They rolled me into the giant room that the Cube had been named for—a massive square, ringed on every side by cell doors. The place had changed since I’d been warden. Back then it had been designed as an isolation prison, one in which the inmates were not allowed outside of their cells, one in which no hierarchy of dominance and gladiatorial combat was allowed, because socialization did not happen. It was a true Supermax, every prisoner stuck in their cell twenty-four hours per day.

  Thanks to the Supreme Court and their ruling, that was no longer the case, and when I entered the big open space inside the center ring of cells, I found the downstairs had been converted to a social area, complete with steel tables and chairs bolted to the floor. A crowd of prisoners was cat-calling and hooting at me as I was rolled in.

  Ah, Thunderdome. A hundred metas enter. One Sienna was going to walk out.

  And there were about a hundred of them, shouting and yelling and cursing me and my name and my body parts and calling me body parts—it was actually like a re-staging of the riot outside the Minneapolis jail, without the gunshots and with everyone in orange jumpsuits. Slightly cleaner, slightly more stylish than the dirty hippies.

  No glass bottles or piss. Yet.

  “This is gonna go great,” Owens said dryly as she wheeled me in.

  “Just leave me trussed up like this in the middle of the pod,” I said as we went past the crowd, which was nominally being held back by the guards. The guards didn’t look enthused about what they were doing, and I couldn’t blame them. They were, after all, being forced to hold back superpowered people with nothing more than stun batons. If the supers decided to push it, the guards would die. I was sure there was some sort of threat in place that kept the chaos at bay—for now—but within seconds of entering I could smell the power imbalance in the room.

  It smelled like everything was about to bust at the seams.

  Owens guessed what I was thinking. “Anyone who’s had a behavioral violation in the last four week is suppressed. Like an in-house version of probation. So the troublemakers are generally weak, because they just can’t control themselves.”

  “This is sounding more and more like Lord of the Flies, but with putative grown-ups,” I said.

  Owens half-shrugged, not taking her hand off my gurney as she wheeled me. “I didn’t design the program or the social structure, I’m just telling you how it is.”

  “Thanks for the heads up,” I said.

  “They’ll think you’re powered coming in,” Owens said, whispering. The crowd noise was so loud and the metas so distant that they wouldn’t be able to hear her, even with their super hearing. “Everybody is when they get into gen pop. You only start getting strikes once you’re in, so …”

  “So I can bluff—until someone calls it,” I said. She nodded. “That’s useful to know.”

  “They’ll be wary of you, too,” she said. “Everyone knows your rep. But someone will eventually step up on you. It’s going to happen.”

  “I’m in the women-only section,” I said, looking around. There were no dudes but the guards, and suddenly I was thankful for small miracles. Sort of. Dude guards would still suck to have around, thinking they were more badass than me. Suddenly I was grateful Harry had taken out the worst offender I’d met so far.

  “Guys are in the section above,” Owens said, nodding at the ceiling. “They divided it off after the decision, I guess. Federal statute—and something about bad optics of having superpowered men able to prey on unpowered women.”

  “But not vice versa?” I asked.

  “No one gives a shit if some guy prisoner gets his skull busted open by a pissed-off woman,” Owens said. “They assume he had it coming to him.”

  “Bad assumption,” I said. I knew a couple of the faces in here on sight, and they were not nice faces. Not nice women.

  “So say you,” Owens said. “Whatever the case, it’s separated out now.” She cringed as a particularly virulent epithet reached us. “Man, you just make friends everywhere you go, don’t you?”

  “I’m a very popular person.”

  She and my escort group rolled me over to a cell in the corner of the square first floor. Up above I could see a railing boxing in the second floor, and above that, a solid metal ceiling that separated us from the dude levels of the prison. The place looked different but not that different. As we rolled past cells I peered in, and where once there had been simple squares that were set up for isolation, now they were a more traditional prison configuration complete with a hole in the floor for a toilet, sinks, bunk beds—all lined with the same plastic-looking gel walls that had been ubiquitous in my days here.

