They Tell Me I'm The Bad Guy (19 page)

He got somebody to get me a bottle of water and gave me a psy-blocker to take. Even though their staff psychics confirmed I was unreadable, which smelled like bullshit, they had to give me a blocker anyway because of procedure. The thing was like a fucking horse pill; I had to try three times to choke it down. Then, with Tank and the Rubber Battery waiting to unload ass-stomp on me if I resisted, he showed me the court order to sedate me for transport. The ACLU hadn't gotten the Supreme Court to repeal sedation after a smooth arrest like this one yet, so the SCEIA still got to dope us like they were transporting whales even after we surrend
ered. For everybody's 'safety.'

"I might still have acid in my system, man," I told to Blue while some guy swabbed my arm for the injection. "This isn't gonna overload my system, is it?"

"Don't worry, this guy here is a certified paramedic and will be on your chopper with you. We've got a medical team on standby at headquarters."

"Uh huh. You didn't answer my question."

DeltaBlue smiled, his eyes hidden by tinted flight goggles. "Yeah, you should be all right."

They jammed me full of sedatives and pointed me at one of the helicopters touching down on the lawn. Drashelle got on ahead of me; she had an ass just made for slapping that looked like it had been poured into that rubber suit. It was close enough to touch. I memorized it.

A couple of guys sat me down across from her on the helicopter. Everyone else on the ground got their orders and started to disperse. I shouted at Rosemary, who was walking back into the house, "Can you come with me?"

She stopped and shook her head and yelled something I couldn't make out to me over the noise.

"
Come see me in custody, will you?
" I yelled to her.

Blue was hovering nearby, and I could tell the motherfucker's ears were tuned in to everything being said, but fuck him.

Rosemary nodded reluctantly.

Some GI Joe looking motherfucker slammed the door shut between us and told me to sit my ass down. I complied because Drashelle looked like she was in a fuck-somebody-up mood and my sedatives were starting to kick in.

The helicopter ascended and turned away from Rosie's house. The two other ones kept formation next to us, snipers still ready to take my head off like a champagne cork. The Tank was co-pilot on the helicopter I was on; DeltaBlue looked like he was
texting
on his cell phone while he flew point out front.

Drashelle stared out the window, her legs crossed. Nobody sat next to her, and they gave her a berth with all the metal they were packing.

"I got your magazine spread," I told her when I started getting loopy. "It was hot."

She acted like she didn't hear, but she was a shitty actress. I had seen the movie she did. Got some use out of it.

"I
'
m sorry, what did you need?" she asked me.

"Nothing."

A minute or two passed of me thinking about how stuck up she was, and I belligerently said, "I know you heard me." Then I passed out from the sedatives.

They woke me up when we landed. The armed escorts threw open the door, yanked me up and told me to walk and do
exactly
as I was told. My feet hit the tarmac a stone's throw from the Skee Headquarters building, a squat five-floor office park looking thing in Washington, DC wedged between Anacostia Naval Station and Bolling Air Force Base. Conveniently across the street from St. Elizabeth's Mental Hospital.

A red painted line stretched all the way from where we landed to the building. The other two helicopters still hovered,
snipers
watching me.

Four steroid advertisements in navy blue guard uniforms came out to sign paperwork to take me. They joked and laughed with DeltaBlue while I stood there barely able to. A bushy-eyed, white-haired guard as squat as the building behind him seemed to come out of nowhere and surprised
the shit out of me.

"The fuck?" I blurted out loudly.

"It's all right, son," he said in a gravelly voice. "Calm down, just breathe."

He gave me a minute to process where I was, then focused my attention on the red line at my feet.

"This is the Power Line," he said loudly over the noise of
the
helicopter taking back off. "We call it that because any powered individual in our custody has to stay on this line. By stepping off this line, you give
us
the power to open fire for our own safety. Keep that in mind. Stay on the line at all times."

I nodded.

"Do you understand the importance of this line?"

"Yes. This line is my power."

He blinked once. "Don't step off it. All right?"

"Yeah, all right."

The sedatives made getting processed, fingerprinted and photographed a blur. They had a doctor look at me and wrap my r
ibs up. They were only bruised.

My old tour guide stayed with me every step of the way down the Line. "Each of these cells are designed to house Post-Humans like yourself. We're only half-full right now, so you'll be staying as Uncle Sam's guest in your own cell. There are a couple of notables in-house right now: G-Mod Killah was brought
back
in a couple of days ago by Ibn Meghar of the Shining Beacon Coalition
himself
, uh, Barney Whistle is in the infirmary and should be out in a couple of days, and DeltaBlue brought in Ja-Rilla yesterday from the field office in LA. He's the one that's a shaved gorilla. And, no, I'm not screwing with you, his human brain was put into the body of a gorilla for who-knows-what reason and he keeps the body shaved." He turned his head back to me and fluttered his fingers on his chin. "Except for a goatee he keeps. And, before you ask, no, again, I'm not screwing with you."

"Hey, I'm just here until the Witness Protection people come get me," I told him. "I ain't staying. I'm gonna testify against a murderer."

"Good for you," he nodded. "Here we go. You're in cell Number 14."

They gave me another pat down, then punched the code in to open the door and put me in my room. It looked like a dorm
room.

"Hey, you got a guy named Will Bowman here?" I asked him.

