When Jab entered the Peacekeeper jail, she saw a tall delivery boy standing next to Sleepy who was devouring something from a lunch box on his desk. When he saw her, he smiled. "Thanks for the meal. You got some credits? I promised the lad here a tip." He did a double take. "Where's the prisoner?"

Jab dreaded what would come next. "I..."

"I'm right here." Cat said as she removed the cap that hid her long hair. Cat had put on a set of loose coveralls and a cap from an Armenian restaurant. Both her jailers looked at her flabbergasted.

"Good merciful God!" Jab exclaimed, almost jumping out of her skin.

"Don't worry miss Catherine, Jab startles easily. Happens to her all the time." Said Sleepy laughing.

"Jab and I thought you might be hungry Charlie." Cat said, smiling sweetly.

"God dammit! Do you know how many people want to hurt you?" Jab cried, exasperated.

"A lot?" Said Cat with an innocent look. "C'mon Jab. If they can't recognize me, they can't hurt me. Right?"

"You willing to bet your life on it?" Jab's facial expression changed from angry to horrified. "Oh God... you would. Listen Cat, I know it's not easy on you. Hell, this mess is a nightmare to each and every one of us. You'll have to face the consequences of your acts. As we all have to." She grabbed Cat by the sleeves and guided her roughly to her cell. "You're not fucking quitting on us little miss goody two shoes."

"Is that what they call me behind my back?" Cat asked amused.

"Before. Yeah. Now they call you a murdering bitch." Jab said, grinding the words out. She'd been thinking of her late husband Ahmed. Her temper had flared unexpectedly.

Cat started like she'd been slapped in the face by Jab's harsh words. She meekly went inside her cell without a word. Tears poured out uncontrollably. Her vision blurred and she felt physically sick. The door closed in her back. She stumbled inside and sat on the floor. She took her head in her trembling hands and started to cry inconsolably.

Charles uncomfortable, looked at Jab a question mark written all over his brutal but strangely gentle face. "Did you have to be that hard with her?"

"Oh hell yes. This is nothing compared to what she'll do to herself now that she's regained her frigging sanity." She looked at Cat. "You now see the scope of your crimes don't you?"

Cat turned her tear stricken face in her direction. A look of pure despair clearly displayed on her beautiful features. She hid her face back in her hands and resumed her lamentations.

Jab turned to Sleepy. "I want a suicide watch on her twenty-four seven. You hear me Sleepy?"

"Yes ma'am. Don't worry."

"Good."

Jab left him and as the iris closed he said, "bitch". He turned towards his prisoner and asked her. "You okay kid?"

"I really don't know. I just want to sleep."

"That's good, I'll arrange for Yeshua to visit you tomorrow morning after your breakfast. I'll get a cold pack for that nose."

"Thank you Charles." She got up and went to her cot. He opacified her wall and shut off her lights.

That kid might be a monster but she was still so very young and she'd been indoctrinated from birth like they had been for Christ's sake, the old Barca clone thought to himself. After he gave her the cold pack, he went back to his post and started the paperwork for Cat's transfer to a regular cell. She had a long arduous road ahead of her. Her trial wouldn't be a picnic either. Poor kid, he thought.

The Santa Maria arrived and so did her most illustrious passenger. The queen. Along with her came her legal staff and government. Catherine's trial was organized in record time. So many witnesses. So much evidence proving all the monstrous deeds she had accomplished during the attempted Martian takeover. The more it went on the more depressed Catherine got. She was indeed comprehending the scope of her crimes against humanity.

She had been so sure her cause had been just. She had been so sure the indoctrination she had received was God's will. What her father, mother, even her grandfather told her had been the truth. They would have liberated humanity from all those ineffectual committees taking late and often useless decisions. Humanity would have been governed by a strong leadership. A Martian way of life. She had grown up thinking that their cause was just. Now, seeing the results of their actions, she was aghast at how wrong she'd been. The consequences, the suffering, the broken families, the orphans and all the deaths she had caused directly or indirectly. Good God. What blinding insanity had seized them all on the belt?

Now that her trial was in full swing, she realized that she was really and truly screwed.

Back then when she was little and full of her grandfather's ideas; she'd been so sure that all of them living in exile in the belt were in the right. Now, she was faced with a harsh return to reality. She was on the losing side, so everything she'd done since she'd been born was officially wrong. Not only wrong, but criminally and unforgivably wrong. She'd killed people. People dear to those accusing her here. They wanted her head and the judge would serve it on a platter to them gladly. They had done it to Jab and she'd been Murakami's own daughter. She, on the other hand, was the daughter of a man who tried to conquer them, the granddaughter of Gal Tyran. The mastermind behind the Martian's latest try at ruling what was left of humanity. What chance did she stand against such determined hatred? None, she was a bug about to get squashed with a sledgehammer. They would do it just to make an example of her.

Jab and Yeshua tried to plea for her that she'd been trained since her infancy into her grandfather's doctrines. That she never really had a choice. Jab even repeated Cat's mom's last words to her before she died. 'Do what you were bred for!' That had been particularly hurtful to Cat.

They later named the three persons Catherine was accused of killing. She saw Jab's face crumple at the reading of the last name. Jabrina looked on the verge of exploding but reigned herself in at the last moment. She stormed out of the room.

After all the proceedings, nothing would sway the people from the jury. The prosecution had laid too good a case for them to ignore. They proved without a doubt her direct participation in three premeditated murders.

