Meta (Book 3): Rise of The Circle (14 page)

"Hmm, all right then. Looks like you're a little bit stronger than I thought. Go ahead and lower it back down there and let's try a little bit more weight."

I do as he says and wait while he readjusts the machine. On his mark, I bend over and pick up the handlebar again.

"Amazing. That's decuple the amount of weight," he says, more to himself than to me.

"Decuple?" I ask.

"Ten times. You're going to have to start picking up on this scientific lingo, Connor. I can't explain everything, you know."

I place the handlebar back on the floor and wait while he, again, adjusts the parameters on the screen.

"Okay, let's see what you've got," John says, motioning for me to try picking up the handlebar again.

I wipe my hands on my jeans to remove the sweat from my palms and lean over the bar. Wrapping my fingers around the handlebar, I can already feel that it is much more firmly seated in place than during my prior two attempts. I try pulling it upward just using the strength in my arms, but it won't budge.

"Ah, there it is. You had me worried for a second that there was something wrong with the equipment. I'll go ahead and readjust it back down a bit."

"No," I say as he turns to the display. "Just give me a second. My stance wasn't right."

Fully aware that now I've got to at least pull this stupid handlebar off the floor if I don't want to look like an ass, I readjust my feet and make my stance a little wider. I squat down, remembering that thing people always say about lifting with your legs and not your back. Or is it back and not your legs? I'm not completely sure, but I'm going to use everything I've got this time.

At first it feels like the handlebar just isn't going to budge. I start to feel bad for laughing to myself about John's attempt now that I'm sure my face is turning ten different shades of purple too. But then, I feel a slight give. The handlebar is no longer completely resting on the floor, and I can feel that I'm supporting the full weight. I dig down deep, hoping that if I pop my arm out of my shoulder the metabands will take care of fixing it later. I don't think I’d want John popping it back in.

Unleashing a weird grunting noise that I didn't know I had in me, I slowly pull the handlebar further, past my ankles, then my knees. By the time it's up to my waist, it starts to feel easier. Maybe it's just that the worst part is over, or maybe my metabands are just realizing I need a little more juice and helping to compensate.

Finally, almost ten full seconds later, I've pulled the handlebar all the way up to my chest. I look over to John for the first time and his jaw is practically on the ground. I can feel my arms trembling and the muscles beginning to burn.

"Can I drop it?" I ask through clenched teeth.

There's no response from John, who is still just staring at me.

"Can I drop it?" I ask, a little more urgently this time.

John snaps out of it long enough to give a nod, and I immediately release the handlebar. It snaps back into place on the ground instantly. The metallic clang of the bar hitting the floor with that kind of momentum rings throughout the training room. I'm bent over with my hands on my knees, wheezing to catch my breath.

"How much was that?" I ask through gasps.

John looks back at the screen, double-checking the weight to make sure before he tells me.

"That was centuple the original weight," he says.

"Centuple? What is that, twenty times?"

"No, it's a hundred times. You just lifted 500,000 pounds. That's almost what a 747 weighs."

"Great. That's good to know in case I ever need to pick one up."

T
he rest
of the day follows more or less the same pattern. John sets up a test that he doesn't think I can do, and I blow it out of the water. We attempt to test my running speed on a specially built treadmill housed in a separate room, but it maxes out before I'm able to hit what I think is even close to my maximum speed. That means moving over to another room meant more for testing agility than speed.

This room, labeled “Endurance 2,” contains a track over ten miles in diameter. It's more of a circular tunnel than anything else. It makes me think of what a subway line would look like if they forgot to put down the tracks. Orange LED lights line the walls every hundred feet or so, and the walls themselves are baffled and built to withstand multiple sonic booms.

John waits in an alcove near the entrance and watches as I run. I have to enable my suit for this test, unless I want my pants to catch on fire from friction. There's a reason why a lot of metahumans don’t wear corduroy.

