Meta (Book 3): Rise of The Circle (27 page)

"
A
lot
of the pieces of this story aren't going to entirely make sense to you. It's not too different than if you tried to explain what happened today to a caveman."

"Thanks," I reply sarcastically.

"I don't mean any offense by that, but it's accurate. In reality, the advances from my time far outweigh the differences between this time and that of the cavemen. I'll try to put what I know and what happened in terms as close to what you'll be able to understand and relate to as possible."

"Okay."

"It happened during an expedition returning to Earth from a few galaxies away. We'd been-"

"We?"

"My team. I'll get to them in a moment. We were returning from an expedition. Metabands at that time were standard issue to all explorers in our position. They were primarily used to help us interface directly with our vessel. It wasn't so much a melding of man and machine as it was allowing the two to simply exist together as one. The metabands connected with their owners at every level of existence. They were incredibly powerful, but to some, there was a belief that their full power had yet to be harnessed.

"The chief scientist aboard my ship was one who believed in this idea, and so he tinkered. He experimented. He was determined to find the limits of this technology. It was technology that had already existed for hundreds of years by my time, but it was still considered a new frontier in many respects.

"I was unaware of the specifics involved in many of these experiments. Part of me just didn't want to know. I didn't want to know how far he would go to find whatever it was he was looking for. I didn't want to know how far he'd go just to prove that he could. By the end, his experiments caused a rupture of energy unlike any the universe had seen before.

"It ripped our ship apart at the molecular level. Our metabands were all that protected us from the harshness of space, but they were all connected. Not only our own, but also the thousands more we were holding onboard as cargo. They were being brought back to Earth for further study from the frontlines of a war being fought in deep space.

"When the experiment caused one to rupture, it opened a hole in the fabric of reality itself. The metabands and my crew were pulled in through that hole. It existed for only a fraction of a second, and when it closed, it took my hand and one of my metabands with it. Luckily, the auxiliary power held in the other kept me alive long enough to make it through the atmosphere and land back on Earth."

"And what about all the other metabands?"

"They were scattered across the solar system, like a sack of potatoes falling out of the back of a truck. The majority of my team landed safely on Earth. It was a few years later when Earth's orbit crossed paths with the first batch of metabands floating in space. They looked like space junk to the untrained eye, but anyone who came upon them after they made it down to Earth would be able to tell right away that there was something unusual about these bracelets."

"And that was the first wave."

"Correct. The second wave was years away still, but I knew it was coming. I'd spent the time in between tracking down metabands as they gravitated back toward Earth's magnetic field. I tried to recover them before anyone else could, but it proved to be an impossible task with the technology available at the time."

"What about the other members of your crew? What happened to them?"

"None of us expected the first wave. We'd all assumed that the metabands had been lost to the vastness of space and time. All we could do was try to go about living normal lives, or as normal as we could make our lives after being displaced this far from our own time.

"I was never able to assimilate. Not fully. I couldn't wrap my head around the concerns of people from this time. I couldn't relate or understand. I spent a long time looking for purpose. I didn't find it until the altered metabands began crashing down to Earth, and that's when I knew I had to do what I could to prevent them from hurting anyone else. That's when I found my purpose.

"But as I said, others were able to adapt. They were able to find their places in this time. They learned to love what were strange customs and technologies to us. They found ways to fit into the current culture and connect with others, even though everyone on earth had been long dead by the time any of us were born.

“Some were even able to make lives for themselves here and families. Connor, your parents were two of those people."

At first, I don't think I heard him right, or I think that he's speaking metaphorically.

"What? What are you talking about?" I ask, shaking my head as if that would make what he’s just said go away.

"Your parents. They were colleagues of mine. More than colleagues. They were friends. We were all trapped in this strange time with no one else who could possibly understand what it meant to have gone through what we did. But your parents didn't think that way. They made a purpose and a life for themselves here. A large part of that was you and Derrick, their sons from a time they didn't belong in. But they found purpose in another way too, a way that inspired humanity, by becoming the first two metahumans the world had ever seen."

The room is spinning as all the puzzle pieces I've carried around my entire life begin to fall into place.

"My parents ... they didn't die as innocent bystanders during The Battle."

"No, they didn't. They died as heroes. They died protecting the city and the time that they'd come to call home."

"My dad ..."

"Your dad was The Governor. Your mom was Silk. She was one of the countless metahumans that died that day trying to stop Jones. The Governor, as you know, was the one who finally did in the end, by throwing him into the sun."

