DEKKA: No. More creepy and disturbing than painful.
MADDOW: Can you give us a sense of how that feels? It must be just . . . well, let me just ask: What is it like? How does it feel?
DEKKA: (Shrugs.) You should probably ask Cruz or Shade or . . . (pushes Cruz forward)
CRUZ: Hi.
MADDOW: Cruz, you have become the face of the Rockborn Gang. In fact, we’re going to put up the iconic photo of you carrying a baby away from the flames that engulfed hundreds of people in that just unspeakably awful moment in Las Vegas. I wonder if you see your new status as, well, like I said, the face of the Rockborn Gang, I wonder if you see this perhaps as an ironic twist, given that you are transgender and your ability, your superpower, is to alter your appearance at will.
CRUZ: I guess. I mean, yeah, it’s like, I don’t know. Like the rock has a weird sense of humor. Or else the media does. But I’m not the hero here. It wasn’t me that stopped Dillon Po
MADDOW: The so-called Charmer. Dillon Poe, who had the power to compel absolute obedience with just the sound of his voice.
CRUZ: Yeah, him. It wasn’t me that stopped him. It was Malik and Francs. I just happened to be in that picture.
MADDOW: The story is that you were recruited, in a way, by Shade Darby, who was your friend from school. Is that correct?
CRUZ: More or less. You should talk to Shade. Shade and Dekka are sort of the . . . I don’t know. I mean, I’m just this chameleon person. Or talk to Malik, he’s the one who . . .
MADDOW: Did you want to say something more about Malik?
CRUZ: Malik, come here, your turn.
MALIK: Good evening, Ms. Maddow.
MADDOW: Welcome to the show, and thanks for coming on. Your story is perhaps the most tragic. You were very badly burned in the battle that took place at the Port of Los Angeles.
MALIK: Yes.
MADDOW: Doctors did not expect you to survive. Is it true, as some reports have it, that the Malik you are now, the person we are seeing, is actually a morph?
MALIK: Yes, that’s true. I am in morph now. If I de-morph, I revert back to the condition I was in the hospital. Which, as you said, is . . . intolerable.
MADDOW: And the power you have is the ability to essentially project that pain onto others. That’s how you prepared the ground for the raid on the so-called Ranch, the Homeland Security facility people are comparing to Dr. Mengele’s Auschwitz.
MALIK: Yes. That is my power. The ability to project excruciating pain. It’s not . . . It’s not something I wanted.
MADDOW: Survivors from the Ranch, survivors—and there were very few—say the pain you projected was so awful that in some cases they attempted suicide rather than endure it.
MALIK: (Nods)
MADDOW: And Dillon Poe did in fact kill himself rather than endure it.
MALIK: Yes.
MADDOW: Does it concern you at all that this power is in the hands of . . . well, in your hands and in the hands of the others in the group? And then I wonder if you would talk about how you see all of this playing out.
MALIK: Does it concern me? (Laughs) Of course it concerns me. We have six people here who have extreme power. No one elected us. No one said, ‘Let’s give all this power to these kids.’ The problem is that the rock gives power to the good and the bad alike, people like Justin DeVeere—
MADDOW: Knightmare.
MALIK: Yeah, him. And Tom Peaks—
MADDOW: Napalm or Dragon, as people are calling him.
MALIK: And Dillon Poe, yeah. The only thing the people in charge could do to stop Poe was send a tank brigade into the city, and, I’m sorry, but that wasn’t going to stop him, either. Look, I don’t want to be doing this; none of us wants to be doing this. But Dillon Poe had to die; there’s no question about that. He had to die. He was a mass murderer. He killed—
MADDOW: The official death toll is currently 3,102 people. And may rise as more bodies are found.
MALIK: Yeah, he had to be stopped, and the only way to do it was by killing him. But that doesn’t mean I wanted to be the one who . . . None of us likes doing this, Ms. Maddow. You know?
MADDOW: Shade Darby? Is that true for all of you? I ask because—and please correct me if any of this is wrong—but you actually chose this path. You actually obtained a piece of the rock and became a mutant deliberately.
SHADE: Yes. And I have to live with that. Not just what I did to myself, that’s on me, but I dragged Cruz into it, and Malik. You could say I chose this for myself, although . . . Did I know this was how it would turn out? No, of course not.
MADDOW: I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I sense, and again, correct me, but I sense that you feel some guilt.
SHADE: Some guilt? (Laughs) I saw my father thrown to the ground and arrested for something I did. I convinced Cruz to help me, and now she’s in the middle of all this, living this life. And Malik . . . Do I feel guilty that someone I care about is haunted night and day by voices in his head? That he’s defined by pain? People are calling him M-Pain and Screamer and, you know, Malik is the smartest, kindest . . . Yeah. Yes, Rachel, I feel guilt.
MADDOW: Is Aristotle Adamo there with you?
ARMO: Call me Armo.
MADDOW: I want to run a piece of tape we have obtained. I’ll warn the audience that it is shaky and poor quality and . . . well, I was going to say it may disturb some viewers, but given what everyone has seen in recent days and weeks . . . Let’s roll the tape. That is you, in morph, attacking an Apache helicopter, a military helicopter, as it hovers over the ground.
ARMO: Huh. Cool, I actually haven’t seen that before.
MADDOW: You were a prisoner at the Ranch where—
ARMO: Can you run that tape again? That was way cool.
MADDOW: Actually, if you could answer my question and—
ARMO: Nah, first run the tape.
MADDOW: (Pause.) All right, ummmmm, control room?
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