Meta (Book 3): Rise of The Circle

by Reynolds, Tom

  "The other driver's drunk. I could smell the booze on him from five feet away. The back of the van is full of fertilizer bags. This whole thing is about to go up. We've got to get these people back," the Blank explains to Jim, ignoring me.

  "But what about the driver?" I ask.

  "Screw him. He's lucky he didn't kill anyone. Let him burn," the Blank says before pushing me aside to start yelling at the crowd to back up immediately, explaining that the van is close to exploding.

  The crowd begins to panic and scatters in all directions. Jim stands silently frozen. He doesn't know what to do.

  "Jim, we've got to get that guy out of there," I say to him.

  "We can't. You heard the Blank. He's getting what he deserves," Jim says, his eyes unfocused and staring into space.

  "You don't really believe that. He doesn't deserve to die," I say, trying to get into Jim's line of sight and hopefully snap him out of this.

  The crowd of people is almost a full block away, and it's quiet. The only sounds are the crackling of the spreading flames and the distant moans of the man trapped in his vehicle.

  I give up trying to talk sense into Jim. Time is not on this guy's side. I run around the wreck and find a bloodied man hanging halfway out of the driver's side window of the overturned van.

  "Are you okay?" I ask.

  There's no response, but the rise and fall of his chest tells me that he's still alive, just unconscious. I reach into the car to see if I can pull him out. Just then, another pair of hands reach in too. Jim's by my side.

  "Screw it. I don't care what he did. I'm not just going to let someone die," he says.

  We're both fumbling, trying to reach inside the smashed car to detach the man's seatbelt, but it won't budge. I remember something about not moving accident victims if you can help it since they may have spinal or internal injuries that you can't see, but this guy is dead either way unless we get him free.

  "Just go, get out of here before this whole thing goes up," Jim says, still trying desperately to pull the man through the smashed window.

  "I'm not leaving," I reply, not wasting even the second it would take to look at him when I say it.

  "Well then all three of us are going to die."

  "You leave then."

  "I can't. I need to try."

  The fire hits some of the spilled fuel spread across the pavement and starts burning even more intensely. I nervously look toward the back of the van where the explosive fertilizer is. This isn't working, and I'm not going to let this man die either. If I had my powers I'd be able to open this van up like a tin can and have this guy clear of the explosion in half a second.

  It's time to break my promise to Michelle.

  "Jim, get the hell out of here," I yell, trying to startle him into listening to me, not only to get him clear from danger, but also hopefully clear from seeing me activate my metabands.

  "I'm sorry, Connor," Jim says, coughing from the smoke

  There's defeat in his voice. Not just because he's not going to be able to save this man, but because he knows that I'm not going to listen to him and clear the area like he wants me to. The flames are more intense than ever, and I can barely even see Jim or the man through the thick black smoke.

  "Screw it," I say as my metabands materialize around my wrists, which I then bring together to activate.

  I raise my red-covered hand to the roof of the van and peel it back like a banana. With my right arm, I grab the man and with the left I grab Jim. I pivot on the ball of my left foot and push off just as I hear the high-pitched squeal of pressure building up in the back of the van, the pressure of an explosion.

  Even moving as fast as I can, there isn't time to completely outrun the fireball at my back if I want to also make sure I don't injure this man any further. I'm only a few steps away before I throw myself over them, shielding the pair from the blast. Smoke and rubble fall over my back like a shower, and then it's over.

  Before the smoke clears, I can hear both Jim and the man coughing, and I know that they're okay. I pull myself off of them and step back, looking around to make sure that no one else is nearby. Mostly I'm looking to check for any casualties, but I'm also trying to ensure that no one saw me activate my metabands.

  The coast is clear.

  Jim slowly works his way back onto his feet. He turns and faces me, taking in the crimson suit before locking his eyes with mine. I should say something to him. I should apologize for lying to him. I should explain why I've done the things I've done. I should say something, anything, but the words just don't come.

  "Get out of here," Jim says flatly.

  There's no sense of anger or urgency in his voice, just pain. I start to open my mouth, reflexively thinking that he wants me gone because I've lied to him all this time, but then I remember where I am and what activating my powers could mean right now: The Alphas.

  So I say nothing and instead take one last glance down the block where I see the crowd starting to come back in this direction. They see me, a metahuman in a city where metahumans are banned. I'm not sure if they're happy or mad, but I don't intend to wait around long enough to find out.

  I turn my head toward the sky and, in an instant, I'm gone.

  27

  I don't even think about flying directly back home. When this city was crawling with metahumans, it was easy enough to duck into a building from the roof, where I could be reasonably sure no one would see me. Even that might have been a stupid risk.

  I take a last look over my shoulder. The skyline is clear. There's a jet way off in the distance and a helicopter heading toward the scene of the accident, but nothing else. Time might be running out, so I look for a place to land. It needs to be close, and it needs to be as unpopulated as possible. Landing in a busy intersection isn't going to help with this disappearing act. Below me, I see something that looks like it could work and I swoop down into a dive.

