Metawars: The Complete Series: Trance, Changeling, Tempest, Chimera (94 page)

Even if Teresa secured pardons for the residents of Manhattan, was this really the best place to settle? Yes, it was very defensible, and logically there was plenty of room. No one else would want to live here—which led to a good reason why this was a terrible place to settle. Would they ever be able to escape the ghosts of their violent past if they built their new life on top of a graveyard?

Hundreds of civilians had died during fights in the five boroughs before the mandatory evacuations went into effect. Dozens of Rangers and Banes had died here over the years, without counting the death toll that final day. Maybe the bodies were gone, but their ghosts lingered in the empty skyscrapers and abandoned subway tunnels.

Could they ever see this place as anything other than a prison? Could I?

I needed space to think, so I excused myself from the dining room and went back outside. Even though the playground was still within the guard perimeter, no one was there, which made it an ideal location for some alone time. Despite residual soreness from yesterday’s dunk in the pond, I climbed to the top of the iron jungle gym and settled on the bars. The elevation gave me a nice view of the treetops and, beyond those, the rising skeleton of Manhattan.

Thousands of abandoned buildings covered the island. They could be torn down, their materials repurposed. Meta powers would make the work fairly simple, and the designs of new accommodations shouldn’t be very hard to—
What am I doing?

I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands. I was actually sitting there planning a way to make this place hospitable in the long-run, and for what? For whom? When the hell had I changed my mind so completely about everything? This trip hadn’t turned out anything like I expected.

Exhibit A: Aaron Scott.

Until our New York excursion, the majority of our interactions had involved polite grunts and the occasional snarly comment over whose turn it was to load the dishwasher after a group meal. He was always King, the Changeling, the guy who “killed” four people and took over their lives and personalities. I looked at him and still saw the blank, faceless, hairless creature from that day at HQ when his sister blasted me through a window. He wasn’t real.

Somehow, in four days, he’d become a whole, real person I actually got along with and liked talking to. He was Aaron. He liked sweet stuff and wielded sarcasm just as deftly as I did, and he cared. Not about me (well, maybe), but he cared about others. Various parts of his personality salad had seasoned him with a hell of a lot of compassion I’d never have guessed was there.

“Ethan, I’m gay.”

We hadn’t had a chance to talk again since he dropped that bombshell, and it wasn’t exactly a topic I could bring up hours later in casual conversation without sounding completely stupid. “Remember when you told me you were gay, and I didn’t say anything? Well, I should have said, ‘Hey, me too,’ only I didn’t because I spend so much time ignoring that part of myself, and I’ve only ever told two people in my adult life and it never occurred to me to make you number three.”

Yeah, completely stupid. Even if it was true.

A shape bobbed through the trees, coming toward the playground from the direction of the Warren. My breath caught. Had I managed to conjure up Aaron for an inevitable, awkward conversation?

Sunlight glinted off a head of red hair, and my breath came out in an annoyed whistle. Jinx. I held tighter to the metal bars. He stopped at the edge of the play area and looked around. Spotted me at the top of the jungle gym. He came closer, walking with a stiff posture that said he meant business, while his speed suggested a casual stroll. Almost like he didn’t want to spook me.

Good call. I trusted him as far as I could throw him (without my powers).

Jinx leaned against the swing-set post and then didn’t seem to know what to do with his arms. He tried crossing them, then put his hands in his pants pockets. Finally he just let them hang by his sides. The awkwardness was revelatory—he was nervous.

“Is there any news on Andrew’s condition?” he asked once he’d quit fidgeting.

“Not that I’ve heard,” I replied. “Not since this morning. Warden Hudson might be able to get you an update.”

“The warden isn’t likely to do me any favors.” He stared at me, intent. Begging me not to make him ask.

For some reason I had mercy. “I can request an update.”

“Thank you. I’d appreciate that.”

He could have just as easily asked Teresa for a nonexistent update, which made me wonder if he had something else to say. Or admit to. The more I studied him, just a middle-aged man standing in a patch of sunlight, the more I saw the resemblance. More than just our hair and eye color, I saw myself in his jaw and eyebrows and in his physical build. Couldn’t he see it, too?

“Before I do you a favor, though,” I said, which got his full attention, “I want you to answer a question for me.”

He hesitated before nodding yes.

I went straight for the throat. “Why did you betray the Ranger Corps?”

Jinx didn’t seem surprised by my question, just sad. “It’s hard to explain.”

