Convictions (Abrami's Sister pt. 1)

"Under the articles of section 37, we find the defendant, Josephine Sorin, guilty."

Guilty? The last word rang in Jo’s ears. Guilty?

She stared at the jurors, who would not return her gaze. Guilty? This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. Her attorney had promised, promised, no jury would ever convict her. Even the prosecutor had as much as admitted it was a pro forma prosecution. Guilty?

Her mind was in a haze. She didn’t hear the lead judge of the tribunal thank the jury for their service, didn’t hear him hold her over for quick sentencing. She never heard that the charges had been amended after the jury was sequestered. She never heard the secret evidence against her.

She only heard that one word crashing down on her existence: Guilty.

By the time she thought to look at her attorney, the woman had already turned to confront the prosecutor. Strong hands latched onto Jo’s upper arms and guided her toward a door midway between the defense table and the judges’ bench. It was off-white with a small, mirrored window cross-hatched by wire reinforcements or sensors. A sturdy door with clean, almost sterile lines. This wasn’t the door she was supposed to exit through. She was supposed to leave by the main doors leading into the hall then down onto the courthouse steps where the press would be waiting. Instead she was led through a door into the unknown.

Beyond was a dimly lit, short hall, almost a small room, ending with a blackout curtain. Her guards held her there until the door clicked shut behind them, then swept the curtain aside and guided her into a vestibule with two holding cells, both empty, behind a wall of clear glas-steel on one side, and what appeared to be an elevator on the other. There was another blackout curtain opposite her that looked very much like the one she had just come through, probably leading to another courtroom.

One of her guards, a tall, broad-shouldered, muscular man, went to a computer pad and keyed open one of the cell doors with biometrics and his badge. The other, a sturdy woman about Jo’s height, guided her inside.

"Hands on the glass barrier, please," the woman ordered, then spread Jo’s feet apart as far as her skirt allowed and pulled them back to where she was leaning off-balance against the transparent wall.

Her male partner initiated a security scan on equipment that whirred down from the ceiling in front of the glas-steel Jo leaned against. As he watched the results roll up on the display, the guard reviewed orders on his comm, all while keeping an eye on his partner and his ward. "Something suspicious in her bra. And it looks like she has a visitor already."

"Do we take her back to the attorney’s conference room?" the woman asked as she had Jo turn around so they could scan her back.

"No, down below," her partner responded. "We’re supposed to drop her in Interrogation 2."

"Probably a new lawyer for her appeal." The woman managed to sound neutral. It annoyed Jo that both guards spoke as if she wasn’t there unless they wanted her to do something. "Turn and put your hands back on the barrier. Now, take off your shoes, please. No, keep your hands on the barrier," the woman interrupted when Jo started to reach down. "Just kick them off one at a time. Ok, I want you to lean your head against the barrier and undo your belt." Once Jo did, the woman had her remove and drop it, keeping herself in a position where she was both protected and could react if Jo made any sudden moves, as though that were likely. The floor felt cold and hard through Jo’s sheer stockings as the guard had her remove her jewelry and drop it on the bunk.

Everything inside the holding cell and out was an off-white, not quite cream color. Nothing modern, more an annoyingly institutional surplus color that no one else would buy because it just looked off somehow. The walls, except where they were clear, were all that same color. The bunk and the commode, both seamlessly molded into the floor, were also the same, as was the synthetic blanket covering the foam mattress. Even the tear-away fiber bag on the blanket had only a slight variation in tone, not quite sterile, but not quite dirty either. Dingy, without being unclean. The guards’ dark uniforms and the blackout curtains, along with the scanner display were the only points of contrast in the room, and even the menus of the scanner had similar tones. The color picked up whatever other hue it was exposed to, so that the floor beneath her feet had taken on a sickly green cast from her skirt.

"Do we have a jumpsuit?" the female guard asked her partner. Jo suddenly wondered what would become of her clothing now. She had agonized for hours on what to wear today. Red would show up nicely in the holos but might remind people too much of Blood. Blue would make her seem too cold. She briefly considered a conservative gray, but opted instead for a green and gold combination. Dusky green to show off her color and make her look vibrant. Gold for a touch of nobility. She had wanted to make just the right impression for the cameras when she was vindicated.

"They’ll take care of that over at central processing after her meeting. But search her anyway."

