Caped (Book 1): The Burdens of Fate (2 page)

The bartender goes back to focusing on his
game, occasionally lending an ear as this awkward stranger adds more pieces to
his outlandish tale. A fanciful tale of survival against now extinct animals,
as him and his clan of exiled survivors dwindle in number from hundreds to a
handful. Left for dead. Brief tirades followed by moments of prolonged silence,
if they weren't told so skillfully he'd have been considered a loon or kicked
out, but as the night dragged on a small group gathered, wanderers from the
younger crowd. And with each question they asked his tongue grew a little more
loose.

They were enthralled, drunkenly testing the
depths of his self-delusion.

Joe looks down at his watch during the height
of the fervor, quickly finishes what's left of his drink, and mutters a lowly
"Check-mate."

The lights struggle for a few brief moments,
and the music fades to silence. A man in a dark black suit walks in, flashing a
badge which I was unable to discern but clearly distinguishes him as an
authoritative figure. He motioned for the crowd to dissipate, which they do,
retreating back to the large group in the corner that had already begun
speculating amongst themselves. The agent approaches cautiously before taking a
seat next to Joe who greets him with an irritated, "You're late."

"We had to make sure this wasn't a
trap."

"Are you convinced?" Joe asks.

"No, but it's a risk we're willing to
take."

"You're not the only one taking
risks."

"They're family. I'm sure they'll forgive
you, eventually."

Joe shrugs and then reaches into his pants
pocket to pull out a single folded piece of paper. The agent unfolds it to find
it covered top to bottom in extremely small, almost illegible handwriting. He
pulls out a small flashlight and reads over it for a few lines before folding
it and placing it in his pocket. After the transfer they did not acknowledge each
other, not a glance, nod, or smirk. They simply cease to exist to each other.
Joe then lifts his hand towards the bartender for another drink, and the agent
rises to leave. The agent walks a few steps before pausing for a moment; he
motions to make a comment but thinks better of it and exits. The music resumes.

Joe stays at the bar only for as long as it
takes him to finish his drink and close his tab. He is well composed and
doesn't show the slightest hint of intoxication, a fact that has bewildered the
guests and bartender all night. They all watch in silence as he leaves, hanging
somewhere between buying into his story and taking it all as some elaborate
entertaining inside joke.

And that's it, I woke up. At least that's my
best explanation of it. Felt more like my consciousness was slipping back into
my body. A total mind-fuck, and I definitely wasn't expecting the experience to
feel so vivid. Like I could sit down at that bar and order myself a drink.

Damn, this sure is going to take some getting used
to.

Alvin
Turner
-
Journal #1

I was afraid and shaking. There were random
body tremors, and my breath... the constant fear my breath was leaving me. It
was too short, too quick. Hyperventilating. I couldn't breathe. My eyes
couldn't focus and refused to stay still. "Help me," I thought.
Because of my breath? Maybe.

I needed to get out of here, but I couldn't. My
muscles refused the signal. Move dammit!

Oh God!

I knew why. I knew why but I was too afraid to
admit it. My breath...no more air. I needed air but my lungs were full. Help
me, I thought. Help me because I was right. I didn't want to be right. What
did...what does it mean to be right?

My muscles locked up, for how long I don't
know. Perhaps a second. Maybe longer, or far far shorter. And right when I felt
as if the stagnant tension was going to send my body screaming in every
direction, I coughed. Like a smoker's cough sans all the phlegm and mucus.
Deep, long, and raspy; shaking me from the balls of my feet to the crown of my
skull.

It was liberating and terrifying.

Yet I still half expected to wake up at any
moment, to blink and find that it's all in my head.

The first couple of times I noticed
"it" it happened too quickly for me do anything other than pass it
off as my imagination, a byproduct of adrenaline or other perception altering
chemical the brain frequently pumps out. And then I began to worry. Something
was wrong with me; I was convinced I was seeing the first stages of something.
WebMD said otherwise, call me lazy but I have neither the money nor patience to
go see a doctor. Maybe if this were Britain
or Canada
but my luck's never been so good.

Then it hit me on my drive home today, perhaps
I could control it. And so here I sat, in this very chair, feeling like an
extreme idiot. Started the stopwatch app on my phone and began to focus, trying
for the same feelings I'd felt before. I tried multiple approaches, squinting
my eyes, tensing my muscles, and trying to replicate a feeling of shock, but
accomplished nothing other than feeling like an idiot. Each moment growing less
confidant that anything had happened at all, which didn't bode well for my
mental stability. But in the defeat and the calm of just staring at the
clock...I felt it.

And I'd like to call bullshit on that considering
I was never calm when this happened before, but I felt it.

What exactly it was I felt, I'm not sure. Best
described as a muscle, but throughout my entire body. I flexed it with as
little force as one would use lifting a finger and immediately the world slowed
to a crawl. I was dumbfounded, and so I did it again, this time with a little
more force. It was amazing, the ease with which I could control it, coupled
with the feeling of near infinite freedom; and I hadn't even left the chair.

What can I equate this feeling with? Nothing.
Nothing comes close to describing the stagnant and unreal look of it all. No
sound, except the ghostly ephemeral ones I make. Stuck to the ground, yet
feeling weightless all the same. You never realize how many things around us
are moving until nothing moves at all. In light of that, a simple fact remains:
My life has changed.

