Meta (Book 3): Rise of The Circle (15 page)

"Ah, Connor, there you are," The Physician says to me as he emerges from the exam room I'm walking toward. "I'm afraid we'll have to reschedule tonight. As much as I'd like to learn more about you, I have a more pressing matter that I must attend to this evening. I hope you understand."

The tired grin across my face must say it all to him. I couldn't be more relieved to be let out of an obligation than I am right now. I practically want to race him to the elevator.

Part of me definitely wonders what the doctor, and everyone else who isn't a student for that matter, works on during the day. Tonight that wondering will have to wait, though. I've got my mind on a hamburger and nothing on earth is going to stop me from getting it.

A
fter I finish scarfing
down a late dinner, I head back to my room since I've got not only nowhere else to be, but also nowhere else to go. I'm hoping that Tyler isn't waiting in the room we share, but I know that is probably hopelessly wishful thinking. From what I can tell, he barely even leaves it to go to class.

Before I even reach for my doorknob, I can tell that my wish isn't going to be granted tonight. There's laughter coming from my room. Not the kind of fun, carefree laughter you hear from people just having a nice time. It's the kind of almost yelling, aggressive laughter that sounds more like a way of claiming territory than anything else. Worse yet, from the sound of it, Tyler isn't alone in there either.

The second I put my key in the keyhole, the laughter is immediately silenced. I can hear rummaging and shushing noises coming from behind the door. When I turn the doorknob and open it, I find the room is packed full of people like a clown car. For the past couple of days, I've barely been able to fall asleep since I've felt so crowded having just one other person in this room; now there's inexplicably over a dozen. There's a stale stench of cheap beer hanging in the air too. Ugh. This is the last thing I wanted to come “home” to.

"It's my roommate everyone. It's cool," Tyler announces from somewhere in the depths of the tiny living quarters. Instantly, the room turns its collective back to me and conversations resume. Hidden red plastic cups reappear from every nook and cranny in the room.

This is maybe, literally, the last thing on earth that I want to deal with. What I want is to crawl into a little tiny ball and go to sleep for the next week. That's going to be really hard to do unless I don't mind sharing my bed with the dozen or so other kids currently using it as a couch. Oh, great. Even if they weren't sitting on it, it looks like my pillow is drenched in a mixture of beer and I don't want to know what else.

I shuffle along the wall of my room, apologizing as I inevitably bump into people who are technically only guests of one half of this dorm room.

"Shut the door!" Tyler yells unnecessarily loudly from across the room.

I sigh and turn around, apologizing to these strangers for a second time as I move back along the wall and toward the door. Once I'm close enough to touch the handle, it occurs to me that I don't want to stay here, even if it is my room too. I walk back out into the hallway and close the door behind me.

As I walk through the otherwise quiet hallway, wondering what I did in a past life to deserve getting the only jackass on the floor as my roommate, I hear something. It's the fuzzy click of a walkie-talkie, followed by voices around the corner. Loud voices. Authoritative voices. Adult voices. It's the police, and my guess is that I know exactly why they're here and where they’re going.

I quickly spin on my heels and head back to my room. Even if this isn't why cops are here, they're sure to hear the noise coming from the room and decide it's worth a closer look. I don't waste time knocking and instead quickly fling open the door. All eyes in the room are on me, but I can't seem to find Tyler's face in the crowd to warn him. That's when he steps out from around the corner of the entryway, near the closets. He's inches from my face.

"All right, bro. Enough's enough. I tried to be nice, but apparently you don't take a hint well," he says.

"Tyler, listen, you gotta hide all this stuff and get everyone out of here," I quickly babble out before I'm cut off.

"Are you stupid or something? The only one getting out of here is you," he says.

And with that, he shoves me. We're standing so close to each other that the shove catches me off balance, and I fall backward through the door, landing on my butt and sliding across the waxed linoleum floor into the door opposite ours in the hallway. A chorus of laughter sweeps through the room so loudly that it makes the impromptu party's previous volume seem like a tea party.

