“Justice systems that take place in the darkness are not typically—” he began.
“Oh, enough already,” I snapped at him. “God save me from hapless idealists. What would you prefer we do with him?” I tilted my head to indicate Simmons. “Let him go?”
“No,” Reed said, looking like he was about to deliver a punchline of his own, “that’s the kind of thinking that causes the death of Uncle Ben.” He paused and looked suddenly uncomfortable. “Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben, not the rice guy.”
“I got it.”
“I’m not saying these people aren’t guilty as hell,” Reed said gently, “and I’m not saying they don’t deserve what we’re giving them right now and worse.”
“Then what are you saying?” I asked, feeling the plane shift directions again. The shawarma was not settling well. Or was it the conversation?
“We have a justice system for a reason,” he said. “With penalties civil and criminal—”
“That these guys wouldn’t fit into at all,” I said. I laughed, but there was zero joy in it. “Try and imagine sticking them in—I dunno, the Stillwater prison. Human guards, meta prisoners. Give them their hour of exercise or whatever every day, under the supervision of normal people, and see how long it takes for Simmons or—” A particularly malicious thought occurred to me, “or your boy Anselmo,” I watched him blanch almost imperceptibly, “to break out.” I folded my arms in front of me. “The guards don’t even carry guns in human prisons, Reed. They’d be completely defenseless against what these guys could unleash. It’d be like taking a prison population and giving them all guns and telling the guards they had to go in with nothing.”
“I don’t have a solution, okay?” Reed said, and it was not a question. “I’m just suggesting that we’re making trade-offs that should be examined. In this case, we’re putting people in a black box without—”
“I know what we’re doing,” I said, in a tone that suggested I was so far done with this conversation that I didn’t even want to look back at it.
“Do you?” he asked. “Do you really?”
I tilted my head to look at him. “Unless you’ve got a better idea?”
He looked like he was going to argue more, but his voice fell. “The guy who got those Russians out? He was part of an organization called ‘Limited People.’”
I wanted to roll my eyes, but didn’t. “Great name for a human group.”
Reed held his silence for a second. “It’s from a quote. ‘Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty.’” This time I did roll my eyes. “You don’t think it’s true?” he asked.
“I think it’s a really great piece of fortune-cookie wisdom from someone who’s never had to deal with running a prison for people who fall outside the realms of ordinary law and power,” I said with a slight growl. “I mean, really, has there ever been a system devised to take into account these extraordinary circumstances?” I shot him a look of fire, feeling like I was burning as I looked at him. “Has there ever been this great a threat to basic security?”
“There’s always a threat, Sienna,” he said quietly. “So long as there have been people, there have always been others who intend them harm.”
“Yeah, well, my job is to stop that harm,” I said, looking straight ahead. “Full stop, end of sentence.”
I could see him out of the corner of my eye as the plane rattled on final descent. I knew he wanted to argue more, but whether it was because of the roughness of the landing or because he knew my patience was gone, he held his tongue. I sat in silence as we made our way to the ground, thankful for the peace that hung in the air—even if it did not come close to settling inside me.
11.
I led Simmons out of the back of the van, a half dozen guys with submachine guns arrayed around me. We stepped out into the cold, and I felt Simmons gasp as Minnesota kissed him hello. It was January and he was wearing a fairly thin coat. Do the math on that one.
Thanks to long practice dealing with the Minnesota chill, I managed to brace myself. I held tight on his forearm and pushed him forward. “Come on, let’s get inside,” I said with as much encouragement as I could.
The snow covered the ground in all directions as we stepped out under the portico and walked the half dozen steps toward headquarters front door. Simmons was dripping from the gel still, and I felt it freeze on him as we walked. I’ve read books where authors talk about the glorious, frigid majesty of winter. Every time I step outside on a day like today I feel the urge to track them down and give them a swift kick to the groin. Or the head. Maybe both. Simmons’s steps faltered, and I dragged him along, flanked by our armed guard squad as they opened the glass doors to the agency’s headquarters for me.
We passed through the doors into the lobby and a blast of warm air thawed me slightly. Ice had already formed on Simmons’s arms and legs, and he walked with a limp, jaw chattering. His lips were slightly blue. “Come on, let’s get you locked up, it’ll be warmer down there.”
I steered him through the security checkpoint with a nod from the guards and we made our way out of the sweeping lobby with its high ceilings into a metal door that led to a staircase.
“Where are you … taking me?” Simmons asked, shivering.
“The meta equivalent of prison,” I said, leading him down the stark staircase. The smell of fresh paint lingered in the air. “Which is also, not coincidentally, called prison.”
“I thought that was in Arizona,” he said, looking around wildly, taking it all in.
“Used to be,” I said. This was a pretty closely guarded secret, since the last prison had been destroyed twice. When we rebuilt it, they—the government—wanted to make sure that it was given every possible security precaution.
Apparently, I was the best security precaution they could come up with, so they stuck it here under the agency headquarters. It was still a secret to the rest of the world—including most of our employees—but since Eric Simmons was about to become a resident, I didn’t feel a need to lie to him about it.
