Chris’s brash chortle of a laugh formed the backdrop of the tense, otherwise silent few seconds as every cape present tried to figure out what the fuck we were supposed to do.
“This isn’t a joke,” Luis said. The way he stood, the light didn’t catch his eyes, so the sockets were cast into shadow.
“I know. I just can’t- your sheer cojones,” Chris said.
Yosef and the woman I was assuming was his wife looked at their translator, then at Luis. Both clasped hands together, Luis in front of him, Yosef behind him, and shrugged.
Weird, the things that ended up so similar, in societies so distinct.
“Balls,” Chris clarified, with a roll of his eyes.
“You’re not helping,” Amy said.
“You’re implying I should be.”
I looked at Miss Militia, and she raised her eyebrows. Her scarf was pulled down, as she’d removed it when we’d all removed our masks, and her lips were pressed into a firm line.
She wasn’t speaking up.
I turned to look at my team. Sveta looked faintly angry, and I wasn’t sure how much of that was Amy, and how much was this being a slap in the face to someone who’d tried to realize their humanity, only to be defined by how human she wasn’t.
Tristan held a pose almost like Ashley’s usual one, a little arrogant, like someone who was standing a little extra taller because they expected to be knocked down a peg at any moment.
Ashley was unmoving, her eyes dark in how white they were.
Kenzie smiled, hands fidgeting. But for the movement of my head to look over at the others, I was still, only my eyes moving. Kenzie’s head was constantly turning, looking to her older teammates for reassurance or guidance. In the midst of her looking at each member of Breakthrough, she looked for and turned her attention to Chris. I heard a faint sigh from her.
And Rain, as odd as it was, seemed most at peace with this. Most focused, and most himself in this alien place.
“We’ll cooperate,” I said, while my head was turned to my team, not the others. Nobody flinched, nobody bucked or rebelled. They knew. We had to.
“I assume Natalie isn’t included in this,” I added.
“She isn’t,” Luis said. He didn’t even have to look at the other groups for input. Because we were being arrested purely because of who and what we were. Parahumans. Ones they couldn’t trust or pretend to control.
The younger Wardens exchanged a couple of words. Vista, Golem.
“Okay,” Vista told Miss Militia.
“We’ll cooperate,” Miss Militia echoed my phrasing.
Scribe-boys scribbled. The room seemed to accept the answer with what I might have called a quiet kind of smugness, not smirking, not gloating or lording over us, but… maybe self-satisfied was the word.
And then there was Amy. Staring at me. How many times had she been at the periphery when things went to shit?
Fuck it. I’d made my decisions. She didn’t warrant more thoughts until it came to figuring out what to do, and when it came to that, it would be the Wardens who had the power to make the decision, and I would make my biased argument, citing my warning to Jessica about Amy.
Past that, I had other things to concern myself with.
The translators finished. A few words were exchanged in foreign tongue. Miss Militia seemed to relax slightly, though calling her relaxed would have been a lie. She’d put the power into our hands because her decreeing it meant something different than us agreeing on our own behalf.
Luis stepped forward, toward the center of the room, and talked in his foreign tongue, addressing the other groups. One of the men in the conservative muumuu-style outfits stepped forward.
It was our turn to be outsiders, needing the translation. Miss Militia supplied it, telling us, “They have different types of prison for different types of criminal, they’re deciding where to put us. Rehabilitative, holding, reconstruction, castigation, devastation. I’m-”
“Devastation?” Rain asked.
“I was about to say I’m butchering the translation.”
“Please tell me there’s a really frontloaded curve that favors rehabilitation,” Sveta said.
“No,” Miss Militia said. “Kind of. They don’t punish for minor crimes the way we do. They don’t have traffic laws or drug laws in the same way. But they punish harshly for wrongdoing or even accidents. Luis is arguing for holding. Aian is arguing for us to be held in a reconstruction facility.”
Aian was the guy in the muumuu, though the outfit wasn’t bright and hung heavier than a normal muumuu. His beard was thick and dark, his eyes narrow. His hair was long but tied back straight against the scalp. When speaking, he repeatedly held up or held out a hand, bent back so the wrist stuck forward, fingers and thumb curled in to rest against the flat palm.
“Reconstruction sounds scarier than castigation,” Sveta said, “assuming it means what I think it means.”
Rain guessed, “Break someone down, build them up the way you want, instead of just… breaking them?”
“Yes,” Miss Militia said. “And I agree, Sveta. But I’m not sure if they plan to actually punish us or take action. It would be the quality of the facilities given. Food, the amount of sleep we’re allowed, outside communication.”
“You don’t sound certain they’re not going to punish us or do something more serious.”
