ASBO-Boy - Gunpowder, Treason and Plot: Part 1

Nia stood in the corner of the room and watched as Beacon questioned the survivor of the crash on the other side of a glass divide. The shell-shocked kid couldn't have been more than fourteen. He was strapped to a chair in the centre of the dark questioning room at a local police station.

"Can't we just wait for them to count the bodies?" Nia asked – unable to believe what she was saying.

"We have to start looking immediately. The Ward Security isn't what it once was." Elixir replied in a whisper.

"So there were some survivors?" Beacon demanded, leaning in close to the boy. Swelter and Elixir were standing close-by but Nia had never felt further from any of them.

"If you give us names then this will end. Come on, we all want to go home and get some sleep. This'll all be over when you give us names."

"I don't know…" The boy repeated over and over, sobbing.

Beacon stepped out of the room without another word. He entered the room with the others and shook his head wearily. A nearby officer spoke to him.

"Can we take him for processing?"

Beacon nodded solemnly, but Swelter stepped forward. "Let me speak to him." Beacon looked up at him and nodded. Elixir's hand slipped from her brother's as he went through to where the poor little ASBO was sitting. Beacon led them out into the next room and there they stood in silence unable to meet each other's eyes.

"What will he do?" Nia asked with a voice so hollow she was uncertain she'd even spoken. When the other two didn't answer she just swallowed her curiosity and stood watching Beacon trace the lines of the Union Jack on his costume.

After an immeasurable period of time, Swelter emerged looking flushed.

"Bark, Squeeze, Vue and Arc-Light."

A nearby officer passed him a PDA and he scanned over the details. "An electricity wielder, a boy who can manipulate his body mass, one who can open holes in physical objects and one who can turn his skin to 'bark'."

"Between them they can get in and out of any Ward with ease." Beacon muttered, "But they'll make a lot of noise doing it, so my theory is they haven't gone far."

Elixir nodded. "We sweep the area until we find them."

**
The following day Nia woke up around midday with a headache. Her room at the pent-house was wide, airy and neatly decorated with modern art. One wall was entirely made of glass and looked out over the bay. She sat up and shook the cobwebs out of her pounding head.

In the living space she found Swelter doing exercises. She sat down and turned on the TV wall.

" – last night's explosion has been attributed to a faulty mechanism in the body of the helicopter which was transporting ASBOs from Sandfields Borstal to the Secure Facility at Cefn Coed." The jerky footage was showing the burning hulk of the helicopter last night. "Investigations are underway to find four missing ASBOs. All are Positive Other and can be considered extremely dangerous." Faces of the escaped inmates were shown on-screen and Nia was forced to see Mike's narrow, jaunty face blown up to fill the wall space. With a flick of the wrist she turned the wall off and sat up. After hours of searching they'd finally given up around dawn.

"Faulty-mechanism my arse." Swelter muttered between ab-crunches. Nia was inclined to agree that the explosion was part of a plot to break the inmates out. She tried to imagine the kind of person Mike had become inside the Borstal. Hard, bitter and dangerous. As dangerous as the boy they'd questioned last night? She wondered, thinking back at the terrified creature as he sat pinned to the chair.

"What exactly did you ask that boy, to make him talk?" She asked as casually as she could. Swelter sat up and smiled.

"I just turned the heat up a bit. That's all." He replied with a glint in his eyes. Nia suddenly felt very sick and had to sit up to battle with her stomach.

"But – I didn't do much." Swelter back-pedalled, "I just played the bad-cop and he cracked. I didn't hurt him."

Nia couldn't look at him and began to walk out of the room to the balcony for some fresh air. Outside she found Beacon who was staring off into space across the bay.

"What's wrong?"

"Swelter tortured that boy." She spat furiously. The guilty party appeared at the door of the balcony looking ashen. Nia pointed at him venomously, waiting for Beacon to rise up in indignation as well.

"'Torture' is a bit strong, don't you think?" Beacon replied, slightly bewildered, "He was only a bloody ASBO."

Nia held a hand to her mouth and tried to contain herself. In the corner, near the Japanese water feature was Elixir, smiling vacantly at the water. "Now that we're all here, I have a plan of action." Beacon declared, glossing over Nia's feelings. She looked at each of them in turn and found that none of them met her eyes. They just didn't care. Only Swelter looked as ill as she felt and for that she should have been glad but she only felt empty and sick.