I hustled him through the special security checkpoint and into the staircase to the prison entry. There were twelve armed men waiting here with their weapons at the ready, and another dozen waited behind a concrete and metal wall. I put one hand on a biometric sensor while leaving the other on Simmons’s arm. “I don’t have to tell you what the penalty will be for starting shit right now, do I?”
“I won’t get a nice, fluffy cell?” Simmons smarted off.
“I’ll kill you instantly by breaking your neck,” I said without emotion. “This is a high security area; the guards will shoot to kill, and if they fail, I won’t.” I pulled a scanner from the wall unit close to one of my eyes, leaving the other free to watch him. I saw him look back, trying to get a read on me. “You escaping custody out in the world is one thing; you causing an earthquake in the middle of my meta prison is a death sentence.”
I heard him gulp. I think he believed me. He should have.
The door opened without any fanfare. A firing line of armed guards stood to our right. We left our other escort behind and walked down a long, narrow corridor that looked like it had been shaped out of steel. It wasn’t; it was some metal harder than steel, some alloy whose proper name I’d never caught. They made meta handcuffs out of it, and it stretched a hundred yards straight ahead and slightly down, a grim warning that we were entering a place of darkness and seriousness.
Simmons took it all in with an air of uncertainty. His cockiness was all evaporated now, and so was his limp. He was dripping a little on the floor, but I saw his eyes take in the steady succession of men staring out at us from portholes with rifles to our side. The guards called them murder holes, and that was an accurate description. There was one way into the prison and one way only, and anyone unauthorized was to be riddled with bullets until such time as their body was nothing but splatters of tissue and bone.
I didn’t take any chances with safety.
&n
bsp; We reached the other end of the hallway of death and were buzzed in thanks to the camera above our heads. I pushed open a heavy door and there we were, in the Cube.
I heard Simmons make a gasping noise as he took it in. It was metal all around, too, with inlaid lighting behind bulletproof panels. There was room for eighty modular cells, with an option for another unit further down as maximum security if we ever needed to expand. For now it was just the Cube, though, so named because it was four floors up and down. Only the top floor was presently occupied, though, and not even fully. The rest were reserved for future inmates.
I pulled Simmons along the first row. We passed one of my favorite prisoners, Anselmo Serafini. Reed had run afoul of this particular pig in Italy a couple years earlier. I’d had his cell speaker muted so that he couldn’t be heard, and had personally supervised a reconstruction of his cell that allowed only a small window for him to look out of because—I’m not even kidding—every time I or another female guard came past his cell, the bastard would expose himself to us. While I considered neutering a valid option, cooler heads than mine prevailed, and I settled for giving him a two-inch by three-inch mail slot to look out on his limited world.
Speaking from experience, it’s a shitty way to go through imprisoned life. When I put him in the new cell, I’d threatened him with covering that last slit up as well. Happily, I’d now gone a year and a half without having to see his genitals. It had been a good year and a half.
I pushed Simmons down to the end where one of the guards was waiting with a cell door already open. “Are you putting me in that gel again?” His voice wavered. I couldn’t blame him; I’d tried it once, just for the experience. It feels like being trapped in a Jello mold, unable to move at anything other than a snail’s pace, and all the while trying to keep your head above the surface. It burns when you get it in your eyes, too, though I was assured it’s non-toxic.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. I felt a little pity for him, and he relaxed slightly in my grasp. “Our tech department developed a less invasive version of it for use when prisoners aren’t being transported.” I brought him up to the door and let him look into his new home.
“Aw, man,” he said.
The nullifying gel was still very much a part of the decorating scheme. It was a requirement for all our prisoners who had a certain level of strength or ability to project physical force. In the case of the permanent dwellings, though, we’d found a way to incorporate it into sealed packets that lined the cells. “It’s still in there,” I said, “ready to stop your quakes if you try and shake the walls. Also, I gotta warn you, if you burst open any of the packets, we will flood the cell up to your neck.” I pointed to an itty-bitty vent at the top. “We can get it completely full in less than five seconds, if you can believe it.” Anselmo had figured that one out in his first week, the dick.
“Where’s my bed?” Simmons asked.
“You sleep on the floor,” I said. “The gel packs are pretty comfortable. It’s like a waterbed.”
“You’ve tried sleeping on it, then?” Simmons asked, nonplussed.
“I have.” He looked at me in sharp disbelief, so I shrugged and elaborated. “I’ve slept in worse.”
“You—” he started, giving me a furious evil eye but apparently thinking the better of whatever he was going to say. I wasn’t super petty, but other inmates had occasionally irritated me enough that I pressed the FLOOD button on them as I left.
I sighed. “If you’re searching for something to call me that’s not going to result in me punching you in the kidney, you could try ‘Warden.’” I reached down and started to unlock his hands.
“When do I get out of here?” Simmons asked as he rubbed his wrists. “For exercise or whatever?”
“You don’t,” I said. “You’re in solitary.”
“What the hell?” His voice got sharp and high. “When’s my trial?”