“This is symbolic,” Miss Militia said. “They want to stress they have power. If they do want to punish us I’ll argue to take on the punishment on behalf of my subordinates. There’s precedent.”
“Punishment like… lashes?” Rain asked.
“Flogging was mentioned,” Miss Militia said, stoic, doing double duty in explaining and listening. “They’ve argued down to bloodless lashes.”
“Beating?” Rain asked.
“I understand it to be water,” Miss Militia said. “I won’t say more out of concern for Lookout, here.”
“If you’re afraid of scaring me, don’t worry. I hang out with Heartbroken. I don’t scare easy. I’d rather know. I like knowing stuff.”
“She would,” Ashley said.
“Water buckets. They tie you in place and splash you, hot enough to almost burn or ice water, no rhyme, reason, or timing.”
“You’d faint,” Tristan said. “We’ve looked into stuff relating to cold water because Byron. With hot water and sudden temperature changes, you’re talking syncope -fainting-, arrythmia, low blood pressure?”
“They may give drugs to keep us from fainting. I suspect they’d rather we faint, they wake us up or wait until we wake naturally, then resume the process. There’s a very real motivation here to see us brought low and repeated faintings would qualify, I think.”
“If I could swap out to Byron that’d work,” Tristan said.
“If it comes down to bloodless lashings for Byron, Tristan, then it’ll be your entire team, Vista, Golem, and myself,” Miss Militia said.
“I’m kind of regretting agreeing to cooperate,” Tristan said.
“I’m not,” I said, keeping my voice low. “No, this is… fuck this, especially if they’re going after a kid like Kenzie-”
“They’d relish the chance,” Miss Militia interrupted.
“Yay,” Kenzie said, her voice small.
“Sorry. You said you wanted to know.”
“I do. Thank you, you’re super nice, but I’m a tiny bit scared now. Plus I think I’d have to disconnect and that’d make me more scared.”
“Disconnect from?” Miss Militia asked.
“My team’s headquarters.”
“Kid Win was similar,” Vista said. “My old teammate. Couldn’t take him away from his workshop too long or he’d get antsy.”
“Haha, yeah,” Kenzie said. Then, as if renewing her efforts, she launched into quiet chatter with a different tone, “At least we’re somewhere pretty. Every building, all the clothes, the language-”
“Something nice to say about anyone, even the guys who are jailing us?” Tristan asked.
“I’m sure they have good reasons.”
I repeated myself, “I don’t think this is right, I don’t think this is okay, especially if it involves Kenzie or people who are only here for functional purposes, like Vista or Golem. But I’d rather stay and go through their charade if it means securing supplies for people back on Gimel.”
“Yeah,” Kenzie said. “I’ve been hurt before. I just don’t want to be hurt and alone.”
She wasn’t talking about her computers or tech. She was linked in to Darlene and possibly the others.
“I won’t let it happen,” Ashley said.
Kenzie made a nervous sound, halfway to a laugh. “I hope so. Just a bit nervous now. Not that I don’t believe in you.”
Ashley put a hand on Kenzie’s head. “Be brave, look confident.”
“Their motivation isn’t the pain,” Miss Militia said. “It’s about posture and position. They’re playing a game of chicken, knowing we could threaten them, but they hold supplies hostage. Even if we went to war, which we absolutely won’t and can’t do, we wouldn’t have their cooperation or supplies in the meantime, and that would cost us too much.”
“Please tell me Luis is arguing for something milder and winning that argument,” Sveta said.
“He’s arguing,” Miss Militia said. Answering only part of the statement.
As if her words had been a mechanism, Luis fell silent, his argument ended.
Aian said something in response. I could see Miss Militia’s posture change. I could see Aian in the boxy robes punch a fist out to his left.
With the way the groups were arranged, Luis’s group, the Founders, were to our left. There was a group that hadn’t spoken yet, then Yosef’s, two more groups that had been mostly silent, then Aian’s. To Aian’s left was the group with my mother, father, Marquis, Spruce, and Chris.
And my sister. Aian’s fist extended to her, specifically.
“It’s about making a statement about them too,” I said. “The parahumans who came to Shin. Chris, Marquis… telling them their place.”
“Yes,” Miss Militia said.
“They want them to handle the arrest, put us in our cells.”
“Yes. And to handle any punishments. Aian just cut through several of Luis’s arguments by saying that punishments can be more pointed because Amelia Claire Lavere can be ordered to maintain our health,” Miss Militia said, her voice overlapping Luis’s rebuttal, which was quickly followed by a response from Aian. “If we refuse, if she refuses, we’re clearly lying in reassuring them, either Amy’s too dangerous, we’re too dangerous, or both.”