The judge finished with the following end statement: "Miss Tyran, even if we release you in twenty, thirty or five hundred years. The fact is you'll still be hated. You represent all that went wrong with humanity until now. You're the last of a long line of Tyrans. That most hated family who betrayed Earth starting with Culwin Tyran as early as 2153. That's 136 years of treachery your family had inflicted on Earth and you will be the end of it. Literally. We're going to make sure of it with the sentences that will be given to you in this fair trial by your peers." The man took a piece of plastipaper and read the contents. "Miss Tyran please stand up to hear your sentence."

Cat obeyed.

The judge continued. "Catherine Cornelia Tyran, for the murder of Annie Asami Kimura, the clone Isaac Wallace and Harry Alejandro Serrano, you are hereby sentenced to three consecutive life sentences of twenty years each without a chance of parole."

She got her sentences. Three of them.

The judge even made a joke that he was being merciful by not giving her a chance to get released early. He said that people might not welcome Catherine with open arms. Even in sixty years.

Catherine didn't hear the judge's jeers. Sixty years! She'd be like 81 years old when they would finally let her out of jail. Everything else than the concept of her most likely living the rest of her natural life in a cell faded away. Then, feeling faint, everything went black and she slumped in the accused box, passing out from the sheer shock of her realization.

Her life was over.

She dreamt of Harry Serrano asking her what would become of Esperanza. She was in one of the outdoors cells she had designed and jailed so many others. This time, she was the one on the floor trying to hide from the bitter cold and Harry Serrano was in her old armor complete with a skull helmet. He was banging on the bars of her cell repeating his question over and over. Whenever she tried to answer him, he would hit the duranium bars harder, driving her half-mad with the resulting cacophony.

She woke up screaming, drenched in sweat. She'd fallen on the floor and it took a few minutes for her to realize where she was. She'd been assigned a new larger and less secure cell. Less secure only in the cell's structure being not as reinforced as her old cell had been. No more super-strength. As a result, she was in a regular, more spacious cell. Not the Mars Imperial Hotel but more comfortable none the less.

Charles Park's voice made her jump. "Everything okay in there?" He had taken Amy's family name. Cat wished she could do the same. Tyran. That name would leave her stigmatized for the rest of her life.

"I'm fine Charlie. It's just another one of my nightmares. Sorry." She said in a shaky voice.

"I'll see if I can get you some coffee. Stay there. Don't move."

"Ha ha. Very funny mister." She smiled in spite of herself. Charlie had a way about him that would make Cat laugh every time. A kind of innocent Joie-de-vivre.

She went to her sink and splashed some water on her face. Felt like heaven. She took a towel and soaked it in cold water. She put it on her head and tried to sponge the sweat away as best as she could. Refreshed, she sat on her bed and waited for Charlie to come back. She observed her shaking hands. She knew she was slowly loosing what was left of her sanity. Those crippling dreams would make sure of that.

The meal door opened and a steaming coffee cup was waiting for her. Her wall went transparent and she saw that Charlie wasn't alone as she had previously thought. She saw another shadow just at the edge of her vision.

"Mr Park, you're a dear as always." She said to the blushing fully armored Peacekeeper. Only his head wasn't covered. His helmet was in the retracted position. Most Peacekeepers did the same now. The new armors Jab had designed could do that and much more.

The tall man next to him moved aside, she recognized him instantly. He asked. "Can I come in?"

She hesitated.

"Please?" He insisted.

"O-okay."

The iris opened and he came in. Unsure he looked around for a place to sit. Charles brought in a folding chair resolving his dilemma.

"Thank you Sargent Park." Zack said.

The big Peacekeeper got out and the iris shut with a definite metallic clang.

"I'd lost hope of seeing you again." Cat said, eyes on the floor.

"I had to. I tried not to come. I was trying to convince myself that all between us was over and done with. I was wrong. I had to talk to you."

"Well, if you want, you can come anytime. I'm not going anywhere."

"Maybe and maybe not."

"What does that mean?" Cat asked him, her eyes finally on his face. This time, it was his eyes that were directed downward.

"Since you were captured, you had two champions fighting for you. Jab and June Gates. Remember June?"

"Oh yeah. I remember her. Why aren't they here themselves?"

"Well, June just married the Queen and now finds herself quite busy. Jab... well, Jab wants to kill you. Literally. She really wants to wring your neck." Zack said scratching his head.

"Why?"

"Harry Serrano. Until the trial, she thought that Harry had been killed by a random Ultra-Marine. When she learned that you killed her goddaughter's father. You can guess her reaction."

"She punched something."

"She punched something."

"You're not going to tell me?" Cat asked Zack exasperated.

"Let's just say I saw a big hole in her bedroom's wall. She didn't use the door that day."

"How could you possibly know about her bedroom wall?" Cat asked, her voice on edge.

"Do we need to do this? Cat, c'mon, not this again."

She looked at him suspicious. "Not this soon after her husband's death. Later... perhaps. But definitely not now. There's no way."

"No, no God no! I help her build her house."

"I see. So why are you here? Not that I don't appreciate seeing you, but now I'm guessing that you have a message from Jab."

"Atari." Zack said, borrowing one of Jab's favorite expression.

Cat pinched the bridge of her nose. "Not you too. What does that even mean?"

"It means 'Bingo' or 'You got it'. Sorry. Jab is a bad influence on me sometimes."

"So, what's the message?"

"They want to make you an offer." Zack said simply.

"A deal?"

"You could call it that." Zack said, looking at the floor again.