Prisoners (Out of the Box Book 10)

by Crane,Robert J.

  “It’s my safeword,” I said, and shot fire from one hand and nets of light from the other, not really caring which one hit him. He dodged between the two as I kept up the stream and advanced on him, flame penning him in on one quarter and nets of light spattering against the back wall with the other. If the net hit him, he’d be rocketed to the wall and anchored there so I could beat the living shit out of him until this sick feeling of betrayal passed. If the flame hit him, he’d be suffering from disembowelment by inferno. I wasn’t picky about which he chose, but I made sure he was going to have to choose one of them.

  “Pick your poison,” I said, striding toward him as he retreated, the panic rising on his young face. “Or I’ll pick it for you.”

  “You don’t understand, Sienna,” he said, visibly sweating as the flames I cast to his side dispersed in a billowing fire against the ceiling. The tiles were burning now, and I didn’t care.

  “No, you don’t understand,” I said. “I’m the line, and you’ve crossed me.” I opened my mouth again and blasted him with a net of light shot right from my gaping maw. I’d never done that before. I’d been tempted to go with the fire instead, but somehow the light won out.

  Timothy, with nowhere to dodge, caught the net in the center of his chest. Strands burst free and wrapped around him, hauling him back as I killed the bursts of flame. He slammed into the blackened wall as I drew the last of the fire out of the ceiling, snuffing it. Smoke hung thick in the air and a fire alarm rang in the distance. I fired four more nets and bound Timothy’s arms and legs tightly to the wall, which I realized was also metal.

  The sprinkler system kicked on, spraying down on me with vile-smelling water, my hair dripping down my face in seconds. I kept coming at him, and he watched me, trussed up to the wall like a pig ready for roasting. I was a foot away when I threw my first punch. I put all that hurt, all that betrayal—those of a lifetime—into that punch.

  Which is to say I pulled it, because I didn’t want him to die right away.

  His head rocked back and hit the steel wall, and he blinked hard. I could almost see little birdies flying in there as he tried to focus himself. “Uh …” he said, opening his mouth. Blood dripped out, washed free by saliva and the sprinklers. “… Hurlyburly?”

  I stared at him evenly. “That’s my safeword.” I got up in his face so I could look him clear in the eye, my nostrils flaring like I was Wolfe on a kill, smelling his fear. “There’s nowhere safe for you, Timothy.” And I jacked him in the jaw once again, and again after that, but stopped when his head lolled to mark his passage into unconsciousness. Apparently there was somewhere safe for him, after all.

  4.

  By the time I checked on Reed, Augustus and Kat, they had almost subdued the frost giant. I rolled my eyes hard at them, Augustus with a big block of dirt as a choker against the dude’s neck, Reed trying to pull the oxygen out of his lungs enough to knock him out, and Kat—tiny Kat—riding the frost giant’s shoulders and punching him pitifully in the head.

  I rocked him out with one punch and he crumbled, his ice armor shattering into a billion tiny shards.

  “Nice of you to remember the little people,” Reed said, massaging a black and blue contusion around his neck.

  “That looks painful,” I said, and knelt to scoop up some of Frosty’s shield detritus, which I promptly tossed to Reed, who caught it. “You should put some ice on that.”

  “Hilarious,” Reed pronounced. “What did you find in the—”

  “Four metas,” I said. “All down.”

  “Man, we couldn’t even take out their sentry,” Augustus said, eyeing the unconscious body of the frost giant. “Are you sure you need a team?”

  “Teamwork makes the dream work,” I muttered. I couldn’t remember who I was quoting. It was an empty platitude, and I could see by the looks on their faces that they weren’t any more reassured by it than I was. “We’re going to need meta containment pods. We have a Gavrikov, an empath, a short-duration pre-cog, and a … I dunno, a screamer, I guess, not sure what to call her.”

  “A screamer?” Kat looked up from where she was bent double, hands on her knees. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “She screams, and I think sound waves come out.”

  “That’s generally what happens when one screams,” Reed said.

  “Yeah, well,” I rolled my eyes, “her screams turn human tissue into jelly. Probably can break glass and bust walls, too.”