The woman’s hands were quick, efficient and asexual yet still managed to make Jo feel mildly violated as they left no portion of her body untouched. "She’s clean, except the underwire," the woman announced.

"Put it in with the rest."

"Ok, ma’am, I need you to remove your bra." Jo just stared at her then her male partner, neither of whom gave any indication of turning away. Nor did they look as though they were anticipating her next actions. They just maintained the bored expressions of their jobs. After dropping her jacket on the bunk, she unlatched her bra and began to wriggle it out of her sleeve all without removing her shirt. She felt as though she was in an advanced yoga class trying to pull that trick off with her feet still spread wide. While she contorted, the female guard stood where she controlled both Jo’s position and the cell’s exit.

After a momentary struggle, Jo let her bra dangle from one hand, smiling slightly at her minor victory. Neither guard seemed at all impressed, which left her feeling even more exposed. She reminded herself that no matter how humiliating this experience became, she had been through worse. Much worse. At least here there seemed to be some rules.

"Turn around with your arms straight out and drop it on the bunk. Now pick up your shoes in one hand and put them in the bag. Good. Now the belt. The bra. And the jewelry. Fold the bag over once and set it back on the bunk. You can put your jacket back on." The woman turned to call to her partner, "We’re ready in here."

When Jo looked through the glas-steel barrier into the vestibule, the other guard held a set of plasti-steel, electromagnetic restraints.

"Four point?" the woman asked. "Can’t we get by with two’s? It’s not like she’s going anywhere in bare feet and a skirt."

"She’s section 37; she has to be fully restrained."

"What’s section 37?" Jo asked. Neither guard answered.

"What about my stockings?" she tried instead. "They’ll run."

"Sorry," was the woman’s only response, not sounding particularly sympathetic.

Quickly and expertly, the two guards shackled her hands and feet then had her clutch the tear-away fiber bag containing her shoes, belt and bra against her abdomen. The restraint lines didn’t allow her to raise her hands much higher or wider.

The female guard locked her in the holding cell as the male guard keyed the elevator and they waited. The holding cell smelled faintly of stale sweat covered by disinfectant. The scent of a public locker room, or of years of desperation.

When the elevator arrived and both guards had verified it was empty, they led her from the cell into the back of the car. She could only take short, one-foot steps and was afraid the restraint cables would snag her skirt even though they had a protective polymer coating. Her arches ached and felt as though they would cramp against the cold, hard surface beneath them. Her left foot clung momentarily to the elevator threshold before tearing free. She felt the run extend halfway up her leg. Great.

The guards latched her restraint lines to an eyebolt in the prisoner’s area. Once she was safely locked in, the guards scissored a plasti-steel barrier at the rear of the car into place and keyed the lift down. Security cameras monitored both her and the guards from two different angles. Her hair, so finely coifed this morning, had begun to spill into her eyes. She couldn’t lift her hands to brush it away. Blowing it only lifted it briefly before it settled to tickle her face again.

Slowly, they descended from the courtroom to the basement. The elevator was old and needed maintenance, so Jo could feel the pull of gravity in the pit of her stomach as it creaked along. It smelled of machine oil with a hint of ozone, like an elevator in a public housing block.

When the doors opened, Jo was looking out onto a wide, starkly lit hallway running to a near perspective point in the distance, perhaps a quarter mile away. Once she was unhooked from the wall and led out, she saw there was a waiting area lined by hard, foam covered benches with latch hooks beneath them where prisoners could be secured while they waited for their day in court. There were a series of adjoining security doors with observation ports, exact replicas of the door from the courtroom to the holding cells. Everything was the same institutional off-white as the holding area upstairs. From the recessed, overhead lights the walls took on an eerie, mildly pinkish tone like a few drops of blood from a shaving knick tinting an ivory bathtub full of water.

The male guard peered through one of the windows and nodded to his partner before opening the door, again with his badge and a biometric scan.

"Through here ma’am," the female guard said, motioning her through the open door. Jo wished she would stop calling her that. She had a name.

Inside was a small room of the same monochromatic color with several plasti-steel chairs and a conference table extruded from the plasti-steel floor. The guards had her set her bag on the table then sat her down and latched her restraints to an eyebolt beneath the seat between her legs before retreating to stand by the door. She wondered when she would be fed, or allowed to go to the bathroom. There were probably procedures for all of that judging from how things had gone thus far. She wondered how long it had been since her conviction.

