Chapter 10
The wind hit me in the face the moment I stepped off the bus. A few grains of sand found my nose and eyes, forcing them shut, and I started rubbing at my face with both hands. Hoarse laughter drifted from somewhere nearby — I barely registered it, still moving through a light fog.
The dry air coated my tongue. The smells reaching me didn't promise anything good. Sweat, metal, gunpowder, cheap cologne, and terrible cigarettes.
From inside the bus came a faint, barely audible voice — a radio host announcing the next track. Nine in the morning, and whoever had just downed his coffee was broadcasting enough cheerful energy to grate on everyone within range.
"And next up — 'The Man Comes Around' by Johnny Cash."
The bright, chatty voice was an almost comical contrast to the track itself, and to everything surrounding me right now.
The opening guitar hit my ears, and then someone shoved me from behind, telling me to move up and get in line. The bus doors closed, cutting off the melody — but it kept playing in my head.
In the background, a pair of supers who'd escorted the transport peeled off and disappeared. At the entrance, new ones were already waiting, scanning the small cluster of prisoners who'd been separated from the rest of the group. I was among them.
"Move it, you pieces of garbage — get in line!" A loud, carrying voice from a broad-shouldered, mustachioed sheriff came from right over my ear. He got no reaction from me and gave me another shove, politely suggesting I follow the others. "Welcome to your new life."
The shackles clinked at my wrists. The metal had cooled inside the bus and was now warming quickly under the morning sun, already chafing and promising a rich and varied future of discomfort.
Orange prison uniforms everywhere, unavoidable, dragging at the eye. We walked in silence — nobody had said a word since getting on the bus. Black and white, Mexican and a pair of Asians who'd been keeping together from the start.
Young men my own age, and older men who could've been fathers or grandfathers. Shaved heads and full beards, tattooed and clean, some pale with anxiety about the unknown — and some assholes barely concealing the look of people who already knew exactly what was coming and found the whole thing privately entertaining.
We moved through a long corridor flanked by chain-link fencing on both sides. The enormous walls, the color of old asphalt, greeted us with their sheer mass and a sense of settled, patient waiting. Guard towers, fencing, razor wire. Armed guards at every angle.
I breathed in and stopped with everyone else, filing one by one through the entrance of the Los Angeles County Correctional Facility. And I started working back through how I'd ended up here, and what exactly I was supposed to do now.
---
"Herman Herby, this court of the State of California finds you not guilty on the charge of involuntary manslaughter." The judge's gavel came down, she straightened her slipped glasses, and then she gave me a small, gentle smile while I tried to conceal the complete mental collapse happening behind my eyes. "In the course of the investigation, a number of relevant details came to light. The testimony of Mecha Man was also significant — by his account, you cooperated immediately and surrendered without resistance, which carried considerable weight. Mecha Man acknowledged that he had initially misidentified you as a vandal and a criminal, and made the only reasonable decision available to him — to place you under arrest. Though the defender of Los Angeles was unable to appear in person, he sent a rather impressive statement on your behalf. And finally, witness interviews established that your connection to the death of Miss Reid is, at most, indirect."
"Thank you, Your Honor." Samson, seated beside me, smiled and gave my shoulder a satisfied pat. Involuntary carried two to four years, and now I might get away with community service. We'd also managed to avoid a second-degree ruling — unintentional but with aggravating circumstances and demonstrated malicious intent — which would have meant fifteen years, no discussion.
The only reason any of this had worked was that the one person who could actually help had understood my situation and agreed to extend a hand. Leonard had turned out to be genuinely decent, and he happened to have a very good lawyer. That lawyer was ultimately the one who pulled my ass out of the deepest possible hole.
The lawyer in question looked absolutely deranged. A Wolverine-style black-and-yellow mask worn over a full superhero costume, which was then covered by a regular business suit. He also had bird wings growing from his back and traveled with a trained eagle on his shoulder. Total surrealism.
"I haven't finished, Mr. Herby." The judge fixed me with a stern look over her glasses, then arranged her features into an apologetic expression that sent a chill straight down my spine. This elderly woman had been looking at me with a distinctly unsettling quality throughout all three sessions, one that made water want to leak out of me from various locations. "Despite the fact that your actions led to the capture of a dangerous criminal, and despite the superhero who arrested you requesting leniency on your behalf, I am still obligated to pronounce sentence on your other transgressions."
"What?" Only Samson's firm grip on my shoulder kept me in my seat.
