“You surrendered those rights when you became a murderer,” the magistrate said.

  “‘Allegedly,’” I fired back. “Unless you’re pronouncing my guilt this very minute. And I can’t tell you how fair I feel this trial is already—what with the person who’s judging me, jurying me—is there a verb for that? I mean, other than in this instance, where I believe the proper term would be ‘screwing’—”

  “Ms. Nealon!” The magistrate was back on her feet after a short sit, slamming her gavel down. “You will control your outbursts or—”

  “Or what?” I asked, finally getting as fully over-the-line here as in any fight for my life because … shit. This was a legal fight for my life, and it seemed like they planned to strap me to the gurney and tape my mouth shut. “You’ll hang me? Seems like I’m already heading that way, Your dis-Honor. Lemme tell you something fun about people deprived of hope and their rights—they don’t take it well.” I rattled the chains that undergirded the copious amounts of leather straps keeping me down. “You want me to what? Keep my damned mouth shut while you railroad me? As though the long list of my myriad crimes doesn’t give you enough cause to sentence me for a long time anyway? You gotta stack the deck completely against me by denying me a lawyer and being a firmly committed asshole against my cause? What the hell is the point of me being here if I don’t get to mount a defense? What is the point of a trial if I don’t get to have an advocate examine the evidence of my apparently innumerable crimes and try to construct a defense? Hell, if you wanted me, an American, familiar with my rights, to shut up and just take this injustice—I mean, really, do you even realize who you’re talking to? You should have tried me in absentia, you biased dumbass—”

  “Silence,” the magistrate said, hammering her gavel impotently. “Silence. Silence! SILENCE!”

  “Come on, Nealon,” one of the guards, a thin woman in a guard uniform with a nametag that read OWENS, put a hand on the back of my upright gurney and tipped me, starting to roll me back. “I think you’ve done enough damage to your cause for one day.”

  “You want to be my lawyer?” I asked Owens. “Looks like you’re the best I can get at this point. Do you work pro bono?”

  Owens was a white girl, looked to be in her thirties, and her eyes danced with amusement, but she hid the smile as she rolled me back. Another guard, a big dude, got in beside her to help steer me away. I had a full escort, ten or twelve peeps walking with full assault rifles and black helmets and the full Gestapo thing going on. Owens had her helmet visor up, and strands of her hair were sticking out the sides.

  “The defendant is remanded into the custody of the state,” the magistrate said, tone back to normal, all coming back to right with the world now that my sarcastic ass was being removed from her courtroom.

  “Awesome,” I called back over my shoulder as best I could, what with my head being strapped down. “I’ll let you know how the accommodations are. I’m expecting five stars, turn-down service, the whole works, especially given how much I’ve been paying in taxes prior to my unfortunate interruption in life.

  “Get her out of here!” the magistrate shouted.

  “Was it something I said?” I asked Owens as she wheeled me out of the courtroom.

  Owens didn’t answer immediately. She seemed to wait until the doors closed behind me. “Maybe it was something you did,” she said, whispering like she was afraid the magistrate would hear and slap her around just for having a little fun with me. Because we couldn’t have that. It might take some of the seriousness out of this railroading they were about to perform on me.

  3.

  “Better brace yourself,” Owens said as they rolled me toward a set of double doors to the outside. A couple courthouse guards were waiting there, lacking the full battle rattle of Owens and her team. The courthouse guards looked tense, a little shifty, like they were girding themselves for a particularly unpleasant duty. I’d been brought to this show trial hearing straight from the Cube, where I’d been processed and whatnot and left to cool off in a quiet room by myself for a few hours before the doctor and warden had come in to talk to me.

  Apparently, judging by my performance in front of the magistrate, I had not cooled off enough. Whatever, it was summer. Cool was optional.

  The guards threw the double doors open and I was hit by a blast of summer heat and greeted by flashbulbs and flying obscenities. Tough to decide which of those was less pleasant. The humidity was off the scale, and my hair wilted beneath the various straps, frizzing to the max as I was rolled out into the madness. The sun was beating down brutally, and it looked to be nearing midday.

