn't get the arm and leg astronauts to respond.

… Okay, maybe 5% mind fog wasn’t too hard to notice.

Regardless, Ryan had just confirmed his superpower only required his brain to activate. All those extra parts were just for fun. A few were even designed for it.

Focus, Ryan… Focus. He chided himself as he pulled up his energy total. 158 points. Same as before. Not his full amount… but more than he’d worked with before. And this time he was alone with no friends to back him up. Strapped down and impaled in an enemy dungeon by two psychopaths.

Alright. Ryan thought as he psyched himself up mentally for what he was about to do.

Let's do this.