by Cubed, Magen
Forty-five minutes later, he awoke to the gentle hum of the ceiling fan. There were two police officers banging on his cheap, wooden door and rattling the bolt out of the lock. His newly formed sinuses smelled like old pennies. His jaw ached, and the gun was an awkward weight on his crookedly splayed fingers. After a moment, he sighed.
“All right,” he told the ceiling. “You win.”
III.
The one thing Norah could never do by any means was pretend. Even as a child, she was too thoughtful and practical to pretend that her dolls had lives beyond her. Pragmatism left little room for such fantasy as the bills on the kitchen table turned from white to pink. Her predicament, as of now, defied even her vaguest comprehension, threatening to simply drift from her grasp at any given moment.
She didn’t feel different. Checking herself over in the mirror revealed no deformities, claws, or scales. It didn’t matter how often she stuck out her tongue at her reflection and checked the inside of her mouth for growing fangs; nothing came of it. Changing from the inside without proof felt anticlimactic. Even if she could have afforded the trip to the doctor’s office, it wouldn’t have made her feel any better.
The concept of moving objects with her will was frightening at first, as she laid awake at night with a weight on her chest. What if she made everything in the apartment move? What if it all floated out the window when she wasn’t paying attention? What if she let the people and cars on the street outside drift into the atmosphere? What if she couldn’t shut it off? Soon, the questions turned to anticipation. She expected something horrible to happen in the line at the grocery store. Standing there with her basket, she almost sadistically pondered the consequences of picking up the entire building and hurling it into the next county...
The produce stalls would bounce off the ground in a colorful freefall of fruits and vegetables. The frozen food cases would fling open to spew microwave dinners and takeout pizzas into the air. People would simply sail into the air in the horrifying realization that their grips on reality were truly tenuous at best. In the end, nothing ever happened. Almost disappointed, Norah paid for her basket of items and left to pick up Hannah from school. She never said a word of it to anyone.
By 6:00, Hannah was flat on her stomach on the living room floor, filling her sketchbook with drawings. In the kitchen, Norah cooked pasta and made a green salad for dinner. Hannah hadn’t asked about the latest drama unfolding on the evening news or her mother’s increasingly cagey behavior, and Norah was grateful for that. She didn’t have the strength of will to explain the realities of life and death to the seven-year-old, especially when her own understanding of mortality had just taken a vicious blow. It was easier to keep her paranoia to herself, along with any delusions of superpowered grandeur she may or may not have had.
“Mom. Mom, Mom.”
When Norah looked up from her cutting board, Hannah was staring into the kitchen and wavering an unsure hand over her crayons. The drip-drop of water then caught her attention. She turned to find that the cooking pasta and sauce had risen from their respective pots in amorphous blobs. Water splashed from the wet noodles into the pot below, and the sauce churned in on itself like a molten core, threatening to burst all over the counters and walls. Norah quickly rounded her tiny island counter to grab Hannah and pull her to the other side of the living room. Hiding behind the couch, she took her child by the shoulders and stared her down earnestly.
“Don’t be scared. I can explain this. And no matter what anybody tells you, I’m not a bad mother.”
“Okay.”
The sudden loud splat confirmed Norah’s fears. Peering out from behind the couch, she found the kitchen was a runny red mess of sticky noodles and sauce, which dripped from the ceiling. She took a deep breath. Hannah fidgeted. Her leg braces chattered. Her eyes widened behind heavy lenses.
“So, yeah,” Norah said. “I can explain.”
“How did you do that?”
“I’m not entirely sure yet, but—I think I might have superpowers.”
Hannah’s eyes bugged out and she grinned toothily. “That’s so awesome.”
“Well, as long as you think so.”
IV.
Adam killed the toaster first. It was an accident. He was trying to place his whole wheat into the slots when he busted the cover off and crushed the flimsy metal inside. The microwave went next when he ripped the door off without even realizing. The shattered coffee pot and ripped cabinet hinges followed. He bent a wrench in half at the shop when a door slammed, and he had to kick it across the floor before anyone else could notice what he did. He ripped the door from his car after work on Friday evening and spent his entire Saturday afternoon putting it back on.
