Meta (Book 3): Rise of The Circle

by Reynolds, Tom

  "What is he doing here?" I ask when I get close enough.

  "That's just what he was about to tell us," Midnight says.

  "Please, just put me back on the ground, and I can explain," Keane asks.

  "Explain from up here," Midnight says.

  "I want to talk with you. If I were here to do harm, don't you think I would have already done it? If I wanted to, I could take control over you and just be done with it. I'm refraining from using my powers as a show of good faith," Keane says.

  Midnight doesn't move and continues to hold Keane by the throat. He never breaks eye contact with Keane, but he seems to be mulling over what his next move should be. Then he suddenly and abruptly drops Keane to the ground.

  "What the hell are you doing?" I ask.

  "Talk," Midnight says, ignoring my question. "You've got thirty seconds. If I don't like what I hear, you're going to wish you were back in New Mexico. I know places where even you can't escape, and you wouldn't like them very much."

  "I know what Alpha Team is trying to do. I know what their plan is," Keane says.

  "And how could you know that?" I ask him.

  "In case you've forgotten, I can literally read minds, Mr. Connolly."

  "Not theirs you can't. They're too powerful," I reply.

  "No, you're correct, but I have been able to search the minds of some of those that they're holding hostage."

  "Who?" I ask, immediately thinking of Derrick.

  "I'm not at liberty to say, unfortunately."

  Before I'm able to open my mouth, Keane is doubled over in pain, clutching his stomach, the result of a knee from Midnight.

  "I told you, we're not playing games here," he menacingly whispers into Keane’s ear.

  "Not anyone you know. People whose minds I've interfaced with previously. That's the only reason I was able to connect from such a long distance. The stress of their kidnapping made them more susceptible. It's the only explanation I can think of, at least.

  "How I acquired this information isn't important. It's the information itself that needs to be acted on as quickly as possible."

  "And you want us to do your dirty work? We're not your butlers, Keane. You can't just have us do your bidding because you want us to. We can't be bought and sold like that," I snap.

  "I have no intention of buying or selling anyone. I just want to see Alpha Team taken down. Saving people is important to you, I understand that, but I’ll be honest and say that I imagine saving these people is something you're much more interested in than I am."

  "Yeah, I'd imagine that too."

  "Yes, well, the problem here is that Alpha Team is surrounded by Bay View City itself. Those people aren't just potential collateral damage to Alpha Team. They're a shield. They know that anyone who dares to try to oppose them and fight will have to do so without harming the citizens, a nearly impossible proposition. Fighting them and costing lives would only prove the point that Alpha Team is trying to make: that metahumans are dangerous."

  "Then what's your point?" I ask.

  "My point is that I think I might have a way around that for you."

  38

  Although we don't discuss it on the way down, Midnight and I both know Michelle isn't going to like this. She doesn't even like the idea of us doing anything in regards to Bay View City right now, except waiting for more information. The only reason she might yield is the lack of other options in this situation and the prospect that Derrick may be in danger. That said, the idea of doing something about it is one thing, but bringing Keane into the facility is another.

  "I must say, it really is quite a feat you've pulled off here. Were the classrooms retrofitted with the elevator equipment or were they built to be elevators from the very beginning?" Keane asks. The question could be pointed at either Midnight or me, but neither of us is feeling particularly chatty. "I only ask because I'd be quite interested in getting myself something similar after all of this is over."

  "After all of this is over, you're going back to prison," Midnight says.

  There isn't anger in his voice anymore. He just states it plainly as fact.

  "Well, we'll talk about all of that once this is over with. Everything's negotiable," Keane says.

  Keane had already been aware of the elevator before we brought him into it. He'd seen into the mind of one of the workers responsible for the original construction of the building all those years ago. Those workers were given specific tasks in relation to very specific pieces of the facility in order to prevent outside knowledge of what was really going on here. Much of the construction was fabricated off-site and assembled later.

  After Keane saw bits of what was being built from the memories of the worker, he was able to piece the rest together himself. He figured out what the facility actually was, who had built it, and, most importantly to him, who is here. There isn't much he doesn't already know about all of this.

  While it's extremely risky to bring him down here, these are desperate times. As Keane pointed out, if he'd really just wanted access to the facility, it would have been much easier to just take over my or Midnight's mind and make us let him in than try to convince us using logic.

  We reach the bottom and the elevator locks into place. Before Midnight or I can reach the door, it opens on its own. Michelle walks in, her eyes looking down at the tablet in her hands.

  "Finally. I was starting to think that the two of you got lost somewh ..." she trails off as she sees Keane and, in an instant, lunges for one of the emergency alarms back out in the hallway.

  "Michelle, wait," I say. She temporarily freezes. "He's not here to harm us. He's here to help."

  "Are you out of your mind! You brought an escaped metahuman convict into our facility!?"