"Mr. Herman Herby, the State of California finds you guilty of administering justice without a valid superhero license. Of vigilantism and the unauthorized assumption of judicial duties, resulting in the death of one individual, and the destruction of private property valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars—"
While the judge went down the list in her measured, authoritative tone, I shot a panicked look at my lawyer, Mr. Birdman.
"Don't sweat it, kid, we won." He smiled at me brightly, whispering, radiating a very specific variety of American confidence — the kind that lives next door to a used car lot. "Instead of twenty years, you're looking at eighteen months. Maybe less."
"—A sentence of one year and four months, with the possibility of early release after three months for exemplary conduct." The judge coughed into her fist, gave me one more long and somehow greasy look, then made a note in her papers. "Bail, set at one hundred and twenty-three thousand dollars, is approved. Mr. Herby, you are granted three days to put your affairs in order, after which you are required to present yourself here to begin your sentence. This session of the court is adjourned."
The gavel made me jump. I stopped listening to Birdman's congratulations and let Samson steer me outside, where I desperately needed air. My chest had seized up and coherent thought wasn't available — which the professional therapist read immediately, and he hauled my no-longer-scrawny backside toward the exit without ceremony.
"I thought — I actually thought they weren't going to send me to prison," I said, grabbing my own head, turning to the two of them. We'd stepped away from the entrance, away from the handful of people coming and going. "I don't want to go to prison!"
"Easy, kid." Samson, of all people, was the voice of reason here. "It's only eighteen months. Less, even—"
"Correct. And the judge turned out to be surprisingly agreeable — she accepted bail and knocked down the sentence in exchange for a few photographs of you sleeping."
"*What?!*"
"What?" He shrugged airily and started flipping through his planner, apparently no longer concerned with my existence. "Everything went fine. I don't understand what your complaint is."
"I'm going to *prison,* you son of a—" I made a grab for his wing, but Samson got there first, blocking me before I could snap a few of the lawyer's more unnecessary appendages. "What do you mean *fine?!*"
"Look, kid—" The winged man produced a cigarette from a pack with casual expertise, lit it, let his eagle settle on his shoulder, and turned slightly sideways so he wasn't quite meeting my eyes. "When you go poking around in other people's business without a signed permission slip, you have to be ready for the possibility that certain things will start poking back. What I mean is — I'm fully prepared to go to jail for bribery and assorted other things, and I know it'll happen eventually. You should have thought before you went picking fights in broad daylight."
"Take it easy, Harvey," Samson said, though he'd stopped physically restraining me. "The kid's life is going sideways here."
"But I *already fought him!*" I stepped forward, and to my credit, held myself together. "Amanda and I both—"
"Exactly — *Amanda and you.*" Birdman jabbed a finger at my chest and flicked the stub of his cigarette somewhere behind him without looking. "She is a professional, registered hero with an established reputation and significant field experience. You, and I say this with respect, are a wet nobody. Nobody knows who you are, and as far as the system is concerned, you don't have a name."
My shoulders dropped. It stung — and somewhere in the back of my mind I was already dreading something else: how Grandma was going to take this. And Amanda, when she woke up.
"So what am I supposed to do now?"
"Well, judging by the look of you—" He made a slow, appraising circle around me, then delivered his assessment with the air of a doctor giving a difficult diagnosis. "—I'd start rolling out a welcome mat in the relevant location—"
"*Harvey.*"
"What?" He glanced at the disapproving Samson and spread his arms in an elaborate gesture of innocence. "The kid's impressive and all, but have you seen who ends up in the super-offender blocks? The county facility is softer than average, sure, but — I have a feeling our little Kimberly here is going to earn straight A's across the board."
"My God, so it's true," I said, clutching my head. "Prison really does make everyone gay." I banged my forehead against the nearest column twice.
"What's the problem? It's the twenty-first century." Birdman draped an arm around my shoulders and winked at the scowling therapist. "I'm gay, for instance. The brotherhood always looks after its own. So if — *when* — your lovely little ginger situation gets compromised, call me."
"You're gay?" I extricated myself from his arm, filed that away somewhere improbable, and moved to stand next to Samson, who was regarding the lawyer with steady disappointment.
"Pfft, obviously not." Harvey rolled his eyes and fished out his phone to check the time. "It's against God, it's against nature, and they're all going to Hell."
"*Harvey—*"
Leonard's exhausted exhale coincided exactly with the moment my court-appointed defender spread his wings and launched himself skyward. His takeoff was underwhelming, but he gained speed gradually, which was almost charming to watch — especially when he had to thread between the overhead power lines on his way out. "That man, I swear—"
"Forgive him. He's strange, but he's a decent person."
