Sergeant Elleanora Martinez, AFPD
Then

About eighteen months ago, Kramer moved from Third Precinct back to Ninth.  I had been working in dispatch and riding a desk, but my boss got me transferred to a beat after the second time I failed to get a promotion. My boss wanted to have me promoted, but politics up the chain from him had kept me from making the jump.  In a lot of careers, failure to advance for as long as I had might have been cause for dismissal, but police work in Angel Falls has never been heavily burdened with applicants, so I was allowed to keep my job.

When Kramer got in, he had just come off a big bust; he was making waves and he had powerful friends and no compunctions about using his connections to get whatever he wanted.  I can’t swear to it, of course, but I would be unsurprised to learn that he had deliberately used his pull to get himself assigned to my precinct- it was exactly the sort of dick move that he’d do.

The Hell of it, for me, was that Kramer was actually good at his job.  He was actually pretty smart- when he wasn’t crazy because of drugs or withdrawals- and, generally, seemed fairly personable.  I was certain nobody would believe me if I told them he hit me; certainly, no one would be willing to believe it might be a pattern of behavior for him.

I’m ashamed to admit it, but I hid.  I spent as little time as I could in the station proper and I avoided anywhere that Kramer might be able to come into and corner me.  Almost no one noticed that my behavior had changed; Angie, over in reception, noticed that I’d been logging a lot more hours on the street than before, but given how crime tends to proceed in waves in the city, she didn’t think much of it.

My partner, Harry, did notice, and he asked me about it.  I’d gotten to know Harry pretty well over the last few weeks; he was a good guy and I liked him.  He and his wife were a few years older than me, and his oldest kid played football at Roosevelt High School.  I’d been to a game and had a blast cheering until my throat was raw.  His wife invited me back to their place after the game and we sat around eating hot dogs and drinking beer until she shooed her kids off to bed.  With just us on the patio, Harry asked me why I was avoiding the station.

“Not that I mind, you understand,” he added, a sly twinkle in his eye, “I mean, I’m happy to shuffle papers while you catch bullets… it just seems a little out of character for you, is all.”

I grimaced.  “You meet the new guy in Vice?” I hedged.

“Kramer?”  Harry’s tone was guarded, wary.  “We’ve met.”

I twitched a smile at his reaction.  Most people just plain liked Kramer, so it was a relief to know that my partner had some reservations.  “We have a bit of a history,” I said, and I explained.

After I’d finished, Harry frowned.  “I always knew the son-of-a-bitch was a snake,” he commented, “but I didn’t know he’d sunk that low.”

“I don’t know that he has,” I admitted, “but it sure feels like it.”

Harry snorted.  “I called him a snake and I meant it,” he said.  “You’re too good to be working a beat after ten years on the force, but he’s got enough favors and slick friends that he can keep you in the slow lane until you die of old age.  You want me to talk to the captain?”

I shook my head.  “No, don’t do that, Harry,” I decided, “Kramer’s vindictive and I wouldn’t want any of his crap to splash onto you.”

“That’s just like you, Ellie,” Harry relied, “always worrying about somebody else.  Let me worry about me.”

I don’t know if Harry actually went through with it and talked to the captain and, if he did, I have no idea what sort of leverage he used, but it really did seem like Kramer’s star, which had been ascendant, suddenly stopped dead.

*****

Now

Rufus Hodges had only been on duty since about noon, so he was a bit more alert than his partner, Carmen Fitzgerald.  They were both up in the tower as Unit Seven was released into the prison’s main yard.

Rufus nudged Carmen and nodded down at the field.  “You see that?” he asked, frowning.

A knot of men were starting to gather near the gate.  Crowds were generally discouraged in prison- they couldn’t be entirely prevented, but having bunches of prisoners in close proximity was how inmates got shanked, and that was a headache nobody needed.  Carmen nodded and picked up the bullhorn.

“OVER BY THE WALL,” he ordered, the bullhorn amplifying his voice so that there was no question of being heard, “BREAK IT UP OR I’M SENDING YOU BACK.”