Okay. I was on the same page as Tristan now. Didn’t expect hardball to this degree.
What else could we do though?
“Are they being influenced by Teacher?” Ashley asked. “This feels pointed.”
“This is how they politic, I’m afraid,” Miss Militia said. “This seems normal.”
I spoke, “When we investigated Teacher, it all seemed normal or excusable. Things so close to reality you could believe it happened. You had to look at the end results and the consequences to find patterns.”
“Luis and his Founders are center, as far as we’re concerned, joined by the group to his right. Normally the Coalition balances it out, and with my voice or another Gimel voice we can strike a healthy compromise. The Coalition being absent could be Teacher.”
With them gone, the guys in the ‘center’ were our best advocates.
And our best advocates, Luis’s faction- he was stepping down and back, no longer one of the people speaking. Ceding the floor to Aian. Ceding a victory to Aian.
Aian talked, his voice low, and he did all of the talking, with only a periodic one or two word comment or agreement from other groups. Luis was entirely silent.
Fuck me. Gary had stirred shit up to score a political victory at home, and caused an inter-earth incident in the process, painting their parahuman saviors and neighbors in the worst light possible. We went to handle that, just so we could go after Teacher without worrying about what’s happening in the background, and we faced imprisonment, torture, public humiliation…
And worse than imprisonment and torture. We faced my sister. My sister who was ‘not well’, according to my mother. Who was spiraling out, doing her best to mitigate that spiral by moving slowly. I wasn’t sure her best was very good.
I was even less sure it would be good if she was forced to cooperate in our torture and humiliation. My torture and humiliation.
The feeling, now, was of something institutional and wholly unfair, something biased against us, that was now dragging us inch by inch toward something ugly. To my sister being made to lay hands on us, on me, all while being in the worst fucking state possible to handle her shit. And she hadn’t been handling it.
Aian squared his shoulders, moved his arm, and faced us. Yosef’s wife approached to stand beside and one step behind him.
When he spoke to address us, his voice was faintly nasal and insistent. His translator’s voice was normal, but the opening of each statement overlapped with the end of Aian’s.
“All but Militia will stay in a reconstruction facility, where you will join the rounds. Miss Militia will return to Gimel and explain the situation.”
The ’rounds’ – I only had to look at Miss Militia’s expression to know how things had gone. I didn’t miss her glancing at Kenzie.
“If I may-” Miss Militia started.
“You may not.”
“If I may!” Miss Militia raised her voice.
There were murmurs, there was chatter.
Aian ceded, his hand moving to motion her to come closer.
“A general can take the punishment for their men.”
“Are you a general? You dress as one but you insisted you were something else.”
“I am not someone who leads battles against humankind. I am someone who leads battle against monsters and fights to make humanity shine brighter. These people have fought under or alongside me.”
Aian answered. The translator translated, “Your Wardens, yes. Breakdown-”
Luis coughed a word. The translator corrected himself.
“-Breakthrough is not yours.”
“They are my responsibility. I will stay and I will take any punishment you see fit, as much as I disagree.”
“You will go,” the translator translated for Aian. “Because we want someone we can trust going between us and Gimel.”
“I will not see people, many of them not quite adults in the eyes of our government, punished for the crimes of adults.”
“Punishments with kind intent and purpose.”
Ashley put her hands on Kenzie’s collarbone, pulling her back into Ashley’s front in a protective hug.
“Unacceptable,” Miss Militia said. “Our memory is long when it comes to this sort of thing. You will hurt relations far more than you realize. I told you from the beginning, they’ve earned goodwill.”
“Then imprisonment until the trade deal is signed and new protections agreed to. We are insistent on having our presence and security affirmed. And if these parahumans cause trouble, they will bleed for it. The so-called Red Queen will ensure they don’t bleed too much.”
“That should be fine,” Miss Militia said. “It won’t come to that.”
“Do you say that because you know they’ll cause trouble and you’re at peace with the politics of it, or because you’re lying to yourself?”
“Being parahuman doesn’t mean trouble is inevitable. Have I caused you trouble?”
“You have the gall to ask that after raising your voice in here, threatening us?”
“I made no threat.”
“You are a threat. You have the power, I’ve been told, to kill all of us here. Our soldiers might shoot you, but these others you’ve brought with you could kill them, for all we know.”
The ‘walk softly and carry a big stick’ might have been something they prized, but the moment we didn’t speak softly…
Aian spoke, giving the order. His translator voiced it in English. “Take them.”
My eye fell on Amy. The fear that ran through me had a grip to it, paralyzing. They were putting me in her charge, and I’d just told her off. I’d just been harsh with her.