  “How do you keep the prisoners from using the legs of the bed to smash the gel packs?” I asked.

  “We don’t,” Owens muttered, “but it’s an instant three months of depowering if you do it.”

  That had implications. Part of the way we’d kept our inmates in check was the gel-coated walls and ceiling. They diffused energy powers and absorbed the impact of punchy ones. There were other, more specialized pieces of gear we had as well, but the gel coating took care of ninety percent of our inmates, rendering them harmless when in their cells.

  And they were always in their cells.

  But they also didn’t have anything with which to puncture the gel lined walls. No beds, no toilets, nothing went into those cells except biodegradable (read: flimsy) clothing, cutlery and trays for the food, all designed to be flushed down the toilet hole after a meal.

  “You’ve got a nice disaster brewing here,” I said, taking in the changes.

  “Tell me about it,” Owens said, bringing me to a stop outside what I presumed was my cell. “In here.”

  I looked at the residual lip in front of my cell. The same massive gel-packed door was still here, it was just wide open, as were the rest on the block. “Well, gee, I’d like to go in, but I think I’ll end up flat on my face if you try and roll me.”

  “This is where you get off,” Owens said, and I heard her working the strap that bound my left hand. “Try and play nice, will you, Nealon?”

  “I think we both know that me playing nice in here would only hasten my death,” I said as she freed my arm. I shook it, trying to restore the blood flow. I had red marks all in my skin around my wrist, and I doubted they’d go away anytime soon.

  “True that,” Owens said, and came around behind me to unbind my right arm. The other guards that were with her had backed off, forming a semi-circle like a second line of defense from the prisoners in the distance, still yelling at me from the center of the big, square room.

  “Is there a betting pool among the guards on how long I’ll live?” I asked as Owens stooped to unbind my ankles.

  Owens smiled, but did not look up from her labors as she unstrapped my right leg. “There is.”

  “I’m all in on me being the last one standing,” I said.

  “Sorry,” she said, moving to the other leg. “That bet’s already been taken. You can have the next bet out, though, or the one before it—I think it’s a year, and six months, respectively. Everything short of that has already been scooped up.”

  “And someone already bet on me to go the distance?” I shook out my legs, stepping off the gurney as Owens backed off. “Damn. That’s a sucker’s bet.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “It was mine.”

  I blinked. “Owens … you don’t even know me.”

  Owens just shrugged, one-shouldered. “Like I said … you got a rep.”

  “Let’s hope I live up to it,” I said, undoing the Hannibal mask myself and tossing it to her. She caught it easily. “It’d be a shame if you lost money.”

  “Also be a shame if you died, right?” Owens asked.

  I shrugged. “To some, surely.” She was standing between me and my cell. “Welp … I guess I should check out my new digs.”

  Owens’s face kind of mashed. “About that … you have a cellmate.”

  “You said that before,” I said. “I guess the warden doesn’t really take me playing well with others into account.”

  “I think he does,” Owens said, hesitating, “given who he assigned you.”

  That caused just a quiver. “Uh … okay. That mean it’s someone I know?”

  “Yep.” Owens nodded, and walked over to put the Hannibal mask on the gurney, then started rolling the thing back toward the entry. She paused, her radio beeping. “This is Owens.”

  “Owens,” came an urgent voice, “Burke is unresponsive in the break room, foaming at the mouth—lock down the prison.”

  “Shit,” Owens said, and waved her hand around. “Lock down! Back to your cells!”

  The crowd in the center of the Cube started to disperse immediately. They hustled, too, some of them moving meta speed to get back. A klaxon went off in the distance, and suddenly I was glad I didn’t have meta hearing, because it was like a tornado siren going off in my ear even with human hearing. I saw prisoners cringing and blanching, bending double in pain at the sound.

