The Power Broker

by Nick Svolos

  Please turn the page for an excerpt from The Power Broker.

  “Tell me again why this is a good idea?” Ratna Bannerjee asked.

  I turned onto Highway 1 north of Las Cruces and glanced out of the corner of my eye at my photographer. Though she insisted on tagging along on this assignment, she looked like she was coming down with a bad case of second thoughts. I couldn’t blame her. It wasn’t an unreasonable reaction, given where we were going.

  “I never said it was. But the best stories often come from somebody’s bad idea.”

  “You gotta admit, turning off the containment field on a supervillain just to see if she’s sane is a little over-the-top.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s lawyers for you. Her PD convinced the judge to issue the court order, so they’re gonna do what they’re gonna do.”

  “Do you actually think there’s a sane person in there?”

  “Damned if I know. I mean, it’s been what, seven years since the incident? If Dr. Schadenfreude was telling the truth—and it’s hard to tell with that guy—she’s been under the control of a mad scientist ever since. I can’t imagine what something like that might do to a person.”

  We fell into a tense silence for the last few miles, until the Lompoc Enhanced Correctional Facility came into view. Back when the Space Shuttle was still a thing, NASA constructed a base here to launch polar-orbit spy satellites. The tract wasn’t very big, putting the buildings a lot closer to the launchpads than at Kennedy, and they had to be hardened so they wouldn’t rattle apart during lift-off. When the shuttle program folded, the feds repurposed the facility as a prison for superhuman criminals. Lompoc housed eighteen prisoners, putting them dangerously close to full capacity. The inmates, whether they were serving time or just awaiting trial, spent their days in solitary cells under the orange glare of a containment field to keep their abilities neutralized.

  Today’s subject, Mechanista, was the terrifying remnant of a teenage girl with a rare form of leukemia. An experimental treatment using microscopic robots to stimulate her stem cells to fight the cancer went horribly wrong, converting every cell of her body into tiny machines. She went insane, turning the procedure room into a food processor before escaping to a life of villainy. She’s been here since her capture last summer, nothing more than an immobile statue, waiting for the justice system to decide what to do with her. Today, with a little luck, we might find out.

  We checked in at the main gate. A team of guards there checked our IDs and studied our paperwork like they were preparing for the S.A.T.s. They scanned my car’s undercarriage with an electronic detector. A German Shepherd came out to give us a good once-over. Once they were satisfied, they called in our arrival to some distant command post before sending us to a security facility where we were scanned some more, patted down, questioned, and relieved of all of our worldly possessions except what we needed to do our jobs—my notebook and Ratna’s camera. They even took our clothes, making us change into green jumpsuits. These guys took their jobs seriously and didn’t take any chances. I couldn’t blame them.

  They handed us color-coded badges and ordered us to wear them at all times. The guard joked that we didn’t want to be mistaken for prisoners, but I didn’t think he was really joking. He gave us each a little pamphlet with the protocols we were to follow. We sat through a five-minute lecture on the same procedures. I knew them by heart. “In case of an emergency, stay put and wait for help,” “Don’t address the prisoners,” and, oh, yeah, the guards were trained to shoot first and ask questions while reloading. When they were done with us, they turned us over to a pair of armed guards. These guys were in dark blue jumpsuits with padded armor and helmets with visors that covered their faces. Without so much as a word, they escorted us through the labyrinthine depths of the facility. The corridors were unmarked and deliberately disorienting. In no time at all, I lost track of the way out. The prison was designed to be a confusing maze. It sent a clear message. We’d only be leaving if they wanted us to. I’d been here several times, and it was never a good feeling.

  After a fifteen-minute march, we came to our destination. A reinforced door slid open, leading to an observation gallery overlooking an empty containment cell through what must have been a solid foot of clear plexiglass. The cell glowed with an eerie orange light, emanating from Kunai radiation emitters located throughout the room. Across the observation booth was another door and a window that granted a view into a control room populated by white-suited technicians and staff.

  Incarcerating people who can bend bars or melt their way through concrete wasn’t easy. In the old days, they tried a variety of methods to keep them under control. Narcotic gasses, oxygen deprivation, you name it. Anything to keep these people from getting out and menacing the world. None of them worked particularly well. A minute or two lapse was enough to get them back on their feet, ready to fight. Over time, the courts found most of these methods to be unconstitutional, anyway. Something about cruel and unusual punishment. For my money, it wasn’t as cruel as being torn in half or turned into a puddle of melted goo, but nobody asked me. Fortunately, the discovery of Kunai radiation and the Galestorm Technologies Nullification Field changed all that. It was a legal way to turn off a super-criminal’s powers. Most of them, anyway.

  Our escort moved off to take up positions with the other security personnel around the perimeter of the room while Ratna snapped pictures of the environment. I approached three people in business suits sitting in the front row of the seating area, nodding to Ratna to make sure she got a few shots of them, too. The man and two women were the only people in the place who weren’t wearing prison-issued jumpsuits. Being officers of the court had its privileges.

