Meta (Book 3): Rise of The Circle (26 page)

I
'm kicking
up a small sandstorm in my wake as I rush back toward the New Mexico facility. The roof looks like it's been ripped apart by a giant can opener. The scene is eerily quiet, and for a moment, I consider the possibility that Chomp's impact may have taken the lives of everyone inside.

Then I realize why it's so quiet: we're in the middle of nowhere. This was by design. This new facility was placed in the desert to correct the mistakes made in Silver Island's original design. The reason there are no screaming ambulances or police sirens is because they're all hundreds of miles away. We're all alone out here.

I make my way inside the building using the only accessible entrance: the giant hole in the roof. Once inside, I find chaos everywhere. Dozens of armed guards are running in every direction possible. The small on-site fire department is struggling to put out fires created by shorted out electronics and spilled chemicals.

Rounding one of the corners, I come upon a small group of guards inspecting the damaged cells. The one closest to me is startled when he sees me and fires a round directly into my chest. The bullet stings but is deflected off and rattles through the grates in the catwalk below.

"Whoa, easy. I'm one of the good guys," I say as I put my hands up in the air.

"How do we know that?" one of the other guards asks.

He has his gun trained on me too, aimed right between my eyes, I think.

"If I wasn't a good guy, I probably wouldn't brush off the fact that you just shot me. Get Halpern. He can vouch for me," I say.

"Stand down, officers," Halpern says as if on cue as he rushes up the nearby stairs.

The guards comply and lower their weapons, then immediately return to checking cells.

"I'm starting to think you're bad luck," Halpern says to me, motioning for me to walk with him as we talk.

He's peering into cells as we continue down the hallway, double-checking the guards' work and making sure that everyone who's supposed to be in a cell is in a cell.

"How bad is it?" I ask.

"We're not entirely sure yet. We've got an earthmover inbound to fill the crater as quickly as possible and prevent any further damage to the facility. We're not stupid, though. After Silver Island, this place was retrofitted to be fully compartmentalized. In situations like this, where the integrity of the building has been compromised, all the other sections are immediately sealed off. All the detainees should have already been anesthetized via their metaband restriction devices."

"So basically you just knocked everyone out using the same locks you've got over their metabands?"

"That's correct. If it were up to me, I'd keep 'em all like that 24/7, but these human rights activists are all over us nowadays. They say it's
cruel and unusual
to keep them constantly sedated. You see this guy?" Halpern asks me as he motions to a prisoner asleep on the steel floor inside a clear plastic-walled cell.

He's older, maybe in his late 50s and unnaturally skinny with a growing pool of drool collecting under his mouth.

"Called himself Skin. You know why? Because he used his laser vision to skin over a dozen people alive using just his eyes. Did it so quickly and cleanly that most of his victims lived for hours before they finally died from shock. But we're the ones who are cruel and unusual for wanting to make sure this guy doesn't get out again by any means possible."

"Has anyone escaped?" I ask.

"No. All of our systems indicate that the majority of the damage occurred in the dining hall area. None of our cells have been breached and motion sensors indicate that every cell is still currently occupied. We're double checking, of course, but from what we can tell, your buddy didn't hit whatever it was he was aiming for."

"What about Keane?"

"Like I told you, we're checking on everyone."

That isn't the response I want to hear, and somewhere deep in my gut, I know something isn't right. I rush toward the section that holds Keane. As I make my way there, I notice that there are fewer and fewer guards. The ones checking cells haven't made it to this area of the facility yet since it's farthest from the hole Chomp put through their roof.

When I find the area, I approach Keane's cell hesitantly, cautiously, until I can see him and make sure that he's unconscious. Not only is he conscious, he's sitting calmly in his cell with his legs crossed, eyes fixed straight at me and smiling.

I yell for guards.

"Why would you need help from guards, Omni?" Keane asks me. "You know that they're just humans, after all. What could they possibly do that you couldn't?" He stands up and begins to cross the floor of the cell, approaching the plastic wall. "I want to be honest with you, Omni. I think we're close enough that I can be honest, can't I? I mean, I did live inside your little girlfriend's head for quite some time, so I do feel that I know you pretty well, Connor."

He knows who I am. He must have seen it in Iris's mind. This whole time everyone just assumed he could only control others with his abilities but not actually access their thoughts and memories. Stupid! Keane has relied on making everyone believe he is less powerful than he is over and over again.

