The Trial

The lack of sunlight in the windowless classroom did little to soothe the mid-Monday tiredness stinging my eyes. I wanted little more than to curl up in bed with a mug of hot cocoa, but instead I had Gladly's cross-functional class, and with it—

"Got the note, Hebert?"

Somewhere buried under my sigh was a lick of anger, just out of reach through the fog of drowsiness. The sight of Sophia and Madison, once enough to drive me to full alertness, now only brought a fatigue from which not even the horrible squeaking of my chair's legs against the floor could shake me.

I let Miss Militia's note fall to the table as I took my seat, Sophia wincing as my kneecaps immediately banged into her own.

"We're not giving it to him," I said.

If we did, that would be it: Gladly would give us another topic. He'd have to, with a note signed by Miss Militia herself. But what about Lustrum? I was sure that, if we kept digging, we'd find something. But if we weren't careful…

"We might be in a bit above our heads," said Madison, her eyes fixated on the note. "But… I— I don't know. There's something we're missing. The heroes are definitely hiding something. They basically rolled out a red carpet for us, with the car and the PHQ and everything. They were trying to impress us, right? So we'd do what they said? To get us to stop, before we figure out whatever they're hiding."

"Been reading too much PHO, Maddy," said Sophia.

"Not 'Maddy,'" said Madison, her mouth twitching in irritation. "And I'm just saying: there's something there."

"We have to keep digging," I said. "We'll find something."

"Or it'll find you," said Sophia, her voice lacking her usual brashness. "If you find anything. And if you don't… I can't fail this class. Don't think even you can bullshit with what we've got so far."

No, I couldn't. What we'd found so far would fill four or five pages, if I stretched. Six if I really pushed. Maybe we could squeeze in another page or two musing on some of our more outlandish theories. It was a Simurgh plot wouldn't go far, but perhaps we'd get more mileage from Lustrum was a shared dream manifesting out of the uncertainty in the collective consciousness as feminism transitioned into third wave, the second wave giving its last, violent throes. The thought tugged at the corner of my mouth, and I couldn't hold back a snort.

Wheels against linoleum distracted me from my musings.

"And how's my Lustrous group doing, today?" asked Mr. Gladly, swiveling his stool beneath him and taking a seat beside our desk. "Found anything inter— what's this?"

My hand snapped out to snatch away the note, but it was too late. He raised his eyebrows at the letterhead; he raised one still further as he read the note's contents. He chuckled and shook his head.

"Can't say I expected that," he said, laying the note back down upon the desk. "That's— Bet one of you's planning on keeping that, aren't you? Going to frame it?"

My eyes drifted over to Madison, and along the way I spotted Sophia's doing the same; Madison rewarded us with that little innocent smile of hers.

"Well, I did keep a few capes in reserve, of course, just in case a group ran into problems," said Mr. Gladly. He lowered his voice and sneaked a glance around the classroom. "Between you and me, some of the easier ones. Ones everyone'll know."

He left unsaid that we'd need an easy cape, two weeks behind that we were.

"How about it? Want a hero? How about Alexandria? Or maybe you'd rather another villain… tall, dark, and scaly himself? Lung the Vengeancebringer?"

If his chuckle was anything to go by, Gladly had thought up that title himself, and clearly thought it very clever indeed, but none of us felt up to humoring him with a laugh.

"Mr. G!"

A small groan slipped its way between my lips, but I held back an eyeroll.

"Yes, Emma?" said Mr. Gladly.

"I'm sure Sophia and Madison could join my team," said Emma. "There's not enough time for them to start from scratch. It wouldn't be fair, would it?"

My ability to hold back my eyeroll, it turned out, was not without limits. My fingernails dug into my palms. Why was I upset? Shouldn't I want to be out of this godforsaken group?

"We're not changing groups," said Mr. Gladly firmly, his eyes lingering on me. Had I been right? Had he put Sophia, Madison, and I together in an attempt to protect me? He'd have done better to see them reprimanded, or even expelled. Unless… was there a reason he couldn't?

"Well," said Emma, her smug smile as grating as ever, "it's too bad, because we've been finding tons of things. Of course, I might have a connection or two, you know."

I shot Sophia a look—so much for 'competition'—but she just raised an eyebrow and shrugged like she always did.

"We have to pick Lung, obviously," said Madison, as Gladly walked off. Sophia disagreed, and the two of them began fighting.

Was that it?

I didn't want it to be. I wanted to know what had happened with Lustrum. It felt important, somehow, though I wasn't sure why. Was it personal? Maybe I wanted to know why my Mom would follow someone who'd do such horrible things as the heroes had said Lustrum had done. Or maybe it was as Laura Mirthton had said: maybe I just couldn't let things go.

