breakproofing

Shatterproof glass, which is used for countless applications in modern prisons, is produced by pressing together two panes of glass with a layer of transparent plastic or resin between them. When the glass is struck at shattering impact, the glass shatters into rounded, dull fragments, and the intermediate layer remains intact, holding these much safer shards together. With the proper dedication and appropriate tools, this sort of glass can also be broken through, but due to its construction it affords far more resiliency than ordinary plate glass.

The name is a lie. It is not that the glass is made to never break. Instead, it is accepted as a given that any glass will break, someday; and therefore this glass is simply designed to break in the safest way possible.

*

She didn't understand at first how you could have more than one life sentence, but the lawyer explained it to her. A life sentence is a technical term; it's a set number of years, not necessarily your whole life, and then there's the possibility of having some time taken off for whatever reason. Multiple back-to-back life sentences, on the other hand, mean they're never letting you out. And two counts of first-degree murder, one of involuntary manslaughter, three of assault and battery, two more of assault with intent to rob, and two of assault on a police officer all add up to more lifetimes than she was planning to have, all things considered. So that was some good news.

The lawyer was state-appointed, a small, balding man with glasses and sweaty palms. Wolfram and Hart, of course, did not offer their services. She'd been told the lawyer's name but forgot it immediately. She answered his questions when he asked them, and she told other people mostly what he told her to tell them, and otherwise she kept her head down and didn't say much of anything. The trials didn't drag on, and the attorneys on both sides seemed puzzled by the case, even a little lost. She guessed they didn't get many people in court who just wanted to go to jail for a long time. Or maybe it was something else. She wouldn't know.

"Faith, I want to ask you something," the lawyer said once, when they were talking, or, actually, when he was talking and she was looking at her nails and nodding sometimes. Her nails had this weird bruised look all the time now. Could a coma do that? "This is off the record, but it will help me prepare a defense. And there's some personal curiosity on my part as well. Is that all right with you?"

She nodded. Her nails were thin, too. One of them had split when she was trying to get away from the helicopter, and it hurt.

"Are you sorry?" the lawyer asked.

She almost just nodded again, and then she looked up at him, frowning. "Am I what?"

"Sorry," the lawyer repeated. His eyes were watery blue and small behind his glasses, mildly interested at best. He took a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and squeezed it in his hands, drying his palms. "You've told the police, and now me, about a lot of very serious things you've done, and -- while you seem very interested in being punished for these things... I can't seem to tell whether or not you feel any remorse over doing them."

She looked at him. He kept drying his palms. There was a sudden thought in the back of her head -- were they always like that, or was it her? It made her feel tired. "Remorse? What -- what do you mean by remorse?"

The lawyer blinked his mild blue eyes at her and put his handkerchief away. "I mean -- "

"If you mean -- " she cut him off, and struggled. "If you mean, do I wish I hadn't done it? Yeah, I do. I mean, I didn't go around in grade school saying I wanted to be a serial killer when I grew up, or anything." He was staring at her now, a lot less mildly, so she looked back at her nails. When she pressed her thumb to her forefinger, the nail went white. People staring at her like that reminded her of B. "If you mean, would I do it again now, if I could... no, I wouldn't. I wouldn't want to. If you mean... does it eat me up inside, do I have nightmares about the dead guys or freak out screaming sometimes, yeah, sure, sometimes. I don't think about it much, but when I do. Well. Anybody would freak out, you know?"

It was the most she would say at once to anyone except Angel for the next three years.

The little bald lawyer with the glasses, who looked like he should be a bank teller instead of a criminal defense lawyer, cleared his throat. "But I didn't ask you that, Faith," he said. "I asked if you felt any remorse. It's -- it's not really something I can quantify beyond that; either you feel it, or you don't."

She released her thumb, and the white semicircle went away, so she looked back up at him. "Then I guess I don't," said a ghost of the old tough girl who knew all the worst streets in Boston. But she was gone again when she saw the look in this little wannabe banker's eyes.