"I'm sure you've figured out by now that Chomp was under my employ."

"How did you control his mind from that distance?"

"Oh, I didn't control his mind. I might keep some of the things I'm capable of close to the chest, but even I'm not capable of that type of mind control from so far away. No, for that I had to rely on the oldest super power known to man: money. It turns out money can be a fantastic motivator for all sorts of things, even convincing someone to let themselves be caught and then later jump out of a plane, even though all sensible logic should tell you that once you fall you'll never stop.

"But, as I said, unfortunately, I didn't think of everything. I've been funding most of the groups responsible for protesting the use of sedatives on metahuman prisoners of war for quite some time, and I became convinced that they would indeed prevail, or at the very least delay the use of sedatives until I was able to execute my plan.

"Now, however, even if the rest of this prison's population hadn't been knocked out, I doubt I would have had the wherewithal to control them in my current state. It's taking nearly all of my abilities just to keep the sedative from affecting me.

"Of course, it helps that I was able to accurately mimic the negative side effects that occur in a small percentage of the population when they're previously exposed to this particular chemical. After they saw that, they made sure they kept the doses they gave me as low as possible. Not even The Agency wants a lawsuit on their hands if they can prevent it."

"Why tell me all of this?"

"Because the plan didn't work, and I want you to know that. I wanted you to know that something I'd planned for meticulously and spent millions to make happen unfortunately failed, all because of an unexpected variable."

Just then two heavily armored guards enter through a mechanized door on the outer wall of the cellblock.

"Back up against the back of your cell! Show me your hands! Now!" one of them shouts as both aim their rifles at Keane.

"Ah, they must have finally detected the motion in my cell. I was wondering how long that was going to take."

"Back up, freak!"

"Hmm, I don't think I've seen the two of you in this cellblock before, have I?"

"You're going to be seeing the underside of my boot in about three seconds if you don't comply!"

"The reason why I mention it is because it would appear you gentlemen are unfamiliar with this area of the facility and its particular rules, especially when it comes to outside visitors."

My eyes go wide as I realize what Keane is doing.

"Get out of here!" I scream at them.

"We don't take orders from you clowns."

"You see," Keane says, "the reason I wanted you to know about my plan was so you could also see just how well I'm able to improvise when the unexpected happens. Isn't that right, boys?"

I turn back to look at the two guards. Their expressions have suddenly turned blank, and in the blink of an eye, they've turned their rifles on themselves, each holding the barrel of their own gun with their teeth.

"Stop this right now!" I yell at Keane.

"Oh, I'm not going to kill them, or more accurately, they're not going to kill themselves. Not yet at least. Maybe once all of this is over and they see just what they've done, but that's not on my conscience. That's all on them.

"I know you're fast, Connor, but even you aren't fast enough to stop both of them from pulling the trigger, not if they both do it at the same time. So, I ask you this: Are you going to let me out of here, or would you rather watch these two men die?"

E
verything happens quickly from there
. With the New Mexico facility's Faraday cage punctured, it's trivial for a teleporter to get in, and with the money Keane has, it isn't hard to convince one to assist in a jailbreak in exchange for a few million dollars. That's pocket change to Keane, and all I can do is watch.

The teleporter appears and disappears in an instant. It's obvious now that this plan was a long time in the making. Keane would have had to give extremely detailed descriptions of the floor plan to ensure they didn't teleport themselves into a wall or floor. Once Keane found his designated waiting area by a water fountain, all he had to do was check the clock on the wall to know exactly when the teleporter would arrive. In and out. A few seconds after he's gone, the guards begin to regain control over their minds.

"What the hell just happened?" one of them asks me as he pulls the barrel of his rifle back out of his mouth.

"Keane just escaped. I need you to sound whatever alarm you have to," I tell them.

"Uhh, I think we already are," the other guard says over the constant wailing alarms already going off all around the cellblock.

There isn't much more for me to do here, even if they wanted my help, which I'm sure they won't after they hear how Keane just got away. I lift into the air and travel back down the winding hallways of the facility, back to the hole in the roof. The night sky is clear, and I take a position about a thousand feet up so that I can see into the distance, toward the lights of the nearest city. I don't know what I expected to find up here. Keane could have teleported anywhere on Earth, or even off Earth if you want to be technical about it.

"Keane's gone, isn't he?" Midnight asks over my earpiece.

