Killed.  There was an outside possibility she could die, if she took the wrong one, or if she got especially unlucky.

Absolutely.

I wonder how often that happens with natural powers. Bonesaw talked about the power adjusting to protect its wielder, but does that always work?

“How do you test this?  You’re talking about a lot of tests, sixty for just one sample, but there’s no way people wouldn’t notice or that word wouldn’t get out if you were doing something like that.”

Good point.

“As you’ve seen, Cauldron has resources.”

“That doesn’t really answer my question.”

Evasions!

“It does.  Just not as clearly as you want it to.”

Heh, fair enough.

Something in the Doctor’s tone suggested the woman wasn’t going to elaborate further.  Jamie shut her mouth, frowning slightly.

Yeah, countermeasures or not, they can’t take too many risks.

“I don’t want a power like that.”

“No.  For one thing, the ‘R’ value of sample J-zero-zero-ninety is very low.  Note the letters on the grid.  The most important ones are the ‘O’, ‘P’ and ‘R’.  These, on their own, determine roughly ninety-percent of a sample’s cost.  O refers to a power’s uniqueness.

Interesting.

I suppose the O value would be low for things like flight, strength and invulnerability, the Standard Alexandria Package?

It’s largely subjective, and liable to change through factors entirely out of Cauldron’s control, but it is easier to stand out as a hero or villain if nobody else can do what you do.”

Yeah, that’s true.

“You’ve already mentioned the other two letters in passing.”

“The ‘P’ value is the raw effect of the granted abilities.  An estimation of the rating the PRT would assign to the powers.  Higher ‘P’, more effective and versatile abilities.”

Shatterbird’s P value must be sky high.

Jamie nodded.  “And ‘R’?”

“Unfortunately, as I’ve mentioned, there are no guarantees.  A given sample does not provide the same effects every time it is tested.

So we’ve got O for… Originality, P for Power and R for Reliability?

There are admittedly some dangers involved in the use of our product.  Sometimes there are physical changes that cannot be masked.  You have seen the heroes or villains with glowing eyes or less human features.”

Ahh, I guess experiments on powers with a very low R value might be the cause of the Case 53s?

That was sobering.

“The ‘R’ value refers to how predictable a given sample is.  There are some that produce very simple, reliable results.  In sixty-three tests of sample T-six-zero-zero-one, it has only failed to grant a form of flight on two occasions.  Contrast that with sample B-zero-zero-thirty.  It has, in four tests, granted an individual the ability to make things implode, it has created a powerful vacuum in someone’s mouth, that draws everything into a portal where it is promptly annihilated.

Hah, that’s a fun one.

Sample B-zero-zero-thirty killed the other two test subjects.”

Ouch. That’s less fun.

“No sample provides the exact same powers every time.  The bullet points note examples of the powers gained when the sample was tried on a human subject or a client.

That makes sense. The powers of this setting are so individualized that it was more surprising that they’d be able to create similar powers in the first place.

There’s typically a common thread or theme connecting powers from a given sample.  One sample might have a tendency to work with the production of acids and a tendency for physical manifestation.  This might allow an individual to turn into a living pool of acid, to secrete acid from his pores or to spit streams of corrosive venom.”

This reminds me a lot of two things that both tie back to the same chapter: 9.3. We’ve had discussion about similar types of trigger events resulting in similar powers on a broader scale, and we’ve got cape families where themes rather than exact powers are hereditary. New Wave has various configurations of light and shields, Panacea has control over biology after Marquis’ control over bones, the Vasils have various forms of control over people…

It seems like on some level there’s a separation between theme and specifics, where the specifics are more individual.

The Doctor frowned at the image on the computer screen.

What’s up? Problems with the time stream? Clockroaches? Weeping angels invading the lab?

“What?”

The Doctor turned the monitor around.  It showed graphs and charts that made little sense to Jamie.  Clearing her throat, the Doctor leaned forward over the desk and extended one manicured nail to point at a series of labels on a three-dimensional graph.  “This is the ‘P’ value as related to the cost of the power, with the expected range of powers.  The amount of money you have, even assuming an additional thirty-three percent in payment made at a future date, is probably not going to provide you with the power you’d need to take on a striker-seven.”

Ahh. Then again, clever application can make a weak power work against a strong one.

Jamie’s face fell.  Shaking her head in confusion, she asked, “‘P’?  And what do you mean by probably?”

The Doctor opened a drawer and retrieved a binder.  She slid it across the desk.

I take it this is the catalog?

Every page was laminated, labeled with a serial number.  Each page had a picture of a vial with a different colored metallic liquid inside, sitting beside a list of powers.  The bottom half of the page or a second page, depending on the number of powers listed, had a grid with a number assigned to an arrangement of letters.

Yup. Let’s have a look at these costs and what Cauldron can do.

“Meaning you employ those countermeasures you talked about.”

Probably, yeah. The one about removing the power seems especially appropriate in the case of a default.

