Meta (Book 3): Rise of The Circle (22 page)

"But what about the driver?" I ask.

"Screw him. He's lucky he didn't kill anyone. Let him burn," the Blank says before pushing me aside to start yelling at the crowd to back up immediately, explaining that the van is close to exploding.

The crowd begins to panic and scatters in all directions. Jim stands silently frozen. He doesn't know what to do.

"Jim, we've got to get that guy out of there," I say to him.

"We can't. You heard the Blank. He's getting what he deserves," Jim says, his eyes unfocused and staring into space.

"You don't really believe that. He doesn't deserve to die," I say, trying to get into Jim's line of sight and hopefully snap him out of this.

The crowd of people is almost a full block away, and it's quiet. The only sounds are the crackling of the spreading flames and the distant moans of the man trapped in his vehicle.

I give up trying to talk sense into Jim. Time is not on this guy's side. I run around the wreck and find a bloodied man hanging halfway out of the driver's side window of the overturned van.

"Are you okay?" I ask.

There's no response, but the rise and fall of his chest tells me that he's still alive, just unconscious. I reach into the car to see if I can pull him out. Just then, another pair of hands reach in too. Jim's by my side.

"Screw it. I don't care what he did. I'm not just going to let someone die," he says.

We're both fumbling, trying to reach inside the smashed car to detach the man's seatbelt, but it won't budge. I remember something about not moving accident victims if you can help it since they may have spinal or internal injuries that you can't see, but this guy is dead either way unless we get him free.

"Just go, get out of here before this whole thing goes up," Jim says, still trying desperately to pull the man through the smashed window.

"I'm not leaving," I reply, not wasting even the second it would take to look at him when I say it.

"Well then all three of us are going to die."

"You leave then."

"I can't. I need to try."

The fire hits some of the spilled fuel spread across the pavement and starts burning even more intensely. I nervously look toward the back of the van where the explosive fertilizer is. This isn't working, and I'm not going to let this man die either. If I had my powers I'd be able to open this van up like a tin can and have this guy clear of the explosion in half a second.

It's time to break my promise to Michelle.

"Jim, get the hell out of here," I yell, trying to startle him into listening to me, not only to get him clear from danger, but also hopefully clear from seeing me activate my metabands.

"I'm sorry, Connor," Jim says, coughing from the smoke

There's defeat in his voice. Not just because he's not going to be able to save this man, but because he knows that I'm not going to listen to him and clear the area like he wants me to. The flames are more intense than ever, and I can barely even see Jim or the man through the thick black smoke.

"Screw it," I say as my metabands materialize around my wrists, which I then bring together to activate.

I raise my red-covered hand to the roof of the van and peel it back like a banana. With my right arm, I grab the man and with the left I grab Jim. I pivot on the ball of my left foot and push off just as I hear the high-pitched squeal of pressure building up in the back of the van, the pressure of an explosion.

Even moving as fast as I can, there isn't time to completely outrun the fireball at my back if I want to also make sure I don't injure this man any further. I'm only a few steps away before I throw myself over them, shielding the pair from the blast. Smoke and rubble fall over my back like a shower, and then it's over.

Before the smoke clears, I can hear both Jim and the man coughing, and I know that they're okay. I pull myself off of them and step back, looking around to make sure that no one else is nearby. Mostly I'm looking to check for any casualties, but I'm also trying to ensure that no one saw me activate my metabands.

The coast is clear.

Jim slowly works his way back onto his feet. He turns and faces me, taking in the crimson suit before locking his eyes with mine. I should say something to him. I should apologize for lying to him. I should explain why I've done the things I've done. I should say something, anything, but the words just don't come.

"Get out of here," Jim says flatly.

There's no sense of anger or urgency in his voice, just pain. I start to open my mouth, reflexively thinking that he wants me gone because I've lied to him all this time, but then I remember where I am and what activating my powers could mean right now: The Alphas.

So I say nothing and instead take one last glance down the block where I see the crowd starting to come back in this direction. They see me, a metahuman in a city where metahumans are banned. I'm not sure if they're happy or mad, but I don't intend to wait around long enough to find out.

I turn my head toward the sky and, in an instant, I'm gone.

I
don't even think
about flying directly back home. When this city was crawling with metahumans, it was easy enough to duck into a building from the roof, where I could be reasonably sure no one would see me. Even that might have been a stupid risk.