One of the men on the outskirts of the group turned towards the tower- it was a tall, skinny Hispanic named Cesar.  “You mean us, CO?” he yelled back, taking a step away from the group.

There was a brief flurry of movement, then a bright flare of light as another man held up a hand and a lance of white fire shot across the yard to spear the megaphone, causing the metal and plastic to liquefy and boil in an instant.  The explosion of superheated plastic and metal hit Carmen full in the face, and he dropped, screaming through a face that had become a freakshow of melted tissue and bone.

Rufus dove back, narrowly avoiding being sprayed himself, and scrambled to get behind cover in the tower proper.  There were rifles in the tower, and a phone that would let him raise the alarm.  He grabbed the phone and yanked it off the desk, sitting with his back to the wall as he dialed.

“This is control,” a bored voice answered, “go ahead tower.”

“Lockdown!” Rufus yelled, “O.P…. shit, I dunno- there’s a meta on the yard, dammit!  We need containment and medical!”

*****

Now

The common public view of South River is that it houses no metahuman inmates; this is, of course, not true.  The vast majority of prisoners within South River are actually traditional medium and maximum security felons; gangbangers, muggers, rapists, robbers, druggies, and so on, but the facilities are occasionally used for low-risk metahumans.  This situation is very rare, though- the vast majority of metahumans- at least those with quantifiable metahuman abilities- are housed at Tarterus, where the guards and defenses are specifically designed to cater to them.

This doesn’t mean that there are no protocols in place for the occasions when metahuman inmates do cause trouble- there are- but most of those measures are really only effective as stopgap measures against relatively weak metahumans.  More powerful metahumans are transferred to Tarterus as quickly as possible, and held- with the aid of neuralgic power dampeners- in the super-max section of the prison.  Within the less secure sections of the prison, more traditional methods of control are exercised- strict regulation, guards, restricted access, and armed sentries patrolling inaccessible towers and catwalks.

When a metahuman gets free, somehow, and gets into the relatively lightly restricted section of South River, the procedure calls for an immediate lockdown of the entire prison; no one is allowed to leave without an escort and all civilian personnel are expected to make directly for their designated safe zones.  Critical emergency response teams- CERT- are deployed, all corrections officers are tasked with counting prisoners and maintaining control, and an emergency warning is broadcast to Lonely Point Naval Base and the local National Guard unit.  On a purely physical level, all the monitored doors are immediately closed and locked, while all the internal fences are powered up; there was some concern, at one point, that if a prisoner manifested electrical powers, he might be able to ride the current in the fences and use it to escape, so several powerful generators were built into the prison itself.  The generator output is considerable, but still under guard and, further, completely off the civilian electric grid.

Art Sewell had transferred into South River less than a month ago; this was his first full-scale lockdown- he’d yet to even have a practice on his shift- and he screwed up.  He hit the button to activate lockdown procedures, electrifying the fences and starting the automated alerts and announcements over the public address system, but he forgot to close the security doors.  Individual system operators quickly realized that central had not taken control and began sealing sections of the prison manually, but not before several groups of prisoners took advantage of the slip-up and rushed the open doors

The CERT team started scrambling, heading for the prison armory, but a number of inmates that had been in visitation had cobbled together a spontaneous gang, and these men blocked access and started aggressively attacking anyone who appeared to be attempting to restore order.  Without much warning, the CERT team found itself in a pitched battle and being forced back by the angry prisoners.

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I had originally planned to place this chapter in Tartarus, but a variety of issues made that implausible.  Casting about for an alternative, I found South River State Penitentiary, which was named but neither owned nor described, which made it a pretty much ideal location for my brand of shenanigans.  Also, if you're a fan of Ellie or, for some strange reason, Kramer, this chapter will fill in a lot of important details about the shape of their current relationship...

This picture- and all the artwork for Shooting stars- is brought to you by the amazingly talented and lovely .

Shooting Stars is an epic tale (okay, maybe that's pushing it, but I've always wanted to call something I wrote an epic) taking place in  and will feature characters by , , and an appearance of Esau by .

Sgt. Ellie Martinez and Network belong to .

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