  I'm plunging back toward earth head first, as fast as possible without causing a shockwave or any other kind of disturbance that will bring unwanted attention to me. At the speed I'm traveling at, few people would notice me as more than just a strange object out of the corner of their eye. Before they gave it their full attention, I'd already be gone from the sky.

  Fighting the instinct to slow down and prepare for a landing, I keep my head firmly in place and keep plummeting, all the way down and right into a huge pile of trash. It was the best place I could find to land on short notice without having to worry about anyone seeing me. My powers might be able to protect me from a lot of things, but they can't do anything to protect me from the smell.

  I wait silently, deep in the massive pile of trash, focusing on the sounds around me, listening for the distinctive boom of another meta flying through the sky, but it doesn't come. All I can hear is the sound of dozens, if not hundreds, of rats scampering out of the garbage pile.

  The Bay View City Municipal Landfill isn't the kind of place that gets many lunchtime visitors. That's why I flew into a pile of garbage at high speed. “Pile of garbage” might be a little bit of an understatement. This is a mountain of garbage and evil. The smell is overwhelming, and there's at least thirty feet of it between my head and the rest of the world above me.

  When the threat of being ripped apart by an Alpha becomes more welcoming than spending another second breathing through old diapers and discarded cans of dog food, I start to swim for the surface. I fight every instinct I have to not just fly out at super speed, telling myself that someone may still be waiting for me out there.

  After a grueling five minutes, I'm finally out of the pile and back breathing fresh air on the surface. Well, not really fresh air. I'm still in a landfill, after all, but compared to where I was, this smells like heaven.

  To my relief, there's no one around. I need to get this suit off as soon as possible. Anyone, even a garbage man, seeing me like this and I'm right back to the situation I started from. I raise my wrists and stop right before I click them togeth
er, looking at the banana peel clinging to my forearm. Clenching my teeth, I make my body vibrate at supersonic speed. Dirt and slime fly off of me in every direction. Once I'm somewhat satisfied that there's nothing left clinging to me, I power down.

  It wouldn't have been as safe, but it sure would have been easier to keep my powers on while I trek through all of this trash on my way toward what I hope is an exit. My balance was never great to begin with, but trying to keep my equilibrium on top of all this shifting, rotting garbage while also holding my breath is really testing my limits.

  When I make it back onto solid ground, I take off running for the exit, still looking overhead every few seconds, waiting for an attack that thankfully never comes. I emerge from the entrance to the landfill, running past a driver who does a double take from the cab of his garbage truck. I can see the top of my apartment building from here. It's easily still at least a couple of miles away, though, so I'd better start walking.

  * * *

  I contact Derrick on the way back to tell him everything's okay. Well, not really okay, but my head is still attached to my neck, so it's something. I'm out in the open here, though, which means I can't actually call him and have to use text instead. Derrick thinks that the Alphas are just too powerful to trust phone calls anymore. While he trusts that the encryption he's using is unbreakable, he worries that one of the Alphas might be close enough to zero in on my voice out here in the open and listen in on our conversation.

  It's paranoia beyond belief, even for Derrick, but part of me thinks he might actually be right. I decide it's better to be safe than sorry and don't push the issue any further. He tells me to go home and wait. He would go there himself too, but he's worried about today's actions leading to someone getting closer to figuring out who I really am. If that's the case, then him leaving work in the middle of the day and during a big breaking story would only add fuel to that kind of speculation.

  After I walk through the front door of the apartment, all I want to do is take a shower. I might have waited until I was out of the trash heap to power down my metabands, but I still had to walk through quite a bit of grossness before I was completely out of there. The long walk home, most of which was uphill, didn't exactly help with the smell either. As nice as a shower sounds, the first thing I do once I calmly close the door and all of the blinds is run over to the TV remote. Derrick would kill me if he knew I was sitting on his nice, new leather couch after taking a swim through the city's waste, but what he doesn't know won't hurt him.

  I flip over to one of the meta news networks, sure that they'll have some kind of live report while I also scroll through the different websites on my laptop that cover this type of thing. I checked all of them on my phone during my walk, but I couldn't find anything at all about any metahuman sightings in Bay View City. Did Jim not tell them what happened? Was it possible that no one saw me? I suppose anything's possible, but it seems extremely unlikely.

  As I wonder aloud what the hell's going on, a breaking news graphic splashes across the screen, and the video cuts to an anchor sitting at her desk, reading from a stack of papers that have just been handed to her.

  "We apologize for interrupting your previously scheduled programming to bring you some breaking news. We've received word that earlier this morning Bay View City witnessed its first confirmed metahuman sighting in nearly two weeks at Regis Park in the downtown area. Witnesses on the ground confirm to MNN that the suspect bore a strong resemblance to the metahuman known as Omni, who has not been seen since his involvement in the unauthorized release of dozens of inmates from the Silver Island Metahuman Containment Facility. When asked if this metahuman may have been responsible for the nearly fatal two-car accident that occurred in the area at the time, officials said that all possibilities are being investigated."

  They think I'm responsible? If it wasn't for me, the almost fatal car crash would have definitely been fatal.

