Someone touched my hand, startling me. I snatched my hand back. I refocused on what was in front of me. Viola’s eyes were wide with a combination of alarm, concern, and a look that said Don’t make me pepper spray you. I realized Viola was the one who had touched my hand. I also realized my fist was clenched and cocked back, ready to punch. Embarrassed, I brought my fist to my mouth and pretended to cough into it. Where was choking on a pumpkin spice latte when you needed it?
“What is your deal?” Viola demanded.
“What do you mean?” I asked, shooting for wide-eyed innocence and likely hitting busted instead.
“Ever since we sat down, you’ve been looking around like you’re expecting someone to stab you to death. And just now, when I touched you, you reacted like I really did stab you.”
“Sorry. I’m a little jumpy. I’ve had some brushes with violence since moving to Astor City.” You can say that again, I thought. “Being from a small town originally, it’s not something I’m used to. Just last night I saw a mugging. Four guys robbing an old man.”
“That’s terrible! What did you do?”
“I shouted at the muggers, ran toward them, and they got spooked and ran off.” Another lie. What really happened was they got spooked when I dove from the sky like a peregrine falcon. I roughed them up a little to teach them a lesson; I had little faith the overwhelmed and corrupt Astor City justice system would teach them anything other than how to be better criminals. Then I immobilized them with my powers and used my watch to call the cops.
“Thank goodness they ran off,” Viola said.
“Why do you say that?” I asked, puzzled.
“Because if they hadn’t, they might’ve hurt you.”
“Oh. Yeah, I suppose they might have.”
Viola leaned back in her chair. She crossed her arms as she looked at me probingly. “You’re an interesting fella, Theodore Conley.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked again. I was a brilliant conversationalist. No wonder I had few friends.
“Let me count the ways. You ran toward four muggers and act like that’s the most natural thing in the world to do when most people in the city would’ve just minded their own business or at least kept their distance and simply called the cops. Normally I’d assume a guy was lying about confronting muggers to try to impress me, but I get the feeling you couldn’t care less about impressing me. I’m not sure if I should be offended by that, by the way. You seemed surprised at the thought the muggers could have hurt you. You’re sizing up everyone who walks through the door like you might have to wrestle them later. You inherited a pile of money in your twenties, yet instead of partying 24/7 the way a lot of people our age would, you’re giving a lot of it away. Your hands are as fidgety as a little kid’s, yet the rest of you is as calm and still as a lake, with no wasted movement. At least on the surface. Despite your veneer of calm, you’re wound as tight as a two-dollar watch, as indicated by how you overreacted when I touched your hand. And on top of all that, you go around quoting the Bible, which is not something people our age normally do.”
Wow. Viola was both pretty and perceptive. I’d have to stay on my toes around her. If I kept carelessly running my mouth, it would be like hanging a sign around my neck reading Hi, I’m Omega. I suck at keeping secrets. Instead of doing that, I shrugged. “What can I say? I’m complicated. I’m like an onion.”
“Because you smell and you make girls cry?”
I smiled. “No. Because I have layers.”
“I would have gone with a cake instead of an onion.”
“The next time I need a better analogy, I’ll be sure to give you a call.”
Viola smiled back at me. Her teeth were perfectly straight and even. I wondered if she had worn braces. She flipped her hair over her shoulder. “I certainly hope you will,” she said.
I realized Viola was flirting with me. She liked me. I was startled to also realize that I liked her too. The twin realizations made me nervous. Though it was irrational, it felt like I was cheating on Neha and dishonoring her memory by sitting here talking to another woman. Part of me wanted to bolt. Another part of me, the same part that kept glancing at Viola’s cleavage, made me sit tight.
“So tell me, what makes you so complicated and onion-like?” Viola asked.
I shook my head. “I feel like I’ve talked too much as it is. Tell me more about you.”
She did. Her last name was Simpson. (“No relation to O.J.,” she said. “Imagine my relief,” I said.) She was 24-years-old and a native of Portland, Oregon. She lived in Appalachian Springs, a suburb a short drive from Astor City. She had moved to this area after graduating college in Massachusetts to take a job as an associate editor at Ms. M, an online magazine for millennial women. She was working toward a master’s degree in psychology at night at Astor City University. She wanted to be a psychotherapist. Her background and professional aspirations explained why she was so observant. I tended to scoff at psychologists because of how little I thought of the one I had been forced to go to when Mom died, but Viola made me want to reconsider my prejudice. Her father, a construction worker, died in a work-related accident a few years ago. Her mother had recently remarried a man who had hit on Viola the day he met her, and later drunkenly fondled Viola at their wedding. Viola was not a fan of her stepdad.
“I can’t imagine why,” I told her.
Viola saying her father had been killed prompted me to share that my father had been killed too, in my case during a Rogue attack. I left out that Iceburn had attacked because Millennium, Mechano, and Seer had dispatched him to kill me. The key to being a good liar, I had learned, was to tell as much of the truth as possible while omitting key facts. That way your story would appear to be true if someone ever checked on it. Also, there were fewer outright lies you had to keep straight. Who knew being a Hero would qualify me to teach a masterclass in lying? My parents would be so proud.