Later he shows me the tape from my trials. In the beginning, I look like a blip that appears in front of the entrance every few seconds, but after I break through the sound barrier, the occasional blip turns into a streak, and then that streak turns into a solid wall of red.

T
he final test
of the day involves flying, or more specifically, speed and agility while flying. They already know I can fly, obviously, but not necessarily how well. I've always assumed that every metahuman who could fly more or less did it the same way, but apparently that's not the case. While I just have to imagine myself moving through the air to do it, others rely on different methods. Some are able to “launch” themselves into the air, traveling great distances but ultimately succumbing to gravity sooner or later. Others can fly, but not at any kind of speed. This effectively makes them human blimps and not particularly effective crime fighters.

The test takes place in a gigantic warehouse-sized room. The ceiling must be at least twenty stories high and the room could easily fit a dozen football fields or more. It's not until I enter the room and look around at just how big it is that I realize it's been a while since I've really flown. Flying around Bay View City was a big no-no after Silver Island, and the same goes for above ground here on campus. All of a sudden I'm excited about being able to stretch my wings again. My figurative wings, that is. I don't have real ones. That would be weird, even weirder than being able to fly.

"Last test of the day, Connor. How are you feeling?" John asks me as he taps at his tablet.

I assume he's entering notes or results from the other tests today, but he could just as easily be playing a game for all I know. He seems pretty intent on not letting me peek at what he's doing, and judging from what I've learned after spending a day with him, I'd be surprised if he wasn't playing a game on there.

"I feel great. It's nice to finally get to exercise some of my abilities. I was starting to worry that I’d forgotten how to use some of them," I answer.

"They're like riding a bike, Connor. You never really forget. To this day I remember the feeling of flight. The wind in my hair. The earth beneath me. That feeling of complete and total freedom."

"You could fly when you were a metahuman? I didn't know that."

"When I was a metahuman? No. I'm talking about my Cessna. Yeah, I used to have one of my own back in my heyday. That was before the sponsorship money dried up and I had to sell it to get the creditors off my back. You'd think the bank would jump at the chance to have a metahuman as their official spokesman in exchange for forgiving a few late loan payments, but apparently not.

"Anyway, this is a test that will combine a few of your skills so we can accurately judge not only your individual abilities, but also how well you're able to integrate them with each other. It's not like walking and chewing gum at the same time, you know. Some abilities can be very difficult to use simultaneously.

"To start with, let's have you hover up there into the middle of the room, and I'll explain how this is all going to work."

I do as he says and lift myself effortlessly into the air, gliding to what looks to be about the center of the room before coming to a stop. When I turn back, I see that John has climbed a ladder along the side of one of the room's walls. At the top of the ladder is what looks almost like a tiny flight control tower. John finds a seat inside the small window-lined perch and moves a microphone into position in front of his mouth.

"All right, Connor," he says, his voice amplified through the microphone to fill the room.

"I have enhanced hearing, you know. You don't have to use the mic," I tell him, having to shout since I don't have a microphone myself.

"The test regulations require that the proctor uses a microphone, so that is what I will do, thank you," John says into the microphone, causing a massive amount of feedback that makes both him and me wince. "Okay, we'll start off nice and easy. I'm going to be releasing a drone into the room. It has a kill switch located underneath its belly. All you need to do is catch it and press that switch to deactivate it as quickly as possible. Got it?" John asks me.

"Got it," I reply, thinking to myself that this sounds like a piece of cake.

John presses a button in front of him, and on the far side of the room, I can see a tiny opening appear in the wall. A section of the wall has receded, and a machine about the size of a toaster emerges. The drone holds itself in the air with four rapidly spinning helicopter blades, emitting a soft, consistent hum. It remains a few feet from the wall, completely still, waiting in the air. I look over to John, not sure if I should go yet or if there's a problem with the drone. He looks back at me and simply gestures toward the drone, telling me to go deactivate it. I shrug my shoulders and glide forward.

