Summary: An excerpt from the journal of Tommy Shepherd.

When you're a detainee at my old juvenile hall you have no rights. If you have a useful superpower you aren't even a person. You are a weapon. A thing. You just don't know it yet.

Sure it's fun at the beginning while they're testing your powers. You go to go all out, no holds barred in that arena as they take down notes. Therapy, they called it. Allowing the subject to exercise their destructive streak in a controlled environment. I don't know what I did, maybe I blew through the test too fast, maybe I laughed a bit as a small shed evaporated under my touch, but whatever I did signed me up for Therapeutic Conditioning.

You don't want to go to that.

You get moved out of the general population and moved into a cell specifically designed to counteract each and every one of your powers. Not sure if they all have this, but mine had an electrified floor. So pretty much the only "safe" place was on the bed, but even then you're still stuck in this one place with no protection, and any attempt to flee gets you enough electricity to knock you out. Once you're subdued they'll dose you to dampen your powers. Each dose lasts about two hours by my count. So as soon as you're dosed you get to go do their tests. But don't even think about escaping then; there are always guards with tranqs and tazers who are just looking for any excuse to shoot you.

I got tazed when I didn't destroy the model playground with the kid mannequins on it.

The mental conditioning is the worst part, though. It always starts with a dose. They don't want you fighting back after all. When I started this I was completely shocked and disgusted by what they showed me. People dying, getting shot, emaciated, videos and pictures, and they tie you down so you can't look away. I know how a person acts when they've had their arm dipped in hydrochloric acid.

The first session is the worst, only because you don't know what's coming. I was sick, horribly sick when I first saw those images. The next two or three sessions also suck, but after that you start to get used to it. By the fifth four hour session I didn't even really notice when they showed someone getting their arm snapped at the joint and twisted around.

I'm pretty sure it's a defense thing, the numbing. If you don't become desensitized you'll go crazy. Maybe you go crazy anyway, but at least I can still function.

So you let yourself go numb and hide your rebellion. Because if you're anything like me, and if you've ended up in this place you are, then you're going to want to get out of there. I just beg you to be smarter then you were when you got captured. These people do not mess around. Do you know what they do if you're stupid in here? They pull everyone in the program into the auditorium, they tell us what you did, how they caught you, and then they kill you. I learned more during those than during their 'therapies'. After you lose two friends to those you learn to stop taking stop taking risks.

Risks are bad, but the rebellion is the only thing that will keep you any semblance of sanity.

My rebellion was slow, and I almost gave in. But I managed to find a weak point in the wall, right by the lock. I almost had it when I was broken out.

Still, the drugs, the shocks, the videos; these people know how to brainwash. They know how to warp you to the point where even when you go to see your parents after becoming a hero, after having saved people, proven you're better than everything they told you, they kick you out. You broke out of jail after all. Those people were only trying to help, Thomas. Instead of applying yourself to get better you were your normal rebellious self. Your father and I saw the news video of you hurting those aliens, blowing them up. How could you?

Parents. Can't live with them, can't kill 'em.

The hardest part of that juvie is nothing that they've done. You're strong. You can adapt to them. The hardest part is readjusting. You can't tell anyone what you went through, you'd be locked up again. No more drugs, no more tests, no more trying to fix me. I'll just stay in my emotionless shell where nothing and no one can hurt me. And people will learn to just leave me alone and not pry. It's none of their damn business what I had to do in order to survive. I'm alive. I still have a shred of morals, I don't attack kids, and if the team says stand down I don't finish them off even if I know that they're just going to come back and attack later.

This prison is a death sentence. You're never going to be the same kid. I used to be happy. I used to be nice. It was an honest mistake when I vaporized my school. I had no control then, my powers had manifested right as I was freaking out over a test. I can never go back to that. They forced me to kill. They forced me to stand back and do nothing as I lost people close to me or die with them.

I just wanted to learn to control myself. Is that too much to ask? To figure out how to keep your powers under control without getting beaten for not attacking the new kid in TC? For trying to help? I just wanted to be a hero, you know. I really did. As I was standing there, the ash from my school falling around me, realizing that I had destroyed only the building, that everyone was still alive, I thought that I could really do it. Be a hero. Now? Ha, yeah right. Now I just want to be left alone. I've done enough. I wasn't fast enough to save Glen or Tenie, I just sat and watched them get killed for trying to escape. I don't deserve to be a hero. I don't deserve this costume. This team. I can't tell them what I did, or I'm going to chase them off. They'll send me back.

I've killed.

Avengers don't kill.

I can't be an Avenger.

It's as simple as that.

Even if the team can somehow look passed what I did, miracle of all miracles, they'll still treat me like glass. I'd be spending every free minute in therapy or something. No more adults. No more therapy. No more. I don't want that. I just want to be me again. I just want to know what being me is. Who am I now? Other than broken.

If you do something that could get you sent there, run. It doesn't matter where, just go. Anywhere is better than there.

Anything is better than death.