in technicolor

Brett knew a little about the prison system; what he hadn’t heard much about was what the prison system did with enhanced people and this lovely presentation from the county office had not only been enlightening, but terrifying.

The presenter smiled in the station’s conference room as he ran through new procedures and best practice for handling enhanced people. For most stations, it was probably just a routine training course, but for their station and for several of the other larger hubs, it felt oddly pointed.

Brett felt more than a little singled out. Maynard too, he was sure, since she worked with him more these days on cases involving vigilantes.

He was a bit queasy.

The guy showed them all a new device which had been tested in the Ice Box, he explained. It was a type of collar thing. It had a digital lock on it and, as the guy demonstrated, it went around the neck of the enhanced person.

“Once it’s in place, you set the lock and voila,” the demonstrator said, waving at the bulky yellow strap in his hand, “It counters the enhancement. Then you can arrest your target as you would any other suspect.”

The strap looked to Brett to be nearly three inches in width. He sucked in a breath at the mental image of that thing strapped in tight around Peter’s pale throat.

No.

Take it away.

“Since vigilante activity is so rife in this sector and a couple neighboring ones, we’ve decided to give you guys, Station 40, and the team at Metro Gen the first official set of collars,” the presenter said, laying his hands on the sides of the box he had on the table next to his laptop. “You guys can use them as needed and we’ll make sure all is well before we roll them out to the other, smaller stations.”

Brett didn’t want to make eye contact with this guy.

“Any questions?”

The Captain tapped his lip with his middle and fore fingers, he’d been doing it through the whole presentation. Sitting with one leg crossed over the other and a slight jut to his bottom lip. He looked over his shoulder at the detectives and officers. Expectant. He wanted someone to ask a damn question.

Brewer took one for the team beside Brett. He raised his hand tentatively and when the demonstrator smiled at him in acknowledgement, said, “Are there really that many enhanced people running around that this is a problem?”

Brett flicked his eyes at the Captain and the Captain held his gaze for a long second or two before turning his gaze back to the presenter.

“Well, I don’t want to say that we expect this to become a normal part of your routine,” the presenter said, still with a damn smile. “But the number of enhanced people, or at least, identifiable enhanced people, has increased over the last decade. Now, obviously, there will be people who may not even be aware of their enhancements, so you might consider this a precautionary measure for anyone who appears to be showing signs of mutant behavior. Any other questions?” the presenter asked.

Maynard slid forward in her seat and put her hand up.

“Are these things painful? Do they cause pain?” she asked.

“Oh, no. They’re not painful in and of themselves, all they do is temporarily block the presentation of mutated bodily functions,” the presenter said. “Essentially, it’s like an off switch. So, let’s say you’ve got Spiderman and you get one of these guys on him, the collar isn’t going to hurt him. It’ll just make the laws of gravity reapply to him.”

Ellen’s hand shot up.

“What if,” she said, “We have someone like the Winter Soldier or Captain America? Would putting this thing on them like, reverse their enhancement?”

Oh.

Now that was a good question.

“Well, I doubt you guys would be arresting Captain America.” Sir, Brett thought, your confidence tells me that you have never in your life met Captain America. “But it wouldn’t reverse the enhancement, as in, undo his size or anything like that, but it would slow down his metabolism and it definitely would reduce his strength to that of a normal human’s.”

“But they’ve been tested?” Brett finally clarified. “And they for sure don’t hurt people?”

The guy smiled at him with confidence in the set of his chin.

“100% safe,” he promised.

Jessica Jones got into a bar fight that week and Brewer went to get her. He followed the new procedure and when Brett came into the Station, Jones was screaming nonstop in the interview room.

His hands went cold around his cup of late-night coffee.

“What’s happening in there?” he asked the nearest officer.

“We don’t know,” The gal told him. “She’s only been here for ten.”

Jones screamed like someone was punching her in the fucking throat over and over.

“Jesus Christ,” he said, dropping the coffee on his desk and moving towards the interview room door with several other officers on his heels.

