Action Figures - Issue Three: Pasts Imperfect (28 page)

“Thank you so much,
everyone,” I say, “and yes, that includes you, Captain Forgetful.”

“I got you a present,” Matt
mumbles.

“I hate to eat and run on
you, but I have to eat and run. I’m meeting my dad at home at five so I need to
catch the bus. I’ll see you all in the morning.”

I trade hugs with everyone,
throw my backpack full of birthday schwag over my shoulder, and waddle my way
toward the bus stop up the road. Oof. Shouldn’t have eaten so much. I’m not
going to have any room for dinner with Daddy.

It’s a struggle not to lapse
into a food coma during the ride home. No worries. Once the game starts and the
Bruins are kicking the Canadiens’ collective ass, you won’t be able to put me
down with a tranquilizer dart full of Thorazine and Nyquil.

The bus lets me off at the
end of my road. About halfway home, a black sedan rolls past me and comes to a
stop along the curb. A woman and two men in matching black suits get out. One
of the men stands a head taller than the woman, and the other man is a head
taller than that.

“Miss Hauser,” the woman
says, producing a leather wallet from an inside jacket pocket. She flips it open
to expose a badge and an ID card. “Agent Julie Fassbender, Homeland Security. I
need to speak to you.”

Feds? That’s no shock; the
dress code is a dead giveaway, but why would a federal agent want to talk to
me?

“Okay,” I say as the big
agent moves in a slow, wide circle around me. That’s when I realize: We’re on a
stretch of my street that is undeveloped; it’s all wooded area here. The
nearest houses are several yards in either direction, and neither is within my
line of sight. I’m not entirely secluded, but there aren’t any handy witnesses
who might wonder why some suspicious strangers are chatting up their neighbor
and step outside to say something. It was no accident they stopped me here, and
that realization causes my palms to start itching, but I have to play it cool.
This could be nothing, after all.

Agent Fassbender dispels
that theory right quick, and what she says causes my brain to lock up. “We
received notification from the Protectorate earlier this afternoon that you
violated North American airspace this afternoon, in defiance of a ground order
issued against you on March 9.”

That was only a week ago?
Man, time flies.

Whoa, wait, what? “Excuse
me?” I say.

“Miss Hauser, please don’t
play dumb,” Fassbender says. “Your Lightstorm identity is known to us, so I
strongly recommend that you don’t —”

“That’s not what I’m talking
about. What do you mean, I defied Concorde’s ground order? I haven’t been up
once since he took my transponder.”

The shorter of the male
agents sighs loudly. “Bender, come on.”

Fassbender disciplines him
with the merest of glances in his general direction, then turns her steely gaze
back to me. “Miss Hauser, this matter is not up for debate.” She reaches into
her jacket pocket again, and this time she brings out a folded sheaf of paper,
which she shows to me. “I have a warrant for your arrest, to be executed
immediately.”

Her free hand pushes the hem
of her jacket aside and hovers near a pistol tucked in a belt holster. The
short agent makes a similar gesture, and a rustle of cloth behind me tells me
the big agent is doing the same.

“Concorde told us you’d be
cooperative,” Fassbender says.

Every human being has
something called a fight-or-flight instinct. It’s a primal impulse that impels
a person facing a serious threat to survive by any means necessary, whether
it’s to go on the attack or to run like hell and hope the other guy isn’t
faster. For super-heroes in particular, this is a very important instinct.

However, the urge is so
powerful and deep-rooted, it’s extremely easy for reason and rational thought
to become overwhelmed. Right now I am channeling every ounce of will into
pummeling my fight-or-flight instinct into submission, because neither option
would end well for me. These are federal agents; whether I blast them or take
to the sky, I’d only be piling the crap-heap so high it’d need a flashing red
light to warn off low-flying airplanes.

“I’m not going to fight
you,” I say in a hoarse whisper, my throat tight and dry. “I’m surrendering,
okay?”

The agents’ hands stay near their
sidearms. I’m sure they’ve heard that line before. The big agent moves in
cautiously. I try not to flinch in surprise as he slips something around my
neck. The thing beeps, and suddenly I feel five hundred pounds heavier. The big
agent catches me under the arms before I sag to the sidewalk.

“Suppression collar is
active,” he says as he escorts me toward the back of the car, reciting the
Miranda rights as we go. Everything below my neck is moving in slow-motion.
It’s like I’m trying to walk through peanut butter.

Biggie folds me into the
back seat and slides in next to me. Fassbender takes out her cell phone as she
and the other guy climb into the front.

“Byrne control, this is
Agent Fassbender with Homeland Security,” she says, adding on her badge number.
“We are en route with one in custody.”

That’s when it really hits
me, and the only thing keeping me from puking my guts out in white-hot terror
is this suppression collar thing.

I’m a prisoner in federal
custody. I’m going to prison.

I’m going to Byrne.

TWENTY-FOUR

It scares me how quickly I
lose track of time sitting in my cell, a windowless white box maybe ten feet
square, equipped with nothing more than a cot and a weird sink/toilet
combination.

(Oh, yeah, and a small black
sphere in the corner above the cell door, which I’m fairly certain is a camera
— which is the main reason I haven’t dared to use the sink-slash-toilet, even
though I have to pee so bad it’s starting to hurt.)

Is this what it’s like for
the prisoners here? Sealed into a colorless coffin, the minutes and hours and
days slipping by unnoticed, having to sleep and do your business while some
guard watches you on a video screen? I know this is a prison. I know the people
in here did something so terrible they deserved to be locked up. I know it’s
not supposed to be a vacation wonderland, but my God...

