Lull 4.03

I took a deep breath. This wouldn't be hard. I just had to talk to the local news anchor about being a teenage girl who was forced into villainy, how my situation relates to the Canary trial, since that's topical and serves my purposes, and a bunch of other things that make me feel bad.

...Not for the first time, I wished that my powers were different because I couldn't even get drunk to take the edge off my nerves. I really needed to find some way to get rid of my stress or I'm going to end up having a double heart attack… I think. I honestly had no idea how many hearts I had anymore.

Just a few minutes. This was a call in thing, Dad had set up a third, untraceable channel on the communicators and given his friend in the media a way to get into it, and she had passed it on. I wondered if I should ask dad why he'd modeled them on Walkie Talkies? I mean, it was basically a cell phone.

Anyway, Lisa and I had done some research about a few things, relevant laws, the things that had gone down in Boston, I'd brushed up on the Constitution, and I'd made flashcards just in case. Exhale. I was as comfortable as I was going to get, sitting on my bed with all the zerg out patrolling the sewers and tunnels. Rachel, still sleeping in the infestation pod, was my only company. I just had to wait for them to call me, and then-

The tone went off, the one for this channel sounding kind of like an actual bell. I grabbed my communicator and answered. "Hello?"

"Hello," came a mature woman's voice as clear as day, "this is Patricia Smith of Channel 6 News, am I speaking to Empress?"

"Yes, you are," I answered maybe a little too quickly.

"Hold on," Patricia said, "there's some kind of interference."

"Interference?"

"It sounds like you're echoing."

"Oh no," I explained, "that's just my voice." I checked my clock. It was a little afternoon. Was there a news at noon?. "Uh, are we live?"

"Oh heavens no," the anchor answered, "this is going on the evening news. It doesn't happen often, but every time a supervillain or controversial cape gives a news interview, that station's ratings skyrocket the day of and a few days afterward, so Channel 6 wants to advertise this as much as possible and take the time to edit out any stutters or ums and bleep out the swear words."

I gulped, "then how do I know… Nevermind."

"Worried about malicious editing?" Patricia asked. "Don't be. Your father has friends here and there's a complicated economy of favors going on, if you were even curious about why, of all the hostages from Brockton Central, it was only the ones who believe your story that Channel 6 interviewed?"

Okay, that explained a lot. "Okay, so how do we…"

"Start by telling us your name."

"I'm Empress," I began, "but my real name is Taylor Hebert. There's really no point to me having a secret identity, so..."

"What do you prefer, Empress or Taylor?" Miss Hebert wasn't an option. It reminded me of a lawyer's trick I'd learned about. Calling someone by their first name or a nickname invokes an emotional attachment while Mister, Miss, and so on is more abstract. Maybe…

"Either or is fine for me," I answered.

"Well, if you don't mind me calling you Taylor," there we go, "then we should probably start from the beginning. I'm sure by now that everyone has a second or third-hand account of your story, but if you don't mind do you think you could repeat it?"

And so I did. I explained about the locker, about how my so-called 'rampage' boiled down to knocking someone over while having a panic attack, about how I was chased from my home and foamed by an agent who didn't so much as say a word, and all the other stuff I'd said at the bank.

"And that's how I ended up on the streets," I finished. "Later, I found out that I'd apparently 'severely injured' the girl I'd knocked over while I was fleeing the school, but I think that's a load of garbage. I mean, the way I remember it, I just sort of shoved her," Sophia, but none of the news on my 'victim' had mentioned names so I wouldn't, "to the ground because she was in my way and I wasn't thinking clearly enough to move around her, but the way the story went they were talking like I'd slashed her arm open… But my claws, even back then, are harder than diamond and sharper than razors. I mean, I've accidentally hurt a couple of people while getting a grasp on my powers-there's a PRT agent who was down an arm for a while because I underestimated how strong I was, but with how sharp my claws are I'd have been drenched in blood and the girl probably would have bled out." I took a moment to think back. "The girl I knocked over is still alive, the articles were clear on that, and I can clearly remember that the only blood on me was my own bloodied knuckles from punching through my locker to get out."

"Okay then, Patricia said, "That's something to think about. Now, before we return to your story, I have to ask: Do you have any idea who put you in that locker?