  "I know. I know. If we had any other choice, we would have taken it, but we don't, and we're running out of time. He already knew about us and about all of this. All I promised him is that we'd hear him out. That's it. If we don't like what he has to offer, then we send him back out and on his way."

  "No, we send him right back to prison where he belongs."

  The entire time this argument is happening, Keane stays silent. It's not out of respect or anything even resembling that, though. He's standing there with a smirk on his face, enjoying the argument. He's only staying out of it because he likes to watch the conflict. I'm beginning to doubt bringing him down here was anything other than a stupid idea.

  "I only ask for a few moments of your time, Miss ... Adams, is it?" Keane says as he steps forward.

  "Stay right where you are, asshole," Michelle says, taking a step back herself as a precaution.

  "Miss Adams, as I've explained to your colleagues, if I were here to harm you, I could have done so by now."

  "And what if you're just controlling their minds?"

  "If I were, why would I not do the same to you? Why even waste the time to explain myself if I wanted to use that shortcut?"

  "We're running out of time and options. We should hear him out," Midnight adds.

  "Why thank you, Midnight. I never expected someone who spends their nights jumping around on rooftops dressed in their pajamas to be so levelheaded. Maybe all of those people who said you're crazy are wrong after all."

  Midnight scowls at Keane, and the look actually seems to work. Keane is momentarily and uncharacteristically flustered.

  "Right, so," Keane says as he clears his throat. "The plan ..."

  39

  Keane's proposal relies on him using his powers to control the civilians on the ground and evacuate the city before we go in. With one person controlling everyone, the evacuation can happen incredibly fast. No traffic jams, no pushing and shoving, just a nice orderly line over the bridge and out of harm's way.

  Michelle has doubts as to whether Keane is powerful enough to actually pull something like that off, but Midnight believes he is. What Midnight isn't a hundred percent sold on is Keane not having ulterior motives. He lays out his suspicions to Keane directly i
n front of the entire group, stating that there's no room for any hidden hesitations or doubts. If someone has a problem with any of this, there won't be another chance to speak up.

  "I completely understand your ... hesitation, Midnight. All I can offer you as evidence that I'm a man of my word are my past actions."

  "You mean like when you used mind control to dupe your colleagues into making lopsided business deals with you or when you paid another metahuman to break you out of prison?"

  "Both fair points. In my defense, you have no idea who the men and women I took that money from were actually like. Behind closed doors, they were the kind of monsters who would make your stomach turn. The wealth and power they wielded makes the Alphas look like preschoolers. There are a lot of things you can buy when you're wealthy and a lot of things you're willing to do to become even wealthier. At a certain point, anyone will look the other way if the price is right.

  "And as per my escape, I did what was necessary, and I stand behind that. Can any of you say that you would happily sit locked in a cell while your city was overrun by fascists, even though you knew you could do something to stop it? I can answer that question for you: no, you wouldn't. And I admire that. There's a reason why I came to this group with my idea. We may not see eye to eye on everything, but we all would do whatever it takes to ensure the safety of our city. You'll all be breaking the law just by entering Bay View City. How does that make you that much different from me?

  "Despite how desperately some of you would like to categorize me as a criminal or a villain, I'm afraid the real world just isn't that simple. You can't just put me in a box so it's easier for you to classify me. It's your right to hold an opinion, and I understand why many of you see me as something less than yourselves, but that doesn't make me a monster."

  Everyone in the room is silent.

  "If someone has a better idea of how to get everyone else out of the way, I'm all ears," I say.

  The room remains silent.

  "All right then. That part's taken care of. Now we just have to figure out how we actually beat them," I say.

  "The key is separating them," Midnight says from the back of the room as he walks forward to join the rest of the group sitting at the table overlaid with a three-dimensional hologram of Bay View City. "Their metabands are different from all the others, correct? There must be a reason why they're more powerful. We know that all the metabands on Earth are connected to each other. When their metabands bonded to their DNA, it happened in the midst of a nuclear explosion. That nuclear reaction must be what caused the change. Up until now, it'd been assumed that the reaction simply supercharged their metabands to levels previously unseen. The problem with that hypothesis is that's not really how metabands work. You cannot simply create more energy out of energy that didn't previously exist."

  "How do you know so much about metabands?" Winston asks.

  "Just trust him," I answer.

  "The metabands that Alpha Team use aren't more powerful; they're simply connected to each other in a unique way. We know that their previous attempt to destroy Connor's metabands was intended to be self-serving. If Omni's bands had been destroyed, his powers, along with the powers of every metahuman who came after him, would have vanished, but Alpha Team wouldn't have been affected. That's because their energy remains in its own separate loop between the five of them."

  "That explains why they’re trying to take down other metahumans. They know that with even just a small number of metabands destroyed, most of the rest will stop working, especially if they can get to the earliest people to receive their powers, like me," I say.

  "That's not all. I've been watching Alpha Team very closely, and I have another hypothesis that explains why we rarely see them together as a group," Midnight says.