One thought blended with another and the next
thing I knew I was cautiously exploring my limitations. I was obviously
breaking/bending the laws of physics, but to what extent? Could I open doors,
pour liquids, move living things? Dozens of questions, and with each one I
answered a new one seemed to replace it. All falling under the umbrella of the
million dollar question: Am I alone? Freak event, small subset, or will the
entire population be speeding around out there? Or crazier still, perhaps,
different abilities? Nothing has come to my attention to prove anything except
that I am alone. Whatever the case, I have many questions to mull over, but for
now I can't help but enjoy myself.

Oh yeah, and I can walk through walls.
Edward
Otep
(Cont.)
-

...Eventually Laurie grasped the gravity of the
situation and, after a change of wardrobe, we returned to the Trump
International Hotel and Tower. His mark on the place was still evident out
front, cordoned off with police tape along with a two man security detail. We
managed to make our way into the building without incident and said our
uneventful goodbye in a crowded elevator full of unsuspecting people. "L.A.," he said with
a chuckle and small hint of wonder, "...I'll be there."

I smiled in relief, nodding with acceptance as
the door closed, "You better be."

Continuing upwards I found myself continually
amazed by how strikingly ordinary he was. There stood this wrinkled old man, a
few inches shy of six feet tall, no hint of a demanding presence, and as easily
lost in a crowd as any other. It was a revealing epiphany; the world hasn't
changed, just the people in it.

And just like that the first chapter on Laurie
Stahl had closed, and quickly transitioned to my first brief encounter with
Alvin Turner.

At 3:13am I made my first call to Alvin's land line,
something I knew he wouldn't answer because he'd later tell me the many places
he visited his first night. I'd written down and rehearsed all I needed to say,
but just before the *beep,* the slip of paper vanished from my hands. It took a
moment to process exactly what had happened but the message was received, with
the exception of my call-back number, which I promptly left.

It was a ghost story without the ghost, one
that left me feeling extremely vulnerable; an unexpected result.

It was the dead of night and although my body
was clamoring for sleep my mind refused to rest, flaring with heightened
periods of awareness due to the Everest sized proportion of the task before me.
I am extremely hesitant to sleep. Should I afford myself such a luxury or do I
persevere to the point of exhaustion? Until my head hurts and my body aches, is
that not what real heroes do?

Yet I'm constantly reminded of a vital fact,
that I am not a hero. Not yet. I'm a single man living in very non-fictitious
situation. I have no Batcave to retreat to, no backup, and at this moment, few
souls alive that would even believe the events of my day. Tonight I sleep in a
hotel, alone. I now live with the reality that I'm not insane, a fact that is
both comforting and terrifying. In six days we'll be tested for the first time,
a test I'm not sure we can aptly prepare for.

–
3/13
–

Michael
Serna
–

Journal Entry
#1,372

Everyone's talking about Japan's "Flying Man!" phenomenon, a
compilation of amazingly clear and lengthy videos straight out of Tokyo that
have
gone viral in just a few short hours. Literally
hundreds of people were able to catch video and take photos of him before he
flew off. They've got it on security cameras, news cameras; I'm surprised it
hasn't shown up on Google Earth yet!

I don't know what to think. We've seen hologram
technology move by leaps and bounds, anyone remember Tupac showing up on stage?
Technology is constantly improving so we can't just blindly trust our eyes
anymore.

So, is this excellent viral marketing for some
unannounced superhero movie Hollywood
loves to churn out these days? A crazy expensive hoax by dedicated individuals
looking for their fifteen seconds of fame, holographic project, optical
illusion, swamp gas? Or the craziest of all, could it possibly be real?

I don't know which crowd I fall into yet but
I'm definitely counting it as a hoax one way or another, and I'll definitely be
keeping my eye on it.

In the highly improbable off-chance the videos
are legit, this does make the recent disappearance of eight inmates at the
Upstate Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison in upstate New York,
seem just a bit more interesting, especially since they're stubbornly refusing
to release the names of the missing inmates while openly acknowledging their
hesitation to call this as a jail break since there's only "circumstantial
evidence to prove such an accusation."

How long have I been saying you can almost
never trust the mainstream media? They honestly believe we're idiots.

And of course, through a short bout of internet
journalism, I've discovered that today’s announcement comes fresh on the heel
of three similar reports from yesterday in Texas,
California, and Colorado, stating similar
"disappearances." But it's in no way suspicious those never got any
media cover, is it?

Are we witnessing a streak of perfectly
executed jail-breaks, or something beyond coincidental timings? Any possibility
of a relation to Japan's
flying man? Maybe.

The head of security says that, "While the
disappearances do cause us to re-examine our security structure, we've been
operating under the same regimen for the past couple of years. It's highly
unlikely such a flaw would be exploited for the first time this far into a
program." He later added, "We will, however, take no options off the
table."

So authorities are probing surveillance footage
around the time of the disappearances, and the manhunt for these convicts
outside the facilities is already underway.

Visitations have been suspended for the
remainder of the week while the FBI investigates. Sounds logical, but is it
legal?

We're likely to never know. The federal
government recently issued a moratorium on any information, which is odd
considering that most facilities are owned by private companies.

And to make things stranger still is the
announcement from the department of homeland security warning of a possible
terrorist attack within the next few days, citing new evidence in an ongoing
investigation. No further evidence was given, not the type of threat, or even
possible targets.

Really, how vague can our government be? Have
terrorists escaped, and if that's the case why were they in our penal system
and not being held by the military? Sounds like the FBI is intervening to cover
their ass. Whatever the case may be, it sure has given news channels some fresh
meat for the next few days.

Gotta love our alphabet agencies though,
somehow, they don't make me feel as secure as I feel they should. But what do I
know, I'm only human. And besides, with all this juicy media flying around (no
pun intended Japan)
it seems everyone's forgotten about last weeks "solar event."