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magibrainAnd then circumstances conspired to make me write 2100 words of first scene for a potential treatment of White Collar slavefic. Trust me when I say that this was not what I planned to be doing today.
Basically, the rough idea is that instead of a prison system, most of America's convicts end up in a program called Conditional Citizenship for Criminal Rehabilitation, which means that they get tracker'd and their labor gets leased to private or corporate buyers. (Violent offenders tend to get institutional service, where the government holds their leases directly and makes them work in guarded, prison-like factories or the like.) Instead of sentences of fixed duration, convicts are given Points Toward Freedom – generally, 300 points should be worked off in one year, with higher rates possible for exceptional service; when all the points are worked off, the convict is once again granted all the privileges and responsibilities of full citizenship. However, in mandated quarterly reviews, supervisors can adjust the number of earned points downward to reflect concerns about a convict's rehabilitation. Earning less than 60 points per year for two or more years can get the supervisor deemed "insufficient to oversee the subject's rehabilitation", which means that the Department of Corrections seizes the subject's lease and puts it to auction, returning a percentage of the final sale value back to the supervisor, but that's not a difficult threshold to manage.
Needless to say, abuse in the system is absolutely epidemic.
There are all sorts of legal runarounds like how, technically, Conditional Citizens are still allowed to avail themselves of the protection of police, but there's no requirement that leaseholders have to provide phone or internet access by which they could seek that protection. And while there are a lot of people who are very, very angry with this whole setup – they call themselves abolitionists, because this is frickin' slavery and they're calling a spade a spade* – they have to fight tiny, piecemeal battles on things like allowable workloads and maximum sentences because at this point the CCCR program is such a cornerstone of the American economy that there isn't a chance in hell of getting even the most sympathetic congress to sign off on outlawing the program outright.
*Brief pause to make sure that phrase doesn't have racist origins. Apparently it doesn't, but I can never keep track of these things. Though "a spatulous device for abrading the surface of the soil" is pretty excellent.
Anyway, in this universe, Neal's position in "acquisitions" for Adler had a rather more illegal bent from the start, and he was on a plane back from Copenhagen when Adler pulled the plug on his Ponzi scheme and left the country. Which meant Neal was picked up at the airport before he knew what was going on, and the prosecution team – deprived of Adler – went with both barrels after any employee of Adler's they could prove was in on any aspect of his illegal operations. So Neal wound up with a 1500-point (forecasted 5-year) sentence, and then not long into it got his lease bought out by someone who realized that he could make a fortune on Neal's work in high-end art restoration.
Then, seven years into this forecasted 5-year sentence, the FBI starts hearing chatter that Vincent Adler is back in the States. And they start looking for someone to consult.
Neal's first impression of Special Agent Peter Burke was of carefully-concealed rage.
He was working a church restoration on Third Street with Myrvold Restoration Services when Burke walked into the sanctuary. Neal didn't notice him come in; he was standing on an elevated work platform, bent over backwards to detail the wounds on some Saint or other's hands on the ceiling vault. After five years and change, the awkward positions he had to contort into had mostly become physical background noise; he could hold a brush above his head for an eight-hour day with two fifteen-minute breaks and lunch, no problem. Sometimes even when he didn't get those mandated breaks and lunch.
Still, it meant that his attention was already occupied when a sharp voice called, "You Neal Caffrey?"
Neal finished the brushstroke, then wiped off the brush and looked down. It wasn't a good idea to take time to chat with people, but he'd rather keep his situational awareness than dance for the approval of a supervisor who didn't approve of anyone.
The man standing down on the floor looked like the distilled essence of federal law enforcement. Black suit, red tie, and he sounded angry – the kind of angry that was trying not to sound. The kind of angry that was easy to suicide-by-cop on. "Who's asking?" Neal asked.
The man reached into his coat, and Neal tensed despite himself. If he pulled out a gun, there wasn't much he could do – he could hit the deck, use the bottom of the work platform to block a shot, but any halfway-decent pistol would be able to punch through the corrugated metal platform floor, and even if he did want to jump off the thing and make a run for it, the jump would probably fracture his ankle and any halfway-decent assassin would be able to pick him off while he was falling. But the man didn't come out with a gun, and it had been a few years since anyone seriously wanted him dead, anyway; it was just a badge, with a picture too small to see from thirty feet up in the air. "Peter Burke, FBI," the man said. "I'd like to talk to you. I've cleared it with your supervisor."