“Use small words and complete sentences.”

He paced from the swing set to the slide and then back again before resuming his previous position. “Back then, the Rangers were losing focus. They were becoming government pawns and media darlings, instead of what we were meant to be.”

“Criminals?”

“Humble.”

I stared. “Humble? What does that mean?”

“It means that as Metas, we possess incredible powers. And those powers come with an invisible deed of responsibility. The Rangers made us tools. The government paraded us around in our uniforms, made us spokespersons for various agencies, little more than propaganda, and when they were done with us, they put us back in our box to play with later. Rangers couldn’t rescue a cat from a tree without a MetaHuman Control Group agent’s say-so.”

His words weren’t small, but he did use complete sentences—I still didn’t understand. Nothing he said made sense when put against my own memories. Granted, I was thirteen when the Rangers officially ceased to exist, but surely I’d remember some of what Jinx was talking about.

Or did I? I recalled a few times when my mother went out with her Corps Unit to do what she called “the old song and dance.” Nothing criminal or disaster-related was ever reported around these calls, but I hadn’t questioned her job. Hadn’t questioned anything the adult Rangers were called to do.

“You’re thinking now,” Jinx said. “That’s good. You know I’m not lying or exaggerating.”

“I don’t know that, no. I was a kid, still two years out from joining a Unit. And my mother didn’t talk about work when she was home.”

“Patricia.” He said her name with such tenderness that I wanted to kick him in the balls. “She was beautiful. Had an incredible laugh. You look like her a bit.”

“Really? Because I think I kind of look like my father.”

Jinx swallowed hard. He studied the dirt for a moment, before lifting his head and looking me in the eye. “I regret leaving Patty. But she didn’t agree with my views on the Rangers, and I no longer agreed with hers. I didn’t set out to become a bad guy, Ethan, but I also couldn’t stay with the Rangers. And in that world, if you weren’t a voluntary Ranger, then you were an automatic Bane.”

“But that’s . . .” What? I couldn’t even finish my own sentence.

“That’s not what you were told?”

“No.”

“Big surprise. There’s a saying, Ethan. History is written by those who win.”

Apropos. Kind of. “I’d say we both lost the Meta War.”

“You’re right. All Metas lost. But the government won.”

The government who, according to Jinx, had treated the Rangers like personal dancing monkeys, and had declared any Meta who didn’t join the Rangers to be a bad guy. The government who, I knew for a fact, had lied to our faces about what had actually started the Meta War twenty years ago, who’d taken away our powers for fifteen years, and who’d had a fail-safe plan to murder all the prisoners in Manhattan.

A government who was probably secretly thrilled by the appearance of Humankind.

“My leaving the Rangers was never about betraying others,” Jinx said. “It was about not betraying myself and what I believed in. My deepest regret is leaving Patty, but she wouldn’t come with me when I asked.”

My hand jerked, and I almost lost my balance on the jungle gym bars. Mom and I never sat down and had a long talk about my father, or about why he’d left. She’d certainly never told me that he asked her to go with him. Not that she had any reason to tell me. She had believed in the Rangers and she died for that belief—just like hundreds of others.

“I’m surprised,” I said.

“By what?”

“I’d have thought your deepest regret was turning her water powers against her and causing her a long, painful death drowning in her own bodily fluids.”

He flinched. “A very different person did that. Jinx killed Fathom that day. He was an angry man trying to survive a battle. But I am sorry that I took her from you. You were too young to lose both of your parents.”

“Funny. Before she died, Mom told me that my father was alive and well.”

Jinx’s eyes widened briefly, then his entire face shuttered. He almost looked angry. “Why are you here, Ethan? What do you want?”

People kept asking me that question, and every day my answer changed. I wanted to look Jinx in the eye, and I’d done that. I had entertained ideas of killing him to satisfy a decades-old need for revenge, but I knew now I would never do that. I had not come here looking to bond with him, or to discover that the things I’d once believed about him weren’t entirely true. That maybe he wasn’t the evil villain I wanted him to be, the neat and simple murderer.

Nothing about this was neat and simple.

One thing I’d come looking for and received in spades—“Answers,” I said.

“And have you gotten your answers?”

“A lot of them. Trouble is, most answers just create a lot more questions.”

“That they do, son.”

Our eyes met and held for a moment. This might be as close as either of us would get to saying it, admitting to it, and that was okay. I didn’t need a father. And I had the answers I needed on this particular topic. He wasn’t Jinx now, any more than Simon was still Psystorm. Those identities had been left behind at Belvedere Castle when we all lost our powers.

