by N X Hunter
Kitsuna nodded. She was grateful that Rayna wasn't treating Lee as too much of an inconvenience, or blaming her for causing it. Maybe she had seen in Kitsuna's transformation this evening that having him there today had benefited her, and by extension the team. Maybe the twins were just used to the need for interacting with 'normies', and the challenges that presented, and didn't really hold that against anyone. Still, she did kind of hope that Lee would just decide to go home - she wanted Soren here too.
"I could just call Lee and tell him we won't be back so he should go?"
"Yeah, I already thought of that - but I need to speak to Soren first if you do that to find out what particular lies he's already told him so we can keep the story straight, and if it turns out Lee's already decided to go home then it'll save you the trouble of having to lie too."
"That's... smart. Thanks," Kitsuna replied. She wondered if she would ever get as used to planning and lying as these people. Rayna wasn't even that great at it all compared to Soren, and she was still several steps ahead.
She sat watching in silence as both Rayna and James made their phonecalls, feeling a little bit useless. They were making things happen, and all she could really do was trail along like a trainee shadowing their supervisor. But neither of them seemed to expect any more from her than that, so she supposed it was all she was meant to do. It was hard being such a beginner, but then, hadn't that been what she'd expected college to feel like, even if this wasn't quite the education she'd been anticipating?
Rayna finished her call and spun her chair around to face Kitsuna. James was pacing around the office behind them, still talking on his phone, though it wasn't possible to discern from his end of the conversation whether he was getting what he wanted or not.
"OK, so Soren actually told Lee only half a lie. He told him that we had had to go to the police station to bail a friend out of the cells because she'd been arrested! Isn't that brilliant! So anyway they're out at a bar right now, but if you call Lee and say our friend is taking ages to process and then we are going to take her home, so we won't be back til super late, Soren thinks Lee'll probably just get a late train back to Astolat City and he'll be able to come here and help us with the Courtney situation."
"Oh, I mean, that's cool I guess," Kitsuna said.
On the one hand, it was pretty smart of Soren to say something as close to the truth as possible - it certainly made her feel less bad to only halfway lie to him. But on the other, she didn't really like the thought of Lee now worrying she had gotten in with the kind of people who get arrested, after only a week.
"You know what, I'm just gonna send him a message. It's believable enough that if we're busy with cops and stuff I wouldn't make a call, and I don't really want him asking a load of questions about it if he decides to go all overprotective..."
"Good plan. Although I'm sure Soren didn't make up too crazy a reason for her getting collared, like, hopefully Lee doesn't now think you're hanging out with a load of like, arsonists or some shit."
Yeah, she's right, I have to trust Soren more than that. If it was just underage drinking or some minor driving infraction or some other thing everyone does, then Lee won’t care, he's not some super law abiding angel himself. I really need to develop their skill of worrying about their lies enough to cover their own asses but not so much that they have anxiety about every possible implication...
"Hey Lee - I'm sure Soren told you we had to help a friend out with something. We're gonna be here for a while and then we want to go back to her place and make sure she's OK after, so I don't think we'll be back any time soon. I'm really sorry I didn't get to see much of you this visit but thanks for doing Soren's new tattoo, and I hope you had a good time even without me! I'll call you tomorrow, OK? Have a safe trip back to Astolat."
Deciding that the albeit slightly passive aggressive approach of wishing him a good trip without actually suggesting he goes home first was appropriate for not inviting any discussion on the matter (the last thing they needed was him volunteering to come along and help or something), she fired off the message, right at the same time James ended his call and nodded at both girls.
"OK, we're allowed to interview Klein tonight. But they want us to do it now, because they're changing shifts or something soon and can't be bothered to explain to the next guys that we've arranged to go in, or some other crap... I don't know, but I got Soren a pass too if he's coming, so he can meet us down there."
Chapter 19
The trip down to the penitentiary area underneath the West Wing of the Calibre Academy was a more complicated one than Kitsuna had imagined, never really having had a chance to explore the college grounds in any detail. The whole 'secret magic prison' part of the college campus had been left out of the VR tour.
The elevator she had used from the roof twice before was the first one they had to take, followed by a trip down a hallway into a secure area that James accessed using his faculty proximity sensor pass, then another elevator, then a big set of doors they had to be let in through after speaking to a security person via an intercom, following a retinal scan of James's eye.
Once they had passed that, there was a brightly lit waiting area, with digital windows that looked out onto a pretty beach. It was disorientating for Kitsuna, even though there had also been underground areas at her boarding school with digital windows that made it seem like they were above ground. For some reason it was more disconcerting here, maybe because she was thinking about the prisoners who would live out the rest of their lives down here, with this daylight from somewhere else the only daylight they would ever see again.
It wasn't even daytime. When James had said that this was a 24 hour facility, did he mean that the people inside didn't even know if it was day or night out in the real world, their sleep patterns controlled by technology?
She didn't want to ask. She had already heard how easy it was for people to find themselves down here for life - even something as simple as being too afraid to fight could result in a life sentence, and it was unpleasant to think too much about how her life was now in the the hands of the people who did the locking up. Or that in fact, it always had been.