  There was a crowd waiting outside the courthouse, with metal barriers and a whole ton of guards lined up, separating me from a crowd of angry reporters and—somehow—an even more pissed-off crowd of protestors.

  What were they protesting? Me, apparently.

  I saw signs suggesting various punishments for me that lined up perfectly, as near as I could tell, with the magistrate’s intentions. HANG HER, one read, and it had a magic marker sketch of a stick figure with dark hair in a noose with stick figure legs dancing beneath it in midair. Clearly it was not me, because even after taking off some poundage in the last year, no one was ever going to mistake me for a stick figure.

  “Just ignore them,” Owens said over the deafening roar. I couldn’t tell if she was talking to me or the guard rolling me alongside her.

  “It’s cool,” I said as someone close to the barricade shouted, calling me an “effing bitch.” Then they spat on me. The mask caught most of it, fortunately. “I’ve been called worse.” Then someone else hurled the c-word at me. “Like that. That’s worse.”

  A bottle cracked off my mask and the crowd roared its approval. Warm liquid splattered through the holes, and I was very grateful to find it was lemonade, sweet and slightly sour.

  “Hustle up,” Owens said, and they started to double time it, running me forward to a waiting van.

  “What the hell did I do to these people?” I asked as another thrown bottle—this one of yellow liquid that I suspected was not lemonade—hit my abdomen and, thankfully, bounced off. It hurt a little, though, not gonna lie. Everything seemed to hurt more with my meta powers suppressed.

  “Ms. Nealon, how do you respond to comments on the internet that—” someone shouted from across the barricade to my left.

  “I never read internet comments!” I shouted back as I passed. “Sanity does not lie that way.”

  I rattled the chains as the crowd roared again. Someone chucked something else at me, but it missed. Lucky these losers apparently never played softball. “What the hell is wrong with you people? You throw like boys who’ve never masturbated,” I shouted through the mask. “Build some arm strength, you little bitches.”

  I figured no one would hear me over the mask and the crowd noise, but apparently someone did, because I got called the c-word again. Or maybe they were just hurling it around in general. Classy bunch, these protesters.

  “You’re just winning friends all over the place,” Owens said as the big aluminum barricades rattled, the weight of the crowd pressing in on them. I wasn’t highly experienced at crowd control, but it seemed to me there were about half as many officers here as I’d have wanted to control a group this size. Or this angry.

  “Seriously, are these the families of all the mercenaries I’ve ever—allegedly—killed?” I asked. “Because otherwise, I’m at a loss as to who all I pissed off to generate this much of an organized response.”

  “I like how you threw ‘allegedly’ in there,” Owens said. We were about ten feet from the van, and the lead guard element already had the doors open in anticipation of shoving me in. “As though you have a real chance of beating that particular rap at trial.”

  “Honestly, I’d plead self-defense on any mercs that have crossed my path. And I’m already looking ahead to the appeal,” I said as a glass bottle bounced off my mask. Could have been my skull. Still stung. “Ouch.”

  “Your aim sucks!” Owens shouted into the crowd. She was dripping with something and it didn’t smell remotely good. She didn’t seem all that fazed, though.

  “Seriously, little girls in softball leagues the world over could give these boys some pointers,” I said. Which was unfair, because the crowd was at least fifty percent pissed-off women. It was also probably unfair to overgeneralize, but they were grubby as hell, fitting my every preconception of professional protesters turned out by the organizing arm for some group or another that had apparently taken exception to my very existence. I caught a NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE sign out of the corner of my eye and a FRY HER sign right next to it. This one had a stick figure drawing of me in what I assumed was supposed to be an electric chair, though it looked more like a toilet. “It seems like this group has a well-reasoned set of arguments. I suspect the court is going to get a flurry of carefully worded amicus curiae briefs from them just as soon as they’re done throwing piss and invective at us.”