"No. Nobody with that name has come through here recently. Do not use your powers in this cell," the old guy went on. "We'll know about it. The walls look normal, but behind them are millions of dollars in sensors and armor plating, same kinda stuff they have up in Stone Pass. If the temperature in here changes ten degrees up or down, you'll get a visit from a guard to find out why." He pointed up at the ceiling that had five emergency sprinkler heads. "You've got a camera there and there to watch you. There's somebody watching you twenty-four a day. If you need something," he gestured to a purple laminated card sitting on the bed, "Just hold that card up in front of the camera. The teal one next to it is to let them know you're making a privacy request. Flash that up there, and a guard will be here within a minute to hear your request. You only get two a day, so make 'em good."

I barely understood, so he put a sheet explaining it all on the metal desk next to my metal toilet.

The old guy turned on the TV that was bolted into my wall behind bulletproof glass. "We've got closed circuit TV in here. Not all the channels you're used to I'll bet, but you can get a few shows." He handed me the remote. "They can't question you or get a statement from you on the sedatives, so they'll talk to you in the morning. Get a good night's sleep because tomorrow's going to be a long one for you."

I fumbled for the remote with a dull hand. "What is it you do?" I slurred out with the drugs. "Your badge says 'P' on it. There's a P, so thats means you're a Poster, right?"

The old guy sent the guards out of the room ahead of him. "You got a good eye. I fly and I kick ass. And keep in mind there's no room to fly in this place." He knocked his knotted hand on the door frame before he stepped into the hallway and punched the code to lock my cell.

"Lights out in an hour," he said through the one foot by one foot piece of bulletproof glass in the metal slab of a door. "Sleep well."

I
lied
back on the rough sheets. The sedatives hit me again in a wave, and I fell asleep thinking about how nobody knew I had melted the tires on Red's motorcycle.

Sticks and Stones Can Break Your Bones but Words Will Fuck You Sideways

I woke up when the sedatives wore off. Took a piss in my metal toilet; the fluorescent lights above came on halfway through. I nearly gave the cameras the finger but caught myself. The prize at the end of this tunnel of horseshit had to take priority.

But the thing that bothered me was why Rosemary couldn't read my mind. Were her and Blue just lying about it? And where the fuck was Will?

I finished and flushed the toilet. "Was Will Bowman brought in by Agent Red?" I asked the cameras. Nobody answered. Fine.

Thirty seconds later, a speaker came on. "Guillory, your cell temperature readings are increasing. What are you doing?"

"Thinking about Agent Parks. Hey, was a guy named Will Bowman brought in by Agent Red?"

The speaker in the ceiling replied, "That question can be answered in your conference this morning."

"I have a conference?"

"Opening up Number Fourteen," someone in the hall announced. The metal-on-metal squealing of the door to my cell opening
woke me up better than coffee.

"Guillory," one of the guards said, "Move to the back wall and put your hands out, palms flat, against the wall."

I complied without saying anything, my mouth full of bad breath and desperation for the first cigarette of the day.

I got walked down to the showers in shackles. I had a shower by myself with four armed men watching my progress. I got told to hurry up while I brushed my teeth. And I fucking took all of it because it was the only smart thing to do if I didn't want this to be my permanent routine.

After the allotted hygiene time, they walked me down the Power Line in a stiff grey prisoner's jumpsuit and shackles to the interrogation rooms, which were all nicely labeled as 'conference rooms' instead of 'interrogation rooms' to make stupid guys feel like everybody here was
really their friend.

The guards sat me down in a steel chair at a steel table in a beige cinder block room. One wall had a big mirror on it, and anybody who had ever watched a cop show knew there were ten guys in a room watching me. A ceiling-mounted camera in the corner with a blinking red light recorded everything.

Some limp dick non-Poster agent came in and shook my hand and put a pad of white paper and a pen on the table.
He turned on a pocket recorder and gave his unimportant name, the date, all that crap, and had me give my name, birth date, and all my unimportant crap.
He told me I could have an attorney present and anything I said could be used as evidence in court. I told him I didn't need an attorney, I just wanted to help them get Tracey. Because that was what an innocent guy would do, like an idiot, and I wanted these shit heads on my side.

The guy asked me to write my story, everything I knew about Tracey, everything that had happened since she contacted me. I told him I would be glad to if he got Will somewhere safe so Tracey couldn't touch him. I threw in my sister and her family, too; didn't figure Tracey to be the type that would go after them, but I had to make my scared guy act look good. And I wanted my acceptance into Witness Protection in writing.

Three fucking hours of pretty much this same routine followed. He wanted my statement, I wouldn't give it to him until I got what I wanted. They thought I would give in and just spill my guts, but they h
ad the wrong man for that shit.

I finally got some peace while I ate a breakfast of fast food pancakes and the coffee of my choice, but the limp dick guy started right back up with his shit as soon as I finished eating. I played the bathroom break card and said the coffee had gone right through me, and after an hour of whining about it, he finally let me go take a shackled piss.

An hour he kept me waiting to piss. The motherfucker was lucky he was a cop and I needed to not beat someone half to death on camera with their own shoe.

When I got back from the bathroom, the limp dick was gone. In his chair sat DeltaBlue's glowing ass, wearing shades indoors like Elvis fucking Presley and a pinstripe suit that fit him like it was custom. His blue lightshow reflected off the steel table.

"Mr. Guillory, have a seat," he said, standing as I entered and sticking his hand out. I shook it. "How was your first night in the Pib?"

A guard unlocked my shackles, and I took my seat. "The what?"

"Oh, I thought you would'a heard that by now. That's what everybody calls the holding area you spent the night in. Before the first series of renovations, the staff nicknamed it 'Pandora's Box,' you know, because of all the guys that got put away in there and the freaky things that could go down. That was back when people used to read books and, uh, watch variety shows and stuff like that, though, so nowadays everybody just call it The Pib."