I take a last look over my shoulder. The skyline is clear. There's a jet way off in the distance and a helicopter heading toward the scene of the accident, but nothing else. Time might be running out, so I look for a place to land. It needs to be close, and it needs to be as unpopulated as possible. Landing in a busy intersection isn't going to help with this disappearing act. Below me, I see something that looks like it could work and I swoop down into a dive.

I'm plunging back toward earth head first, as fast as possible without causing a shockwave or any other kind of disturbance that will bring unwanted attention to me. At the speed I'm traveling at, few people would notice me as more than just a strange object out of the corner of their eye. Before they gave it their full attention, I'd already be gone from the sky.

Fighting the instinct to slow down and prepare for a landing, I keep my head firmly in place and keep plummeting, all the way down and right into a huge pile of trash. It was the best place I could find to land on short notice without having to worry about anyone seeing me. My powers might be able to protect me from a lot of things, but they can't do anything to protect me from the smell.

I wait silently, deep in the massive pile of trash, focusing on the sounds around me, listening for the distinctive boom of another meta flying through the sky, but it doesn't come. All I can hear is the sound of dozens, if not hundreds, of rats scampering out of the garbage pile.

The Bay View City Municipal Landfill isn't the kind of place that gets many lunchtime visitors. That's why I flew into a pile of garbage at high speed. “Pile of garbage” might be a little bit of an understatement. This is a mountain of garbage and evil. The smell is overwhelming, and there's at least thirty feet of it between my head and the rest of the world above me.

When the threat of being ripped apart by an Alpha becomes more welcoming than spending another second breathing through old diapers and discarded cans of dog food, I start to swim for the surface. I fight every instinct I have to not just fly out at super speed, telling myself that someone may still be waiting for me out there.

After a grueling five minutes, I'm finally out of the pile and back breathing fresh air on the surface. Well, not really fresh air. I'm still in a landfill, after all, but compared to where I was, this smells like heaven.

To my relief, there's no one around. I need to get this suit off as soon as possible. Anyone, even a garbage man, seeing me like this and I'm right back to the situation I started from. I raise my wrists and stop right before I click them together, looking at the banana peel clinging to my forearm. Clenching my teeth, I make my body vibrate at supersonic speed. Dirt and slime fly off of me in every direction. Once I'm somewhat satisfied that there's nothing left clinging to me, I power down.

It wouldn't have been as safe, but it sure would have been easier to keep my powers on while I trek through all of this trash on my way toward what I hope is an exit. My balance was never great to begin with, but trying to keep my equilibrium on top of all this shifting, rotting garbage while also holding my breath is really testing my limits.

When I make it back onto solid ground, I take off running for the exit, still looking overhead every few seconds, waiting for an attack that thankfully never comes. I emerge from the entrance to the landfill, running past a driver who does a double take from the cab of his garbage truck. I can see the top of my apartment building from here. It's easily still at least a couple of miles away, though, so I'd better start walking.

I
contact
Derrick on the way back to tell him everything's okay. Well, not really
okay
, but my head is still attached to my neck, so it's something. I'm out in the open here, though, which means I can't actually call him and have to use text instead. Derrick thinks that the Alphas are just too powerful to trust phone calls anymore. While he trusts that the encryption he's using is unbreakable, he worries that one of the Alphas might be close enough to zero in on my voice out here in the open and listen in on our conversation.

It's paranoia beyond belief, even for Derrick, but part of me thinks he might actually be right. I decide it's better to be safe than sorry and don't push the issue any further. He tells me to go home and wait. He would go there himself too, but he's worried about today's actions leading to someone getting closer to figuring out who I really am. If that's the case, then him leaving work in the middle of the day and during a big breaking story would only add fuel to that kind of speculation.

After I walk through the front door of the apartment, all I want to do is take a shower. I might have waited until I was out of the trash heap to power down my metabands, but I still had to walk through quite a bit of grossness before I was completely out of there. The long walk home, most of which was uphill, didn't exactly help with the smell either. As nice as a shower sounds, the first thing I do once I calmly close the door and all of the blinds is run over to the TV remote. Derrick would kill me if he knew I was sitting on his nice, new leather couch after taking a swim through the city's waste, but what he doesn't know won't hurt him.

I flip over to one of the meta news networks, sure that they'll have some kind of live report while I also scroll through the different websites on my laptop that cover this type of thing. I checked all of them on my phone during my walk, but I couldn't find anything at all about any metahuman sightings in Bay View City. Did Jim not tell them what happened? Was it possible that no one saw me? I suppose anything's possible, but it seems extremely unlikely.

As I wonder aloud what the hell's going on, a breaking news graphic splashes across the screen, and the video cuts to an anchor sitting at her desk, reading from a stack of papers that have just been handed to her.

