Paige watched as the clerk delivered the envelope to the judge.
“In the matter of the state of Massachusetts versus Paige Mcabee, as to the count of attempted murder, how do you find?”
“Not guilty, your honor.”
Paige sagged a little with relief.
“In the matter of the state of Massachusetts versus Paige Mcabee, as to the count of aggravated assault with a parahuman ability, how do you find?”
“Guilty, your honor.”
Paige shook her head as well as she was able. No! This wasn’t fair!
She almost missed the next line. “…sexual assault with a parahuman ability, how do you find?”
“Guilty, your honor.”
Sexual assault. The words chilled her. It wasn’t like that.
“Is this your verdict?”
“Yes, your honor.”
“Paige Mcabee, please direct your attention to me,” the judge spoke.
She did, eyes wide, shellshocked.
“Determining sentencing for this case is not easy. As your lawyer has no doubt made you aware, you do fall under the umbrella of the TSPA, or the three strikes act. At the age of twenty three, you have been convicted of no prior crimes.
“According to the witnesses heard in this court, you first demonstrated your abilities in early 2009. You were vocal about not wanting to become a member of the Protectorate, but you also expressed a disinterest in a life of crime. This state, in which an individual does not identify as hero or villain, is what the PRT classifies as a ‘rogue’.
“It is in our interests to promote the existence of rogues, as the proportion of parahumans in our society slowly increases. Many rogues do not cause confrontations, nor do they seek to intervene in them. Instead, the majority of these individuals turn their abilities to practical use. This means less conflict, and this serves the betterment of society. These sentiments mirror those that you expressed to your family and friends, as we heard in this courtroom over the last few weeks.
“Those facts are in your favor. Unfortunately, the rest of the facts are not. Understand, Miss Mcabee, our nation uses incarceration for several reasons. We aim to remove dangerous individuals from the population and we do it punitively, both for justice against transgressors and to give other criminals pause.
“Each of these applies in your case. It is not only the heinous nature of the crime that must be addressed by the sentencing, but the fact that it was performed with a power. Laws are still new in the face of parahuman criminality. We become aware of new powers on a weekly basis, most if not all warranting careful and individual attention in respect to the law. In many of these cases, there is little to no precedent to fall back on. As such, the courts are forced to continually adapt, to be proactive and inventive in the face of new circumstances that parahuman abilities introduce.
“It is with all of this in mind that I consider your sentencing. I must protect the public, not only from you, but from other parahumans that might consider doing as you did. Placing you in standard detention proves problematic and exorbitantly expensive. It would be inhumane and harmful to your body to keep you under restraint for the duration of your incarceration. Special facilities, staff and countermeasures would have to be arranged to keep you in isolation from other inmates. You pose a significant flight risk. Finally, the possibility of you re-entering society, by escape or parole, is particularly concerning, given the possibility of a repeat offense.
“It is with this in mind that I have decided that there is sufficient cause to sentence you outside the scope of the TSPA. Guilty on two counts, the defendant, Paige Mcabee, is sentenced to indefinite incarceration within the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center.”
The Birdcage.
The noise in the courtroom was deafening. A roar of cheering and booing, movement, people standing, reporters pushing to be the first ones out the door. Only Paige seemed to be still. Cold, frozen in stark horror.
Had she been able, that might have been the moment she lost it. She would have screamed her innocence, thrown a fit, even swung a few punches. What did she have to lose? This sentence was little better than an execution. Some would say it was worse. There would be no escape, no appeals, no parole. She would spend the rest of her life in the company of monsters. With some of the people that were kept in there, the ‘monster’ description was all too literal.
But she wasn’t able. She was bound and gagged. Two men that were bigger and stronger than her placed their arms under her armpits, practically carrying her out of the courtroom. A third person in uniform, a burly woman, walked briskly beside them, preparing a syringe. Panic gripped her, and with her having no way to express it, do anything with it, the hysteria only compounded itself, making her panic more. Her thoughts dissolved into a chaotic haze.
