by wildbow
I grimaced at that. He extended an arm, indicating I was free to leave the cell.
He continued as we walked, flanked by the guards. “…And then there was the team, handling the internal politics, Assault’s harassment of Battery, the Wards and their individual issues. The countless requests for appearances, for photo shoots, interviews, and demonstrations, figuring out which have to be accepted, which can be turned down, knowing that too many refusals in a row could mean a negative article. And then there were the threats, of course, dealing with powered criminals. Every team member becomes a resource, and those resources have to be allocated judiciously.”
“And in the midst of all that, you’re still trying to find time for you,” I said.
“Free time is the easiest thing to sacrifice,” Defiant said. “It costs you, to give it up, but there’s little guilt. Time to yourself is best spent preparing. Developing new technology, strategizing, adjusting equipment—”
“Weaving costumes, pre-preparing lines of silk,” I said.
Defiant nodded.
“I may have inadvertently screwed Miss Militia over,” I said.
Defiant shook his head. “She’s a natural leader. I wasn’t.”
“That might make it easier to handle,” I said. “But she’ll still be in a position where she has to worry, has to prioritize and make sacrifices, and I don’t know if she asked for it.”
“She’ll manage,” Defiant said, as if that was that. I couldn’t tell if it was trust in his teammate or if he wasn’t particularly empathetic on that front. Miss Militia was the one who’d supplanted him as team leader. Were there still hard feelings?
We stopped at the end of the hallway, and the guards stopped to check in at the control station that managed which doors opened and when. There were procedures for seeing a prisoner out, and it took some time.
I could see into cells near the gate. Prisoners glared at me. I was a villain to everyone who had a grudge against supervillains, a hero to everyone who had a grudge against ‘cops’. A traitor. A murderer. The person who’d killed one of the strongest heroes in the world. Who’d killed someone who had fought for decades to save the world, again and again, and who may have doomed us all.
The other prisoners were still trying to assess me, I was pretty sure. Nobody spoke to me or approached me when we filed off to get our meals or when I visited the library. The words printed on my uniform were probably daunting for the unpowered.
The judge had seen fit to assign me to a close security prison, a wing in a medium security facility. It was somewhat backwards, as rulings went, everything taken into consideration. I’d been charged as an adult, for one thing, so juvenile detention was out. Too many crimes under my belt. I was apparently too dangerous for a minimum security institution, but the PRT had asked for leniency, and this was the compromise they’d come to.
As far as I could figure it out, it was everything I might have expected from a medium security prison, complete with a station that controlled the opening and closing of cell doors, constant supervision, and escorts wherever we went. The only difference was the emphasis on programs. We were here to be rehabilitated, to find work, get an education and get therapy. All mandated.
I’d already started studying. Now, with Defiant here, I’d get okayed to start other projects. I hoped.
The warden was waiting for us in the ‘hub’, the room with benches where we’d waited to be assigned to our cells. She wasn’t what I’d expected from a person in charge of a prison. She made me think of a stern teacher, instead. She was old, pushing sixty if not well past it, and ramrod straight, and thin. Her graying hair was tied back into a short braid that didn’t quite reach the bottom of her neck. She was tough in a gnarled, craggy sort of way, like the veteran actors of cowboy movies, but female.
“Taylor Hebert,” she said.
“Ma’am.”
“Every rule in my prison applies while you’re outside. You know this.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I know you capes are magnets for trouble. If a fight happened to erupt while you were en route and it came down to you fighting back or getting stabbed, I expect you to get stabbed and then graciously thank your attacker, you understand?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“That said, best if you don’t get hurt. Running would be preferrable, so long as you don’t run. Trying to escape would be the worst thing you could do, and it wouldn’t succeed.”
“You want me to stay out of trouble. I understand, ma’am.”
“It’s a cushy deal you have here, but one word from me, and that changes.”
“I get that, ma’am. Really, I do. I get that I did some sketchy things. I get that this is a kind of penance, probably not as harsh as I deserve, and I welcome it. I think, given a choice between walking away free right this second and continuing my sentence, I’d choose the latter.”
She studied me for long seconds.
“We have a no-tolerance policy on powers, Ms. Hebert.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“What appeared to be an emerging case of body lice in the main prison seems to have abruptly corrected itself, according to our physicians. The roach traps in the kitchen aren’t catching anything, either.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“There’s a part of me that would like to think you’re doing us a service, cleaning things up. Which would still be a violation of the zero-tolerance rules, but somewhat forgivable given the intent. Another part of me has to be concerned that you’re hoarding these in the same manner another prisoner might hoard makeshift weapons.”
“No, ma’am.”
“Which is it?”
“I sort of hoped to talk about it with my therapist, on our first meeting, and figure out the best way to approach it before talking to you.”
She made a ‘continue’ gesture with her hand, arms still folded, her gaze hard.
“My power is always on. It takes a conscious effort to block them out and let them act normally. I feel what they feel, sense what they sense, sort of. It’s… not fun with lice, crawling around in prisoner’s pubic hair, you know? Being aware of that, across eighteen, nineteen prisoners, twenty-four-seven?”