"We apologize for interrupting your previously scheduled programming to bring you some breaking news. We've received word that earlier this morning Bay View City witnessed its first confirmed metahuman sighting in nearly two weeks at Regis Park in the downtown area. Witnesses on the ground confirm to MNN that the suspect bore a strong resemblance to the metahuman known as Omni, who has not been seen since his involvement in the unauthorized release of dozens of inmates from the Silver Island Metahuman Containment Facility. When asked if this metahuman may have been responsible for the nearly fatal two-car accident that occurred in the area at the time, officials said that all possibilities are being investigated."

They think I'm responsible? If it wasn't for me, the
almost
fatal car crash would have definitely been fatal.

"At this time, we've been told to advise citizens to remain in their homes until the metahuman in question is found or confirmed to have left the city. He's to be considered extremely dangerous. Sources also tell us that the Alphas may already have a suspect in custody at this time, although that has yet to be confirmed."

It's then that I remember Jim. I didn't call him after I landed for the same reason I didn't call Derrick: all eyes were on Omni and anyone who could be found to be connected to him would be in danger. I figured that they would question Jim and ask him what I said and what I knew. If someone was close enough to have seen me and recognized me as Omni, then that means they were probably close enough to have noticed the two of us talking. Could they really think Jim was Omni, or were they just trying to get information out of him?

I feel sick to my stomach, suddenly realizing how strongly the situation pointed to Jim as the metahuman they were looking for. He was the only person that the other Blanks would have recognized that stayed close to the accident when everyone else had run.

Anyone there who heard about a metahuman saving the second victim would have assumed that was Jim. Add to that the Blanks' paranoia and constant backstabbing and it's easy to see Jim being turned in. From what I've heard, turning in a suspected traitor is a one-way ticket to an easy promotion among their ranks, even if you're wrong.

That means that the Alphas probably have Jim, and if they do, they won't take “it wasn't me” for an answer. I don't know what they'll do to him. Even if all they get out of him is the truth, that means everyone I know is in trouble.

O
ut of all
of the stupid things I've done, what I'm doing right now might be the stupidest yet. I'm not sure how stupid it can be considered when I have no other choice, though. If I do nothing, my secret will be revealed and Jim will be killed or, most likely, both.

This is what I have to keep reminding myself as I fly through the air, heading toward Keane Tower.

The tower's exterior hasn't changed since I was last here, but its ownership has. After Keane was found guilty of using his telepathic abilities to coerce his business associates into agreeing to unfair and worthless deals, his assets were seized and his business declared bankruptcy. After Silver Island was destroyed, the Alphas moved into the tower and claimed it as their own. There wasn't anyone around who could dispute their claim, so that's where they've remained, and that's where I'm assuming I'll find them.

As I approach the building, I pull back on my speed and raise my hands into the air.

"It's Omni. I'm not here looking for a fight. I think you might be holding the wrong person in there, and I just want to talk. Once that happens, I'll leave Bay View City and never come back. I promise you," I say.

I wonder if they'll be able to hear the slight increase in my heartbeat, which is a surefire indicator that my promise to never return might be a lie. But if it means getting Jim back in one piece, I'll keep to my word.

Far below me, I can see hundreds of people gathering in the streets with their heads tilted skyward. They're watching my every move and listening to my every word. This is what I counted on, maybe the only thing I could actually count on: drawing a crowd. The Alphas may rule Bay View City through intimidation and fear, but I'm hoping that they'll see starting a war in the sky right now is exactly what they claim to be trying to prevent. No one in that crowd below could say that I came here to fight, so if it happens, that's all on Alpha team.

I hover in the air above the city for minutes, waiting. I used some of my power to project my voice loudly enough so that I'm sure it can be heard. Despite the temptation, I stop short of trying to use any kind of enhanced vision to see through the walls and into the building. It's not like that ability has been working well lately, not since Charlie crushed my metabands anyway.

After seven minutes, there's movement. A mirrored window on the eighty-third floor swings open. It's an invitation to come inside.

M
uch of the
furniture and equipment from the last time I was here, when this was still Keane's building, has been removed. Where there was once a sprawling cubicle farm, now there's nothing but open space. I walk through the space and toward the door of the office that used to belong to Keane, keeping my head on a swivel the entire time. A nagging voice in the back of my mind keeps telling me that this feels like a trap. How could it not feel like a trap? I've been invited into the home of a group whose publicly stated goal is to rid Bay View City of metahumans for good, and here I am, the first metahuman Bay View City has seen in weeks just strolling in for a visit.

