Meta (Book 3): Rise of The Circle

by Reynolds, Tom

"There's no time," she says as she reaches out for my hands before we instantly materialize in what looks like an abandoned subway station. It's completely empty, except for a television displaying the action above from a live drone feed and Keane.

  "We had a deal, Keane. Let go of them!" I scream as I run toward him.

  "Not one more step there, Mr. Connolly, unless you want to see how many people it takes to break your friend's neat little trick. I'm guessing another row or two is all it will take before it'll be impossible to keep the bodies from piling up on themselves. Not much you'll be able to do then, unless Winston wants to start turning the people themselves into jelly, which I strongly advise against if they ever want to live a full life after this is over with."

  "Why are you doing this?" I plead.

  "To prove that I can to him," Keane says, gesturing toward an unseen Charlie, "and to you. To show everyone that no matter what they think they can do to contain us, put us in little locked boxes that they throw away the keys for, it won't matter. We're what's next, and there's no way to stop the inevitable.

  "I think I have a way to show you exactly what I mean. Iris here is a little too immune to my effects now, especially if I want to make sure I'm able to devote enough of my attention to keeping all those people balanced up there.

  "But you, Omni. You're a bit of a different story, aren't you? Let's take a little root around inside that head of yours, shall we?"

  It feels like a light switch being flicked. That's how fast it happens. In an instant, I'm no longer the driver of my own body; I'm merely a passenger.

  "All right, Mr. Connolly, now that you're nice and comfortable, what do you say we go have some fun?"

  I try to move my arms, but it's like they belong to someone else. My eyes won't even listen to me. I can't move them or focus them on what I want to. I try to turn my head to look to Iris for help, hoping that she understands what's going on and can stop it, but it's no use. Keane is in complete and total control.

  "Why don't we start by having you take flight. Straight up ought to be the quickest way out of here and back into the fray, don't you think?" Keane asks.

  Suddenly, my view of Keane is obstructed. My focus remains on where he stands, but there is a blurry body in front of me now, and it's clad in purple.

  I wait for Keane to speak, but no words come. Slowly, I can start to feel the extremities of my body, like when your leg falls asleep and then wakes back up as the blood rushes back in. Keane is losing control, and when the person in front of him steps aside, I understand why.

  Iris teleported, just a short distance, less than ten feet. Where she teleported from and the distance isn't important, though. It's where exactly she teleported to that is.

  In a flash, she disappeared momentarily before reappearing instantly behind Keane, and I can see what she's done.

  There's horror in Keane's eyes as he tries to make sense of the sensation he's feeling, but a moment later, his eyes and hands simultaneously find the cause for concern: a gaping hole straight through his chest. Through it, I can see Iris standing on the other side of him, her right arm covered in blood.

  Keane drops to his knees and his eyes close. Tears begin to roll down Iris's white eyes, but her voice shows no sign of sadness.

  "I had to, Connor. He was going to use you the same way he used me. He was going to use you to kill. I couldn't let that happen. I just couldn't," she says.

  I look back down at Keane, his eyes wide open and unfocused. There's no hope for him.

  "There could have been another way, Iris."

  "But there wasn't. He's been given chance after chance and we haven't learned. No one has learned. I needed to end this. Not just for me, for everyone. He's not going to hurt anyone ever again. There's nothing you can do now for him. Go stop Charlie."

  I look once more at Keane, the life draining from his eyes, before looking back at Iris. He deserved to die, but that's not for people like us to decide. Once we start doing that, we're no different than them.

  "I can teleport you back out of here," Iris says.

  "I got it," I reply.

  "What are you going to do? Blast up through a hundred feet of earth and city infrastructure just because you're mad at me? This isn't your city to destroy either."

  "Fine."

  Iris reaches out to touch my arm and, in an instant, we're back above the city as though we never left.

  I spin in a circle, quickly trying to pin down Charlie’s location. I'm glad to see the city is still standing considering how long I was gone. The rooftops are already clearing out of all the people who were under Keane's control as they all retreat back into the relative safety of their office buildings and apartments.

  Nearly a mile away from where Iris and I are hovering, I spot the rest of the metahumans from the academy on the street.

  "There," I say to Iris before diving through the city toward them. She quickly follows. We land and find a group of confused-looking metas and Sarah, still wearing Midnight's, sorry, her mechanized armor.

  "What happened?" I ask.

  "I'm not sure," Winston says. "One minute we're duking it out with Charlie, holding our own, when all of a sudden, he just ups and takes off on us."

  "I'm telling you, he retreated. He got his ass handed to him, saw the writing on the wall, and decided to take off instead of hanging around to face the music after we beat him into submission," Ellie says.

  Iris and I trade concerned looks.

  "No. Charlie wouldn't quit, not like that. He'd rather go down fighting than run. He can't rally people around the idea that we're all dangerous monsters if he looks afraid of us himself. It doesn't make sense," I say.

  My radio earpiece clicks on. At first all I hear is static and no talking. Almost everyone on this channel is here already, everyone except Michelle and Midnight.

  "Omni," Midnight says through my earpiece, "we've got a problem."