“My concern, Ms. Hebert, is what you’re doing with those bugs.”
“Nothing,” I said. “I—moved them away from the prisoners. I’ve mostly left them where they were, let them starve. I can’t leave them stationary like that where there are rodents, or they’ll only feed the rodent population and you’ll have a bigger problem. I could kill the rodents, but then you’d have dead rats in your walls, and—”
“This isn’t acceptable. You understand why this isn’t acceptable?”
“You have to protect other prisoners,” I said.
Even if it means letting them have lice? I didn’t say that last part.
“If bugs are your weapon of choice, I can’t let you have access to them.”
“What about a bucket?” I asked.
“Hm?”
“Set up a bucket in some back room, fill it with something caustic enough to kill them on contact. I’ll drown every bug I can reach in the bucket, and you’ll be able to see for yourself, by the volume of bugs that are in there.”
“Let’s postpone measures like that,” Defiant cut in. “Go change.”
I nodded, happy for the escape route. I made my way to the combination shower-and-change room area, pausing to collect my civilian clothes from the guard in the bulletproof glass enclosure that overlooked the hub.
I would have liked to shower in relative privacy, but I didn’t think anyone outside was planning on waiting. I stripped out of the prison uniform, a lightweight, gray one-size-fits-all cotton tunic and pants that felt more like pyjamas than real clothes. Mine weren’t as threadbare as the clothes the other prisoners wore. For one thing, I was a ‘small’. Sort of. It was a choice between either wearing a medium-sized tunic and have it hang around me like a tent, or wear a small and have it barely reach my
beltline. I’d chosen the latter.
The other reason I got a uniform that hadn’t been worn a hundred times by a hundred other prisoners, was that I wore a special prison uniform with ‘Sp. Inmate’ printed across the shoulders and sleeve, informing everyone who saw me that I had powers.
After folding the garments, I donned my ‘Weaver’ costume. I’d have to update it. It wasn’t real, wasn’t fit for fighting. The underlying bodysuit was something generic they kept on hand, no doubt similar to what made up Clockblocker’s costume. Much in the same way his costume had been elaborated on with armor panels, mine had armor that Dragon had 3D-printed prior to arriving at the PRT headquarters.
It felt wrong, especially the way the straps fit into it, and I didn’t like knowing how flimsy it was.
I didn’t wear the mask or the armor panels, merely holding the bundle that contained them. Instead, I pulled on clothes over the bodysuit, rolling up the sleeves until they were midway up my biceps. The same short-sleeved, button-up shirt I’d changed into after we’d met with the judge, and jeans.
When I emerged, Defiant and the warden were talking. She had enough presence that even Defiant, six feet tall and clad in armor, looked like he wanted to back down.
She tapped him in the center of his chest to punctuate her words, “…before lockdown. And I want all paperwork, as soon as you get it.”
“You’ll have it,” he responded.
“Hand out,” the warden said, turning to me.
I extended a hand.
She strapped a device to my wrist, like a pager, but with a coarse black strap attached. “So we know where you are.”
“Okay.”
The warden looked to the guard in the bulletproof glass enclosure. She gave him a hand signal, and he opened the front door to the prison.
We made our exit down a corridor of double-layered fences topped with barbed wire. We entered the parking lot, where a small crowd had gathered around Defiant’s ship, staring.
They parted to let us board, and then backed away as the jets started to thrum with life.
“We’re alike in some ways,” Defiant said, from his seat at the controls. I sat behind him, having belted myself in.
My response was cut short as we started moving, and inertia hit me like a pressure wave against the front of my entire body. I managed only a “Hm?”
“We’ve both been leaders. We’ve both made our mistakes, and we’ve faced a form of detention for it. You with your prison, me with my retirement.”
Oh, he was back to that? We’d been interrupted.
“Guess so,” I managed. “And Dragon?”
“Not a leader,” Defiant answered me. “Not unless you count the artificial intelligences that operate the other suits. But her prison? It remains worse than any you or I have faced.”
“Remains?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, but he didn’t elaborate.
How could her prison be worse than jail? And how could she still be in it, unless… was she disabled? Cerebral palsy, partial or total paralysis, something else?
I wasn’t sure how that factored in with her current inability to communicate. If she relied on a computer to speak for her, maybe something in the program had broken?
The craft changed direction. Defiant tapped a button, then let go of the controls. Autopilot?
“Whatever happens,” he said, “you’re a member of the Wards. That’s done, but the nature of your membership is still very much in question, understand?”
“I’m not sure I do.”
“Before, I mentioned the tasks of being in charge of a Protectorate team.”
“Allocating people.”
“Yes. Today you’re going to meet some people who are going to play a very crucial role in deciding how you are allocated. Best case scenario, we put you on a team in the thick of something. Not the quiet you’ve been enjoying in your cell, but you’d be helping. Everyone benefits.”
“And the worst case?”
“The worst case is they say it’s a mistake, and you go to jail for the foreseeable future. I don’t see that happening. The second-to-worst case is more likely, where there are no team leaders willing to take you on board with all of the inherent risks.”