Strength wasn’t what it was cracked up to be. In the movies and the comic books, it was a plot device—a cheap trick to use at parties. No one ever talked about what it was really like to be so strong. It poured out of his muscles like steel and snapped his spine straight when he least expected it to, turning him into an unmovable object without his consent. Life was fraught with danger now. It was filled with held breaths and hands kept tucked away. The prospect was a terrifying one, forcing Adam to take up even less space on the sidewalk and inside crowded elevators. One miscalculation could crush and maim.
In a way, nothing really changed. His body wasn’t his; it was still a cage that kept him separated from everyone else and afraid of what might happen if he let another person get too close. Before, he would break if touched, but now he could break other people. Nothing about it was fair, but he had no say in that, either. The only time he didn’t feel so fragile was when he bent over a car engine. Work at the shop was more than work to Adam. It paid the bills and kept a roof over his head, but it was his church. His tiny altar at Bob’s Repair and Restoration was the only safe place he had left. A sea of noise and grease and grubby, metal parts, it afforded him a consistent stream of puzzles to take apart, tease out, and put back together again.
When he didn’t have work, maintaining Betty occupied his time. Just as before, it made him feel safe. He changed the oil, tweaked the engine, and gained satisfaction going to the junkyard for spare parts. The Barracuda was a masterpiece in the making. He’d hauled its disused shell from his neighbor’s backyard before his sixteenth birthday. Alone with his car or in the guts of some stranger’s SUV, he could finally breathe. Strength didn’t matter there; only the silence mattered.
The long, black Mercedes arrived at Bob’s shop at 1:30, right after Adam’s lunch break. It was making a strange rattling noise, so Adam jacked it up and checked over its belly with a flashlight. Out of the corner of his eye, through the partition window to the waiting room, he saw Caitlin Connor’s lean profile. She was reading on her tablet and sitting in a red, leather chair. He recognized her immediately from Bridger’s bedside at the hospital. Her heels had stood at the bathroom door, and her long body had draped lovingly over Bridger’s in the confines of the bed. The cold startle of it sucked all the air out of the garage. Adam banged his head on the metal lift frame and accidently crushed his flashlight in half. Embarrassed and hoping no one saw, he quickly scurried out from under her car and headed for the waiting room. Blind curiosity mitigated anxiety’s hold on him as he stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jumper and elbowed his way inside.
“Ms. Connor?” he squeaked. (Ms. Connor, as seen on the paperwork she had on file in the office, and not Mrs. Levi.)
“Yes?” She straightened up, hovering one long finger over the screen of her tablet. “How much will the repairs be?”
“We’re still working on it, ma’am, but it won’t be too much longer. Actually, I want to talk to you about your husband.”
Caitlin angled her head. Her expression was cold. “What about my husband?”
“He and I know each other. Well, we met just recently through a... work thing. I wanted to give him my number, but I realized I didn’t have his, either. Is there any way you could relay a message for me?”
She blinked slowly, sizing him up. He felt entirely too small. “Did you meet at the hospital?”
He froze. “Well, yes. You could say that.”
“Has he been going to treatment, or am I to assume he’s been ducking his doctor’s calls as well?”
“I—I wouldn’t really know about that. I just know I’d really appreciate it if you could let him know I was looking to check in with him. Make sure he’s doing okay, you know?”
“What’s your name again?”
“Adam.” He raced over to the desk, grabbed a business card and a pen, and wrote his number on the back. “Adam Harlow.”
“Adam.” She stood to pluck the card from his hand. She thumbed over it but didn’t immediately put it away. That was probably a bad sign. “All right. I’ll let him know.”
He smiled. “Thank you. I’ll just go finish up on your car and get you out of here.”
She said nothing else.
V.