  I step back from the rest of the group who are all now bickering and arguing over what to do next and place my hand up against my ear to try to make sure I can hear him clearly.

  "Where are you?" I ask.

  "Above you."

  I look up but see nothing except for the clear night sky.

  "You're not going to be able to see me, even with your vision. I'm miles up in my aircraft. There isn't much time."

  "Time?"

  "Charlie. He flew past my plane and into the stratosphere approximately ninety seconds ago."

  "So he is running away?"

  "No. I'm tracking his telemetry. He's outside Earth's gravitational pull and heading for the moon."

  "Why would he do that?"

  "He's going to try to use it to gain speed. If he can catapult around the moon and back toward Earth, he'll be traveling impossibly fast. Fast enough that his impact could cause an extinction-level event."

  "Wait. Slow down. I don't understand."

  "I can't slow down, Connor. There's no time. If Charlie returns into Earth's atmosphere at the speed he's traveling, he's going to create a crater the size of the west coast of the United States."

  "What do we do? How do we stop him?"

  "He's too powerful. Even that strong of a collision might not be enough to kill him. At this point, I don't think he even cares about that. He's up against a wall, and this is the only way he sees out."

  "So he's just going to kill everyone on the planet because he lost?"

  I'm talking loudly enough that the rest of the group is starting to turn their attention toward me. They murmur back and forth to each other, trying to figure out the other end of the conversation that they can't hear.

  "There's one chance, Connor, and I wouldn't even suggest it if it weren't for the fact that we're all dead in a few minutes anyway."

  "What is it?"

  "Your metabands. They're damaged."

  "I know that."

  "Listen for a minute. Your metabands are damaged. Metabands aren't supposed to be damaged. They were built to withstand
literally anything. The reason they were built this way was to protect their power source from ever escaping their confines. Just like how a nuclear power plant has hundreds of safeguards to prevent any type of breach, except times a thousand.

  "When the bands, your parents, and I were brought back to this time, it was due to an anomaly we never could have predicted. The bands were damaged in a way they hadn't been designed against. That's what allowed them to tap into the massive amounts of power that they have now. Charlie’s bands are unique because they were able to absorb the energy from the nuclear bomb that was meant to destroy them. Your bands, in their damaged state, are open to outside energy now in a similar way."

  "I don't understand."

  "Your bands can absorb energy the same way Alpha Team’s were able to during the explosion."

  "That's great, but there's not exactly a nuclear bomb nearby."

  "There's not. There's something better. Something with even more energy."

  My mind works to figure out what he's getting at when I look up and realize: the other members of the Circle. Their combined energy is greater than any single source of power anywhere in the world.

  "Are you getting it yet?" Midnight asks.

  "Them. I can take their powers."

  "That's my belief, but these bands weren't built for that. The damage will prevent the internal safety systems from blocking the energy input, but you'll be highly unstable."

  "The world's about to end anyway. Unstable sounds like a better plan than anything else on the table. How do I do it? Just concentrate or something? That's how I'm able to fly or do anything else with them."

  "No, you'll need to tell them to manually enter recharge mode."

  "How?"

  "By speaking it out loud into either of the bands."

  "What? Are you kidding me? These things had voice commands the whole time, and I'm just finding out now?"

  "There isn't time for joking around, Connor."

  "There's not going to be any time for anything soon so I might as well get it out while I can."

  I look down at my shining, cracked silver metabands for what I assume will be the last time. They haven't let me down yet, and I hope they don't now.

  "Initiate manual charge," I say.

  The others look at me with confusion on their faces when my metabands suddenly start pulsating with a soft white light.

  "What are you doing?" Iris asks.

  "Charlie didn't quit. He's just stepped back to get a running start. He's catapulting himself around the moon as we speak and planning to slam himself into the city, destroying the entire planet in the process. I might be able to stop him, but I need all the power I can get."

  "What do we need to do?" Winston asks.

  "They'll need to have physical contact between their metabands and yours for the exchange to work. Once the circuit is complete, the energy should flow into your bands automatically," Midnight says, having heard Winston's question through my microphone.

  “Midnight says the metabands need to be touching each other,” I relay to the group.

  "All right everyone, you heard him. Line up, metabands together with the person to your left and right. We don't have much time," Winston says.

  "Wait, what happens to you then?" I hear a heavily distorted voice ask. It belongs to Sarah, or more accurately, to her mechanical suit.

  "It doesn't matter. If I don't try this, we're all dead anyway."

  "But what if it does work?"

  I take a second and glance up into the sky, expecting to see a fiery streak coming through the atmosphere, but it's not there, not yet at least. I turn to Sarah and mentally pull my cowl back into the rest of my suit, revealing my identity.

  "What?" the distorted voice asks.

  "Protect Derrick for me, okay? He's the only reason I'm still here. He never abandoned me, but now I have to abandon him. Tell him I'm sorry."

  Sarah hits a few buttons on her right forearm and the visor to her suit retracts.

  "Connor? How are you using Omni's metabands? I don't understand," she says.

  Even with all of this, I have to laugh at the question and how she'll feel when she realizes.