He slammed open the door and saw that no one else was in there with her. It was just Jones at the usual table, handcuffed in place and practically convulsing.

It was horrific.

Brett knew the second he saw a stripe of yellow peeking out between the loose black hair on her shoulders what the problem was. He crossed the room without remembering doing it and tried to get fingers between the collar and Jones’s neck, but that just made her flinch harder and struggle even more with the handcuffs. They bit into the skin around her wrists and hands hard enough that the skin went red and raw almost immediately.

Fuck.

“Jessica,” he said as calmly as he could, “I’m trying to help you, let me help you. I’m gonna take it off, but I need you to breathe, alright?”

Jessica, to his complete shock, attempted to take several gasping breaths at the order, but Brett realized she couldn’t seem to make her body do what it was supposed to. She could only wheezing noises low in her lungs.

“Make—stop,” she pleaded between them. “Make it stop. Can’t—can’t—”

“BREWER,” Brett roared, “CODE. NOW.”

Brewer was back in the room in an instant, rattling off a code which Brett’s fingers struggled to remember as he swept Jones’s hair off the collar and flicked open the box on the back of it. He inputted the code and the keys lit up green and then the collar’s latch unclicked and it fell loose around Jessica’s bony shoulders.

She coughed and gasped like someone had just stopped strangling her, and then she slowly laid herself out on the interview table and just breathed shakily. The tips of her fingers were nearly white. She shivered hard.

Didn’t say a damn word.

Brett touched her shoulder.

Still didn’t say a damn word. Didn’t shove him off. Just laid there with glazed over eyes, breathing.

Jessica Jones refused to be touched by anyone, for anything. Her acceptance of the pressure Brett put on her shoulder was proof enough that something was horribly wrong. He looked at Brewer.

“Get a fucking doctor, now.”

Jessica fell asleep in the chair before the medical team got into the room. They stood over her and whispered frantically and then before anyone knew it, there was an ambulance being called and Jones was gently being shaken awake.

She woke up suddenly and went a little berserk.

Brett watched an entire medical team hold this tiny woman down as she screamed and then watched as a group of paramedics squirmed in to give her a shot of something that made her calm down enough to be transferred into the ambulance.

And then Jessica Jones was gone and all that was left of the whole interaction was the blood smeared across the table and its handcuffs and the yellow collar.

They got word later that morning that Jones was in medical distress from some kind of brutal incident; her body was wrecked and in the process of healing itself, so when the collar had turned off her mutation, she’d been slammed with the full brunt of a set of broken ribs and blunt force trauma to her back. When the mutation stabilized again, she signed herself out of the hospital and got the fuck out of dodge.

She refused to open her apartment door to the police, even for an apology—formal or informal.

She screamed through the door that she heard nothing they said unless it came in the form of a warrant or through her attorney. If they didn’t fucking leave her alone, she shouted, she would sue for police brutality and harassment.

Brett didn’t blame her. Not one bit.

Turning that mutation off must have felt like being right back in the car crash that had nearly taken her life as a teenager. You don’t come back easy from that. Most people don’t come back at all.

The Captain had everyone put the collars back in their box and to leave them there while he wrote up a memo outlining their concerns with their implementation. But it was too late. The word was out.

Brett couldn’t find a single person he’d spoken to before. Not Jones, not Spidey, not even Matt. No one was talking. Everyone was petrified. Maynard sighed after they returned from yet another unsuccessful hunt for some information from Peter.

“Can you blame them?” she asked as she fell heavily into her desk chair. “I mean, if one of my friends got fuckin’ super-tazed by the police, then yeah, I wouldn’t be so hot on talking either.”

Brett reported the lack of information to the Captain and watched him place his hands on his hips in thought. He closed his eyes and appeared to bite some metaphysical bullet.

“Mahoney, come into my office.”

Ah, shit.

“I know you know their identities, Brett,” the Captain said.

Brett said nothing. He didn’t know where his loyalties lay anymore.