"Strange?" My disbelief was entirely genuine. Two days of dealing with this individual had formed a solid, immovable impression. "Please. That lunatic blew past the 'strange' stop years ago and never looked back."
I waved goodbye to Samson, thanked him for what felt like the hundredth time, and floated home in something resembling a dream. The three days were spent getting ready to leave. I wasn't allowed more than two kilometers from the house, and I didn't much feel like going anywhere anyway. I'd wanted to visit Grandma in the hospital — but it seemed like soon enough she'd be the one visiting me.
---
"Hey, sweetheart! Hey, baby!"
The crude, brainless hollering from the inmates snapped me out of my courtroom memories. I was currently carrying a bedding package and a small bag of toiletries at arm's length, walking with the remaining group through the cellblocks.
The column had been shedding people steadily as we moved, and what had started as fifty had dwindled to four.
First, a massive, hairy man who resembled a beaver. His fur — and yes, there was fur — was a warm golden color. Whether beavers actually came in golden was genuinely unclear to me.
Behind him was a completely ordinary-looking guy, and if I hadn't personally witnessed his limited levitation capability, I'd have had no idea why he'd been assigned to a reinforced block. He had the look of a standard office worker — the type that gets drunk on weekday evenings and gets into bar fights hoping someone will break his arm so he can take sick leave. He also talked constantly, and when I say constantly, I mean that nothing short of a baton to the kidneys was going to shut him up. He'd apparently been some kind of supervillain. His name was something like Flying Serpent or Air Kite — I couldn't quite parse it.
Third was a fairly nasty little piece of work who had just turned eighteen. White hair standing straight up, piercings, tattoos, and a face that actively invited a brick. Or a good solid hit with a metal pipe, similar to what I'd arranged for Electro. This one had heavy-looking suppression cuffs on both wrists and some kind of durable muzzle over his mouth — apparently his powers required it. His clothes were different from ours too — high-quality, some expensive moisture-wicking fabric.
From the whispered exchange between officers before departure, I gathered that he could somehow weaponize his own sweat and other secretions — the outputs either exploded or did something similarly catastrophic, I hadn't fully understood the details, but the precautions made sense. Three of the five super-guards went with this particular teenager when they separated him toward the isolated cells.
"Hands at your sides. Feet apart. Wait here."
Concise. You had to give them that — especially compared to the aggression and mockery from the guards in the other blocks.
"Herby — second cell. Brown — fourth—"
I stopped listening. The cell door clanged into place behind me with an echoing clang of metal, and I was standing in a room that was, genuinely, not what I'd expected.
The lighting was subdued. Two beds occupied opposite corners, a reasonable distance apart. Given that some cells packed inmates into rooms barely two meters square, this was practically a resort.
I walked to the nearer bed, saw no signs of occupancy or personal effects, and tossed my things down.
"That's my spot." A quiet, educated male voice came from everywhere and nowhere. The first drops of moisture appeared on the back of my neck and my palms. I'd been holding it together this whole time — barely, but managing, fighting back the waves of anxiety and the panic that kept trying to crest — and now—
I was genuinely unsettled. I turned slowly and scanned the room, searching every shadow. No one. My first guess was another invisible person, but—
"I'm not really in the mood for company today, so let's do the introductions properly tomorrow morning." Still no source visible. I started moving along the walls, examining each dark corner carefully. "This is actually rather rude, you know. You barged into my home like a meteor. No hello, no goodbye."
I pressed my back against the wall and swallowed.
"Look, I understand. Modern youth, no manners. But could you say *something?*" I let my gaze drop to the floor — to the small droplets from my palms that had fallen — and in the largest of them I caught a reflection of the ceiling.
I raised my head slowly, already gathering water in my hands, ready to launch it regardless of what it might add to my sentence.
"Hmm. Better — I was starting to worry—"
The moment I saw what was up there, I screamed across the entire cellblock like an absolute child.
In perfect answer, the enormous bat screamed right back, equally terrified, and plummeted from the ceiling to the floor, landing on its back and thrashing in a frantic attempt to right itself while simultaneously trying to cover its ears with its wings.
We kept screaming at each other until the guards burst in and told us that we were supposedly criminals, not girl scouts, and our carrying on was disturbing everyone else in the block.
That was how I met Victor Vaimund — self-declared genius, Harvard graduate, a grown man permanently stuck in the behavioral patterns of a teenager, and in practical terms, an enormous werewolf bat with a deep and abiding love of cocaine that arguably exceeded even his fondness for blood.
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