"I think maybe you should speak to a psychologist," he said, after a minute. "There might be some exte--"

"I'm not crazy."

His smile was brief and thin, too short to make up for the second of alarm in his eyes. Banker-blues. "I didn't say you were crazy."

"Yeah, but that's what you meant." She was aware that she was talking too loud, too hard, but she had to, she wanted to scare him. She'd seen enough movies to know what that meant. Crazy meant hospitals and doctors and inkblots and drugs and shit. It meant fixing the crazy, not punishing the crime. It wouldn't be enough. "I knew what I was doing. I don't want you telling them I was crazy to get me off easy."

The lawyer held up his soft pink sweaty hands. "Please don't jump to conclusions, Faith. I'd just like a court psychologist to analyze you so we can see where we are."

"There's nothing to analyze," she said, and scraped hair out of her face. She ought to ask them to cut it. It must have grown while she was out. Had someone cut it? Had someone had to cut her toenails? God, what a job. "I'm just a bad guy, okay?"

And who was he, to offer her that big, patronizing, we-can't-give-you-a-loan-right-now smile? He didn't know shit about shit. "I'm a criminal defense attorney," he told her. "I don't believe in bad guys."

Hope one eats you on your way home, then, she thought, but she wasn't going to say that. "Then... fine. Then I'm a plain old normal kid who made some bad decisions."

The lawyer tilted his head. "Two murders is a lot of bad decisions for a seventeen-year-old girl."

"Yeah," she said, and swallowed the rest. "You kind of had to be there."

Then she told him she was tired and she didn't want to talk anymore, and the cops took her back to her holding cell. She lay on the cot and stared at the cracked webby plaster of the ceiling, and cracked her knuckles with her thumb. Who was he, to look at her like that? She could break him in half if she wanted to.

*

She's quiet, and she doesn't give anybody much trouble. Sometimes people give her trouble -- mostly the new girls, the ones who were in gangs and want everybody to know how tough they are. They gravitate to her because everyone else leaves her alone, she thinks. She doesn't hurt them bad. It's not really their fault. There was a guard once, too, who tried to feel her up while he was searching her one time, and she broke his hand without really thinking about it, and then they dumped her in solitary for a while. Then a couple of his buddies came after her a couple nights later, to let her know who she shouldn't fuck with. She broke their hands, too, plus some other stuff. They dumped her in solitary for a while longer. But these days the guards mostly leave her alone.

Life in jail is much more scheduled than she's used to things, and sometimes it bugs her, but it's not like there's anyone to complain to. She gets by. She has a weight training regimen, mostly just for something to do, even if most of the "weights" she lifts she could pick up and swing around her head with one hand. Better not to let on about stuff like that. Better not to stand out. Off and on, they've had her working on her high school diploma, too; the one she gave up on a good six years ago, not long before the night she was going from club to club and just barely got away from a couple guys with really weird faces who jumped her out of nowhere, and a well-dressed woman with a British accent and bad teeth found her hiding from them in an alley and tried to help her home.

(Who the fuck are you and what the fuck is going on? You tell me now.

I'll explain on the way, shall I?)

...But it isn't worth thinking about that anymore, and she tries not to. It's over now, and if one thing's for certain, it's that she isn't anybody very special. She isn't anybody at all. Just some girl in jail, who's always quiet and keeps to herself, and who's got no attitude and doesn't do much of anything, some girl who gets visits every couple months from a big broody guy in a leather jacket, and maybe the guard looks at her funny sometimes for what they talk about, but nobody pays it much attention. Some girl, some nobody girl nobody looks at twice. Some girl you look right through and don't even see.

And what's crazy, really, is what an incredible relief that is, after all this time. The total load off your mind of knowing that the imaginary monster under the bed has been real all along. She imagines the same feeling coming over all the people she and B never saved, like a sweet beautiful wave, can almost hear them thinking just at the moment the fangs sink into their necks or the demon eats their skin or that whatever happens happens: Well, that's a relief. Here I thought I was just going crazy.

