how to draw the line, district three.

I thought I’d make it further.

Call me stupid, call me crazy, I caught one look at Indy’s face and knew better than to try and convince her not to try and take my place up on that stage. I did the only thing that I knew would get everyone else’s attention, the only thing I could think would get all the guards to look at me instead of at the girl trying to take my place. It wasn’t like I could let Indigo go up there, not after everything, but I couldn’t go up on that stage either. Frantic, panicked, I thought about the one thing that Indy had coached me on more than anything else, and that was cutting and running the second things started to look like they were going sideways.

Unlucky for me, every exit is blocked off. Even the alley way that Rotty showed me a few months ago when we were up in the upper crust neighborhood trying to pick pocket snotty nosed cunts with their noses in the air. Narrowest goddamn thing, a Peacekeeper blocks the whole thing off just with his shoulders. I’d tried to turn on my heels, change direction, find another way out, but a blonde lady with a heavy looking gun knocked me upside the head so hard I literally think my brain forgot to tell my knees how to work and I just went down like a sack of potatoes. She stepped right between my shoulder blades before two dude lumbered up and scooped me up off the concrete. I kicked and thrashed even with her boot holding me down, but it wasn’t good enough.

In the end, the picked me up high enough that my feet didn’t even touch the ground. I caught sight of myself thrusting like a toddler in their arms and let loose a piercing shriek.

“LET ME GO! LET ME GO!” One of them twisted my arm then until I felt like it was about to pop out of its socket, and then started up the stairs towards the stage they’d constructed in front of the Justice Building. My kicking and screaming isn’t hidden from the cameras, and in another life maybe that would make me stop fighting, but I don’t care. A fire doesn’t go out simply because it is watched. A laugh escapes me, another thing I can’t control, tears stream down my cheeks. I catch sight of Indy in a chokehold, devil in white standing behind her. “I’m gonna show you! I’M GONNA SHOW YOU!”

Except then a rag gets shoved in my mouth and it tastes disgusting and I’m being dragged into the Justice Building itself. Never been in here. Kind of wish it had stayed that way. I can’t hear anything over the racing of my own thoughts, the whole world spinning around me while I am deafened to it. Benzo is scooping me up in his arms in my heads, and Copped is blowing up the building to get to me. Tears are streaming down my face and catching on the gag that’s been tied around my face to keep me quiet, the hoisting sitting on my skin and making me uncomfortable.

The same two men never leave my sides, two hands pushing me down and holding me in the chair they plopped me in before picking me back up and taking me to the train.

I have never felt so aware of my size, never felt so aware of the fact that this world was not made for me.

I’ve grown weary of kicking and trying to scream by the time the bring me to the train car I’m apparently meant to be left in. On the other side of the car, the girl who made it home is sitting next to the boy they’d dragged on stage with me. Technicality Rose. Not an unfamiliar name. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t make me gag. And he’s talking to Maya first. Of course.

My shadows, my shackles, the men drop me right there on the train floor, mouth still bound.

I try and scramble to my feet as quickly as I can, snarl out towards them around my gag before reaching out with my hand. I manage to catch one of them along the calf with my nails before the other kicks me in the stomach and tells me to behave, or else.

I huff, once, the pull out my gag with my finally free hands, staring daggers from where I now stand.

“Or else, what, you kill me? Rose over there is gonna try and beat you to it.”