“I should go,” I said. Instead of climbing, I gathered up enough wind to carry me down to the ground near Jin—McTaggert. “When I ask Warden Hudson for an update on Andrew, I’ll see about securing you permission to visit him.”

McTaggert jerked, startled. “You will?”

“Yes, I will. I’ll probably need to put my own ass on the line and take responsibility for you, so don’t fuck it up.”

His mouth worked, trying to form words. I’d apparently baffled him with my offer. “Why would you do that?”

“Because no son should ever feel abandoned by his father,” I said, and then walked away.

Fifteen

Field Trip

A
ndrew had a private room in the Children’s Ward, which had been cleared of visitors prior to my arrival with McTaggert and his newly acquired ankle monitoring bracelet. The few rooms with patients had hospital security guards posted outside, who gave us nasty glares on our way past. McTaggert ignored everyone, even the four armed prison guards accompanying us per Warden Hudson’s orders. For the first time since I met McTaggert, he seemed happily excited about something and I totally got why—he was going to see his son again.

A white-haired man in a lab coat met us outside Andrew’s room and gave both of us a stern glare. “You have thirty minutes to visit,” the doctor said gruffly. “Do not let him get agitated or too active. Keep him in bed. He may seem a bit groggy from his medication, but that’s to be expected.”

“He’ll make a full recovery?” McTaggert asked.

“I believe he will, yes. He was very lucky he got here when he did.”

A wash of pride warmed my chest and I fought back a smile. Andrew was going to be fine.

McTaggert pushed open the door, and I followed him inside. Andrew was sleeping in a railed bed, his red hair an amusing splash of color against the white sheets. Even his freckles stood out from his pale face and arms. The monitors behind the bed beeped a steady rhythm, announcing the continued life of my brother.

Even thinking it felt strange.

McTaggert made a soft noise, like a sigh, only deeper. He approached the bed and touched Andrew’s forehead. The boy leaned into the touch, wrinkled his face, then opened his eyes. Stared up in wonder and blinked hard, like he didn’t quite believe his father had come to see him.

“Daddy?” Andrew whispered.

“I’m here, Andy. Daddy’s here.”

The rough, choked edge to McTaggert’s voice had me backing quietly out of the room. Andrew was fine, and they needed to be alone. The four prison guards had taken positions—two inside the hospital room and two outside—and they didn’t give me a second glance when I walked down the hall to the private waiting room.

Before we left Manhattan, Teresa told me to take her cell phone with me in case of emergency. Maybe this didn’t qualify, but as I settled into an upholstered chair in the waiting room, my fingers dialed a phone number I hadn’t used in weeks.

The call seemed like it was heading straight for voice mail, and then a familiar voice picked up with a curious “Teresa?”

I smiled at a terrible ocean watercolor on the wall across the room. “No, it’s Ethan.”

“Hey!” Dahlia’s joy at hearing from me seemed to jump through the phone and grab hold of my heart. Then her tone got scared. “Oh my God, Ethan, are you okay? What’s going on?”

“I’m okay, Dal, I swear,” I replied.

“Is Aaron okay?”

“He’s fine. No one’s hurt.”
For a change.

“All right.” A pause. “Are you calling just to talk? Because you haven’t done that in a long time, you jerk.”

I laughed—a deep, genuine belly laugh—because she was so right. And she was calling me on it. “I’m sorry I’ve been such a jackass lately. Really sorry, Dal.”

“It’s okay. At least you’re a self-aware jackass.”

“This is true.”

And like that, we were back. I’d apologize better in person, but I heard forgiveness in her voice—as well as a lot of fatigue, which wasn’t surprising given current events. I tried to forget that Noah was there somewhere, probably trying to not listen. Sooner or later, I had to trust he’d keep his mouth shut, so I dove into the reason I called.

“I wanted to talk to you,” I said.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. Things are almost good, even, which is strange, given the circumstances.”

“Tell me.”

So I did. Everything from distancing myself from her after our adoption of Dr. Kinsey and the Changelings two months ago, right up to the conversation I had today on the playground with McTaggert. I spoke softly for most of it, because I was still in a public place. But she listened without interrupting while I got it all out—McTaggert, my lost need for revenge, my newfound sense of solidarity with the Metas in Manhattan, and my fluctuating feelings for Aaron. Mentioning Aaron got my heart jumping a little—had to be nerves, considering his brother could be hearing this. No other reason.