"I've got a good idea," I said bitterly as I thought to my ex-best friend and the two psycho-bitches she ran with nowadays, "but I can't prove anything and besides, it's not like it'd help me now." I tried so very hard not to think about what I'd felt in Emma's head at the market.

"That's a rather mature perspective on all of this," the anchor said, "So, back to your story, why don't you tell us about your time on the streets?"

"What's there to tell that hasn't already been told?" I asked, "I get chased away from home, I have run-ins with the PRT agents or a Ward where I get attacked on sight, accidents happen, I have to steal to survive, yadda yadda, eventually I throw my lot in with the Undersiders because they're the only people who treat me like a person."

"The Wards attacked you without a word?"

"Well, a Ward," I admitted. " Okay, this is a little bit against what I said earlier, but this is a little more serious than a cruel prank." I sighed. "A few days into my de facto exile, I was scavenging through a dumpster when I was shot in the back by Shadow Stalker. Apparently," I said, remember something I found out later, "she's on probation for almost killing a guy and is not supposed to be using blade-tipped bolts, but that's what she used on me. That, that's something for someone to look into, right?" I asked. "Then there was… Never mind." That, that was something I didn't want to go into.

"Taylor?" Patricia asked, "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," I said perhaps a bit too quickly.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I..." I took a deep breath. "Look, something happened and I'm not so sure I'm willing to broadcast it out to the whole city."

"Something involving Shadow Stalker." the anchor inferred.

"Yeah," I admitted.

"Taylor," she said, "I'm not going to make you tell me if you don't want to. Honestly, her shooting you in the back is big enough on its own, so if whatever this is is too personal or too uncomfortable, we can just move onto the next question. Maybe save it for another interview. It's up to you. However," she continued. "If it helps, if you tell me and then decide you don't want it to air after all, we can always edit it out before we air the interview."

"Okay." Inhale, exhale. "This is hard to say. It, it was...Hard, the first couple of days on the street. Before I figured everything out. A day, maybe two, after Shadow Stalker attacked me. I hit rock bottom, I just wanted everything to end, one way or another. I convinced myself that Dad would be better off, that he could deal if I just wasn't there anymore." I swallowed.

"I'm sorry, I don't think I under-oh."

"...Yeah" I said after a moment. "Looking back, it'd probably been building up for a long time, but I just hit my breaking point, and… At first, I tried my wrists, you know, but I didn't know which way you're supposed to… You know, and my healing factor was a bit stronger than I thought it was so it didn't work. It's always pretty quick on the TV, but..." Damn it! I took a few more breaths to steady myself. "So, then I spent an hour or so just, like, trying to find some heavy rocks and filled my pockets. I, um, I found a spot that overlooked a deep part of the bay, and I… I thought about what I was doing. I didn't go through with it that time. Doing it that way, it takes a while, and I decided that I wasn't quite ready to go yet… Then I got shot in the back again." Deep breaths. In and out. "I turn around and it's Shadow Stalker again. She shot me again, punched me in the face, and then kicked me into the bay. I sank like a stone, and my last thoughts were on how unfair it was for her to try and-" I choked on the next word and had to pause again." How unfair it was for her to do that… right, right after I changed my mind. Obviously, it didn't stick, but..."

"Taylor? Do you need to take a moment?"

"No, but thank you, Patricia," I replied. "Can I call you Patricia?" She answered yes and I continued. "But… things are better now. I've got a dedicated place to live that's...mostly safe, and I've got friends now, so things are better even if they still suck."

"Well, that's good to hear." She sounded sincere. "But about your friends?"

"The Undersiders? They're great," I said with a smile. "Regent's pretty good for a laugh, Grue's like everyone's big brother, Tattletale's pretty friendly once you get to know her-my little outings," referring to the shopping trip and girls day out, "were her idea, and Rachel's surprisingly cuddly. They're the first people in months to treat me like an actual human being instead of a monster to hunt down. Yeah, they're criminals," I admitted, "and yeah, I helped them commit a few crimes, but they're not bad people and honestly, they're kind of in the same boat as I am."

"What do you mean?" She asked. And this is the moment I had been waiting for.

I took a breath, "You see… when you're a parahuman who has committed or even been accused of a crime, well, people don't necessarily care about things like 'innocent' or 'guilty' or 'right' or 'wrong' or even the law. If you're scary enough, you get treated like a monster. If you're useful enough, and they think they can control you, then people will come out of the woodwork to try and get you to work for them," I took a moment to compose my thoughts. "Or sometimes, the people who are supposed to be helping you or looking into the law just don't give a damn."