Within a minute, the door sighed open and a man entered. She looked up at him with expectation and relief. Now something would finally get done, this whole incident would be revealed as a misunderstanding. He had the appearance of the type of man she wouldn’t remark on or even remember if she met him in a bar. He was a little shorter than average, and perhaps a little round. Not exactly chubby, he just didn’t fill out his suit in an attractive way. He had a well-practiced smile plastered on his face. His hair could have been brown or blonde, perhaps even auburn depending on the light. His eyes, too, seemed changeable, brown, black or green depending on which way he faced. When he turned to face her, she saw they were also neither warm and open, nor cold and calculating. They were dead, betraying no human emotion. Any hope of him helping her died when his eyes met hers.

"I am here to take possession of the prisoner," he said, holding out a comm pad with his credentials. The guards exchanged surprised looks.

"We were told this was a meeting, not a transfer," the male guard said, puffing out his chest defensively which might have intimidated any other man.

The smaller man seemed unfazed, not even straightening his posture. "She’s section 37, which means she falls under my purview at any time, as you can see. And I’ll need her restraints re-keyed to my biometrics."

He waited patiently, his smile never fading, while the guard pressed the button to page through the comm pad’s display. The stranger signed and thumbprinted the guard’s comm completing the transfer after flashing over the appropriate documents.

"You two can wait outside while I talk to her. Actually, bring us some coffee. Not that sludge from the bailiffs’ break room, either. Go up to the third floor lounge. Prosecutors know good coffee. Oh, and bring a Danish. Make that two."

"What do we look like," the female guard asked indignantly.

"You, Bailiff Carsley," the man said after scrutinizing her badge, "look like an individual who doesn’t want to antagonize someone who can take possession of a section 37 prisoner on signature authority. Now run along." His smile never dimmed.

The guards left sowing disgusted glares over their shoulders. The man just smiled until the door closed behind them. Then he strolled over to the seat next to hers and pulled the tear-away fiber bag toward him.

"Let’s see, what do we have in here." He unfolded the bag and exposed each item without removing it as he named it. "Shoes...belt...watch...jewelry...bra... They only take these things from dangerous prisoners." He folded the top of the bag back over and looked up at her. "Are you a dangerous prisoner?"

"No," Jo answered cautiously.

He leaned in and casually rested the palm of his hand on the seat between her legs, never breaking eye contact, his predatory smile never wavering. She shivered as his other hand lightly touched her left wrist, then jumped when she heard the electromagnetic bolts in the shackles clack open. She felt slightly faint as he pulled away, the restraints dangling from the hand that had unlatched them from beneath her seat. "Then we won’t need these, will we?" he said cheerily.

He set the restraints on the table, then moved around to seat himself across from her.

"Who are you?" Jo asked once she felt her voice wouldn’t betray her.

"Nick Michaels," was his only answer, other than his unrestrained smile.

"Where’s my lawyer?" she demanded.

"You’re a prisoner now, not on trial. Lawyers only complicate things at this point." Michaels still smiled a smile that died at his eyes. Though for a moment, they almost sparkled. Almost.

Jo’s emotions hovered between anger and fear. "Then what’s this about?"

"You’re Souleymane Abrami’s sister. That’s Sub-Commander Z’s real name, isn’t it?"

Jo closed her eyes and almost passed out from the weight of dread that settled over her. So that was what this was about. "Half sister, and I wouldn’t know. Like I’ve told two dozen agents before you, I haven’t seen him since I was seven. We never really kept in touch. I know that you think he’s dangerous, but I don’t know where he is."

Nick Michaels set his comm on the table and started fiddling with it, as though he were distracted or bored. "You probably know more than you think, even if you don’t remember it consciously. There are some very interested parties right now who are counting on that and are working to exploit it as we speak. But I’m not one of them."

"What do you want?" Jo asked warily.

Michaels looked up, almost startled. "To help you get a better sentence, of course. I can get you time served if you help me. Or help me to help you, as the case may be."

"I turned down a better deal than that before," Jo responded.

"That was before you fell under section 37," Michaels replied smoothly.

"What is section 37?" she asked with some exasperation.