“And I get that you have to for them to trust you. I’m not looking to break that trust—lord knows that’s already been done for us. We need to get back into the black with these folks, Mahoney. We already got an uptick in unsolved cases and we were doing so damn well.” The Captain let out a big breath. “I’m giving you freedom. Clearance. Whatever you need. Talk to them. Reestablish trust. The last thing we need right now is for the vigilantes to go back to working against us.”

Yes, sir. He’d do his best, sir.

Foggy refused to speak to him. It was probably the biggest sign of any that the whole community knew what happened.

Brett had to find Karen. He spotted her at her usual coffee joint and felt bad as he waited outside to surprise her. It worked. She saw him and stopped dead in her tracks. Her blue eyes were ice.

“Don’t you talk to me,” she threatened with a shake in her voice that promised pain.

“I’m not here as a detective, Karen,” he said.

“No. We’re done. You guys had your chance,” she spat.

“Karen,” Brett started.

“I said no, Mahoney,” she snarled. “I said no. My friends—my everyone—they’re all having nightmares.”

“Karen—”

“Get out of my face. I don’t deal with pigs.”

He watched her stomp down the sidewalk, occasionally throwing fierce looks over her shoulder to see if he’d followed her. He didn’t.

There was something more going on here.

May Parker found him at the bullpen and stood outside it, staring at him until he noticed her. She ignored the officer trying to talk to her, trying to ask her what she was doing there, and kept her gaze locked on Brett.

“We trusted you,” she said in the alley behind the station.

“Mrs. Parker,” he said.

“No, you let me have my piece. We trusted you—all of you. This station. You know my face, you know my nephew’s face and we have had no choice but to trust you. But that was when I didn’t have to worry that someone was going to torture my fucking child, detective.”

“Mrs. Parker,” he said as calmly as he could, “We were not aware of the damage—”

“Did you ask? Did anyone ask? Because Peter did, and you know who he had to ask, Brett? He had to ask Wade because Wade nearly died once and for all from wearing one of those damn things in the fucking Ice Box, detective. He’s got stage four cancer, Brett. And this justice system put one of those things on him and left him to rot and you know what? I don’t know what would happen if someone put a collar on Peter. I don’t to know, but I can tell you right now that Pete has had broken bones and been hit and been shot by your people and I can tell you for damn sure that he’s got more scar tissue in him than a soldier right now. If the mutation goes away, he could have serious mobility issues.”

Jesus.

Jesus, Peter, what were you doing, kid?

“May,” he said, “We aren’t advocating for these collars. We’ve put them away, no one wants to touch ‘em. No one has touched them since we saw what happened to Jessica.”

“No,” May snapped through her tears, “Maybe you’ve stopped. But the station by our house hasn’t. And Metro Gen hasn’t.”

For fuck’s sake.

“There’s a girl on my floor who didn’t even know she was enhanced until she got arrested for being drunk and disorderly,” May said, swallowing the tears in her throat and bringing it back out as fury. “She’s twenty years old and she screamed for two hours in ICU last night before we figured out what was wrong with her. Soon as the collar came off, her body took care of it. She’d escaped from a human trafficking ring, Brett. They did that to her and every day now, she’s going to be reminded of it. People don’t ask for these things to happen to them.”

He didn’t know what to say to it all. It just felt—not helpless, but more like no one knew anything about the experience. Like there wasn’t enough information floating around. Like there wasn’t anything that they could point to and say, here—this is proof that this is fucked up, it’s not just my personal experience. There are others. This is a phenomenon.

“May, I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know how to help right now. I’m sorry Peter is scared, really. I am. But I—I don’t have control of the system. I can’t make them stop, we can—”

“This is the point,” May said, cutting him off. “This is the exact point. This is why Spiderman exists, don’t you see that?”

Well. Yeah, he did now.

“May, I don’t know what else to tell you,” he sighed. “I can talk to—”

“I want you to do whatever needs to be done to show people that this is unacceptable,” May said. “Talk to Wade and others who’ve worn those things. Try it yourself. Try it as a group. I don’t know, just—this is barbaric. All it’s doing is make our people and ourselves feel like there’s no point in working with the police. The stakes are too high. They’ll just work harder to take care of things themselves and someone’s going to get hurt. Someone will die because of this. And god help me, we don’t have luck to spare in our family, detective. I’ve already lost my husband. Peter’s already lost his parents.”