Neal did his best not to grimace. Generally speaking, when the FBI got involved in his life, his life got worse. "You mind if I clean my brushes before I put them down?"
Burke looked at him for a moment, then said "Go ahead." Neal let out a quiet breath; asking permission for things was always a calculated risk, but he didn't want to be responsible for ruining his leaseholder's property any more than he wanted to annoy the FBI. The FBI could just bring him to trial on something and extend his sentence, maybe get him reclassified from civil to institutional service. His leaseholder could really make his life hell.
He cleaned up with the speed of someone who'd long ago learned that speed could make the difference between a pleasant chat and an insubordination mark on his record, then brought the elevated platform down and stepped off, only to be confronted with Burke's outstretched hand.
It took him a moment to realize he was being offered a handshake.
"Mr. Caffrey," Burke said, when he took the proffered hand.
"Special Agent Burke," Neal said, and tried not to be too far on his back foot, physically or metaphorically. He had to wonder what the catch here was; so far, Burke had been treating him suspiciously like he was a citizen, an actual legal person, not a convict on lease. Being with the FBI, Neal expected him to know better.
And, up close, the anger in Burke's voice was there at the corner of his eyes and the set of his mouth, too. This was not a happy man, for all that he was keeping it under his proverbial hat. For whose benefit? Neal had to wonder.
"If you'll come with me," Burke said, and gestured out of the sanctuary and down the hall.
While it went against all of his better judgement, following an authority figure out of a space with witnesses and down an unused hall, his better judgement had never been so reliable at giving him a workable other choice. For one thing, as an FBI agent, Burke was probably armed. For another, Neal was wearing a steel-reinforced tracker that couldn't be cut, picked, slipped, or hacked, and could trace his position down to the nearest three yards.
Yeah, running had never been an option.
He followed Burke to a small meeting room, probably used for some administrative church function when the church wasn't undergoing renovations, and sat down when Burke indicated that he should. Burke sat across the table from him, still with that muted anger. It wasn't helping Neal feel more at ease.
"What can I do for you?" Neal asked, fixing on a helpful, though not oversaccharine, smile. Had to walk a line, here as everywhere: couldn't come across like he resented this conversation. Couldn't come across like he had something to gain.
Burke cleared his throat. "You were caught up in the sweep of Vincent Adler's employees," he said.
Neal smothered a wince. It had been seven years since his conviction, over seven years since his arrest, and he'd hoped that particular bit of infamy would quietly fade from his life. No such luck, apparently. "I was."
"You got a fifteen-hundred point conviction," Burke said. "That should have been worked off in six years. But according to your record, in the seven years you've been in the system, you've worked off barely more than four hundred of those points."
Neal kept his smile fixed, and told the roiling anger at the pit of his stomach to leave it for another time. Talking back to hostile law enforcement never ended well. "I've always had a problem with leaseholder satisfaction," he said.
Peter gave him a hard look. "I'll bet. Is the problem they're not satisfied enough, or they're too satisfied to let you go?"
And Neal's smile melted like it had never been there.
In seven years, he'd never heard someone call out the situation quite that baldly.
"Myrvold acquired your lease at two million dollars," Burke said. "It's currently valued at over seven. That, combined with your suspiciously low quarterly assessments, is enough to get Myrvold a nice IRS investigation, but that's not why I'm talking to you." He folded his hands, leaning forward over the table. Instinct told Neal to pull back; learned negotiation skills told him to lean forward. He did neither. "I've been asked to acquire your lease for the FBI."
There was a lot Neal could have said to that. So, why are you telling me? might be a good option, as would The FBI wants an art restoration tech? But he had a feeling he knew the answers to those – Burke was beginning to ring as an abolitionist, and the FBI probably wanted the skills that landed him in the Conditional Citizenship for Criminal Rehabilitation program in the first place. "The FBI has seven million dollars to toss around on conds?" he asked, instead. Way too blunt, yeah, but it was worth it just to see how Burke would react. Probably.
