SOPHIA

The weather was unseasonably temperate in the city that day. The sky was an inverted bowl of perfect blue, the breeze sweeping through the treetops carried the heady scent of summer flowers, and the sun spilled bars of gold across the sidewalks. Sophia, however, was unable to enjoy any of Nature’s glorious bounty at the moment. The architects of Allegheny County Jail had clearly held the view that sunlight was for law-abiding citizens only; there wasn’t a window or shred of natural light to be found anywhere in the prison’s visiting room.

She sat uncomfortably in a hard-backed chair, staring intently through the glass as she waited for Nate to appear on the other side. A guard who looked like a gorilla was prowling behind the visitors, grunting with every step. Sophia could feel his eyes boring into her back. She folded her hands on the little counter in front of her, wanting to show that she wasn’t trying to hide any knives or tunneling spoons up her sleeves. The claustrophobic watchfulness of this place was giving her flashbacks to the Basement Complex. She felt herself breaking into a nervous sweat.

After a few minutes, Nate finally emerged. He was flanked by two guards, and his wrists and ankles were secured with cuffs. He laboriously made his way over, metal bonds jingling as he sat down on the other side of the glass. He didn’t look directly at her, but he picked up the phone on his side and pressed it to his ear. Sophia took that as her cue. She plucked her own phone from its receiver.

“Hi,” she said.

Nate gave a loud sniff and nodded.

“I thought of a lot of prison jokes while I was waiting, but now they strike me as really inappropriate.”

He smiled and raised his head. He looked thin. Shadows were smudged beneath his eyes, and it looked like he hadn’t shaved in a month.

“I appreciate that,” he said. “I’m not really in the mood.”

They stared at one another for a long minute. Sophia took a deep, steadying breath before she spoke again.

“I don’t know if you care at this point, but I came to give you some updates about Felicity. I’m not sure what the papers have reported.”

Nate leaned forward. The hunger that had leapt into his eyes at the mention of their sister’s name made her instinctively draw back.

“I saw on the news that the jury found her not guilty on all charges by reason of insanity,” he said softly. “Is that true?”

Sophia nodded.

“It took a while for them to decide where to stick her, but in the end they ended up shipping her back to the Institute. I guess mutant-free psychiatric facilities were a bit nervous about taking her on.”

“They took her back?” he said angrily. “To those quacks?”

“It’s under new management if that makes you feel any better. Some bleeding heart who worked with Camilla runs everything now. Her name’s Martha.”

In fact, Sophia heard through the grapevine that Larry had been promoted, and that he would be working side by side with the new management to ensure the transition went smoothly. She was glad that there were still some people out there who got all the goodness they deserved.

“Is my mother still involved?” Nate asked.

“Not so much anymore. She’s currently being indicted for the part she played in those experiments. I think they’re looking to set a trial date soon. Not sure how that’s all gonna shake out.”

Nate stared off into the distance for a moment, chewing his lower lip.

“I didn’t see Felicity during her trial,” he said finally. “I guess recording was kept to a minimum. How is she feeling?”

Sophia hesitated. What was the kindest way to let him know that their sister looked like a hundred-year-old raisin? That she could barely get out of bed? That her insides were practically dust, and the doctors said she only had a couple more years left to live at most?

“She’s not going great,” she said lamely.

Nate’s face showed no signs of pain, or even anger. It was just an empty slate. She swallowed and went on:

“The court assigned her a couple of handlers. They’ll be checking in to make sure she’s being treated well.”

So you don’t have to worry about her. You don’t have to worry about anyone in your family anymore. Everything will be okay. The words were on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn’t make herself say them.

“She would have been better off in here,” Nate said with a twisted smile. “In prison you always have the hope of being killed in your sleep.”

They stared at one another through the smeared glass. Sophia wasn’t sure what to make of the expression on his face. He was still smiling, but his eyes were soulless.

“How’s it going in here? Are you still being protected?” she asked quietly.

