Chapter Two: McKean Magical Prison

Team One had been dire straits before, but that didn't make a lick of difference as they were dragged into the Canadian Auror Division holding area and tossed into cells by the very same Aurors they had worked with. None of the Aurors spoke to Team One, but the cops could tell that their former colleagues were cold and rigidly furious. The wizard responsible for running the small cell block gleefully activated every last ward on the cells, an action that made Sam and Wordy wince as they felt their tiny amount of magic stagger under suppression wards meant to restrain those wizards capable of wandless magic. Greg didn't react at all, something only Ed and Jules noticed. Once the wards were activated, Team One was left alone.

Greg rubbed his wrists, then raised his voice. "Team One, status!"

"No harm," Ed called back, his words echoed by Jules, Spike, and Lou.

The Sergeant frowned. "Sam? Wordy?"

Sam groaned, leaning against the walls of his cell as his vision swam and the cell appeared to dip and spin around him. Wordy was scarcely any better, for all that he didn't rely on his magical core like most Squibs did. He was curled up on the floor of his cell, a migraine pounding against his skull as his core automatically struggled against the suppression wards.

Greg couldn't see his constables, but Ed was in prime position; his expression was appalled. "Eddie?"

Ed swallowed hard. "I think it's whatever they turned on before they left, Greg," he reported. "Has to be…Sam and Wordy are the only members of the team with a wizarding background."

Jules' eyes widened, darting towards Sam's cell involuntarily. "Sam!" she called, fear vibrating in the name. "Wordy!"

Despite the fact that fear rang in the second name as well, Greg couldn't help but notice that her fear for Sam was greater than her fear for Wordy. A slight frown emerged, drawing his constable's attention.

"Boss? You're not in trouble?" Jules asked, the question a touch accusatory, as if Greg had failed somehow by escaping the suppression wards' effect. In the last two cells, Spike and Lou's curiosity was palpable, with none of Jules' accusation.

Ed opened his mouth to snap at Jules, but Greg shook his head. He was about to reply when the cell block door opened again. A blond Auror stepped inside, his short stature and compact frame giving his identity away at once. "So," he drawled sarcastically, "Enjoying your stay so far?"

Jules snapped around towards the Auror. "Turn off whatever's hurting Sam and Wordy!" she demanded loudly.

The Auror jerked in surprise, then strode forward. "What are you talking abo…?" He trailed off, staring at the two men with shock. "Merlin's Beard!" he swore, retracing his steps and drawing his wand as he moved. Seconds later, the suppression wards were deactivated; Sam groaned in relief and straightened, but it took Wordy several minutes to recover enough to crawl back to his feet.

Shrewd dark eyes inspected Greg for any ill effects, but Simmons didn't remark on the lack thereof. Instead, he stalked to where he could see every member of Team One and waited until both Sam and Wordy were back on their feet and halfway coherent again. "You know," he began, his voice calm and casual, "I really didn't want to believe it. Giles swore up and down that you lot would never risk everything you've gained to let a pack of Dark Wizards loose on our world. That you didn't hold us to blame for what happened to Roy Lane…" Ed hissed in shock. "…and I believed him." The Auror shook his head slowly and paced back and forth. "I believed him right up until you shot him, Braddock!"

Sam jerked back away from the bars. "I didn't!" he protested loudly.

"No?" Simmons asked, his tone condescending, insinuation thick. "It was your gun." He swung towards Ed. "Just like it was your gun that killed three guards at McKean and two more at Azkaban."

Ed's jaw dropped and he gawped at the Auror.

And Simmons wasn't even finished as he swiveled back to face Wordy. "And your phone that they found at McKean, right where you and the fugitives escaped from the prison."

"Escaped how?" Wordy asked weakly. "And my phone went missing…"

"…right around the time our prisons were attacked," Simmons finished smoothly, crossing his arms. "Quite the coincidence, wouldn't you say?" He rocked back and forth on his heels. "But the phone we found wasn't even deactivated, or so the goblins informed us, so…" he leaned forward, his face outwardly pleasant. "…tell me, Constable Wordsworth, how do you explain that?"

Team One held their silence, well aware that anything they said now could be used against them at trial. Wordy held his silence for another reason as well: he was too dizzy and nauseated to see straight; feeling himself sway, he retreated to the cell's tiny cot and slumped down, struggling to keep his gag reflex in check.

"Nothing to say?" Simmons jeered loudly, ignoring Wordy's cringe.

"Senior Auror Simmons," Greg put in, his voice quieter and more intense. "You know trial procedure as well as we do."

The Auror paused, frowning as he absorbed Greg's unspoken argument. Reluctantly, he inclined his head, moving so that he was face-to-face with the Sergeant. "Point," he admitted. "And if I say all of this is off the record?"

"It's not illegal to lie to suspects," Greg countered calmly. "Even less so in the wizarding world than the tech world."

