Paragon to Pavement 0.5

PtP: Chapter 0.5

Interrogation Room 4 was… smaller than she expected.

Almost oppressively small, really.

Especially so, given how massive the door looked from the outside.

If it was just small, that’d be one thing but it was also rather depressing too. Given that it was a prison, that seemed like a given but it seemed like they had found the worst shade of eggshell white for this room somehow.

Something Blazer didn’t even think was possible.

She stepped forward into the room as the massive vault of a door sealed shut behind her with another hiss that had to be hydraulic from the vents of air that lifted her cape from behind. Her gaze trailed with every step she took, the four guards in each corner staring at the figure in the center of the room.

In all tac-gear and wielding shock batons, their hands edged further and further away from their holsters the closer she got to the metal table

And finally… him.

“Sky.”

His file said he was at least twenty, and Mandy couldn’t deny that much, but looking at him now…

Wow. The heroine couldn’t help but feel that he was older and younger at the same time. It might have been the way he sat or his muscles, or maybe the bags under his eyes. Of course, it could also have been the fact that he was covered in a patchwork of deep and faded cut and burn scars… maybe.

The orange jumpsuit, standard issue, hung off him but it did little to hide all the scarring all over his body. Jagged and ugly, they were nothing like clean surgical wounds or even the scars you’d see from movie makeup. No, the burn marks on his neck looked nothing like that, thick and ropy lines running down his face to his arms where the skin looks melted and re-fused. Each one was deep and months-old into dark skin; pale patches of keloid that made him look a good few years older than his twenty.

It was a shame, too. 

With his rounded face, and cheekbones, she could tell that he would actually be something of a babyface without them. 

Almost cute, even.

Granted, it was hard to think that way looking at him cuffed to the table, heavy magnetic cuffs attached to a chain in the center of it restricting both his hands and his range of motion. The collar around his neck hummed just enough to unsettle the teeth, the power dampener a thick metal ring with a blinking red light designed to restrain, debilitate and scramble bio-energy currents.     

He still hadn’t looked up, not even after she said his name or stepped closer to the table. Not even after the final clank and hiss of the loud vault-like door. “Mr. Bright?”

Nothing.

Alright. Mandy bit back a sigh, the professional mask firmly in place over her blue one. “My name is Blonde Blazer. I’m with the Superhero Dispatch Network; SDN, the Torrance Branch.”

As much as she liked to pretend it was, her patience wasn’t infinite and it was quickly reaching its limit the longer the subject of her visit stayed silent. Honestly, he wasn’t even looking at her, or anything else; gaze firmly on the table he was cuffed to.

He was barely breathing even, almost like he was meditating or something.

Unfortunately for him, Mandy didn’t have time for any inner peace. “I’m here to discuss your removal from this facility.”

There we go. That did it, more than anything else she could have said or done, as his gaze snapped up and his eyes hit her like a punch to the gut.

Blue.

Not just blue. Electric blue. As bright as hers, even.

Those same eyes roamed her outfit; not something she was unused to, but rarely did it happen without even the slightest bit of lust in the other person’s eyes. Mandy didn’t think she was particularly vain, but she knew exactly what she looked like as Blonde Blazer and it was rare that even women didn’t look at her with something.

Not him, though.

No, he just laughed.

Mandy blinked at the dry raspy sound that left his throat as he threw his head back, more like sandpaper dragging over concrete than anything else.

“SDN.” Whether it was from disuse or his injuries, his voice was rough, but not so rough that she couldn’t make out his accent from just three syllables.

East coast, northern?

“What, you a gang?” His lip twitched upwards. “Or just the local loser version of Longbow?” 

Longbow? Blazer stepped forward, pushing that back for a second. “We aren’t a gang.”

“Yeah, I know.” Three syllables ended with another rasp of a laugh as his eyes refused to leave hers. “It’s called a joke.”

“The SDN is a licensed superhero agency,” Mandy brushed right past that. “We provide hero services to our subscribers.”

His eyes didn’t move for nearly a full ten seconds after she explained herself, the young man seemingly refusing to blink. “Licensed,” he finally parroted. “Agency.” Sky shook his head, pulling against the cuffs for a single second as the beeping and humming around his neck intensified for a split second.

Finally, he let the chain fall back down with a loud clink of metal, the electronic sounds dying with it.

“So? What is it, hero?” His lip curled up, showing off a set of gritted white teeth. “You here to tell me my ‘appeal’ for being abducted by some cosmic starfish got denied? Cause I been waiting on that one.”

With a sigh, Mandy slid into the chair opposite him. “The government of California,” she began again, hands clasped firmly on the table, “admits their apprehension and treatment of you was… hasty.”

A snort left him this time, loud and almost echoey in the small room. “Hasty. That what you call it? I wake up from a coma, covered in burns, and they tase me till I go back under? Hasty?“

That wasn’t in the file. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the time to admit how much she didn’t know about his situation. “In their defense, they did think you were a terrorist.”

