21 0 remember, p.5
21.0 - Remember, page 5
part #21 of Girl Out Of The Box Series
“This job does take you to some dark places,” Jamal said. “I’ve seen that and I’ve only been doing it for a year.”
Scott nodded. “She’s been doing it for over eight. She’s seen stuff that’s walked her into a state of mind where she’ll fire first rather than risk a life. Remember how she was before Winter did …” he looked around, lowered his voice, “… what he did to her? She wouldn’t kill anyone. Wolfe, by accident. Gavrikov because … there was no other way. She refused to kill people, remember?”
“I remember,” I said softly.
“Wow,” Friday said, “I can’t imagine a Sienna who goes around not killing people. It’d be like a bizarro universe. Did vegetables taste like cake there?”
“It was literally eight years ago, Friday,” Scott said. “Vegetables tasted the same as they’ve ever tasted.” He turned his argument back to me. “You’ve been there for the change—”
“She’s still my sister,” I said.
“—you know what she did along the way—”
“She’s not being tried for any of those things,” I fired back. “She was pardoned for all that.”
“—the pattern is … damning,” Scott said quietly. “She knows why she’s been on the run all this time—”
“Because someone framed her for the big crime,” Augustus said. “And it was well-timed, too, coming right after all those revelations about what she’d been pardoned for? Bing, bang, boom. You couldn’t have done a better job of knocking her down than they did.”
“I don’t care how dark you think she is,” I said, stepping up to Scott. “This is my sister. She hasn’t lost her way; she’s got a true north, she’s got a moral compass, and she doesn’t go outside the bounds unless the bounds are going to get someone innocent killed. She didn’t kill Harmon, I don’t give a damn about happened to Nadine Griffin—”
“No one does, she was suuuuuuch a bitch,” Friday said.
“—and I don’t believe Sienna has slipped the chain like a mad dog,” I said. “She went out there tonight and blazed through two hundred hired guns to save Angel.” I pointed at Angel, who rolled her eyes at me using her as a prop. “She didn’t nuke everything—”
“Which would have done the opposite of saving me,” Angel said.
“—she didn’t do any of the other crazy things she could have done over the last couple years when she was a criminal anyway,” I went on. “She didn’t go nuts and murder everyone in sight, or go on random killing sprees—”
“Yay for human restraint,” Augustus said. “Do we get awards for not killing innocent randos now? Because I thought that was just expected in a civil society, and I’d like some gold pinned on me if that’s how it is.”
“—and she damned sure doesn’t deserve what’s happening to her now,” I said. “Stuck in jail for crimes she didn’t commit and being judged guilty for defending people because of her past actions. That’s not how justice is supposed to work—in the dark, without counsel or due process or any of the protections we’re supposed to be guaranteed. I don’t give a damn about darkness, I don’t give a damn about righteous kills—my sister’s a damned hero,” I pointed at the screen again as they showed a file photo of her from after the battle with Sovereign, “who’s saved the world and saved all of our lives, multiple times. And I’m not letting her rot away in jail for the rest of her life.”
Dead silence.
Then Friday piped up: “Hell yeah! When do we bust her out?”
“We don’t,” I said, and that caused a stir.
“Yo, you just led the most inspirational speech since Jeff Winger went off the air,” Augustus said, after everybody had a moment to absorb what I’d just said. “If you weren’t calling us all in and winding us all up for a breakout … what the hell was that for?”
“Because we’re going to do what the US government isn’t,” I said, “and what you,” I looked sort of acidly at Scott, “claim Sienna wouldn’t. We’re going to get her out the right way, not by busting her loose.” I felt a steely determination flood me, and I looked at Augustus and Jamal, then Miranda, in turn. They got it, since they were in on the original plan. “We’re going to get the evidence that proves Sienna didn’t blow up our old office park in Eden Prairie for the hell of it.” I straightened, feeling like someone had poured me a steel backbone. “We’re going to prove her innocent. And to hell with anyone who gets in our way.”
