The containment van lurches to a stop. Locks clack all around it, and the rear doors swing open into Front Street's central hub, a wide chamber of concrete, steel, and blinking red panels.
Sally stands in the van threshold, cuffed but unbroken, as gray-coated staff move to flank the bay. Above them, relay lights race along the ceiling like a heartbeat.
Gray-Coat Leader
Step out, Sally. The Department is done pretending you are a person.
The Rose
No. She is not your property. Back away from her.
Mark V
The relay spine is live, Sally. If you hit the core, the whole network goes dark.
Across the chamber, the central console glows behind a mesh of cables and sealed panels. Somewhere inside it, the pulse tied to Sally's biology hums like a locked door waiting for one last turn.
The Gray-Coat Leader lifts a hand, and the room tightens around Sally, The Rose, and Mark V. Every path now leads to the core, or back into the van.
Sally leaves Department of Superhuman Affairs central hub behind and arrives at Washington D.C. super human prison.
“I get back in the van and get transported to the super human prison in washington d.c. awaiting my trial.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Agility, rolled +1)
Cold fluorescent light replaces the red pulse. Sally is inside a bare intake bay, concrete walls sweating under a row of cameras, with a steel bench, a sealed door, and a clerk’s window bolted shut behind scratched glass.
A prison orderly wheels her cuffed hands toward a marker on the floor, then stops at the check line. The air smells like disinfectant and wet metal, and the distant locks engage somewhere deeper in the block.
Prison Orderly
Hold there. Put your hands on the rail and face the camera.
Sally
The intake bay is separate from the transport route.
Sally is guided past the rail and into the search lane. The cuffs are removed, logged, and replaced with a tagged restraint band, while a scanner sweeps over the collarbone tattoo and the stolen drive in evidence pouch.
Prison Clerk
Case transferred from federal custody. Awaiting trial assignment. Sign here.
Through the slit in the clerk’s window, Sally catches a glimpse of a corridor stacked with sealed doors and a relay indicator blinking dead red above the far gate.
Prison Clerk
If you want one call before lockup, say it now.
Quest Complete
Get out of the Department of Superhuman Affairs
New Gift: Hard-Won Insight
The intake bay hummed under cold lights. The cuffs came off, the restraint band clicked into place, and the clerk slid the transfer slate shut.
Prison Clerk
Federal custody received. Department transfer complete.
Prison Orderly
Phone call is yours, if you want it.
Sally
I do. Then I'm done running.
Sally stood in the heart of the prison with a thin band at her wrist and the red relay glow reflected in the glass. The Department had taken its hold, but not her name. In the silence after the transfer, she finally belonged to herself, and the chapter closed with the weight of that choice.