*

California's prison system operates principally on four security levels. Level I is the lowest-security level, consisting of open dormitories with no perimeter enforcement, that are generally occupied for nonviolent offenders serving short terms; Level II facilities are similar, but surrounded by fences -- some electrified or equipped with razor wire -- and protected by armed guards, and house mostly well-behaved offenders serving longer terms, or terms for more serious offenses; Level III facilities have individual cells and fully secure perimeters, and their inmates are generally repeat offenders or those with a history of behavioral problems. Level IV security is the highest, and in addition to all the security measures of Level III, tend to employ electronic security and significantly higher numbers of armed personnel. These inmates tend to have a fairly extensive criminal record, and are generally considered high escape risks.

More recently built prisons tend to employ a number of high-tech security measures, such as electronic control of access to prisoner cells from a central "booth" area, command centers from which movements in and out of the prison are monitored and controlled, and occasionally the perimeter fences are even equipped with motion sensors, transmitting all activity to nearby security vehicles for immediate response in the case of an emergency. Furthermore, in addition to the well-armed internal and external guards in Level IV facilities, a Security Emergency Response Team, or SERT, consisting of highly trained specialists, can be summoned in the event of a major disturbance.

Still, all told, it would theoretically be possible for a Slayer to escape even a Level IV facility without injury, and perhaps even without a great deal of difficulty. That is, assuming she had any strong desire to leave.

*

She doesn't know exactly how long she'd been in when it happened. A few years, probably, but she has a way of losing track of time. She keeps meaning to ask Angel how long it's been, but when he comes to visit she always forgets about it somehow. Two years, or three? There's no seasons in this stupid state.

She woke up because it was dark. It's never full dark in a prison, especially not in the high-security part. But now it was. It was just her in the cell that night; it wasn't more than two days before there was a new girl to fill the spot, of course, but Faith went through a lot of cellmates. They got moved to lower security, or got favors from somebody to switch, or even got out, sometimes. But mostly, it was her: all the quiet from somebody in for multiple murders just creeped people out. Hard to blame them.

It was dark, and she couldn't hear anything outside the cell. Not coughing or sneezing or snoring or breathing, not yelling about the lights being out, not guards walking around. Just... nothing. Like she was at the bottom of a well. And that thought got her freaking out a little, and she sat up on the bottom bunk and started looking around.

"Rise and shine, tiger," said Mayor Richard Wilkins III, from where he was standing by the head of the cot.

She almost screamed. Later, she wondered if it would have changed anything if she had. Would someone even have heard?

But instead, she just whipped around backwards on the bed, scooted back a little, stared at him. "...Boss?" She tried to keep her voice down. Explaining the dead guy hanging out in her cell to that asshole Carlisle? Not high on her list of things to do tonight.

He folded his hands in front of him and smiled, rocking forward on his toes the way he did. Wearing one of his old used-car-salesman suits and just smiling at her. He was the only thing in the cell she could see, like he was lit up somehow from inside. Maybe ghosts did that. "Faith," he said, with the low warm voice he never used on anything but her name. "Look how much you've grown."

Something in her throat felt funny all of a sudden. She swallowed it.

"Aren't you... didn't you die?"

For a minute he had a funny look on his face, like he'd just bitten into something that didn't taste right -- and then he burst out laughing, the big grinning can't-help-myself laugh that looked like it'd crack his face in half. Christ, she'd almost forgotten how he did that. "Oh, come on, now, how many vampires have you killed, and now seeing a dead man's a big surprise?" He shook his head. "Yes, I'm afraid so. Heck of a bad turn. But here I am."

"Here you are," she said, low under her breath. Didn't move, though. She didn't know why she didn't want to touch him. "What... what are you doing here?"

