Meta (Book 3): Rise of The Circle

by Reynolds, Tom

  "Come in, come in," Charlie says, standing to greet me and offering a seat in one of the chairs opposite his desk. "I assume you've already met James."

  Jim turns his head to see me but doesn't stand. His expression is hard to read and the calm all around me is making this feel even more like a trap. Jim doesn't necessarily seem comfortable, but he also doesn't look like he's being held against his will. Has he told them my secret? Have I so betrayed his trust that his loyalties lie with this man now?

  "Can I get you anything? Water, juice, coffee?" Charlie asks, his gaze directed over my shoulder at a younger man wearing an expensive suit who I didn't see when I came in.

  I shake my head, and Charlie waves the man off without a word.

  "Please, sit," Charlie asks me again.

  "I'd rather stand, thanks," I reply.

  "Suit yourself, but if this were a trap, you know that being seated or standing wouldn't really matter. You've already put yourself into a potentially very dangerous situation. Taking a load off your feet wouldn't make a whole hell of a lot of difference.

  "I've been speaking with young James about your heroics earlier this afternoon. Very impressive stuff if I do say, Mister...?"

  "Omni."

  He smiles.

  "Of course. I didn't think getting your true identity out of you would be that easy. To be honest with you, Omni," he says in a tone that tells me he thinks calling me by my alias is ridiculous, "I really have no interest in who you actually are."

  This is the first real indication I have that Jim hasn't told him anything, or at least hasn't told him the truth. Charlie could be lying to me, but I choose to hold onto the small chance that he's not.

  "Tell me," Charlie says as he wanders over to Keane's old drink cart and pulls out a bottle of whiskey amongst the dozens of fancier-looking bottles. He pulls the cork out of it and splashes some into a rocks glass before capping the bottle and putting it away. No fancy cocktails for this guy. "What do you truly know about those things?" he asks as he motions to the metabands on my wrists.

  "I know enough," I say, trying my best to sound tough.

  Charlie throws his head back and lets out a boisterous laugh that's so loud it makes me involuntarily flinch. I'm not sure if he saw it, but if he did, the tough-guy act I just tried has been completely negated.

  "Omni, if this conversation is going to be all monosyllabic on your end, then it's going to be a lot longer than it has to be. I thought your old buddy Midnight did enough brooding for both of you?" he asks rhetorically with a smirk. "Now there's a guy I actually would like to know more about. Very interesting character, that one. How he's been able to hold his own in a world filled with metahumans for this long is certainly something to be respected, even if he's often on the wrong side of things. I've had a lot of training in my time in the service. A lot of training. Usually with a guy like that, I could tell you ten different things about him just by how he fights. I could look at how someone like that throws a punch and tell you where he learned it, who he learned it from, how long ago, the list goes on. But his methods are almost completely alien to me. It's not as though there's a lot of footage of him to go by, but still. Fascinating stuff. I won't lie. I'd be very interested to learn who it is under that cowl. But under yours? It really doesn't matter to me."

  He finishes pacing back and forth in front of his desk and walks around to the other side to take a seat. Once he's seated, he takes a long sip from his whiskey.

  "Wow, that is good stuff. I don't think I've had whiskey this expensive since the time we raided King Abdullah's castle back during the Krykstan skirmish. Very good stuff," he says as he places the glass on the desk in front of him.

  Jim sits quietly with his head facing forward, ignoring me.

  "Why did you tell everyone that I'm dangerous?" I ask.

  "Because you are dangerous, Omni. You're very dangerous. All of us are."

  "You told them that I caused that car accident."

  "I did nothing of the sort. Unfortunately, despite the appearance that we completely run this city and all the media within it, that simply isn’t the case. The news reports what the news wants to report."

  "And that just happens to usually be anti-meta rhetoric?"

  "Well what do you expect from a world that has been ravaged by people like us?"

  "Don't group me in with you. We're nothing alike."

  "I'm sure you believe that, but sadly it's simply not the case, because at the end of the day, we're both the same. We're humans. And humans have weaknesses. Flaws. Vulnerabilities that no metabands can overcome. The sooner other metahumans realize and accept that, the better off all of us will be. There's a reason why the news reports stories the way that they do. It's because they fit in with the narrative that normal citizens expect and want to hear. Do you know how many people left Bay View City after we imposed a ban on metahumans here? Five percent. That's it. Only five percent of people who called Bay View City home felt that our new law was so terrible that they had to leave."

  "But you're only counting people who have the ability to leave. Lots people in this city have lived here their entire lives and so have their families. Just because they didn't leave, doesn't mean they agree with what you're doing."

  Charlie shrugs and looks into his whiskey glass.

  "I'm sure you're not entirely wrong, but you're missing the point."

  "Which is?"

  "You see yourself as a hero. A savior."

  "I just see myself as someone who does what they can to help."