"The articles of the League of Worlds general charter that governs acts of terrorism."

"I’m no terrorist," she protested. "I was convicted of tax fraud."

"Oh, but you are," Michaels replied casually, then slid his comm unit across the table to her. "This is a report that was recorded just after you left the courtroom. In four hours it will have been broadcast planet-wide."

Jo watched the clip of a female reporter on the courthouse steps, exactly where she had imagined she would be talking to the press. The reporter explained in an overly-dramatic style how Josephine Sorin, sister of Souleymane Abrami, who was widely suspected of being Sub-Commander Z, had been convicted of conspiracy to commit terrorism and other charges related to the Green Revolution. A jury had been empanelled by a secret tribunal after an initial charge of tax fraud had uncovered financial irregularities that led to several terrorist organizations. Now Jo understood exactly what was at stake. Now she was afraid.

"There was never any discussion of these charges at my trial," she said.

"Precisely why they were secret." Michaels continued to sound as though at any minute he might laugh at some private joke.

"I never had a chance to defend myself," she protested.

"You were defended vigorously and more than adequately, I can assure you," he replied, unfazed. Making a point of glancing at her rumpled suit jacket, he added, "Though looking back, you probably should have gone with another color. People will think you were making a political statement and support the Revolution, even if your suit is the wrong shade of green."

Jo hadn’t thought about that this morning. "My lawyer will have this thrown out within a week," she said with as much arrogance as she could muster.

"Your lawyer might not be able to find you in a week," he replied.

"I don’t like being manipulated, Mr. Michaels." She tried to set steel into her eyes.

Her glare rolled off him. "It’s a lot like paying taxes, Ms. Sorin; no one expects you to like it, just to tolerate it and cooperate. Besides, I didn’t do this. There are other parties willing to exert a lot more pressure than I am. I’m actually here to help you. And you don’t have a lot of time. Those bailiffs will be back once they verify my credentials and figure out I’ve exceeded my authority. If I don’t have your cooperation by then, the next people who talk to you will have even less of your best interests at heart. They are waiting down the hall, and probably getting impatient."

"But I don’t know anything," she cried in frustration.

"For what I want you to do, you don’t have to. I just need you to make contact with someone. Someone somewhere remote. If everything goes well, that person will lead me to your brother."

"Half-brother," she corrected, trying to hold back the tears that would likely ruin her makeup, "And why would he do that?"

"Our profile indicates Sub-Commander Z has always shown a tendency to take care of the people he feels responsible for. We have it on good authority that your brother, half-brother," he corrected when she glared, "felt responsible for your mother taking you away. He feels he could have prevented some of what happened."

"That was a long time ago," Jo whispered, looking down, ashamed.

"Not to him. Our profile suggests he has an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, so things like that remain fresh in his mind as though they had just happened. He would have been, what, thirteen then? Believe me, what happened to you makes an impression on a thirteen year-old boy."

"Why didn’t you ask me to do this up front, before all these bogus charges?"

"If we’d asked you to go to Terminal, would you have volunteered?"

"Terminal?" Her head snapped up in alarm. "No!"

"Now you know why I didn’t ask." His smile brightened.

"You’d send someone to that genetic hell-hole of a prison on arranged charges?" Jo stared at him in disbelief.

"I didn’t arrange these charges. Another interested party did that. But, you should really be more careful who you bank with. Besides, you admitted your brother was dangerous."

She didn’t correct him this time. "You don’t have to remind me how dangerous he is. I lived with him."

"Then you know he’s dangerous on an interplanetary scale now, Josephine. People take what he did on Darwin very seriously. Blood, Grant, The Farm, Down 2, those were gains the Green Revolution made under fractured and incompetent leadership, gains LOW OrbIT has yet to recoup. Imagine with your brother in charge. They are still out there, and our intelligence indicates they are planning another offensive. Soon."

"But Terminal?" she pleaded. "I thought that was the prison of no return for those socio-genetic Darwinists."

"After the Green Revolution, LOW OrbIT had to open it up. They had nowhere else to put the people who were too dangerous to risk any possible escape. There is more than the Green Revolution in play now. We can’t drop our guard."

"That’s a death sentence," Jo said. "Souleymane never did anything to me. He protected me when no one else would."

"We can protect you and extract you. I’m trying to save you from worse, believe it or not."