  Owens hoofed it toward the door, and her guard escort went with her. “Lock down in twenty seconds,” a female voice called over the speakers. “Lock down in fifteen seconds. Return to your cells.” The or else was implied.

  “Okay,” I muttered, seeing the other inmates disappearing into their quarters, shooting only resentful looks at me. It looked like I wasn’t going to have time to stretch my legs and enjoy my newfound, limited freedom of motion. Just before the ten-second announcement burst over the loudspeakers, I hurried into my cell and found …

  Someone waiting for me.

  “Shit,” I said. “You.”

  My cellmate was sitting on the edge of the bottom bunk, her wavy blond hair looking pretty dirty. Her eyes had dark circles underneath them, but she was looking at me intensely, laser beams pointed my way. I hadn’t looked in those eyes in a little over a year, when I’d help put this woman in the very cell that she currently inhabited.

  After she’d shot me in the head in a bank in Florida, coming closer than anyone I’d ever encountered—save for maybe Rose—to killing me.

  “June Randall,” I said, as my cellmate just stared at me, and I realized …

  They’d paired me up with her on purpose. With a person known—they had to know, right?—to have come within a hair’s breadth of killing me once before.

  The door closed behind me, the alert siren covering the clank of me being shut in with this person who had every reason to hate me.

  Someone in this place really, really wanted me dead.

  15.

  “So, June,” I said, staring at my one-time antagonist, “how’s it going?”

  June seemed a lot grimmer, more deflated than when we’d last crossed paths. Of course, she’d kinda had her boyfriend, Elliot “Ell” Lafavre die on her during that particular excursion, so maybe this was how one looked after that sort of thing … and a year plus in the meta pokey. “I’ve had better years,” she said. Her eyes were hard, but kind of languid as she stared at me.

  “I know these feels,” I said, running a hand over the gel-packed wall. It was not a comfortable moment, being locked down in a cell with her. We hadn’t seen each other since I’d helped save her life … which also resulted in her arrest.

  I was hoping she remembered the former more than the latter, but I was guessing, sitting in such a grim place … she was unlikely to have forgotten either.

  “I’m not going to kill you,” June said, tearing her eyes off me and putting them on the gel-padded floor.

  “Great,” I said, “but I’m guessing whoever paired us up as cellmates doesn’t know that.”

  The klaxon was still honking outside, and Harry’s words came back to me: Trust poison. Now it made sense.

  June’s power was toxin clouds she could produce from her own body. It was a nasty, asphyxiation and choke-on-your-own-bile kind of power. She glanced up at me. “Are you planning on killing me?”

  “I’m not planning on killing anybody,” I said. “But … I think we both know it might come to that, regardless of my best intentions.” I looked around. “So … you took the bottom bunk, huh?”

  She blinked at me. “Yeah. And if you try and move me to the top one, I might change my mind on that ‘not killing you’ thing.”

  “Fine,” I said, trying to decide whether I wanted to vault up there right now. It probably wasn’t wise, since doing it with my currently-human level of strength would reveal that I was depowered. Instead, I opted to lean against a wall. “It’s not worth fighting over.”

  She nodded. “So … how was the rest of your run?”

  “Got tired of it like you did, I expect,” I said, feeling the wobbling gel wall against my back. We used to have the prisoners sleep on it; it was like a slightly firmer version of a waterbed. “Finally wore out on it a couple days ago, and here I am.”

  “A couple days?” June looked up at me, brow all askew. “They usually put you through a trial before they bring you down here.”

  “Yeah, it might have been the shortest in the history of the Republic,” I said. “I doubt it was what the framers meant by a ‘speedy trial,’ but given how much bullshit got heaped on me in that short a time, I’d hate to see what a long one would have produced. Probably would have blamed the Holodomor on me somehow.”

  “That sucks.”

  “At least I know where I stand.” I looked out the window of our cell door, which had closed near-silently. “So … what’s the lay of the land in here?”