He shrugged. “For now. I don’t think they’ll be able to keep it up forever, though. A cop has a certain smell to these people. One of them will get me eventually.”

There was no fear in his voice. Only a weary resignation.

“So, how about you? How are you doing?” he said, still holding that horrible smile on his face. “Last time I saw you was…let’s see…last month. You were on the news. Somebody got a shot of you coming out of a coffee shop. Real headliner stuff.”

Sophia rolled her eyes. “They’ve been up my ass ever since the trial. I really owe your mom, you know.”

“Oh yeah?” His face darkened.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“She’s done a lot of shitty things,” she said quickly. “I’m not excusing any of it. But she got a lot of her employees to testify that my power was real. They never would have believed my stories otherwise.”

“I’m pretty sure they were convinced after you made a chair levitate in the courtroom.”

Sophia laughed. “I’m sure that helped. I do have some probation and court-mandated therapy to get through, but considering how it could’ve gone, I guess I’m pretty lucky.”

“Yeah, you are. I’m glad, Sophia.” His expression softened, and for a moment a tender look crept into his blank eyes. “I’m sorry there was no official closure for your mother’s death though. I heard the grand jury didn’t think there was enough to move to trial?”

“Yeah, guess the word of a deranged teenage Telepath wasn’t enough to get a conviction. Who would’ve thought?”

Sophia tried to speak lightly, but the decision had been a bitter pill to swallow and she was still dealing with the disappointment. There hadn’t been enough physical evidence to link her to their mother’s death. There had been nothing but Sophia’s testimony of what she had seen in her sister’s memories. Turns out that didn’t hold up in court. Even from beyond the grave, Sybill was still getting away with things.

“They didn’t even care about Felicity’s testimony? Or did she not testify at all?”

Sophia looked at him for a minute. Then she said quietly: “Felicity can barely talk, Nate.”

Another silence lapsed between them. Then it was like something inside of him that had been tethering his body to the chair broke. He slumped down.

“Does Camilla come to visit you a lot?” Sophia asked, groping desperately for something that would make that horrid emptiness leave his eyes.

“Nope. Haven’t seen her around.” He shrugged again. “Nothing new about that though.”

Sophia opened her mouth to express sympathy (although what the hell would she even say?), but he rushed on before she could get anything out:

“Do me a favor, Sophia. Make something good out of your life.” He suddenly leaned towards the glass until his nose was practically pressed against it. “Promise me.”

Sophia swallowed the lump in her throat and blinked hard. “I will. I…I want to learn recollection reparation, Nate. I think the new people at the Institute could help me out with that and one day maybe I can work for something like Project Camilla. Do something useful with this power.”

Her voice trailed away uncertainty. But Nate nodded, looking satisfied with her answer, and then leaned away from the glass again.

There was so much more she wanted to say to him, and yet she found there were no words to adequately express the Calvary they had each walked. So she said nothing, and together they rested in silence.

“Alright, everyone! Time’s up!” barked the guard. Sophia jumped. “Back to your cells! Visitors, please exit single file to the door on your left!”

“Thanks for coming to see me,” Nate said as Sophia stood up, the phone still pressed to her ear.

Sophia leaned forward and pressed her palm to the glass. After a moment, Nate raised his hand and placed it over hers. “Thank you for coming when I called,” she said. “Thank you for saving me.”

She hung up before he could respond, but Nate continued to leave his hand pressed against the glass as she hurried to join the line of visitors filing out the door. In the bustling of bodies, he thought he saw a familiar flash of vivid red hair. His heart pummeled, his head swam, but then he realized a moment later that it was just Sophia’s sweater. She looked over her shoulder at him before she hurried out the door, and there was surely no mistaking her for Felicity in that moment: the smile on her face was one of pure gratitude.