Did that impact her willingness to obey? I had a fundamental understanding of her yet I had zero idea what she might do. If pushed, did she refuse, try to prove herself to me by refusing to take action against me? Did she go the other way?
Which was worse?
Did she internalize all of this and slip further? All it had taken for Hunter might have been a similar hair color and appearance, a bit of exhaustion, and Amy had slipped, had made a critical error.
If we said no, fought, ran, or brought war to their doorstep, then they rescinded aid. We would take the blame, and they would claim a victory in that, having brought us low and reminded us of our place.
“Us too?” my mother asked.
“You’re the custody of the Red Queen,” the translator said. “Her responsibility is yours. Your dereliction is hers.”
This is why they need help escaping. They were roped in with Amy. If they left, it was deemed Amy’s failure. Prisoners in the loosest sense.
We’d had to make our decision. The Shin parahumans now had to make theirs. Marquis had no reason to be fond of us but in a weird way I could trust him most. My dad. My mom. Spruce. Chris. Amy. As I got to the last name on that list, the amount of trust I had in the individual dwindled.
I nodded, mostly to myself, and that seemed to be the signal that gave permission to the Shin parahuman group. Not as organic as Miss Militia leaving Breakthrough to make a call without any input from her, but… whatever.
“What do I do?” Natalie asked.
“Go with them. You’ll be the back and forth for them and Gimel,” Miss Militia told her. “Come back here, report to me. They should treat you well.”
“Damn. Okay,” Natalie said.
“All of you do your best, avoid responding to any taunts or tricks,” Miss Militia said, her voice quiet enough for just our group. She turned to Vista. “And if it comes down to it and it seems they intend to castigate you or anything like that, escape.”
I spoke, “That would mean-”
“Escape,” she interrupted me, turning to me. “Any of you, if it comes to it, escape. If it gets that bad, if they’re willing to go that far, trade may not be possible, the situation wouldn’t be salvageable. At least like this, it was superficially a charade, a heavy-handed moving of segments of the political machine. We can recover from it. But we can’t sacrifice people to that machine.”
“Got it,” Vista said.
“For the love of God, be good,” Miss Militia said. She said it to Vista and Golem, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t intended for them. It would have been crass to say it to us, and she wasn’t crass.
“What are you guys going to do in the meantime?” I asked. I shifted my footing, signaling I was asking about Teacher.
“Just focus on yourselves. We’ll work something out. This should only be a few days at most before we work it out. In the meantime, I think they want you to give them an excuse, they can punish you, and use the film of act and punishment for their political enrollments or even televising it for the public.”
“Political enroll- nevermind,” Tristan said, changing his tune as Marquis and the others drew closer. He looked at Vista, who had her chin set. She didn’t look anywhere near happy about this. “This is screwed up.”
“It’s theater. We’re capes, theater is part of it,” Ashley said.
“Well said,” Miss Militia told her.
Behind Chris, Spruce, and Marquis, I could see my parents and Amy. Amy hesitated, then approached until she stood beside Marquis. A diplomat from Aian’s contingent accompanied them. No doubt to show them where the hell they were going.
“Would it be tactless for us to use weapons?” Marquis asked.
“It might be best,” Miss Militia said.
“Would it, now?”
“You’re effectively their parahumans. Your weapons and clout are theirs. Show off a bit if you must.”
Marquis made a hand motion like he was snapping a finger in reverse, and the snap produced a rapier-thin blade from his middle finger. He waved it in the air before settling on Tristan, Golem, and Rain, bidding them to move. Spruce joined him.
“Come on,” Chris said. He pushed Ashley’s shoulderblade hard enough she had to take a step and as part of that, had to manage Kenzie, who was standing just in front of her. “Let’s go. I want to get back to my own stuff.”
When she didn’t move fast enough, he gave her another push. She shot him a look over her shoulder, her neck and jaw tense enough that lines and muscles stood out.
“It’s only going to get worse when you’re in there. Suck it up.”
“Theatrics,” my mother said, as she walked into the midst of our group. She smiled at Natalie. “Earning your pay, hm?”
Natalie’s responding smile was weak.
“I’ll make it up to you,” my mother said.
“I believe you.”
My mother produced a coruscating spike in her hand. I knew the energy she made could be diffused or left ‘sharp’, and I imagined she’d picked something that would burn at worst, if someone were to walk fast enough into it.
I’d wanted her to guide me. But she didn’t, instead putting a hand on Sveta’s shoulder. Because she didn’t think – there was a dwindling number of people to manage us.
“Regretting sending mom here?” I asked, approaching my dad, because the alternative was that he wouldn’t think either, and I’d be left with Amy guiding me.