"The FBI has eminent domain," Burke said, with a kind of dark, unfunny humor to his tone.
Right. Neal leaned back, letting out a breath and tilting his head at Burke. Studying his expression. Burke certainly looked like he found every aspect of the situation unpalatable, which lent a certain credibility to the abolitionist theory. So, that might answer one question. "What would I be doing for the FBI?"
"Consulting on an investigation," Burke said. "I can't give you many more details unless you agree."
Agree? Neal wanted to ask. That was not a word which had had any serious application in his life for the better part of a decade. "I'm not sure if you know this, Special Agent Burke, but you don't actually need my consent to purchase my lease."
"I know that," Burke all but growled. "That doesn't mean I'm required to treat you as though you're not a human being. Look." He gestured over the table, though probably more to dispel his own unease than to illustrate anything. "The FBI doesn't require your assistance. But we believe you'd be an asset, and we can offer you a chance at working off the remainder of your sentence the way this law is supposed to function. Guaranteed four-year maximum sentence, so long as you don't violate the terms of your lease or commit any new crimes."
Neal swallowed, at that. But he couldn't quite let himself buy it. Freedom was always the carrot they dangled, the light at the end of the tunnel that never seemed to get any closer.
"You'd consult for the FBI," Burke said. "The Bureau would hold your lease, but I'd be your direct supervisor. A lot of desk work, paperwork. Fieldwork as appropriate and necessary. Typical eight-to-five workday, an hour for lunch, evenings and weekends are your own except when casework demands it – which I can't promise is all that infrequent." He gave a sidelong grimace, and Neal found himself appreciating that, despite himself. Burke seemed to be talking about his own work life, not just things to be inflicted on a new pet convict. "Quarterly reviews where you'll actually earn those points toward freedom you've been promised. Federal holidays."
But still. Neal raised his eyebrows. "Four years of paperwork, huh?"
Burke waved his hand back at the church. "You'd rather be doing this?"
Neal shrugged one shoulder. "I do have an appreciation for classical art."
Burke chewed on that for a moment. "How'd you like to consult on art-theft cases?"
Neal thought about that, for a moment, then voiced an Oh. "You're that department of the FBI." Really, what had he expected? Not that it changed anything, but it was another little detail to help him see the lay of the land. And although the prospect of spending for years doing paperwork about stolen art sounded slightly less soul-killing than the prospect of spending four years doing paperwork on anything else, here at least he got to put a brush in his hand.
But as with most things, there wasn't much of a choice to consider.
He could take the FBI's deal and trust that Peter Burke was good for his word... or he could keep scraping by on the minimum points Myrvold had to award him not to be deemed "insufficient to oversee the subject's rehabilitation" and having his lease revoked back into the Department of Corrections' auction pool. At this rate, it'd be twenty years before he was out. Twenty years of back-spasming, muscle-cramping labor, of sleeping in bunk beds with guards at the door, of counting his blessings that Myrvold wasn't as bad as he could have been. Had yet to assault any of his leasees, male or female. Varied the menu. Gave them most weekends off. No, he wasn't the worst by a long shot; his corruption was the basic, everyday kind of corruption of a man doing what he could not to give up his power.
And that was assuming Myrvold got through the IRS thing okay, with a slap on the wrist the way most leaseholders came out. Hell, if things went bad there, his lease went back to the DoC auctions anyway, and god knew where he'd end up there.
But even without that threat, if he were to be honest with himself, freedom was a hell of a carrot. He'd always run toward that light.
"Freedom of association?" he asked.
"Anyone not criminal or inciting you to criminal acts," Burke said, without appearing to think about it at all.
That cinched it, as he felt his heart do something he'd hoped to have trained out of it. Myrvold wasn't much for association, and it had been seven years since he'd had any real contact with some of his closest friends – and, yeah not criminal might be stretching it, but what Burke didn't know. And it was an open question whether or not any of them were still full citizens, or whether they'd been sucked into the vicious undertow of conditional citizenship like him, but he could hope.
And there was only one way to know.
He made himself grin, an easy, confident grin like he wasn't stepping out of a frypan into a space where god knew whether or not there was a fire. "Where do I sign?"