  June shrugged. “You probably know. It’s brutal. Violence is currency, and so are powers. If you’ve got a nice account built up, you’re cruising. When you’re out …” She snapped a finger, and it was loud, thanks to the metahuman speed with which she made the motion. “Game over.”

  “Thanks for playing,” I whispered, looking out at the half dozen guards just standing out in the common area. “Is everyone gunning for me?”

  “Not everyone,” June said. “We’ve known you were coming for all of twenty-four hours. Didn’t know when, exactly. But … lots of talk about ending Sienna Nealon. Lot of angry people out there.”

  “I don’t even know most of these assholes,” I said, looking back at her. She was the picture of perfect repose, just hanging out languidly on the bed. She definitely had her powers, though, that snap of the fingers proved it. “What’s their beef with me?”

  “Cops don’t do well in jail,” she said with another shrug. “You know that.”

  “That’s a good point,” I said, looking back out through the blurry window. Maybe if I was lucky, the lockdown would last a while, kill some time for me. Though it wasn’t like spending the afternoon in confinement with her was likely to run out the entire clock of my life sentence. I sighed. “They’re all going to be coming at me, then?”

  “Some won’t,” she said. “Some don’t know, don’t care about you. Some don’t want any trouble. They just want to keep their heads down and do their time.” She stirred, standing up. “Only problem is …”

  “Do they do defined sentencing here?” I asked. “Because mine was life.”

  “So was mine,” she said, folding her arms. “I don’t think they send the minor cases here, but … I haven’t heard a sentence yet less than life.”

  “What a charming gulag,” I said.

  “Was it better when you ran it?” June asked.

  “Probably not,” I said. “It was isolation, twenty-four-seven, because we didn’t have suppressant back then, and I didn’t want to deal with prisoners preying on each other.”

  “You didn’t want the prisoners to prey on one another? Or you just didn’t want to deal with it?”

  “Well, since I was always busy catching new ones, no, I didn’t want to deal with it,” I said, sighing. “Of course, I still had to at one point—”

  “That was the prison riot, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That was an ugly night. These Russians meta VIPs were coming for this soirée the new director was hosting, trying to put out some of my PR fires. Turns out, my old pal Cassidy Ellis was spearheading a prison break using them and a bunch of mercs as cannon fodder. I got doused with suppressant so I couldn’t superpower back.” I smiled thinly. “It did not end particularly well for any of them.”

  Except Cassidy, though she’d ended up in here for a while before the Supreme Court decision kicked her loose. To go on and become a criminal hacker doing all sorts of questionable things the world over.

  Good call, Supreme Court.

  “You kicked their ass depowered?” June was eyeing me.

  “Yeah, why?”

  June slapped out at me, meta-speed, and there was nothing I could do to dodge it. She stopped her hand inches from my face, looking into my eyes, and she shook her head. “No reason.”

  “Liar,” I said as she withdrew her hand. Well, now she knew, and she hadn’t splattered me across our cell.

  “What the hell are you gonna do?” she asked, walking back over to the bed and sitting down.

  I looked out through the blurry gel-filled window. There were still guards just standing out there. Looked like we were going to be in lockdown for a while longer. “I dunno,” I said, “but I’ll figure something out.” I forced a smile. I was getting good at that. “I always do.”

  16.

  The lockdown didn’t end until the next morning, and after a while they announced lights out, which made it official: I had my first bed time since I’d escaped my mother’s house.

  Which made sense, because really, my first warden was my mom.

  June didn’t say much, and I didn’t have much to talk about, either, so we just sort of went to bed by mutual agreement.

  I woke to an announcement: “Lockdown is ended,” said a bored, male voice over a loudspeaker in our cell. “Get ready for prisoner count.”

  “Breakfast time,” June said, and I could hear her rustling the blankets below.

  “Oh, good,” I said, because I hadn’t eaten since yesterday. “How’s the food?”

 

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