8.
Sienna
A night of sleep on a hard cot and the lack of my healing powers meant that I woke up for the first time in my adult life with actual pain. In my neck. Apparently from sleeping on it in a kinked position.
If this was what normal people had to deal with—and if this was what I was going to have to deal with for the next umpteen bajillion years they had me locked up—hard pass.
I washed in a little sink that was right over my stainless steel toilet and dressed in my prison garb before Owens and her associates came in to strap me to my gurney and bind me hand and foot again after giving me a shot.
“For crying out loud, Owens,” I said as she stood back and let the night doctor administer the injection, “you woke me up in the middle of the night and injected me then, too.” I yawned, not entirely for effect. “You can’t tell me that was eight hours ago.”
“Orders from the top,” Owens said, her wry smile not giving me a lot of joy, “you, being special, get injected every six.”
“Taking no chances with the world’s most awesome succubus, huh?” I yawned again, squirming against my bonds. “Ahhh! AHHHH!”
“What?” Owens sprung to attention. “What is it?” She looked around, always keeping the corner of her eyes on me.
“My nose! I have an itch on my nose and you’ve strapped my hands to a damned gurney!”
Owens snickered and reached out, running a barely-there and slightly grubby fingernail over the side of my nose. Her pressure was on point. “There?”
“Other side, other side … that’s it,” I said as she moved to the right spot. “Ahhh.”
“All right, let’s get her moving,” Owens said to her cohorts, and off we went.
They wheeled me into a minimalist conference room that had been rearranged to the rough approximations of a courtroom. I had a little folding table in front of me. For what, I have no idea—it wasn’t like they unstrapped me, they just wheeled me up to it and—voila! Now I had a waist-high table in front of me to hold the Diet Coke I couldn’t even drink. Because my hands were bound. Along with the rest of me.
The prosecutor stood to my right at a slightly more august conference table, which he, being unbound, could actually use. He watched as they rolled me to a stop.
“S’up?” I called.
“Hi,” he said, clearly a little taken aback that I was speaking to him like we were co-workers or something.
The magistrate was sitting in all her fussy glory at a table at the front of the room, and once I was in place, she said, “All right, let’s get started.”
I looked around. Owens and her ensemble players, the prosecutor, the magistrate and me. We were the only ones in the room. Not even a court reporter. I spoke up. “Wait. Is no one going to announce you?” I stared at the magistrate, who stared back. “This won’t do at all. Come to order! This is the 1st Circuit Court of total bullshit and farcery, the dishonorable Sterny McClownshoes presiding. All rise!” I looked around. Everyone was already on their feet. “Good, good. Now all do the Hokey Pokey.”
Owens stifled a snort, but no one else found it amusing. Apparently the magistrate had given up on trying to convince herself I was going to be anything but contemptuous of the court, because she just frowned and moved on, turning her eyes back to the paperwork in front of her. But, I wasn’t done yet.
“Case number 1234567, the people versus Sienna Nealon, totally evil superbabe of—”
“Can we please just move along?” the prosecutor asked.
The magistrate was getting that look in her eye, like I was making her consider a gallows sentence. “Ms. Nealon—stop being a pain in the ass, or I’ll—”
“Objection,” I said, “that conclusion is not found in evidence.” I swear I heard Owens trying to keep from laughing out loud. She was making a wheezing sort of noise. A couple of her bit player guards were similarly shaking with laughter, the sniffing noises a dead giveaway.
“Overruled,” the magistrate said, slamming her gavel down for emphasis. “I’m finding plenty of evidence you’re a pain in the ass. Now …” and she gave me the full evil eye, “if you feel compelled to continuously disrupt the proceedings … I’m going to issue my own version of a gag order … one involving a literal gag.”