Even before the syringe of tranquilizers was jammed into her neck, Paige Mcabee fainted.
■
Paige woke up and enjoyed five seconds of peace before she remembered everything that had happened. Reality hit her like a splash of cold water in the face, somewhat literally. She opened her eyes, but found them dry, the world too bright to focus on. The rest of her was damp, wet. Beads of water trickled down her face.
She tried to move, and couldn’t. It was as though something heavy had been piled on top of her. The paralysis terrified her. Paige had never been able to stand being unable to move. When she had gone camping as a kid, she had preferred to leave her sleeping bag unzipped and be cold rather than be confined inside it.
It was that foam, she realized. The restraints weren’t enough, they’d sprayed her with the stuff to ensure that everything below her shoulders was covered. It gave a little to allow her to exhale, she could even shift her arms and legs a fraction, lean in any given direction. The harder she pushed, however, the more resistance there was. The second she relaxed her efforts, everything sprung back to the same position with the foam’s rubbery pull. She felt nausea well in her gut, her heartbeat quickening. Her breathing increased, but the mask made even her breath feel confined. The water made her mask damp, so it clung to her mouth and nose. There were slits for her nostrils and mouth, but it was so little. She could not take a deep breath without drawing water into her mouth, and with her tongue depressed, she could not swallow easily.
The room lurched, and she had to stop herself before she lost her breakfast. Puking with the mask on, she might choke. Dimly, she realized where she was. A vehicle. A truck. It had passed over a pothole.
She knew where it was taking her. But if she couldn’t get free, she was going to lose her mind before she got there.
“The little bird’s awake,” a girl spoke, with a hint of a nasal Boston accent.
“Mmm.” A man grunted.
Paige knew the ‘bird’ reference was due to the stray feathers that stuck out of her scalp. Her powers had come with some extremely minor cosmetic changes, turning her hair the bright yellow of a banana or baby duck. It affected all the hair on her body, even her eyelashes, eyebrows, the fine hairs on her arms. The feathers had started growing in a year ago, the exact same shade as her hair, only a handful at a time. At first, alarmed and embarassed, she’d clipped them off. Once she’d realized that no further changes were occurring, she’d relaxed and let them grow in, even showed them off.
Paige turned her attention to the two people in the vehicle with her, glad for the distraction from her burgeoning panic. She had to force her eyes to stay open, painful as the light was, wait for her eyes to focus. Sitting on the bench beside her was a girl about her own age. The girl had an Asian cast to her features. Her eyes, though, were a very pale blue, betraying some Western heritage. The girl wore the same orange jumpsuit as Paige, and every part of her except her shoulders and head were covered in the yellow-white foam. Her straight black hair was plastered to her scalp by the wet.
The man sat on the other bench. There was more foam around him than there was around Paige and the other girl combined. Topping it off, a cage of m
etal bars surrounded the foam, reinforcing the setup. The man was Asian as well, no less than six feet tall. Tattoos swept up the sides of his neck and behind his ears, into the midst of his wet black hair; Red and green flames, and the head of what could have been a lizard or dragon, drawn in an Eastern style. He was glowering, his eyes hidden in shadows, oblivious to the endless spray of mist that sprinklers in the truck’s roof were generating.
“Hey, little birdy,” the girl sitting across from Paige spoke. She was staring at Paige as if those cold eyes of hers could look right through her. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You lean to your right as hard as you can, then shove yourself left on my signal. But you keep facing the back door there, alright?”
Paige glanced to her right. The back door of the truck looked like a vault door. She quickly glanced back at the Asian girl. Did she really want to turn her back to this person?
The girl seemed to note Paige’s hesitation. She lowered her voice to a hiss that made Paige’s skin crawl. “Do it. Unless you really want to gamble on the chance that I’d be able to find you in the prison, if you don’t do as I say?”
Paige’s eyes widened. This was the sort of person she was going to be locked up with. She shook her head.
“Good, little birdy. Now lean to your right, look at the door.”
Paige did, straining her body to move as close to the door as she could.