  “Ohhhhh,” Augustus said, nodding at last. “Man. I was wondering how you knew she was a screamer. I mean, my mind can’t be the only one that went right into the gutter—”

  “It was,” I said.

  “No,” Reed said, looking marginally guilty. “It wasn’t.”

  “I still have no idea what you guys are talking about,” Kat said, finally returning to standing, parking her hands on her hips.

  “We need to tag and bag these rejects,” I said, nodding at Frosty the Giant-man. I hadn’t heard any of them in my ear since Screamin’ Amber burst my eardrums, and I ran a hand down the side of my face. It came back bloody, and I realized she must have literally burst my eardrums, because there was a trail up to my ear canals, and my earpiece was missing. “Someone patch the cops in and have them bring in our restraints. Also, a chem kit so we can dose them.”

  “I’ll do it,” Augustus said, heading back down the hall and giving Frosty a solid kick as he did so. He fiddled with his earpiece and then started to speak. “Portland PD, this is task force Signet—”

  “Who the hell chose that lame name?” Reed asked.

  “I did,” Kat said, sounding irritated. “You wanted to me to interface with the Portland PD while you prepped—”

  “—the building is clear,” Augustus said, “no remaining hostiles on their feet. We need our chem kit and restraints, please.”

  “He’s so polite,” I said, staring after him. “I’d be barking orders.”

  “Did you … have a fight?” Reed asked, sidling close to me in the hallway.

  I gave him a hard look as I meandered over to Frosty and grabbed him by the sleeve, taking particular care not to touch his skin. “Why, yes. Yes, I did. While you three were dicking around with Frosty the Snowdouche, I was beating the ass off four other metas, including Timothy Logan —” Reed cringed, “—who is just so lucky he’s not a corpse right now.”

  “Who is Timothy Logan?” Kat asked.

  “Ouch,” Reed said. “But I wasn’t talking about that kind of fight. I meant with your …” He lowered his voice, like Kat couldn’t hear him anyway, “… gentleman caller?”

  “What is this, a Jane Austen novel?” I dragged Frosty along as Reed followed and Kat subtly did the same, a dozen steps behind him, plainly eavesdropping. “If you’re talking about Jeremy, he’s my boyfriend, and no, we didn’t have a fight. Have you lost your sense and sensibility?”

  “You just seem a little off,” Reed said.

  “He means that you are super, super bitchy today,” Kat said, oh-so-helpfully. “Like someone lit the fuse on your tampon.”

  I hurled Frosty bodily into the room with the others and heard a satisfying SMACK! as he hit the vault wall and slid down. (He was a meta, you sensitive souls, he was fine.) “No one lit a fuse on my anything. If I’m cantankerous, maybe it’s because I’m sick and tired of trying to keep assholes like this in line and seeing not one ounce of rehabilitation happening.” I threw a glance over my shoulder at Timothy and stuffed back a wad of resentment that threatened to surge out.

  “What?” Reed looked genuinely concerned, leaning forward on the balls of his feet like that might help him catch whatever I came out with next.

  “Never mind, it doesn’t matter.” I stormed into the center room through the burned-out door and gave each of the perps a good, solid, painful kick to make sure they were all still out. There wasn’t a twitch to any of their faces, which told me they were either safely unconscious or they were masters at controlling their pain.
I doubted it was the latter, because I’d already racked every single one of them up and knew that they made faces when they hurt.

  “It matters a little,” Kat said, easing into the room behind Reed, “if only because we’re hoping that if you get it all out … maybe we can hug, and you’ll go back to being kinda-happy Sienna again. Which is nice. It’s been really pleasant these last few months. You’ve almost been like a different person. But today …” She looked at my handiwork with the criminals laid out around us. “It’s like you’ve taken a step back to … I dunno, just-post-Directorate-raging-bull-Sienna?”

  I gave her an evil look, because I remembered damned well her betrayal of the Directorate, though I had (mostly) let it go a long while back. “How long have we been doing this?”

  Reed looked taken aback. “Uhhh … uhm … I mean, I know it feels like forever sometimes …”

  “Six years,” said Kat promptly. “Almost seven.”

