ASBO-Boy - The Cage

“Why? We were good – weren’t we? We were good!” Beacon said, sobbing. His voice creaking like the springs on an old bed, betraying his age. Nia almost felt sorry for him.

“I’m sorry, my child,” the man said, his voice cold and icy. He wasn’t even the remotest bit sorry. “But you’ve seen too much. The balance needs to be reset.” (From The Core of the Problem)

When Nia awoke she was lying on a cold enamel floor. Her arms and legs were bound in suppression cuffs and she was still wearing the stinking remains of her costume which hung from her in limp folds. Lying near her was Elixir and sitting in opposite corners were Beacon and Swelter. The events of the past twenty-four hours came back to her in sickening waves. Her limbs felt hollow with fatigue. “Where are we?” She croaked.

“Cefn Coed,” Beacon whispered, his voice husky and deeper than she remembered. Nia sat up and stretched her limbs, feeling every joint creak and snap with satisfaction. Beacon was staring at his feet, the Union Jack on his chest torn and scorched and hanging from him in rags. Swelter was staring at her, his face a mask of anger and contempt. She looked away and touched Elixir on the shoulder, she groaned and rolled over. Her face was streaked with tears and all of her composure seemed to have melted.

“They’re going to kill us,” she whispered, “They’ll replace us and dump our bodies in the Tawe.” Nia hushed her quickly and stroked her hair. She didn’t know what they were going to do with them but she felt grimly certain they weren’t going to kill them. They’d be dead by now if that were the case.

“They’re toying with us. Seeing when we’re going to snap.” Swelter muttered, his eyes locked on the door. The only concession to detail in the small white room was the outline of the door. The walls, floor and ceiling were bright white.

“Shut up,” Beacon snapped, his voice breaking.

“Shut up,” Swelter squeaked in contempt, “What right have you to be throwing orders around now? It’s your fault we’re here.”

“Stop,” Elixir moaned, crawling over to Swelter, who held her in his arms in an approximation of tenderness. Nia sat in the middle of the floor between the two camps, her loyalty bellonging to neither. She made a feeble attempt to wrap her cloak around her but it was in too much of a mess to be constructive. Awkwardly she looked at Beacon who seemed to have taken Swelter’s comment as proof of his own suspicions.

A new feeling crept in and cast Beacon in a new light. He didn’t have any friends; Swelter and Elixir had each other, but Beacon had no one. They were a team, but that was all that held them together. It was an uncomfortable feeling that base school politics still seemed to be applied to him; he was too good-looking, too strong, too obviously ‘popular’ and desirable. Nia had never been part of his crowd and the twins had only ever been interested in each other. The galling truth was that she couldn’t bring herself to comfort him, he was an arrogant pretty-boy whose bigotry offended her but she felt ashamed that her capacity to forgive didn’t extend far enough.

“We’ve seen too much,” Nia muttered aloud, “What did he mean?”

“The bunker,” Beacon replied, “We saw what was inside.”

There wasn’t much she could remember from the the bunker, the whole episode seemed to have become one large mess in her head. There was Vue, the computers, the map, barrels and the water.

“It must have been built by them for something.” Elixir mused clearly uncomfortable with what she was saying. It felt like being sent to the naughty step – they’d all done something inherently wrong but they didn’t know why or even what exactly they’d done.

“I saw nothing.” Swelter muttered. “If we’d all stayed together no one would have ended up underground and we wouldn’t be here.”

“Of course, if we’d followed your orders we’d all be safe and sound. Sure.” Nia sat up, sensing where the argument was going. It was the same old issue with Swelter and Beacon; since she’d met them both they’d been fighting and sniping at each other.

“Leave it.” Elixir spat, her venom despiting her fatigue.

“You can talk,” Swelter said, ignoring his sister, “You were busy touching base with your old boyfriend, that ASBO scum we took down in Singleton park.”

“What?” Nia asked, her blood running cold. That night in the helicopter coming back to her like a bad dream. That couldn’t have been Mike, surely…

“Oh – didn’t you know?” Swelter mock-gasped, his voice dripping with spite and jealousy. Not even his anger could hide it, Elixir and Beacon looked away and Nia nodded her head as if she should have been expecting this all along.

“Stop talking about him,” Nia said, her voice cold and Spartan. Beacon and Elixir seemed to shrink further into the background.

“Why?” He returned, evidently not getting the warning, “He’s a criminal. People like him are the reason we have walls dividing up the city. Without scum like him we wouldn’t have to save people’s lives.”

“Says he, Mr Civic Justice, the man who uses torture to get what he wants.”

The temperature, defying probability, dropped several degrees. Swelter looked stunned, but Nia was impotent with fury. She watched him melt and back instantly onto the defensive.

“No...,” He stammered, his own rage and shame catching him out, “I explained – I wasn’t –”

“You explained what? That your actions were somehow justified? That torture is okay – so long as you’re the good-guy and someone else is the bad-guy? Could you be any more stupid?”

“But I’m not –”

“There is nothing you can say that can justify to me what you did. You may as well save yourself the breath. You are wholly the worst kind of person. You use violence to get what you want and then you have the audacity to claim the moral high ground.”

“That scum was caught in the act. He got what was coming to him.” Swelter replied, feeling his anger and justification come back to him. “He’s a criminal -”

“As opposed to you?” Nia spat back. The temerity of his pride stunned her, it was probably the only thing that he and Mike had in common. “How dare you.” Her voice pounded against the walls like claps of thunder. Somehow she’d found herself on her feet. “All three of you. You think you’re saviours, lording it over the little people who live in their slums – you’re nothing! You’re empty little puppets without a shred of decency between you.”

She sat down in the vacant corner and locked her arms around her knees in defiance. The others didn’t look at her and she was glad.

“What does that make you?” Beacon asked, his voice devoid of feeling. She didn’t answer him, she just sat back and contemplated their fate. Death, captivity or something else, a third path perhaps; either of the first two would have been preferable to the shame she felt at Beacon’s uncomfortable truth. She’d never felt like one of them, but she had once bought into what they represented. Slowly she slipped into sleep, the rant having drained the last of her will to stay awake.

**

“You see? They are still children. Exactly as we expected. Too young to be promoted.” Doctor Euryale spoke to the assembled blank-faced scientists. Below them the chamber that held the Elementals glowed through the one-way glass. “We’ll have to keep a closer eye on them when they are done. I hope you have leanred something from this observation. They cannot be trusted, they are too young to fully comprehend their feelings and their actions.”

He guided them towards the door that led into the facilty’s observation hub. From here they could see into all of the rooms. “We will re-arrange their minds and keep a closer hold on them. They wont be truly useful to us until they are adults and by then we’ll have unlocked the key to replicating their powers, at which point they will become, as they fear, expendable. For now, the children are sleeping. Soon it will be time for their medicine.”