“And back!”
She heaved herself the other way, eyes still on the door. Something heavy cracked against the back of her head. She tried to pull away, sit upright again, but was stopped as the mask caught on something.
When she felt hot breath on the back of her neck, she knew what she’d caught on. The other girl had gripped the strap of the mask in her teeth. There was a tug, then the girl lost her grip, and the two of them were pulled back to their individual positions by the rubbery foam.
“Shit,” the girl growled, “Again.”
It took two more attempts. On the first, the strap came free of the buckle. On the second, the girl gripped the mask itself and pulled. Paige turned her head in the girl’s direction so the pacifier-cage on the inside of her mouth could be pulled free.
Tendrils of drool extended down from her mouth as she worked her jaw and tongue, trying to swallow properly. She let out a little whimper as sensation returned to the parts of her face that had gone numb.
“Two qweshionsh,” the Asian girl mumbled, her teeth still gripping the mask’s leather between them, “Youh poweh?”
Paige had to work her jaw and mouth a second before she could speak, “My power? I sing. Really well.”
The Asian girl frowned, “Whaf elth?”
“I… it makes people feel good. When I get going, I can affect them, alter their emotions, make them susceptible to following instructions.”
The girl nodded, “Teh collah?”
Paige looked down at the heavy metal collar around her neck, “It’s set up to inject tranquilizers into my neck if I sing or raise my voice.”
“Okah,” the girl mumbled, “Take teh mahc.”
“Why?”
“Take ih!”
Paige nodded. They leaned away from each other, then swung together, the girl passing the mask to her. She clenched it in her teeth, feeling her jaw ache.
“Drop that and I’ll turn you inside out,” the girl spoke, “Lung. Hey, Lung? Wake up.”
The man sitting opposite them raised his head a fraction, opened his eyes. Maybe. Paige couldn’t quite tell.
“I know it’s hard with the stuff they pumped into you, but I need your power. Birdy, lean forward, show him the mask.”
Paige did her best to push herself forward against the foam that was layered against her chest and stomach, gripping the strap in her teeth, the mask dangling below her chin.
“I need you to heat the metal, Lung,” the girl spoke. “Get it fucking hot.”
Lung shook his head. When he spoke, there was no Boston accent in his voice. The accent that was there made his words clipped, clearly not the voice of a native English speaker. “The water. Is too wet, too cold. And I cannot see it well. My eyes have not healed entirely, and it is hard to see through this spray. Do not bother me with this.”
“Try, you miserable fucker. Failure of a leader. It’s the least you can do, after getting your ass kicked by a little girl, twice.”
“Enough, Bakuda.” he growled. He slammed his head back against the metal of the truck’s wall behind him, as if to punctuate his statement.
“What? I couldn’t hear that,” the girl, Bakuda, grinned with a hint of mania to her expression, “Your voice is too fucking high pitched for my range of hearing! You pathetic… halfbreed… eunuch!”
“Enough!” he roared, again slamming his head against the wall of the truck. “I will kill you, Bakuda, for these insults! I will tear your arm from your socket and I will shove it-”
“Pissed off?!” she interrupted him, practically screeching, “Good! Use it! Heat the motherfucking metal. The metal strip around the edges!”
Still panting with the exertion of shouting, Lung turned his attention to the mask. Paige winced at the blast of heat against her face, started to pull away, but stopped as Bakuda spoke.
“Focus it!” Bakuda shouted, “Focus on the edges!”
The radiation of heat ceased, but Paige became aware of a stringent, smoky smell.
“Hotter! As hot as you can get it!”
The smell was too strong, too acrid. Paige coughed a few times, hard, but she didn’t lose her grip on the mask.
“Now, birdy! Same maneuver as before, but don’t let go!”
Paige nodded. She leaned away, then swung in Bakuda’s direction. What followed surprised her more than when Bakuda had bitten into the strap of the mask.