The cell door slides open
with a soft pop and a hiss of changing air pressure — the first sounds I’ve
heard in...well, however long I’ve been in here. A guard in head-to-toe black
appears in the doorway. A second guard looms behind him, cradling an automatic
rifle.

“Come with me,” he says.

The guards escort me down a
hallway and to a small room that, best guess, is a local monitoring room and
control station for this section of the prison. A man in standard Byrne black
sits at a station ringed with monitors. The guards exchange a few word with
him, he pokes at a keyboard, and a doorway on the other side of the room opens.
The guards bring me through, down a short hall, and to an elevator. We get on,
go up a few floors, get off, go down another hall (I think; all the hallways
here look exactly the same), and end in a small interview room. There’s a table
in the center, a chair on one side, two more on the other, and everything is
bolted to the floor.

The guards tell me to take a
seat, then they seal me in. I do as ordered like a good little inmate.

I sit there for who knows
how long, occasionally glancing up at the little camera-globe in the corner of
the room. When the door opens again, Mindforce enters and frowns at the sight
of me in my prison jumpsuit and suppression collar (which, for the record, is
crazy itchy). Concorde follows, and behind him is a tall man in a charcoal
business suit.

“Carrie,” Mindforce says. He
sits across from me, as does the man in the suit. Concorde, predictably,
remains standing so he can better glower at me. “This is Sullivan Crenshaw.
He’s the Protectorate’s legal advisor.”

“You’re bringing in your own
prosecutor just for me?” I say. “I feel like such a special little snowflake.”

“I’m not a prosecutor, Miss
Hauser, I’m the team’s legal adviser,” Crenshaw says, “and, because you’re an
adjunct member of the Protectorate, I’m here to advise you on our next course
of action.”

“Sullivan thinks he can get
the charges against you dropped,” Mindforce says, his optimism sounding false
and forced.

“Your age, your record of
service with the Protectorate, your previous good standing with the team —
these factors will all help,” Crenshaw says, “but what will make or break your
case is the specific circumstances of your violation. I need to know, in
precise detail, why you went up in defiance of Concorde’s —”

“I
didn’t
go up,” I
say. “I tried to tell that to the agents who arrested me.”

“Stafford Air National Guard
Base scrambled their jets at 1:28 PM in response to radar contact on an
unregistered flyer over Kingsport,” Concorde says. He leans in to hover over
me. “Do you honestly expect me to believe that wasn’t you?”

I glare up at him. “If you
won’t believe me, maybe you’ll believe Mr. Rose.”

“Mr. Rose?” Crenshaw says.

“My web design teacher. If
he’s not good enough, maybe you’ll believe my boyfriend,” I say, my voice
rising to a shout, “or any of the other twenty kids in my web design class,
which is where I was at 1:28 this afternoon because I’M IN SCHOOL UNTIL TWO
EVERY DAY! Which you would have known if you’d taken two minutes to CALL ME!” I
scream in Concorde’s face.

Crenshaw gawps at me.
“Concorde,” he says with strained patience, “please tell me you confirmed
Carrie was actually the one who committed the violation before you called it in
to Homeland Security.”

Concorde’s answer is a
resounding nothing.

“Oh my God, Concorde,”
Mindforce groans, “are you serious?”

“Who else could it have
been?” Concorde says. “A flyer shows up over Kingsport, Carrie’s a flyer, she
lives in Kingsport —”

“And she’s not lying. It
wasn’t her.”

Crenshaw curses at length.
“This is great. This is outstanding. Get out of my way,” he says, shoving Concorde
aside as he stands. I like this guy better already. “I need to make a phone
call. Guard!” he shouts at the camera globe, and a second later, a guard opens
the door to let Crenshaw out.

Mindforce twists in his seat
to face Concorde. Concorde throws his arms in the air, a
What do you want
from me?
gesture. Mindforce angrily jabs a finger at him. Concorde spreads
his hands, assuming a contrite posture. Mindforce slams a hand down on the
table. I hate mindspeak when I’m not in on the conversation.

“Carrie, I am so sorry this
happened,” Mindforce says, “and I promise you, I swear to you, we will do
everything in our power to make this right.”

“Today’s my birthday,” I
say. My throat tightens, my eyes burn, but I will myself not to cry. That is not
going to happen. “I’m supposed to be at a Bruins game with my dad. Make
that
right.”

Mindforce slumps back into
his chair and curses under his breath, and that’s the last thing anyone says
until Crenshaw returns several minutes later.

“Let’s get you out of here,”
he says.

Mindforce and Crenshaw,
backed by a pair of guards as a matter of protocol, escort me to the processing
area. Crenshaw assures me that in light of the new information provided to
Homeland Security, all charges against me will be dropped, the record of my
arrest will be expunged, and it’ll be like none of this ever happened. You
know, except for the part where it totally did.

The guards remove my
suppression collar, and for several minutes afterward I feel like someone’s
replaced my blood with helium. They give me back my clothes and my backpack and
leave me to my business. I take care of certain bladder-related matters, change
out of my prison couture, and check myself out in a mirror to see how life in
the big house has affected me. Eh, not bad. Nothing a hairbrush and some
concealer and a time machine can’t fix.

Crenshaw, no doubt fearing
that I have a lawsuit on my mind, stays on me as we’re escorted out. No
charges, he says, no arrest record, he says, I will be cleared of all wrongdoing
in the eyes of Homeland Security and the FAA and Colonel Coffin at Stafford, he
says, and look, there’s Warden Pearce, who has been informed this has all been
a terrible mistake, he says.

Since I’m obviously in a
prime position to make demands, “I want my headset back,” I say, “and I want my
transponder reactivated. Like, yesterday.”

“That may take some doing,”
Crenshaw says.