With each passing day, Amazing Man’s warnings that I would wind up being the target of people who wanted to either use me or kill me seemed more and more like the cries of the boy who cried wolf. Especially up here, high in the sky, far removed from the cares and concerns of the mundane world. Up here, I felt invulnerable. Untouchable. No bullies would mess with me if they saw me like this. If the Three Horsemen could see me now, they would poop twice and die.
I was grinning at the image of that when something caught my eye. It looked like a shooting star, a streak of fiery light that flashed across my peripheral vision. This was no shooting star, though. It was too low. It had come not from the sky but from close to the ground, near where I had been keeping track of the utility lights by the storage shed. Then a fireball rose into the sky in front of where the shed was. It seemed tiny, not real, from this far away. Up close, though, it must have been huge. Red and orange flames came on the heels of the fireball, steady and distinct against the background of the dark ground.
It took a moment for my brain to process what was happening. Where it was happening. The fireball had erupted in front of the storage shed’s utility lights. From where our mobile home was.
My heart rose to my throat.
Dad!
I was in motion before I even consciously thought about it. I turned in mid-air and rocketed towards our house. I flew faster than I ever did before. I must have broken the sound barrier getting there. Some of our neighbors reported hearing booming sounds and shattered car and house windows afterward.
I slammed to a stop high in the air over our mobile home. It was on fire from end to end. The house was a long rectangle. The middle of it had a huge charred hole in it, out of which flames and smoke shot up into the night sky. There was an ear-numbing roar and intense crackling and popping, like that of a huge bonfire. It was a scene straight out of Hell. Even at this distance, I felt like I would also burst into flames. The heat coming from the house was that intense. It did not matter. Regardless of the heat, I had to go in after Dad.
Right as I was about to fly into the inferno, I saw someone floating above the house, on the other side of it from where I was. He had on a pitch black suit that covered him from head to toe. There were luminescent ragged lines on the black suit. It reminded me of the pictures I had seen of lava right as it was breaking through the Earth’s crust. The man’s body was glowing, half orange-red, half light blue. A Meta obviously. A Hero presumably. Thank God!
“Hey!” I cried out to him. My voice was panicked. “Can you help me? My Dad is inside.”
The floating figure looked over at me. He floated closer.
“Are you Theodore Conley?” he called to me. How did he know my name?
“Yes, yes,” I cried impatiently. What was he waiting for? “My Dad. I think he’s still inside. Help me!”
“I assumed you were inside asleep, kid,” the man said. “My bad. Easily corrected error, though.” He raised his left hand, palm out. “I promise it’ll be quick.”
There was a flash of blue light. Something formed around me, shutting out the fiendish light from the fire. It felt like I had been plunged into a frozen lake. I suddenly felt impossibly heavy. Dread stabbed at my heart as I realized what had happened. I was encased in ice. I could not stay airborne. I was too heavy. I plunged toward the ground.
My mind roiled as I fell. That was no Hero. Obviously. How stupid could I be? As I plummeting out of the sky, freezing, I felt sick to my stomach. My stupidity might have gotten Dad killed.
It was about to kill me.
CHAPTER 10
I wished I could say I meant to raise my force field as that Meta shot his cold beam or whatever in the heck it was at me. I wished I could say it, but I could not. It was pure dumb luck that I raised it, an instinct triggered by fear. If it were not for my force field, I had no doubt I would have been frozen to death before I even hit the ground.
Though I felt like a human popsicle, I was not dead. Not yet at least. Hitting the ground after falling from as high as I was would change that soon enough.
I tried as hard as I could to shatter the ice around me. I strained against it both with my body and with my powers. No good. I was as secure as a fossilized fly in amber. And, about to be just as dead. I tried to lift myself back into the air with my powers. After a terrifying moment, I gave up on that too. Too heavy. Damn it! I could not die. Who would save Dad?
I changed tactics. I tried to slow my rate of descent at least a little. My hands burned with a now familiar sensation. Would it be enough? I ground my teeth together, bracing for the impact.