  "That's bullshit!" Charlie exclaims in a burst of rage as he slams his whiskey down on the desk, spilling half of it onto the floor before straightening himself in his seat and clearing his throat. "I apologize for that. It's just that I've heard that excuse before. I've heard false humility. I've heard good intentions. But power corrupts. And the world has seen what this type of power has led to in the past."

  He's talking about The Battle. Jim has barely looked at me since I walked in, but now I can tell he's trying even harder not to.

  "So your solution is to get rid of all the metahumans except for you and your buddies? How does consolidating power into the hands of the few fix the problem you're talking about?"

  "I never said that was what I was talking about, which brings me back to my original question, which you so flippantly tossed aside with a smart-ass remark: How much do you know about how those things on your wrists actually work?"

  I remain silent, partially because I don't know a lot about how they really work and partially because the little I may know is the last thing I would tell him if he doesn’t know already.

  "You're guarded about this. I can see that. I can understand that, even. You don't know me, and I don't know you. Why would you tell me something that I might be able to use against you? I'll start then by telling you something about my metabands that I haven't heard about any others.

  "I can feel when other metahumans are close. It's hard to describe, and it only works if the bands are active, but it's uncanny. When you showed up at that accident today, an accident which I fully believe you had nothing to do with, incidentally, I hadn't learned about it from television. I learned about it from these," he says, holding up his wrists to show me his own metabands.

  "I could feel your power nearby. That's how I knew you were here. It's how we were sure, prior to your arrival today, that we were a city completely free of metahumans."

  This isn't something I've ever experienced before, and it makes me wonder how else Charlie’s metabands are different from my own.

  "Do you know why I could feel your power, Omni? I'll tell you. It's because we're connected."

  "Oh no, is this going to be one of those ‘Luke, I am your father’ type speeches?" I ask.

  There's a brief pause, and it seems like I've just infuriated him. I can feel my muscles beginning to tense up and my adrenaline surging as I wonder if this is going to be it, if this is finally when we're going to have it out. But it do
esn't happen. Instead, Charlie throws his head back and laughs again, even harder than last time. He's laughing so hard that tears are rolling down his face, and he's having trouble catching his breath.

  "I heard that you were witty like that. It's a defense mechanism, I'm sure. Something you do when you're not sure what else to say, but still, I have to admit, that was very funny. I should have been clearer. It's not just you and I that are connected, Omni. It's all of us. And I don't mean that in the tree-hugger sense of the word. I mean literally. There is some unknown force that ties all of these bands to one another.

  "Has it ever occurred to you why it was that shortly after you found your metabands that the rest literally started raining from the sky?" he asks.

  I let my guard down slightly. I know that there's something more happening here, something else going on that I just don't quite have a grasp on yet, but the truth is that I have wondered. My head has been full of questions about the pieces of metal wrapped around my wrists since they first appeared, and my curiosity is getting the better of me.

  "What do you know about my metabands that I don't?" I ask.

  "Not a lot. And I'm certain that there are things you know about yours that I don't. They're very personal items, after all, adapting to their owner's physiology so closely that they refuse to work for anyone else, granting abilities unique to each owner. They become a part of you, as we've found out ourselves as well, obviously.

  “No, there isn't much more that I know about your metabands than you do, save one thing. If they are indeed all connected in some way, yours are the linchpin."

  "I'm not sure what you mean by that."

  "Do you remember The Battle of Empire City?" he asks.

  If it weren't for the suit I'm wearing, I'm positive I would have started breaking out in a sweat. Of course I remember The Battle. Everyone remembers The Battle. Is he asking me because he knows who I am and that my parents died there?

  "Of course," I answer, trying to make sure no emotion seeps through into my words.

  "It was a silly question. Everyone remembers The Battle, of course. It's what changed our opinions about metahumans forever. After two of them destroyed half of a city, they were no longer something to be admired; they were something to be feared. That was the day we learned that even with the best intentions, they can cause more death and destruction than we could ever imagine.

  “A lot of people forgot that feeling. They forgot the feeling of inadequacy, of powerlessness that the entire world shared that day. I was well into my military career by that time and was deployed to Empire City in the aftermath. The things I saw there dwarfed anything else I'd ever seen before or since in my time fighting for this country.

  “That was when we all decided to put our foot down. That was when the government started planning for how to deal with this type of problem."

  "And what happened?"

  "Nothing. The Governor and Jones never came back. The other metahumans lost their powers. Some disappeared, some tried to turn their former status into pathetic reality television careers. Most importantly, though, people forgot. They forgot how they felt on that day when we saw two gods go head to head and take half a city with them. Funding dried up. The public lost interest in trying to find ways to fight a war against an enemy it had become convinced was never coming back.

  “What very few thought about was what it meant that the deaths of The Governor and Jones were what brought all the other metahumans to their knees. No one put the pieces together and realized that it was the destruction of their metabands that muted all of the others. That is, until you arrived.

  “You were the first, just like The Governor. And just like him, your arrival heralded the coming of all the rest."