Everything seems to be going fine until I am right in front of the drone and reach out to find its deactivation button. An instant before my fingers reach it, the drone's blades suddenly turn off, sending the whole thing plummeting toward the floor. I think there's a problem at first, except the drone powers its blades back up a foot from the ground, preventing what would have been a nasty collision with the ground.

I follow, lowering myself to the ground after the drone. Again, everything seems too easy until I reach out to grab the drone. All at once, the helicopter rotors spin into high gear, emitting a sharply pitched whine as the drone rockets back up toward the ceiling and out of my reach.

Glancing over at John, I see a smirk growing across his face, and I realize that this is part of the test. Of course the drone was never going to be easy to catch. I smile back at him, hoping to catch the drone off guard when I rocket myself back up to the ceiling.

A split second later, a very loud gong echoes through the room. It's the sound of my head colliding with the ceiling after the drone quickly moved out of the way and I missed it again. The room's speakers click on to broadcast the sound of John laughing and then click back off. He turned on the microphone just to laugh at me. On top of that, my head really hurts since I wasn't expecting it to hit anything and didn't have time to brace myself. Even with superpowers, I can still hurt myself through my own clumsiness. Another one of my unexplored powers.

The drone hovers back to the center of the room, where I began the test. It doesn't have a face since it's just a machine, but even still, I feel like it's taunting me. I launch head first toward it. This time I won't make the same mistake of assuming that it will stay in place long enough for me to reach it. Sure enough, it takes off sideways right before I reach it, but now I'm following it.

It darts back and forth across the room, covering an almost impossible amount of ground in an instant, zigzagging in every possible direction with seemingly no rhyme or reason. But I don't give up. I stay on its tail as it moves throughout the gigantic room, never straying more than a few feet but never close enough to grab it either.

My eyes are locked onto it like a homing missile, and I'm more determined than ever. I make myself as wide as possible with my arms and try to prevent it from doubling back on me. It's confined to just a corner of the hangar and its movements are even more erratic. It doesn't have the amount of space it needs to outmaneuver me, and finally, when it's completely cornered, I grab it. The drone struggles and twists to break free of my grip, but there's no way I'm letting go of it. With the button on its underbelly pressed, the light on top of the drone changes from red to green, and it gently returns back to the center of the room before lowering down to the ground.

"Not bad. Usually it takes a good twenty minutes before the test subject realizes they can't just chase the damn thing to catch it. Let's see how you do with a few more," John says over the loudspeaker while tapping away at the console in front of him.

A few seconds later, what seems like hundreds of new doors along the wall open all at once. From each, a single drone flies a few feet forward before locking into place as their lights change from green to red.

I
t takes nearly
an hour for me to put down every last drone and another twenty minutes of having to listen to John tell me about how they didn't have tests like this back when he was a meta, and that he couldn't fly, but if he could he would have finished the test in five minutes, tops. I don't know if I could honestly tell you which was more exhausting: the drones or listening to John brag about something that he’s never actually done.

There's nothing worse than thinking you're done with a test only to find out there are more questions printed on the back of the page. The equivalent to that for me today is forgetting that, even when I'm done with the tests John has put me through, I still have to head over to meet with The Physician for even
more
tests. These are tests that I'd have to undertake anyway, but the fact that my metabands are damaged has piqued his interest even more. Honestly, I'm just glad I don't have to spend any more time with John today.

Walking down the corridors, I wouldn't have realized it had gotten so late if it weren't for the relative emptiness. One of the many disadvantages of being a mile underground is it makes installing windows difficult, logistically speaking. The halls aren't as empty as they were last night, but certainly much more empty than they were earlier this afternoon. From what I can tell, the students that are still here are doing the equivalent of extra credit work, practicing abilities that aren't quite honed yet, or at least not honed to the point where they'd feel comfortable practicing them in front of an audience.