He already knows the answer.

"Yeah. Where are you?" I reply.

"Two o'clock," he replies.

"What happens at two o'clock?" I ask.

There's a sigh at the other end.

"Two o'clock as in slightly to your right. Look up," he says.

Oh. Right. I look in the direction he says and can see the faint shimmer of a heat trail in the sky. It's Midnight's plane, or at least what's left of it, zipping through the sky.

"Meet me in Albuquerque. I'll send coordinates to your device."

"
H
ow many secret
hideouts do you have exactly?" I ask as I fly over the city of Albuquerque, trying to keep an eye out for wherever it is I'm going.

I have the exact GPS coordinates, but since I'm not a computer, that doesn't help me as much as something like saying, “Look for the rooftop with a Jola Cola sign on it,” would.

I find the building that Midnight gave me coordinates for and land on the roof. There's only one door up here, so I venture a guess that's where I'm heading. The door leading from the roof isn't locked, but there's a second one inside that is. It doesn't matter, though. Once the first door closes, the small space lights up with blue lasers projected from every angle, overlapping and scanning across my body. Once the system is confident that I'm me, the entire room descends a few dozen stories, well below street level.

The elevator slows to a stop, and I exit to find what I've begun to recognize as standard features for Midnight's hideouts: an automated medical bay, computer monitors lining almost every space along the walls, and training simulation areas. Midnight sits at a computer in the center of the room, fixated on the screen.

"What's happening?" I ask as I walk briskly over to him.

"Nothing. Yet," he replies.

"No reports of any eyewitnesses? Someone had to have seen something. Keane didn't just vanish into thin air. I mean, technically, I guess, he did, but he had to have landed somewhere."

"And I'm sure he did, but unless he's in a public area, we're not going to find him by hacking into red light cameras."

I bite my tongue right before saying something about how we have to try. Of course we have to try. Midnight knows that better than anyone. He doesn't need me reminding him. After a few seconds of silence, there's suddenly an explosion of rage from Midnight like I've never seen before.

He punches the computer monitor in front of him, shattering the screen into a hundred pieces of broken glass. He rips the keyboard from the desk and throws it across the room, smashing another monitor that's hung along the far wall.

I don't say anything, not like I'd know what to say anyway. I've never seen him this frustrated. He pulls off his cowl as though it's suffocating him and stares into space for a long while before he speaks again.

"There's something that I should tell you," he starts.

"Okay ..." I say, not sure what to expect next.

"I think it's only right for you to know now. I'm not sure what Keane has planned next, but the more I learn about him and how he works, the more I'm beginning to expect that this might be the end of the line for me. There are secrets I know that I swore to myself I'd take to the grave, but now that I'm standing in front of it, I'm not sure if it's right to do that anymore. I'm not sure about a lot of things anymore. I'm not even sure where to begin."

More silence follows as Midnight seems to be running through it all in his head, deciding which of the who knows how many secrets is the one he should tell me first. I'm not sure whether he's deciding based on which are the least secretive, or which are the most necessary in order to make sense of the others.

"I know that you have questions about me. About who I am. Where I came from. How it is that I know what I do about metabands. I've done what I can to keep the world from asking those questions of me, and I've gone even further to try to keep you from asking the same, but it's important that you know.

"You know that the metaband that powered my suit belonged to me, but you don't know what happened to the other one."

"There were two?"

"There are always two," he says as he releases an unseen clip from the forearm of his suit. Once unfastened, he removes the lower arm guard, revealing the scarred forearm that I’ve seen and wondered about once before. "The other was ripped away from me, which is how my arm ended up like this. There was enough residual energy in the other band to regenerate the arm for the most part, but as you can see, it wasn't completely successful before the residual energy was expended."

"I thought it was supposed to be impossible to remove a metaband from its owner once it's linked?"

"It is, nearly. Mine wasn't ripped off by any normal force, though. It was ripped off by the limitations of physics itself."

"I don't think I follow," I say as if the look on my face wasn't making that clear enough.

"What I'm going to tell you is going to seem impossible."

"I'm a teenager that can fly and bend steel thanks to some bracelets. I'll try to keep an open mind," I say, which actually gets him to crack a rare smile.

"The metabands that are currently on Earth aren't from this time. They're from thousands of years in the future."

"How could you know that?"

"Because that's where I'm from too."