“You don’t get one,” I said, drawing up to look him in the face as I pulled the chains free of him. I watched his body for a hint of defiance; I could put him down before he could raise a hand to me, but I’d probably just shove him into his cell and call it good.
“Where’s the bathroom?” he asked, peeking in. “Oh.”
“Yeah,” I said. “And it clogs if we have to flood the cell, so …” I tried not to make it sound like a threat, but who wanted to float in gel along with their own waste? Other than Anselmo, anyway.
“Man, this isn’t right!” Simmons said, looking at me in disbelief. “This isn’t fair!”
“I agree,” I said, admitting to him something I wouldn’t even say to my brother, “but it’s what we’ve got.” I shrugged. “It’s not like I can stick you in gen pop at the local jail, because you’d just break out.” My lips were a grim line as I stared at him. “I wish I had a better solution, but I don’t.”
“You’re gonna regret this.” His jaw was set, face was red and eyebrows turned down to show his growing, impotent rage. He believed me now.
“Because your girlfriend is going to make me sorry?” I didn’t say it with any spite, just calm resignation.
He didn’t bite on the bait, so I pushed him beyond the threshold and sealed the door. It closed with a quiet swish, leaving me staring at his disbelieving face as he stood in the gel-sealed cell, comically distorted by the clear-pack door.
I shook my head and turned away, but I could feel him watching me the whole time. I didn’t dare look back as I walked, though. I just kept going to the end of the row.
12.
I stopped near the end, as I always did when I brought a new prisoner down or came for inspection. I paused before a door not that different from Eric Simmons’s. It certainly wasn’t blacked out like Anselmo Serafini’s. I saw the prisoner moving around inside. He’d been watching the entry as I came in—they all had, really—and he stood as I approached. I flipped the switch on the audio microphone and speaker hidden somewhere in his ceiling came to life. “Hey, Timothy,” I said.
Timothy Logan walked up to the clear, distorted door and nodded at me through the barrier that separated us. “Howdy, Warden. How’s it going?”
“Not bad,” I said. That bluster when I closed the door on Eric Simmons? That was the norm around here. It was almost like the prisoners had to posture, had to wave their thingies around to show me that even though I’d stripped their freedom from them, they still had pride. The threats were … graphic, in some cases. Most of them were murderous, and not nearly so subtle and tame as what Eric Simmons had just offered. They were also, between our eighteen prisoners, almost universal.
Except for Timothy Logan.
When I put Timothy in his cell, he didn’t fight it, didn’t yell, didn’t scream or protest. He didn’t flail his meta powers around, used to getting his way and knocking down any cop that opposed him. That was the difference, in my view, between Timothy and the rest of them: contrition. That and humility. “How’s your time passing in here, Timothy?”
“They’ve let me have some books,” he said, nodding. “One at a time, only, always paperbacks.”
“I know,” I said with a smile. It had been my idea, and they’d been my paperbacks, from back when I was a prisoner in my own home.
“It fills the hours,” he said.
“Three months,” I told him, and he blinked at me, trying to process what I’d just said. “Three months and you’re out of here.” I changed my tone. “If you can handle good behavior for three more months.”
He made a slight incline of his head down the line toward Anselmo’s cell. “As much fun as it would be to scream and strip naked and generally make an ass of myself until they flood me in, I think I can probably handle that. I just want to do my time and get out, and if I ever see a place like this again even on the news, it’ll be too much.” His face went slack. “I just want to be … free.”
I felt a curious longing at that last word. “I hear you. Just keep what you’re doing and soon enough you will be.”
“You’re a good guy, Timothy,” I said, thinking back to someone I’d met in a similar situation—Antonio Morales. He’d tried to rob a pawn shop in Las Vegas and it had ended badly. I’d let him go almost four years ago and hadn’t heard a peep from him since. He’d shuffled around a little bit and landed in Seattle. I’d kept a watch on him, and not a whisper of trouble had come from anywhere close to him in the intervening time.
I desperately hoped Timothy Logan was going to be my next Antonio Morales story, because none of the other assclowns down here were showing much sign of redemption.
“It means a lot that you think so,” he said gently. “I just want to live my life. Make it up to the people I took from, and go on about my business.”
“Three months,” I said again and slid my bare fingers across his door. “Take care, Timothy.”
“You too, Warden Nealon,” he said and shuffled back to sit down on the floor of his cell. He bounced slightly as he did, the side-effects of the gel at work.
The walk back up the corridor of death was uncomfortable as always, the guns pointed at me as per my orders. I always thought about flying, but I don’t like to give my men a reason to be twitchy with their trigger fingers. They were well trained, but surprising the hell out of them by flying out of here at high speed did not strike me as the brightest move.
I reached the other end, passed the biometric scan, then passed the second checkpoint and stepped into the lobby. Before I even had a chance to draw a breath of relief at being out of that place, Ariadne was upon me. It didn’t take me more than a second to realize she’d been waiting in ambush, right outside the door. Her pale cheeks were flushed the color of her red hair, her face looked drawn, and I could tell just by looking at her that something was desperately wrong before she even got a word out. “What?” I asked.
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