I didn’t walk a straight line to my dad, either. I took the path that kept him between Amy and myself. She had a look in her eyes that was somewhere between wounded and hopeful, constantly changing, and my little maneuver pushed things into the ‘wounded’ for the time being.
Though he held his arm straight out in front of him, the hand he put on my shoulder wasn’t one that gripped me hard. It was almost reassuring.
“It saved her life,” he said.
Right. Of course. “Sorry.”
“I’m sorry this is happening this way.”
I shook my head.
Besides the fact that Amy was behind me and I had no idea what she was doing, besides the fact that she’d tried to grab me from behind once already, and had chased after me more than once in the time since Gold Morning…
No, I’d rather bite the bullet and keep the peace. How did it go? Rule of law, then right and wrong, and if neither of those worked, reach out for counsel? If none of that was possible, do what I could do without regrets?
This was the law here. It was ridiculous and unjust, pure farce for political points and to apply pressure on another government.
“Fuck me with a salted log, do not fucking touch me,” Vista said.
I turned to look. Amy, with about a foot of distance between a reaching or motioning hand and Vista.
“I don’t want to fall behind,” Amy said. “This is hard enough.”
“Give me a second.”
“You’re going to make them suspicious.”
Vista didn’t budge, staring Amy down. In the meantime, my dad and I were stopped, while the others left the room. Miss Militia remained where she was, a short distance from Vista and Amy.
“Be good,” Miss Militia told Vista. This time, the words really did seem meant for Vista.
“I am. But if it comes down to it, I’m not going to have a squad of soldiers who I don’t know or trust at my back without taking steps.”
Miss Militia looked around. “You undid it?”
“Just finished,” Vista said.
She walked, Amy following, guards following Amy. Vista didn’t hurry, and the result was to create a good fifteen or twenty foot gap between myself and Amy.
Natalie hurried to catch up to my dad and I.
“You coping?” I asked.
“I should be asking you that.”
“Life as a cape. Before I even had powers, I made myself stay up until I heard my parents come back in. My dad taught me some first aid from pretty early on.”
“I didn’t know you stayed up,” my dad said.
I ignored that, addressing Natalie, “Are you managing though? You’ll be going home, maybe report to people or tell them what Miss Militia’s more or less going to say so she can focus on other things. Then, I imagine, a… stiff drink?”
“I can’t drink when anxious,” she said. “I have a… guy. Kind of but not really a boyfriend. Does that sound awful?”
“No,” I said. “A guy sounds really nice.”
“We’re in a fuzzy territory. It doesn’t matter, you have bigger things to worry about. I’ve got someone to give me a hug when I need it, that’s what matters. I’ll call him once I’m in range for cellular service.”
“Good,” I said.
“I don’t want to sound rude, but… I didn’t expect family to be such a factor. Carol’s… very different.”
“She’s recovering,” my dad said.
“Yeah. I get that.”
A glass-covered, glass-walled tunnel with snowbanks on either side separated buildings.
“I’ve talked to Vista a few times,” Natalie said. Her voice was quieter. “She sounded really unlike herself just now, talking to Amy. Scared.”
“Amy’s not that scary. She’s a good person who’s been through a lot, like most parahumans,” my dad said.
“Vista’s been through a lot. She’s level-headed, she’s smart, she’s experienced- fuck, she’s more experienced than me, I’m pretty sure. And she’s scared. I’m scared.”
“Singular bad experiences, traumas or histories of trauma, and our mental issues can screw up the tools we use to determine if we should fight, fly, or freeze.”
It hurt, hearing that.
“So can love,” I said. I looked at my mom’s back. “And guilt, shame.”
It wasn’t a short walk to the prison. We pulled hoods up and helmets on as we left the warmth of building interiors, the young politician that was showing us the way passing us on to a guy in a guard’s uniform. We walked past groups of people, all dressed more like Luis than any of the other delegates.
Our destination was a building that looked to be a stout castle, split in two and separated, with an office building growing out of the divide, concrete and tinted windows covered in bars. Wrought iron fences with whole sections wrought to be bent to right angles, spikes rising up from the face of it in echoes of the multitude of medieval-style towers that leaned out and then up from buildings around us.
Just a few days. No alternative, we did this, we let the Wardens handle shit and work out an alternative, and we went back. If we couldn’t, we’d break out. We had the means.
The cold was biting enough that I was glad to be indoors. I was less glad that the lobby before the internal prison gates was as small as it was.
I was very aware of Amy entering the space, of her proximity to me, and to everyone else. Vista avoided being within arm’s reach, and on Amy’s opposite side, guards did the same. It made everything else more squashed with the sudden influx being what it was.