"That's a pretty serious accusation," Patricia said, "I mean, it's pretty obvious that sometimes members of law enforcement don't behave properly, but you're talking about fundamental corruption in the system."

"I know," I said, "and I've got proof. My friend Rachel Lindt, for example-"

"I'm sorry," Patricia interrupted, You said that name a second ago," she said. "Who is Rachel?"

"The PRT calls her Hellhound," I said, "but she hates that name. However, her preferred Cape Alias isn't exactly G rated. Her real name is a matter of public record so for the sake of keeping this clean, I'm just going to call her Rachel."

"Alright then, thank you for the explanation."

"Now," I continued, "I don't know the full story, but I think I have the important parts and\ from what I've been told and what I put together she was abandoned as small child, shoveled from foster home to foster home, the homes would be bad matches or she wouldn't get along with other kids in the home, and eventually she ended up in the home of a woman who treated her very poorly."

"Can you clarify that statement?"

"Rachel's final foster mother was strict," I explained, "like, 'if you're a minute late to dinner or use a salad fork on steak, you don't get to eat that night but do have to watch your food get thrown in the trash and the others eating' strict."

"I presume that this is what made her ''trigger?' " She asked. "For our viewers at home who don't know, a person becomes a parahuman via a phenomenon called a trigger event where some extreme stimulus causes them to become mentally overwhelmed, causes them to hit a breaking point that 'triggers' their latent powers."

"No," I corrected, "That came later. Rachel gets on better with dogs than with people," I explained, " and she was keeping one in secret. Unfortunately, it wasn't well trained, if at all, and Rachel had to keep it confined near 24/7 because of course her foster mother would have gotten rid of it if she found out. One day it started getting aggressive and antsy from being cooped up and Rachel let it out for just a little, but the foster mother tried to drown it to punish Rachel for having it in the first place." I took a moment to compose myself, I was starting to feel sad. "The stress of seeing her only friend in the world being killed just to punish her was too much, and suddenly her untrained, panicking puppy was an untrained, panicking meat-tank. The dog proceeded to act exactly how you'd expect a dog in flight or fight mode to act, it attacked and mauled anyone it could get its paws on. The Foster mother. The other children that she was abusing. It was only dumb luck that it didn't get Rachel. She couldn't control it, couldn't calm it down, she'd literally just gotten her powers. She had no idea what was going on, so she ran for safety. Now, even though all she wants is to be left alone with her dogs, she's on the run from murder charges because the people in charge refuse to cut her some slack for something outside of her control." I sighed. "None of that would have happened if Rachel's foster mother hadn't been an abusive puppy killer. None of it would have happened if Child Services had done their jobs and not let a woman like that become a foster parent, let alone put the most vulnerable children with her."

"That's a rather intense tale," Patricia said, "That… Why would…?"

"Because they don't care about right and wrong," I repeated, "They just care about how scary you are, whether or not you're useful, and if you'll toe the party line. Anyway, then we have Tattletale," I continued, "she's psychic. She can read minds,"I gave Tattletale's claim, "just like me but less monstery. Her dad found out, and he wanted to exploit her for her powers, so she ran and ended up homeless on the streets picking pockets to survive.

"Why picking pockets specifically?"

"Well, for one, there aren't many jobs that pay a wage you can live off of that hire teenage dropouts," I explained, "and for two, well, there are laws, I don't know all of them of the top of my head, that make it difficult, if not impossible, for parahumans with certain powers to get jobs in certain fields or engage in things like the lottery or gambling if their powers would give them an 'unfair' advantage. Tattletale is a mind reader, you can count the number of legitimate jobs that her powers wouldn't give her an 'unfair' advantage in on one hand. Anyway. So she was alone on the streets with basically no chance of getting legitimate income, so she was picking pockets and stealing to get by, and then she got in trouble. Some less than savory types found out about her power and were interested, and then she had a choice to make: She could let herself be exploited by criminals, Supervillains, or crooked businessman, committing crimes in the hopes of being provided for… Or she could go to the PRT, in which case she'd have either been exploited by them for her power or else sent to prison for her thefts, for an excessive amount of time, because she refused to be used, or she could lay down and die." I was starting to get thirsty. I debated the merits of getting up to grab something out of my mini-fridge but decided against it when I considered the time it would take to open the lock. I then resolved to make Alec's life difficult for a few days. "Instead, she became Tattletale: If her only other options for survival were to be used or to break the law, she decided that she might as well be breaking the law for herself instead of for other people. She says that it turns out that the life of a Supervillain is a lot safer than being a homeless teenage girl, and from my experiences, I'll have to agree."