JACK

There was a lot of discussion about what to do with Jack. During the trials, his murderous history was splashed across every local newspaper, flaunting eye-catching headlines such as “MASS MURDERER OF THE ELDERLY KEPT HIDDEN IN INSANE ASYLUM,” and “ONE MAN’S CONSPIRACY TO PROTECT A MURDERER.” Once the sensationalized reporting died down and people moved on to the next titillating bit of news, the world was simply left with a young man who was incomprehensible. And so the world did what it usually did with such people: hid him away in the hopes that someone else would deal with him. He was declared insane and sentenced to live out the rest of his days in psychiatric care. But the only place on earth that knew how to deal with a lunatic with superpowers was the same place that had created him.

So he was shipped back to the Institute.

Martha Luxley, the new head of the facility, shut down the Basement Complex and moved all the residents up to the main floors. They were given more freedom than any of them were accustomed to: they had visiting hours like everyone else, as well as recreational periods. Jack was placed in the Aster Ward, a new floor created for residents who struggled with long-term mental health issues. The other Aster residents were aware of his past, and no one attempted to befriend him. Jack didn’t seem to mind, although it was very difficult to know what exactly he was thinking at any given moment. The most anybody could hope for was that he would keep out of trouble---which he did, for the most part.

He rarely spoke to anyone except his personally assigned therapist, and his only real friends these days were the rats. They had snuck in through his bedroom window one day and Jack had started feeding them. He even set up some blankets in the corner for them to sleep on. When he told this to his therapist, she offered to speak to someone about removing them.

“Don’t be silly,” Jack drawled, looking at her with an amused glint in his eyes. “I like having them around.”

“Rats are filthy animals, Jack. They could harm you.”

“Funny. People say the same thing about me,” he said with a toothy smile that made his therapist feel a little sick to her stomach. “I named one of them Jackie Junior. Cute, right? JJ, the Rat. Sounds like a band, doesn’t it?”

“One of them? How many are in your room?” his therapist asked, her eyes widening.

Jack leaned back in his seat, his spidery limbs dangling over the edge of the chair. “Just two,” he said, staring at a spot on the ceiling. “I named the other one Francis.”

“After a friend?”

Jack smiled. His therapist felt a worm of unease inch up her spine.

“Not even a little,” he said.

He didn’t elaborate. Their session ended early that day.

FELICITY

Felicity sat in her room---her cell, really, for all intents and purposes--- listening to the sound of distant traffic outside the window. She had endless hours of solitude at her disposal these days, and lately she’d been reminiscing in between all the injections and pills. Mostly she thought about her childhood---no, just Nate. Her brother was the only thing from her past worth thinking about. He was the only thing that had ever felt like hers.

She was grateful that he would never see her like this: a pathetic little husk of shriveled flesh and sunken bone. The doctors gave her three years left to live---tops. If there was a God, it’d be a lot less than that. Then again, the existence of a deity would probably amount to the same result for her anyway. If God did exist, He had never done a single thing for her worth noting.

In the days when their parents still took them to church, Felicity remembered hearing preachers yell from various pulpits that hell existed because God was merciful. He didn’t want anybody to go there. No, people chose to go, and God was a good creator who respected free will too much to do anything about it. He wouldn’t force Himself on anyone. Even as a child, this had struck her as grotesque.

For example: for her tenth birthday, her father had gifted her a little porcelain-white doll. It wore a ribboned green dress and had red yarn pigtails. “She looks just like my girl,” he whispered, bending down to affectionately nibble Felicity’s ear. Whenever she looked at the doll after that, Felicity would feel her father’s warm teeth on her skin.

A few weeks later she took the doll into their backyard and buried it.

There was a thunderstorm the same night. She remembered curling up in bed and listening with relish to the sounds of hard, steely rain lashing against the roof. She grinned at the idea of that pig-tailed monstrosity trapped beneath the moist earth, hopeless and rotting in its watery grave. Whenever she thought of God, she always thought about that doll. God might be a lot of things.

“Good” wasn’t one of them.