My dad went to her side, creating a buffer of space where others could move closer without being in immediate proximity.
I’d complained the greenhouse patio was claustrophobic. This was worse.
From alien political pressure to cold to claustrophobia. There wasn’t any time or place since I’d entered this damn world that I’d felt capable of breathing.
Vista had talked about how the little things went underappreciated. That the public would never know about the monsters being slain, the nascent S-class threats that never grew beyond a certain point or figured out how to use their full potential, because the PRT or the Wardens had stepped in.
With orders and directions given in a language we didn’t understand, we were all filed off together into an adjacent area. The Western of the two half-castles.
Co-ed shower, with only a dividing wall up to my shoulder.
We had to. As much as I could briefly entertain the notion that we might eventually have to say ‘fuck it’ and stop caring as much about what civilians thought, in practice, if aid for millions was on the line, I’d eat the shit, I’d endure.
I’d fucking endure my sister being here, of all things.
I just had to hope our more temperamental and unreliable allies could keep it toned down. That we could manage this for the one or two days it was necessary.
We handed over gear, piece by piece, slowly, with multiple guards keeping weapons trained on us. Because we’d cooperated this far, but when asked to hand over phones, keys, pens, loose change, that was when we’d pull out guns and open fire, right?
Fuck me. Fuck this.
“Amy doesn’t need to be here,” I said, as I finished removing the stuff in my pockets and started removing ornamentation, like the decoration at my hood and shoulders.
She looked at my mom, as if for confirmation, then said, “I kind of do but-”
“Think,” I said. “Find two rational thoughts, put them together, and think about it, please.”
“I am. I’m aware this is awkward. But they want this. They want us to watch you and I’m not sure where I’m supposed to go.”
I could have choked on the anger I felt.
“Come keep an eye on me,” Tristan said. “Give Victoria her space.”
Amy was just short enough that only the top of her head, still covered by her hood, was visible over the top of the divider.
I pulled off the outer layers of my costume, my mom and two guards looking, a third guard looking over my red letter – my paperwork from the portal. They checked me over, one guard examining me, another going over my clothes inch by inch, while I stood on the clammy floor, still with beads of moisture and droplets from when prisoners had used the space.
They let me change back into the tank top and costume leggings I’d been wearing, and they gave me simple shoes and socks to wear. I kept the socks in my pocket, slipping wet feet into the shoes. Wet socks would be worse and would get the shoes wet anyway.
I wanted more. The protection of the heavy coat, a barrier between me and everything else.
After they finished Sveta, I settled into position, still in the stall, my arms resting on the divide between Sveta’s stall and my own, my chin resting on my arms. My position let me keep an eye on the others while keeping Amy in my peripheral vision.
“You have scars,” Amy cut into my thoughts.
From a vantage point on the boy’s side -she’d moved to higher ground to be able to see faces above the shoulder-high divider- she could see my head and the arm that rested on top. I dropped my arm and covered the topmost scar with my hand. Notches where the acid centipedes had raked me.
I pulled the hand away, anger and hate and bitter feelings boiling up. I could have used my aura or power, if it wouldn’t have been so costly. Fuck me.
“Don’t follow through with that thought,” Vista said, so I didn’t have to.
I saw Amy look momentarily frustrated and lost. She looked to my mom, who didn’t respond. She looked to my dad.
“Hostility doesn’t help any of us,” my dad said.
“Technically speaking,” Chris said.
“Oh my god, please shut up, Chris,” Vista said.
The guard barked a word at her in a foreign tongue. He was checking her hair.
“I think he said to be quiet,” Marquis said.
“Hostile execution of a certain world-conquering tyrant got me my current position. A kind of diplomatic immunity,” Chris said. “Hostility is great, if you have good timing.”
“There are more than a few hostile things I could say to you,” Ashley said. “The mildest of them is that you’re tiresome.”
The guards moved on from Vista to Ashley, taking the dress from where she’d already hung it over the same divider that made it so I could only see her head, and made it impossible to see Kenzie at the far end of the row.
“Tiresome, says the wannabe villainess who can’t drop the same old act. Nobody’s impressed, Ash.”
“Hey,” Kenzie said. “Leave her alone.”
“I almost had a morsel of respect for you, tidbit,” Chris told her, his voice echoing just a bit more in the room with its open area and hard surfaces. “Leaving this trainwreck was a good idea.”
“I didn’t want to leave.”
“Okay, then I’ve changed my mind about the morsel of respect. You could be so great, so powerful. And what are you doing? You’re obsessing over making friends, the one thing you’re worst at.”
“Like you’re any better?” Tristan asked.
