They came at nine in the morning. Gabriela Rodriguez had hoped they wouldn’t, but she wasn’t surprised. She had planted the bomb, after all. That had been her. And oh, she had been careful, honest to god, she had. She’d worn gloves and brought only a burner phone. If she’d been more serious about getting away, maybe, she would’ve left the country or at least the state. She could go back to Texas, maybe. She’d always loved Austin. But so did she love Oregon. She loved the Communist book group she led on Tuesdays. She loved the farmer’s market, her neighbors, her comrades. And she loved her home.

So, she didn’t try to run. Gabriela Rodriguez, age 22 and doomed, went about her morning as usual. She brewed herself a mug of chamomile tea, sat on her woven mat, and drank. She looked at the art which filled most of her walls, the plants which filled in the gaps. She went through her stretches. She was bent over, stretching her hamstrings, when the wall caved in.

Battering ram? Maybe. It all happened so quickly, and before she could do much at all, she was on the ground, arms behind her back, and saying over and over— in a voice steadier than she felt— “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot, I’m cooperating.”

Gabriela was not a small woman. She was 5 '10, 185 pounds of muscle and tits, but there were five— no, six— men, none of them small, all with very large guns in her studio apartment. Fucking fascists, she thought. It felt good to think it. Good and right to know that maybe these pigs had her on her stomach, but they were just dirty pigs and she was righteous. 

They sounded like pigs, too. Squealing and snorting like mud-covered hogs. “Stay down!” “Don’t move!” “You have the right to remain—” “Don’t even try—” Their words overlapped like barnyard noise. They pulled her to her feet, and Gabriela let them. She let them march her out, down the stairs, and to the street. They passed sweet, old Mrs. Chen, her neighbor, and Gabriela watched as poor Mrs. Chen’s eyes grew wide and face grew pinched at the sight of Gabi, who helped her carry boxes and brought her fresh tamales, handcuffed and stone-faced. 

So she marched to the unmarked white car Pig #1, balding and chubby, shoved her in. Head up, she reminded herself. Eyes straight. They can’t take what you don’t give them. She catalogued the other piglets with a flat expression. For a moment, she let herself think of her comrades. Had one of them turned her in? She suspected she’d never know. She had talked of her plans at meetings, always in vague, half-joking terms. That Luigi Mangione, huh? Hot. Wish he’d shoot another one. Unabomber? Politically incomprehensible, but, like, aura. Her remarks were hardly controversial in her group. They elicited laughs and nods without fail. But Gabriela had always been willing to follow through in a way her comrades, bless their souls, simply weren’t. It wasn’t that they were cowards, but who would throw away their life at twenty-fucking-two years old just to blow some rich guy’s house? Who’d be that fucking crazy? Gabi, that’s who. 

They arrived at Marion County Jail not fifteen minutes later. A safe place to keep uppity bomber bitches until trial, where they could stick those same uppity bomber bitches in supermax and wipe their hands of them. 

At the same time as Gabriela Rodriguez, 22 years old and doomed, held her head high as pigs in uniform marched her through beige halls, a very different sort of criminal sat in Interrogation Room 302.

Akira Drake had ants crawling under his skin.

He felt like it, anyway, and to Akira, feeling and being were nearly the same thing. Yes, there were ants crawling under his skin. Fire ants— which felt appropriate— and any moment now they would break out, come out of his skin like from pale, cracked earth, skitter up his chest and in his eyes until he was just ants and burning.

He wanted to see the man across from him burn. This stupid detective, with his square jaw and his wedding ring, who thought he was smarter than Akira, handsomer than Akira, more normal than Akira was. Well, he maybe had a point with that last one. He wanted to see him burn, so he told him as much. “You’d look better if you were on fire.”

A pause. The detective already knew Akira Drake was off his rocker, everyone did, but this was blunt even for him. “Excuse me?”

“You know, on fire. Burning alive and shit. It smells like pork, the flesh I mean, when you really get going.” Akira laughed short and mean, leaned forward. “You wanna be bacon, detective?”

“...Okay, fire, right. Let’s focus on the night of the fire. Were you, uh, thinking ahead? What were you doing earlier that night?”

This was well-tread territory for Akira. They just kept asking it. Akira hadn’t bothered to claim innocence. They’d found him jacking off outside the still-burning building. It was an abandoned house, shitty and dilapidated and wooden (mistake), but there were squatters there. Akira confessed basically right away, but what bothered him was that they kept wanting to know more. Accomplices? Motivation? Had he done it before? Had he? Had he? How was his childhood? God. You’d think a detective would take a confession and be grateful for it. Maybe leave him the fuck alone for once. 

“I dunno, okay? Don’t fucking… remember. Who even keeps track of shit like that? ‘Yes, detective, I had hamburger helper and pop rocks and dined for approximately 48 minutes.’ I mean, come the fuck on.”

The rest of the questioning continued in the same pattern. Akira tuned it out after a while. He let his mouth answer for him while his brain was somewhere else. He gave answers the detective would want to hear. Crazy answers for a crazy boy. Hey, an insanity plea was still on the table. 

When their time was up, the guards came to get him. Ugly and uglier. One pulled him up by his shirt and set him on his feet, the other grabbed him by the hair like a dog and shook his head back and forth. The guard’s fingers were thick and red, like sausages. He had Akira by the roots of his scalp. “Were you good, Drake? Huh? Were you good? Did you play nice with the detective?”

The detective sighed and pushed in his chair. He looked at Akira with something that might have been sympathy, or just professional disapproval, but said nothing. For his part, Akira was busy trying to keep his eyes uncrossed. His brain felt like it was pinging from one side of his skull to the other. 

They kept a grip on his hair as they marched him down the hallway. Akira could feel Ugly’s hot, sour breath on his neck. “Keep walking, pretty boy,” the guard said in a flat, bored tone. “Don’t slow down on us, now.”

“Aw, you think I’m pretty?” Akira said out of habit. His mouth was moving while his brain was somewhere else again. And yeah, he had slowed down because he’d just spotted maybe the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his life. She was big, that was the first thing. Not fat, definitely not fat, but tall and strong-looking with a frankly impressive set of tits. She probably had abs. She seemed like she would. She was very tan with a mane of brown curls that fell to mid-back. Her face was regal. She had a strong jaw, full lips, and eyes like chlorophyll. She was leaning against the wall of her holding cell, eyes glazed as she looked at her hands. 

“Hey! Lady! Yeah— yeah, you, the tall one. What’re you here for, huh? What’d you do?” Akira was speaking quickly, now, trying to get it all out before the guards stopped him, “We should meet up! Fuck, I’d let you do anything to me, you know that? You’re strong, right? You look strong! I bet you could pin me down and I couldn’t do anything about it. Like, maybe I’d try to push you off, but you wouldn’t let me, would you? I’d love to see that puss—” 

Uglier cuffed the back of his head. “Jesus. Little psycho.” The girl was looking at him now. Her eyes were scrunched up in what was almost certainly disgust, but what Akira preferred to pretend was arousal. Yeah, he’d remember her.