Meta (22 page)

  
The pizza we ordered comes right as we're waiting for the video to finish uploading. I hope this isn't my last meal, especially since I had to compromise with Derrick on the toppings I wanted.

  
We eat and talk, honestly and openly for the first time in what feels like maybe ever. Now that Derrick knows who I really am, or at least who I can become in a second's notice, I don't see the point in keeping anything else from him. He already knows the most dangerous part. He's glued to every word as we polish off an entire pepperoni and sausage pizza between the two of us and the video finishes uploading.

  
Within minutes, it begins receiving thousands and thousands of views. Neither of us are surprised, since this was a video of one metahuman calling out another. The metahuman equivalent of one of those professional wrestling pre-fight interviews, where they scream into the camera about how they're going to body-slam their opponent so hard, they'll wish they were never born. Derrick was mad we didn't turn ads on and make a few bucks at least.

  
I'd drifted off into a food coma from the half a pizza I'd eaten when Derrick shakes me awake.

  
"We got a response," he says as my eyes struggle to adjust from being asleep and focus on his face.

  
Actually, we got a lot of responses, the video already had three million views, but what Derrick was referring to was a response from The Controller. The response didn't come via video, just a simple comment:

  
"Tomorrow. Downtown Culver. Five p.m. Between Smith and Warsaw. And don't even think about bringing any of your super buddies or the gloves are off."

  
I expect Derrick to be giddy. He was finally involved, directly involved, in fact, in a world that had fascinated him for so long. But when I turn to look at him, he's looking at the floor.

  
"What?" I ask.

  
"Don't do this," he says.

  
"What are you talking about? This was your idea."

  
"I know. But don't do this."

  
"I have to do this. He's going to be there one way or another, and if I'm not there he's just going to kill as many people as he can to set an example, to prove that I'm a coward."

  
"I know. I know. You're right," he says, as he finally looks up and into my eyes. "I know what you need to do, it's just that you're all I have left Connor. If I lost you..," he trails off in order to keep himself from choking up.

  
"Hey," I say to him as he goes back to looking at the floor. "Hey!" Now I have his attention. "I'm not planning on losing this. Someone's gotta bring this lunatic down, and you know as well as I know, as well as the entire world knows, that I'm the best shot at doing that."

  
This gets a begrudging nod from Derrick. He knows, but that doesn't mean he has to be happy about it.

  
"In that case, you'd better get to sleep. You've got a big day tomorrow." he tells me.

  
"You're right. There's just one thing I have to do before that."

  
And with that. I summon my metabands, activate them and teleport to Midnight's lair one last time.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

It's dark. I mean, it's always dark here, but this is too dark.

  
"Lights on," I say out loud.

  
There is the familiar click of florescent lights as the flickering image of Midnight's headquarters comes into view.

  
It's empty. Completely, and totally empty. None of Midnight's suits, computers, hardware, vehicles, etc. Not even a trace that anyone has ever been here before.

  
He's gone. And he doesn't want me to find him.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

I can hear Derrick back in the kitchen on his laptop when I teleport back into my bedroom. With everything that's going on, I can't begin to explain how relieved I am that at least my foot didn't end up in a toilet this time, but I'm still sad.

  
I stand there with my metabands still active for a few minutes, looking down at myself. My nearly unrecognizable body, covered head to toe in deep red. The meaningless symbol on my chest that has become meaningful to some. I examine my metabands. No matter how many times I look at them, I'm still fascinated with them. Concentrating hard, although not as hard as I had to before, I'm able to bring up the lighted indicators showing that I have nearly full battery power. How the hell these things recharge themselves, I have no idea, but they seem to do it faster when they're off than when they're on, which I guess makes sense. Without the need to keep them powered on any longer, I bring them up together in front of my chest and deactivate them. The Omni uniform retracts into the bands and I'm Connor again.

  
I stand there for another moment, looking at my more familiar body. It feels so weak in comparison, but there's comfort in its familiarity. This is the thought going through my head when a hand from behind clamps down over my mouth.

  
Instinctively, I begin to bring my arms together to activate my metabands. I hadn't even had time to make them disappear yet, and while I wouldn't normally activate them in front of someone, whoever this is, obviously knows who I am already. They've seen the bands on me. And they were hiding in my closet after all.

  
Wait. Who would hide in my closet?

  
"Don't," Midnight's voice says into my ear. His hand releases from my mouth and I turn to face him.

  
"What the he..," I begin to yell before he clamps his hand back over my mouth.

  
"If I wanted you to yell and scream, why would I have covered your mouth Connor?" he says, then releases his hand again.

  
"Sorry," I say, even though I'm not sure why I'm the one apologizing to the masked vigilante who's been waiting in my closet for who knows how long. I'm positive he does this hiding in the shadows stuff, at least partially, because he likes scaring people.

  
"Connor?" Derrick yells from the kitchen with slight concern in his voice. Midnight shoots me a look that says the obvious,
don't tell him I'm here.

  
"I'm fine. Just stubbed my toe," I yell back towards the kitchen. There's no response back, but I don't hear him get up from his chair so that must have satisfied his curiosity.

  
"Where were you just coming from?" Midnight asks me.

  
"From your place. I was looking for you," I say.

  
"I'm not there," he tells me. Thanks for that Midnight, I kinda figured that part out for myself.

