Meta (Book 3): Rise of The Circle (29 page)

K
eane's proposal
relies on him using his powers to control the civilians on the ground and evacuate the city before we go in. With one person controlling everyone, the evacuation can happen incredibly fast. No traffic jams, no pushing and shoving, just a nice orderly line over the bridge and out of harm's way.

Michelle has doubts as to whether Keane is powerful enough to actually pull something like that off, but Midnight believes he is. What Midnight isn't a hundred percent sold on is Keane not having ulterior motives. He lays out his suspicions to Keane directly in front of the entire group, stating that there's no room for any hidden hesitations or doubts. If someone has a problem with any of this, there won't be another chance to speak up.

"I completely understand your ... hesitation, Midnight. All I can offer you as evidence that I'm a man of my word are my past actions."

"You mean like when you used mind control to dupe your colleagues into making lopsided business deals with you or when you paid another metahuman to break you out of prison?"

"Both fair points. In my defense, you have no idea who the men and women I took that money from were actually like. Behind closed doors, they were the kind of monsters who would make your stomach turn. The wealth and power they wielded makes the Alphas look like preschoolers. There are a lot of things you can buy when you're wealthy and a lot of things you're willing to do to become even wealthier. At a certain point, anyone will look the other way if the price is right.

"And as per my escape, I did what was necessary, and I stand behind that. Can any of you say that you would happily sit locked in a cell while your city was overrun by fascists, even though you knew you could do something to stop it? I can answer that question for you: no, you wouldn't. And I admire that. There's a reason why I came to this group with my idea. We may not see eye to eye on everything, but we all would do whatever it takes to ensure the safety of our city. You'll all be breaking the law just by entering Bay View City. How does that make you that much different from me?

"Despite how desperately some of you would like to categorize me as a criminal or a villain, I'm afraid the real world just isn't that simple. You can't just put me in a box so it's easier for you to classify me. It's your right to hold an opinion, and I understand why many of you see me as something less than yourselves, but that doesn't make me a monster."

Everyone in the room is silent.

"If someone has a better idea of how to get everyone else out of the way, I'm all ears," I say.

The room remains silent.

"All right then. That part's taken care of. Now we just have to figure out how we actually beat them," I say.

"The key is separating them," Midnight says from the back of the room as he walks forward to join the rest of the group sitting at the table overlaid with a three-dimensional hologram of Bay View City. "Their metabands are different from all the others, correct? There must be a reason why they're more powerful. We know that all the metabands on Earth are connected to each other. When their metabands bonded to their DNA, it happened in the midst of a nuclear explosion. That nuclear reaction must be what caused the change. Up until now, it'd been assumed that the reaction simply supercharged their metabands to levels previously unseen. The problem with that hypothesis is that's not really how metabands work. You cannot simply create more energy out of energy that didn't previously exist."

"How do you know so much about metabands?" Winston asks.

"Just trust him," I answer.

"The metabands that Alpha Team use aren't more powerful; they're simply connected to each other in a unique way. We know that their previous attempt to destroy Connor's metabands was intended to be self-serving. If Omni's bands had been destroyed, his powers, along with the powers of every metahuman who came after him, would have vanished, but Alpha Team wouldn't have been affected. That's because their energy remains in its own separate loop between the five of them."

"That explains why they’re trying to take down other metahumans. They know that with even just a small number of metabands destroyed, most of the rest will stop working, especially if they can get to the earliest people to receive their powers, like me," I say.

"That's not all. I've been watching Alpha Team very closely, and I have another hypothesis that explains why we rarely see them together as a group," Midnight says.

"Well that's easy. If their metabands are all connected, then it'd make sense for them to never be all in the same place at the same time. That would minimize the chances of them all being killed in the same strike," Ellie says.

"That's part of it, but we've seen them act together. They took down Silver Island as a unit, but since then, no one has seen them together, especially not in combat. I believe the reason for this is that they're able to transfer their energy between each other," Midnight says.

"So they're sharing it?" Michelle asks.

"Not exactly. Think of it more like a pool they can all draw from, but when only one of them is drawing power from the pool, it increases that individual's powers exponentially."

"What does that mean?" Winston asks. Midnight looks like he's getting tired of being asked so many questions, and his ire falls on Winston just because he's the last one to have asked. "What? Sorry if I've slept through a few math classes because I've been stuck down here all night."

"It means that when one of them takes power from the others, it's not just the sum of the power added together; it's multiplied."

"So if one of them is taking the power of three, it's like that power gets multiplied by itself."

"And that explains not only how Charlie can seem so much more powerful. It also explains why we rarely see them all fighting at the same time. When Charlie is using their powers, the rest are in the tower, hidden and protected since they're little more than just human at that point."

"So that's when we hit them. We lure Charlie out and go after the others while they're powerless!" Ellie stands up in excitement at the idea.

"That won't work," Midnight says, instantly deflating Ellie's enthusiasm. "Taking down the others while the power is focused inside of Charlie won't change anything since he'll still have all of their power.

“What we need to do is overwhelm them. Force all five to come out fighting so their powers aren't pooled into one unstoppable metahuman anymore. If my predictions are correct, the balance of power is something that they all have control over, meaning that one of them can't simply override the others to take all of the power without the others allowing it. The power has to be relinquished before one of them can take it. That's why Charlie holds the majority of the power most of the time. He was the leader of their squad before all of this, and so he's kept the natural position of leader now as well.

“But they're all still fighters. None of them will lie down and accept defeat just to give someone else their powers. We separate them, beat them until their powers reach reserve levels, and then detain them using Agency restraints."