"Oh, I came to warn you." He took a few steps over to the edge of the cell, ran his finger along the wall and then frowned at it. "Some very nasty customers are on their way here this evening. Looking for you, unfortunately. You might -- "

"What?" She got up now, too much energy and not enough places to put it. "Wait, what's coming?" He turned to face her, and she stalked around in a little half-circle, pushing hair out of her eyes and shaking her head. "No, no, but they can't get in here. I mean, I'm in jail."

His sad little smile. "I'm afraid that doesn't matter much to these gentlemen," he just said. "They'll be here." He paused, looking down thoughtfully, and then met her eyes with a serious, kind expression. "It's all right, Faith. It'll be just you and me again."

She thought she heard something now. Were those running footsteps? It was so far away. "I..."

"Oh, I know." He waved a dismissive hand. "You can't die, you have lots of important self-flagellating to do. You kids today. You never look at the big picture." Shaking his head, chuckling. "You know what they say, you can't make an omelette without killing a few people."

Faith barely heard him; she was listening for that sound to come back. It had faded, but then it sounded again, and she jumped. They were closer, shorter than it should have taken, ringing down the corridors that led here. Maybe in low security. It was impossible to tell. The sound quality was weird: muffled, like some wacko had taken it into his head to carpet the whole place in the middle of the night. She couldn't fight in here, especially not demons or something. Would a guard even hear her?

"You can call for help if you want," the boss said, and she started again. The warmth was out of his voice now. "But I'd hate to see my little girl reduced to that."

She turned and stared at him. His expression said nothing.

They were on this block now, and closing in.

Suddenly a fresh smile broke across his face; it was like cracking an egg there. "Come on, chin up! They'll kill you, of course, but then you'll be with me again. And I'll take care of you, young lady. That's a promise." He looked at her expectantly, and when she just kept staring, a look of sympathy replaced the smile. "Oh, I see. Well, if you're concerned about spoiling my big day, you can forget all about that." He held up his hands. "I know, I should be angry, but it's something every parent has to accept -- no matter how much you give up for your child, in those teenage years, you just can't hope to compete with her friends. Heck, even if the friend stabs her in the gut, am I right?" His laugh was almost covered by the sound of footfalls. They were so close. The fondness in his eyes was relentless. "No, Faith, it's all right. I forgive you."

When she opened her mouth to ask him again what was coming, a weak, hiccuping, choked noise came out instead. It took her completely by surprise. She couldn't be crying, she couldn't fight crying...

Something slammed up against the bars of her cell, making a dry, meaty sound. A yelp hitched out of her, and she spun around, stumbling back from the entrance. She couldn't see anything. The bars rattled once, twice. They could only be opened from the guard post at the center of the block; she knew that. She also knew it probably didn't matter.

But he was around in front of her again, between her and the bars. "Fight if it'll make you feel better," he said, smiling a little. He cast a glance over his shoulder, and shrugged. "But I don't think it'll make much of a difference, do you?"

She was looking past him, into the dark, but at that her eyes focused and she stared again. "You're not him," she said finally. Her mouth felt numb.

He tilted his head, frowning. "Who?" he asked.

That was when the door clanged open and they rushed her.

There were three. She worked that out almost immediately, listening to the number of footsteps that crossed the threshold, the sources of noise that spread out around her. They were almost silent, but that wasn't good enough. Heavy fabric fluttered; she grabbed out in the dark and caught it, maybe a sleeve, and then whatever it was closed with her, tight enough she could smell incense and unpleasant, dead herbs. She had one of its arms, figured out where the other was swinging a fraction too late, hissed as she jumped back just a little too slow and something scraped across her belly. It cut through her sleeping shirt but barely skimmed her skin. Okay, one of them had a knife, better assume they all did. The whatever pulled away, and they circled around her, just close enough to feel. Probably figuring she was helpless in the dark.

The only thing in the world, the boss stood at the edge of the cell and watched her fight. He had a faint, expectant, half-bored smile, like a guy who's not much for sports watching a basketball game.