There was nobody else in the waiting area, though there were comfortable looking seats, and a screen telling them to wait for assistance. They'd be able to watch something by changing the windows to viewing screens, though she knew without even checking her phone that they were already in an insulated area, and so that would mean they wouldn't be able to get any live broadcasts or stream things from the internet. Probably just some pre-recorded stuff and an archive of books or articles that visitors could use to pass the time, just like in 'normal world' places where digital signals were blocked, like therapeutic retreats where escaping from technology was considered part of the 'detox'. Or regular prisons.
Visitors though... The jail was part of the Academy, and clearly wasn't a place that people from outside of the mahou shoujo world could come to. When someone like Klein was incarcerated here - someone who wasn't a mahou shoujo or in any way connected with the network - what did their friends and family on the outside think had happened to them? Did the organization fake their deaths? Was there a family out there mourning for this guy, thinking he'd been in an accident? Or did the people just vanish, as if they'd mysteriously moved far away and told nobody? She for a moment felt sorry for him. He'd never see anyone he knew again, and they'd never know what became of him, however the network handled these things. She wondered if maybe that was why Courtney had visited him, after all. Maybe she couldn't let someone be that alone, even someone who had manipulated her, cheated on her, and destroyed her closest friendship. Maybe that was the kind of person she was. Or maybe she just wanted to rub his face in it. From Kitsuna's point of view, not knowing the girl, either was possible, but she wasn't even sure which she herself would be most likely to do in Courtney's shoes.
According to the clock on the 'PLEASE WAIT FOR ASSISTANCE' screen they'd been in the waiting room, or
holding area, or whatever it was, for about twenty-five minutes, time mostly spent with James going over the questions they wanted to ask and Rayna fidgeting and pacing about in frustration at the wait, when the door they had come in through clicked open again and Soren arrived.
"So I suppose you guys are way less excited about hearing about my tattoo now," he said with a self-deprecating smile, despite the fact he was wearing shorts and pointing at the inflamed, reddened, but nonetheless excellent looking sword Lee had drawn there.
"No, but once this is over I definitely want to know why your leg is wrapped in film like a cauliflower," Rayna said, raising one eyebrow.
"Lee said that was important. But I guess he could just be trying to make me look like a twat in front of Kitsuna," he shot her a smile.
Kitsuna laughed, glad he'd arrived and changed the mood a little. Things had been intense ever since she and Rayna had left the apartment, and it was almost nostalgic to remember the time earlier in the day when the sword tattoo had been the group's main focus.
"So, we're gonna see Klein again... I guess I'll have to break my promise to Courtney that if I ever saw him again I'd break his nose, what with all the security down here. It's gonna be tough, I never liked that smug asshole."
"You did at first. We all did. I know it makes us look like idiots to remember it that way, but it doesn't change the fact he fooled us all into thinking he was a nice guy who really loved Courts. Even James didn't suspect he was a jerk from the outset."
"Well, I... I only met him a few times, socially. But yeah, I was supposed to scope out whether he was bad news for one of our team to be around, and I didn't pick up that he was."
"Wait," Kitsuna said with a haughty look that was only halfway joking, "you vet the guys we get involved with?"
"So far that's not really going to be a problem for you," he said, with a half smile, "but well, only outsiders. And I only have to meet them and make a report on them and then recommend to the girl whether I think she should... Oh god when I explain it like that I sound like a big brother, don't I?"
"Or a dad," Rayna said, wrinkling her nose.
"Gross on both counts, can't we say 'annoying bodyguard' or something?" Kitsuna said, not unkindly.
She supposed it stood to reason that he'd be responsible for doing stuff like that. As a 'professor' he had excuses to meet with the people the 'students' socialized with, and it was probably better him keeping tabs than some other random person from the Academy. But she did wonder if that might lead to a conflict of interests in her case, when she was kind of involved with him. He had agreed that he didn't need exclusivity from her, and all but said he expected that somewhere down the line she'd get together with Soren, but what about other guys, if they were outsiders? Would he have to have a professional opinion about Lee, with reports and recommendations, if he ever became more than a friend? Did he have to do that even while he was just a friend? She realized once more how little she knew about what James's role really was here, jobwise, although he'd been faultless so far as support to them, and on a personal level in helping her get through all of this. It was hard to remember sometimes that he was, in his own way, just as much under the control of the organization as she was, and that that may mean he had to do some stuff that she and the other people he was responsible for might not like, whether he wanted to or not. The way that Rayna and Soren dealt with this was just to accept it and not hold it against him, and Kitsuna figured she'd have to do the same. Even personal relationships inside this unusual situation were coming with a sharper learning curve than she'd been expecting from college.
