Awakening

(Benny)

I woke up in a cell, and judging by the sky visible from the barred window, it was night time. I sat up and touched my sore face groaning at the stinging pain that surged as a reaction to my fingers. I felt exhausted, like my energy was getting sapped rapidly the longer I stayed in this cell.

I pushed myself up with wobbly legs and stumbled around the cell. I grab a hold of the bars lining the front of the cell and peered out to look at my surroundings.

I could see a lot more people from the protests and riots had gotten arrested and stationed here. Some were cooperating, there was a lady with teal dyed hair who sat peacefully on a bench awaiting a charge i'm guessing. Then there were people like the guy currently on the ground struggling to get a cop off of him. I wondered why neither used their powers, but that's when I noticed the hand cuffs wrapped tightly around their wrists. It was made out of some kind of sliver metal alloy with a red light coming from the center of its circular shape.

It looked like that was neutralizing their powers, it must be what's sapping my energy right now. Further proving my theory right, I looked up and saw the very same red glow that illuminates from the cuffs hanging directly from the ceiling, basically lighting up my cell with its dreadful lumen.

I scanned the jail cell and was surprised when I saw a sleeping Chase against the back wall of the room. I stumbled over to him and attempted to shake him awake, he grumbled and pushed my hands away gently mumbling about him not wanting to wake up right now.

"Chase wake up, we're in a fucking jail cell" I said shaking him more violently. At that he jolted up holding his head and hurriedly looked around the cell that currently held us. "Fuck, how long have we been in here?" he said groaning.

Instinctively, I reached for my phone but once realizing it wasn't in my pocket I swore and turned to Chase who was rubbing his forehead.

"Hey do you have your phone still? I could of swore I took mine with me today" I said, "don't they search your pockets and confiscate anything they find? They probably have it in a bucket somewhere" he mumbled.

"Hey do you feel like something draining away at you too? I feel more lightheaded then I did waking up just a few seconds ago" he complained swaying back and forth.

I sighed, "Yeah it's those barbaric LED lights you see on their cuffs and in the ceiling, I guess it negates our powers or something like that" I explained to him.At the rate they were going with this cell tho, we weren't going to make it another hour.

We sat barely able to make conversation, but when we did Chase and I talked about what we'd do when we got out of the police station. About an hour later a officer approached our cell and told us we were free to go. They didn't tell us who got us out so we just chalked it up to cells being filled up rapidly so they just let us free anyway.

When Chase and I were a few blocks away we got stopped by a guy in a mask with a fist on his shirt. "Come with me" he said. "I need to take you guys somewhere we can talk in private".

We followed the man hastily around the corner figuring he couldn't be all bad if he was a member of BLM. The corner that seemed to lead into a dark alley suddenly morphed into a pathway leading to a big slightly abandoned looking Factory.

The outside had broken windows you could see through, this place looked like it hadn't been cleaned in literal years. I expressed my worry thoroughly to Chase who did the same, yet we still followed this man stupidly inside thinking it couldn't do too much harm.

Once inside the factory we could see that it actually looked tons more better inside. It was clean, way less dusty than the outside and it had pieces of furniture.

"Hey man, can you please tell us what we're doing here now? Were you the ones who bailed us out of jail?" Chase questioned the man.

"All of your questions will be answered right now, just follow me through this door to meet the others and we'll get started right away" the man turned around to tell us before opening a huge door we stoped in front of and leading us inside.

The room was smaller and slightly more compact than the outside as to be expected. There was a round arch table in the middle of the room with powerful looking people sitting on chairs waiting patiently for us I assumed.

There were posters of the BLM fist hanging up on the wall and maps/coordinates marking all over the area. The man lead us to three empty seats which all three of us sat in accordingly. The table was silent for a moment until on of the members, a young lady of color with beautiful dark black skin and a remarkable coat of make up on her face decided to talk.

"Hello, I'm so glad you could join us. My name is Rhonda. Everyone here has seen what you two have done at the most recent riot and we're very impressed" everyone nodded or hummed in agreement.

"Thank you, but who exactly are you guys? I can see that you guys hopefully support BLM but are you guys like a group or a council?" I asked. Rhonda nodded her head, "we're a mini group like tons other across the city and even more so across the world. We send out people to protests to monitor them and help out if anything goes wrong, and we want you two to be one of those people" Rhonda smiled.