  I made my way to the open seat next to Mechanista’s court-appointed public defender. Casey Higgins was young, pretty, and had the excited yet terrified look of someone about to find out whether the life preserver she’d just been thrown was the real deal or a hologram.

  “Green’s a good color for you, Conway,” she said with a grin, sticking out her hand. She spoke fast, like there were so many thoughts buzzing around her blond head that she had to eject the sentence as quick as possible to make room for the next.

  “In this place, I’ll take anything that isn’t orange.” I took a moment to exchange greetings with the Honorable Scott Smith and Assistant District Attorney Elena Stephens before taking my seat.

  “Well, thanks for coming. And thanks for your testimony. She’d never have this chance without you,” the defense lawyer said.

  I frowned. “Don’t pin this on me, counselor. I just reported what Dr. Schadenfreude told me. That doesn’t mean I think this is a good idea.”

  “If there’s another way to verify her mental fitness to stand trial, I’d like to hear it.”

  “Just off the top of my head? Get a telepath. A good one can stand outside the containment field, link in a psychiatrist, and settle the matter once and for all.”

  “You’re forgetting, Mr. Conway, that the ninth circuit ruled against the admission of evidence acquired via telepathic means,” the judge, apparently listening in on our conversation, chipped in. “Violation of the fourth amendment. Besides, the only known telepath available is the terrorist who was involved in the accused’s capture.”

  I considered debating the judge’s use of the “T-word” to describe Sinfonie. She might have been a lot of things in her youth—a burglar, an overzealous eco-warrior, perhaps—but it was a bit of a stretch to call her a terrorist. She was probably the most powerful telepath on the planet, and the fact that she didn’t just take over the world by force spoke volumes about her character.

  But, as I looked at the elderly jurist, I decided against it. He had to be pushing eighty, but his mind seemed as sharp as it was when he first passed the bar exam. The governor handpicked him to manage this trial, coaxing him out of retirement. Smith had a lifetime of experience with supervillain cases, and none of his verdicts had ever been overturned. The odds of a hu
mble reporter winning a debate with him were about as long as those of convincing Sinfonie to come within a hundred miles of a place like this in the first place. I conceded the point with a shrug and dropped the matter.

  Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling of impending doom. What we were about to do was flat-out stupid.

  I looked around the rest of the gallery and found two more people. They were in gray jumpsuits, and from their detached demeanor, I pegged them as the psychiatrists. If things went right, they’d be the ones to assess Mechanista’s mental state. They had the look of people who just realized that things were about to get very real. No doubt wondering if accepting this assignment was such a smart move, after all.

  I noticed Ratna and I were the only members of the press present. At least we’d have an exclusive. You know, assuming we survived.

  The warden, clad in a black administrator’s jumpsuit, emerged from the control room. “Your Honor, counselors, we’re ready to begin.”

  The judge sighed. “Very well. Let’s get this over with.”

  The warden turned and nodded to somebody in the control booth, launching the grand experiment. A moment later, a set of thick double doors rumbled open on the far side of the containment cell, and a pair of white-suited technicians wheeled in a gleaming chrome and black statue under the watchful gaze of a squad of heavily armed and armored security personnel.

  “Good lord,” one of the psychiatrists gasped.

  Mechanista stood, locked in the pose she was in at her capture ten months ago: both arms outstretched and formed into brutal cannons, the same long-barreled rifles she used to shoot Suave. The containment field’s Kunai particles shut down whatever made Dr. Schadenfreude’s nanobots work, leaving her in this inert, immobile state. I shuddered to think what it must be like, being trapped forever in a body like that. At least the techs had the decency to point her gun arms away from the observation booth before beating a hasty retreat from the room. Sinfonie had forced her to eject all of her ammunition before they clamped on the containment gear last year, but that didn’t make her any less threatening.

  The big doors slid shut. The security team stayed in the cell, taking up a semi-circular formation and aiming their bulky, high-tech weapons at her. They looked, even at this distance, like Galestorm tech. Stunners, I figured. Good call. Bullets would only amuse this prisoner. The energy weapons, however, could disable even the most powerful superhuman for up to a couple of hours.

  A few moments later, the techs in the control room shut down the grid, and the orange light faded away.

  In the cell, all hell broke loose.

  An ear-piercing digital shriek filled the room, deafening even through the walls and acrylic window. I clamped my hands over my ears and forced myself to look back into the cell. The guards were already down, incapacitated. They writhed in pain as they tried to cover their ears through their helmets.

  I winced, imagining the agony they must have been in, so close to the source of that scream. Their suffering didn’t last long, though. Mechanista’s body erupted in a cloud of dark gray metallic dust. The electronic screech died away as the cloud coalesced into a sphere. It dropped to the floor with a loud thunk, and erupted in spikes, eight of which instantly stretched out, striking precise locations throughout the room. The other five impaled the guards.

  I wrenched my gaze from the grizzly sight to look into the control room. The techs worked their panels in desperation to turn the Kunai field back on.

  They would never complete their task. Mechanista’s first strike destroyed the emitters. All of them.

