Sovereign

by April Daniels

  “That’s less helpful than you might hope, Codex,” says Kinetiq. They and Charlie start arguing about the merits of specificity in doomsday scenarios while one of the Docs walks me back upstairs.

  “So Red Steel. Is he still alive?” she asks, her tone deliberately light.

  “Yeah, but he might wish he wasn’t. I dropped him with some fishermen and had them call for a medical evacuation chopper.”

  Ever so slightly, Doc’s shoulders relax. “Good. Good. Hey, Danny, before you go, I just want to say I’m proud of you.”

  “I win fights, Doc. That’s what I’m for.”

  She shakes her head, and I get the feeling that I’ve misunderstood her. “Look, if you go into court, people are going to say terrible things about you. I want you remember that the people who know you don’t believe them for a second. Okay?”

  I nod. “Okay.”

  Doc steps back so I can take off. “Go find Cecilia before she has an aneurysm.”

  With a wave I push off into the air and go find my lawyer. She’s got a balcony in her office—she represents superheroes, so of course she’s got a balcony for comings and goings—and the glass door is wide open when I arrive.

  One of her assistants sees me and calls out as I nudge my way through the curtains. Cecilia cuts a phone conversation short and comes over to me. There’s another round of what’s-going-on to work through, and when everyone’s up to speed, we drive to the police station. Cops are everywhere downtown. We pass through two checkpoints on our way into the government district, and they shine lights into the backseat. Some of them have blurry photos of Calamity clenched in their hands, and I fight to keep my face neutral and pleasant. We’re not going to give them any reason to call me uncooperative.

  When we arrive at police headquarters, there is already a crowd of reporters milling around waiting for something to happen. They descend upon us like a swarm of piranhas, and Cecilia does an amazing job of cutting a path for me. A constant strobe of camera flashes follows us up the steps. Cecilia’s called ahead, and they’re waiting for us. Detective Phạm and a few senior officers I know by face, but not by name. They usher us inside, and the moment we’re out of view of the cameras, Detective Phạm turns to me with a studiously blank look on her face.

  “Danielle Tozer,” she says as she pulls handcuffs from her belt, “I am placing you under arrest for the murder of Vincent Trauth. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law…”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Smile for the mugshot! We combed my hair so that the shaved strip with its row of bloody stitches is obvious to the casual viewer. That, plus the snarling line of laser burns on my face, makes it pretty clear I’ve been in a fight. Cecilia says it never hurts to remind people I put my life on the line for them. It’s not enough to keep me out of prison; we’ve got to keep my reputation intact as well or I could lose my contract. We haven’t even spoken about what this might do to my still-pending federal license. I’m beginning to think it will be years before I’m allowed to fight for Northern Union.

  After I get fingerprinted, some officers lead me to an interview room. One of them handcuffs me to the table, and I look up at him with what I hope is withering skepticism. “Really?”

  He blushes. “It’s policy.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  The cop scuttles out of the room, and then it’s just me with four gray walls and the linoleum. Cecilia was with me when I got arrested, but they split us up for the booking part, and now we’ve got to wait for them to decide to let my lawyer talk to me. All that noise you hear about having a right to an attorney? It doesn’t mean having an attorney at whatever time is most convenient for you.

  So I sit, and I stew, and I try to hold still so I don’t aggravate my injuries. They’re healing well. Already my hairline fractures have begun to fuse. In a few hours I get more healing done than most people do in a few days. My healing factor isn’t much compared with some capes, like Deathwish or Infinity, but it’s plucky, and it’s mine, and it gets the job done. The breaks all look clean, so in another day or two I’ll be combat-ready again, and Red Steel will still be laid up in traction.

  A vicious thought occurs to me. If Garrison really did give Red Steel eye lasers he didn’t have before, he might have boosted his regeneration powers in the bargain. I might have to face him again before this is over.

  I open up the phone program on my suit and tap out an email to Red Steel’s public address.

  Hi!