Which was a joke, of course. He wasn't legally allowed to sign much of anything.
Basically, the rough idea is that instead of a prison system, most of America's convicts end up in a program called Conditional Citizenship for Criminal Rehabilitation, which means that they get tracker'd and their labor gets leased to private or corporate buyers. (Violent offenders tend to get institutional service, where the government holds their leases directly and makes them work in guarded, prison-like factories or the like.) Instead of sentences of fixed duration, convicts are given Points Toward Freedom – generally, 300 points should be worked off in one year, with higher rates possible for exceptional service; when all the points are worked off, the convict is once again granted all the privileges and responsibilities of full citizenship. However, in mandated quarterly reviews, supervisors can adjust the number of earned points downward to reflect concerns about a convict's rehabilitation. Earning less than 60 points per year for two or more years can get the supervisor deemed "insufficient to oversee the subject's rehabilitation", which means that the Department of Corrections seizes the subject's lease and puts it to auction, returning a percentage of the final sale value back to the supervisor, but that's not a difficult threshold to manage.
Needless to say, abuse in the system is absolutely epidemic.
There are all sorts of legal runarounds like how, technically, Conditional Citizens are still allowed to avail themselves of the protection of police, but there's no requirement that leaseholders have to provide phone or internet access by which they could seek that protection. And while there are a lot of people who are very, very angry with this whole setup – they call themselves abolitionists, because this is frickin' slavery and they're calling a spade a spade* – they have to fight tiny, piecemeal battles on things like allowable workloads and maximum sentences because at this point the CCCR program is such a cornerstone of the American economy that there isn't a chance in hell of getting even the most sympathetic congress to sign off on outlawing the program outright.
*Brief pause to make sure that phrase doesn't have racist origins. Apparently it doesn't, but I can never keep track of these things. Though "a spatulous device for abrading the surface of the soil" is pretty excellent.
Anyway, in this universe, Neal's position in "acquisitions" for Adler had a rather more illegal bent from the start, and he was on a plane back from Copenhagen when Adler pulled the plug on his Ponzi scheme and left the country. Which meant Neal was picked up at the airport before he knew what was going on, and the prosecution team – deprived of Adler – went with both barrels after any employee of Adler's they could prove was in on any aspect of his illegal operations. So Neal wound up with a 1500-point (forecasted 5-year) sentence, and then not long into it got his lease bought out by someone who realized that he could make a fortune on Neal's work in high-end art restoration.
Then, seven years into this forecasted 5-year sentence, the FBI starts hearing chatter that Vincent Adler is back in the States. And they start looking for someone to consult.
Neal's first impression of Special Agent Peter Burke was of carefully-concealed rage.
He was working a church restoration on Third Street with Myrvold Restoration Services when Burke walked into the sanctuary. Neal didn't notice him come in; he was standing on an elevated work platform, bent over backwards to detail the wounds on some Saint or other's hands on the ceiling vault. After five years and change, the awkward positions he had to contort into had mostly become physical background noise; he could hold a brush above his head for an eight-hour day with two fifteen-minute breaks and lunch, no problem. Sometimes even when he didn't get those mandated breaks and lunch.
Still, it meant that his attention was already occupied when a sharp voice called, "You Neal Caffrey?"
Neal finished the brushstroke, then wiped off the brush and looked down. It wasn't a good idea to take time to chat with people, but he'd rather keep his situational awareness than dance for the approval of a supervisor who didn't approve of anyone.
The man standing down on the floor looked like the distilled essence of federal law enforcement. Black suit, red tie, and he sounded angry – the kind of angry that was trying not to sound. The kind of angry that was easy to suicide-by-cop on. "Who's asking?" Neal asked.
The man reached into his coat, and Neal tensed despite himself. If he pulled out a gun, there wasn't much he could do – he could hit the deck, use the bottom of the work platform to block a shot, but any halfway-decent pistol would be able to punch through the corrugated metal platform floor, and even if he did want to jump off the thing and make a run for it, the jump would probably fracture his ankle and any halfway-decent assassin would be able to pick him off while he was falling. But the man didn't come out with a gun, and it had been a few years since anyone seriously wanted him dead, anyway; it was just a badge, with a picture too small to see from thirty feet up in the air. "Peter Burke, FBI," the man said. "I'd like to talk to you. I've cleared it with your supervisor."