The door slams shut, but I can still hear the laughter. It isn't until I'm back up on my feet that I realize my metabands have already materialized around my wrists. Did I do that? Did I summon my metabands subconsciously, or did they just appear on their own because they somehow sensed I was in danger? Both thoughts are equally concerning, but my more immediate problem is that I can't focus hard enough to make them disappear again. With no way to get rid of them and the threat of being seen with them growing, I turn and walk briskly down the hallway in the opposite direction of where I heard the radio noises coming from.

I don't dare look back, even when I can hear the door being pounded on and the police announcing themselves. Oh well, I tried to warn them, I think to myself, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't think the dose of instant karma was pretty funny.

I
t's 10
:00 p.m. on a Thursday night, and I've really got nowhere to go. That's not to say that I'm not extremely grateful for avoiding what I'm sure is a mess with the police. As frustrating as Tyler throwing a party in my room without even telling me is, I can't even imagine how ticked off I'd be right now if I was being interrogated for underage drinking.

The thought of heading down to the facility crosses my mind since technically it's open to us twenty-four hours a day, but after spending most of my day underground and knowing that I'll be back there tomorrow, it's just not that appealing. Private time to myself is few and far between currently. I should really enjoy it while I've got it. Fresh air, the sky, all of that stuff.

After about fifteen seconds of fresh air, I'm bored with it and take out my phone to see if there's something there that can distract me. I'm walking with little direction, just kinda wandering toward the main library and water fountain as I go through what seems like an endless list of spam and status updates in my feeds. After a few minutes of this, I decide to declare social media bankruptcy. There's just no way I can get through this much junk after being basically offline for a week.

I'm desperate to find out what's happening back in Bay View City, but any news I can find is frustratingly vague or off topic. I reach the campus’s water fountain and find myself a place to sit along its wall. As if on cue, the screen of my phone changes to indicate an incoming video call from Derrick. I tap answer.

"Well, well, well. So I guess you're still alive after all, huh?" Derrick asks once the call begins.

"Yup, I am."

"All right, just wanted to check. See you later," Derrick says as he pretends to end the call.

"Sorry I haven't been able to talk much lately."

"Much lately? I haven't seen or heard from you since I dropped you off."

"Yeah, sorry about that. I've been really ... busy," I say, trailing off as I realize it might not be the best idea to have this conversation on a phone in case the call is being tapped by any of the seemingly endless number of enemies I seem to be accruing lately.

"Don't worry. This is a secure line. It'd take all the computers in the world working together for about ten thousand years to break the encryption, and as much as I might miss having you around to bother me lately, I actually don't have that much time to talk right now anyway."

"Thanks," I say as I glance over my shoulder to check that someone isn't listening in on our call the old-fashioned way by just sneaking up behind me. The fountain sits in the middle of campus and offers sight lines for hundreds of yards in every direction. If someone tried sneaking up on me, I'd see them coming from a mile away.

"So, tell me all about your first day at school," Derrick asks in a mocking tone, like he's asking me how my first day of kindergarten was.

"Good. Well, I mean, not all good, but not bad."

"Yeah, Michelle's been keeping me updated."

"How does Michelle know what's been going on with me? She's barely even been here all week."

"You think that no one on the faculty there talks to each other? She's your recruiter. She gets confidential daily updates about your progress, and then she shares those confidential updates with me of course."

"That's adorable. I'm glad you've found such beautiful domestic bliss together. You're not at all concerned about how she lied to you about everything, even her name, for most of the time you've known her?"

"Eh, I get why she did it. She had to. Nothing is black or white nowadays. Not anymore."

"Speaking of which, how is everything going back at home?"

"How much do you know already?"

"Not much, really. They've done a pretty good job of keeping us literally underground all day. By the time I'm done with regular classes, and then metahuman training, I barely have enough energy to do my homework and eat."

"Things here are quiet."

"That's good then, right?"

"No, it's not good. The Alphas have taken up residence in the old Keane Tower. They've run almost every metahuman out of the city. The handful that have been foolish enough to try to fight them haven't done very well."