"I have to say… that makes a disturbing amount of sense"

"So yeah," I said, "between my own experiences and what my friends have told me, when a parahuman has an accident, or causes a scene, or commits or is thought to have committed a minor crime… There comes a point where the people in charge stop caring about right and wrong, it's a little different for everyone, but you can submit, if you're useful, die if you're not… Or you can keep escalating and survive on your own terms. If you're lucky you get to make the call yourself."

"I'm sorry," Patricia said, "but I don't quite understand what you mean. Could you please clarify?"

"Yeah," and here we go, another part that made me uncomfortable. I got my flashcards ready. "Well, I've got a perfect example from not that long ago: Channel Six is covering the Canary trial, right?"

"We are," replied the anchor. "Paige 'Canary' Mcabee was accused of using the emotion affecting properties of her singing voice to force her ex-boyfriend to mutilate himself in response to his belligerent behavior after one of her concerts. She was convicted and sentenced to incarceration in the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center."

"Okay," I began, "now before I start, it's very important for you to remember that Paige surrendered and cooperated with the police. She did everything that you're 'supposed' to do when accused of a crime. A guilty person would have lawyered up at the first chance and done everything they could have to stall things and buy themselves more time."

"I suppose so," Patricia said, "but that doesn't really constitute proof that she's innocent"

"But it does make it highly unlikely that she was planning to run for it, but that's something to get to in a little bit. Anyway, Canary was protected by the TSPA act, which is a three strike law. Three strike laws exist to discourage first-time offenders, especially those who committed minor crimes, from becoming repeat offenders. The TSPA act in particular also exists to prevent first time and minor parahuman offenders from being thrown straight into the Birdcage. The Judge admitted that she was in fact protected by the three strikes rule, and then essentially explained that he was going to completely ignore that and that he was throwing her into the Cage even though he legally wasn't allowed to."

"Could you pause here?" the anchor asked. "We have a clip of that and this is a great place for a sound bite."

"Yeah. Wait, actually, can you get ahold of that and, I don't know if there's a way to play that over this, but..."

"I'll see what I can do," she replied.

I waited a few minutes, and then a man's voice, slightly distorted, came out of the communicator.

"Determining sentencing for this case is not easy. As your lawyer has no doubt made you aware, you do fall under the umbrella of the TSPA, or the three strikes act. At the age of twenty three, you have been convicted of no prior crimes… It is with this in mind that I have decided that there is sufficient cause to sentence you outside the scope of the TSPA. Guilty on two counts, the defendant, Paige Mcabee, is sentenced to indefinite incarceration within the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center."

Hearing the half-assed rationalization again made my blood boil.

A few moments later, Patricia was back. "Were you able to hear that?"

"Yes, thank you. And this is really all you need to know that something very wrong was going on in that trial: The Judge as good as admitted that the sentence he made was illegal. Even if the guilty verdict was upheld, any reasonable judge would have overturned the sentence for a more reasonable one, if not at the initial trial, than at least on appeal." I double checked my card on Birdcage sentences. "Except there's no appealing a Birdcage sentence, which I'm pretty sure is a violation of the First Amendment right to petition to the government for redress of wrongs, but that's a whole other can of worms. I mean, death row inmates get plenty of appeals and retrials and can go years or decades before being executed because that's permanent and you want to be sure that you're not making a mistake. But a Birdcage sentence is just as permanent, and they get shipped away within days or weeks with not so much as a token appeal."

"In fairness," Patricia said, " the Judge did state his reasoning-the prohibitive expense of creating specific measures to contain Canary and the cruelty of keeping her as restrained as she was."