  “They’re throwing piss and invective at you,” Owens said, sounding quite put out about it. “The rest of us are just your collateral damage. As usual.”

  “Sorry,” I said as they wheeled me up to the van and stopped. “If I had it my way, you wouldn’t be in the line of fire here. Any of you.”

  “If you had it your way, you’d probably still be out roaming free,” Owens said, spinning me around so I could see the whole crowd.

  And … shit. It was a big crowd.

  “I surrendered,” I said as they started to lift me up into the van. The crowd was really pushing against the barricades now. They were scraping against the pavement, producing a loud screeching noise that was mostly covered by the screamed insults and obscenities. Cameras were rolling at the periphery, documenting the about-to-unfold riot.

  “Forgive me for not being impressed,” Owens said. The wheels of my gurney cart thumped as they brought me into the van and Owens took care to tilt me back so I didn’t whack my head. A bottle hit me in the chest but didn’t break. Ow. Like a punch to the sternum.

  “I’ll forgive you only because you’re presently drenched in urine that was presumably meant for me,” I said. “It’s nice to be home. Nobody throws a welcome party like Minneapolis.” Another bottle, this one caught me in the throat. “Your aim is not improving, you worthless turds! Don’t you people have jobs to get to?” I looked at the messy clothing around me. Seriously, where did these people come from? “Oh. Right. You’re probably already at work.”

  “It’s a good thing they can’t hear you,” Owens said as she tilted me over and started locking my gurney wheels into place. “I don’t think it’d make this situation any better.”

  “I’m not about making situations better at this point,” I said. “Besides, is there anything I could say that would make these people not want to skin me alive right now if given half a chance?”

  Owens tossed a look out of the van as the doors slammed from outside, my escort squad forming a perimeter around the vehicle. Now garbage and bottles were pinging against the van’s sides. One hit the front windshield and spider-webbed it. “Get us the hell out of here!” she shouted at the driver.

  “You want me to run people over?” the driver called back. He didn’t sound particularly happy about it, but I saw his point—and about ten heads staring up over the dashboard from outside, waving hands angrily at me and shouting a dozen different terrible things. Also at me.

  “Just tell them I pushed the accelerator to the floor,” I said. “Everyone will believe it and you’ll get off scot-free.”

  “Give the cops a second to clear them off—” Owens started to say.

  A gunshot rang out, and the back window cracked, a spider web appearing in the glass around a central point where a bullet had caught in the bulletproof pane.

  “GO GO GO!” Owens shouted. People scrambled to get out of the way, and I saw a Minneapolis cop forcefully shoving people out from in front of the van. He waved the driver on, and the driver responded by laying rubber down on the pavement as another bullet hit the back window and stuck there next to the last. Two bullets, just sitting there, lodged in the bulletproof pane.

  Another day in the life of Sienna Nealon, and everyone in the van was freaking the hell out except Owens.

  “Good times,” I said as we hit the street, skidding sideways as the driver tried to drift like Angel but wiped out a half dozen garbage cans and hit the curb instead. He damned near flipped us, too, but managed to get things straightened out in time to not do so. We sped down Washington Avenue like a rectangular bat out of hell, sirens on the roof raging.

  “Someone just tried to kill you,” Owens said, ducked down next to my hand, which was secured into place so tightly I could barely feel it at this point. “Does that even register with you?”

  “If I got all worked up and flustered every time someone tried to kill me, I’d never get any sarcasming done,” I said. “And one thing you need to know about me if you’re going to be guarding me, Owens—my sarcasming is more important to me than anything else at this point. You might say it’s the last thing I’ve got left.”

  “Other than your life,” Owens said.

  “If I lose my sense of humor, my hollow shell of a life isn’t going to be worth living,” I said, letting my gaze creep around the van interior. Buildings were rushing by outside the windows. I caught the sign for JD Hoyt’s Supper Club and realized we must be heading toward 394 West.

  “Well, you are something else, Nealon,” Owens said. Was that grudging admiration? I didn’t dare to hope.