I hit the ground hard. It felt like everything inside my body bounced around. The impact reminded me of the time I had gotten rear-ended in my car by a speeding pickup truck. Everything ached. But, I was alive. Even better, the impact had cracked the ice a little. Straining against the ice with my powers, I could feel little fissures spreading through the ice thanks to the force with which I had hit the ground. I focused on them with my powers, willing them to get bigger. It was like trying to open dozens of crates simultaneously with dozens of crowbars.
My head hurt with the force of my concentration. I felt the ice starting to give way. I heard popping and cracking. I just had to get free. I pushed with all my might. The ice shattered. Shards exploded away from me like I was at the center of a bomb.
I lay halfway in the ground in a small crater caused by my impact with the ground. I quickly got up. My head swam, making me see double. Two infernos filled my vision. I shook my head, trying to clear it. The two infernos snapped together into one hellish sight, that of my house burning with Dad inside. I leapt out of the crater. I ran as quickly as I could towards the fire. I limped. My right leg was not working right. Pain stabbed at me like a rusty knife every time I put my weight on it. I tried to ignore it.
A flash of light from above. I dove to the right. A fireball scorched the ground where I had been an instant before. That blasted Meta again. The fireball did not simply go out. Instead, it ignited the ground where it hit. The fire spread faster than any normal fire I had ever seen, encircling me, covering me in a dome of flame as quick as a wink. The dome started to shrink, closing in on me. My skin burned. It felt like I had been plunged into an oven and I was about to be cooked.
I activated my force field again, using the one that kept everything out, even the air. I was not up to flying out of the fiery cage. Instead, using a short burst of my powers, I threw myself out of the fiery dome like a tossed ball. I landed on the other side of the flames, free of their confines.
The Meta glowed above me, glittering like a snake’s eye. It was now obvious he wasn’t going to let me into the house without interfering again. I knew I would have to take him out in order to get into the house to save Dad.
There were plenty of things around I could have thrown at the Meta to incapacitate or kill him—trees, utility poles, a tractor, my car, trucks, a bunch of things. The problem was, even at my best, I was not proficient enough in the use of my powers to pick up stuff that heavy. Maybe if I had trained in them. But, I was neither trained in their use nor at my best.
Wait! The utility poles. The Meta was near them. I exerting my will on the power lines that ran from the poles. I snapping them. I whipped them at the Meta like a cowboy lassoing a steer. They wrapped around him like an anaconda wraps around its prey. I made a line snake towards the Meta’s neck. I did not know the best way to incapacitate someone, but I knew you could choke someone unconscious by his neck.
The Meta fought against the constricting lines for a moment. Then he relaxed. I thought I had him. Wrong again. The Meta’s entire body glowed red-orange. The lines binding him melted off like ice thrown into a furnace. The molten metal and plastic dripped off of him like perspiration.
The Meta raised his hand again, pointing his open palm at me.
“It’s nothing personal, kid. I’ve got a job to do is all,” he said. His voice was gravelly, like he was a long-time smoker. �
��You’re starting to annoy me though. Hold still and I’ll make this nice and painless.” The Meta’s palm glowed brighter, like an exploding star. I braced myself. I was not strong enough to defeat this guy. I had failed both myself and Dad. I deserved what I was about to get.
Unexpectedly, the Meta cocked his head to the side. Then, I heard it too. Sirens. An instant later I saw flashing lights from a series of vehicles pulling into the driveway of our property. The Meta shook his head.
“You are one lucky sonofabitch, kid,” he said. “I was told to make your death look like an accidental fire and to make sure there were no witnesses.” He nodded his head at the approaching vehicles, cops and fire trucks, that were almost on top of us. “That looks to me like an awful lot of witnesses.” He lowered his glowing hand. “Rain check? Rest assured that this is not over. We’ll see each other again when there aren’t so many others around. Until then.”