  
"Where have you been? You have no idea the amount of shit I've been through this past week," I say.

  
"Actually, I have a very good idea. I was there for most of it," he tells me.

  
"What?"

  
He answers my question by pulling something out from behind his back (where and how he keeps all this stuff on him I never understand) and throwing it down in front of me. It's a mask of some kind. A very, very realistic mask. It's of the face of an older woman I saw at the lake during the Merman attack. Wait. It's not modeled after her, it is her. She was him.

  
"You think this is the only disguise I wear?" Midnight asks, referring to the current all black costume I've seen him wearing every time we've met.

  
"You were there? Why didn't you do anything?" I ask.

  
"So you would," he replies. "If I had acted, you wouldn't have had reason to. You were right to be frustrated with me, I was training you too slowly, creating a dangerous situation if you were called into action before you were ready. So instead, I let you out into the world and just stood back and observed."

  
"But how did you know I was ready? I know I was being a pain in the ass and wanted to move faster, but that didn't mean I was ready. What if things had started to go south, would you have stepped in?" I ask.

  
"Yeah, probably," he says with a shrug of his shoulders. Unbelievable. I thought I'd nearly got myself killed multiple times, and apparently he was always mere feet away.
 

  
"None of that's important right now though," he tells me.

  
"What is then?" I ask.

  
"The cage match that you just challenged your online buddy to tomorrow," he says.

  
"Oh. Right. That." I'd nearly forgotten in all of the excitement of having an actual boogeyman come out of my closet and scare me half to death.

  
"Do you have a plan?" Midnight asks.

  
"I do, but I have a feeling it's not up to your standards." I say.

  
"What is it?"

  
"Go to downtown Culver tomorrow at five p.m. and hopefully hit him in the head enough times that he goes to sleep."

  
Midnight doesn't respond to that. He just gives me his hundred-yard stare. His point's been made: I don't have a plan, and I really need one.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

I barely slept last night, and I don't know what to do with myself this morning. How do you spend your day when you know that at the end of it, you're going to be facing a person powered by presumably alien technology, with powers and abilities beyond what you can even imagine, and that their sole purpose in life right now is to kill you in the most public way possible? So of course, I don't bother taking the day off of work.

  
Oddly, I find this to be somewhat relaxing. There's something very Zen about picking up other peoples' trash while contemplating how your own mortality will be up for grabs later in the day. It might seem weird that I went to work when there's so much going on, but Midnight said it was the best thing to do. I'm going to have to get used to balancing my actual life with my life as a guy who can also fly and throw people through walls. At least that's what Midnight tells me. According to him, the number one way metas' secret identities were found out back in the day, was because they slipped up in their own personal lives.

  
Husbands or wives who thought their spouses were cheating on them, who decided to do some snooping, only to find out that their loved one was actually flying around the city stopping crime. Bosses who fired their employees due to taking too many sick days or showing up to work seemingly hungover because they'd been out all night before getting their head shoved through brick walls.

  
Midnight was determined that I keep up appearances, especially on big days like today. It's days like this, he said, when someone inevitably starts putting two and two together and thinks, 'You know what's weird? You never see Connor and Omni in the same place at the same time.' They won't be as likely to have those thoughts when attacks happen randomly, but when it's a premeditated fight? People have all day to think about it and wonder who the metahumans battling really are.

  
There's other reasons besides keeping my identity a secret that Midnight insisted I go to work today. The main reason is my own sanity. Although I can't keep my metabands powered up constantly, it is possible to still lose all sense of who being Connor Connolly is, and start thinking of myself only as meta. Midnight says that this can lead to a whole host of problems, including beginning to feel separated from the rest of humanity. According to him, this is one of the reasons a lot of metas begin killing without discretion. It's hard to feel sorry for a human being when you start believing you're a god.

  
"Hey!" Jim yells into my ear from behind, startling me.

  
"Hi. Why are you yelling at me?" I ask.

  
"Because I've been standing here for five minutes now, waiting for you to notice. In another world today?" he asks.

  
"Sorry. I didn't get much sleep last night. Just a little tired," I tell him. It's the truth after all, but I'm going to have to start coming up with some new excuses soon.

  
"Yeah, I know what you mean. Me neither. You got any plans for the fight today?" he asks.

  
I hadn't even thought about the rest of the world's reaction to all of this. During the first wave of metas, there were occasionally premeditated battles, but it was very rare. Almost all of them seemed to happen at random. People were lucky if the news crews got there in time to get a glimpse of little more than the aftermath. It's different now. Back then, how would you have contacted another meta even if you did want to fight him or her? Now all you have to do is send a message through social media. Even though I've basically grown up with social media as my reality, it was still weird to think of metas being able to use it for things like setting up a fight that might destroy a city block or three.

  
Downtown Culver had already been evacuated late last night. After 'The Battle', people take metahuman evacuation warnings very seriously. After the evacuations, the media was able to get into the area and install ballistic-proof cameras on the street, rooftops, etc. The government allows this, and actually encourages it, since in theory, it keeps those with more curiosity than sense far away if they can just watch on TV.

  
That's not enough though, of course. In addition to the robotically controlled cameras, there's also camera-equipped drones that are already circling the area. Some are the military's, used for information reconnaissance in case they ever find themselves pitted against one of us some day, but most are run by the media corporations, making sure they're able to get a good vantage point of the fight even if it strays outside of the predetermined area.