“It sounds like you’ve got a crush going on,” she said when I finally stopped talking.

Leave it to Dahlia to home in on the most awkward part of the monologue. “Maybe.”

She made a noise.

“Okay, so very probably,” I amended.

“And you’re scared.”

“Honestly? A little. But not of him.”

“Of what the others will think?”

“Yeah. I mean, I don’t think they’ll react badly, exactly. I guess I don’t want them to be disappointed that I didn’t trust them enough to tell them sooner.”

“That wasn’t the problem, though, was it? You trusting them?”

She knew me so well it was frightening. “No. I do trust them, and I always have.”

“But you saw being gay as a weakness, just like having Jinx for a father was a weakness.”

“Exactly. Only I don’t feel that way about McTaggert anymore. Regular people might not get it, and they might judge me as the offspring of a supervillain, but I don’t care. I know who I am.”

“I think you do. And I think you’re ready to accept all parts of yourself without reservations. Do you know how I know this?”

“Do tell.”

“Because right now, Ethan? In the nine months I’ve known you, there’s something in your voice I haven’t ever heard before.”

“Which is?”

“Hope.”

My eyes burned and I closed them tight. When I opened them again, I felt lighter. Happier than I had in months. “You’re right, Dal. For the first time in a long time, I have something I can really believe in.” Freeing the Warren residents and finding them—us?—a safe, permanent home. A place for Andrew, Muriel, Caleb and the others to grow up in peace.

“I’m glad,” she said. “So glad for you.”

“Thank you.”

One of the prison guards stepped into the waiting room and tapped his wristwatch. I nodded in his direction.

“Listen, I have to go,” I said. “Thanks for listening.”

“Anytime, you know that. And be careful out there. You nearly gave me a heart attack when I heard about the explosion.”

“I’ll try to make it home in one piece, I swear.”

“Good. See you soon.”

“See you.”

I pocketed my phone, then followed the guard back to Andrew’s room. Knocked politely, too, before I barged inside.

McTaggert had pulled the room’s only chair close, and was sitting with both arms through the bed’s rails, holding tight to Andrew’s hands. They both glanced in my direction when I stepped around the half-pulled curtain. Andrew gave me a bright smile.

“Daddy says you flew me here so the doctors could fix me,” he said.

“Yes, I did,” I replied. “And I’m really glad the doctors fixed you.”

“We all are,” McTaggert said. “Listen, Andy, I want to tell you something very important, okay?” Andrew nodded solemnly, his eyes wide. “There are still dangerous men out there who don’t like me very much. I might get hurt like you got hurt. Maybe even worse, like Whitney and Dana.”

My guts twisted a little at the idea, and I wasn’t sure what to make of that.

“But you won’t let the bad men hurt you, right?” Andrew asked.

“I will try very hard to stay safe, you know that. But just in case something happens, and I can’t take care of you, I want you to do what Ethan here tells you, okay?”

My heart skipped a beat, and I started to sweat. He was giving me verbal custody of his kid? Wasn’t that kind of like signing his own imminent death warrant? I wanted to tell him to shut the hell up or he’d jinx himself (no pun intended), but I couldn’t seem to interrupt their moment.

“Because Ethan’s a good guy?” Andrew asked.

“Yes, because he’s a good guy. He’s really smart, too. Ethan will take care of you, just like a big brother would.”

Andrew’s face broke into a big, toothy grin. “We both have red hair, just like real brothers! Okay, I’ll listen to him.”

I had no words. None.

“Good boy,” McTaggert said. He stood and leaned down to kiss Andrew’s forehead. “Just think hard about getting better, okay? Hopefully I can come back and visit again soon.”

“Can’t I come home with you?”

“Not yet. Not until the doctors say you’re well enough.”

He affected a proper pout. “It smells funny here.”

“I know. You’ll be home soon. I promise. I love you, munchkin.”

“Love you more! Bye, Ethan.”

I waved, still unable to form proper words. Andrew’s eyelids were already drooping as we left the room and allowed the guards to escort us back to the elevator and helipad. So far, so good. At least McTaggert hadn’t tried to escape. It wasn’t until we were in the air, flying back toward Manhattan, that I realized what had upset me so much about those final moments between father and son. He never said the actual words, but McTaggert had been saying good-bye.

