The Origin (4 page)

“There’s you.” Her slender finger rested on the page, pointing to a black and white yearbook picture of Daniel, his mouth set in a smug smile, a testament to his prime standing in the school social hierarchy.

Daniel perched on the couch and chuckled at his former self. “God, I was such an arrogant douchebag! Look at my hair!” His brown hair had been longer and tinged with gold, flopping into his eyes with boyish abandon. Nowadays, it was kept short and neat, practical and understated. “How did I not get punched in the face on a daily basis?”

“You weren’t that bad,” Olivia said, grinning at the picture that she might have kissed once or twice in her youth. “Well, not all the time.” She flipped the pages and found a picture of herself, limp hair, braces and all.

“There you are,” he said, trying to suppress a smile as he leaned in for a closer look. “You look… different now.”

“I look much the same actually.” He raised an eyebrow and she laughed. “After the braces came off and we found a good dermatologist, that is.”

As his eyes roamed over her face, she felt acutely aware of the short distance between their mouths, she could almost feel the warmth of his breath on her cheek. With one small movement, she could turn her head and touch his lips, like she’d dreamed of doing back in high school…

“How about that coffee?” he asked, standing up abruptly.

Biting her bottom lip, Olivia headed to the kitchen and set up the single-serve coffee machine. “It’ll just be a few minutes,” she said, leaning against the counter.

Daniel walked over with the yearbook in his hands. Olivia saw with some measure of jealousy that he was looking at a picture of Kelly Hoyt, the long-distance running state champion, class valedictorian, and Daniel Johnson’s girlfriend. Olivia had not known her, but nevertheless had envied the heck out of the girl if only for having dated the hottest boy in school. For a year at least.

“Was it true,” Olivia said, feeling bold, knowingly treading into personal territory. “That she broke up with you because of the accident?”

Daniel stared at the stainless steel fridge door, the muscles in his jaw working. “I, uh…” He cleared his throat. “Can we not talk about Kelly?”

Olivia nodded and was glad when the coffee maker beeped, breaking the tension. “Milk or sugar?”

“Neither.” He took one hearty sip then placed the mug on the counter. “Well, thanks for the coffee, but I have to head out.”

Olivia furrowed her eyebrows in confusion, staring down at her coffee so that Daniel wouldn’t see the disappointment sprouting all over her face.

As they walked to the front door, Olivia wondered if she would see Daniel again. Perhaps not, if his abrupt exit was anything to judge by. “It was great to see you again after all these years,” she said with a rueful smile.

Daniel gazed at her for a moment with an expression that she found hard to read and said, “I had a good time.” He glanced at her lips a few times, and just when she was sure he was leaning down for a long overdue kiss, he paused and gave her a quick peck on the cheek instead. “Goodnight.”

And before Olivia could even open her mouth to return the sentiment, he was out the door and down the stairs.

Daniel was nineteen and an undecided sophomore at Kansas State University when he was finally forced to use his abilities out in the open. For the past two years, he had kept his incredible strength and speed a secret, so that not even his parents knew that their adopted son could bench press a school bus without breaking a sweat. But one late, wet night, as he was driving back to the dorms in his ’58
Chevette
, singing wildly along to the newest punk rock hit on the radio, Daniel witnessed the vehicle ahead take a left turn too abruptly and spin out of control. Daniel held his breath as the two-door SUV hydroplaned on the slick asphalt, then unexpectedly gain traction only to flip over twice and land on its side.

He was transfixed at first as he slowed and parked on the shoulder, attempting to process what he’d just seen. Finally his brain caught on and he jumped out of the car, his body starting to surge with adrenaline. As he approached, a woman climbed out of the driver side door, which was pointing straight up in the air. She was halfway out when she spotted Daniel, and began to wave her arms frantically.

“Help, please! My daughter’s stuck in the car!”

“Where is she?”

“In the back, behind the passenger seat!”

Daniel helped the woman out of the vehicle first, and then he heard the most god-awful, heart-wrenching sound: the high-pitched cries of a distressed infant.

“Please!” She looked up at him with tears and blood running down her face, her fingers clutching his arms in desperation.

He looked into the driver window and saw the car seat, which was, thankfully, still sitting in its base, with the baby still strapped in. He climbed inside the car but could not for the life of him figure out how to free the car seat from its base. He fumbled around, pressing and tugging at various plastic parts in vain.

“I can’t get her out.” He climbed back out and faced the frantic mother, reassuring her that her child was not hurt, or at least, not dead. Then it occurred to him that,
duh
, he was strong. Without a second thought, he ran to the other side of the vehicle, and with two hands placed firmly underneath the roof, lifted the car, surprised at how easily the SUV flipped back onto its wheels. He reached for the passenger door handle and pulled, the damaged door ripping cleanly away and landing with a metallic thud on the ground. A second later, the woman was pushing him aside, unlatching the car seat with one simple move.

“Is she okay?” Daniel asked, trying to catch a glimpse of the screaming infant around the woman’s shoulders.

“I don’t know, I think so.”

“Do you have a cell phone?” he asked. “To call an ambulance.”

“Yes, yes I do.” She looked up at him, tears still streaming down her face. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

Minutes later, Daniel drove away in shock, feeling like someone had poured warm syrup down his neck as he thought of the woman’s gratitude. For the past two years, he’d come to accept that the defect in his DNA was nothing but a burden to carry, that nothing good could come of being strong or fast. But what if he had it wrong all along?

What if he could help?

* * * * *

After fleeing Olivia’s apartment, Daniel lay in his bed, unable to stop from replaying a scene before his eyes, couldn’t help but see Kelly Hoyt’s brown eyes when he had broken up with her.

