Clara’s words make complete sense, and I start to feel the rage leaving my body now that I can see what Nathaniel is trying to do.
"See? I knew you were too scared to fight. You're exactly the kind of coward I imagined you’d be," Nathanial says.
"I'm not scared. I'm just not stupid enough to get kicked out of here. If you feel differently, feel free to throw the first punch," I say.
Nathanial laughs in a way that feels like he's just trying to stall because he can't think of anything else to say. I've met enough bullies in my time at a dozen different schools that I actually do feel pretty stupid for letting him get under my skin so easily.
I guess that since I’ve gotten superpowers, I've been out of practice as far as being bullied goes.
"Actually, I have a better idea," Nathanial says. "How about a little game of chicken?"
"Are you kidding me? We all have some kind of superpower courtesy of aliens, or gods, or who knows what, and you want to get into cars and drive at each other as fast as we can to see who's the bigger man? You realize how ridiculous that sounds, don't you?" I ask.
"Not cars. I guess you've forgotten all about that dragon The Controller made you fight already?"
"See, I knew you were secretly a fan. Why don't we just end this, and I'll go ahead and autograph whatever you'd like," I say sarcastically. This gets a pretty good-sized laugh from the crowd, so I decide to see if I can push it further. I can practically see Nathanial's face turning red. "Or do you want a selfie? We can do a selfie together if that's what you really want instead. Or hey, why am I being so stingy to a fan? I can do both."
Nathanial smirks, catching on to the idea that if I can't fight him here, the next best thing for me is humiliating him. He's not new to bullying either.
"Actually, I had something a little more fun in mind. Carter," he commands, and a nebbish-looking white boy a little younger than I am steps out from behind the crowd, "are you up for a little elevator work?"
12
"I don't need this, you know. I can fly."
I'm standing next to Carter and Nathanial on a very small platform made of solid iron. I know it's made of solid iron because I watched it being made. One of the other metas here can suck iron molecules from pretty much anything: the air, trees, water, other human beings, you name it. From there it's a simple matter for him to rearrange those molecules into just about anything he wants. Right now he can only handle very basic shapes, like this thin, rectangular platform we're all standing on, but he's working to improve.
In front of us is everyone from the group that was previously spending their night a mile underground. We're above ground now, though, right by the entrance to the cavern. I should say that while we're all above ground, I'm actually more above ground than they are. The group is quickly shrinking as the platform I’m standing on rises up into the air.
Carter is, of course, key to the platform's ability to levitate. I certainly don't possess any type of ability that allows me to cause anything to fly other than myself, and Nathanial doesn't either, as far as I know. From the brief explanation I got before I jumped on this flying platform of death, it seems that Carter is able to control air pressure and temperature. He's apparently become quite good at this, as he's able to create an air thermal right underneath the iron platform that's strong enough to push it, as well as the three of us standing on top of it, straight into the air. Carter is along for the ride since, as with most abilities, he's able to have more exact control over it the closer he is.
"So it's going to go like this," Nathanial says as we clear the tree line of the surrounding forest. We have to be at least two hundred feet in the air now. With the group below us out of harm's way, Carter really starts to open up the throttle on his powers. Nathanial has to raise his voice to compensate for the increasingly loud howl of the air current pushing the platform higher and higher into the night sky. "We both have our metabands powered off, and they're going to stay powered off. Once Carter brings us as high as he can, me and you are gonna jump."
"Okay, and then what? I don't think I'm really into the idea of a suicide pact," I say.
"Without your metabands activated, you're going to fall," Nathanial says.
"Right. I think I figured out that part already."
"From there, it's just simple straight-ahead chicken. First one to activate their metabands loses. Whoever comes closest to the ground without splatting, wins," he says to me.
"Wins what?" I ask.
"What do you mean, wins what? You just win."
"Okay, but like what do I win? Because right now I'm not seeing the upside of risking my life to impress a bunch of people I just met."
"If you want to chicken out and head back down to the ground, I'm sure Carter here would be happy to oblige. Is that really what you want to do, though? It seems like you're having enough trouble here as it is making friends. I can't imagine everyone seeing you as a coward would help much."
"I'm not a coward."
"Great, then this will be the perfect way to prove it."
I look down at the ground a thousand feet below me. Growing up, I always had an irrational fear of heights. I think part of it came from knowing how my mom and dad died. When I was little, sometimes I would wake up screaming in the middle of the night. The nightmare was always the same. Mom and Dad are in the building, but they're trying to get to the roof before The Battle starts. I'm running up the stairs after them, but they don't see me or hear me yelling.
Everyone is running up the stairwell, pushing and shoving each other to try to get to the roof. Some are on their way up there to try to get a better glimpse of the battle. They're the ones who don't know that the foundation to the building has already started crumbling. The others, the ones who know what's coming, are trying to reach the roof before the building collapses. They're hoping, against all odds, that some salvation is waiting for them on the roof: a helicopter or maybe another meta saving people from their fate.
