He knew something was wrong.

"Your shirt is torn," replied Jay Volk. Looking at her, it was the only thing he could think to say. Her face was flushed; her hair looked like she'd spent only five minutes making it artistically mussed, not thirty; and her shirt—a white shirt, not her usual flashy colors—her shirt was torn.

"Put me on live," Maxine Ralls repeated. "Now."

He knew something was wrong, but Jay Volk agreed anyway. She had that gleam in her eyes: the one that said you might not like this, but you'll love what it does for our ratings. Wolf News didn't keep its token mutant around for her racial diversity.

"We'll cut international news. You're on after sports," he told her, and there was something behind her smile that was torn worse than her clothes.

She knew something was wrong, but she'd gone anyway.

The call had come in that morning, to her direct line: she almost hadn't answered, because the number on the caller id was just some anonymous city payphone. Between sips of coffee, and rings, her brain had woken up enough for that to click: anonymous city payphone. Who calls a reporter's direct line from an anonymous city payphone?

The kind of person a reporter wants to talk to, that was who.

Once the caller had identified himself, she'd recognized the voice: it was a voice most people in the city had heard in the past months, repeated ad nauseam. Of course, it wasn't the voice they'd been paying attention to, when they'd been watching that clip. He had the identification to back things up: the badge number, the names of the others involved, the hints of details that weren't released with the official statements.

She caught a pen out of the air, pulled off its cap before it could so much as wriggle in complaint, and started writing. Place, time. Guarantees that they'd remain anonymous. Bring no one else. No cameras. No recording devices. Just pen and paper notes. This would be anonymous, right?

"Sir," she said, with all due affronted dignity. "I'm a professional."

When she hung up the phone, she stared for a moment at what she had written. Then she fist pumped victoriously enough to attract the attention of at least three senior reporters.

This was it: her first anonymous witness. Her first anonymous witness who had come to her, no less. And why not? She was a professional; it was about time people started treating her like one, instead of like the token mutie around the office, rounding out the affirmative action lineup with the Latino secretary, the Asian girl in HR, and the black guy who covered international news. She was exactly the person they needed to break this story, and they'd realized it.

Whatever this story was; he wouldn't get into details over the phone.

It took some quick subway jockeying, but she was there on time. Plotting the routes and hopping the trains kept her mind occupied enough that she was a block from the station before she realized what kind of neighborhood she was in.

For just a moment, her steps slowed. Maybe she should have brought Rex. The octoclip had a certain way of screwing everything up, though. Especially with people who might be a bit jumpy around obvious mutations.

"Ms. Ralls?"

She spun around to face the voice, tensed, then relaxed. She recognized it; from the phone, and from weeks of hearing it played in clip after clip on every news program in the city. It was the voice of one of the officers involved in the Gina Schuyler beating; with him where three of the others. Only one was missing.

She'd be fine. She was going to be hanging out with cops, wasn't she?

"Hello, Officers," she smiled in glib greeting, pushing her purse higher up her shoulder. "So, where are we going to do this?"

The officers looked at one another; the smiles that broke out made her grip on the purse strap tighten, though she kept her own smile in place.

"Oh," the caller replied, taking a step towards her. His fellow officers flanked out, easily surrounding her. And she just stood there, watching them do it. That was the part she would remember mostly clearly later: she just stood there. "I'd say right here is fine, wouldn't you? A filthy street, for a filthy freak."

"What?" She said. Stupidly: like she didn't already understand.

The rest wasn't clear. It had a dreamlike quality: disconnected images, tied together only by sensation and emotion.

The first contact was a push; almost gentle, by comparison. She staggered to one side, and another officer shoved her back the other way.

These things didn't happen.

"Did you really think you could say all those things, and get away with it?"

"Say what thi—?"

The first hit was with an open palm.

"You don't talk when I'm talking. That's the problem with you; you don't know your place."

One of their belts was lose, and the fly unzipped; she remembered being more afraid of what they could do than of what they were doing. Especially after she lost her footing.

"Defending us? You arrogant little freak. You think we needed your help?"

One of their shoes was untied. The laces were a bland army green; they seemed to hang suspended in the air as the man drew his foot back to—

These things happened to other people.

"Hey hey, don't kill her, we just gotta teach her a lesson."

She remembered feeling grateful when she heard that: pathetically grateful, like a cringing dog.

These things didn't happen to Maxine Ralls.

Fingers in her hair; her head was raised off the ground.

"You really think that what happened to that gargoyle girl was an accident? Broken bones, five officers to take down one girl, that's an accident? God, they breed you things stupid."

She didn't know when they left. Her ears were ringing; she wanted to throw up. Maybe she already had. There were sounds of a warbling siren in the distance, but she couldn't think of that as a good thing anymore. She had to... get somewhere. But it felt like the only direction she could move was inwards; she curled more tightly around herself, but it didn't make it any better. Her shirt was getting dirty. It was new; white. Not her usual color. White made her freckles stand out.