“I don’t believe you,” she had said, her lips beginning to tremble. “You told me you loved me.”

His chest had ached, but he’d had no other choice. “
Loved
. Past tense. I can’t be with anyone right now,” he’d added, which was the truth as far as he was concerned. For as much as he’d cared for Kelly, he had needed to live a life free of complications and tethers.

And for years he’d managed just that, until the reappearance of one Olivia King. In under sixteen hours, the woman had managed to bulldoze her way into his life and he had not been able to refuse her, a talent that left him wondering (and maybe secretly hoping) that she, too, had some special abilities of her own.

With a sigh, he rose from the bed and began to dress for his nightly patrol. He pulled on a turtleneck, pants, gloves, boots and jacket – all black – and wore a balaclava on his head, rolled up to look like a cap.

He jumped out of the bathroom window and landed in the dark alley below. Now that the idea of the Black Hero/Vigilante had been trumpeted by the media (some news channels calling him a troublemaker, a thorn in the NYPD’s side, while others hailing him as the champion of New York), it seemed that everyone was on the lookout to catch a glimpse of the mysterious vigilante, and walking out of the front door in his dark outfit night after night was no longer an option.

But Daniel was not naïve. Before he began his patrols, he had expected comparisons to Batman or Spiderman – it only made sense for people to compare that which they knew nothing of to familiar comic book heroes – but he still could do without the extra attention. If only the people he’d helped out had kept their collective mouths shut, the police would not be actively searching for him right now.

How ironic that he spent his time ridding the city of criminals, and yet now he was being hunted as one of them.

Several minutes into his patrol, Daniel heard shouting down a narrow street, rendered dark from busted streetlamps. Three men were closing around a shorter, older man whose bald head and glasses were reflecting the pale moonlight. Daniel ran towards the group swiftly, his presence announced by a small gust of wind.

“What’s going on here?” he said, the balaclava already pulled over his face. When the mask was on, he affected a low, guttural voice that he hoped sounded authoritative, if not a little menacing.

“None of your business, asshole. Move along,” one of the guys said, the wide blade of the knife in his hand glinting from the streetlight. Apparently Daniel’s affected voice did nothing to move him. “Shoo,” the guy said dismissively before turning back to the bespectacled man, who was by now visibly shaking.

“Are you all right, sir? Are these men bothering you?” Daniel asked the gentleman calmly. He couldn’t attack unless he had incontrovertible proof; those were the rules he had put in place after the first and only misunderstanding, when he had unwittingly pounced on a woman’s S&M master/lover.

“They’re attempting to mug me, I believe,” the bald man said, his voice thick with trepidation, though it wasn’t nearly enough to conceal his sarcasm.

“I said step off!” The guy with the knife took a wide swipe at Daniel, but missed as Daniel had already moved away. “Oh, we got a fast one here guys,” he said with a sneer. “Let’s see if he’s as fast as Jocko.”

Of the three, the shortest one with the most groomed facial hair took a step away from the group and regarded Daniel through narrowed eyes while he scratched his jaw. “Think I’ve seen you before. That you who turned me in for casing the place on 137
^th
?”

“That was me. How come they let you out?” Daniel’s blood boiled at the though of yet another common criminal set free by the NYPD. “Don’t tell me lack of evidence?”

Jocko sniggered. “Let’s just say they didn’t know what hit them,” he said and moved, dissolving into a blur.

Before Daniel could blink, a fist struck his jaw and his head snapped to the side. He rubbed his throbbing cheek, trying to quell the excitement bubbling up in his chest. Was it possible that there were others like him?

“Holy shit.” Jocko stopped and fanned his hand in obvious pain. He turned back to his cohorts and yelled that Daniel had a face made of concrete, a claim that was met with jeers.

Before he could be taken by surprise again, Daniel sprung into action and lunged for Jocko, but the stubby man was a fast one, and he moved aside and pushed Daniel to the ground. “
Gotta
be quicker than that, buddy,” he said, smiling down with great triumph.

Daniel’s nose flared as he jumped back to his feet, his earlier excitement quickly reshaping into irritation. He hurled himself into Jocko, who stepped aside once more, and Daniel, anticipating the move, quickly changed his trajectory. With a soft thud, they collided and fell to the ground. Jocko’s arms flailed wildly, a chaos of flying fists that landed its target several times while Daniel reached in his back pocket for a zip tie.

“Do you even see what’s going on?” he heard someone ask from behind. “Who’s winning?”

Daniel waited for several moments until Jocko had exhausted himself, for speed was the man’s only ability. Everything else was all too human, including his stamina. Once the fists slowed, Daniel reached out, grabbed Jocko’s thick wrists and had them bound in a flash. One more moment and Jocko’s ankles were also secured.

Before any of the other men had had a chance to pick out the victor, Daniel stood and headed towards the two remaining members of the gang. They did not even have a chance to lift their knives before punches were landed squarely on their faces. A few seconds later, they joined Jocko on the ground, bound and defeated.

While the bespectacled man called the police, Daniel pulled Jocko to his feet and lifted him out of earshot. “How do you move so fast?” he said through narrowed eyes.

Jocko smirked. “How do
you
?”

“Just answer the question!” Daniel caught himself before his grip on the man’s thick arm became too uncomfortable.

“Don’t know. Just do.”

“When did it start?” He glanced at the others, hoping they couldn’t overhear the heated conversation.

“Don’t know. A few weeks ago?”

“How?”

“I don’t know, okay? Just woke up at the cop shop really freaking fast.
Fatboys
didn’t even see me escape.”

Daniel took a deep breath and led the man back to the pile of criminals on the ground. He didn’t know what he’d expected to hear, but it wasn’t what he already knew, which was a big, fat nothing.