Ben appeared unannounced on the corner outside of Kyle’s building. He had a bag of cheap food in one hand and a six-pack in the other. Boxes of books and vinyl records dotted the curb in haphazard piles. Kyle had surrounded them with duffel bags and backpacks stuffed with clothes and old photos. Ben watched Kyle load the contents of his apartment into the rented moving truck, then spoke up. Kyle barely noticed. He only stopped to lean against the side of the truck and wipe sweat from his face with the bottom of his T-shirt.
“What’s up?” Ben asked, offering a sloppy burger in a paper wrapper. “You moving?”
“Yes.” Kyle eyed the burger momentarily, then snatched the bag from Ben’s hand to check its contents for a better option. Finding none, he took the offered food. “I’ve been compromised.”
“Compromised how?”
“Somebody broke in and searched my place.”
“What? Shit, that sucks, man,” Ben said. They perched themselves on the truck’s opened hatch, unwrapped their sandwiches and popped open their beers. “Did they take anything?”
“Nothing to take. Just my vinyl collection, but they didn’t even touch it.”
“Just some neighborhood kids, you think? Wanted to give you a hard time?”
Kyle chewed thoughtfully and shook his head. “Seemed too deliberate, like they were searching for something. Somebody’s trying to get under my skin.”
“You sound paranoid, man.”
“I am paranoid.”
Swallowing a bite, Ben shrugged. “Where you moving to?”
“No idea. Going to rent a room for a few days, park the truck, and try to lay low until I find somewhere safer.”
Ben chuckled. “You think it’s such a hot idea to leave a U-Haul sitting around town these days? These little accidents going on ‘round here got everybody spooked, man. The cops aren’t saying it, but we all know it’s terrorists. It has to be.”
“Well, you’re not wrong.”
After their lunch, Ben helped Kyle load up his sofa and bed frame. Ben waved Kyle off as Kyle drove away to his rented room in a hotel further uptown, far away from Koreatown. There, he unpacked his duffel bag in the tiny closet, kicked off his boots, and crawled into the cold bed to sleep.
Chapter Seven
I.
“Amanda, Jesus Christ, it’s six in the morning. At least take a nap in the pen like a normal human being.”
The reviewing room went from black to beige with a click of the light switch. Amanda sat up from her bone-jamming sprawl on the desk and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Collin was at the doorway. He had two cups of coffee, a banana, and a dismayed look. She smoothed down her hair and tried to look presentable.
“I’m not even sleepy. Go fuck yourself.” She reached expectantly for her morning coffee. “Still going over the tapes from the bank.”
“How’s that going?” He pulled up a chair and peeled his banana. “And you look like shit.”
“Thanks. It’s pretty mind-numbing. First, I had to isolate the footage from the day prior to see if I could spot anybody coming or going who wasn’t an employee. Now, I just have to go through every frame until something pops up.”
“Anything so far?”
“No.”
“How many times have you watched this?”
Amanda didn’t answer.
Collin sighed. “Go get some sleep. I can take over from here for a while.”
Taking a drink, she shook her head. “I’ve come this far. I need to finish it.”
12:17: The footage switched to the feed of the street-facing camera. 12:18: Five pedestrians approached the intersection from opposing sides. 12:19: The explosion ripped through the bank lobby to blow out glass and brick across the street. Cars tumbled away and people flung from the sidewalk, engulfed in plumes of fire and black smoke. One of them stood, pulled himself out of an overturned bus, and looked down at his hands.
Amanda nearly spat her coffee across the monitor. She dove for the mouse. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“What?”
She ran the footage back ten frames and paused. Her stomach dropped in a cold and dreadful rush. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice this before.”
“What? Notice what?”
“Look at him. Just look.” She pressed her finger against the screen. “There. Right there.”
“It’s just a guy.” He leaned forward, squinting at the still frame of Kyle Jeong. “What am I looking at?”
“It’s Kyle,” she said. “And he’s there with the four other survivors of the subway bombing.”
“Oh, shit,” he said. “I’ll call the lieutenant.”
