On the video screens, a hooded prisoner-small-framed, frail-looking-is kneeling on a starkly lit stage.

"Wisteria Allgood," blares a bone-chilling voice, "do you wish to confess to the use of the dark arts for the wicked purpose of undermining all that is good and proper in our society?"

This can't be happening. My heart is a big lump in my throat. Wisty? Did that voice really just say Wisteria Allgood? My sister's on an executioner's scaffold?

I grab a slack-jawed adult by his dismally gray overcoat lapels. "Where is this execution happening? Tell me right now!"

"The Courtyard of Justice." He blinks at me irritably, as if I've woken him from a deep sleep. "Where else?"

"Courtyard of Justice? Where's that?" I demand of the man, throwing my hands around his neck, nearly losing control of my own strength. I swear, I'm ready to throw this adult against a wall if I have to.

"Under the victory arch-down there," he gasps. He points at a boulevard that runs off to my left. "Let me go! I'll call the police!"

I shove him and take off running toward a massive ceremonial arch maybe a half mile away.

"You! Wait!" he yells after me. "Don't I know your face from somewhere?"

He does. Oh yes. And so would everyone else, if they took the time to notice that there was a wanted criminal running loose in their midst.

But his fellow citizens' eyes remain glued to the screen. They've got an insatiable appetite for malicious gossip of any kind and, of course, an equal taste for senseless death and destruction.

Even when the falsely condemned are kids. Just kids.

I can hear a distant roar now. The sound of hunger-for "justice," for blood.

I forge ahead into the pathetic herd of lemmings. I'm not going to let them take my sister from me. Not without a fight to the death anyway.

I round a corner, and then, across the top of the crowd, I see… Is that my sister, Wisty, up on the stage? She's hooded, dressed all in black, but standing now. Proudly. Brave as ever.