Neal did his best not to grimace. Generally speaking, when the FBI got involved in his life, his life got worse. "You mind if I clean my brushes before I put them down?"
Burke looked at him for a moment, then said "Go ahead." Neal let out a quiet breath; asking permission for things was always a calculated risk, but he didn't want to be responsible for ruining his leaseholder's property any more than he wanted to annoy the FBI. The FBI could just bring him to trial on something and extend his sentence, maybe get him reclassified from civil to institutional service. His leaseholder could really make his life hell.
He cleaned up with the speed of someone who'd long ago learned that speed could make the difference between a pleasant chat and an insubordination mark on his record, then brought the elevated platform down and stepped off, only to be confronted with Burke's outstretched hand.
It took him a moment to realize he was being offered a handshake.
"Mr. Caffrey," Burke said, when he took the proffered hand.
"Special Agent Burke," Neal said, and tried not to be too far on his back foot, physically or metaphorically. He had to wonder what the catch here was; so far, Burke had been treating him suspiciously like he was a citizen, an actual legal person, not a convict on lease. Being with the FBI, Neal expected him to know better.
And, up close, the anger in Burke's voice was there at the corner of his eyes and the set of his mouth, too. This was not a happy man, for all that he was keeping it under his proverbial hat. For whose benefit? Neal had to wonder.
"If you'll come with me," Burke said, and gestured out of the sanctuary and down the hall.
While it went against all of his better judgement, following an authority figure out of a space with witnesses and down an unused hall, his better judgement had never been so reliable at giving him a workable other choice. For one thing, as an FBI agent, Burke was probably armed. For another, Neal was wearing a steel-reinforced tracker that couldn't be cut, picked, slipped, or hacked, and could trace his position down to the nearest three yards.
Yeah, running had never been an option.
He followed Burke to a small meeting room, probably used for some administrative church function when the church wasn't undergoing renovations, and sat down when Burke indicated that he should. Burke sat across the table from him, still with that muted anger. It wasn't helping Neal feel more at ease.
"What can I do for you?" Neal asked, fixing on a helpful, though not oversaccharine, smile. Had to walk a line, here as everywhere: couldn't come across like he resented this conversation. Couldn't come across like he had something to gain.
Burke cleared his throat. "You were caught up in the sweep of Vincent Adler's employees," he said.
Neal smothered a wince. It had been seven years since his conviction, over seven years since his arrest, and he'd hoped that particular bit of infamy would quietly fade from his life. No such luck, apparently. "I was."
"You got a fifteen-hundred point conviction," Burke said. "That should have been worked off in six years. But according to your record, in the seven years you've been in the system, you've worked off barely more than four hundred of those points."
Neal kept his smile fixed, and told the roiling anger at the pit of his stomach to leave it for another time. Talking back to hostile law enforcement never ended well. "I've always had a problem with leaseholder satisfaction," he said.
Peter gave him a hard look. "I'll bet. Is the problem they're not satisfied enough, or they're too satisfied to let you go?"
And Neal's smile melted like it had never been there.
In seven years, he'd never heard someone call out the situation quite that baldly.
"Myrvold acquired your lease at two million dollars," Burke said. "It's currently valued at over seven. That, combined with your suspiciously low quarterly assessments, is enough to get Myrvold a nice IRS investigation, but that's not why I'm talking to you." He folded his hands, leaning forward over the table. Instinct told Neal to pull back; learned negotiation skills told him to lean forward. He did neither. "I've been asked to acquire your lease for the FBI."
There was a lot Neal could have said to that. So, why are you telling me? might be a good option, as would The FBI wants an art restoration tech? But he had a feeling he knew the answers to those – Burke was beginning to ring as an abolitionist, and the FBI probably wanted the skills that landed him in the Conditional Citizenship for Criminal Rehabilitation program in the first place. "The FBI has seven million dollars to toss around on conds?" he asked, instead. Way too blunt, yeah, but it was worth it just to see how Burke would react. Probably.
"The FBI has eminent domain," Burke said, with a kind of dark, unfunny humor to his tone.