“Yeah, on the way.” She stood, grabbed her jacket, and jogged for the door. “We need to pick them up before they pop up at any other crime scenes.”
“You okay with that?” he asked, sprinting to catch up with Amanda as she raced to the elevators at the end of the hall. “With Jeong?”
“No, I’m not.” She pressed the call button. “But I can worry about that later.”
II.
After the bank bombing, Clara didn’t sleep anymore. Excitement occupied the void sleep left behind, fueled by coffee, energy drinks, and her growing understanding of her power. Her notebooks quickly filled with equations, shorthand, formulas and theories as she abandoned her scheduled classes entirely. Instead, she dedicated her mornings to time trials and her afternoons to postmortems and number-crunching. Time, as she knew it, didn’t stretch, but her perception of it did as she moved through space. Like gravity’s effects on the event horizon of a black hole, time thinned out in elongated strands and strings. The breakdown she experienced was just her brain trying to catch up with her altered perceptions. Sleep had most certainly lost its appeal in the face of such shiny, new observational data.
It was breakfast in the student cafeteria when Padma finally spoke up about Clara’s odd behavior. Seated across from her at their four-seat table, Clara ignored a plate of pancakes and sausage in favor of her seventh cup of coffee and fourth notebook. The last week had been a blur of closed doors, news reports, and comings and goings at all hours. Padma’s schedule led to such hectic, sleepless bouts, but Clara’s never did. Clara was as steady as they came. She was in bed by 10:00 and up at dawn to study. The Clara in front of Padma now—with ink smudges on her hands and coffee on her breath—was a stranger.
“So... what’s this?” Padma ventured, pushing eggs around her plate with her fork. “Like, a new project Dr. Orobe has you doing or something?”
“What? Yes. No, I mean no.” Clara didn’t look up, still scribbling equations across the page. “It’s a—well, it’s like a pet project. I’m trying to figure something out.”
“Oh. That sounds fun, I guess.” Padma made a face at her eggs, chewed, and swallowed. “You still going for the internship in the summer, right? To Bern?”
Clara’s hand faltered over the page. “Yeah. I mean, I guess so.”
“You already scored the gig, though, didn’t you?”
�
��Yeah, like a week ago.”
“So, I thought you’d be excited, dude. This is huge for you.”
“I guess.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. It’s just...” Clara considered the lie she was about to tell and leaned back from the table. “May is a long way off for me right now. I just need to concentrate on what’s in front of me.”
Padma shrugged again and looked to her plate. “That’s cool. I’ve just been a little worried. You kinda spaced out on everybody lately. I mean, I know you’re going through some stuff, and I don’t want to sound like I’m pressuring you to share if you’re not ready. But, you know I’m here for you if you need anything, right?” When she looked up, Clara had put her nose back to the notebook. She was chewing on her pencil and muttering under her breath. Padma sighed. “Good talk, bro.”
III.
There were only a handful of things Bridger Levi couldn’t do. Apologizing was at the top of that list, but he was working on it. Beneath apologizing was asking for forgiveness, and beneath that was knowingly showing weakness. To appear weak was to invite predators—people who waited to tear him down for profit and pleasure. Growing up broke in his father’s silent boarding house taught him that much. He learned to keep his upper lip stiff and his defenses up. His marriage to Caitlin only reinforced that notion. They’d built a life together in Camden behind fortress walls so tall, no one could peer inside.
He knew inherently it wasn’t weakness that forced his hand. It was loneliness. The cold pang of it had settled into his gut the night before as he stared at the ceiling of his rented room with blood in the threads of his clothes. He didn’t sleep, not really; he drifted between thoughts of fire and water, slipping in and out of cold sweats. In the morning, he walked down the street for coffee at a hole-in-the-wall four doors over, paid for a muffin and apple, and sat on the patio to watch people on the sidewalk. He pulled out his phone, started to dial twice, but couldn’t commit. After his coffee, he went back up to his room, resigned to dialing Caitlin’s number.
“Bridger?” Her voice was tight over the line.