“Hey, lady, practice your kinks on your own time,” I said. But I decided to lay off for now, because even I could tell when I pushed things too far. She glowered, and of course I smiled back—not that she could see it behind the Hannibal mask—and we got down to it.
Turns out, the prosecutor didn’t really have a lot of what most courts would call “evidence,” but which was evidently (har har) not a concept taught at his law school/fast food management seminar, which doubtless took place at the comedy club just after open mic night. Opening statements were a laugh, inasmuch as I didn’t get to make one and his was just a short address to the magistrate that he’d present the “evidence” of my guilt during the course of the trial.
She nodded along, and I had a feeling that evidence or no, we all knew how this was going to turn out.
When he got down to the actual trial business, I almost laughed out loud on several occasions—at least up until I got too bored and tuned out. To wit:
“… and furthermore. Ms. Nealon was clearly heavily involved in the attack on New York,” the prosecutor said, waving his well-manicured hand in my direction. “In fact, we can place her very close to the scene of the destruction of the US Attorney’s office on the date in question.”
I clanged my head against my gurney and Owens looked startled by the noise. “Sorry,” I said, “just experiencing a physical reaction to the stupid.”
“Excuse me?” the prosecutor said. His brow lines were all wrinkled up, like he couldn’t believe I’d just mocked his idiotic assertion.
“Of course you can place me in New York on that day, moron, I was working there,” I said. “With the NYPD. I was with a federal agent when the US Attorney’s office fell. It was not me. It was a metahuman known as the Glass Blower, okay? I mean, for crying out loud, we’re like two seconds into this farce, and you’re already making provably false assertions.”
The prosecutor’s cheeks flared. “Prove them false, then.”
“Does that mean I get to call witnesses?” I asked. “Because I could call—”
“No,” the magistrate said.
“Then what the hell do you expect me to do to prove my innocence?” I rattled my gurney. “I can’t even hold up my right hand and super swear I’m telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
No one answered that, unsurprisingly. The prosecutor went back to spinning a conspiracy theory worthy of the darkest corners of the internet.
“… and furthermore, when Ms. Nealon engaged with the federal agents in Billings, Montana,” the prosecutor said, after a lengthy interval of me arguing with him about my inability to make nuclear blasts (in LA), “several were wounded—”
“Not by me,” I said. “I didn’t fight back there. I shrank to the size of an ant with the villain of the piece and nearly burned to death when the place lit off.”
The prosecutor was developing a searing look, one that he kept turning on me every time I interrupted his favored explanations for what had happened in my life. “Ms. Nealon clearly does not know of what she speaks.”
“One of us in this room was there,” I said, rattling my bonds again, “the rest of you weren’t. Are you freaking kidding me with this shit? I did not attack federal agents in Montana! I got the hell out of there, because I didn’t want to fight the feds. Or the local cops. Anywhere, ever.”
The prosecutor just stared at me for a minute. “And then, a month later, Ms. Nealon struck an army supply depot in Virginia—”
“What? No I didn’t,” I said, “I was in London during that time. Another entire country. And I’ve never attacked an army depot in my life. I mean, really, you guys suck at this. No wonder you had to change the rules, eliminate witnesses, and find the most hostile judge on the planet—seriously, did I accidentally burn down your childhood home with all your family in it, lady?” The magistrate was not amused, but she didn’t stop my roll. “Basically you have turned this trial into a long-ranging, continuously running, epic poetry slam about how much I suck. I mean, for crying out loud, you can’t even prove I was at some of these places.” I rolled my eyes and tried to relax my neck muscles. They were tense again. Is this really how it was for normal humans? Because the pain had been with me all day. Annoying. “So, here … let’s just cut the farce short and pronounce sentence. Because if I have to listen another two days of this dipshit just spinning stories about all the evil I’ve done—even when I was not even in the damned country at the time—I’m going to start offering commentary about your clothing choices, start speculating about your sexual partners—or lack thereof. I’m going to make this place into hell for you people,” I looked from the prosecutor to the magistrate. “Because it’s already there for me, and why should I be alone?”