"Why is it foolish? I think it's brave to try to stand up for your city against them. I'm still ashamed of myself for not staying to fight."

"Don't say things like that, Connor. It's not that cut and dry. You can't just dive head first into conflicts without a plan and expect to make it out alive every time. Sooner or later the odds will catch up with you. Look at Midnight," Derrick says, immediately aware after the words have left his mouth that he probably shouldn't have said them.

"Midnight is alive, Derrick. I told you what Sarah told me. He saved her life. And he doesn't dive in head first without a plan. He always has a plan."

"He used his suit to save her, but that doesn't mean he was able to save himself. I'm sorry, Connor. I know he was your friend, but you're going to have to face the reality eventually. If Midnight is still alive, then where is he? No one has seen him since Silver Island. Trust me. I've got my ear to the ground, and if there were even so much as a rumor of someone seeing him recently, I would’ve heard about it."

I don't respond to Derrick since I'm not really sure what to say. It's useless to argue about this since neither of us has definitive proof that Midnight either is or isn't alive. I'd rather change the subject than think about the possible reality that Derrick is proposing.

"What about the people of the city, the non-metahumans? How are they reacting to having the entire city quarantined?" I ask.

"The city doesn't see it like that. A lot of people left, you know that, but the people that stayed are adapting. They're just regular, normal folks who want to be able to go to work without worrying about their train getting picked up and used as a weapon by a random person with God-like powers. I get it. You were too young to really understand what it was like during the first wave. People were scared. They didn't understand what was happening or why. Even before The Battle, there were lots of regular citizens that lived their lives in fear of being the random victim of a meta-related action."

"But what about all the good that metas have done? There were countless times they acted and saved people from disasters and accidents that had absolutely nothing to do with the metas that were around. Car accidents, plane crashes, natural disasters. There were always metas there willing to lend a hand and help in ways no one else could. People knew that not all metas were bad," I say.

"True, some people knew that deep down, but that wasn't what they saw on the news. Cameras didn't show up every time someone in a leotard saved a cat from a tree. It doesn't matter what the odds were or how many good metas were out there compared to bad ones. At the end of the day, people fear randomness more than anything else. You can take precautions against a natural disaster. You can't take precautions against a meta throwing another one through your office window."

Derrick is right. I know that. I understand why people are scared, and I know Derrick doesn't agree with it. He's just trying to explain it to me. Don't shoot the messenger, Connor.

"I just don't get why people would be willing to trust the Alphas. It seems insanely hypocritical."

"Better to trust the devil you know. And in this case, people would rather put their trust into four metahumans who have vowed to rid the city of all the rest. They're seeing the immediate results. The Alphas protect the city from outside metahumans. That's the only time they've used their powers."

"And what happens one day when all the other metas decide to give up on Bay View City once and for all? The Alphas will keep their place on top of that tower and everyone will just trust them to keep their word? What happens when they get bored and decide they want more than just Bay View City?"

"You're preaching to the choir, Connor. I'm not saying it's right. I'm just trying to help you understand what the atmosphere is like here. It's quiet, too quiet. Crime is almost non-existent. The skies are empty, meta-free. It's only a matter of time before the other shoe drops."

"Are you okay? I mean you, personally? Couldn't you be a target for them considering you report about metahumans?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. I've been in this game for a long time, and there's no place I'd rather be than right here as far as reporting goes. The Alphas don't have a reason to do anything to me. We've been fair in our reporting of what they've done. If anything, we've brought people into the city to replace the ones who have left. People from all over the country who are tired of metas are coming here in droves. They think it's some kind of metahuman-free oasis."

"I'm glad to hear you're okay at least," I say.

There's no response for a few seconds, and I can see Derrick looking off screen at something else that has grabbed his attention.

"Sorry, I'm just- Are you seeing this?" he asks as he turns his phone's camera toward the television in our living room.

On the screen is what looks like a breaking news report. The camera is working to focus on the scene. Near the top of the screen is the word “LIVE.” At the bottom is a graphic that reads, "Metahuman Captured By Blanks Within Bay View City Limits."