Okay.

Okay.

He didn’t know what to do, still, but he could promise that he’d try.

“Thank you.”

Save the thank yous for when something actually happened.

BM: foggy

BM: foggy please man, answer your phone

BM: may parker found me today and we talked and I get it, man. I do.

BM: I’m trying to help, but I don’t know how. I can’t just arrest people this time. could really use a second brain rn

FN: stop texting me

BM: fogs

FN: brett my partner had a collapsed lung ten minutes ago stop fucking texting me

BM: oh my god is he okay

FN: no he’s not fucking okay and he refuses to go to a hospital because he’s got it in his head that someone’s going to recognize what’s going on with him in a fucking exam or in his goddamn labs and collar him

FN: things have seldom been worse actually

FN: getting this guy to admit that he needs to be admitted to an ER is a fucking once in the lifetime opportunity and the one time he actually wants to go, he can’t.

BM: foggy no one is going to test him, take him to the ER.

FN: Matt can’t filter his input when he’s on drugs and he’s got more trauma to his body than a fucking punching bag on top of the lung, brett. They will test him. And we don’t know where his mutation would make itself known. Literally nothing is safe. He’s so tired, man. I can’t leave him alone, he’s scared he’ll stop breathing.

BM: foggy take him to the ER please

FN: I can’t. I wish I could, I wish so badly that I could, but if they find out and turn off his senses, the shock will kill him. He hasn’t known any other reality for twenty fucking years. If he has a panic attack on top of the lung, he won’t make it.

BM: take him to Stark then. The Avengers. There’s got to be someone who can help.

FN: I’ve called Sam Wilson. He’s on his way. There’s no one else I can think of right now.

BM: are you alone? Do you need someone to be there?

FN: no. KP is here and our friend Claire. We’ll be fine, we have to be. But just

FN: iim sorry man but I can’t talk to any cops right now I just can’t. I know you’re not like those other guys but I just can’t

BM: no I get it. I’m sorry fogs let me know if you guys need anything. Tell Matt that he’s going to be okay.

“Any progress?” the Captain asked him the next day when his hands were shaking from the stress and caffeine.

“No, sir.”

“And progress perhaps on the horizon?”

“No. Spidey is staying out of sight and mind. DD is avoiding medical attention to avoid the risk of the collar in the ER.”

“Jesus. Is he--?”

“No word. His people are refusing to talk to me.”

The captain rubbed a hand over his face.

“This is madness,” he said.

No, sir. Brett thought, things have just been brought into clearer focus.

That night, the news reported that a child had been refused entry into a school after being found to be enhanced after a hospitalization the day prior. The school argued that they had the right to suspend a student if they posed a threat to the others attending the facility.

The boy was six years old.

Brett watched the program in a bar over the tender’s head and thought, swirling his beer bottle, that Matt had made the right call for once.

SW: hi detective, this is sam Wilson. things are getting a little out of hand. can we talk?

BM: there is nothing I would like more than that

Matt looked like four different types of shit curled up on Captain America’s couch in Brooklyn. He was paler than Brett had ever seen him. Looked to be entering vampire territory on more than one count.  Foggy glared at Brett with as much of his face as he could while Cap ducked past to adjust the blanket Matt was sleeping under when he thought no one was looking.

Sam persuaded Foggy that this was entirely a personal visit and that no one was saying jack to any cops. He then distracted him by calling JB down and sending the two of them out to go pick up lunch from this tiny hole in the wall a few blocks over. He gave JB a complicated order to follow and the guy appeared to let it all wash over him before nodding and heading out. Cap made to follow him, but Sam called him back and set him on Murdock sentry duty. He curled up behind Matt on the couch like a giant golden retriever and settled in to share his heat.

Matt didn’t wake up.