No, it wasn't him. But whoever it was did a damn good impression.

Another one of the things took a swipe at her. She heard it coming in time to duck, and grabbed its arm on the way back up. It broke just like anyone's arm, and the loud clang as the knife it had been holding hit the floor was sort of reassuring. She swept down and grabbed it and stuck it in the thing's side before it could move away. It went down, at least for the moment, in silence.

Numbers Two and Three charged her together right away. So much for the helpless theory. She skirted away from the one into the other's path, caught a knife-hand maybe an inch from stabbing her throat, and twisted. The snap was satisfying. God, how long had it been since she'd done this? Two was sneaking around behind her; she could feel the air ruffling from its robes. She reversed the knife in her hand and stabbed backward. The old familiar rib-grinding feeling -- chest. Lucky shot. Blood gouted over her hand, and she wrenched the knife back out as the thing fell, barely quick enough to stop Three swinging at her with its fists. One did connect, with her side, and she grunted, then caught a handful of its robes and pulled it in. That smell was awful. Three got it in the throat.

She let go, and closed her eyes. Started to breathe again.

Then a hand clamped around her ankle. It nearly pulled her off balance before she grabbed the top bunk. She kicked out her other foot and hit what had to be the thing's head, breath hissing in her teeth, but it didn't budge. So she brought the knife she still had in her hand down right where she'd kicked. There was a sick splattering feeling, and then the hand spasmed and let go.

It was very suddenly time to sit down. Fortunately, she managed to do it where the bed was.

"Very nice," the Mayor who wasn't said. "That's Slayer resourcefulness, right there. I never get tired of seeing it in action."

"You're not real," she said, very quietly. "Go away."

Did his laughter sound less sincere, or was she just listening for it now? "Now, that's not very polite. Is this how I taught you to treat your guests?" And though she didn't want to look at him, she couldn't help it; and now she saw that his face -- all of him -- was starting to run like liquid, or like hot wax maybe. Changing into something else. "Maybe you'd rather see someone else."

By the time he finished saying it, the person standing at the head of the cell had become ... the guy, the first guy. The old deputy mayor. God, what was even his name? Alan something? He smiled at her, a little rabbit smile on his little rabbit face, and she could see where his bloody jacket had stuck to the hole she'd staked in his chest.

"Jesus Christ," she whispered, and swiped a hand over her eyes. But it was soaked with blood, and she jerked away.

"The police spent hours scraping my blood off a dumpster," he said, wandering into the room, fidgeting with one of his sleeve cuffs. His tone was helpful, like he was explaining something important to a superior. "Then there was the autopsy; that was a mess. They cut open my chest with a scalpel and put my brain in formaldehyde. As if they didn't know what was wrong with me." He gestured toward the hole with a small, nervous chuckle. "There was a big state funeral... It was really nice, I think. There were so many flowers. Even my sister cried."

"You're not real," she repeated, to her hands. She was still holding the knife, but she tossed it on the floor when she noticed.

He smiled, standing at the foot of her bed. "Oh, I'm real," he said. "I'm what you did. I'll always be real." He waited, but she didn't answer. "I mean... you're a killer. There's really no way out of that."

"Gee, thanks for the tipoff," said the old tough girl's ghost. It was kind of a surprise. She didn't visit much anymore. "And all this time I thought I was in for littering."

He shook his head a little. "All I'm saying is... Look around yourself. What are you doing here?"

As if she hadn't asked herself that question a million times in the last two? three? years. "What I have to," she said, because it was the only answer.

His smile was sheepish, embarrassed to be so contradictory. "Well... why? Do you think it'll help?" She didn't have an answer for that, either. "You are what you are. It's not as if punishing yourself is going to change that."

"I don't have to explain to you," she muttered, and looked down. "You're not even real."

"You know, you keep saying that, and it's really not getting any more convincing."