"And fear that she'd get back out into the population and master someone else.," I finished, "Which is a poor reason. Like… The non-parahuman equivalent of this would be a person with no criminal history getting into a fight with someone who provoked them, accidentally killing them, getting convicted of manslaughter, and then the Judge ordering that they immediately be taken out and hung from the oak tree in front of the courthouse because if he sends them to prison they'll kill again. It's insane." I sighed. "Anyway, can you honestly tell me that being sent to die in a hole in the ground where there are no guards to keep the other inmates from raping or killing you really more merciful than being left bound and gagged?" Patricia made a noise that put the image of her flinching in my mind. "It's… The people who made these laws. They have power, and they used that power because they saw what they thought of as dangerous criminals but they never stopped to think that there could be extenuating circumstances behind the crimes or that innocent people could be hurt because of their recklessness." My thoughts turned to that afternoon at the bank where Barbie burst in through a wall with no concern for the civilians and almost killed Rachel.

"There's no way out of the Birdcage-the only way in is an elevator shaft that only goes one way. It's suspended in a hollowed out mountain that is kept in an artificial state of vacuum and the whole facility is lined with deadly traps: There's no escaping the facility alive. If someone is sentenced to the Birdcage, and then it turns out that they were innocent? They're screwed, because there's literally no way to get them out. Assuming that they haven't already been killed or worse, because the entire prison is basically run by the worst Parahuman criminals in the world, so there are fleetingly slim chances that you'll find a place that's truly safe." I was starting to breathe heavily. "And it's an mixed prison, with men and women. Which means that there's sex happening, consensual or otherwise. Are the children being born into the Birdcage and being trapped there for their entire lives? Or does a Birdcage sentence come with forced sterilization or compulsory birth control? I honestly don't know, but one of them has to be true and I'm not sure which is worse. The Birdcage is basically a particularly cruel death sentence, but the law doesn't treat it that way."

"Taylor?" Patricia asked. "Are you-"

"And that's not even the worst part! Tattletale knows a guy," actually it was Tattletale's hacking, but that doesn't fit with the narrative that she was psychic. "We managed to get ahold of some… correspondences. Dragon, best Tinker in the world now that Hero's gone, is the only Tinker working on the Birdcage. If she didn't build it, she's at least responsible for everything it is now, and she's also it's Warden. She's also on the record as hating it and made contact with the Judge from Canary's trial asking him to be lenient and reconsider her sentence at the same time that she was preparing to carry the sentence out." It took me a second to realize that I was starting to growl and correct myself. "Dragon is literally the only person running and maintaining it. If she hated the Birdcage so much, she could dismantle it, refuse to put people in, or any other number of things that would see it shut down in favor of something better, but she doesn't."

"Well, she does have to follow the law," Patricia said, "But Taylor, are you-?"

" 'I was just following orders' wasn't good enough at Nuremberg and it's not good enough now.": I interrupted. "Besides, it's not like she has to worry about being arrested. She's one of the most powerful and famous capes on the planet. If she really had an objection to it, she could make demands and there's nothing anybody could do about it. Nobody even knows where Dragon lives, they couldn't arrest her if they wanted to." I took a deep breath. " There's a Mark Twain quote I've seen a couple of times. I don't know the full thing by heart, but I can remember how it ends. It goes something like 'When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, plant yourself by the river of truth and tell the whole world: No, you move.' Dragon makes protests, but the second she's ordered to do something, she caves. Either she doesn't really care and is just making token protests… Or one of the greatest heroes in the world is a spineless, cowardly, weak-willed… Thing who caves under the slightest pressure instead of doing what she thinks is right! I don't know which is worse."

"Are you done now?"

"Yeah," I said. I wiped the tears from my eyes.

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah, sorry, I've had the Cage on the brain for a while now." Between Obi-Mom Brandnobi's threat and Paige's conviction, it's been hard not to think about it. "I got a bit distracted. Back to the matter at hand, the reason she was cuffed and chained was because the prosecution argued that, as a parahuman, she might have superhuman strength." I cycled through my notes until I had the right ones. "Ignoring the implications that every parahuman is exactly the same, they postulated, without evidence, that she had superhuman strength and that she might be a flight risk, again she willingly surrendered and fully cooperated up until they stripped her rights from her so she probably wasn't going to run for it, and her lawyer failed to argue that she didn't and wasn't." I let out a bitter chuckle. "And I looked some things up. She was muzzled and gagged because they were afraid that if she could get the chance, she'd be able to master the jury or something. Here's the thing, in order for her powers to work, she needs to sing or at least raise her voice, right?"

"To my knowledge."