Sophia and Madison were still fighting when the bell rang. I leapt from my seat and grabbed my bag, the chair once again squeaking horribly against the floor. I pushed my legs faster; there'd be a bus downtown in just a couple minutes. I could make it, even without Madison's mom driving—

"We're going to the courthouse, right?" asked Madison, keeping pace beside me with her bouncing cadence.

"Thought we were doing Lung now," I said, a bit of a bite to my voice.

"Alexandria," said Sophia, from my other side. I sighed. Ahead, the throng of students was silhouetted by the light of the doors through which they were attempting to squeeze themselves.

I let myself slow. I wasn't going to make that bus, was I? Not with my two hangers-on. Might as well wait out the crowd. I sighed and leaned against the hallway's wall, its rough, matte paint giving me goosebumps that were only exacerbated by the squeaking of my sneakers against the floor as I let myself slump down an inch or two.

"Whatever," said Madison. "We're going, right? Even if you're not going, I'm going."

"Of course I'm going," I said, letting my eyes fall closed. I ran my fingers through my hair; pulled and felt the tension against my scalp—

"Idiots gonna get yourselves killed," said Sophia. "Or Mastered."

"You don't have to come, Hess," I snapped.

"Can't be weaker than you, Hebert, can I?"

It was such a Sophia thing to say. Why could I tell it was a lie?

The Superior Court downtown was an older building with an insufficient number of windows. Its walls were yellowing; its accents were an unpleasant shade of wood. The line for the metal detectors was long, and had Madison not canceled her swimming lessons and gotten her mom to drive us, we wouldn't have made it through before closing time. As it was, we had a scant thirty minutes to spare. The clerk, a middle-aged man with I'm-smarter-than-you glasses and wrinkles only on his forehead, was every bit as rude as Madison had said, huffing and sighing as if we were horribly wasting his time. We had arrived at four and didn't leave until the courthouse's closing time of five thirty.

"Is strawberry alright?" asked Mrs. Clements, a small carton of ice cream in her hand. "Madison doesn't like it, so it's all we have left."

"I don't 'not like' it," said Madison. "It just bothers my stomach."

I wondered how strawberry ice cream in particular could bother someone's stomach. Stomachs could be strange, I supposed.

"Strawberry's fine," I said, pushing back my chair. "Let me help—"

"You have homework," she said, sternly.

I glanced at the records strewn across the Clements's glass-top kitchen table. Although Sophia had given Madison and I threatening looks, none of us had told Madison's mom that, technically speaking, Lustrum wasn't our assignment anymore.

Madison was nibbling on a biscotti as she read through a sheet, blinking her eyes periodically at the cumbersome legalese. Occasionally, she asked Sophia for help deciphering something or another. Maybe Mr. Barnes had taught Sophia a thing or two?

"A lot's redacted," said Sophia, over the clatter of ceramic bowls moving against each other.

"The rest we know," said Madison. "Child taken from Harold Stansfield Children's Clinic, fed bio-tinkered drugs identical to those found in 1998, and then Mastered for— well, they don't say why. If you can trust the prosecution, at least. It all reads like the Canary trial. Lustrum wasn't even allowed to speak in her own defense. It doesn't make sense. They knew she wasn't the Master, didn't they?"

"They might not have been sure," I said. "Maybe they only figured it out later."

I poked at a few of the pages. There wasn't much, and most of what was left un-redacted was rhetoric by the attorneys. Lustrum's seemed bumbling and confused. The prosecution, meanwhile, kept referring back to the child.

"It's weird, though," said Madison. "The way it's written… The names are all redacted, even the genders, and it's hard to keep track of who's who, but… they keep building up one of the parents. Is it just to make the jury feel sad?"

I jumped as a dark green blur swung down before me. Just a placemat, followed shortly after by a square white bowl with three large scoops of ice cream. A few moments and another green blur later, and Sophia had her own bowl.

"Could've been a cape," said Sophia. "Mentions a sensitive identity here. Usually that means hero."

She pointed at one of the pages with one hand as she scooped a spoon of ice cream into her mouth with her other. Behind her, Madison's mom started pulling pots and pans from the hanging rack— making dinner, I supposed.

"Armsmaster, you think?" I asked, taking a bite of my own. The case seemed personal, for him. 'What am I supposed to do?' he'd asked—not that Sophia or Madison knew about that.

"Him, a son?" asked Sophia, snorting.

"I told you!" exclaimed Madison, victoriously. "He disappeared in the early nineties, and when he came back he was all happy and giddy."

"Armsmaster, giddy?" asked Sophia. "Although…"

"Found any pictures yet?" asked Madison, dipping the tail of her biscotti in her glass of milk. "They have those in trials, right? Exhibits, or something?"