And she jerked like she'd been shot. Suddenly it wasn't a man's voice anymore. Suddenly it was a voice she'd know anywhere. In a coma, in her dreams, even if she ran to the other side of the planet and lived a hundred years without ever hearing it again.

She looked up and into Buffy's face.

"You've never stopped running, have you." B, standing there with her arms folded over her chest. She'd gotten older, and thinner, and she had a leather jacket on that Faith hadn't seen before. It looked good. "It's always just been easier to pack it up and go. You didn't come here to atone; you came here so you wouldn't have to face up to me and all the other people you screwed over. You're hiding. And sooner or later even the hiding will get too hard, and you'll break down a door and off you'll go again. Never look back."

It was hard to even think. "That's not -- "

"You're weak," B cut her off. "You don't have it in you. You're too big a mess to even be sorry, let alone make up for it." She spread her hands, with the old exasperated look. "I mean, come on, who do you think you are? The Slayer? Sorry, that's me. The one and only, remember?"

"Nobody," she said. There was no breath behind it.

B smiled, unpleasantly... and somehow, that was a little better. It didn't look right at all. "No. You're a killer."

"I won't do it again," she said, with a little more power behind it. B frowned. Her pouty little frown.

"Really? Gosh, that's funny... 'cause it seems like I just saw you do it three times."

"They weren't human."

"Are you sure about that?" Innocently. "It is awfully dark in here."

"Shut up." She swiped at her hair. The blood was crusting on her hands, and they were shaky.

B leaned on the edge of the upper bunk, giving her a look that was almost kind. "Running won't help you, Faith," she said. "You've pretty much tried everything now, haven't you? You even tried to be me, and even that didn't work. Different skin, just as empty inside." She shook her head a little, and brushed hair off her forehead. "You're always going to be what you are. Why are you fighting it?" She leaned in a little closer, elbow propped on the bunk. "Wouldn't you rather be a murderer than nobody at all?"

Faith let that sit for a minute. She knew what the answer was, of course. But she didn't have to tell this thing that.

"I'm not going back," she said, finally. Now her voice even felt calm.

"You will," B said. "You'll have to. You can't get away."

And Faith looked her in the eyes; not very steadily, but she looked. And actually, when she did, it was a relief. How could she have thought this was B? It didn't even look like her.

"I'll deal," she said.

B's face stretched in a weird grin. "You'll die."

"You're not B," Faith said, still pretty calmly, considering. "I'm going to close my eyes, and I'm going to count to five, and when I'm done you're going to be gone." She closed her eyes. There was no sound. "One. Two. Three. Four. Five."

She opened her eyes. B's face was maybe an inch away from hers. This time she did scream, a little.

"Okay," B said brightly, and then she folded in on herself and was gone.

It took a few minutes for her heart to stop trying to explode, and then it occurred to her that her cell door was open and, human or not, there were three dead bodies on her floor.

She stood up, slowly, breathing hard, and pushed her hair back again. What could she even do? The best thing...

She felt around on the floor until she found one of the corpses, picked up its legs, and dragged it out of the cell. It made awful sliding, bumping noises on the tile floor. She left it in the center of the block, then went back for the other two. Then the daggers; she thought about wiping them for prints, but decided it didn't really matter, and just dumped them on top of the heap. Went back to her cell. Closed the bars. Changed her shirt and tried to wash up. Crawled back into bed and fell asleep right away.

In the morning the lights were back, and things were normal. No one said a word about anything strange happening the night before, and the bodies were still in the middle of the floor. It was like nobody could see them. They stepped past or around or even over them, but never seemed to notice. At least they weren't human, then. They stayed there for a few days, until she thought it was about to drive her crazy, and then a cleaning crew did the whole block and they got swept up with the trash and dust. And that was the end of it.

A couple weeks later, Angel came to visit. He had a dead grim look in his eyes and looked tired and haggard, and he was holding his right arm a little funny. They talked about the weather.

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