  This is Danny. We kicked each other’s asses earlier today. No hard feelings, I hope, but if I see you fighting for Garrison again, I will put you down for good. It’s not worth your life. Walk away.

  Hugs and Kisses,

  Dreadnought ^_^

  A few minutes later, my suit buzzes with an incoming message. It’s from Red Steel and my heart flips over. Already? I was kind of hoping that after the ass-whooping I handed out, he’d still be asleep.

  I am a professional, and my contract has been fulfilled. Do not resume your attack on the satellites, and we will have no further quarrel. As an aside, if you threaten me again, I will kill you.

  -RS

  So of course I have to write back.

  Okey dokey! When this is over can we get a selfie together?

  -D

  I do not believe you will survive the next seventy-two hours.

  -RS

  Okay, but what if I do?

  -D

  Then, yes.

  -RS

  Cool beans. How are you feeling, by the way?

  -D

  Perhaps you should threaten me, and we shall see how I am feeling.

  -RS

  I know from that last scuffle on the beach that he can sense his surroundings even when blind with cataracts. Maybe it lets him send emails as well, or he’s dictating them to someone. Or maybe he’s already back in action and simply wishes to sit the rest of this out. I decide that I need more practice at the better part of valor and close my email program.

  A few minutes later the door creaks open and an officer shows in Cecilia. She slams down a fat sheaf of folders on the table and sits heavily in the chair across from me.

  “So?” I ask her. Little flickers of trepidation swirl around my ribs. I know I’m innocent, but being handcuffed in a police station for a few hours has a way of bringing home all sorts of unpleasant possibilities.

  “Something’s rotten,” says Cecilia as she opens the first folder. Her voice is clipped. “They found his body a little under six hours ago. The coroner says he died early this morning.”

  The trepidation explodes into full on anxiety. “That…doesn’t sound right. I mean, that sounds a little fast, doesn’t it?” I say this, but of course I know the answer, I’m just scared to say it out loud. The government can’t even decide whether or not to wipe its ass in six hours.

  She nods. “No kidding. To go from body to warrant in less than a day is impossible. Someone has their thumb on the scale. I’ve got little birdies and they tell me pressure is coming from way up high.”

  I lean forward anxiously. “But we can beat this, right?”

  “I think we need to look beyond the legal case. It’s no coincidence this is happening now. This looks like a backup plan to me. Garrison wanted to recruit you, but since that’s fallen through he wants you off the field and tied up in court. We need to focus on getting you out of custody as quickly as possible so you’re free to counter whatever he’s following this up with.” Cecilia starts flipping through folders and arranging papers on the table. “In the longer term, their case doesn’t look too solid. At the very least, we can account for your whereabouts with GPS data for most of the past week, including the time you were supposedly—” Cecilia’s voice halts. Her fingers go white around her pen. After a moment, she continues, voice steady. “Supposedly murdering Vincent.”

  “Cecilia, are you okay?”

  Her lips twist into a sour smile. �
��Superhero law is a very small community. He wasn’t…we weren’t friends. But he was one of us.”

  “Garrison is going down for what he did. I promise.”

  She meets my eyes. “Good.”

  Night court is not normally a big deal, but this isn’t any old session of night court, this is the arraignment of Dreadnought, which means?

  Reporters. So many goddamn reporters. The police walk me down the hall from the holding cells to the courtroom, and when we turn the last corner and run into the crowd gathered outside the courtroom door, there’s a grunt of excitement, as if the press is a single organism sighting its prey.

  Nearly solid camera strobes blind us, and a thousand pictures of me being escorted in handcuffs into the courtroom hit the Internet in a matter of minutes. Given how frequently I’m in the public eye, I’ve developed some love-hate feelings about the press over the past few months, but I shove all my frustration with them aside and make sure I’m all smiles and confidence as we run the gauntlet. A few of the reporters smile back, ask questions that I try to answer as the bailiff chivvies me along. We even manage to laugh, and I have a moment where I think this isn’t going to be so bad. People know this is ridiculous. I’ll be out on bail in an hour, maybe two.