"No idea," I said, shuffling through a few more pages. "But I thought I saw something…"

Somewhere, in the midst of the photocopied pages, I'd seen a bit of paper with the cloudy bloom of printer toner. Just there! I extricated it from the pile of papers that was only growing less organized, and—

"Harold Stansfield Children's Clinic?" I asked, staring at the picture. It was hard not to recognize it.

"Yeah," said Madison. "That's where they say she kidnapped him from."

I spun the picture around, and pushed it towards Madison and Sophia. It stuck and tumbled against a couple other sheets. Sophia reached for the napkin holder, plucked out a paper napkin, and wiped her fingers with a surprising daintiness, before reaching for the paper I'd tossed.

"I don't think she kidnapped him," I said. "I think she rescued him. From Harrow's."

On the sheet of paper, through the noisy patterns left by the copy machine, was a photograph of a burnt-out building that was less of a building and more of a house, a house Sophia, Madison, and I had visited not two weeks ago. The BBQ.

Below it was a caption, printed in a stodgy monospace font.

04/03/05: Remains of Harold Stansfield Children's Clinic after attack on night of 04/02/05.

"Holy shit."

"Language, Maddy," said Mrs. Clements, not bothering look back from the stovetop. She twisted a burner knob; click click click whoosh—

"Not 'Maddy,'" said Madison, with only the barest of sighs. "What about the Master, though?"

Sophia began to laugh. It was a bitter, awful laugh; at the sound of it, the strawberry ice cream seemed to turn sour in my mouth.

"There wasn't one, was there?" I asked, quietly.

"Some 'hero,'" said Sophia, disdainfully. "Couldn't take his kid being… being… gay, or trans, or whatever they were…"

"The drugs," I said, the pieces starting to fit together. I looked through the documents, trying to find any other pictures. Maybe there was one of—

"Hormones, maybe," said Sophia. "If the kid was trans. Or puberty blockers."

I thought I heard Madison's mom mutter a word that might have been 'fascinating,' but the sound was quickly covered up as she poured something into a pan and it began to sizzle violently.

"Tinker-made…" said Madison. "If the kid's Armsmaster's… could, uh… they? Could they be the bio-tinker? It would fit, wouldn't it?"

"Timeline's wrong," said Sophia. "Same drugs found in 1998. Before kidnapping."

"Okay," I said. "So Lustrum broke this kid out of the clinic and, with her bio-tinker, helped 'em get the medicine they needed… and Armsmaster didn't approve. Not if he sent the kid to Harrow's. Ah!"

I snatched a leaf of paper from the pile. I'd almost missed it: it was nearly entirely blank, but for the black-and-white photo of an oblong lozenge centered within it, and the caption immediately below.

Bio-tinker-crafted pills found during 04/08/05 raid of Grace Sanders's residence. Quantity found: 1lb. Chemical composition matches drugs subject of 1998 trial of known Lustrum associates.

"That's T."

I jumped. When had Sophia gotten up? She was leaning over my shoulder, scrutinizing the picture of the tiny pill. I leaned to the side, preferring not to feel her breath on my ear.

"T?" asked Madison.

"Testosterone," said Sophia. "Trans men take it. Some nonbinary people too. Depends."

"Trans men are, uh—"

"Assigned female at birth," I said. Sophia shot me a look. "What? I read. Or I research, anyway. I've been thinking of signing up for the DIY class at the BBQ. I thought I should learn basics, shouldn't I?"

Sophia rolled her eyes theatrically. "Nerd," she said, dragging out the 'er' nice and long.

"So the kid's probably a boy, then?" said Madison. "He was probably taking the testosterone?"

"This is bio-tinkered, though, right?" asked Sophia. She looked apprehensive, and her eyes darted to the bench in the corner of the room, upon which we'd all tossed our bags.

"Yeah?"

Sophia offered no words of explanation. She strode to her bag and fumbled with the latches, before searching around inside until she found her phone. Then she grabbed the handle of one of the kitchen's exterior French doors and yanked it open—it apparently stuck something awful—before making a phone call.

I exchanged a glance with Madison. Neither of us understood.

"Fascinating, I tell you," said Madison's mom. "I think it's wonderful, you three doing this for your class. We never got projects like this when I was in school."

Madison reddened slightly, but before she could say anything, the kitchen door creaked as Sophia shoved it open again.

"We need to go," said Sophia. "Come on."

"Not staying for dinner?" asked Mrs. Clements. "Is everything okay? Do you need a ride, or—"

"No," said Sophia abruptly, before catching herself. "Thank you. We can take a bus. There's… it's about the case."

Mrs. Clements gave a little giggle.

"Right," she said. "The 'case.' I guess you're going, too, Madison? I'll leave dinner in the fridge for you."

Sophia nearly dragged us out of the house. It was a ten minute walk out of the neighborhood, and another five to the nearest bus stop. A twenty minute bus ride, a five minute wait, followed by another ten minute ride, and we arrived in a slightly worn-down neighborhood not unlike my own. I thought I might have passed through once or twice. I recognized the street—Stonemast Avenue—and realized I couldn't be all that far from home.

