Meta (Book 3): Rise of The Circle (32 page)

"You've got that right."

"Funny. That's very funny. All right then," Charlie says as he begins rising into the air, still sitting with his legs crossed comfortably in front of him. "I think that's probably enough discussion. These people aren't tuning in to watch a debate. They're tuning in to see a bloodbath. That's the only way they'll pay attention and the only way they'll learn. Time to make an example out of you. Nothing personal, I hope you understand that."

The air around Charlie starts visibly vibrating around him.

"Get out of there, Connor!" Midnight yells into my earpiece, but there's nowhere to go. If I run, he'll just follow. He won't stop until he's gotten what he wants: an example for the rest of the world to see.

S
uddenly
, a single word echoes through the concrete canyons of downtown Bay View City, a single word coming from a million mouths at the same time.

"Stop."

Charlie holds back his fist, hesitating momentarily. He can see the look of confusion on my face and knows that it's not a trick, or at least, not a trick that I'm any part of. The momentary truce is just long enough for me to break free from his grip and gain some safe distance. If he's going to kill me, I want to at least see it coming.

Both of us scan the skyline, looking for the source of the word, and we both find it. Along the rooftops of buildings throughout the city, there are thousands and thousands of people crowded, all lined up in formation, dangerously close to each other and to the edges of their respective buildings.

"Surrender at once or watch your city kill itself, one person at a time," the unified voice says.

Keane.

"What are you doing, Keane?" I yell into the night sky.

"I'm doing what neither of you have the courage to. I'm ending this, once and for all. Remove your metabands and surrender or people start dying," the bodies reply in unison.

Charlie laughs.

"You really think I care if you kill a few innocent civilians? Collateral damage. The cost of doing business. They won't be the first civilians killed by metahumans, and if people like me were ever to surrender to people like you, they certainly wouldn't be the last," Charlie announces as he addresses the city of mindless drones.

"So be it," they reply.

Without hesitation, the first line of people closest to the edge all take a step forward and all begin their long fall to the street below.

Without thought, I dive toward the nearest building, pulling my arms in close to my body as I pick up speed. My eyes are focused on the falling bodies closest to me.

I collide into the first as gently as possible and still almost snap his neck from the whiplash. Feet first, I continue my flight into the nearest window of the same building, smashing it into a million pieces. Before the last shards have fallen, I have the man I caught safely sprawled out across the office carpeting before I rocket back out of the window.

I'm diving even faster this time, struggling to reach the next victim before she reaches the asphalt below. I grab her just in time, less than fifty feet above the street below, and wince, expecting to hear the sickening thud of the others I couldn't reach as they hit the ground, but the sound doesn't come.

Hesitantly, I turn my head to see what's happened. The street below me flexes and pulsates as person after person falls into it and crosses the street. I see the reason. Winston is standing with his arms outstretched, concentrating. He's changing the molecular structure of the street itself, softening it to save the would-be victims falling from the sky.

"Omni, Winston's not going to be able to hold that up for long. You've got to find Keane and take him down, now!" Midnight says through the earpiece.

I briefly scan the sky for Charlie, even if he's secondary to my worries at this exact second. As I place the woman I caught onto the cushy concrete below, Iris teleports in front of me.

"There's no time," she says as she reaches out for my hands before we instantly materialize in what looks like an abandoned subway station. It's completely empty, except for a television displaying the action above from a live drone feed and Keane.

"We had a deal, Keane. Let go of them!" I scream as I run toward him.

"Not one more step there, Mr. Connolly, unless you want to see how many people it takes to break your friend's neat little trick. I'm guessing another row or two is all it will take before it'll be impossible to keep the bodies from piling up on themselves. Not much you'll be able to do then, unless Winston wants to start turning the people themselves into jelly, which I strongly advise against if they ever want to live a full life after this is over with."

"Why are you doing this?" I plead.

"To prove that I can to him," Keane says, gesturing toward an unseen Charlie, "and to you. To show everyone that no matter what they think they can do to contain us, put us in little locked boxes that they throw away the keys for, it won't matter. We're what's next, and there's no way to stop the inevitable.