Simmons tapped his wand against his palm, thinking. Suddenly, he thrust the wand forward; Greg flinched, but the wand never pointed at him. "I, Nathanial Simmons, swear on my magic that I will not use any information I discover in this conversation against the members of the Strategic Response Unit's Team One. So mote it be," Simmons said firmly. Magic blazed around his wand, sealing the oath. Grimly, the Auror met Greg's eyes. "So tell me Parker: did you do it?"

Greg let his indignation show and leaned forward, bracing his hands against the bars of his cell as he returned Simmons' fierce gaze. "No." The negotiator cocked his head to the side. "And you know it, Nathan." He ignored the Auror's hiss at the use of his first name. "The Lestrange brothers?" Greg gestured in Wordy's direction. "Why would we break them out of prison after their actions during the Wizarding Wars, never mind what their father did to Wordy's parents?" Pausing, Greg leaned back, shifting his stance so he could stand more comfortably. "Anderson? He kidnapped two little girls and tried to murder my constable. I would have to be completely out of my mind to want him out of prison…same for the rest of my team, Nathan."

"And Loki?"

The Sergeant considered, then shrugged. "I suppose you could make a case for him; he was more annoying than dangerous…almost his own worst enemy, particularly the second time around." Greg let that hang, then shook his head slowly. "However, given his attempt to murder a whole room full of innocent civilians, I would, again, have to be insane to want a wizard like that loose on our streets."

"That's your argument? That if you did it, you wouldn't have done it for them?" Simmons was incredulous. "What about Giles?"

"He's our friend," Sam piped up. "We don't attack our friends, period."

"How is he?" Jules asked softly, her eyes worried.

Simmons stiffened and didn't respond, but his very lack of response told Team One it wasn't good news. The Auror growled, almost to himself, then glared at Greg again. "Any other arguments in your defense, Sergeant Parker?"

It was Ed who spoke before his boss could. "How do you figure we made it from Toronto to Azkaban, then over to McKean in less than twenty-four?"

The Auror swung towards him, then one shoulder shrugged. "A Muggle helicopter."

"They don't fly that fast," Spike countered, crossing his arms.

"This one did," Simmons argued.

"Spike," Greg interceded before his bomb tech could argue further. "If the escapes were by helicopter, Nathan, then I do have another argument."

Surprise marked Simmons' face as he turned towards Parker, one eyebrow hiked.

"No member of my team possesses the license necessary to fly a helicopter," Greg explained politely. "You could argue that a lack of license doesn't necessarily mean that we lack the skills to fly, but to the best of my knowledge, none of my team has even had training in how to fly a conventional aircraft, much less a helicopter."

"Conventional?"

"You know," Spike jabbed, "Two wings and a tail? Big noisy engines? That kind of thing? They fly out of the city all the time."

Though he was clearly unimpressed with Spike's theatrics, Simmons considered Greg's point quite seriously, frowning as he tried to poke holes in the Sergeant's arguments. "How can I be sure?"

"Go to the airport and ask," Ed countered. "Or you could head over to our aerial department and ask around; we've got more than a few police choppers and I bet the pilots could tell you what it takes to get that kind of training. It's not a quick, easy process, can tell you that much."

Simmons' frown deepened, but he didn't question them further. Abruptly, he looked up. "You're all being sent to McKean until trial," he announced. "Take my advice and keep your heads down." Without another word, he turned on his heel and left, the door clanging shut behind him ominously.


Not long after Simmons left, the techies were hauled from their cells and transported to McKean Magical Prison by Portkey. On arrival, the team staggered against their escorts before falling all over each other. Ed hauled Wordy to his feet, supporting his friend as the brunet struggled to recover from the spinning, wrenching Portkey travel and the nausea induced by the suppression wards. He watched Jules help Sam up, but said nothing as the slim brunette clung to her boyfriend, fine tremors running through her body.

He couldn't even blame her, not here, not now. In addition to worrying over Sam's health, Jules was almost certainly slated for the women's portion of the prison. As a pure techie and a cop, Jules would be a prime target for any of the female prisoners and none of them would be able to help her or protect her. Sam reached back, hugging his girlfriend – unlike Wordy, he was fine, but Ed suspected he would milk the moment in hopes of protecting Jules just a little longer.

Their escorts sneered, two Aurors forcing the couple apart before another one wrenched Wordy away from Ed's support; the brunet swayed, but managed to stay on his feet. Having separated their prisoners, the Aurors dragged them into the prison's processing area.

Inside, they were assigned prison robes and their civilian clothing was confiscated. Photographs were taken of each techie, in a procedure that was indistinguishable from its tech-side counterpart. Instead of being separated from Jules, as Ed had expected, she was dragged along with her teammates to a cell block that was set apart from the prison's other cell blocks. In the middle of the group, the team leader caught a glimpse of a sign above the entrance and realization dawned. It was the trial block.