"You know that collar that they had her wearing? The one the size of a tire? It's Tinker-Tech. It's supposed to sedate her if she starts singing. The muzzle was completely unnecessary." A thought occurred to me. "Actually, now that I think about it, they didn't even need the collar. Just give the bailiff a taser and instruct him to use it if she starts singing." I reviewed one of my flashcards. "Actually, they don't even need that: There's legal precedent for having certain parahumans, usually high-level blasters, attend their trial via a video conference specifically so that they can't attack people in the courtroom or escape. If the prosecution thought that Paige was as dangerous as they said she was, if she was as much a flight risk as they said she was, then having her in the courtroom at all was dangerously irresponsible." My mouth was getting dry. I licked around in the insides to try to moisten it a bit, but I'd have to drink something soon. "So they've got her in completely unnecessary heavy duty restraints, which is cruel and unusual if anything is, before she's even been convicted. The only purpose the gag served was keeping her from talking. And her hands were restrained, so she couldn't write anything down or type it, either."

"So what are you saying?."

"I think that the reason that the prosecution was so insistent on having Paige bound and gagged," I explained, "was to deny her her rights. She couldn't talk or write anything, so she couldn't participate in her own defense, and by presenting her to the jury muzzled like a feral animal and bound in chains, well, there's no way a jury is going to be impartial. Which I think violates her fifth amendment right to due process before an impartial jury." I cleared my throat. "She was also prevented from communicating with her lawyer in any reasonable manner. Speaking of her lawyer, he was a court-appointed defender," I explained, "and you're only supposed to get those if you can't afford a lawyer or otherwise can't get one of your own, Paige was rich. She could have easily afforded her own attorney. Instead she got a man who she was only allowed to talk to through email that he didn't reply to and who didn't even bother to defend her, let alone provide a competent defense, appointed to her by the judge who blatantly ignored the law when sentencing her and gave her the maximum sentence on flimsy reasoning. I'm pretty sure that denying her the chance to hire a lawyer appointing her one she isn't even allowed to talk to is a violation of her right to legal counsel."

"So not only is the judge, by all appearances openly ignoring the very law he's supposed to uphold," Patricia finished, "but you believe that he actively conspired to ensure that she was found guilty."

"Exactly," I confirmed, "in fact, I'm glad you said that, conspire, because it brings me to another few points. I don't know, exactly, if the judge and the prosecution were working together, but something's fishy about the prosecution's claims and I can smell it from here." I cleared my throat again and idly wondered why I hadn't evolved past the need for phlegm yet. "At no point was there any presumption of innocence in Paige's trial. The prosecution made a bunch of baseless claims about what Canary did, what she was capable of doing, and what she was going to do, and the judge proceeded to act like every last one of them was true. Why would a first-time offender who surrendered to the police and cooperated every step of the way be a flight risk? There was never even an offer of bail, just an assumption that she was dangerous and who could and would run or master people into helping her escape or do it herself with the super strength that there was no proof that she had, leading to her being chained up like she was already convicted. The judge assumed that she deliberately mastered her boyfriend and that she would master someone else if she ever got out of prison. Her lawyer barely gave a token defense." I sighed. "All suspects are presumed innocent until proven guilty. That's the idea that our justice system is based on, but Canary's trial is pretty solid evidence that it's an idea that's not worth anything anymore."

I looked over my notes just to make sure I wasn't forgetting anything. "Oh, and speaking of things the prosecution claimed without proof, not once did the prosecution provide any evidence that Canary's ex-boyfriend was actually mastered. We only have the man's word, and that, arguably, violates the fourth amendment which states that warrants, including arrest warrants, can't be issued without probable cause. One man's word that he was mastered when he mutilated himself is not probable cause. For those keeping score at home," I finished, "that's half the Bill of Rights being thrown out in the Canary Trial."

"But why would the man have mutilated himself if he wasn't mastered?" the anchor asked.

"First, and um... You're gonna have to bleep this," I said, "if someone told you to 'go fuck yourself…' I'm willing to bet that even at your most literal, there's going to be a few things you think of before you think of cutting off one part and shoving it up another, right?"

"...You're not wrong," she admitted uneasily.