We walked up a driveway covered in chalk drawings. There was a yellow sun, a dark gray cloud, and a big yellow lightning bolt, each drawn in squiggly lines; I felt myself smiling, almost able to see the chalk stick held tightly within a child's fist, jerkily moving back and forth. Just ahead of the lightning bolt was a speeding figure drawn much more carefully, done in all black, a cape trailing behind her blowing in streaks of gray wind: Alexandria.

Sophia fiddled with the door for a minute—the key seemed to jam—before letting us in. Was this her home? Why had she brought us here? Madison didn't seem to know any more than I did.

There were noises coming from somewhere to our left—I thought I saw a kitchen down one way, and maybe a living room down the other—but rather than heading for either, Sophia led us up a flight of carpet-covered stairs.

She knocked on a door, the sound echoing within its hollow structure.

"It's me," she said.

The door creaked open with a little pop of the lock springing undone. Inside was a boy perhaps just shy of twenty. He opened the door wide and gestured for us to enter, raising an eyebrow at Madison and I.

Inside was a small room with wood paneling halfway up the walls, and wallpaper up the rest. Clothing was strewn everywhere. The room was sparsely decorated: an empty picture frame or two on a desk, but no photos.

"Guests?" he asked, raising an eyebrow in a manner that reminded me very much of Sophia. "Which one's Emma?"

"Neither," I said, a bit of irritation creeping into my voice. "I'm Taylor. She's Madison."

"He's Terry," said Sophia, motioning at him with her head. "My brother."

"Outing me, then?" he asked Sophia. I was unable to tell if his apparent irritation was earnest or in jest. It must have been why she'd called: to get his permission, however reluctant it seemed to be.

"Oh!" I exclaimed. Immediately, I felt my face grow warm. "Sorry, I mean— it just explains some things. You're— are you trans, then?"

"Yep," he said, tersely. "Very."

"Same rules as BBQ," said Sophia. "No outing. You never even met him. I will kill you."

Terry scowled slightly and glanced towards the small window at the end of his room. He seemed to consider something for a moment, flexing his fingers testily, before shaking himself.

"Let's get this over with, then," he said, rather unpleasantly. "Come on."

He led us out of the bedroom and across the hall, over to a tiny bathroom with a combination shower and tub, its flowery curtain yellowing. He pulled open the mirrored medicine cabinet, and took out a small, clear bottle containing oblong lozenges, each identical to the one we'd seen in the photo at Madison's house, all colored a deep forest green.

Sophia took the bottle from him, examining it closely. It held little in the way of labels.

"Can I… can I hold one?" I asked, a thought striking me.

Terry looked at me quizzically, before sighing.

"Fine," he said, brusquely. Sophia opened the bottle, jostling me as she tried to maneuver her arms in the limited space. She tapped it carefully against her palm, sliding out a single pill which she gingerly handed over.

I peered at it. It looked normal enough. Like a gel, maybe. I wasn't sure. But didn't pills usually have markings to help identify them? This one had none.

"What's got you on edge?" asked Sophia. I looked up, but she wasn't talking to me. "Need me to yell at Ste—"

"No, no," said Terry. "It's just…"

I thought I saw him shrug, but my attention had returned to the pill. I briefly glanced up again. None of them were looking, so I had a fly buzz over.

"Do they work well?" asked Madison.

"Yes."

"No problems?" asked Sophia, an edge to her voice. "Nothing wrong? Strange? You don't, like—"

"It's just testosterone," he said.

I checked again—they still weren't looking—before having the fly land on the pill and taste it. Only after I'd done it did the guilt set in: Terry would be taking it later, wouldn't he? I should probably—

"Ah!" I yelled, dropping the pill. "Oh my god, I'm so sorry!"

"Fucking Hebert," Sophia muttered.

I ducked down as if to pick it up, accidentally head-butting Sophia's leg on the way.

"No, no," said Terry, sighing heavily. "I'll get it later. Can't take it now, anyway."

"Where did you get them?" asked Madison. But I could tell from the way she said it that she already knew the answer. After all, hadn't the pill Elisa had taken been the same shade of green?

Was our bio-tinker still active? Did they perhaps sign their work in forest green? Something was still off about it all. Messy, almost. Was that just how things were, in real life? Or was there still a piece we were missing?

"At— at the BBQ," said Terry. "Dr. Thenison. It's— they subsidize hormones for people who can't, uh…"

"Dr. Thenison?" I asked. "We've not been able to get in to see him."

"Good luck with that," said Terry.

"Why?" asked Sophia.

Terry sighed again.

"The BBQ was attacked this weekend, Sophia," he said. "Dr. Thenison's missing."