Right. Neal leaned back, letting out a breath and tilting his head at Burke. Studying his expression. Burke certainly looked like he found every aspect of the situation unpalatable, which lent a certain credibility to the abolitionist theory. So, that might answer one question. "What would I be doing for the FBI?"
"Consulting on an investigation," Burke said. "I can't give you many more details unless you agree."
Agree? Neal wanted to ask. That was not a word which had had any serious application in his life for the better part of a decade. "I'm not sure if you know this, Special Agent Burke, but you don't actually need my consent to purchase my lease."
"I know that," Burke all but growled. "That doesn't mean I'm required to treat you as though you're not a human being. Look." He gestured over the table, though probably more to dispel his own unease than to illustrate anything. "The FBI doesn't require your assistance. But we believe you'd be an asset, and we can offer you a chance at working off the remainder of your sentence the way this law is supposed to function. Guaranteed four-year maximum sentence, so long as you don't violate the terms of your lease or commit any new crimes."
Neal swallowed, at that. But he couldn't quite let himself buy it. Freedom was always the carrot they dangled, the light at the end of the tunnel that never seemed to get any closer.
"You'd consult for the FBI," Burke said. "The Bureau would hold your lease, but I'd be your direct supervisor. A lot of desk work, paperwork. Fieldwork as appropriate and necessary. Typical eight-to-five workday, an hour for lunch, evenings and weekends are your own except when casework demands it – which I can't promise is all that infrequent." He gave a sidelong grimace, and Neal found himself appreciating that, despite himself. Burke seemed to be talking about his own work life, not just things to be inflicted on a new pet convict. "Quarterly reviews where you'll actually earn those points toward freedom you've been promised. Federal holidays."
But still. Neal raised his eyebrows. "Four years of paperwork, huh?"
Burke waved his hand back at the church. "You'd rather be doing this?"
Neal shrugged one shoulder. "I do have an appreciation for classical art."
Burke chewed on that for a moment. "How'd you like to consult on art-theft cases?"
Neal thought about that, for a moment, then voiced an Oh. "You're that department of the FBI." Really, what had he expected? Not that it changed anything, but it was another little detail to help him see the lay of the land. And although the prospect of spending for years doing paperwork about stolen art sounded slightly less soul-killing than the prospect of spending four years doing paperwork on anything else, here at least he got to put a brush in his hand.
But as with most things, there wasn't much of a choice to consider.
He could take the FBI's deal and trust that Peter Burke was good for his word... or he could keep scraping by on the minimum points Myrvold had to award him not to be deemed "insufficient to oversee the subject's rehabilitation" and having his lease revoked back into the Department of Corrections' auction pool. At this rate, it'd be twenty years before he was out. Twenty years of back-spasming, muscle-cramping labor, of sleeping in bunk beds with guards at the door, of counting his blessings that Myrvold wasn't as bad as he could have been. Had yet to assault any of his leasees, male or female. Varied the menu. Gave them most weekends off. No, he wasn't the worst by a long shot; his corruption was the basic, everyday kind of corruption of a man doing what he could not to give up his power.
And that was assuming Myrvold got through the IRS thing okay, with a slap on the wrist the way most leaseholders came out. Hell, if things went bad there, his lease went back to the DoC auctions anyway, and god knew where he'd end up there.
But even without that threat, if he were to be honest with himself, freedom was a hell of a carrot. He'd always run toward that light.
"Freedom of association?" he asked.
"Anyone not criminal or inciting you to criminal acts," Burke said, without appearing to think about it at all.
That cinched it, as he felt his heart do something he'd hoped to have trained out of it. Myrvold wasn't much for association, and it had been seven years since he'd had any real contact with some of his closest friends – and, yeah not criminal might be stretching it, but what Burke didn't know. And it was an open question whether or not any of them were still full citizens, or whether they'd been sucked into the vicious undertow of conditional citizenship like him, but he could hope.
And there was only one way to know.
He made himself grin, an easy, confident grin like he wasn't stepping out of a frypan into a space where god knew whether or not there was a fire. "Where do I sign?"
Which was a joke, of course. He wasn't legally allowed to sign much of anything.