At lightning speed, he put the pieces together. For whatever reason, wizards awaiting trial could be kept in the prison itself, but were kept segregated from McKean's general population. He wasn't sure if McKean had separate cell blocks for female and male inmates, but it was possible that the wizarding world didn't keep the genders separate – yet more evidence of how out of date the magicals were. At least, the team leader reflected ruefully, there were no dementors at McKean. A small blessing, but he would take it – right along with his gratitude that Jules hadn't been separated from the team.

Inside, the officers were tossed into cells that were side-by-side, two to a cell. As a female, Jules ended up in a cell of her own, but her male colleagues were all grouped up. Spike and Lou traded tired smiles with each other, Sam shrugged at Ed after stealing a glance at his girlfriend's cell, and Wordy edged away from Greg, still nursing his grudge from the Roy Lane debacle – along with an impressive splitting headache.

The cell block was along one of McKean's outer walls, so each cell had a window to the outside, giving the techies their first view of the United States coast and the Pacific Ocean. It was a rather poor view, all things considered, but still better than nothing. Once imprisoned, the techies were left alone by the guards to consider their situation.


Greg had decided, at some point in the previous month, that he wasn't going to argue or debate his decision to save Roy Lane's life, even at the risk of his own. Though he was mightily tempted to argue now, as Wordy pointedly ignored him, the Sergeant decided to devote his energy to strategizing a way out of the mess his team had been forced into.

They were being framed, that much was obvious, and given the differences between techie trials and wizarding trials, they had maybe a fifty-fifty shot at discovering who had framed them before they ended up in prison for the rest of their lives. Frankly, Greg could already take a decent shot at guessing who had framed them, but proving it was another matter entirely.

Particularly with the trap well and truly shut around them. Sam's gun, Ed's gun, Wordy's phone…and that was just the start. Moffet had outdone himself on this one, but Greg couldn't fathom why. After all, his team wasn't in the wizarding world anymore; they weren't working with the Auror Division any more…wasn't that what Moffet had wanted? Then a thought nudged at Greg; they had left of their own choice. The Sergeant stiffened. Before the prison breakouts, sympathy had quite possibly been entirely on Team One's side following the Auror Academy mess.

For whatever reason, that Team One had left the Auror Division on their own terms had been a thorn in Moffet's side. Greg's eyes narrowed as he thought through a few possible chains of events. One stood out as if painted neon yellow: the possibility that the Auror Division, at some point in the future, would have come back, asking Team One to accept their badges again for one reason or another.

He didn't want that to happen, no matter how remote the possibility, Greg realized, looking around the cell block with renewed determination. If they could find a way to shift the investigation towards Moffet, then his team might just scrape through yet. But to do that, they needed as much information as possible…and they were at ground zero for the second of the two prison breaks. The Sergeant regarded the door to their cell block thoughtfully, working through an idea or three on how to perhaps get more information. That his ideas meant he would not be keeping his head down never occurred to the negotiator – not that the realization would have made the slightest bit of difference in Greg's decision.


The four guards who arrived with Team One's dinner were very surly and all of Mexican origin. They chattered to each other as Team One ate, their voices low and grating. Greg finished his meal, frowning to himself. He knew some Spanish, but not enough to get the information he really needed from the guards. However…

"Have you worked here long?" he asked politely in Italian.

The guards jerked around, their eyes narrow and unhappy as they regarded the Sergeant. Finally one of them replied, "Several years."

Greg nodded thoughtfully, then inquired, "Were you here the night the prison was attacked?"

Another guard growled, very softly. The lead guard nodded jerkily. "Yes. We knew the guards who were killed. Our friends."

The negotiator let his sympathy show in his eyes. "I'm sorry for your loss. Did any of you see what happened?"

The guards glanced at each other, clearly surprised by such a question from a prisoner. One of the guards frowned to himself, studying Greg more closely as the lead guard admitted, "No, we were patrolling another area."

Team One traded looks with each other as their Sergeant nodded, almost to himself. It was a shame the guards hadn't seen anything, but… Greg cocked his head to the side. "Did any of you see the phone they found?"

The guards frowned in confusion, muttering to each other. From what Greg could hear, they had no idea what he was talking about. As if…the Sergeant's eyes widened. As if there hadn't been a phone found. Even if they didn't understand what he was talking about, the negotiator was sure they would have remembered if something was found.

Even as Greg drew breath to ask another question, the guard that had been studying him jabbed the lead guard's ribs and snapped, "They are the ones, the ones who came here before!"

The Sergeant stiffened in alarm, but much too late; the guards surged forward, hauling him out of the cell before he could say anything in his own defense. Once he was clear of the cell, the guard who'd spoken up kicked him to the ground, screeching something Greg couldn't quite catch. That was the last thing he remembered as the four guards descended on him, howling like banshees.


Author note: In the interest of readability, I kept Greg's conversation with the guards in English, but if anyone is interested in how the conversation would have 'sounded' to the rest of Team One, I can include it as an extra chapter once the story is finished.