That shut everybody up. The magistrate looked at me with icy eyes, apparently trying to either compose herself or her thoughts, and finally, she put her hands together, and spoke. “Ms. Nealon … I don’t think we need to beat around the bush here. You are guilty of significant crimes. The murders of Zachary Davis, Eve Kappler, Roberto Bastian, Glen Parks—”
“I got a presidential pardon with my name on it for every single one of those,” I said.
“—establish, indelibly, your character,” she said with great significance, looking me right in the eye. “Regardless of whether those crimes are something you can be held to account for under law is irrelevant. They color your entire history following them.”
“That pardon just doesn’t mean jack, does it?” I asked.
“On the contrary,” the magistrate says. “It means you can’t be prosecuted for those crimes.”
“Bullshit,” I said. “You’re prosecuting me for those crimes at this very moment. You’re just being very dishonest about it.”
The magistrate forced a tight smile, and I had a feeling she was enjoying this. “Your character defines your destiny. You’ve committed murder. You’ve admitted it. Your claim that you haven’t done the other things your record would suggest—murdering President Harmon—”
“This is about Harmon?” I nearly tipped my gurney over. “I did not kill Gerry Harmon.” The bastard killed himself on me. How was that my fault?
Her smile evaporated. “You’re guilty of being a murderer.”
“And you’re guilty of being criminally stupid. The difference is that my murders were pardoned because I saved the freaking world,” I said. “You’re welcome for that, by the way. No need to say thanks for your continued ability to draw breath and propagate your stupidity.”
“One good deed does not wipe out a bad one,” the magistrate said.
“No, apparently even a presidential pardon can’t wipe the slate clean,” I said, chuckling a little. It wasn’t funny funny, but I was past the point of caring and that sensation of being beyond giving AF was producing a weird lightheadedness.
“Ms. Nealon,” the magistrate said, seizing her gavel, “if you want to get down to it … I’m game. I find you guilty on all counts of the indictment.” She slammed down the gavel like a hammer, and it sounded like …
Like it echoed into forever.
“I hereby sentence you to life—your life term, that is, however long that may be—in prison, without any possibility of parole,” the magistrate said, and here, a very slight smile creased the corner of her mouth. “It’s time for you … to face justice.”
9.
“Is that what that was?” I asked Owens as she wheeled me out of the silent makeshift courtroom, the gurney wheels squeaking. “Justice? I didn’t recognize it underneath all the bullshit.”
“I don’t think you were the best advocate for your case,” Owens said, bringing me to a stop just outside a holding room with a single window. It looked dark. “I gotta put you in here for a minute. I wasn’t thinking they’d be done with you today, and now we gotta move you down into gen pop.”
“Yeah, make sure they do the turndown service when they prep my room,” I said, “and I’m not complaining you haven’t fed me today, but I’ve got this weight-loss halitosis breath thing going, I’m pretty sure, so the maids might want to leave a mint.”
“Why? I’m not kissing you,” Owens said with a smile as she card-keyed the door and it buzzed open.
“You sure? I hear having a girlfriend on the inside can really help your survival chances.”
Owens kinda froze at that and nodded her head at the other guards that were in close attendance. She leaned in where no one else could hear her and said, “This ain’t a joke, Nealon. You’re going in with the sharks here.”
“If I don’t laugh, I might just cry,” I whispered back. She pulled away from me, and I smiled tightly.
“That’s a great attitude,” Owens said, wheeling me into the small, seven-by-seven or so holding cell. “We’re going to leave you in here. If you need something—well, there’s not much we can do. You’re going to be locked in until I come back.”
“Awesome,” I said. “I’ll just hold this pee until I can’t anymore. Wet leg will be a great look when you wheel me down into the prison. I’m going to look super fierce coming in like this, until they see I’ve pissed myself.”