The Meta quickly rose straight into the air until he was only a pinprick of light. Then he streaked off into the distance as a bright blur against the night sky.
I did not watch his entire departure. I was too busy racing towards our burning home.
I flicked on my impermeable force field to protect myself from the flames when I got close. I plunged inside, hoping I had enough air in the small bubble around me until I found Dad. I did not even have to go through a door as the fire had burned holes in the walls. Most mobile homes were built cheaply. Ours was burning like a lit box of tissues.
The inside of our house was a scene from Dante’s Inferno. There were not many places to search for Dad as our small house contained only two bedrooms, a bathroom, and an open area that served as both living room, dining room, kitchen, and laundry room. Thanks to how small the place was, despite all the smoke and the flames, I found Dad in seconds. He lay unmoving on the floor outside his bedroom, near the front door. Maybe he had been trying to make it outside.
Normally I would not have been strong enough to lift Dad. But now, my surging adrenaline enabled me to do it, along with a bit of an assist from my powers. I carried Dad out through a gaping hole in the side of the home. I carried him as far as I could away from the blaze before collapsing in exhaustion in the grass outside. Dad fell out of my arms into the grass face first. He did not move. His clothes were burning. I feverishly stripped off my sweater. With it, I frantically smothered the flames that licked Dad’s body.
I turned Dad over. No, no, no, no, no, no. Over half of Dad’s face was gone. His skull poked out of his burnt skin, white against charred black. My vision blurred, making Dad’s face an impressionist’s painting of a Halloween mask. I knew it wouldn’t do any good, but I checked for a pulse anyway. I had a hard time doing it as I was mostly blinded by tears.
I could not find a pulse. It was not there to be found.
Amazing Man had warned me. I had been too stupid—too scared—to listen. And look at what happened. Now Dad was dead. It was all my fault. If I had left with Amazing Man to go be trained, that Meta would not have targeted our house as I would not be here. And, if I had training and then that Meta had come after us, I could have stopped the Meta before Dad died.
Dad always said life was not fair and that I might as well get used to it. I looked down at Dad’s charred remains. How could I ever get used to this? I knew I never would.
That was how the cops and firefighters found me—holding Dad’s burnt body, my tears trying too late to extinguish the fire that had consumed much of him. At least that’s what they later told me. I did not remember seeing them. They also told me they had to pry Dad’s charred dead body out of my hands. I did not remember that either.
What I did remember was the Meta’s last words to me. “Rest assured that this is not over,” he had said. “We’ll see each other again.” He was right about that. This was not over. We would see each other again. As I held Dad’s lifeless body, I swore to him that Meta and I would see each other again. I would make sure of it. Someway, somehow, someday, I would.
And when we did see each other again, when I looked upon that murdering piece of filth again, I would be ready for him. Unlike when we first met, it would not be me who needed rescuing. No cop or firefighter would delay or stop our reckoning. I would learn to use my powers. No, not just learn to use them. I would embrace them. I would get so good at using them that Meta would not stand a chance against me. I would get myself ready for the happy day I met that Meta again. If I needed a Hero’s license to accomplish that, so be it.
And when I did meet that Meta again, I would erase him from the face of the Earth so thoroughly not even an electron microscope would be able to find his remains.
As God as my witness I would.
CHAPTER 11
I was hospitalized for several days due to smoke inhalation, burns, and a few other things. My time spent in the hospital was a blur, like my mind was disconnected from my body. My mind was in the morgue with Dad.
Once I was discharged, I dropped out of college of course. Sitting in classrooms all day learning about syllogisms and the themes that ran through Huckleberry Finn seemed pretty stupid and pointless in light of what had happened. Besides, learning about those things would bring me no closer to finding the Metahuman who killed Dad. As far as I was concerned, finding him was the sole reason for my existence. Nothing else mattered.