•   •   •

For the first time, leaving the island that evening felt strange. Like I should stay behind with everyone who wasn’t allowed to leave. People I’d stopped thinking of as prisoners and began to consider . . . well, not exactly friends. I couldn’t explain it, but leaving felt wrong.

Teresa and Simon were in a meeting with Warden Hudson when Marco, Aaron, and I returned to the observation tower. The atmosphere there had changed, and it took me a minute to put my finger on it—the expressions on the guards were less wary, their manners less abrasive. It might have been sympathy over yesterday’s copter crash and resulting deaths. It might have been McTaggert’s successful off-site field trip to the hospital. I didn’t know for sure. All that really mattered was that I felt less like the guards would pull their guns on us at any given moment.

We three gathered around Simon’s desk to watch the streaming news reports. Every live outlet was talking about variations of Humankind, the copter crash, the Chicago fires, and the upcoming demolition of Rangers HQ. Polls had already been taken across the country. Questions and results ranged from disgusting (65 percent of respondents sympathized with the goals of Humankind and would donate money to their cause) to kind of heartwarming (76 percent of respondents considered the murders of Mark Sanderson and the four Meta prisoners hate crimes and thought they should be prosecuted as such). A lot of people were calling for the Rangers (i.e., our little band of freelance heroes) to make a public statement about recent events.

Teresa would speak to the press when she was ready. She was good at it, and she knew how to work a crowd.

Marco switched feeds to a broadcast out of Miami, Florida, in which a dour-looking female reporter was interviewing random people on the street. Her question: “Should the Meta prisoners in Manhattan stay there permanently, or be allowed to receive pardons for past crimes?”

The answers varied.

A teenage girl: “Leave them there. Who cares?”

Two men in their late twenties: “Take it on a case-by-case basis.” “You can’t judge all of them by one person.”

A rotund lady in an ugly straw hat: “Who?”

An elderly man with bad sunburn: “Should finish blowing up that damn island and rid ourselves of the problem. My taxes shouldn’t be feeding those monsters.”

Marco growled.

He’d taken over Simon’s desk chair, while Aaron and I stood behind him. I couldn’t see Marco’s face, but imagined he was probably baring his teeth at the computer screen. I felt the exact same way—if I’d been a thousand miles closer, I’d have blown the opinionated geezer right into the Atlantic. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only person who felt that way about Metas. He was just willing to say it on the record.

“Things are going to get worse, aren’t they?” Aaron asked softly, not bothering with his Scott accent, even though he still wore the mask.

“Probably,” I replied. Despite his disguise, my entire body was oddly aware of Aaron’s proximity. Not that I planned to act on that anytime soon. We both had way more important things to worry about. Life-and-death things that had nothing to do with the way my skin prickled when our elbows accidentally touched.

Stop. That
.

I didn’t move out of range, though.

Teresa and Simon joined us a few minutes later, interrupting a long rant by a senator from Oregon calling for the removal of all Metas to Manhattan immediately, “for the safety of our citizens.”

Asshole.

Marco muted the computer.

“They’ve arrested a tower guard on conspiracy charges,” Teresa said, keeping her voice low. “He delayed following the warden’s order to shoot down the copter by twenty-five seconds, giving it time to reach its target.”

“Which was us,” I said.

“Yes. He’s denying being part of Humankind, but there’s no other good reason for him to have been complicit in the crash.”

“He doesn’t just hate Metas?” Aaron asked.

“He probably does, but why delay the order to fire if he didn’t have advance knowledge of its target? He had to know he’d be identified and brought up on charges.”

“He couldn’t have had qualms about killing the pilot?”

“The pilot was already dead,” Simon said.

“What?”

I glanced at Aaron, unable to hide my own surprise, and we both stared blankly at Simon, waiting for him to explain the findings from his psychic sensors.

“We won’t be certain until they complete the autopsy,” Simon continued, “but I couldn’t feel anything from the body. I’m sure he was dead when the copter when down.”

“So the copter was piloted by remote?” I asked.

“Possibly. Investigators are still sifting through the wreckage.”

“There’s another possibility,” Teresa said. “The copter could have been flown telekinetically.”

I grabbed the back of Marco’s chair, a little dizzy at the notion. “But the crash was claimed by Humankind.”

“I know that.”

“So you think Humankind has Metas working with them? Isn’t that like asking one of the cows to drive the cattle truck to the slaughterhouse?”

“A little.” Her lavender gaze flickered past me to Aaron, and I caught on before she said it. “But Metas aren’t the only superhumans out there anymore.”