"I think I have a way to show you exactly what I mean. Iris here is a little too immune to my effects now, especially if I want to make sure I'm able to devote enough of my attention to keeping all those people balanced up there.

"But you, Omni. You're a bit of a different story, aren't you? Let's take a little root around inside that head of yours, shall we?"

It feels like a light switch being flicked. That's how fast it happens. In an instant, I'm no longer the driver of my own body; I'm merely a passenger.

"All right, Mr. Connolly, now that you're nice and comfortable, what do you say we go have some fun?"

I try to move my arms, but it's like they belong to someone else. My eyes won't even listen to me. I can't move them or focus them on what I want to. I try to turn my head to look to Iris for help, hoping that she understands what's going on and can stop it, but it's no use. Keane is in complete and total control.

"Why don't we start by having you take flight. Straight up ought to be the quickest way out of here and back into the fray, don't you think?" Keane asks.

Suddenly, my view of Keane is obstructed. My focus remains on where he stands, but there is a blurry body in front of me now, and it's clad in purple.

I wait for Keane to speak, but no words come. Slowly, I can start to feel the extremities of my body, like when your leg falls asleep and then wakes back up as the blood rushes back in. Keane is losing control, and when the person in front of him steps aside, I understand why.

Iris teleported, just a short distance, less than ten feet. Where she teleported from and the distance isn't important, though. It's where exactly she teleported to that is.

In a flash, she disappeared momentarily before reappearing instantly behind Keane, and I can see what she's done.

There's horror in Keane's eyes as he tries to make sense of the sensation he's feeling, but a moment later, his eyes and hands simultaneously find the cause for concern: a gaping hole straight through his chest. Through it, I can see Iris standing on the other side of him, her right arm covered in blood.

Keane drops to his knees and his eyes close. Tears begin to roll down Iris's white eyes, but her voice shows no sign of sadness.

"I had to, Connor. He was going to use you the same way he used me. He was going to use you to kill. I couldn't let that happen. I just couldn't," she says.

I look back down at Keane, his eyes wide open and unfocused. There's no hope for him.

"There could have been another way, Iris."

"But there wasn't. He's been given chance after chance and we haven't learned. No one has learned. I needed to end this. Not just for me, for everyone. He's not going to hurt anyone ever again. There's nothing you can do now for him. Go stop Charlie."

I look once more at Keane, the life draining from his eyes, before looking back at Iris. He deserved to die, but that's not for people like us to decide. Once we start doing that, we're no different than them.

"I can teleport you back out of here," Iris says.

"I got it," I reply.

"What are you going to do? Blast up through a hundred feet of earth and city infrastructure just because you're mad at me? This isn't your city to destroy either."

"Fine."

Iris reaches out to touch my arm and, in an instant, we're back above the city as though we never left.

I spin in a circle, quickly trying to pin down Charlie’s location. I'm glad to see the city is still standing considering how long I was gone. The rooftops are already clearing out of all the people who were under Keane's control as they all retreat back into the relative safety of their office buildings and apartments.

Nearly a mile away from where Iris and I are hovering, I spot the rest of the metahumans from the academy on the street.

"There," I say to Iris before diving through the city toward them. She quickly follows. We land and find a group of confused-looking metas and Sarah, still wearing Midnight's, sorry,
her
mechanized armor.

"What happened?" I ask.

"I'm not sure," Winston says. "One minute we're duking it out with Charlie, holding our own, when all of a sudden, he just ups and takes off on us."

"I'm telling you, he retreated. He got his ass handed to him, saw the writing on the wall, and decided to take off instead of hanging around to face the music after we beat him into submission," Ellie says.

Iris and I trade concerned looks.

"No. Charlie wouldn't quit, not like that. He'd rather go down fighting than run. He can't rally people around the idea that we're all dangerous monsters if he looks afraid of us himself. It doesn't make sense," I say.

My radio earpiece clicks on. At first all I hear is static and no talking. Almost everyone on this channel is here already, everyone except Michelle and Midnight.