There's a mob of people and confusion in what looks like somewhere near downtown. The streets are lined with nice stores and fancy restaurants. On the streets are at least two-dozen Blanks in the middle of a larger, angrier group of maybe a hundred or more.

The Blanks are struggling, almost causing a pileup of people, as they strain to hang on to another, unseen person buried somewhere in the middle of the crowd. The unmasked people along the outer edge of the crowd are all screaming and hurling garbage or whatever they can find at the middle of the huddle.

Suddenly the camera tilts up, seemingly at an empty sky, before it finds the subject it’s searching for. There, hanging silently in the sky, slowly descending toward the scene of chaos, is Charlie.

He looks different than when I last saw him. Behind him is a flowing black cape that hangs all the way down his body and past his feet. His identity is no longer obscured either. His face is older than I would have expected considering how quick he was even before finding his own pair of metabands. Across his cheek is a large scar, one that I would have to assume was inflicted prior to him becoming a meta. His hair is gray, as well as his eyes, both of which add intensity to his already steely glare.

Someone in the crowd yells to look up. One by one, this spreads throughout the assembled masses until they’re all looking up at Charlie and shuffling aside, clearing a space for him to land. It's only now that the camera can see what is in the center of the mass: a lone metahuman.

His uniform is yellow with purple accents running throughout his torso, culminating in an entirely purple cowl. His face is bloodied and the uniform is in tatters as he struggles to stand on his own now that the crowd has backed away from him. He's in bad shape and the faint blue pulse on his metabands indicates they're on extremely low power. By the look of the shape he's in, any reserve power is likely being used for life support systems at this point.

Charlie lands gently and takes his time surveying the crowd before turning his attention to the beaten metahuman.

"Who found this man?" Charlie asks the crowd.

A lone Blank steps forward.

"I did, sir. He was captured during a reconnaissance operation," the Blank says.

"Reconnaissance operation? You faked a mugging and waited for one of us to respond. It wasn't reconnaissance; it was entrapment," the bloodied meta yells.

"You'll have your turn to speak," Charlie says to the yellow metahuman without averting his glance from the Blank.

His tone is calm and slow. He's not afraid of this metahuman or any others. His patience sends a chill down my spine.

"His name's Utilitarian. We've been tracking him since yesterday, waiting for him to show off those shiny new metabands he's got. When he did, we pounced. I'd guess he's only a level two or three. It didn't take much to overwhelm him," the Blank says.

Charlie doesn't respond. Instead, he turns his attention to Utilitarian, sizing him up and down as though he's trying to figure out exactly what to do with him.

"Were you not aware that Bay View City is a metahuman-free district?" he finally asks.

"I knew, but I couldn't just turn my head when I saw a man being attacked. I wasn't going to use my metabands again, but I had to do something. I couldn't just walk away and do nothing," Utilitarian says.

"And if you knew metahumans were no longer permitted in this city, why, may I ask, are you still here?" Charlie says.

"Because this is my home. I was born here, and I intend to die here. Who decided you were in charge and got to choose who is allowed to have metabands and who isn't?"

"The people decided. They decided they'd had enough of false gods destroying their homes and killing their loved ones. It gives me no pleasure to use these ... instruments," Charlie says, looking down at the gleaming metabands wrapped around each of his wrists. "If it were possible to destroy them tomorrow and still keep the scourge that is metahumans out of this city, I would do so in a heartbeat. However, until that day comes, I will reluctantly use the same instrument as those who wish to harm Bay View City to keep them away."

There's a long silence among the crowd as everyone waits. No one knows what will happen next in this stalemate. One side will inevitably have to back down, and it's pretty clear who that's going to be.

Utilitarian holds his rib cage, wincing in pain, staring at Charlie through a swollen black eye. His expression changes as he seems to admit to himself that he's been defeated. Like a rubber band snapping, his uniform recedes back into his metabands. He then removes them, letting each drop to the ground. They both land with a thud you would associate with a much heavier object. Neither bounces or rolls, but stay exactly where they first hit the ground.