  "Well that's easy. If their metabands are all connected, then it'd make sense for them to never be all in the same place at the same time. That would minimize the chances of them all being killed in the same strike," Ellie says.

  "That's part of it, but we've seen them act together. They took down Silver Island as a unit, but since then, no one has seen them together, especially not in combat. I believe the reason for this is that they're able to transfer their energy between each other," Midnight says.

  "So they're sharing it?" Michelle asks.

  "Not exactly. Think of it more like a pool they can all draw from, but when only one of them is drawing power from the pool, it increases that individual's powers exponentially."

  "What does that mean?" Winston asks. Midnight looks like he's getting tired of being asked so many questions, and his ire falls on Winston just because he's the last one to have asked. "What? Sorry if I've slept through a few math classes because I've been stuck down here all night."

  "It means that when one of them takes power from the others, it's not just the sum of the power added together; it's multiplied."

  "So if one of them is taking the power of three, it's like that power gets multiplied by itself."

  "And that explains not only how Charlie can seem so much more powerful. It also explains why we rarely see them all fighting at the same time. When Charlie is using their powers, the rest are in the tower, hidden and protected since they're little more than just human at that point."

  "So that's when we hit them. We lure Charlie out and go after the others while they're powerless!" Ellie stands up in excitement at the idea.

  "That won't work," Midnight says, instantly deflating Ellie's enthusiasm. "Taking down the others while the power is focused inside of Charlie won't change anything since he'll still have all of their power.

  “What we need to do is overwhelm them. Force all five to come out fighting so their powers aren't pooled into one unstoppable metahuman anymore. If my predictions are correct, the balance of power is something that they all have control over, meaning that one of them can't simply override the others to take all of the power without the others allowing it. The power has to be relinquished before one of them can take it. That's why Charlie holds the majority of the power most of the time. He was the leader of their squad before all of this, and so he's kept the natural position of leader now as well.

  “But they're all still fighters. None of them will lie down and accept defeat just to give someone else their powers. We separate them, beat them until their powers reach reserve levels, and then detain them using Agency restraints."

  "It sounds pretty easy. Why hasn't someone tried this before?" I ask.

  "Few others understand how their powers really work, which is obviously intentional on their part. They maintain the illusion that they all have the power of a hundred metahumans and no one dares mess with them.

  “But even if someone else did figure it out, there's another reason why no one has tried this yet. It's what makes it risky for us too, and that's the timing. If we don't hit all of them equally as hard in the same timeframe, then they'll be able to transfer their powers away before they hit reserve levels. That's not even taking into account the risk that if one of us doesn't succeed in taking down our target, their powers will be up for grabs for the others. All it takes is one miss on our part and that Alpha Team member will be able to transfer his power to one of the others, who will then easily be able to beat whichever one of us he's up against and so on like dominos until they've won."

  "And we're all dead."

  "Presumably, yes."

  Silence falls over the room again and a few take a long, deep exhale, letting the full gravity of what we're about to try fall on them. There's a million different ways this can all go wrong, and any one of them is enough to take all of us with it.

  * * *

  Midnight enters the room and the side conversations quickly come to a halt. We've all been waiting for him for over an hour. Some passed the time by sleeping, trying to get in a nap to make up for the rest of the week's lost sleep. Others spent the time training, either running laps around the hundred-mile track or using the heavy lifting room.

 
; Everyone avoids the casualty-prevention room. It's usually one of the busier rooms, and one that the staff encourages us to spend the most time in, but if all goes as planned tonight, we won't need to save anyone. If all goes as planned, our only job will be taking down Alpha Team. If we fail that, then saving innocent lives is going to be next to impossible.

  I spend most of the time pacing. It frustrates me that I'm not invited into the planning. A few months ago, I was the most powerful person on earth, so it's hard not to feel sidelined as “just a kid” right now, even if my powers aren't where they once were.

  "Nerves?" Iris asks me.

  "A few," I reply.

  "That's good. You need some of those. Keep you on your toes," she says back.

  "What about you?" I ask.

  "I don't get nervous."

  "Not even for something as big as this?"

  "It's no bigger or smaller than anything else we've done before."

  "Yes, it is."

  "No, it's not. Not when you consider that every day any of us are out there could be our last. Or could be the last for someone who has the misfortune of standing around taking pictures with their phone on the wrong street corner."

  "I guess I never thought of it that way."

  "Probably for the best. Might not be the healthiest way to go about trying to live your life."

  There's a pause while I consider if I should say what I really want to or not. Before I can say anything, Iris seems to read my mind and says it for me instead.

  "Midnight told you about who I really am, didn't he?" she asks.

  "Yeah, he did."

  "And he told you about who you really are too?"

  "I'm always who I've been. What Midnight told me about my parents doesn't change who I am. You shouldn't let it change who you are either."

  "That's easy for you to say. Your parents were heroes. The world practically worshiped them. My father was a monster that brought nothing into this world but pain and fear."