“Revoking your powers in the worst case scenario, yes.”

“Is that revoking of powers a part of the process of however you give people the powers, or is it something that one of your in-house capes does?”

Thank you, “Jamie”, for asking all the good questions and being an excellent audience surrogate. I appreciate it. 🙂

The Doctor was typing on the computer.  Without taking her eyes from the screen, she said, “The latter.  You don’t need to worry about someone using a loophole or flaw in the process to take away your abilities.”

I didn’t even consider that. But yeah, good to know.

So they’ve got someone who’s kind of like Hatchet Face, but whose power-blocking effect is permanent. It sounds like it works on any cape, too.

It’s probably a striker power, just to keep it from being too overpowered.

“We can expedite this.  Cauldron is prepared to buy the property from you for seven hundred and thirty thousand dollars, renting it out to you in the meantime if you require it.

Seems like a good plan. And then they can sell it on for a profit when “Jamie” doesn’t need to rent it anymore.

We will sell it at our leisure rather than wait for you to find a buyer.”

Yeah.

“I don’t need you to rent it to me.  No, that works,” Jamie said.  She was secretly relieved to have one of the biggest hurdles handled so easily.

It seems like Cauldron knows what they’re doing when it comes to making this go smoothly.

“Good.”

“And I have another five thousand that my relatives set aside for my school.  It’d be harder to use that without people getting curious, but it’s there.”

You should probably leave that for the school unless you absolutely need a power that costs five thousand more than you can afford.

“We’ll see.  In terms of cost, Cauldron requires that the client pay two-thirds of the total amount in advance, and pay the rest over a six year period or default.”

Seems reasonable.

“And so you’ve spent the last year trying to find a way to purchase powers, with the intent of righting that wrong?”

And protecting her father, I suppose? If it’s not too late for that.

No, wait, her dad’s definitely alive, unless he got killed while she was on this trip. He was the one who was supposed to use the GPS tracker if she didn’t return.

“I want to stop him.  And not just him.  I want to help things make sense again, even if it means playing unfair because they’re playing unfair.

I think “Jamie” might get along with Taylor.

Crime should have consequences.”

But yeah, sounds like a recipe for an antihero.

The Doctor typed something onto the keyboard, paused, and then typed something else. “Madcap.  Well, the good news is that he isn’t one of ours, so there’s no conflict of interest. The bad news is that the PRT rated him as a striker seven.”

Pretty high rating… So what does his strike do? Incite madness?

Jamie’s face settled into a grim expression.  “I know.  My dad has resources.  I took the time to look up Madcap’s records.”

“Having looked into your finances-”

“I’ve got a place in the city that was left to me.  My dad doesn’t know about it, so it’d be easy to sell it and not have anyone close to me get curious where they money went.

Huh, that’s convenient.

Current housing market says I could sell it for three-quarters of a million dollars.  I just have to sell it.”

Not bad!

“Too true.”

“Finally, after about a year of court appearances and one minor appeal they managed to squeeze in there, it was decided.  The pair was supposed to go to the Birdcage.  Except someone broke them out.”

We do know Ramrod did eventually end up there, at least, after Lung, Bakuda and Paige.

Unless of course there’s some bullshit going on with the Ramrod in the Birdcage being fake or something.

“I think I’m beginning to understand.”

Jamie gnawed on her lip for a second.  Just thinking about it pissed her off.  “His name is Madcap, and he’s a mercenary that specializes in breaking people out of jail.

Hm. I guess either they predicted they would get caught, there’s a fourth person who would want Ramrod and Fleece out, or Madcap was a personal friend of the pair or otherwise had personal interest in getting them out.

Sometimes even when they’re in the convoy on the way to the Birdcage.  And it’s just… wrong.  It’s not the way things should work.  Months or years of investigation, good police and good heroes risking their lives to finally catch someone and arrest them, a year of trial, and all it takes is one fucking asshole with powers to free them?”

Yeeah.

“Countermeasures?”

“Our response will reflect the gravity of the offense.  We have clients who have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the products and services we offer.  It is our obligation to protect them.”

Ah, fair enough, it’s not always murder.

“What kind of countermeasures?  Would you kill me?”

“We try to avoid murder in the course of doing business, not just because of the moral issues, but because it draws attention.

Makes sense. Kill someone and you’ve got an investigation going.

For leaks, our usual procedure is to discredit the individual in question and deploy our in-house division of parahumans to drive them into hiding, remove their powers or both.”

Removing their powers is a thing they can do? I suppose it doesn’t make any less sense than giving them powers in the first place, but that’s an interesting tidbit.

Try to avoid murder.  The phrasing implied the Doctor or Cauldron had gone that far before. She didn’t like that, and she especially didn’t like the fact that the Doctor was phrasing things so she’d miss that detail if she wasn’t listening carefully.

Of course, the Doctor is doing customer service. She’s not going to lie about the terms or their neutral morality, but she’ll try to make Cauldron sound good.