Once everyone reaches the roof, there's nothing there, though. That's when the building starts to tilt. Everyone is sliding and clawing, desperately trying not to go over the edge, including me. The last thing I see before I wake up every time is my mom and dad right as they go over.
I thought my metabands had effectively cured me of my fear of heights. After all, it would be kind of hard to fly if it was still an issue. There's something different about this situation, though. I don't know if it's that my metabands aren't activated or if it's just the small detail of standing on a platform that shouldn't even exist let alone be floating a thousand feet in the air, but I can start to feel sweat beading up on the back of my neck. That familiar feeling from my nightmare is creeping in, and suddenly, I just want all of this to be over and for both of my feet to be back on the ground.
"You still with us there, Omni?" Nathanial asks me.
"Yeah, I'm here. Let's just get this over with."
"Second thoughts?"
"No, I'm just getting bored up here," I say.
Neither of them believes me.
"Okay, so here's how it works. We both take our metabands off and place them here on the platform-"
"Wait, no one said anything about taking metabands off," I interrupt.
"Relax, it's just for a few seconds. Have to make sure neither of us secretly has ours booted up, right? The only way to make sure is to have us both start from the same place, with both of our bands placed on the platform here. That way we can be sure there are no shenanigans," Nathanial explains.
I'm liking all of this less and less by the second.
"Fine," I say, slipping my metabands off of my wrists after powering them down. My fear of heights is only growing now that my brain realizes I'm back to being a frail human, the smushy kind that doesn't do well with a thousand-foot fall.
"Okay, now place them on the platform in front of your feet, just like mine," Nathanial says.
I involuntarily hesitate for an instant, the fear welling up inside
of me, but I push past it in the hope that this will all be over soon and place my metabands down at my feet.
"Good. Stand up straight and get ready. On the count of three, we both grab our bands and jump. If you hesitate, Carter here will see it and you’ll lose. As long as that doesn't happen, then it's simple: last one to activate their bands wins. Ready?"
I decide against replying verbally out of concern that my voice will betray me and crack, revealing to Nathanial just how scared I really am. Instead, I simply nod, trying to keep my poker face as stone-like as possible.
"One ... two ..."
Nathanial never says three, though. Right after the count of two, as I'm staring intently at my metabands, barely able to wait to get them back on, I'm pushed. I never even saw the push coming because I could barely see Nathanial out of the corner of my eye, but I hear him laughing just as I go over the edge.
The platform above me is rapidly shrinking into the moonlit sky. I've fallen from this height before, higher even, but never without my metabands, metabands that are still sitting up on that platform, which is growing farther away from me by the second.
I'm used to time feeling as though it has slowed down in situations like this. Part of that is the abilities that the metabands give me when they're on, but another part is just the regular old human brain experiencing sensory overload and slowing down to try to interpret and compute it all. Without the bands on, though, it doesn't feel like there's enough time for my life to flash before my eyes before I smack into the ground.
I close my eyes and brace for the inevitable impact, but it doesn't come. Instead, it's replaced by laughter. Carefully, I pull one of my tightly shut eyes open to look around. I'm no longer feeling the sensation of falling, but I don't feel like I'm back on the ground either. I certainly don't feel like I hit the ground. That, I think I'd notice.
Above me, the platform, Carter, and Nathanial are all gone. Only the empty night sky remains. Below me is another story, though. Stretched out all around me from adjacent trees is what looks like a gigantic spider web. The only difference, besides this one being human-sized, is that it is also glowing in a bright red hue, like a grid of laser beams in a spy movie.
The net I'm caught in is slowly lowering back toward the ground at the speed of a fast elevator and the laughter is turning into applause. Beneath me, the group is cheering.
It was fake, some kind of prank that I’m the butt of. I momentarily consider trying to pretend to laugh along, like I was in on it the whole time too, but my body won't let my brain override the emotions running through it.
Once I reach the ground, the net vanishes and the applause begins to die off. A few offer me a hand to help get me back on my feet, but I don't accept any of them. I'm mad, and whether it'll do any good or not, I want everyone here to know it. This seems to make everyone laugh even more.
"Aw, come on. Don't be like that. It's just a little fun. We do it to all the new guys," Nathanial says.
Adrenaline is still coursing its way through my veins, and I'm so mad that I can't even speak. All I want to do now is find my metabands and go home. Not back to my crappy, tiny dorm room that I have to share with some entitled jerk. No, right now I just desperately want to go back to Bay View City. It doesn't even need to be the apartment. I'd settle for the old house Derrick and I had. If anything, I think I'd prefer that.
"Fine, okay. Mission accomplished. You hazed me. I've been initiated. I get it. Now please just give me my metabands back," I say, breathing in through my mouth and out through my nose to try to bring my heart rate back down and get my anger under control.
I look around, trying to spot where my metabands are, but I don't see them anywhere. The group that assembled to watch me almost crap my pants has started to splinter off. Some look like they're going home, and others are heading back toward the hole, eager to continue their night off now that the fun of watching me be humiliated is over.