"I think I need to sit down," I mutter as I feel for something behind me to lean up against and luckily find a computer terminal within reach.

"I'm sorry I couldn't tell you any of this sooner, Connor. There wasn't a way to know what the ramifications of anyone finding out the truth would be, which brings me to Jones.

"Jones was a brilliant man. He was obsessed with his work with what are now called metabands in this time, but he was also extremely aware of the potential they had for harm. Despite his work with metabands, he insisted that his family never use them. He worried about the harm, both physical and psychological, that they could have long term. When our craft was torn apart, something strange happened."

"You mean aside from sending all of you through time?"

Midnight actually manages to crack a smile again at that, making me wonder just how literal the mask he wears is.

"Jones's family was on board the ship with him. That was an option available to them since it was a long-haul mission. When the craft was torn apart, his wife, Gillian, and his daughter, Iris, weren't wearing metabands and were presumed dead. For a long time Jones was presumed dead as well.

"But there were things we didn't know at the time that we do know now. The first is obviously that Iris survived. Not only did she survive, but she exhibits metaband-like powers and abilities despite not being linked to a pair of metabands herself. I've been studying her for years, and I'm no closer to an explanation for her abilities than when I started. The tools and materials of this time just aren't adequate to get to the bottom of it. The closest thing I have to a working theory is that when the accident happened, she was still young enough that her genetics were susceptible to manipulation. She was still a newborn, too young to ever safely be exposed to something like metabands, let alone the type of energy caused by Jones's explosion.

“Later, we learned that Jones had survived too, if only technically."

"What do you mean?"

"He didn't go through the same experience the rest of us did. He was too close to the source of energy. After the explosion happened, myself and your parents woke up already plummeting through Earth's atmosphere. We'd traveled back through time centuries, but for us, all of it happened in the blink of an eye.

"Jones wasn't so lucky. He traveled back the same length of time we did, but it didn't happen instantly for him. For him, it was experienced in real time. He spent millennia trapped in a sort of limbo, where time and space didn't exist anywhere except for inside his mind. It's what drove him mad."

"I can imagine thousands of years of solitary confinement would do that."

"When it was finally over and he crashed back to Earth, he was a deeply broken man. He only vaguely remembered and understood what had happened to him. Over time, as he began to recall more and more about his life from before he was trapped in limbo, he began to formulate a theory for setting things right."

"Obviously it didn't work?"

"No, it didn't. And even if it had, the end would have never justified the means."

"So that was the beginning of him becoming a psychopathic murderer?"

"Yes. Time is a lot less flexible than people think. The laws of quantum physics allow for travel through time, but that doesn't mean they allow for time to be changed, at least with any ease. The universe isn't stupid enough to allow itself to become unraveled so easily. Things like the butterfly effect, they're all nonsense. Over a long enough timeline, the universe always finds a way to course correct. It's unconcerned with short-term changes. But long term ... that's a different story.

"When faced with temporal abnormalities, the universe will always attempt to set things back to the way they were heading before the time traveler arrived. But if enough damage to the time line is done, if enough changes happen to significantly alter the known future to the point of no return, then the universe has no choice but to take drastic action.

"Jones's idea was that if he killed enough people, he could alter the entire path of the human race in the future. He believed that if he were able to alter it dramatically enough, metabands would never be invented, or it might mean he would never be born, and in that case, the universe would have no choice but to snap into an alternate path to avoid the paradox. The universe would find a way to prevent him from ever having traveled back in time in the first place in order to prevent the changes that would result, and that's exactly what he wanted.

"He wanted to stop himself from ever coming back in the first place and from ever being trapped in that cage for thousands of years. And as far as he saw the situation, killing random innocents in order to 'save' the universe was not an issue. To him, everyone here had already been dead and buried for a long time. Why should he mourn their deaths any more than you would while studying the bones of a mummy in a museum?"

R
EPORT
, the text message from Michelle reads.

Midnight set her up with the same app he uses to securely communicate with me. I was starting to wonder if she couldn't figure out how to use it. The stuff Midnight uses isn't always very user friendly. It's possible she's just testing it out, but something in my gut tells me that isn't the case. Something in my gut tells me that she's finally using it because it's important.

"Hey, did you get this message from Michelle?" Winston asks as he unburies his head from the book he's reading. "Looks like it’s important."

Okay, both my gut
and
Winston are telling me that this is something important. I get up from the couch, acknowledging that this nap just isn't going to happen, and grab my bag. Winston closes his book and does the same, and we both head for the door.