  I can feel a knot forming in my stomach as I begin to realize what he's saying and what it means. The Governor sacrificing his life ended up disabling all the other metabands because his were the first. His metabands were tied to all of the others, and when they ceased to exist, destroyed in the twenty-seven million degree inferno of the Sun, so did all of the other metabands.

  "So if you think killing me would accomplish your goal of ridding the planet of metahumans, why spend all of this time explaining it to me? Isn't explaining how and why you're going to kill the good guy something they teach you not to do in like Supervillains 101?" I ask.

  "Is that how you see yourself, as the good guy?" Charlie asks.

  "I don't like to classify the world into little boxes like that."

  "I'm glad to hear that. I agree completely."

  "But you've tried to separate the world as metahumans and humans, as if we're less than humanity because of our abilities, abilities that you have yourself."

  "I’m fully aware of the contradictions. Many see my group as the villains while many more see us as the heroes. Real life isn't always as black and white as people would like. I think that's something you're well aware of yourself. You've killed before after all, haven't you?"

  "Only to save the life of an innocent victim, and that was an accident that happened before I learned how to control my powers."

  "Ah, yes, of course. An accident. And how many accidents are the general public supposed to accept from metahumans every year? Just a few? Dozens? Hundreds? Where is the line there? Where do we start to calculate how many lives we're comfortable destroying in the name of allowing others to have this type of power?"

  "If you've made up your mind already, then why are we still talking?" I say, my hands at my sides still, but slowly clenching into fists in anticipation of an attack.

  "You still don't get it, do you?" Charlie says as he rises and walks back over to the rolling bar to prepare another drink. "How could I stand here and talk about how I want to stop the type of destruction caused during the first wave only to turn around and do the exact same thing myself? I haven't invited you here for a fight. That would accomplish nothing and only serve to contradict my goals. I haven't invited you here to kill you. I've invited you here to ask you to forfeit your metabands of your own volition."

  "You want me to just hand my metabands over to you?"

  "I don't want you to hand them over. I want you to join us in destroying them. You've seen the power our metabands possess, and you no doubt know by now that we have the ability to destroy them. But, by destroying the first pair, we'll effectively destroy every pair out there, including our own."

  "And why would you want to do that?"

  "To save the world. To stop another family from being ripped apart by a car being thrown into the sky and landing on a child twenty blocks away. It's not too late. We can go back to the way things were. Metahumans can be something that future generations only read about in history books, a strange blip on the timeline of humanity, but one that didn't threaten the entire future of our species as it does today.

  "I understand that this is a lot for you to take in, and in the spirit of peace I'm going to ask you to take your time thinking about what I've just proposed to you. I think that if you do, you'll realize that you have the opportunity to change the entire world for the better with your decision. You might have power now, but doing this? Doing this would be true power. And true courage. Something a pair of metabands could never give you or anyone else.

  "Think about it. I'll be waiting for you when you make your final decision," he says as he sits back down at his desk, putting his feet up again as he takes a gulp from his rocks glass.

  I turn and begin walking out of his office and toward the window I came in through.

  "Oh, and Omni?" Charlie calls to me as I open the door leading to the rest of the office building. "If you ever come back to Bay View City, it had better be to destroy your metabands. You don't want to see what happens if you decline our offer and think you can return. Consider this your only warning."

  29

  I've made the argument repeatedly to Michelle and anyone else who will listen that it's redundant for me to have to take a history class on metahumans. I'm already
spending half my day training as a metahuman. Why do I need to sit through a class about it in regular school too? It's strange. I never imagined that I'd be wishing for something like a math class, but here we are.

  Michelle's argument is twofold. The first reason being that I'm the brother and legal ward of one of the most well-known metahuman reporters in the world. It would be at best weird and at worst suspicious if I seemed to have absolutely no interest in metahumans. The class isn't especially easy to get into since so many want to take it, and turning down a seat in the class would raise more attention than Michelle feels comfortable with.

  Her other reason is she thinks my knowledge of metahuman history isn't as good as I think it is. Of course I scoff at this, which leads her to giving me a pop quiz.

  "Who was the fourth metahuman to become unmasked during the first wave?"

  Uhhh ...

  "Which professional sports league was the first to issue a ban on metahumans?"

  Hmm ...

  "Which first-wave metahuman held the world land speed record, and what was that record in miles per hour?"

  Okay. So I haven't necessarily paid attention as closely as I should have all the times Derrick droned on and on about this stuff when I was ten years old. So what? That stuff isn't important when you've got your own pair of metabands. What use is knowing about some dumb world record from when I was a little kid when I know that I can personally break it myself any time I want?

  The only consolation is that the class has a few other secret metahumans in it, people that I think I'm actually starting to be able to call my friends. There's a certain camaraderie, if you can call it that, between all of us. This is only intensified when we all have to sit through classes like this one, making faces at each other while Ms. Drew recites half incorrect facts about metahumans from a textbook that's close to being as old as I am.

  After class, I'm heading for the door when Winston cuts me off at the pass.

  "Learn anything new about these overrated false gods today?" he asks while giving me a knowing wink.