"If I walked into your house with unknown powers what would I be wearing?"

"Now that would be a trick," says Cam. "But I don't think I'd escalate to open hostility right away, that just seems like it can't help if they're stronger than you and isn't necessary if they aren't, in a straightforward sort of interaction. I rode up on a motorcycle and announced my business, this isn't exactly high intrigue."

Sigh. "I can call and ask."

"'Preciate it!"

He spends a surprisingly long time on his walkie-talkie. Nothing he says is intelligible.

Elsewhere he wakes up to a phone call. 

"What?"

         "Can you drive out here?"

"So here's the deal," he says when he finally gets off the phone. "I promise that no one's trying to drown you in bureaucracy, it's just with all the mind-control that's going around it's useful to have procedures less flexible than they'd otherwise be. If we want, we can show you back to the border and wave you off, not a hostile, no intrusion intended, and you can go deal with anything that's so important that keeping you here for a couple days would inevitably end in violence, and come back if that ever changes."

His associate looks surprised.

"Option two, you're a demon we found, we bring you in, you fix your vampire, this goes just like it'd go if you hadn't threatened us, in the morning you're talking to whoever's the diplomat on staff about your species and what we should know about you and then we can have the cancer folks here if you want.

Option three is I guess you have your shot at busting out and they take notes so they know more about what they're dealing with and my parents have a big fight at my funeral about whose fault it is that they ever let me join the army. I guess I'm biased but it doesn't really seem like it has a lot going for it."

"To be perfectly clear, I wasn't trying to imply I'd harm a hair on anybody's head in the process of leaving. I guess the building might suffer and I don't know how much collateral damage your wards do, but I was envisioning a zero-casualty departure."

"The building is, uh, full of dangerous demons."

"...I wasn't planning to stage a massive jailbreak unless you've got some really dumb architectural decisions going on in there. If you had decided to put me in the middle of a lot of concentric circles of cells with more above and below I suppose I might have had a call to make about that?"

"Dude, I don't know what your powers are, that's kind of half the problem. This isn't a good place to mess around, generally speaking. If you want to head out you can head right out."

"I mean, I'm tempted to try working with you, delivery NIH is a heck of a selling point. But I notice I'm still wearing handcuffs. Can I still come in if I take 'em off?"

Sigh. "Yeah, okay."

His body language quite clearly conveys that he expects this to get him killed but he uncuffs Cam.

"Thanks!"

And Cam accompanies them into the building.

It's mostly underground. Spacious, well-lit, bizarrely tasteful for a underground secret government prison. Talon is shackled to the wall in a cell behind steel bars. Glaring at him. She's in the only cell he can see, so it's anyone's bet how characteristic it is, but it has a rug, a couch that folds into a bed, and a television. She is apparently watching Star Trek.

"Hey there. Sorry about this whole thing, I can reprogram your things now. Thanks for writing me about it instead of testing the system, by the way." He pulls his computer off his belt loop and lights it up and makes the necessary adjustments. "I'm just going to turn it off for the time being since you seem pretty sewn up in here and I don't know if these fellows would appreciate me adding electronics to your cell to designate it a safe eating location. Hungry now?"

She rolls her eyes. "They're feeding us pig's blood. Like we're animals."

"And here you told me that it wasn't nutritious! I feel lied to, Talon!" he says, appearing a Capri Sun style bag of B-positive in her lap nice and warm. "Enjoy."

She blows him a kiss and then drinks it. 

In range.

         Great. What the fuck is he?

I guess I'll know when he thinks about it. 

"Can we get you anything?" the soldier asks Cam.

"You got Internet in here?" They don't have Wikipedia yet, poor souls.

"No."

"That's awful. A place to sit and read will do, then, while you rummage through your interrogators to find one who'll talk to me. I can also provide palatable ethically sourced shelf stable human-flavored blood for your various captives, if you want to accommodate their gourmet sensibilities?" They could just be messing with everybody about the taste differing substantially but maybe they're not.

" - I'll pass that on but I think it's complicated, there's some evidence they're significantly more aggressive on human blood? Opinions vary on whether it's 'human blood is addictive' or 'they're healthier on their natural diet' but - yeah, I don't know. I'll pass it along. What's your supplier?"