"Seriously, guys, I need my metabands back," I say. There's barely any response. A few turn their heads toward me and offer a shrug of their shoulders, suggesting that they don't know where they are either.
I'm tired, and I've had enough tonight. Up ahead I can see Nathanial trailing behind the group, busy recounting what just happened to a small group of other guys who are laughing along with him. I call out his name. I can't tell if he doesn't hear me or is purposefully ignoring me, but in either case, he doesn't turn back.
I jog up to catch up with them, still calling out his name. I know that I'm close enough for him to hear me, but there's still no response. My blood is nearly boiling as I jog a few steps ahead of him and plant my two feet, standing directly in his path. There's no way he can ignore me anymore.
"Give them back," I say as calmly as possible.
"Give what back?" he asks in return, which gets more giggles from the idiots hanging around.
"Enough. Just give them back so I can go home," I say. Behind me I can hear whispers and shuffling feet. The others have started heading back in our direction now that there's a chance of more drama.
"Tell you what. Why don't you just go home, and I'll take a look around for them first thing in the morning," Nathanial says.
"Now," I say. I can feel my face becoming flush red.
"Ohh, I didn't know you were a tough guy. That changes everything then, doesn't it? It's too bad you didn't have a pair like this back when you let half your city get destroyed."
13
They say that hindsight is 20/20. I've always taken that to mean that looking back at a situation and seeing things clearly is easy, but seeing things for what they are in the moment? That's what we have trouble with. While I know intellectually that that's true, in hindsight, I think I still would have punched Nathanial in the face. I mean, deep down, I knew in that moment it was a bad idea. I don't regret it, but I maybe wish I hadn't punched him quite so hard.
Most of the time nowadays I rarely regret hitting someone harder than I should have, but that's because nowadays, when I'm hitting someone, it's because they're a “bad guy,” and I'm a “good guy.” Before I got these metabands, the number of physical altercations I'd been in was very, very low. Single digits for sure. And I never, ever started them. Back in those days, I was a near master at avoiding fights. When you've moved around as much as I have as a kid, you either have to get good at fighting or really good at avoiding fights. Luckily for Derrick's health insurance, I picked the latter ninety-nine times out of a hundred.
The main problem with deciding to be the one who started a fight, for once, is that I was the guy not wearing metabands. And that's why I'm sitting here with approximately half of the bones in my hand broken, fractured, or just plain shattered.
I'll probably be blamed by the others for being the one who brought faculty attention to the cavern, but the truth is that there were already faculty members on their way out to the site before the punch even happened. Someone else on campus had posted on social media about seeing Nathanial, Carter, and myself up in the air. A team was dispatched into the woods within seconds to find out what was going on.
They were probably relieved that it was just students out there in the woods at first. I'm sure their worst fear was that someone else had stumbled on the cavern by accident, which could have led to others becoming curious about what else was hidden on campus. If they were relieved, that relief was short-lived and quickly replaced by anger.
All of this has led to me sitting here, back underground, waiting for X-rays of my hand. You might think it's a colossal waste of time and energy to take X-rays of my hand when putting my metabands back on would fix all the crushed bones in a second or two. Personally, I think it's a giant waste of time and energy. Michelle disagreed, though.
Nathanial gave up my metabands pretty quickly after the faculty threatened him with expulsion if he didn't, but the metabands were handed over to them, not me. It's not like you could really “hand” something to me in this condition anyway. Any section of my right hand
that isn't broken is too purple and bruised to move. Michelle decided that this would be a good time to teach me a lesson.
So that leads us to the present, where I'm sitting on a metal hospital gurney deep within the underground facility, clutching my bandaged and broken right hand and wanting even more desperately than before to just go home.
"Hi there. You must be ... Connor?"
The question comes from an older man as he enters the doorway. He's balding, with salt and pepper gray hair, and a tightly manicured matching beard. He's wearing a white lab coat and flipping through pages on a tablet that he's looking at over the top of a pair of circular wire-frame glasses.
"Yeah, that's me."
"It's a pleasure to meet you. Although I will say that I had hoped it would be under slightly more accommodating circumstances."
"You don't like meeting people for the first time when they've broken part of their own body doing something stupid?" I ask.
"No, that part I don't mind. I've met plenty of people that way over the years. The part that I mind is getting dragged out of bed in the middle of the night to do it."
"Fair enough."
"I'd shake your hand, but, well, you know. In any case, I'm the physician."
"I kinda figured that part out, with the lab coat and all."
He pauses to look down at how he’s dressed.
"No, no, that's not what I meant. Well, that is what I meant, but I meant you can call me The Physician."
"Okay. You don't have another name you like to be called by?"
"Well my real name is Doctor Phillips, but what's the point of agreeing to be the on-call physician for metahumans if you can't have a little fun?"
"So ... you want me to call you The Physician? Like, pretend it's your meta name or whatever?"
Meta (Book 3): Rise of The Circle Page 11