The Asian girl set about savaging the red hot metal with her teeth, digging into it even as they had to pull away. Softer with the heat, the thin metal strip pulled free of the mask itself. The metal that ran along the strap cut Paige’s lip as it came off. She almost -almost- dropped the mask, but managed to snap her teeth to catch the buckle in her teeth before it could fall to the floor.
As the strip came free, Bakuda pulled back and jerked her head to one side, hard, impaling herself in the shoulder with one end of it. She screamed, and blood ran from one of the burns on her mouth.
Paige looked at Lung. The huge man did nothing, remaining silent. He only watched dispassionately as Bakuda’s chest heaved with the exertion and pain, her head hanging down.
“What the hell are you doing?” Paige breathed.
“No hands, have to make do,” Bakuda panted, “Again. Before my body realizes how badly I’m hurting it.”
Paige nodded. She wasn’t about to argue with the supervillain that was threatening to turn her inside out.
The ensuing attempts weren’t any prettier or easier. The second long metal strip was freed and Bakuda impaled that one in her shoulder as well. The metal grilles from the exterior and interior parts of the mask were next to be pulled free. Paige was left holding only the leather portion of the mask, the straps and the covering that had gone over her mouth and nose. Seeing Bakuda gingerly balance the metal grilles on her free shoulder, against the tacky foam so they wouldn’t slip down, Paige did the same with the leather of the mask.
“What did you do to get sent here?” Paige asked.
“Last I heard, before we lost power to our neighborhood, the body count was almost at fifty.”
“You killed fifty people?”
Bakuda grinned, and it wasn’t pretty, with her lips as ravaged as they were. “Injured more, too. And there were those who got brain damage, one or two might’ve gone homicidally insane, and I know a bunch got frozen in time for a hundred years or so… it gets blurry. Crowning moment was the bomb.”
“Bomb?” Paige asked, eyes widening.
“Bomb. They said it was as powerful as an atom bomb. Idiots. They didn’t even understand the technology behind it. Philistine
s. Sure, it was about that powerful, but that wasn’t even the real damage. Amazing thing would’ve been the electromagnetic wave it generated. Wipe every hard drive, fry every circuit board for every piece of machinery over a full fifth of America. The effects of that? Would’ve been worse than any atom bomb.”
Unable to even wrap her mind around that, Paige glanced at Lung. “And him?”
“Lung? He’s the one who told me to do it. Man in charge, he is.”
Lung’s head moved fractionally, but with the shadows under his brow, Paige couldn’t tell if he was watching.
“You?” Bakuda asked Paige. “What’d you do to get sent here?”
“I told my ex to go fuck himself.”
There was a pause, then Bakuda started cackling. “What?”
“It’s complicated,” Paige looked away and down.
“You gotta explain, birdy.”
“My name’s Paige. My stage name was Canary.”
“Ooooh,” Bakuda spoke, still cackling a little as she gripped one of the metal strips that was spearing her shoulder and pulled it free. Holding it in her teeth, she spoke, “That’sh no good. You calling yourshelf Canary in prishon?”
“I didn’t intend on going to prison.”
“Who doesh?”
“I mean, I’m not even a supervillain. My power, it makes me a fantastic singer. I was making a lot of money doing it, there was talk of record deals, we were moving to larger venues and my shows were still selling out… everything was perfect.”
Bakuda let the strip swing from her teeth until it dangled, then carefully maneuvered it until she was gripping the far left side of it. She leaned back, her head facing the ceiling, as she slid the other metal strip, the one impaled in her shoulder, into her mouth as well, so she was holding one end of each strip in her mouth. Pausing, she asked, “Whaf haffen?”
Paige shook her head. It was the testimony she’d never been able to speak out loud, at her trial. “I’d just finished my biggest show yet. Two hours on stage, a huge hit, crowd loved it all. I wrapped up and went backstage to rest, get a drink, and ran into my ex. He told me that since he was the one who pushed me to get out on stage in the first place, he deserved credit. Wanted half the money.” She laughed a little, “Ridiculous. Like I’m supposed to ignore the fact that he cheated on me and told me I was never going to make it for real when he left.”
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