The sign on the screen changed to plain green, and they all looked around in unison as the other door opened. A man, around the same age as James, with dark skin and short hair dyed to an exotic teal color, entered the room. From his smart outfit, which had the look of a uniform about it but with no logos or livery other than a small badge that read 'Campus Security' on the lapel of the black jacket, he was one of the prison management. A guard, Kitsuna reasoned, would probably be wearing some form of armor or other protection, though she was really basing that idea on stuff she'd seen about regular prisons on TV. She could also deduce from his striking good looks that he was one of the descendants of the original mahou shoujo, rather than an outsider who had been brought in to the organization. Ever since James had explained about it to her, she'd been able to tell straight away - the people with the mahou shoujo genes had something about them, some strange quality, that wasn't there in other people, even really attractive guys like Lee. It was just chemistry, according to James, but it seemed to show itself in so many ways, even the way they carried themselves. Though perhaps there was a kind of positive cycle to it - the genetics made them attractive, which made them confident, which made them come across as even more appealing. She found herself liking this prison guy and wanting to listen to him, before he'd even said anything. Which was weird given that really, the prison administration were technically their adversaries when it came to their goal of getting Courtney back on the team.
"I'm sorry to keep you all waiting. I'm Mel Reyes, I'm the on duty manager at the moment. As you can imagine, it's been quite an... unusual day."
"Were you here when the storm came? Can you tell us what Courtney was acting like?" James asked.
Kitsuna got the impression the two men didn't know each other. Well, it was a big campus. But surely Mel Reyes knew who Courtney and Rayna were, if the local mahou shoujo team were so important to the Academy?
"It was an unpleasant situation. She was in the private room we have for inmates to meet with people - I say private, but of course, the room is monitored, we just don't disturb the people inside unless we have to. Given Klein is a non-violent inmate and Miss Montoya is a VIP, we made the room available for the meeting at her request. It's all in the usual protocols. So anyway, when we were alerted that a storm was imminent, a message was piped into the room instructing Miss Montoya to leave and meet with myself to be escorted out of the insulated area. This has happened a few times before when mahou shoujo have visited people here, and on every other occasion, the girl has left and made arrangements to return and complete her visit after the storm - I or whoever else is the duty manager will wait at the entrance for them to come back and bring them straight back in. There would really be no reason for anyone to refuse that - from the prisoner's perspective she is only gone for a few minutes, and the agreed visit still takes place."
The man spoke in professional tones, but it was easy to tell that he was still quite confused by the events of his shift today.
"So, Courtney refused to leave the room?"
"Yes. When she didn't make any moves to leave, I went inside. That was when she told me that she would not be going into the storm. She said she was going to stay right here with Klein, and, to quote her, 'let the others handle it'."
Rayna frowned, as though that sounded unlike something Courtney would say.
"Are you sure? I mean, she definitely understood the situation, right? She didn't just think you were bothering her about some other thing?" Rayna asked.
"Oh, without a doubt. We do have surveillance footage of the whole exchange, taken with our local network cameras, which can work inside the insulation field. I will hand all of those files over to you to help you with your case. But you will see that it happened just as I described it. Miss Montoya was calm, and I wasn't willing to take any forceful actions against her, so I told her that if she didn't leave, I would have no choice but to detain her, and that she would have to be tried for deserting her duties, the sentence for which would be life in here. She said, and again, I quote, 'OK, that is acceptable.' She didn't put up any kind of resistance when I called in my guards to take her to a vacant cell."
"Well, if she was calm and compliant about being arrested, why can't we talk to her? I was under the impression she had been given sedatives or something, and that was why we couldn't meet with her until tomorrow."
"That's th
e thing, it was only once she'd been alone in her cell for a few minutes - by which time the storm was over - that she began to act differently. She became very agitated, screaming and banging on the walls. She wasn't talking any sense, though I personally think she just realized the graveness of her situation and panicked. In any case, we have protocols for when prisoners become aggressive or distressed, and so, she was given medication and left to sleep."
James furrowed his brow, deep in thought.
"So, OK, what about Klein, since that rat bastard is who we're gonna get to see. What was he doing during all of this?" Rayna asked.
"Nothing noteworthy. He was talking to Miss Montoya about ordinary things during the visit - just asking her for news of the outside, really, and thanking her for taking the trouble to visit him. I know from his records that she has a personal history with him, and so we were somewhat prepared that things might turn nasty between them, so I was monitoring their meeting myself rather than having one of the guards do it. There was really nothing special about their conversation at all."
"And when she refused to leave, and then got taken to the cell - did he show any kind of reaction then?"
"Not really. I mean, he was smiling in a smug sort of a way, like he was enjoying the chaos, but then, there's not much I can read into that. He hates the organization and his psychological profile shows a strong distaste for authority, so it seemed normal that he would enjoy a scene like that... But he didn't say anything and wasn't stupid enough to encourage her. He just watched."
"Smug because it was amusing, or because his manipulation had worked?" Soren said quietly, voicing what Rayna and Kitsuna were both thinking.
James looked at him and nodded.
"OK, so, it sounds like that's all you can tell us about what happened. But where do you stand on all of this right now? I mean, from your perspective, how much trouble is Courtney in? Is this imprisonment a kind of 'cool down' thing or do you believe that she could end up with a full sentence?" he asked.