Meta (13 page)

  
For the first time in what seems like a very long time, I'm just enjoying being sixteen and not having the responsibility of being a meta who doesn't even know fully how to control his own powers hanging over him. Jim and I become close again and start hanging out more frequently, now that I have less to hide. Sarah starts spending more of her breaks hanging out with me too. She even helps me pick up some of the garbage sometimes! If that isn't maybe, kinda, sorta, possibly 'like', than I don't know what is.

  
She also becomes the first person in a very long time that seems to have the courage to actually ask about my parents. It happens one day, completely out of the blue, as we're walking along the beach. Me picking up ketchup covered napkins out of the sand, and her just asking. There's hesitation, but no pretense.

  
"So if you don't want to talk about it, I totally understand..,", she starts, and I already know what she's going to ask, "...but since I don't really know, I thought it would be better to ask you than assume: what exactly happened with your parents?"

  
I tell her about how Mom had arranged to meet Dad that afternoon for lunch. Jones' last attacks had occurred in Skyville so most in Empire City felt a false sense of security. That safety didn't last through the appetizers though. Jones attacked the building they were in. His powers had multiplied. Somehow, he had harnessed a power not seen in any of the metahumans before: the power to release energy directly from his metabands. Later, some suspected he had tampered with the bracelets in some way, allowing them to release the raw power they held directly from its source. Some believed that's what actually killed Jones in the end. That this power was simply too strong for him. Or that his lack of super-ego was what allowed him to fully tap into the power of the bracelets in the first place, something which any sane person would never release.

  
Regardless of how it happened, it was this release that cut a two foot section out of the first floor of the building my parents were in. Ironically, if he had cut faster the engineering experts suspect that the building would have simply dropped the two feet with little damage. Like a magician pulling the tablecloth out from under a table full of place settings. But instead, the slow blast caused the building to topple, right into the building across the street, destroying both. They were the first two of over fifty buildings that would be destroyed that day.

  
The rest of the story she already knew, since it was a story the entire world knew. The Governor had responded within minutes, but it was too late. So much damage had already been dealt. Some blamed him for much of the damage. While the heat blasts from Jones caused a majority of the damage, later studies showed that a lot of the carnage also came from Jones and The Governor's battle. Two straight hours of repeatedly throwing each other through buildings certainly couldn't have helped.

  
The Governor tried repeatedly to move the battle away from the city. He would throw Jones seemingly half way around the world, only to have him return to the exact same block, determined on the total destruction of Empire City. The final time The Governor grabbed Jones and took off into space, we thought we might never see either of them again. They were gone for over an hour before the warnings came. Emergency systems around the world wailed, warning everyone within hearing distance to head indoors. Shield their eyes. And under no circumstances look at the sun. To this day, everyone in the western hemisphere remembers where they were during "The Flash". It was unavoidable. The blast of heat was felt around the world.

  
The Governor had thrown Jones into the sun, destroying his bracelets and killing him. Releasing the power source responsible for the bracelets themselves. The power source that was stronger than anything else the world had ever known, and one which is still not understood to this day.

  
The Governor returned to Earth two hours later, crashing into a desert in the Middle East. At least they assume it was The Governor. The body was so badly mangled there was no way to ever really even know for sure. His metabands were never found.

  
I'm so lost in telling the story, that I don't even notice Sarah's eyes have begun welling up with tears. I stop and apologize.

  
"What are you apologizing to me for?" she says.

  
"Because I upset you. Sorry. I didn't mean to," I say.

  
"No, don't ever apologize for that. I'm sorry that that happened to you. I can't even imagine what it's been like," she says, wiping her eyes and regaining her composure.

  
"Thanks," I say, because I don't know what else to.

  
She looks at me for a long moment and nothing is said. Usually, I'm incredibly awkward during these types of breaks in conversation, but there's something about her, something about her eyes, that puts me at ease with the quiet. It's something I haven't felt before, but it's nice.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It's a full week before I start to get worried that I haven't heard from Midnight at all. No sightings of him on the news either, although that isn't really that unusual, considering his predilection for staying out of the spotlight.

  
There are a handful of incidents involving The Controller's "creations" across the rest of the country, always in cities where metas have started popping up. While there's a lot of general mayhem when these happen, there's minimal collateral damage, meaning few, if any civilians wind up getting hurt. And the metas always win. There's something suspicious about all of it. It feels like The Controller is just testing the rest of us. Finding out what our strengths and weaknesses are, and making sure that there's an audience. If I've figured this out, I'm sure that Midnight has already done the same.

  
I wake up on Thursday morning and jump out of bed before I realize that I actually have the day off. A day off. I haven't had an actual, honest to God, nothing to do
at all,
day off in what feels like forever, so naturally that means I have no idea what to do with myself and start going crazy.

  
Derrick is actually at the office for a change so I have the house entirely to myself. Jim's working today so he won't be around. It's been over a week since I've heard from Midnight, and it doesn't seem he'd be interested in spending a day off going to the movie theater with me, anyway.

  
I get out of bed and take a shower then pour myself a bowl of cereal and park in front of the TV.

  
TV. It seems like I haven't had time to even watch TV lately. I start flipping through the channels. The cable news networks, that focused exclusively on covering metas during the first meta wave all those years ago, have flipped their formats back for the most part. From what everyone can tell so far, the number of new metas is still relatively low, nowhere near the heights of the first meta rising. I wonder how many more there might be that are just flying under the radar, though. After The Battle a lot of people stopped idolizing all things meta and started becoming very suspicious of humans that possessed powers strong enough to nearly level an entire city.