  “Does it feel like it’s getting any better?” I asked. “Do you ever get the sense that we’re making a difference? That maybe out there somewhere, some meta’s making a decision not to be a heinous shithole and criminal just because we’re beating the asses of those who do and taking away their freedom? I mean, look at this crew.” I threw my hands wide to encompass this group that we’d knocked out—that’d I’d knocked out. “They did this, risking waking up in the Cube every day for the rest of their lives. Because they’ve made their choices, and we can’t trust them in society anymore.”

  “Uhh,” Reed said, sounding like he was picking his words carefully, “this sounds like the sort of debate you don’t usually want to have …” I suspected he was looking for the landmine that would inevitably blow his leg off.

  “What’s the purpose, Reed?” I asked. “Stop them and drop them in a prison where they can’t ever re-offend? Protect those outside by sealing these morons forever in stasis? Does it stop any of the other idiots who are yet to come? Or does it just keep these knuckleheads from causing any more trouble?” I hung my head. “I mean … we don’t even deal with the human threats out there, really, and normal humans can do more than a fair amount of damage without powers.” I felt like a ten-billion-ton weight had settled on my shoulders. “What the hell is the point? Are we even making a difference?”

  Reed looked pained, but his argument came fast. “I dunno, why don’t you ask the families of the people Thunder Hayes killed if you’ve made a difference. Or the survivors of Crow Vincent, or Yvette Mulcahy, or—”

  “I know their names,” I said softly. “I know … all their names.”

  “You’ve never been quite like this before,” Kat said, her face all screwed up in concentration. “Say … is this about that Supreme Court decision that’s supposed to come out today—?”

  Reed closed his eyes, then opened them, then rolled them all in sequence. “Subtle, Kat. Way to draw the obvious line.”

  I stood there silent for a long moment. “Yes.”

  “Oh. Well. Okay, then,” Kat said. She bobbed uselessly in the doorway for a moment then nodded once. “I’m gonna go see how Augustus is coming along with those restraints and the chem kit. I’ll, uh … be back.” She ducked out the door and disappeared into the hall in a flash of blond hair.

  “What if … it’s all been for nothing, Reed?” I asked. My brother stood there like a great statue, unmoving. “My entire life’s work, undone with one judgment.”

  “It’s not for nothing,” he said, and now he sounded like the empath with the soothing voice. “You saved the world, Sienna. No matter what else comes out today … they can’t take that away from you.”

  I heard his words, but it was like my eardrums were still ruptured, because they fell deafly upon them. We stood in silence, waiting for the restraints and the means to contain these criminals that I’d beaten. They were just a few more of a seemingly infinite number I’d removed from society, from doing harm to others, and I wondered if any of it, any of it at all, had ever even mattered.

  5.

  “It is grim up in here,” Augustus pronounced once we were all loaded on the private jet chartered for us by our new employer and up in the air. Portland PD had released the prisoners to us so we could transport them to the Cube, and we’d gotten grudging permission from the federal authorities to act as the ferryboat for these clowns. It was on the way for us anyhow, and I had no problem staring at these mooks for a few hours while we flew back to Minneapolis. They were all sleeping, anyway, save for Timothy Logan, who I’d trussed up properly in a stabilized metal frame that was a little like a chair with arm restraints. He couldn’t move anything but his mouth and he was wisely keeping that still presently, though his eyes were darting around, taking in everything going on in the plane’s cabin as we cruised at thirty thousand feet. “What did I miss?” Augustus asked.

  “Sienna is experiencing a mid-life crisis centered around a dearth of purpose,” Kat said. “Honestly, this would be such a great storyline if you’d just let my producers film—”

  “No,” I said.

  “Is this about that SCOTUS thing?” Augustus asked, brow all furrowed.

  “Ew, gross,” Kat said, sticking her tongue out in disgust. “Why are we talking about some guy’s SCOTUS? It’s like, the least attractive part of any human body, ever.”

  Reed just stared at her. “SCOTUS stands for Supreme Court of the United States.”

  “Ah ha!” Augustus said, pointing a finger at Kat. “Now whose mind is in the gutter?”