"It sounds pretty easy. Why hasn't someone tried this before?" I ask.

"Few others understand how their powers really work, which is obviously intentional on their part. They maintain the illusion that they all have the power of a hundred metahumans and no one dares mess with them.

“But even if someone else did figure it out, there's another reason why no one has tried this yet. It's what makes it risky for us too, and that's the timing. If we don't hit all of them equally as hard in the same timeframe, then they'll be able to transfer their powers away before they hit reserve levels. That's not even taking into account the risk that if one of us doesn't succeed in taking down our target, their powers will be up for grabs for the others. All it takes is one miss on our part and that Alpha Team member will be able to transfer his power to one of the others, who will then easily be able to beat whichever one of us he's up against and so on like dominos until they've won."

"And we're all dead."

"Presumably, yes."

Silence falls over the room again and a few take a long, deep exhale, letting the full gravity of what we're about to try fall on them. There's a million different ways this can all go wrong, and any one of them is enough to take all of us with it.

M
idnight enters
the room and the side conversations quickly come to a halt. We've all been waiting for him for over an hour. Some passed the time by sleeping, trying to get in a nap to make up for the rest of the week's lost sleep. Others spent the time training, either running laps around the hundred-mile track or using the heavy lifting room.

Everyone avoids the casualty-prevention room. It's usually one of the busier rooms, and one that the staff encourages us to spend the most time in, but if all goes as planned tonight, we won't need to save anyone. If all goes as planned, our only job will be taking down Alpha Team. If we fail that, then saving innocent lives is going to be next to impossible.

I spend most of the time pacing. It frustrates me that I'm not invited into the planning. A few months ago, I was the most powerful person on earth, so it's hard not to feel sidelined as “just a kid” right now, even if my powers aren't where they once were.

"Nerves?" Iris asks me.

"A few," I reply.

"That's good. You need some of those. Keep you on your toes," she says back.

"What about you?" I ask.

"I don't get nervous."

"Not even for something as big as this?"

"It's no bigger or smaller than anything else we've done before."

"Yes, it is."

"No, it's not. Not when you consider that every day any of us are out there could be our last. Or could be the last for someone who has the misfortune of standing around taking pictures with their phone on the wrong street corner."

"I guess I never thought of it that way."

"Probably for the best. Might not be the healthiest way to go about trying to live your life."

There's a pause while I consider if I should say what I really want to or not. Before I can say anything, Iris seems to read my mind and says it for me instead.

"Midnight told you about who I really am, didn't he?" she asks.

"Yeah, he did."

"And he told you about who you really are too?"

"I'm always who I've been. What Midnight told me about my parents doesn't change who I am. You shouldn't let it change who you are either."

"That's easy for you to say. Your parents were heroes. The world practically worshiped them. My father was a monster that brought nothing into this world but pain and fear."

"That's not true. He brought you into this world too, and you've saved more lives than you can keep count of."

Iris is quiet, working hard to maintain her exterior and avoid showing anything even resembling an emotion.

"Why don't you hate me?" she asks.

"Why would I hate you?"

"My father killed both of your parents. I almost killed you while at the same time making the world a much more dangerous place by letting so many of these monsters out."

"What your father did isn't what you did. And you didn't do those other things, not really. That wasn't you," I say, my eyes wandering subconsciously toward Keane.

He's sitting in a chair in the corner, reading a book and drinking a cup of tea as though he doesn't have a problem in the world. I don't think I've ever been as relaxed in my life as Keane is right now, a short time before we go into a fight that will put potentially millions of lives at risk. Just seeing him sitting like that, so calm when he's mostly the reason why we're all in this mess, begins to make my blood boil. I move to take a step in his direction, not even sure what I'm going to do or say, when the door opens. The others who had taken a break outside, along with Michelle and Midnight, return to the room.

"All right, everyone. Please take a seat," Michelle begins. "We have a lot of information to disseminate and not a whole lot of time to do it."

She moves to the front of the room as Midnight makes his way to the back, where he prefers standing to sitting and listening to talking. Michelle taps a few buttons on the screen of her tablet. The lights in the room fade down and the screen at the front is illuminated with a map of the world.

"We have intelligence from Bay View City that suggests Alpha Team is gearing up for a public broadcast. While we don’t have any specific intelligence about the content of this broadcast, the timing is concerning. With the spate of recent missing journalists and metahuman sympathizers, along with the late hour of this broadcast, we have reason to believe that they may be planning a public demonstration of their power."

"What does that mean?" Winston asks.

"It could mean a few different things, but the one we are obviously most concerned about would be a public form of capital punishment to set an example for the rest of the world."

"Like a beating?"

"Like an execution."

The room quickly fills with murmurs and talk. The blood in my veins turns cold.

"Everyone, please. I understand that there are a lot of emotions in the room, but I need to ask you to put those aside. We have nothing to suggest that anything drastic has taken place yet, and if we do our jobs correctly, tonight we have the potential to end this once and for all. But that can only happen if everyone, and I mean everyone"—Michelle glances at Keane—"has their heads in the game and their hearts in their back pockets for now.

"We’ll be launching a coordinated, five-sided attack against Alpha Team this evening before the broadcast is scheduled to occur. The purpose of this five-sided attack is to divide and separate the members of Alpha Team for the purpose of neutralizing them independently without human casualties, as well as preventing the transference of power from one to the next. From our understanding of their abilities, relative distance may play a significant role in the ability for one member to transfer their power to another. Even if this is inaccurate, we believe it will create a substantial tactical advantage if this unit is broken apart.