  “You guys might want to strap in,” I said.

  Owens’s eyes slitted in suspicion. “Why?”

  “Because we’re about to get on 394 West, heading back to the Cube,” I said. “And if I know that—”

  “Take us down to 8th, then to Highway 55 and get on it,” Owens said, immediately, to the driver. “Sirens on, ignore the lights. When you get to Lake, hang a right and keep going till you get to 35 West. Don’t stop for anything short of Armageddon. We need to vary our route.”

  “Smart cookie,” I said to Owens, who looked at me with a fine glare. Not as fine as the magistrate’s, but not bad. Six outta ten, maybe.

  “Why don’t you do us all a favor and keep us entertained with your lie-down comedy act until we get back,” Owens said, eyes searching for threats all around out the windows. Seemed like they were out there, and in high numbers based on the sheer volume of haters we’d just left behind.

  “Haha, ‘lie-down comedy act,’” I said. “Because I’m strapped to a frigging gurney like a mental patient. Hilarious.”

  “You’re not the only one who uses humor to defuse tension,” Owens said, still staring out the windows looking for trouble.

  “Yeah,” I said, enjoying the feel of blood puddling in my head as I settled back, the prison van rattling through the streets of Minneapolis, “I’ve just got more practice at it than anyone else.” To this Owens did not reply, her eyes urgently searching for threats, and for my part, I shut the hell up, contemplating—at last—just how thoroughly I must have failed as a hero to have that damned many people in my own hometown that hated my guts.

  4.

  “Sounds like that was an eventful ride,” Warden William Smithers—I mean, Warden Bletchely said as the guards rolled me back down the ramp into the massively metal entry to the Cube. Things had changed since I was the warden of this place, but the entry? It was pretty much the same. It looked like a chrome-plated future, like something out of the Terminator movies, where the machines had won and built this as their lair.

  “We got covered in piss and shot at,” Owens said, a little ire leaking out as she rolled me down to the main door into the Cube, a super huge interlocking dramatic thing that hadn’t been here in my day. It almost demanded an equally dramatic sign hung above it, something like, ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE. “If that’s your idea of an event, remind not to ever go to a concert with you.”

  The warden snickered. Apparently he found Owens just as delightful as I did. He hovered his pasty face into my view. “And how’s our star prisoner today?”

  “I only caught, like, ten percent of the piss thrown at us that Owens did, so I’m pretty good, comparatively,” I said. “Is breakfast going to be served soon, or do I have time to attend a yoga class first?”

  Bletchely laughed like I’d just said the funniest thing ever, throwing back his head of thinning, reddish hair that was long on the sides and utterly lacking on the top, a shiny, bereft spot of scalp catching the glare of the overhead lights. “I can’t tell you how excited I am to have you as one of our guests, Ms. Nealon.”

  “You don’t need to tell me how excited you are, Warden. Your excitement shows in the tenting of your trouser crotch. Kinda small, I know—probably a half-man kind of tent, but still—”

  “Hilarious,” he said in a voice that suggested I was anything but. His face was tight, too.

  “Yeah, I’m taking my lie-down comedy act on tour,” I said. “Owens is going to be my manager. I think we’ll hit all the major cities—or maybe, given what we just saw, the major cities will hit us—with riots.”

  “Leave me out of your life plans,” Owens muttered under her breath as the big, dramatic door opened. An elevator waited beyond, guards holding the door for us.

  “Did the prisoner take any hits?” Bletchely asked. “Do I need to have the doctor look her over?”

  “I’m sure she’s fine, but you could ask her yourself if you were concerned,” I said. “The mask makes it difficult for her to speak, but not impossible, as witnessed by her ability to still piss people off even in while muffled—”

  “I’m going to look into a gag for her,” Bletchely muttered.

  “Don’t do it on my behalf,” Owens said. “Her smartassery in the face of an absolutely nutballs morning is the only thing keeping me from telling you where to stick this job.” She made a show of checking her watch. “It’s barely noon.”

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26