I contacted Amazing Man through the Heroes’ Guild. I told him what happened, and that I wanted to train to become a Hero after all. Amazing Man was upset about the sudden appearance of the Meta who killed Dad. He said there clearly was a leak at the center which had registered me, and that he would make sure heads would roll. Though he did not say so, I got the impression Amazing Man himself had found out about me and my Omega-level powers through the registration center. The information about me the registration center had was supposed to be held in the strictest of confidence. It was not to be the last time I learned the phrase “government secrecy” was an oxymoron.
As Amazing Man and Mr. Priebus had told me, the first step towards my goal to become a licensed Hero was to enroll in the Hero Academy. In the few months until the Academy was set to start up again, I stayed with my Uncle Charles and his wife Beth. Amazing Man arranged it so a series of Heroes took turns safeguarding me when he could not do so himself. Despite the fact I knew about the exploits of some of those Heroes—Scorpion, Delphic Oracle, and Medusa, for example—I did not enjoy constantly having a chaperone. I did not complain or try to get away from the Heroes, though. For now, I needed them. I had proven myself incapable of defending myself and the people I cared about. There was no way I was going to risk getting myself killed before I learned to properly stand up for myself and avenge Dad. Someone had to find the Meta who killed Dad, and that someone was going to be me. I had to stay alive long enough to do it. After I accomplished that, frankly I could not have cared less about what happened to me.
To enroll in the Academy, you either had to be an adult or have the permission of your legal guardian. Since I was only seventeen, that meant I needed the permission of Uncle Charles, who was now my closest living relative. He refused to let me go. He said it was too dangerous and that my parents would not have approved. I was pretty sure his real concern was that he expected me to stick around to be a farmhand on his farm whom he would not have to pay in light of the fact he would be feeding and housing me.
I spent the evening seething in frustration after that conversation with Uncle Charles. The next day, I got busy. I found a lawyer, Cathy Jenkins, who was willing to represent me pro bono as the only money I had was a couple of hundred dollars in savings from birthday money I had gotten over the years. Finding and retaining Ms. Jenkins was not terribly hard. We lived in a small community where not too much happened. My father dying in that fire was huge news. Ms. Jenkins was more than happy to help an orphan. Most people were inherently good and would help you if they had a chance. Dad had taught me that. Another Jamesism. Though I had often rolled my eyes at them when he had said them to me
, I would have given anything to hear him tell me one again.
Ms. Jenkins filed with the local court on my behalf a petition to have me legally emancipated and declared an adult. I think Amazing Man might have pulled some strings because we got a hearing on the petition in a little over a week rather than the months Ms. Jenkins had told me it normally took. That was a tense week waiting for my hearing while still living with Uncle Charles and Aunt Beth. Having to live through the tension in the house wound up being worth it. After a brief hearing, the judge emancipated me and declared me an adult. I sent in my paperwork applying to the Hero Academy that same day.
By law, the Academy was required to accept anyone who applied as long as he passed a mental and physical capacity exam as well as a background check. The background check did not worry me; I had never gotten so much as a speeding ticket. But, I had to again go to the Metahuman Registration Center in Columbia for the physical and mental exam. It was weird going there without Dad, not to mention intimidating. I still was not used to driving in a town bigger than Aiken was. I did not go there alone, though: one of my Hero guardian angels rode shotgun.
I hoped the very cute Nurse Jackie would be the one to conduct the exam. No such luck. A very male, very hairy, and very not cute guy named Doctor Martel did it instead. After I took the mental exam, Doctor Martel then examined my body so thoroughly that it kind of felt like I lost my virginity that day. He did not even have the decency to buy me dinner first.
At the end of it all, Doctor Martel cleared me to enter the Academy. I caught a glimpse of what he wrote on his report about his physical examination of me. He said I was “underdeveloped, but healthy.” I hoped that was not what the girl I eventually lost my virginity to would say. Before I left the registration center, Doctor Martel gave me a thick Heroes’ Guild publication. It was the manual for the Hero Academy. He admonished me to read it before I reported to the Academy. I thought I had left homework behind when I dropped out of college. I apparently was wrong.
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