"What do you think it could be?" Winston asks as he walks alongside me, looking around beforehand to make sure we're out of range from any eavesdroppers.

"I'm not sure. I checked all the news I could find on my phone but couldn't find anything out of the ordinary happening really. Something about a teleporter getting himself stuck on top of the antenna of some skyscraper in Dubai, but other than that, it seems pretty quiet. I tried calling my brother to see if he'd heard anything that hadn't been reported yet, but I couldn't get through. Usually that means he's busy, so maybe there’s something big going on."

"Either way, I guess we'll find out pretty soon."

"What are you guys talking about?" Ellie asks from behind us, so close to our ears that it makes both of us jump.

"Ellie, what are you doing? Didn't Michelle already warn you about not using your abilities on campus, especially when you're using them to startle nice people like us?" Winston asks her.

"Relax, dummy. I didn't use my powers to sneak up on you. I saw you coming and hid behind that statue over there," she says, gesturing to a statue of a frog, the unfortunate mascot of our school. "Do you guys know what this is about?"

"We were just discussing that before you scared the two of us half to death. No, we don't," I say.

"Jeez, give it a rest already. Some big tough heroes you guys are, practically afraid of your own shadows," Ellie says, giving Winston a jab in his side, causing him to flinch again.

"After you," I say to Ellie as I hold the door open to the Blair Building.

The three of us walk down the empty hallway toward our normal classroom-slash-elevator. Outside the door, there are a few others waiting. I ask them why they aren't inside yet and learn that Michelle wanted them to wait for the rest of us before allowing the elevator down. Whatever it is she wants to tell us, she wants us to all learn about it together.

The ride down to the training area is tense. It can take a little while, so usually people find a place to sit at one of the desks, but not today. Winston is pacing back and forth at the front of the classroom while most of the rest of us stand. We make it past the halfway point, and I can hear the secondary elevator moving out of its resting position to return to the ground floor. Once we're past it, our elevator accelerates its descent.

When we reach the training area and exit the elevator, we see that the halls down here are empty. That's not completely surprising considering there's no training regularly scheduled at this time, but it's still a little eerie. Down the hall, in the distance, I can hear two voices having an argument. Even from this far away I can pick them out as Michelle’s and Midnight’s. They must hear our collective footsteps because the arguing quiets down as we get closer to the briefing room. Michelle steps outside before we reach the door. The stony look on her face doesn't give me hope or fear about what we're about to learn.

"Come in, everyone," she says as she steps aside from the doorway to make room for us to pass. Midnight has his back to the doorway and is reaffixing his cowl. He almost never takes it off, especially here, where only Michelle and I know his identity. When he does, it's usually serious.

I almost don't notice at first, but all the way in the back of the room, sitting in one of the standard school-style desk-chair combos is Iris. I consider walking to the back of the room and sitting next to her, but the look in her eyes tells me that's a bad idea. There's anger. It's not directed at me, that much I can tell, but it's intense enough that some will undoubtedly spill over onto whoever makes the mistake of trying to talk to her right now.

We find our seats, and Michelle reenters the classroom, closing the door tightly behind her even though there's no one else down here but us, and it's unlikely anyone else is going to accidentally stumble on us a mile beneath the earth.

"Thanks for coming so quickly, everyone. It's important that all of you have time off to rest and do whatever normal things people your age do nowadays, so I hope you understand the circumstances it takes to call you are very serious," Michelle says.

She moves to the front of the room and picks up a remote. Midnight stands with his arms crossed near the door, watching. The screen in the front where a white board would normally be flickers on. On the screen is what looks like a map of Bay View City. It isn't until a plane flies over it that I realize the image is live.

"It hasn't exactly been public knowledge, but we've had a satellite positioned over Bay View City for some time now to monitor the situation there. As you all know, Alpha Team has declared themselves protectors of the city and forbidden any other metahumans within the city limits. This has limited our ability to monitor activity on the ground, but luckily, we do still have some active operatives in the city. This morning we received word from one of those operatives that The Blanks, a vigilante gang who also opposes metahuman activity, have been responsible for a string of disappearances over the last twelve hours. From our analysis, we believe these abductions are connected and that the Alphas are behind them in some way."

"What makes you say that?" Winston asks.

"I was just about to get to that. The reason we believe Alpha Team is involved is because all of the missing people have some tie or connection to the metahuman community. They are either business connections, demonstrated metahuman sympathizers, or have ties to the press," Michelle says.

She looks directly at me when she says that last part, and without having to say a word, I know why. It's Derrick. They have him.