It wasn't a siren. She shut her mouth, and the sound stopped. She was alone on the asphalt, with the last words they'd said.

"If you tell anyone about this, we'll kill you. They won't believe you anyway."

She'd known that something was wrong when the call came in that morning. When it came to her. What was she, but some gag-a-week freak? The station kept her around for the controversy, not her reporting skills. No one, no one, would come to her with a scoop. She'd known something was wrong, but she'd come anyway, because she was stupid stupid—

They could have killed her. They really could have. She'd never felt so... so...

Only in her dreams had she felt so helpless; only in her dreams had she put up with men treating her like that. And even in those, she hadn't put up with it for very long. But it was different out in the real world; she was laying on a real street, and...

And that had really just happened.

"We're untouchable," he'd said. "Not like you, freak. You remember that."

She had an excellent memory, yes. Thank you.

Maxine Ralls uncurled one hand, and stretched it out; the muscles were sore from being held clenched for so long. Her hand scrapped over the rough ground, until it found the strap of her purse. She worked it closer to herself, inch by inch. Then she pulled out her phone.

"...I need a ride back to the station."

She'd gotten herself into a sitting position on the curb by the time the car pulled up. She'd even found the emergency comb in her purse, and made something presentable out of the wreck that was her hair. Three oil-free cleansing wipes, and her face was cleaned up, too; only a hint of red still showed in her eyes, and that was easily covered over with a glare.

"You took your sweet time," she snapped.

The driver's window rolled down and Gabriel, intern cameraman extraordinaire, stuck his head out. "What the heck happened to you? You get mugged?"

"Feels like it," she replied.

"Scoop didn't pan out?"

"Oh, I wouldn't say that." She took a few steadying breaths, then marched stiffly over to let herself in the passenger's side. She stared out through the windshield. "Drive."

By the time they got to the station, Gabriel looked even more concerned. Especially when she stopped at the mirror outside the main news room, and stared critically at herself.

"Do I still look like I was mugged?" She asked him, suddenly.

"No, you look—"

"I was afraid of that." She stared at herself for a moment more; then she tousled her hair with her fingers, until it had regained some of that unbrushed wildness that Irish curls so easily reverted to. After a moment more of thought, she grabbed the collar of her shirt between both hands, and pulled: it tore, quite artistically.

Better.

"Maxine, what do you think you're—"

But she'd already marched into the news room. Jay Volk, program director, was in his usual position: harrying the cameramen. Her little excursion had taken most of the afternoon; it was just about time for the five o'clock news. Primetime. She couldn't have timed it better if she'd staged the thing herself.

"Put me on live. Now."

And he did.

The redhead faced the cameras with a smile her viewers had never seen before, except perhaps in their dreams.

"Good evening, New York," she began, with all her usual cordiality.

"At ten o'clock this morning, I received a call from Officer Maru. Some of you may remember him: he's one of the five officers recently exonerated in the Gina Schuyler beating." The redhead's lips quirked. "That's the gargoyle girl, for those of you who have trouble remembering mutant names."

"Officer Maru informed me that there was something the investigating committee had repressed; a new angle to the story that the police did not want getting out. He invited me out to meet with him and his fellow officers, for an exclusive interview."

There was something conspiratorial in her eyes and her posture; something that beckoned the viewer closer to their screen. She herself leaned subtly across the desk, and the camera obligingly zoomed in.

"Here's the real story, New York: here's what the NYPD didn't want you to know."

The screen framed her messy hair, and her torn shirt, quite nicely. Gabriel had a lot to learn in his internship; the senior cameraman at Wolf News had quite the flare for the dramatic.

"The attack on Gina? That was no accident. She was targeted because she was a mutant; beaten because she was a mutant. Some of you knew that already; but I—I had really thought—"

The smile flickered off for a moment, then was back.

"Four members of the NYPD called me out to a deserted street this morning, and physically assaulted me. Do you know what they said? That they didn't need help from a freak like me. That if I told anyone what they'd done, they'd kill me. They said they were untouchable."

The same emotion that her lips carried crawled up her face, and settled in the laugh lines around her eyes.

"Untouchable," she repeated, like it was the cutest thing in the world.

"You heard them, mutants—they don't need our help, and they don't want it. They're going to keep doing whatever they want to do to us, because they're untouchable, and because the NYPD is actively covering up hate crimes perpetrated by its officers. On the scales of stupidity, I think humanity just tipped things to burn this city down."

She was serious; in that moment, she was deadly serious.

"Maxine Ralls, Wolf News."

Things like this didn't happen to her.

Things like this didn't happen to her, because anyone who f***ed with Maxine Ralls was in for a world of pain.

She didn't pass out until after the cameras were shut off.