As I approach the glass walls of Keane's office, I see him: Charlie. He's sitting with his feet up on Keane's huge wooden slab of a desk. He seems to be making a point of disrespecting Keane's possessions. Charlie's wearing black fatigues and boots, and his face is uncovered. He's not quite old enough to look like a general or anything like that, but he looks like a military man who’s nearing the end of his better days. After the scar on his cheek, the most noticeable aspect of his face is that it is tanned and weathered, the look of a man who's spent years, decades even, in warmer climates. His hair is cut close. Not quite a buzz cut, but not too far off, sprinkled with more gray than dark brown, but still thick and full.

He's speaking to someone just out of my field of vision who is obscured by a pillar. Alpha Team looks at ease in this castle in the sky. If he noticed me coming in, then he's purposefully making an effort to seem like he hasn't. Suddenly he throws his head back in uproarious laughter, which I can see but can't hear through the thick glass walls. As his laughter dies down, his eye catches sight of me, but his expression doesn't change. He waves me into his office with the trace of a smile still on his face, like I'm an old friend he's been expecting to come by for a while.

My heart feels like it’s about to beat right through my suit when I reach for the stainless steel handle of the office door and pull it open.

"Come in, come in," Charlie says, standing to greet me and offering a seat in one of the chairs opposite his desk. "I assume you've already met James."

Jim turns his head to see me but doesn't stand. His expression is hard to read and the calm all around me is making this feel even more like a trap. Jim doesn't necessarily seem comfortable, but he also doesn't look like he's being held against his will. Has he told them my secret? Have I so betrayed his trust that his loyalties lie with this man now?

"Can I get you anything? Water, juice, coffee?" Charlie asks, his gaze directed over my shoulder at a younger man wearing an expensive suit who I didn't see when I came in.

I shake my head, and Charlie waves the man off without a word.

"Please, sit," Charlie asks me again.

"I'd rather stand, thanks," I reply.

"Suit yourself, but if this were a trap, you know that being seated or standing wouldn't really matter. You've already put yourself into a potentially very dangerous situation. Taking a load off your feet wouldn't make a whole hell of a lot of difference.

"I've been speaking with young James about your heroics earlier this afternoon. Very impressive stuff if I do say, Mister...?"

"Omni."

He smiles.

"Of course. I didn't think getting your true identity out of you would be that easy. To be honest with you, Omni," he says in a tone that tells me he thinks calling me by my alias is ridiculous, "I really have no interest in who you actually are."

This is the first real indication I have that Jim hasn't told him anything, or at least hasn't told him the truth. Charlie could be lying to me, but I choose to hold onto the small chance that he's not.

"Tell me," Charlie says as he wanders over to Keane's old drink cart and pulls out a bottle of whiskey amongst the dozens of fancier-looking bottles. He pulls the cork out of it and splashes some into a rocks glass before capping the bottle and putting it away. No fancy cocktails for this guy. "What do you truly know about those things?" he asks as he motions to the metabands on my wrists.

"I know enough," I say, trying my best to sound tough.

Charlie throws his head back and lets out a boisterous laugh that's so loud it makes me involuntarily flinch. I'm not sure if he saw it, but if he did, the tough-guy act I just tried has been completely negated.

"Omni, if this conversation is going to be all monosyllabic on your end, then it's going to be a lot longer than it has to be. I thought your old buddy Midnight did enough brooding for both of you?" he asks rhetorically with a smirk. "Now there's a guy I actually would like to know more about. Very interesting character, that one. How he's been able to hold his own in a world filled with metahumans for this long is certainly something to be respected, even if he's often on the wrong side of things. I've had a lot of training in my time in the service. A lot of training. Usually with a guy like that, I could tell you ten different things about him just by how he fights. I could look at how someone like that throws a punch and tell you where he learned it, who he learned it from, how long ago, the list goes on. But his methods are almost completely alien to me. It's not as though there's a lot of footage of him to go by, but still. Fascinating stuff. I won't lie. I'd be very interested to learn who it is under
that
cowl. But under yours? It really doesn't matter to me."

He finishes pacing back and forth in front of his desk and walks around to the other side to take a seat. Once he's seated, he takes a long sip from his whiskey.

"Wow, that is good stuff. I don't think I've had whiskey this expensive since the time we raided King Abdullah's castle back during the Krykstan skirmish. Very good stuff," he says as he places the glass on the desk in front of him.

Jim sits quietly with his head facing forward, ignoring me.

