Meta (7 page)

  
Midnight. When the first wave of metahumans started appearing on Earth, a lot of people were frightened. You have to remember that this was before anyone, and I mean anyone, the government included, understood or knew what they were. A lot of folks thought they were aliens from another planet. Or some type of government experiment gone horribly wrong. A threat from the Russians, or the Chinese.

  
The first year of metahumans was almost total chaos. Miscommunication about who and what they were ran rampant. Everywhere you went, everyone had a theory or heard a story from another guy, whose brother's brother-in-law's friend works for the CIA, blah blah blah. You get the idea. People were afraid to leave their houses to go to work, and they were also transfixed to their televisions for any and every update.

  
It was around this time the vigilantes started popping up. At first it was just copycats. A guy watching TV decides being a metahuman looks like fun, so he spray paints an old wet suit and decides to hit the streets for himself to see if he can join in on the good times, even if he doesn't possess a pair of metabands. The metas that leaned towards the more villainy side of the spectrum, used to use these guys for target practice.

  
But then a few started popping up that could hold their own. Many came forward out of necessity. They came from neighborhoods that the police didn't have time to visit any more now that they were so busy cleaning up after the metas. Some formed alliances with the good metas, which more or less kept the bad ones off their backs and away from their neighborhoods. If something happened to them, you'd have half a dozen metas after you for it, so it just wasn't worth it for most.

  
The vigilantes were popular. Something for kids to aspire to. The ones that were realistic enough to know that they would never find a pair of metabands for themselves. Everything changed when Midnight appeared, though. No one had ever seen anything like him.

  
While most vigilantes were little more than barroom brawlers at best, Midnight was a different beast altogether. Little footage of him actually existed at the time. It got to the point that many swore he was simply an urban legend. The result of a handful of similar looking vigilantes having a good outing or two, and their stories all being combined to make one almost superhuman sounding vigilante named Midnight. All of that changed when he actually took down a meta though.

  
The meta's name was simply 'Fire'. What he lacked in originality, he made up for in mayhem and destruction. An ex-con released after serving half his sentence for multiple counts of arson and homicide, his ability was turning the oxygen in the air surrounding him into pure fire. As far as abilities go, there wasn't too much you can do with an ability like that to have a positive effect on the world. Luckily for Fire, he wasn't interested in that anyway. Fire was a psychopath through and through. What he lacked in intelligence, he more than made up for in pure evilness.

  
Fire's gleeful march through downtown, incinerating everything and person had been ongoing for nearly an hour when it happens. Midnight appears out of nowhere on Main Street. Right in the middle of Fire's path of destruction. And he simply waits.

  
Fire laughs. His actions weren't disastrous enough to draw the attention of another metahuman yet, but they were enough to bring Midnight out of hiding. Fire redirects his flames towards Midnight as he continues his march. The heat is absolutely unbearable, even for Midnight, who from the news copter's view, you could see was wearing some type of insulated armor. Fire is now bearing down on Midnight as dozens of citizens hiding in nearby buildings take the opportunity to flee. Fire's white hot flames keep getting closer and closer to Midnight, until he is all but two feet in front of him.

  
That's when the manhole cover behind Fire flies about twenty feet into the air. Midnight, or rather the real Midnight, reaches up from the manhole, grabs Fire's ankles and pulls as hard as he can. Fire had no time to react and falls face first into the concrete. The Midnight waiting on the street wasn't Midnight at all. It was a sophisticated suit of armor left to stand idle. A trap. No one was ever inside of it.

  
Seven of Fire's teeth are knocked out of his head when Midnight rolls him over, and headbutts him for good measure, and to make certain he's out for the count. Even though the police swoop in on the scene mere seconds after this transpires, all they find is Fire bound with a pair of Teflon handcuffs. Midnight has already descended back into the entrance of the sewer from where he appeared.

  
And now, he is standing above me. Midnight was recognizable by the fact that he has always been almost completely unrecognizable, by his own design. His entire body was covered head to toe in plated body armor. Over that there was some type of black neoprene. The only recognizable feature in the armor, was a simple dark grey crescent moon, barely visible. The only part of his body that was exposed was his jawline, a look popularized by many of the more well-known metas. Even his eyes were covered by some white lenses that made it appear as though he had no pupils, although obviously whatever material this was, it allowed Midnight to still see through it. Probably even better, since undoubtedly there was some form of enhanced goggles buried under that cowl.

  
"I asked you a question," Midnight says.

  
"Honestly, I forgot what it even was."

  
"Where did you get those metabands? That's the last time I'm asking," Midnight growls.

  
"I don't know," I say.

  
"Wrong answer."

  
"Wait!" I scream before he has a chance to do whatever it is that was the next step after breaking my jaw.

  
"I'm not keeping anything from you. I'm just as confused about it as you are. One minute I'm laying in the woods bleeding to death and the next, I wake up with these things around my wrists. I don't know where they came from, and I barely understand how they work. That's the truth, I promise you."

  
"Hmm. You're telling the truth."

  
"How do you know?"

  
Midnight taps his cowl, next to his right eye. Looks like I was right, he does have some kind of tech in there feeding him information. There must be a lie detector or something that he can use just by looking at me. Or maybe these straps keeping me tied down to the table are equipped with sensors reading my pulse rate. Or he's just bluffing. Whatever, I don't actually care right now because at least he believes me, and I won't be getting any more bones broken tonight if I'm lucky. With another tap on his wrist, the shackles holding me to the table release and I'm free.

  
"You really don't know how those things work yet do you?" he asks.

  
"No."

  
"You're going to get yourself killed out there then."

  
"You think that idea hasn't crossed my mind?"

