"I thought we'd stopped that! You—Alexandria, even Eidolon, you all knew—"

"We knew how you felt about it, and—and it was necessary, it is necessary, to save the world—"

"But it kinda doesn't inspire confidence they weren't hiding other horrible stuff. Also Boots would be real mad about the erasing their memories and I don't see how that bit is necessary."

"So they won't tell people about Cauldron—every rumour is controlled, there has to be just enough that some people will look into it but if a parahuman who became a fifty-three gets mad at us and talks then we lose that control."

"And you can only do total amnesia or nothing?"

"Yeah."

"How confident are you in that?"

"Very, I know the parahuman who does it, their power is very—absolute."

"And the conditions under which unreleaseable 53s are kept?"

"I don't—actually know what those are." He sounds like he feels very guilty about this. "Doctor Mother says they're kept in the best we've got to ensure they're not released but will be useful against Scion. I'd expect they're in another world—aren't they...?"

"We're just going off the documentation, which could be misleading or incomplete. It's not pleasant reading material, though."

"Not pleasant how."

"Epic, the file header on our summary was 10113-Cauldron-misc -"

He makes a hard copy for everyone.

If you read between the lines: Cells. More-or-less spacious, and actually don't have a fourth wall, but there's a parahuman made of wind keeping an eye on them (the Custodian), and the Number Man keeps them contained if they ever try to escape.

"...oh."

"Yikes."

"Elves are possibly not very equipped to evaluate if that's necessary or the best you could do. But, uh, this is not an organization of which conspiracies to cover up atrocities for some greater good are unthinkable. If they thought the monstrosities could maybe be turned, or if Eidolon can control them..."

"Yeah, I mean, I get that, it's just—the numbers—Behemoth is always brought up as one of the things that'll end the world, I don't—"

"We should perhaps ask them but we have limited options if they take it badly."

"Alexandria'd know, if anyone would—Doctor Mother's kind of the mastermind but all plans are hers..."

"That's what I thought, too, but apparently I'm the only one in the dark about certain things, here."

"I can get Alexandria. Do you think she's likely to attack people if she's in on it?"

"No. If she's in on it she'll have very good explanations and arguments, mostly, but she wouldn't get into a fight she knows she'd lose."

Scale model of where Alexandria's at.

Also doing relief.