"Why did you tell everyone that I'm dangerous?" I ask.

"Because you are dangerous, Omni. You're very dangerous. All of us are."

"You told them that I caused that car accident."

"I did nothing of the sort. Unfortunately, despite the appearance that we completely run this city and all the media within it, that simply isn’t the case. The news reports what the news wants to report."

"And that just happens to usually be anti-meta rhetoric?"

"Well what do you expect from a world that has been ravaged by people like us?"

"Don't group me in with you. We're nothing alike."

"I'm sure you believe that, but sadly it's simply not the case, because at the end of the day, we're both the same. We're humans. And humans have weaknesses. Flaws. Vulnerabilities that no metabands can overcome. The sooner other metahumans realize and accept that, the better off all of us will be. There's a reason why the news reports stories the way that they do. It's because they fit in with the narrative that normal citizens expect and want to hear. Do you know how many people left Bay View City after we imposed a ban on metahumans here? Five percent. That's it. Only five percent of people who called Bay View City home felt that our new law was so terrible that they had to leave."

"But you're only counting people who have the ability to leave. Lots people in this city have lived here their entire lives and so have their families. Just because they didn't leave, doesn't mean they agree with what you're doing."

Charlie shrugs and looks into his whiskey glass.

"I'm sure you're not entirely wrong, but you're missing the point."

"Which is?"

"You see yourself as a hero. A savior."

"I just see myself as someone who does what they can to help."

"That's bullshit!" Charlie exclaims in a burst of rage as he slams his whiskey down on the desk, spilling half of it onto the floor before straightening himself in his seat and clearing his throat. "I apologize for that. It's just that I've heard that excuse before. I've heard false humility. I've heard good intentions. But power corrupts. And the world has seen what this type of power has led to in the past."

He's talking about The Battle. Jim has barely looked at me since I walked in, but now I can tell he's trying even harder not to.

"So your solution is to get rid of all the metahumans except for you and your buddies? How does consolidating power into the hands of the few fix the problem you're talking about?"

"I never said that was what I was talking about, which brings me back to my original question, which you so flippantly tossed aside with a smart-ass remark: How much do you know about how those things on your wrists actually work?"

I remain silent, partially because I don't know a lot about how they really work and partially because the little I may know is the last thing I would tell him if he doesn’t know already.

"You're guarded about this. I can see that. I can understand that, even. You don't know me, and I don't know you. Why would you tell me something that I might be able to use against you? I'll start then by telling you something about my metabands that I haven't heard about any others.

"I can feel when other metahumans are close. It's hard to describe, and it only works if the bands are active, but it's uncanny. When you showed up at that accident today, an accident which I fully believe you had nothing to do with, incidentally, I hadn't learned about it from television. I learned about it from these," he says, holding up his wrists to show me his own metabands.

"I could feel your power nearby. That's how I knew you were here. It's how we were sure, prior to your arrival today, that we were a city completely free of metahumans."

This isn't something I've ever experienced before, and it makes me wonder how else Charlie’s metabands are different from my own.

"Do you know why I could feel your power, Omni? I'll tell you. It's because we're connected."

"Oh no, is this going to be one of those ‘Luke, I am your father’ type speeches?" I ask.

There's a brief pause, and it seems like I've just infuriated him. I can feel my muscles beginning to tense up and my adrenaline surging as I wonder if this is going to be it, if this is finally when we're going to have it out. But it doesn't happen. Instead, Charlie throws his head back and laughs again, even harder than last time. He's laughing so hard that tears are rolling down his face, and he's having trouble catching his breath.

"I heard that you were witty like that. It's a defense mechanism, I'm sure. Something you do when you're not sure what else to say, but still, I have to admit, that was very funny. I should have been clearer. It's not just you and I that are connected, Omni. It's all of us. And I don't mean that in the tree-hugger sense of the word. I mean literally. There is some unknown force that ties all of these bands to one another.

"Has it ever occurred to you why it was that shortly after you found your metabands that the rest literally started raining from the sky?" he asks.

I let my guard down slightly. I know that there's something more happening here, something else going on that I just don't quite have a grasp on yet, but the truth is that I have wondered. My head has been full of questions about the pieces of metal wrapped around my wrists since they first appeared, and my curiosity is getting the better of me.

"What do you know about my metabands that I don't?" I ask.

"Not a lot. And I'm certain that there are things you know about yours that I don't. They're very personal items, after all, adapting to their owner's physiology so closely that they refuse to work for anyone else, granting abilities unique to each owner. They become a part of you, as we've found out ourselves as well, obviously.