“Don’t say it like that,” Sveta said. “She does have friends.”
The guards were looking a little anxious about the chatter and debate, all in a language they didn’t understand.
Marquis stepped forward, to put a hand on Chris’s shoulder. He leaned in close to say something, but Chris didn’t really stop, shrugging it off.
I made a short, small whistle, and when they looked my way, I had my hand at the side of my head, at my left ear, fingers in my hair. Our signal, meant for me to calm down.
My team, at least, chilled out, with emphasis on the bitterest sense of chill. Some turned their backs. Kenzie had hopped up onto the bench in her stall, and peered over the wall at Chris. She’d removed her headband and pin.
“So you have friends,” Chris said. “Tell me when you keep them for more than a month without fucking it up.”
Fuck me, I thought for a second Marquis might have said or done something. He certainly tried to get Chris to quietly leave. The rest of my team, myself included, held their tongues while simultaneously wanting to backhand Chris.
Kenzie smiled at him, “It’s been a little while, actually. Um. I’m sure I’m wearing on them-”
“Imagine that,” Chris said.
I still had to talk to her. There hadn’t been a great chance. Too many red flags had popped up. I wanted to do it while out of Teacher’s sight, and with this circumstance, I couldn’t.
“Um! Hm. But I kind of really love them, like, crazy friend-crushing on some of them and crush-crushing on Chicken Little. My first ever crush-crush.”
“Imagine that,” Chris said. “You in love. That’s like saying a trash fire is hot. That poor Chicken is going to get burned.”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure. They get me in ways nobody else has. I think there’s a way forward, even if I am a trash fire.”
“You aren’t,” Sveta said.
“Okay, thank you. Anyway, it’s neat. That’s your catch-me-up on the happenings of Kenzie.”
“The inherent humor in seeing you get thrown in the clink is the only thing holding my interest right now.”
“And Ashley- what?”
The guard was turning Kenzie around. Her turn.
Out of sight, Kenzie pitched her voice higher to be heard. “Ashley’s actually really neat to be around in whole new ways nowadays. She’s grown and she’s warmer sometimes, and she’s still super cool.”
“A compliment from you is like herpes from a hooker, Kenz. It’s a given.”
“I think you’d be surprised. She’s changing and she’s trying to change, and even if I only get breakfasts-”
The guard barked at her.
“He’s saying to stop talking,” Marquis supplied.
“How do you say ‘that won’t happen’?” Tristan asked. “She’s a talker.”
Marquis paused, smiled, and said a single word.
The guard heaved out a sigh.
“I think that was ‘can’t’,” Marquis said.
“Thanks,” Tristan said.
“Anyway! She’s trying, she’s cool, and even if sometimes all I get to see her is breakfasts and sometimes-hangouts I love being a part of it.”
“I miss you too,” Ashley said.
“Gag me,” Chris said.
“And um, Chris? Cryptid? Lab Rat? Whatever you want to be called?”
His expression changed.
He hadn’t known we knew.
“Um. I get it. I know how frustrating it is to be unable to change, no matter how hard you try. And I know it’s scary too, and lonely.”
“You never got that,” Chris said. “That I don’t get lonely.”
“You do, though. Because ever since we showed up all you’ve done is be angry and push and prod, like you’re trying to prove something. The world’s moved on and you’re stuck being whatever you are and it doesn’t matter how much you change on the outside because on the inside? You’re still a miserable little fucknugget.”
It was, in any other circumstance, the kind of line that would have seen Chris guffaw, laugh, say something.
“Um. Haha, my heart’s beating so fast, because I’m angry, and I’m angry because you missed out, you know. Because even now? Even if I might get tortured, I’ll be happier than you are Chris. You missed out and you deserve to. There were glimmers of good in you like when you helped Rain, but you didn’t stick to that and you didn’t try. You were super cool when you stopped trying to be uncool, and I kind of loved you and now I kind of don’t. You’re being shitty by pushing us away and making something hard even harder and suckier because you’re scared and resentful and whatever. I know whatever happens next for you is going to be ten times as hard and sucky as what I have to deal with. You’re going to be just as alone and even more frustrated because you’re never going to be able to take a drug that changes you deep down inside and makes you any less of a pathetic miserable fucknugget.”
This from the girl who always found something nice to say about anyone.
He didn’t immediately respond.
When he did, it was a simple, “Say what you really think.”
“Okay,” she said. “There’s nothing sadder than someone who’s unwilling to change for the better.”
I looked across the room at Amy. I saw her look, saw her expression change, as she looked away. More different real emotions that weren’t her being wounded or blindly hopeful crossed her face in a few seconds than I’d seen since she arrived in the conference building.