"Paige didn't give him the order to mutilate himself," I went on, "she basically said the harshest and angriest form of 'go away' there is. Either this is a freak accident, or the man's lying." I checked the clock. We'd been at this for a while. "And I'm suspicious of the guy: from what the witnesses say, he confronted Paige with a claim that he was entitled to half her money. Now that Paige has been convicted, he's sueing her for absolutely everything she has and she can't exactly defend herself when she's drugged into a coma and waiting to be shipped to a hole in the ground, so of course, he's going to get everything."

"But still, don't you think that it's a little irresponsible to just throw out an accusation like that?"

"I'll admit," I said, "that what I'm suggesting is an extreme worst case scenario, but my point is that the prosecution never once proved that Canary's boyfriend was mastered, which is the centerpiece of the entire case against her, and honestly 'prove that he's been mastered because otherwise for all we know he could have done it himself, he has motive' is something that any competent defense attorney would do. I mean, they charged her with sexual assault for it and the standard defense for that is 'provide a good argument that sexual activity actually happened and that the victim didn't want it' which is kind of scummy," I admitted, "and in any other case where a person is suspected of being mastered, they have to you know, prove that they were mastered. It's jarring that those kinds of defenses were not employed here."

"I can see where you're coming from," Patricia said hesitantly, "but I'm not sure that a man would do that to himself just for money?"

"Well, again, I'm not saying that he did it, I'm just saying that it's suspicious that the possibility never came up. Besides," I continued, "there is a precedent for this kind of thing." I checked my notes to make sure I had the name right. "Have you ever heard of a place called 'Nub City?'"

"I have not."

"Well, you can look this by the way, but it's a nickname for the City of Vernon, in Washington California, that for about a decade in the 50's and 60's had disproportionately high amounts of amputations and accidental dismemberments and mutilations, usually from people who had gotten insurance policies that gave ridiculously high payouts for limb loss shortly before the 'accident.' For a decade, roughly two-thirds of all the insurance claims for limb loss in the country came from Vernon." I blinked. "The general consensus is that the city's population were deliberately mutilating themselves for the insurance money. This was before we had parahuman healers and tinker-tech medicine and procedures, once those limbs were off they were off for good. Self-mutilation for money is a lot less risky now."

"Okay then. Well, that's a rather... enlightening opinion on a controversial subject," Patricia said, diplomatically, "but we seem to have gotten a bit off topic. This interview is supposed to be about you, but we've spoken more about Canary."

"Oh, there's a reason for it," I began, "There was no probable cause, no proof of wrongdoing deliberate or otherwise, the trial was a sham, and Paige's sentence was illegal. From arrest to conviction, it was a blatant screwover. And nobody. Did. A damn. Thing." I took a deep breath. This was going to be another painful part. "If something that blatant gets done to a celebrity who surrendered and fully cooperated up until her rights were stripped from her, what do you think happens to people like my friend Rachel? What do you think happens to people like me?"

"I fled to the streets," I continued, "I ran, I joined a team of villains, and I did all of that instead of surrendering and trying to explain my side of the story, because after being chased from my home and being attacked on sight, after being named the target of a huge manhunt when Kaiser and Lung were still at large, after a Ward tried to kill me twice, I figured that I was never going to get a fair chance. Canary's trial and conviction? That whole travesty told me that I was right."

"I don't know if anybody noticed, but I was kind of missing a hand for a while. Armsmaster has my original right hand in his lab somewhere. He's running tests on it because I was too afraid to say he couldn't or try to take it back from him." My breathing was getting heavy. "He called me an organism. I'm not even a person to these people. After what happened to Canary…" I took a moment to swallow my anxiety. "If they get their hands on me, I'll be lucky if I get drugged into a coma and wake up in the Birdcage without having even gotten a trial. I've already been threatened with the Cage. Or maybe I'll just disappear somewhere."

I curled up into myself. Saying all of that out loud. It made it all feel more real. I was sitting here while there was a manhunt out for me, while there was a very real chance that Armsmaster, or Miss Militia, or another one of the Heroes I used to look up to could kill me, or worse...

"Taylor, I have to ask again: Do you need a moment?"

"No." I took a breath and went on. "Actually, I think I'm done. I've said everything that I have to say."

"Alright then," Patricia said, "well, thank you for your time and I sincerely hope that things somehow work out for you."

"Thank you," I replied, "and uh… the thing? Use it. Use the whole thing if you can."