  “Look, Sienna,” Reed said, leaning over to me. The plane was laid out so that all the chairs were facing the middle; Reed and I were turned around to look back at Logan and the prisoners, while Kat and Augustus were sitting among them nearer the rear of the cabin. “I know this feels like a slap in the face of everything you’ve done, but we don’t know how it’s going to turn out yet. They could make a narrow ruling that upholds indefinite detention for meta criminals, or a broad one that allows for even more expansive powers—”

  “Or they could slap it down,” I said, “and turn loose everyone we’ve ever incarcerated.” Which was what the TV pundits had been predicting based on the hearing. I had avoided the hearing coverage at the time, but as we crept closer and closer to the release of rulings, I had an increasingly bad feeling about what was coming.

  “Even if they do,” Reed said, with the patient air of a professor lecturing a first-year law student, “no one’s saying we can’t jail these people.” He indicated our new prisoners with a wave of the hand. “But there should be trials and due process, not just arbitrary, infinite sentences.”

  “Yeah, I mean,” Augustus said, “it’s always kind of bothered me that we’re sending these people away for life without parole. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve dealt with some bad people, but … they aren’t all murderers. These folks didn’t kill anyone, for instance.” He looked warily at Frosty, who was head and shoulders above the rest of Logan’s lot. “Though not for lack of trying, in some cases.”

  “Let’s say they overrule indefinite detention,” Reed said, “maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe it’ll finally force Congress to deal with the meta problem.”

  “Because Congress is exceptional at solving problems without creating even bigger ones in the process,” I snarked.

  Reed sighed lightly. “You know that’s the sarcastic, offhand response.”

  “Yet also the true one.”

  “These people are our elected officials,” Reed said with an air of great patience, “and whether we are totally happy with them or not, they’re the legislature and this is their responsibility. They should pass a law making the use of metahuman powers in the commission of a crime a federal offense and a felony. Boom. That takes the burden of incarcerating people who can’t easily be imprisoned off the states and local jurisdictions, and adds a little extra oomph for prosecuting a meta who’s used their abilities to commit a crime.”

  “Gah, Reed,” I said, putting my hand in my face, “I am ful
ly aware of the flaws of the current system but I caught almost all these people red-handed in the commission of felonies.” I went on, undeterred. “Pretty much all of them resisted arrest violently—”

  “That’s true, they don’t seem to come quietly along, do they?” Kat mused.

  “To forever jail? Gee, I wonder why,” Augustus said.

  “—and so I’m sorry, but I don’t feel the need shed big fat crocodile tears over locking them up into infinity,” I finished, sitting back in my seat and crossing my arms. “These aren’t ambiguous cases, most of them. Metas aren’t shy about what they do—like that jag in San Fran. Think about the loot he had spread out over his shithole place. He wasn’t even hiding his ill-gotten gains.”

  “That was some bling,” Augustus said. “Did we take that into evidence? Because I’m thinking we’ve got enough that if one or two diamonds disappeared, ain’t nobody gonna—”

  “The SFPD took it into evidence,” Reed said.

  “Clearly Augustus isn’t worried about lawful consequences,” I said. “Kinda illustrating my point.”

  “This isn’t about contrition, or how guilty they are. Even in our new extra-governmental capacity, our job should be to catch these guys and help make the case against them. If they try and kill you, hey, tell the court about it. That should be our role, like in traditional law enforcement—help make the case for why these people should be off the streets. But it’s not our job to determine their punishment or the duration. We get to see the crime up close, and sometimes that doesn’t leave us with a clear head about who they are or what they deserve.” He looked significantly at Timothy Logan. “That’s supposed to be for a jury of their peers to decide, or an impartial judge.”

  “Let me know when you find a totally impartial judge,” I said, looking out the window. The sun was up outside the airplane, shining brightly in a clear sky. “I have a feeling you’ll be looking for a while, because everybody has feelings about these things. No one’s a philosophical blank, Reed. Some judges believe in the iron hammer of deterrence and some seem to think repeat-offender dickheads like Logan here just need a little belly rub to make them sweet, productive members of society.”