  This isn’t some musty basement hearing room like the one where my emancipation hearing was held. (Was that only, what, four days ago?) This room is designed to communicate the full weight and majesty of the law. Tall, with plenty of seating in the audience and a raised jury box.

  The prosecutor is a man I know by face, but not name. I’ve testified in cases he was working on before, but usually I was on his side as his star witness.

  “ADA Hawser, you’re moving up in the world,” says Cecilia with crystals of ice hanging off her words. “I would have expected the DA himself to take this one.”

  “It’s a team sport, Cecilia,” says the prosecutor, a shade defensively. He seems like he can’t tell if he should be excited or nervous. Well, he’s trying to put a superhero away for murder. Maybe he’s both.

  The judge enters from his chamber. Judge Wickles is an older man, hair like slicked-back steel and wrinkles that stand up like oak bark.

  “All rise,” says the bailiff, and there’s a general scraping and shifting as we all get to our feet. The morphix is starting to wear off, and I try not to visibly flinch when my weight settles onto my cracked femur.

  “We’re here today for the arraignment in the matter of The People of the State of Washington v. Danielle Tozer,” says Judge Wickles. “Before we get started, I want to say right now that the defendant’s contract with the City of New Port is completely immaterial to these proceedings as I understand them so far. This court will not tolerate any argument, from the defense or the prosecution, that hinges upon her activities under the name of Dreadnought. Should her work with the city become relevant to the facts of the case, we will determine the extent of that relevance during the evidence hearing. Is that understood?” He points a hard eyeball and an arched brow at both our tables. Cecilia and ADA Hawser both mumble their understanding. “Good. Let’s begin,” says the Judge, and away we go.

  No sooner has everyone found their seats than the judge asks me to rise again. With a twinge in my hip I get to my feet and lock my fear behind the same bulletproof mask I use to stare down supervillains.

  “Danielle Tozer, you stand accused of murder in the second degree,” says Judge Wickles. “The District Attorney’s office alleges that you did seek out your parents’ lawyer, Vincent Trauth, that you found him at his home at approximately five in the morning earlier today, that you had an argument with him, and that in the heat of the moment, you broke his neck and killed him. As a licensed superhero, you are automatically required to be tried as an adult, and so the penalty for this crime is ten to eighteen years in prison. Do you understand the charges laid against you as I have described them?”

  All that brief, buoyed confidence I was feeling has melted, puddled in my boots. “I do, Your Honor.”

  “Very well. You may enter a plea of guilty, not guilty, or no contest. How do you plead?”

  With a heroic demonstration of self-restraint, I avoid pointing out that if I were going to murder someone, it would be stupid to leave their body lying around to incriminate me when I could very easily dispose of it by burning it up in the atmosphere. Instead, I settle for “Not guilty, Your Honor.”

  “Very well. I see you have retained counsel, so we will move on to the matter of setting bail. You may sit,” says Judge Wickles. “Does the prosecution have anything to enter into consideration for this decision?”

  Hawser rises from his seat. “Your Honor, the prosecution moves that the defendant be held without bail until her trial. The unfortunate truth is that, other than by keeping the defendant in a special containment cell, the New Port Police cannot ensure the public’s safety. They simply don’t have the capability to confront her, to say nothing of the obvious flight risk of a suspect who can actually fly.” With a glance at me that’s one part nerves and two parts excitement, ADA Hawser sits back down. I guess he thinks this is going to be good for his career. Dick.

  “I see.” Judge Wickles shifts his gaze to Cecilia. “And you, counselor?”

  Cecilia rises and smoothes her skirt. “Your Honor, the defense moves that the defendant be released immediately upon her own recognizance pending trial. Aside from her sterling record of heroism and self-sacrifice, she is flatly innocent and wasn’t even in the city at the time the murder occurred.”

  Judge Wickles takes the bait and asks, “Where was she?”

  “She was being held prisoner by a supervillain who had contrived a way to temporarily nullify her powers.”