"But I don’t know anyone who knows him. I never have. I’ve been over that a dozen times. I thought all that was behind me. What makes you think I can lead you to him now?"

"Because you may be the last chance we have." For the first time, Nick Michaels sounded completely sincere.

But he was talking her in circles and it was giving her a headache. She leaned her elbows on the table and massaged her temples with her fingers.

"Headache?" Michaels asked. "It’s probably the lighting in here. Most people don’t know that pink is one of the few colors that changes the emotional response it evokes the longer you’re exposed to it. For the first half an hour or so, it’s calming, almost soothing. After that, it becomes increasingly annoying and agitating. That’s why they use it where they want you cooperative at first, but don’t want you hanging around."

She looked up at him wearily.

"You look surprised. There are any number of psychological tricks used in places like this. Take the coffee I sent the guards out for. I was using it as a stall for time. But normally, an interrogator offers you something to drink, especially coffee, to put you at ease and build a bond of trust. Plus, in about half an hour, you have to pee. Full bladders make people more likely to cooperate quickly. It’s a well-documented technique. Old, but quite effective."

"Like releasing a prisoner’s restraints," she asked sharply, glaring at them on the table. "Or telling her a few tricks someone else might use to make her trust you?"

"Exactly." Michaels actually sounded pleased. Was he being honest or was this just another psychological trick? Or both? She had been through the good cop, bad cop routine before. But Nick Michaels was like a whole, insane cop posse.

Her head sank down into her hands again, likely smudging the rest of her make-up. A second later, the door to the interrogation room rattled but did not open. Nick Michaels’ comm buzzed a warning tone.

"It looks like the bailiffs are back, Ms. Sorin. I reprogrammed the door lock, but it will only take them a moment to circumvent that. Once they do, they will not be in a tolerant mood. I need your answer now." He held out his comm, waiting to record whatever she said.

Before she could decide whether to trust him, the two guards burst in, this time with biometrically-keyed stun batons. Slowly, Nick Michaels rose from his seat and put his hands up in front of his shoulders, palms out, his left still holding his comm pad.

"Back away, Michaels," the male guard ordered, pointing his stun baton at him in full, flexed intimidation mode. "Carsley, secure the prisoner."

"Please, Ms. Sorin," Nick asked, "where do your convictions lie, with yourself and your own past or with the millions of people who will suffer when your brother leads the Greens back again?"

"Shut up, Michaels," the male guard snapped. "If you interfere with so much as a harsh word, I will take great pleasure in subduing you, I don’t care who you work for."

Josephine didn’t struggle as the female guard quickly re-shackled her. With a gentle prod from the stun baton that tingled but did not really shock her, she was hustled toward the door.

Slowly, cautiously, careful not to provoke either guard, Nick Michaels followed into the corridor, his hands still clearly in front of him.

The male guard turned and sneered at him, pointing again with his baton. "You move beyond that red line on the floor, mister, and you will have officially exceeded your mandate."

Michaels continued walking as though he hadn’t heard until his toes nearly brushed the line, then he stopped short. "You continue down that corridor, Josephine, and there’s no turning back. I won’t be able to help you on the other side. But say the word and we have a deal, no matter what anyone else tells you."

"Don’t listen to him," the woman whispered to her, pulling her forward. "He’s already in a lot of trouble."

"Let’s go," her counterpart ordered.

Josephine wasn’t sure what to do. She wasn’t sure if she believed Nick Michaels or anything he’d told her. She wasn’t sure her half-brother was alive never mind Sub-Commander Z, though she knew in her heart he was capable of what that man had done. What were the rules here? Were there any? How could she be certain of anything with the way her own government was treating her after failing to protect her when she was young? Was Nick Michaels a guardian like Souleymane or was he like her mother, who would say anything to get what she wanted? How could she ever know which was right? She knew she was being manipulated. Michaels was asking her to pit a thousand "ifs" and the lives of people she’d never met against working to betray the one person who had protected her from the monster who had helped create him, no matter how psychotic he might be.

The guards gave her no opportunity to pause, sort things out or decide. Midway down the hall, she glanced back over her shoulder to see Nick Michaels still toeing the line, his comm held out before him ready to catch any word she might utter before she crossed beyond his reach.


Next Sky Cell (Abrami's Sister, pt. 2)

© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III