"Omni," Midnight says through my earpiece, "we've got a problem."

I step back from the rest of the group who are all now bickering and arguing over what to do next and place my hand up against my ear to try to make sure I can hear him clearly.

"Where are you?" I ask.

"Above you."

I look up but see nothing except for the clear night sky.

"You're not going to be able to see me, even with your vision. I'm miles up in my aircraft. There isn't much time."

"Time?"

"Charlie. He flew past my plane and into the stratosphere approximately ninety seconds ago."

"So he is running away?"

"No. I'm tracking his telemetry. He's outside Earth's gravitational pull and heading for the moon."

"Why would he do that?"

"He's going to try to use it to gain speed. If he can catapult around the moon and back toward Earth, he'll be traveling impossibly fast. Fast enough that his impact could cause an extinction-level event."

"Wait. Slow down. I don't understand."

"I can't slow down, Connor. There's no time. If Charlie returns into Earth's atmosphere at the speed he's traveling, he's going to create a crater the size of the west coast of the United States."

"What do we do? How do we stop him?"

"He's too powerful. Even that strong of a collision might not be enough to kill him. At this point, I don't think he even cares about that. He's up against a wall, and this is the only way he sees out."

"So he's just going to kill everyone on the planet because he lost?"

I'm talking loudly enough that the rest of the group is starting to turn their attention toward me. They murmur back and forth to each other, trying to figure out the other end of the conversation that they can't hear.

"There's one chance, Connor, and I wouldn't even suggest it if it weren't for the fact that we're all dead in a few minutes anyway."

"What is it?"

"Your metabands. They're damaged."

"I know that."

"Listen for a minute. Your metabands are damaged. Metabands aren't supposed to
be
damaged. They were built to withstand literally anything. The reason they were built this way was to protect their power source from ever escaping their confines. Just like how a nuclear power plant has hundreds of safeguards to prevent any type of breach, except times a thousand.

"When the bands, your parents, and I were brought back to this time, it was due to an anomaly we never could have predicted. The bands were damaged in a way they hadn't been designed against. That's what allowed them to tap into the massive amounts of power that they have now. Charlie’s bands are unique because they were able to absorb the energy from the nuclear bomb that was meant to destroy them. Your bands, in their damaged state, are open to outside energy now in a similar way."

"I don't understand."

"Your bands can absorb energy the same way Alpha Team’s were able to during the explosion."

"That's great, but there's not exactly a nuclear bomb nearby."

"There's not. There's something better. Something with even more energy."

My mind works to figure out what he's getting at when I look up and realize: the other members of the Circle. Their combined energy is greater than any single source of power anywhere in the world.

"Are you getting it yet?" Midnight asks.

"Them. I can take their powers."

"That's my belief, but these bands weren't built for that. The damage will prevent the internal safety systems from blocking the energy input, but you'll be highly unstable."

"The world's about to end anyway. Unstable sounds like a better plan than anything else on the table. How do I do it? Just concentrate or something? That's how I'm able to fly or do anything else with them."

"No, you'll need to tell them to manually enter recharge mode."

"How?"

"By speaking it out loud into either of the bands."

"What? Are you kidding me? These things had voice commands the whole time, and I'm just finding out now?"

"There isn't time for joking around, Connor."

"There's not going to be any time for anything soon so I might as well get it out while I can."

I look down at my shining, cracked silver metabands for what I assume will be the last time. They haven't let me down yet, and I hope they don't now.

"Initiate manual charge," I say.

The others look at me with confusion on their faces when my metabands suddenly start pulsating with a soft white light.

"What are you doing?" Iris asks.

"Charlie didn't quit. He's just stepped back to get a running start. He's catapulting himself around the moon as we speak and planning to slam himself into the city, destroying the entire planet in the process. I might be able to stop him, but I need all the power I can get."

"What do we need to do?" Winston asks.

"They'll need to have physical contact between their metabands and yours for the exchange to work. Once the circuit is complete, the energy should flow into your bands automatically," Midnight says, having heard Winston's question through my microphone.