  
Along with the possibility that many of the new metas are staying hidden right now, there's also the fact that
bad
metas are already emerging. Last time it wasn't for a while before anyone that could be considered a 'villain' appeared. There were plenty of opportunists and metas that pledged allegiance to nothing but the almighty dollar. Mercenaries who worked for whatever government, corporation or organized criminals paid the highest amount. While this was looked down upon by the general population, for the most part, it didn't affect their day-to-day lives. A meta taking out a mob boss isn't scary. What's scary is when a certified maniac like Jones appears and has no motivation other than chaos. It's the randomness that scares people. When they can't understand someone's motivations.

  
The news covers Blue Lightning's latest 'heroics', if you can call them that. Blue Lightning is apparently the name that the meta who showed up at Electrotown has decided to take on. He responded to a domestic abuse situation outside the city where the husband was threatening the wife with a hunting knife. She had barricaded herself inside the bathroom and called 911. Unfortunately for the husband Blue Lighting got there before any of the police had a chance. The wife never even saw him apparently. Later when they were pulling her out of the bathroom she told them that all she heard was her husband, who had been yelling and screaming, banging on the door, suddenly become eerily quiet.

  
He'd been stabbed over two hundred times. At some point, the coroner stopped counting because it really didn't matter. Only a meta could have done that so quickly. On the news, they had two experts debating the case. Some called Blue Lightning a hero. The husband had put his wife in the hospital before, and it was only a matter of time before he went far enough to kill her. The police had been called more than a few times, but each time they responded, the wife refused to press charges, likely out of fear of future retaliation. Some of the talking heads on the TV argued that Blue Lightning simply delivered what the husband had coming to him.

  
But what gave him the right to make that decision? He posted a defense of his actions on his blog, claiming that the murder happened in self-defense. That the husband turned the knife on him, after he asked him to drop it, and he had no choice but to defend himself. Two hundred plus times, apparently. He chalked it up to his super-speed simply getting the best of him and not realizing just how many wounds he'd inflicted until it was over. For that he apologized, but he also made it clear that he had no intentions of turning himself in.

  
There was also a small news story about the purple and black costumed female meta with the glowing eyes that I'd seen saving people from a burning building last week on Derrick's computer. The one I went to find the night Midnight decided to rearrange my jawline.

  
Apparently, her name is Iris. The latest news story reported she'd saved another life when she responded to the scene of a very bad drunk driving accident. The drunk was fine, since that always seems to be the case, but the other driver was in critical condition. Iris was the first to respond to the scene, but most importantly, she was able to teleport herself and the injured woman to a hospital instantly.

  
While teleportation was a somewhat common ability during the last 'Age of Metas' (which I learn from the news is what it's now being called), Iris is the only other new meta, besides myself, that I've seen demonstrate the ability so far. I also take note that she seems focused more on helping others than fighting or even preventing crimes. It's possible she lacks enhanced strength, or that she's physically vulnerable despite her other powers, but for some reason I doubt it. Her actions seem very deliberate. Even if she did lack those other powers, she's putting herself in harm's way regardless, especially considering the uptick in The Controller's attacks.

  
Stories about these attacks are what takes up probably about fifty minutes of the hour's worth of meta news that I watch. Authorities and other metas were no closer to discovering who he actually is, or even where he was based out of. Some speculated that the closer he was, the larger and more intense the monsters he could create were. The only problem with this theory is that the monsters he creates seem to be getting larger and more dangerous every time they appear, period.

  
Something else important had also changed: they have begun to kill. In Springfield, a rhino-like monster appeared during a shoot-out between police and a local gang. A new meta, no one had seen before, appeared but refused to engage the monster in combat. Instead, he tried to talk to the monster. Reason with it. Or at least reason with The Controller through the mental link between the two. This did not go well.

  
Even after the rhino creature repeatedly smashed and gored the meta, he still refused to fight. That's when the monster turned its sights on the police, gang members and bystanders. In total, the beast killed twenty-two people before the injured meta was finally able to put it down with what seemed like an uncontrollable blast of heat vision.

  
That injured meta ran off and has not been seen since.

  
The other incident occurred during a house fire in Los Gatos. As the first responders arrived at the scene, a monster standing twelve feet tall, and made of pure fire, emerged from the now destroyed building. It began throwing balls of fire at anything and everything in its path. A very young meta, even younger than me at least, was the first to arrive at the scene. He nobly attempted to fight the fire creature, but the monster was too strong, and the meta was too inexperienced to keep his protective shields up when the fighting became intense.

  
Icicle, a meta with the ability to control temperature saw the fight on the news and came as quickly as he could. He was able to freeze the air around the monster solid, turning it into nothingness. Unfortunately, he was too late to save the young, unnamed meta's life though. He suffered third degree burns over most of his body and died at the scene. Even his metabands couldn't heal the damage he sustained. It was the first time since the new metas started appearing, that one was killed. This scared people, and rightfully so. It scared me.

  
I go to Derrick's computer, sitting on the desk in his home office, with the intention of browsing through his bookmarks to find more information. One of the big meta forums was set as his homepage, so I didn't have to search too hard. After a while of falling down this rabbit hole, I find the link to The Controller's ViewNow channel.