  "You'll have time to figure it out. I hope."

  "Connor, I've got incoming. If you're going to do something, you'd better do it soon."

  I pull the cowl back over my head. There's not much need to keep my identity concealed at this point, but it'd feel wrong to go out without the full suit intact. That's how this started, and it's how it'll end.

  I lower my forearms to my sides, placing them in front of Winston to my left and Ellie to my right.

  "I'm sorry," Iris says through tears.

  "Don't ever be sorry. The world can't ask for a better protector."

  Winston and Ellie tap their metabands against mine and it begins. What looks like liquid electricity flows from the assembled group, collecting in a pool at my end of the enclosed circle. There's no pain involved, a concern of mine before this started, but their costumes and uniforms retreat back into their respective metabands. Their bands lack the energy even to keep those relatively uncomplicated abilities intact.

  At first I don't feel different, but as their power leaves them, I begin to feel it enter me. Everything becomes brighter, clearer. My mind feels like it's running on pure energy, and I can suddenly see everything I have to do laid out in front of me.

  I look down at my metabands. They’re no longer a silver metallic color. Now they look as though they’re made from light itself. My uniform pulses and flows with the same energy, making it appear as though it's alive.

  "Go get him, Connor," Iris says to me.

  I smile before directing my attention to the sky and take off.

  Bay View City shrinks below me as I reach higher and higher, bursting through a lone cloud hanging in the cool autumn sky. I've flown many times by now, but this feels like something else entirely. I'm traveling so quickly it's almost dizzying. The streak that is Charlie waits silently above me. No doubt he’s traveling toward me almost as fast as I'm traveling toward him, but he's still far enough away that he remains a blip in the night sky.

  The air around me begins to thin and become dark. I'm reaching the edge of Earth's atmosphere. It's higher than I've ever flown before. There's a sudden panic that I won't be able to breathe before I realize that I don't feel the need to. I've become so powerful that even something as critical to life as oxygen isn't necessary for me anymore.

  It's now that I start really thinking about what I'm doing, and that that was probably the last time I've stepped foot on earth. There wasn't much of a choice, though, and while the thought of death terrifies me, the thought of what will happen if I don't stop this terrifies me more.

  That's what I have to focus on. That's what will get me through this.

  The thin atmosphere disappears completely, and I realize that there's no more wind on my face. As if to punctuate the realization that I'm in space, a satellite whizzes past my face only a few feet away. I turn to look at it, but it's already hundreds of miles away by the time I catch a glimpse of it turning around the edge of the Earth.

  I turn my attention back toward the moon. Silhouetted against the bright full moon, I pick up sight of him again. Charlie is closer now. Within seconds, he'll be right on top of me.

  I take a hard look at him, gauging his angle and direction so I can make my last adjustments. I'll have to hit him with everything I've got. There's no slowing down or second-guessing.

  I reach down deep and pull the last reserves of energy I have to push myself as fast as my bands will take me. There's a brief moment when I see Charlie's eyes right as he catches sight of me. There's an instant of confusion followed by an even shorter instant of recognition.

  Then we collide.

  And then there's nothing.

  43

  When I wake up, I'm not sure if I've been out for seconds or weeks. Time itself feels different. The collision, the school, finding my metaban
ds, my parents dying, they all simultaneously feel like they happened impossibly long ago and also like they happened just yesterday.

  I'm afraid to open my eyes and find out where I am. If I'm not dead, then I'm likely floating somewhere in space, my metabands barely supplying enough reserve energy to keep me alive, but probably not enough to get me back home.

  That worry is short-lived, though. When I finally work up the nerve to open my eyes, all I see is vast, empty white space.

  I guess I'm dead after all.

  "Hello?" a voice asks.

  It sounds scared. I don't know much about religion or ideas about what the afterlife's supposed to be like, but I know enough that hearing the fear in someone else's voice doesn't bode well for me being in the good place instead of the bad place.

  I search around for the source of the voice, but find nothing but more empty space.

  "Up here," the voice finally says.

  I tilt my head and finally see him floating above me: a man, maybe in his thirties. He's wearing a suit that looks almost like the types worn by me and other metahumans, but it's different, plainer, without symbols or colors, just all one white, seamless suit.

  The man's gray eyes look terrified. His lower lip is trembling like he's on the verge of bursting into tears.

  "Where am I?" the man asks me. "What is this place?"

  Well there goes any hope that he was going to be the one to answer that question for me.

  "I'm not sure."

  "How did you get here?" he asks.

  "I'm a metahuman. I was in a ... I'm not sure what you would call it. A collision? When I woke up, I was here."

  "A meta ... human? What's a metahuman?" the man asks me.

  He says the words as though he's never heard them before in his life. Whoever this person is, he’s been here a long time if he’s never heard of a metahuman before.

  That's when I notice he's wearing metabands around both wrists, which only adds to my confusion.

  "I told you how I got here. Why don't you tell me how you got here?"

  "I asked you a question," he says, raising his voice with a quick kind of anger that makes me flinch.

  "If you tell me how you got here, that would help us both figure out where we are, which I think is probably the most important thing to figure out right now."