  "At this time, we've been told to advise citizens to remain in their homes until the metahuman in question is found or confirmed to have left the city. He's to be considered extremely dangerous. Sources also tell us that the Alphas may already have a suspect in custody at this time, although that has yet to be confirmed."

  It's then that I remember Jim. I didn't call him after I landed for the same reason I didn't call Derrick: all eyes were on Omni and anyone who could be found to be connected to him would be in danger. I figured that they would question Jim and ask him what I said and what I knew. If someone was close enough to have seen me and recognized me as Omni, then that means they were probably close enough to have noticed the two of us talking. Could they really think Jim was Omni, or were they just trying to get information out of him?

  I feel sick to my stomach, suddenly realizing how strongly the situation pointed to Jim as the metahuman they were looking for. He was the only person that the other Blanks would have recognized that stayed close to the accident when everyone else had run.

  Anyone there who heard about a metahuman saving the second victim would have assumed that was Jim. Add to that the Blanks' paranoia and constant backstabbing and it's easy to see Jim being turned in. From what I've heard, turning in a suspected traitor is a one-way ticket to an easy promotion among their ranks, even if you're wrong.

  That means that the Alphas probably have Jim, and if they do, they won't take “it wasn't me” for an answer. I don't know what they'll do to him. Even if all they get out of him is the truth, that means everyone I know is in trouble.

  28

  Out of all of the stupid things I've done, what I'm doing right now might be the stupidest yet. I'm not sure how stupid it can be considered when I have no other choice, though. If I do nothing, my secret will be revealed and Jim will be killed or, most likely, both.

  This is what I have to keep reminding myself as I fly through the air, heading toward Keane Tower.

  The tower's exterior hasn't changed since I was last here, but its ownership has. After Keane was found guilty of using his telepathic abilities to coerce his business associates into agreeing to unfair and worthless deals, his assets were seized and his business declared bankruptcy. After Silver Island was destroyed, the Alphas moved into the tower and claimed it as their own. There wasn't anyone around who could dispute their claim, so that's where they've remained, and that's where I'm assuming I'll find them.

  As I approach the building, I pull back on my speed and raise my hands into the air.

  "It's Omni. I'm not here looking for a fight. I think you might be holding the wrong person in there, and I just want to talk. Once that happens, I'll leave Bay View City and never come back. I promise you," I say.

  I wonder if they'll be able to hear the slight increase in my heartbeat, which is a surefire indicator that my promise to never return might be a lie. But if it means getting Jim back in one piece, I'll keep to my word.

  Far below me, I can see hundreds of people gathering in the streets with their heads tilted skyward. They're watching my every move and listening to my every word. This is what I counted on, maybe the only thing I could actually count on: drawing a crowd. The Alphas may rule Bay View City through intimidation and fear, but I'm hoping that they'll see starting a war in the sky right now is exactly what they claim to be trying to prevent. No one in that crowd below could say that I came here to fight, so if it happens, that's all on Alpha team.

  I hover in the air above the city for minutes, waiting. I used some of my power to project my voice loudly enough so that I'm sure it can be heard. Despite the temptation, I stop short of trying to use any kind of enhanced vision to see through the walls and into the building. It's not like that ability has been working well lately, not since Charlie crushed my metabands anyway.

  After seven minutes, there's movement. A mirrored window on the eighty-third floor swings open. It's an invitation to come inside.

  * * *

  Much of the furniture and equipment from the last time I was here, when this was still Keane's buildi
ng, has been removed. Where there was once a sprawling cubicle farm, now there's nothing but open space. I walk through the space and toward the door of the office that used to belong to Keane, keeping my head on a swivel the entire time. A nagging voice in the back of my mind keeps telling me that this feels like a trap. How could it not feel like a trap? I've been invited into the home of a group whose publicly stated goal is to rid Bay View City of metahumans for good, and here I am, the first metahuman Bay View City has seen in weeks just strolling in for a visit.

  As I approach the glass walls of Keane's office, I see him: Charlie. He's sitting with his feet up on Keane's huge wooden slab of a desk. He seems to be making a point of disrespecting Keane's possessions. Charlie's wearing black fatigues and boots, and his face is uncovered. He's not quite old enough to look like a general or anything like that, but he looks like a military man who’s nearing the end of his better days. After the scar on his cheek, the most noticeable aspect of his face is that it is tanned and weathered, the look of a man who's spent years, decades even, in warmer climates. His hair is cut close. Not quite a buzz cut, but not too far off, sprinkled with more gray than dark brown, but still thick and full.

  He's speaking to someone just out of my field of vision who is obscured by a pillar. Alpha Team looks at ease in this castle in the sky. If he noticed me coming in, then he's purposefully making an effort to seem like he hasn't. Suddenly he throws his head back in uproarious laughter, which I can see but can't hear through the thick glass walls. As his laughter dies down, his eye catches sight of me, but his expression doesn't change. He waves me into his office with the trace of a smile still on his face, like I'm an old friend he's been expecting to come by for a while.

  My heart feels like it’s about to beat right through my suit when I reach for the stainless steel handle of the office door and pull it open.