Villains wear Masks *sequel to Heroes Wear Capes

Chapter 17 - What you don't know won't hurt

"I find your lack of faith disturbing."

~ Anakin Skywalker (Darth Vader)

The plane ride was short for April, just like it had been when she originally came home. Argent mostly held her tongue the entire ride, less stoic than usual. For some reason Argent had already been in Kingdom City and something had happened that wasn't good. April didn't ask, she was too lost in her own thoughts.

By the time their car from the airport pulled in to the parking lot where the ferry to the prison was, April could no longer hold her breath.

"What happened at the prison exactly?"

Argent let out a huge sigh. "I only got the memo right before I was rushed to see something at the hospital, but from what I could figure out, a riot was started by Dylan Danvers, a villain who went by Inferno in DC a while back. He was younger than you when we caught him. We think he thought he was going to overpower the guards, tried to convince almost a quarter of the prisoners to get past the grounds so they could use their powers and escape. Most of the guards were injured and some other prisoners who weren't involved got caught in the crossfire, including X."

"I thought he was kept in solitary?"

"Yeah, but legally we can't keep him in there 24 hours a day. He gets a free hour a day to go in the rec yard, still kept very separate from the other villains but outside in the fresh air. The attack happened to go down during his free hour and he got shot by a prisoner with a guard's gun. Right now he's recovering in the hospital wing with some other prisoners. The injured guards were shipped to our local facility for treatment."

April stepped on to the ferry, facing the agent with a confused frown. "Why weren't the prisoners also taken there?"

Argent furrowed her eyebrows, "Did you think we would chance them having even a second away from the grounds of Alcatraz? The only thing keeping them dormant is the Merlonium in the grounds of the island."

"But wouldn't they heal better away from the Merlonium?" April was now not only thinking of X, who was no super so the mineral could not harm him, but the other villains in there who got injured. The Merlonium surrounding them was not going to help them recover any quicker. In fact, those villains would probably endure more suffering because of the combined effects.

"April, don't you understand? We can't afford for them to even have the chance to escape. These villains would wreak havoc the moment they got the chance, injured or not. It is safer for the entire world if they suffered a bit longer than if they had an opportunity to get out." Argent sat down as the ferry moved, seemingly happy with her explanation. "Besides, Alcatraz has an almost spotless record. We don't want to risk that over a prison riot."

Of course it all seemed to make sense. But, those villains were still humans too. Some of them had done nothing more than try and rob a bank to feed themselves or their families with their newfound powers. Not every super villain in there was vying for world domination. Not every villain in there deserved to suffer.

The only two people who had ever managed to break out of Alcatraz had help from the same man. Nemesis, the superhero Sonic's father, broke Smith and The Manipulator out to cause chaos on Empire City only an hour or two away. No one knew how he had done it, but prisoners had died each time as a distraction.

Each person he broke out faced their fate shortly afterwards. Smith was thought to have been thrown into the sun by his arch nemesis the day after he broke out and The Manipulator was thrown right back in after Nemesis was caught.