“I told them,” he leaned forward as the words snapped out, both guards at his back — and probably the ones at hers — going for their guns. “I fuckin’ told them.” Those eyes burned bright and blue enough to outdo hers as he hissed out the second sentence. “I told them I was Freedom Phalanx. I told them about the Rikti. I told them about the War Walls. They looked at me like I was speaking Martian. Like I was the crazy one.”

No, she could definitely see how they thought that. You do seem a little… manic. “Trust me… we… we know that now.” Her words left her soft, because that was a lie as much as anything else could be. 

Because simply put, she didn’t know. Seriously, who handled his file? She was a manager nearly as long as she’d been a superhero and none of this was helping her do the former job in the slightest. Rikti? War Walls? 

As insane as he sounded, Blazer knew trauma when she saw it, and this kid…

Well, he was a walking ball of the stuff. “The SDN analysts confirmed the dimensional variance signature so we did verify that aren’t from here. We know you aren’t a terrorist.”

The kid stared back at her, clearly searching her face for the lie. After what felt like a whole ten minutes, he huffed and shot her a look with one eyebrow going high over that scarred face. “So what? I’m free to go? You giving me a bus ticket and a ‘Sorry we shocked you for six months’ card? Maybe a gift certificate to Applebee’s?”

“Not…” And here was the hard sell, “…exactly.”

The kid’s face hardened all at once, those shutters coming right back down. “Figures. There’s always a ‘not exactly’.”

“As it is, you have no citizenship,” Mandy continued, voice still steady as she pulled on all her experience as the Torrance branch manager. “You have no social security number. No birth certificate in this universe. You don’t exist, Sky. And… you did cause over twelve million dollars in property damage and hospitalized six police officers.”

“They shot at me first!”

Blonde Blazer pulled a face. “Doesn’t matter. Not to the lawyers. In the eyes of the State of California, you are a walking liability with no legal existence and a heavy debt.”

She took a breath, steeling herself before she threw what had to be the most railroaded pitch she had ever offered anyone. “But… the SDN has offered a solution.”

Two fingers slid a single piece of paper across the table.

A contract.

“The state is willing to drop the charges. All of them. Terrorism. Mass destruction. Reckless endangerment. Unlawful meta activity. Resisting detainment.”

Blue eyes slid down to the paper, the bold print at the top catching all his attention.

PHOENIX PROGRAM.

“If?” It was amazing how tight a voice could be coming from someone who wasn’t old enough to drink yet.

“If you let the SDN take responsibility for you,” Mandy answered his question. “You enter the Phoenix Program. It’s a rehabilitation and reintegration track.” For villains, she didn’t add. “You work for us. We house you. We train you. We monitor you.”

“Probation.” He parroted the word like she just spat on his mother.

“More… employment, really.” Her hands went up, trying to ease the offer. “With… some oversight.”

“You want to put me on a leash.”

“We want to give you a life.”

“A life working for… who exactly?”

“Heroes,” Blazer’s correction came quick. “We help people. We protect our city.”

Another bitter laugh left the young man in front of her, loud as all the others. “No, no, I know heroes. I’m a hero. Statesman is a hero. We protect the people.” All the humor left his face all at once, good or otherwise. “You’re a corporate cop. You protect property values.”

Blonde Blazer opened her mouth, the heroine doing her best to find the words to deny that. …I mean… Unfortunately, that wasn’t an entirely incorrect description of the subscription based super-service that was the SDN.

“What if I say no, huh?” 

The question snapped her out of it, Blonde Blazer blinking as she tilted her head and answered on autopilot. “Unfortunately, you’d be looking at indefinite containment until the state of California processes your appeal and holds several hearings, with all of the stakeholders involved… including you. Which could take… years.”

Her hand went to her neck. “That means the collar stays on.”

The room was silent as the hum of the collar only seemed to get louder.

Blazer didn’t say anything as she just watched him look around the room, his blue eyes clearly tracking the guards as he tugged on the cuffs one more time.

Unsurprisingly, the collar started to beep again; sensors detecting what could have been any attempt at using an ability beyond human.

Finally, he turned back to look at Mandy, blue meeting blue again, as he seemed to search for anything behind the mask.

She expected hate. She expected anger. Hell, she wouldn’t have been entirely surprised if he spat at her. Wouldn’t be the first time. Maybe a rant about freedom, or rights, or something else she’d expect from anybody locked up for something like this.

Instead, the kid leaned forward.

And smiled.

It’s not a nice smile.

“Lady.” His voice dropped low.  “If it gets this fuckin’ collar off my neck, I’d let you take my temperature like a Great Dane.”

Mandy smiled back, number three on her face this time. “Welcome to the Dispatch, Sky.”