“He’s not the first,” Sam said, leaning a chin on his palm with his eyes in Matt’s direction. “He’s lucky though, his nurse friend is a-mazing. We coulda used a set of those kind of nerves on my unit.”

Steve watched the two of them from over the side of Matt’s head. Then he decided that the current amount of exposed skin on Matt’s face would not do and tugged the blanket up higher to cover the guy’s cheek.

“Our station’s ceased use of the things,” Brett sighed. “But the Queens guys say that they’re necessary and now the guys up north want to know why they don’t got ‘em.”

Sam hummed and watched Cap watch him.

“What do you think, big guy?” he asked. Steve squinted at him suspiciously.

“I think there ought to be a protest,” he said with a controlled tone, mindful of the guy he was laying next to.

“Say more, baby,” Sam said and Brett started to get the feeling that he’d orchestrated this meeting less for his benefit and more for Sam and Steve’s.

“Not much more to say. Need to convince people that these things are cruel and unusual punishment. Causing more harm than good. Hurting babies, hurting people. Hurting people indirectly, too.”

Sam hummed.

“So we should protest,” he said. “Like, hold a demonstration. Something to make some waves.”

“Yes,” Steve said with far more hesitancy than Brett thought the situation warranted. “We should protest.”

“How do you think we could it?” Sam pressed.

“Why’re you asking me? I barely got a highschool diploma,” Steve demanded.

“Babe.”

“I ain’t leading no protest.”

“Shall we count ‘em?”

“I’m not that kind of activist.”

“Let’s see, refusing orders to storm into Italy, that’s one.”

“And I ain’t wearing no damn collar, I can tell you that right now.”

“Systematically destroying SHIELD from the inside out, that’s two.”

“I ain’t doing it.”

“The Sokovian Accords. The Women’s March. The climate change march. That rally you and Buck got arrested at when you were kids. That other rally just you got arrested at when you were kids. The immigration demonstration last year. Where does that get us to? Like eight? I’m sure you got more in there than that.”

Steve practically flattened himself into what little bit of the couch cushions he’d allowed himself to lay on.

“I don’t wanna,” he said.

Sam crossed his arms patiently.

“Steve, if you wear a collar, people will lose their goddamn minds. They only think it’s fine right now because it’s happening to people they don’t know.”

“I will get polio.”

“You won’t get polio. We’ve got herd immunity with polio right now.”

“No, you don’t understand, Sam, I will get polio,” Steve insisted, “As soon as any of this,” he gestured to his body, “Turns off, me and polio or the fuckin’ TB are gonna be best pals. Ten minutes, I’d give it.”

“Steven. You are not going to get TB.”

“I got a compromised immune system under all this, Sammy. I am the reason herd immunity is important. I’m definitely gonna get pneumonia—I hate pneumonia. You know how many times I’ve had pneumonia?”

Sam said nothing with pursed lips for a long thirty seconds. Steve pursed his lips right back and set his jaw. Then he cracked in like, record timing.

“Why can’t Tony do it?” he asked in a whine. “Why’s it always gotta be me?”

“Is Tony enhanced?”

“This is how I’m gonna die, Sam. Ask Buck. When he comes back you ask him and he’ll tell you.”

Sam said nothing. Steve grimaced at him. Sam still said nothing.

“Sam,” Steve whined.

“What would Captain America do?” Sam said, sitting back and crossing his arms.

“Write a strongly worded letter?”

“Steven.”

“Samuel.”

“Steve, the guy you’re laying next was half an hour from a wooden box last night. What if that was Pete, huh? Wanda? JB?”

Steve groaned like a guy who’d already made up his mind but needed to at least put some effort into pretending to hold his ground.

“I hate you,” he said.

“Thank you, Cap,” Sam said tightly.

“Fuck you, Cap,” Steve said right back.

Foggy came back to Steve laid out on the floor while Brett and Sam discussed the logistics of the demonstration about to be held at the Station. He stopped in the doorway, confused, and Barnes peeked over his shoulder with interest.

“Stevie, why you on the floor?” he asked.

“’Cause of polio,” Steve moaned.