  
"Watch it, kid. I'm trying to help you here."

  
"Yeah, I noticed that when you broke half of my face."

  
"That was necessary to ensure you could be taken into custody without incident. Even deactivated, the metabands healed you. I knew they would."

  
"Sure, and the mental scars from nearly being beaten to death will heal just fine too, I'm sure."

  
"Toughen up. You're a meta now. Things aren't going to get easier from here. This is the path you've chosen."

  
"I didn't choose anything! These bands just appeared on me."

  
"If you want them gone forever, I can help with that."

  
"Well, I mean, let's not get hasty. I haven't been a superhero for even twenty-four hours yet, let's see if it takes to me first."

  
"Superhero? You think some foreign technology is all it takes to make you a superhero?"

  
"Hey! I saved a little girl's life today, buddy."

  
"And you killed a man in the process."

  
"I'm not proud of that, but it's not like he was an innocent bystander. He was a monster."

  
"That's not for you to decide."

  
"Well, what's done is done. I can't change what happened and what I did."

  
"But you can make sure it never happens again."

  
"Oh yeah? How's that?"

  
"By learning how to control yourself and those bands."

  
"And how am I going to do that?"

  
"Well are you afraid of them?"

  
"Yes."

  
"Then that's the first problem."

CHAPTER NINE

Hovering is harder than it looks. The metabands naturally want to shoot you into the atmosphere, as the dent I've created in Midnight's ceiling proves. At first, it was nearly impossible to even get off the ground, now it feels impossible to land. My feet dangle an inch from the ground, but I cannot relax enough to land.

  
Midnight tells me that flying is one of the hardest abilities to control. Now that I can
kinda
do it for myself, it's no wonder that a lot of the original metas who died, did so because they accidentally flew into a building at a thousand miles an hour, or lost their concentration at thirty-thousand feet.

  
Midnight, of course, has never used metabands himself, but his knowledge of how they work exceeds that of anyone I've ever heard about. That includes the forum junkies that Derrick keeps me apprised of. I ask Midnight how he knows so much about the metabands, but he ignores the question entirely. I'm not surprised.

  
He tells me that I'm lucky. My bands seem to have some sort of built-in protection mechanism that he hasn't seen before. Most metas with superhuman strength and the ability to protect and repair their bodies have to concentrate on doing so. I don't. It's like that ability is on auto-pilot.

  
According to Midnight, my bands look identical to the first wave versions the world saw all those years ago, but there's no way to know for sure if there isn't something different about these ones. Of course, it could also just be how I'm wired, he says. There could be something about my brain, and how it interfaces with these bands, that just works. The way sometimes a person is just a natural, that might be me, at least in regard to the strength/protection ability. Certainly not flying, as the increasingly deeper dent in Midnight's ceiling attests to.

  
After a couple of hours of this, it's obvious that I'm not going to get it tonight. It's late and I haven't had an actual
good
night's sleep in two days now. Midnight tells me that learning to control my abilities while I'm exhausted is important. Maybe the most important. I'm nodding off as he tells me this of course. I can't stop thinking about my bed. Warm and soft. Quiet and cozy. There's literally no place on Earth that I'd rather be right now, than lying in that bed. I want to be there so badly that it starts to feel like I actually am in my bed.

  
Now I am in my bed. It's just as warm and cozy as I'd imagined it. I don't know how I got here, but I've never been so glad to be in it I think as I drift off to sleep.

  
I wake up the next morning and cannot for the life of me figure out how I got here. I remember being at Midnight's and just being so, so tired. The next thing I remember is being here. So this means I can teleport now too? If learning just how to hover seemed difficult, I can't even begin to understand how it is that I was able to teleport.

  
Midnight's not going to be happy about this, I have a feeling. I still don't know how to get to his headquarters, or lair, or whatever it is, since he took me there while I was knocked unconscious.

  
I stumble into the kitchen, where Derrick is so engrossed in whatever is on his laptop screen, that he doesn't notice he's dripping half of his cereal and milk onto the kitchen table as he shovels it into his mouth.

  
"Good morning," I say as I find my way to the cabinet and look for the cereal box.

  
Derrick barely grunts back.

  
"More metahuman happenings?" I ask, not even thinking about last night. What if someone saw what happened? I was careful, I had a ski mask on the whole time, but still. What if it came off when Midnight was beating me half to death and I didn't notice?

  
Nah. He's more careful than that. Right?

  
"Eh. Nothing conclusive. Lots of people on the boards saying they saw things, but no one grabbed a picture or video? Give me a break," Derrick says.

  
I haven't noticed that my right hand is shaking so hard that I'm missing the bowl I'm pouring my cereal into. I don't know why this is making me so nervous. What did I expect Derrick to say? "Oh yeah, here's a picture of you flying above the city on the front page of today's newspaper, by the way..." If I'm going to do this whole secret identity thing, I've got to start getting a little bit better of a grip on my own emotions.

  
"Heh, yeah. Sounds like they've got too much time on their hands. Speaking of which, are you working from home today? I thought you'd said there was a meeting you had to go in for?" I ask Derrick.

  
"Crap!" he exclaims. "I'm late!" Derrick grabs another mouthful of cereal, again most of it doesn't make it to his mouth, as he stands up and grabs his bag. He's out the door before I'm able to say bye. The door slams and there is nothing but quiet inside the house.

  
I'm alone. Finally. I walk back into my bedroom and find my metabands. I sit with them for a long time and just hold them in my hands. They weigh almost nothing, yet are indestructible. A mystery that even the brightest scientists in the world could never solve. Granted, there were many more mysteries to the bands that they were focusing their energies on trying to figure out, rather than just the mystery of why they were so light.