Shego sat on her bunk, laced her fingers behind her head, and leaned back against the wall.

She was in a Global Justice prison cell, one that was very carefully designed and calibrated to hold her, to contain her powers.

Doctor D was in another wing of the same prison, not that it helped her any. They were kept separate at all times. All very necessary, of course – an ordinary prison couldn't hold either of them, let alone both. She could tear one open like a box of crackers, and Drakken had his own ways. He did surprisingly well in prison – he wasn't that tough if the fists started flying, but his improvised weapons were second to none. Where an ordinary inmate might have a shank or a sharpened spoon, Drakken could take the same materials and make a tuning fork whose vibrations shattered bone. More importantly, he could make himself useful to the real power-brokers in the prison population: he could alter their contraband stills to brew hooch better than you could buy off the top shelf at the liquor store, and he could brew much stronger stuff from chemicals stolen from the laundry. Some of it could send your brain straight into orbit…and some could put a hole through a prison wall that you could drive a hover-saucer through.

Even if they weren't being kept separate on general principles, she was effectively in solitary right now. They wouldn't let her out of her cell after what she'd done to Adrena Lynn (who wasn't anywhere near their league, but who had earned a place in GJ's prison by the sheer elaborateness and collateral damage of her escape attempts). The little bitch had been in the middle of another rant about how much of a fake Kim Possible was when Shego had told her to shut up. Adrena had then made the mistake of pointing out that she was totally unimpressed by Shego – after all, she'd only gotten her ass kicked by Kim Possible once, Shego many times.

Shego had succeeded in impressing her. If Adrena Lynn ever did any extreme stunts again, that would be the truly "freaky" thing. But even if she did, she would be nowhere near as telegenic.

It had been excessive, even by her standards. She couldn't figure why she was in such a bad mood lately, given that she felt so good in other ways.

-----

Midnight at the Middleton Space Center. Doctor Robert Harris checked his readings one last time. Not that he needed to. The anomaly was huge – either something was very, very wrong with the instruments, or something very, very exciting was happening. Given the consistency of the data, he was confident of the latter.

He decided to go see for himself. For something this size, it should be possible.

He smirked at the thought as he rose from his chair. The first anomalous readings had come in not long after that smug bastard Possible had gone home for the night. The man had no concept of priorities. If he would actually give his work the attention it deserved, rather than scurrying home to that litter of brats as soon as he could every night, he would probably be running this place by now.

Dr. Harris didn't mind admitting that. It wasn't always the geniuses who made the great discoveries, and it certainly wasn't the geniuses who ran the show. It was the men who were focused, who were willing to put in the time.

Of course (Dr. Harris thought as he mounted the stairs to the observatory), perhaps Jimmy-boy didn't have much choice in the matter. He had met Colleen Possible, and as much as she looked like a siren, it could very well be that she was a harpy as well. He'd spotted Jimmy at the drugstore more than once, attempting to camouflage the fact that he was buying his wife's feminine products behind a screen of household cleaners and headache medication. There was no question that the man was whipped.

Oh, well, Harris thought as he sat down at the telescope and began to adjust the coordinates. His loss, my gain. I'm the one who's going to be running this place before too long, and when that happens, he's going to find out what it's like to operate without favoritism from the director.

There. Those were the coordinates. Trembling in anticipation, he put his eye to the eyepiece.

And he

Saw.

----

Dr. Harris's anomalous readings were seen by none of the other Space Center scientists when they came in the next morning. They never knew it. They had other things to worry about. A number of computers had been smashed (they would never know that they were the computers through which Dr. Harris had taken his readings, and which, therefore, had the anomalous data in their memory); a large fire had been started in the middle of the floor (Dr. Harris had burned all of his notes and hardcopies, then piled anything else flammable he could find into the fire until it was a roaring blaze; if the sprinklers hadn't come on the entire Center could have gone up); and Dr. Harris himself had been found in one of the labs. That was the worst of all, the discovery that shut the Center down for the day as the police investigated.

In the end, it was ruled a suicide: Dr. Robert Harris had used nitric acid to take his own eyes out before slitting his wrists with a broken beaker.

----

Shego sat quietly in her bunk, surveying the room. It was reinforced to the point that it could have served as a nuclear bunker, and it was lined with materials they didn't teach you about in Chemistry class.

Yep, this cell was tough. It would be more than up to the task of holding her. Normally. Normally, she would have been just as helpless to escape as an ordinary inmate in an ordinary cell.

Things weren't "normal" anymore.

She lay down, rolling onto her belly so her face was toward her pillow and away from the security cameras. Then she let her eyes glow for a moment, shedding their new green light on her pillow.

The cell could still hold her. Maybe. For a little longer.

But soon…

Her eyes shone just a bit brighter as she grinned, then she closed them and lay her head down on the pillow.