  Hawser jackknifes out of his chair. “Objection! Your Honor, this is a conversation for the trial.”

  “She was rescued earlier today by Doctor Impossible and a freelancer from California called Kinetiq,” says Cecilia, like Hawser hadn’t even spoken. She gestures at the railroad track of staples running through my scalp. “As you can see, my client was wounded in the ensuing gunfight. How could she sustain a bullet wound if she’d had her powers?”

  That’s as far as she’ll go in suggesting how corrupt we think this whole process is. It wouldn’t do me much good to have my lawyer get held in contempt of court before the trial even begins.

  Judge Wickles looks at me curiously. “Who was holding her captive?”

  Cecilia takes a deep breath and accuses the eighth richest man in the world of kidnapping and attempted murder: “Richard Garrison.”

  Her words are almost immediately drowned in a swell of noise as dozens of reporters take that in and begin the slow, deliberate process of losing their goddamn minds with how juicy this story is going to be. The judge has to bang his gavel and shout for order for a solid minute or so. “Do you have evidence to support this claim?”

  “We have GPS logs of her suit, and both Kinteq and Doctor Impossible are willing to testify.”

  “Objection, Your Honor!” ADA Hawser is practically shouting. “These are topics for a trial, not an arraignment.”

  Judge Wickles purses his lips and nods. “We won’t be considering exculpatory claims at this time. I do, however, find the prosecution’s argument that the defendant is dangerously uncontrollable to be implausible—at the very least, she has submitted to an arrest that, by your own admission Mr. Hawser, the police have no power to physically compel. I see no reason to deny her bail.”

  “She is a danger to the city and everyone in it,” says Hawser, gesturing at me. “This is not the first time her temper has gotten out of control, and in fact, she has a history of threatening people she has disagreements with. If her temper has gotten the best of her in the past, it can in the future as well.”

  “You have evidence of this?” asks the judge.

  Hawser nods at his assistant who stands and approaches a video deck that’s set up at the side of the courtroom. He puts a thumb drive in and clicks open a file. With
a sinking feeling, I know what it’s going to be even before it starts playing. A projector throws a large image on a blank spot of wall, big enough the whole room can watch. The image is grainy, but clear enough to see.

  The inside of a condo. The camera is somewhere up high, on top of a bookcase, maybe, hidden among the leaves of a potted plant. Graywytch is sitting down to breakfast. The door explodes inward on a cloud of splinters. There’s no sound, but there doesn’t need to be. I stalk in, every line in my body heaving with rage. White-faced, clenched fists. Shouting at her.

  The image cuts to another camera. I’m tearing the stone off the wall, crumpling it in my hands. My face is twisted, sour with hate. And Graywytch is scared. Now that I’m watching it through the distance of a screen, it’s obvious she’s terrified. Her smug voice, her sneering smile, it was all bluster. Her body is pulled in tight and high, she’s cleared her line of retreat. Her eyes are darting around. One last shot of me kicking out her window and leaving. After I’m gone, Graywytch sits down heavily and puts her head in her hands.

  The video finishes playing. I’m cold.

  Cecilia sags in her chair. After a moment, she turns to me, trembling with barely suppressed fury, and forces her words through clenched teeth, “Don’t you think I might have wanted to know about this?”

  I bunch my fists in my lap. “This doesn’t have anything to do with anything. She had that coming.” She’s got to believe me. Graywytch was acting, making it look worse than it is. And anyhow, it turns out I was right about her—she had already been working with the bad guys for months by the time this happened.

  Cecilia thrusts a trembling finger back behind us, at the packed audience section. “Look. Look at them, Danny.”

  I turn.

  The entire room is staring at me in undisguised horror. As I watch, two get up from the front row and start making their way to the back of the room, throwing harried looks over their shoulder. Everywhere my gaze lands, people flinch and shy away. A reporter from Channel 2 who I did my first interview with, who I’ve always liked, is wet-eyed with fear at being within arm’s reach of me.