“There’s something sadder,” Amy said. “When the rest of the world won’t let you change.”
There we go, I thought to myself. One shot and you missed it.
It was Amy who stormed out, giving Chris the excuse to follow.
They went to the lobby, and the rest of us, once the guards had picked through Ashley and Kenzie’s stuff, with Kenzie’s small pack having a change of clothes they provided, were let through another set of doors and a series of gates. Each of us had a wristband with a series of symbols.
Natalie saw us off. When the door shut, it separated us from her.
The prison was a series of hallways, with few rooms beyond an atrium area with a glass ceiling, where it looked like food was provided at other times of the day. The hallways were lined with thin mattresses, and it seemed to be first come, first serve.
Co-ed, anarchy. Going by what Miss Militia said, the principle of there being little to no traffic laws and high personal responsibility with severe punishments seemed to hold within the prison grounds themselves. There were places where guards patrolled on raised platforms or on the other side of windows, guns in plain few. I could see two cases of them breaking up prisoners – one case where a man and woman were sitting too close together, suggesting that co-ed didn’t mean open season, and another case where things were getting loud- two parents with kids a few years younger than Kenzie were arguing about a game in their natural tongue.
Our priority was to find the quiet, to powwow, figure out where we stood.
We just had to get through a couple of days.
Ashley’s natural intimidation worked in our favor. When we found a place with only a few people, a little damp where moisture dripped down through a crack in the glass above, they saw Ashley and got out of dodge.
“No cameras?” I asked.
“Guards but no cameras, not here,” Kenzie said. “I can tell.”
“You’re an asset,” Tristan said. “And you’re a champ.”
She nodded, no longer smiling, all seriousness.
“How are you for tech, Kenz?” I asked.
She reached up to tap the side of her head. The sound was artificial, a clink. “Hairclip. Projection. Only a few hours of battery. I’m gonna turn it off and hide it.”
“Um. Oxygen tank and mask. That’s a good one.”
“They didn’t find it?”
“It was hidden with projection. I hung it on the shower lever while talking to Chris. Um. Oh, I’ve got these…”
She reached up and she scraped a fingernail along the surface of her eye. Ashley moved closer, to block the guards’ view.
Golem had the biggest body, and he blocked off the view to the side. He beckoned for Rain to come sit beside him.
“Oh,” Kenzie said, letting go of her eye. “Vista.”
“Can you uh, not do your thing, like, at all? At least while I’m working on the eyes? Because your thing borks up my thing and hoo boy. It would be like pulling a pinecone out of a grape.”
“Not doing my thing,” Vista said.
The action drew a prisoner’s attention. A woman, broad with bad skin, raised her voice, asking what might have been a question, but which lacked the inflection at the end.
Sveta turned, and with one finger, drew a line from lower eyelid to chin, then pointed to Kenz.
The woman made a face, sympathetic.
Kenzie pulled out the apparatus that had been phased into her eye, six inches long and bristling with antennae and prongs. She partially removed the one from her other eye, then pushed it back in.
“Not removing it?”
“It lets Darlene, Candy, and Chicken look in,” Kenzie said. “And I’d feel lonely if they couldn’t. Besides, it lets me see the cameras, and I want to figure out where they all are before I run out of battery. If I have time and if I can make tools, maybe a few minor things, I’ll turn this oxygen can into a battery pack.”
The projection setup for the smoking eyelashes was buried in Ashley’s eye as well. Kenzie removed those, handing them to Rain.
“Can you make something?” I asked.
“What do I need to make?” she asked.
“I’m worried Teacher might try something. We’re cooped up and we’re easy targets. Do you think you could give us a way to track what happens?”
“You think they’ll come after us?” Tristan asked.
“I think they might. Or they’ll try to frame us. Or stage a breakout attempt. Our job is to stay in, at least for a little while, keep the peace.”
I shifted my footing.
And if the Wardens need us they can get us. If not, then the scheduled attack on Teacher happens and we’re stuck on the sidelines because we’re losing this game of political chess.
I saw a few of the others nodding to themselves.
“Should I give Darlene and the others a message?” Kenzie asked. “Call anyone? Even for dumb stuff? I think they’re worried.”
The others named names. Rain wanted a message given to Erin. Tristan asked for his parents, and mentioned the subject of Byron, who was still in armor. A complicated subject to navigate – he hadn’t felt comfortable changing with an anti-parahuman holding him at gunpoint.
Ashley had nobody, and Sveta requested a message to go to Armstrong, just to tell him not to worry.
Half of the people I knew and cared about were here.
“Citrine,” I decided. “We’re going to need some help from above.”