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Lydia sat on the floor on her blanket. She spent at least five hours a day in this position, meditating. Her cellmate was working in the laundry. But Lydia had been deemed too dangerous to allow her to have a job or responsibilities. Thinking of that always made her smile. How she could be a danger in a prison was beyond her.
“Lydia, there’s someone here to speak with you.”
“Good, maybe my appeal was accepted,” she said, standing in one fluid motion.
“I don’t think that’s it,” the guard said. “You should probably prepare for some bad news.”
“Why?” Lydia turned to face the male guard.
“He’s SCTU,” the guard replied. “It’s never good when the SCTU comes to visit an inmate.”
“I might have information they need,” Lydia said cheerily. “Then I can get a reduced sentence and get the hell out of here.”
“Sure,” the guard said. Lydia stuck her hands through the slot in the bars and he put handcuffs on her. Behind him stood a dark-haired, disheveled man that she had never seen before.
“You need glasses, you’d be really sexy with glasses. You have this whole Harry Potter as a grownup vibe going,” Lydia told the man. The man didn’t reply or even acknowledge her.
“Take her to the visitors’ room and I’ll join her in a bit,” the disheveled man said to the guard. Lydia raised an eyebrow. There was a buzz and the cell door slid open. Lydia was half pulled out of her cell. There was another man behind the dark-haired man. He was shorter, but more put together. Lydia said nothing to either of them at this point, and as soon as she was a few feet away, both men entered her cell. She smiled at this. No doubt they thought she had contraband hidden in there. She did, but they wouldn’t find it.
Lydia smiled all the way to the visitors’ area. This guard was not friendly toward her, though, and she wished it had been one of the other guards who liked her that had escorted her. They would have told her more about what was going on. Inside the visitors’ area, there were two men. They both stood as she was brought into the room. She stared at one of them. He was huge, just absolutely massive. He was tall and muscled like a bodybuilder. No doubt he had a small penis from all the steroids, she thought as she was escorted to them and roughly sat down in the chair opposite them. The other guy was rather normal looking.
“What can I do for you gentlemen?” Lydia asked with a smirk.
“US Marshals Lucas McMichaels and Landow Lands,” the big man said as he sat back down. “Marshals Xavier Reece and Kyle Pendergon are searching your cell as we speak, and I assure you, Marshal Reece has seen Shawshank redemption,” McMichaels said to her with his own smirk. “We’ve also worked out which guards you have the most influence over and because of the sheer volume, we’ll be transferring you at the end of this meeting to a more secure location.”
“What?” she nearly screamed at them. She hated this man. She looked at his ink pen lying on the table. She could kill him with it, of that she was sure.
“Oh yes,” McMichaels said. “We have noticed you are a big fish in a small pond. We also know you have requested a new trial and that has been granted, but it’s been granted under the provisions of the Clachan Act. This means if you are found guilty this time of serial kidnapping charges, you will serve a life sentence for your crimes with no chance of parole. And of course, because you are being tried under the SKMM laws and the Clachan Act, you will be moved to the women’s section of The Fortress to await your retrial. The majority of the world forgets that people who start their own religions with them at the center, as you did, are nearly always psychopaths. The Fortress guards are more suited to your particular personality quirks. None of them will be susceptible to coercion or manipulation, which means no cell phone to tell the remnants of your followers to kill people to avenge yourself on Nadine Daniels and Alex Zeitzev.”
“Fuck those cunts and fuck you too. You can’t do this. I want to call my lawyer!” She shouted. No way were they going to railroad her into a life sentence at The Fortress with a bunch of nutjob serial killers. She hadn’t killed anyone. So a few of her grateful followers had signed over their children to her and some douche canoe inside the church had abused the boys. That wasn’t her fault, nearly one in four children were molested in the US anyway. She wasn’t a cult leader and she didn’t control her followers. Those that killed themselves for her had wanted to do it, just like those that wanted to give her their children had done so of their own free will.
“No need,” Lucas said and waved to the guard. He opened the door and brought in the warden and the lawyer Lydia Rolf had used at her trial. “We anticipated your desire to speak to him.”
“This is bullshit!” Lydia screamed.
“Agreed, which is why we also made arrangements for a Federal Prosecutor to join us here today,” Lucas said. “See, Lydia, this is going to happen regardless of how you feel about it. This lawyer will probably end up disbarred, not that you care. But the marshals have been watching the prison and its inhabitants since you got here. They wanted you tried under the SKMM the first time, but lost out to the state. Now the State of Missouri has agreed to it.”
“We found all three of them,” Xavier said, bouncing into the room. “It was clever. I had expected them to be in different spots and behind the dozens of paintings she had on her cell walls. But they were all together and hidden in a fake part of her cot frame.”
“I ain’t killed no one, you can’t send me to the Fortress.”
“You know, Charles Manson said the same thing and yet he was still sentenced to death. Hell, if we had a dollar for every time we heard someone say they hadn’t killed anyone, we’d all be billionaires. Alas, people forget murder isn’t the only serial crime that can land you a life sentence in The Fortress. Now, what’s going to happen is the Federal Prosecutor is going to come in and she’s going to offer deals to your lawyer and some of the guards in exchange for their testimony. We’re going to take your contraband to some of the best computer people around and have them go through every phone call and text message sent from them, even the deleted ones. Then Marshals Reece, Lands, Brown, and I are going to take you to our transport vehicle in shackles and we are going to personally drive you to The Fortress. At least you get to get outside for a while today,” Lucas said to her in a sickly-sweet sappy voice. “Doesn’t that sound like fun.”
“I’m going to kill you,” Lydia told him.
“Probably not,” Lucas replied. “We have a female marshal waiting to search you and it will be the most thorough search you’ve ever encountered, because even in handcuffs and leg irons, it will be a tight squeeze in the transport vehicle,” Lucas said.
“We should just sedate her for the trip,” Xavier said. “That would be the safest way to transport her.”
“That is still an option,” Lucas said. “But it is a lot easier to suit her up if she’s conscious.” Lydia looked at him. Suit her up in what, she wondered. Where had her day gone so wrong? She needed to get in contact with someone and have them get her out of here. This was a nightmare. She made eye contact with her lawyer or tried to, but he refused to look at her.
“I don’t know why you’d make a deal with him, he’s just as big a criminal as I am,” Lydia said. “I have evidence of it.”
“No, you used to have evidence of it,” Lucas said. “We’ve already confiscated it from your follower. His deal will prevent him from going to The Fortress and will ensure you go in his place, because while you are both dangerous, you are the greater of the two evils. When Ms. Daniels told us she felt it likely you were organizing the Family Annihilator murders from within your prison cell, we immediately began looking into it. It’s amazing how easy it is to figure out what a person who is surrounded by cameras nearly all the time is doing.” Everyone but Lydia stood. “Warden, you may go back to running your own prison.” Xavier grabbed Lydia Rolf under the arms and pulled her from the chair. She was trying to figure out how to get someone to break her out of the transport vehicle and how to wipe the texts off the phones they’d found. However, she couldn’t be held responsible if one of her followers was killing people that pissed her off. She never told them to do it.