"Will do," she finished and soon the communication ended. I went to my fridge to get something to drink. I only had the one beer left, so I grabbed the drain cleaner. I was tired all of a sudden. that had… I hadn't expected that talking would take so much out of me. I thought back to… Before. Sometimes Dad would come home, on a day where he'd have a meeting, or be negotiating to get work for his boys or trying to get the fairy back up and running, and even though he was just talking he'd come home exhausted. Was this what that was like? I'd have to call him later and ask.

I pulled a couple of zerglings back to guard the sewer side entrance into my room. One of them puffed itself up, making it look bigger as it stood by the whole into the sewers, while another came up to me and presented it's head while giving me a wide-eyed expression. I gave it a few pats on the head.

When I finished my drink I laid down. I felt out to Rachel in her pod, to borrow a piece of the contentment she felt in whatever happy dream she was having and focused on that instead of my own concerns as I closed my eyes and laid for a nap.

All Hail Empress Taylor

I awoke with a startle and shot up from my bed. There was someone in the tunnels.

It was a man. He was dressed like one of the city's maintenance workers, but the military crew cut and the serious but unconcerned expression on his face tipped me off that he wasn't what he appeared to be. He was approaching slowly, entering from the sewers, and not even trying to hide his presence. When he noticed that one of my zerg spotted him, he just stopped moving and raised one hand in a gesture of surrender, the other held a briefcase or something along those lines.

"I don't know if you can hear me through your little friends here," he said, obviously referring to me. I had a zergling nod, and he continued. "We work for the same boss. He's got some stuff he wanted to be delivered to you."

I had a couple of zerglings gesture him to follow and escort him over, then I got out of bed. I checked the time and-damn! My interview would have aired a couple of hours ago. I hadn't thought I was that tired, but… No matter, I had a computer, I could check to make sure it aired and went well in a minute but still, I was out that long?

I turned to the entrance just as the man who claimed to work for Coil approached, and from his slightly startled expression it had had the effect I'd intended. There was something in his emotions I didn't like. Pity, I think. "What's in the case?"

"Two things," he said, having composed himself and returned to 'all business' mode. "The boss recently got his hands on a large amount of a highly addictive narcotic. He says it's called 'candy.' There are about 12 strong doses in here, the boss thinks you might like some based on your habit of adapting to every drug you can find."

"And?"

"And..." There was the pity again. "One of the boss's spies in the PRT got ahold of some info. There are some files on a flash drive that he thinks you should see. Learn it from us instead of from them." He handed me the case. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry."

That was… Concerning. I dismissed the man and, when he was out of earshot I opened the case and immediately took the drive to my laptop. A sick feeling crept into my hearts as I waited for the computer to boot and the files to load.

Here we go. It was some official-looking documents… Requests for Dragon to investigate my tunnels, I already knew about that… The Barnes and Hess families had been taken into protective custody after the girls confessed to the locker, and… So the PRT knew the truth and they still weren't doing the… I don't know what I expected of them after everything else that'd happened.

There were transcripts of conversations between Armsmaster and Dragon and request forms from Armsmaster for samples of various drugs and toxins and… The fucker was going to use a Bonesaw virus on me!? The hell!? And…

I stepped back and started doing every breathing exercise I could think of. That last file, that was… in, out. In, out. In. out… "Fuck!" I got up and started pacing. I tried some of that candy drug, eating the whole fucking vial to see if it would take the edge off for even a few seconds but no, it didn't help.

I noticed that I'd been clenching my fists hard enough to drive my claws into my palms and my alien blood spilled to the floor as I straightened my fingers. As I waited for my flesh to mend, I went to my fridge, grabbed my last beer. I downed it in one big gulp, shattered the bottle on the floor, then chased it with a bottle of vodka and a half-gallon of bleach. After a moment of thought, I grabbed the flash drive and marched out through my tunnels to head toward PRT HQ.

...My dad was wanted for aiding and abetting an S-Class criminal. Lethal force had been authorized "if necessary" against him and my friends, and Calvert had gotten a kill order with my name on it, citing my "dismemberment of a PRT Officer", "telepathic and psychokinetic abilities reminiscent of the Simurgh," "similarities to the Siberian including cannibalistic tendencies," and "potential to create a new Ellsberg" as the reasons for it being employed. They were going to kill me because I looked like a bunch of scary capes. Whatever, if they're coming after me with everything they've got, then it ends tonight.

*end*

Having some trouble, can't do normal formatting.