“You just said I was a member of the Wards.”
“I did. Miss Militia has your back, but there’s no way you could join the Brockton Bay Wards, under her. Conflict of interests, animosity…”
“I figured.”
“Chevalier’s interests are in restoring the PRT and Protectorate programs. We’ve committed to helping in any world-scale crisis events, which means participating in the next Endbringer program. He respects Miss Militia’s opinion, and your appearance before the media means we’ve committed to keeping you. That was partially intentional.”
“Intentional?”
“Because it throws a wrench in the plans of anyone who might want to maintain the status quo. But as much as Chevalier is on your side, if the capes directly under him in the command structure deem it necessary, he could easily send you to a place where you couldn’t do any damage and bring you out of hiding for media appearances and Class-S threats.”
“A place where I couldn’t do any harm? Like?”
“Guard duty at the quarantine area in Madison, perhaps, or a town without a cape presence, where you’d be doing little more than making appearances and talking to kids.”
“I’m… I don’t want to sound arrogant, but I’m better than that.”
“Mm hmm,” he said. “Let’s hope they think so.”
He pressed the button and took hold of the controls. “New York. The central headquarters of every Protectorate team in America.”
* * *
With Defiant beside me, my civilian clothes removed, costume donned, I entered the common room of the local Protectorate team.
The interior wasn’t dissimilar from the Wards’ headquarters in Brockton Bay. I’d visited that spot when we’d stolen the data from their server. The layout was similar, with what seemed to be interchangeable or connecting pieces defining the interior. The difference was in the quality of the pieces. Gold or faux-gold trim marked pillars and short walls. There wasn’t any brushed steel or ceramic. It was marble. This would be where they held the interviews and wowed the people who invested in the merchandising side of things.
Inspiring, in a way. Intimidating.
Equally intimidating, if not more so, was the crowd that waited for me. Eleven people, arranged across the room, most of them capes.
“In the lead, we have Prism, second in command of the New York team,” Defiant told me.
Prism’s lips flattened into a tight line as she looked at me. We’d met, at the Mayor’s house. She’d been one of Legend’s people. I supposed that Chevalier would have wanted someone who knew the city and the routines as his second in command.
“Rime, team leader of Los Angeles,” Defiant said.
Taking over for Alexandria, I thought. A cape with black hair in a blue skin-tight costume with fur. I recognized her from the Echidna event, the cape who made ice crystals. I remembered how she’d been following Chevalier’s orders. His second in command? It made sense he’d promote someone he knew to the second largest team in America.
“Revel, team leader of Chicago.”
Revel was a woman I hadn’t seen before, even in the background of the various Class-S fights. I was pretty sure I would have recognized her. She was clearly Japanese, with a painted mask covering her lower face, and a massive lantern on a stick that rested against one shoulder. She wore a white skin-tight outfit with straps at the shoulders, the legs ending mid-thigh, giving her a degree of modesty that the stylized crimson kimono didn’t. The kimono hung loose around her, held in place more by belts and what must have been wires in the fabric, elbow-length and just barely long enough to be modest. Her shoulders were bare and narrow, her expression… one eyebrow was raised as she studied me.
“Dispatch, the second in command of Hous
ton.”
Prism at least had an apparent reason to dislike me, but Dispatch’s expression suggested he’d come to that conclusion all on his own. His costume was white, with steel points rising from his shoulders and either side of his brow. The mask that covered the upper half of his face was sculpted into a perpetual frown. I might not have given it a second thought, but his mouth… the frown left me little doubt he didn’t like me, right off the bat.
“You may recognize some of the captains of the respective Wards teams. Jouster from New York, Vantage from Los Angeles, Tecton from Chicago and Hoyden from Austin. You know Clockblocker.”
I nodded. Tecton, in what looked to be a fresh outfit of bulky rust-red power armor, gave me a salute. Jouster was playing up the medieval theme, a spear in hand, while Vantage was a black guy in forest green and silver… his costume looked a touch flamboyant, at a glance. Hoyden looked more like a desperado than a superhero, with a costume that incorporated a kerchief with eyeholes over the upper half of her face, her blond curls tumbling behind, and a jacket and jeans in what looked like black-painted chainmail.
Clockblocker leaned against a desk, unreadable.
“Mrs. Yamada, you’ve met, if the records are right.”
I nodded at the Japanese woman in a casual dress-suit who was standing beside Revel.
“And I’m Glenn Chambers. PRT head of Image,” a man spoke. He approached me to offer a fat hand for me to shake. He had a firm grip. Glenn didn’t look like someone who was particularly invested in image. He was obese, his clothes not flattering, his hair not quite cut into a mohawk, but gelled into something resembling one. He wore rectangle-framed glasses that made it easier to see how he seemed to perpetually squint—a result of long eyelashes.
“And I suppose I’m Weaver,” I said. Eleven sets of eyes, all on me, judging me. I hooked my thumbs into my pockets.
“I’m surprised Chevalier hasn’t shown up,” Defiant commented. He glanced at Prism.