  The warden ran to the control room, sealing the door behind him, and the guards in the observation booth started evacuating the chamber. I stood aside to let the judge and lawyers pass, buying time to get a good look at what was going on. I almost wished I hadn’t. Mechanista reformed her body into a giant drill, and went to work drilling her way into the control room. The acrylic windows would be excellent protection from someone using brute force, but she was too smart for that. These weren’t the acts of a lunatic, lashing out at random. They were precise, deliberate, and deadly.

  They were efficient, too. The drill was already half-way through the window by the time I reached the exit.

  The crew in the control room knew their time was up and raced to evacuate through the gallery. The scene became chaotic as the guards’ efforts to get the civilians out was complicated by the techs’ arrival. Things got worse when one of the shrinks started to panic. His frenzy spread to a couple of the techs and things turned nasty. While two of the guards readied a portable Kunai emitter near the control room door, the others found themselves fully occupied with the chaos of freaked-out people trying to claw their way past the crowd at the only exit.

  “Reuben, you gotta do something.” I turned to see Ratna, leaning in and talking softly. “Go on. I’ll cover for you.”

  It took a second to process, but eventually I got it. I cursed under my breath. Dammit. She knew.

  I pushed that disaster to the back of my mind. I had a bigger one to deal with. “Alright. Get out of here.”

  She trotted off to help the traffic control efforts at our only way out. The warden was the last man out of the control room, stopping to supervise the efforts to get the containment-field generator set up.

  I steeled myself. It was time to do something stupid. That's alright. I'm good at stupid. I went over to the warden. “How can I help?”

  “We need to get this emitter into the cell. Once it’s activated, it should shut her down.”

  “What’s the range?”

  One of the guards answered, “About three yards. We need to get it as close to that thing’s center of mass as possible.” He sounded nervous. I couldn’t blame him. He and his partner had no more chance of surviving in that abattoir than a couple of mice tossed into a blender. There were five corpses in the cell providing mute testimony on that account.

  I didn’t know if I’d fare any better, but I had to try.

  “Okay, I got this.” I tried to sound confident. “Can you activate it remotely, or do I need to trigger it.”

  “What?” said the guard in confusion. “Sir, you need to get—”

  The guard’s protest was cut short as the plexiglass in the control room gave way in a sickening crash. Almost immediately, something started pounding on the door separating that area from the gallery. The reinforced material bulged under Mechanista’s might. She’d be upon us in seconds. I put my back against it and pushed back as hard as I could. My heels dug into the concrete floor. The door groaned, but bent back into place.

  The warden stayed calm. “This man can handle it, officer. Is the device ready?”

  Yeah, he knew what I could do, too. I’d been coming to the prison for years to interview his prisoners. Superhumans were only allowed in this place as captives, and when I suddenly showed up on their DNA scans in December as a super, well, it led to a very frank discussion. I suspected my “special status” was the only reason he allowed me to attend this debacle in the first place. I was Plan B.

  “Yes, but—”

  I held out my hand. “Give it here, officer. Trust me.” His eyes widened as he saw me holding the door in place with my body, and without another word, handed it over. It was about the size of a football, the top half covered in clear plastic with a faintly glowing orange aperture at its center. I tucked it under my arm, hoping I could protect it with my body long enough to do some good.

  “We’ll activate it remotely once you’re in position,” the warden explained. “Good luck.”

  According to Herculene, luck’s the worst superpower of all. Eventually it runs out. But, considering what I was up against, I was willing to take what I could get.

  “Thanks. I’ll go once you’re clear,” I said, trying to sound like I thought I could actually pull this off. That’s part of the job. Inspire confidence in people—even when all you want to do is curl up in the fetal position and gibber in incoherent terror.
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  As the warden and his men moved to the far side of the gallery and hid behind the seats, Mechanista gave up on battering her way through the door and returned to drilling, this time through the window between the control room and the gallery. This was the best chance I was going to get.

  With a protest of grinding metal and gears, I forced the door open, slipped inside and wrenched it closed behind me. In reaction, the drill stopped and a gleaming appendage appeared. At its end, a camera eye formed and regarded me. It glowed a baleful red.

  I decided to try addressing her by her real name, still hoping that some shred of sanity remained in that mass of whirring steel. Something human. Something I could work with.

  “Corrine, do you know who I am?”

  The eye looked me up and down. I shifted a bit to keep my body between it and the package I needed to deliver.

  “Yes,” a raspy digitized voice replied. “You’re that reporter. You are known to us.”

  Good news and bad news. She recognized me, which might be something I could use to build a connection between us, but she referred to herself as “us”. That sounds crazy when spoken by someone wearing a crown. It’s downright terrifying when it comes from a hive of nanobots.

  “Good.” I kept my voice calm and soothing as I took a tentative step forward. “Listen, can we talk? I know what Schadenfreude did to you.”

  A roar of metallic rage assaulted me as the swarm of gray dust swirled, dashing itself against the walls and consoles in the room. “SCHADENFREUDE!” it screamed from a thousand tiny speakers.

  The swirling slowly died away as the nanobots retreated into the containment cell turned slaughterhouse, reforming themselves into a steel female form, approximating the girl she once was—Corrine Milton, a dying teenager whose humanity had been stolen from her by a madman.