The transport vehicle was military-grade and designed to contain psychic entities with multiple dampening fields. It wasn't enough. Bette Noir had been patient long enough.
Throughout the four-hour drive she noticed a fraction of a second where the dampeners cycled, leaving a window where she could use her abilities. She made her move.
Bette Noir exploded from her containment unit. She touched the driver's mind, consuming the surface thoughts. His terror. His awareness. His sense of self.
He collapsed, unconscious but not dead. Dead minds gave her nothing. The vehicle had swerved and crashed through a barrier before rolling. Bette Noir was already gone.
She tried to form a body. It made existing feel less exhausting to her. She pulled matter toward her consciousness, organising and shaping it.
A woman appeared in an alley before her features seemed to melt away. Her hair became tentacles, her eyes multiplied, and her skin became translucent. She tried again, concentrating.
The woman reformed. Then her arm elongated, her fingers merged and her face split down the middle, trying to divide into two before snapping into one.
Bette Noir screamed, windows cracking in her surrounding area. She couldn't hold form. She was a mind without a reliable body. It hurt. The pain caused from being psychic and trying to exist as a physical entity.
She needed to feed, the psychic energy allowing her to temporarily stabilise her form. She reached out, sensing the swarm of minds nearby. She moved towards the nearest cluster.
She approached carefully, forming a human appearance. It held, but her left hand kept trying to become claws, so she hid them in a jacket pocket before she entered the bar.
She sat in a corner booth and watched as people around her drank and talked. She didn't take much, only surface thoughts and stray emotions.
Taking more would get noticed. She needed to stay hidden and to be careful. The feeding helped her, the woman's form stabilising and the constant pain becoming a manageable background noise.
She ordered a water and stayed there for another hour, slowly feeding and rebuilding.
She needed to get better at hiding and needed a sustainable food source while also avoiding Cadmus. Her form flickered.
She pulled out her hand and stared at it. She currently had three fingers. She tried to grow a fourth, but it kept morphing back to three. Someone would notice soon. She needed to leave.
Bette Noir stood and started to move towards the exit, keeping her shifting hand hidden. She almost made it when a collision made her form destabilise.
Her face split and started to divide. She looked up at whoever she'd hit, expecting a scream of horror and panic.
"Sorry, I wasn't watching where I was going."
The man was tired in the eyes and didn't seem to even react to her.
"Are you okay?"
Bette Noir stepped back, her form trying but failing to stabilise itself.
"I'm fine. I'm fine," she repeated, her voice overlapping with multiple tones.
The man didn't leave or run. Instead, he stood there looking at her with his tired eyes.
"You're not fine. You're barely holding form. How long have you been feeding?" he asked quietly.
"You can see..." she froze.
"That you're not human? Yeah, kinda hard to miss with the whole splitting face thing going on. Come on, let's sit. You look like you're about to collapse," the man finished, gesturing to a corner booth.
"Why would you..."
"I can see you're clearly struggling, so sit down before you destabilise completely. I've grown used to seeing suffering," the man interrupted.
Bette Noir should have run or should have fed on him. She should have done anything but follow him, but she was exhausted and curious. Something about him made her feel safe, like he had met her before. She sat, her form flickering.
"What are you?" she asked.
"Complicated. What are you?"
"Bette Noir. I'm a psychic entity that feeds on consciousness to maintain my existence... you should be running," she answered.
"I've seen worse. You escaped tonight, didn't you? From Cadmus," the man replied.
"How do you..."
"I keep track of things like that. Part of my work, if you could call it that. I don't exactly get paid with the usual... currency. You don't need to worry. I'm not going to turn you in. But I would like to know, are you dangerous?" The man said, looking at her directly.
"Yes. I consume psychic energy, and if I take too much, they die. I'm constantly in pain, my body won't stabilise, and I'm a horror that shouldn't exist," Bette answered, her voice cracking.
"That's not what I asked. I meant, are you choosing to harm people, or is the harm incidental to survival? It's been a long time since I worked with you. I don't really know what's different in this continuity," the man said again.
"What's the difference? Also, what do you mean..." she started to reply, staring at him.
"Choice and intent. You're feeding just enough so as not to hurt people. That would suggest you can control it and that you're not trying to harm anyone," he interjected, leaning back.
"That's only temporary. Eventually I'll need more and need to feed properly and then..." she started to reply.
"Then you'll still have a choice. To feed carefully or destructively. Everyone has a choice, even the supposed horrors," said the man.
Bette Noir's form flickered, her hand becoming claws before melting. Then it reformed into two hands on one arm. She started to sob, or at least tried to. Her eyes kept multiplying, and that made shedding tears complicated.
"I don't want to hurt people, but I need to survive, and to survive means feeding and feeding means..." she whispered.
"I know and I understand. You're trapped between survival and morality," the man said, his voice gentle.
She looked at the man, trying to read his mind and understand who he was. She found nothing. His mind seemed to be blank.
"I can't read you," she said, terror shooting through her body.
"I know."
"Everyone has thoughts, but you... you're empty. It's like looking into a void," she replied.
"No, my thoughts are just protected. It's complicated, but it's part of the... currency I mentioned earlier," the man replied.
"What are you?" she asked, full of fear.
Mike watched her struggle with her form. She was deteriorating. It was clear passive feeding wasn't enough. He should have just left her alone or at least come to her as Sophist. Instead, he stayed as Mike. He recognised something in her desperation.
"You can call me Sophist. I... push heroes to their limits... I'm not sure anymore if I can be considered a good person, but I understand what it means to be trapped between what you are and what you want to be," he said.
"I know you. The scientists have mentioned you before, casually. You terrorise heroes, no?" she asked.
"That would be me."
"Why are you here then, meeting me?"
"That's also complicated. It's best I answer that later."
Bette Noir's form started to stabilise slightly. The conversation was calming her down, but she still had a small sense of fear while talking to Mike. Not only was he Sophist but she couldn't even read a single one of his thoughts.
"I'm going to collapse soon. This isn't enough. I need..."
"Then feed from me enough to stabilise."
"I can't. Your mind is shielded. There's nothing to..."
"My consciousness still exists. If I allow it, you can still consume the energy, but you just can't read the contents," he said, leaning forwards.
"That could hurt you. It could damage..."
"I'm aware. Try anyway."
Bette Noir hesitated and then reached out, touching the edge of his consciousness. She found... something. It was like feeling heat without seeing the fire. She fed carefully, taking only small amounts.
It worked, the energy stabilising her form. It helped reduce her pain, letting her hold shape. Mike didn't collapse or even flinch. After a minute, she stopped.
"That's enough. Thank you."
"How do you feel?"
"Better. Stable. Less pain. Your energy is... strange and dense. I can't seem to find the words to describe it," she answered, her form holding now.
They sat in silence for a while, Bette Noir's form stable now. Mike's presence seemed to help somehow.