Somehow science fiction came up. Viola was as much of a fan of science fiction and fantasy books as I was. “Hence the weak eyes and the glasses,” she said. Though my reading habits these days tended more toward books that would help me be a more effective Hero—current events, history, the latest scientific advances, that sort of thing—I still loved fantasy and sci-fi though I didn’t have time for it much anymore. Talking about science fiction led to talking about Star Trek. I told Viola that Enterprise was my favorite of all the Trek series. She mocked me relentlessly at that admission.
“Hey,” she said, “have you heard that Klingons make really colorful fabrics every day?”
“No,” I said, puzzled. “Why is that?”
“Because today is always a good day to dye.”
It took me a second to get it. Then I groaned. “How could you be so cute and yet have a joke so monstrously bad inside of you?” Too late I realized I had said out loud I thought she was cute. My dating skills were rusty. No, that’s not right—rusty implies they ever existed in the first place.
“I am large, I contain multitudes,” she said.
“Walt Whitman?”
“Yep.”
“You make a terrible Star Trek pun one minute, then quote Leaves of Grass the next. You’re one to talk about me being complicated.”
“Most people just think I’m weird. And I probably am. I’ve yet to meet anyone who studied psychology who wasn’t weird. It’s a ‘physician, heal thyself’ sort of thing.” Viola said.
“I don’t think you’re weird. I think you’re interesting.”
“So we’re both interesting, we both understand the other’s references, and we’re both cute. We should get married or something.”
We fell silent, both of us embarrassed. Or maybe I was just projecting how I felt onto Viola. As a future psychotherapist, she could probably tell me.
Viola said, “Speaking of Star Trek, there’s a Trek retrospective at the Museum of Pop Art. I was going to check it out after leaving here. Since you’re into the show too, do you want to go with me?”
“Does a Vulcan get pon farr?” I said.
Viola grinned. “FYI, I don’t pon farr on the first date.”
“Good to know.”
The Astor City Museum of Pop Art was miles away on the outskirts of the city. We headed toward Viola’s car, parked a few blocks away. I did not own a car; it was all too easy to get around the city using public transportation, ride-sharing services, walking or, when I was Omega, flying. The tall buildings of downtown acted as a wind tunnel, augmenting the already brisk wind. It was chilly out. Gray clouds had blotted out the sun. Viola shivered, zipped up her jacket as we walked, and peered up. “It looks like it’s about to rain,” she said.
I sniffed the air. I got a whiff of Viola’s perfume. Something floral. “Nah. Doesn’t smell like rain. Plus the barometric pressure’s all wrong. Maybe it’ll rain in a few hours, but certainly no sooner.”
“What, are you literally Rain Man?”
“You know puns and poetry, I know weather. I grew up on a farm, remember? The weather is far more important to a farmer than what kind of hoe he has.”
“Did you just call me a ho?”
“No. But now I am.” Viola tried to punch me in the shoulder. I saw it coming from a mile away and slipped it automatically. Her fist only hit air.
Viola’s eyes widened. “Wow, you’ve got quick reflexes,” she said.
I shadowboxed, deliberately making my movements far clumsier than they normally were. “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee,” I said. As I punched the air I silently chided myself for moving out of the way of her punch so fluidly. Playing the role of hapless was harder than it looked. I didn’t know how Clark Kent pulled it off. Maybe it was the glasses.
On Allure Avenue, we walked toward a shady-looking dude. I only halfway paid attention to what Viola was saying as I gave the guy the suspicious side-eye until we passed him. I kept a lock on him for the next couple of blocks with my telekinetic touch, but he did nothing warranting further attention. He was evidently minding his own business and wasn’t planning on knocking someone upside the head.
Between this guy and winter coat guy in the coffee shop, maybe Isaac had been right that I needed to do a better job of taking the mask off. Not everybody was a criminal or a Rogue.
We climbed into Viola’s car, a late model blue Honda Civic. She pulled out of the parking space and eased into traffic heading north on Hamilton Street. As we continued to talk as she drove, the guilt I had felt about going out with Viola started to ease out of me. Neha and I hadn’t even been dating when she died; only in that imaginary alternate reality the Omega spirit had put me in had Neha and I dated and gotten married. And even if Neha and I actually had a romantic relationship in this reality, she was gone now. It wasn’t like I was cheating on her. I had no legitimate reason to feel guilty. I was not doing anything wrong.
Viola made a right off Hamilton and onto Greene Street, a three-lane road. The speed limit was higher now that we were out of the downtown district. Viola’s car accelerated. Traffic was moderate, as was the foot traffic on the sidewalks. It was the middle of a Saturday, after all. Things would be much busier tonight.
As we proceeded on Greene, Viola and I had a friendly argument about which Star Trek movie was the best. I threatened to jump out of the car in disgust when she said The Voyage Home was the best. She said she threw up in her mouth at my assertion that the 2009 reboot of the franchise was the best movie. I realized during all this that I was not at all nervous talking to Viola as I had been years ago when I talked to other girls. I wondered if that was because I was more confident thanks to my exploits as Omega, because Viola was a geek like me, or simply because I was not a kid anymore.
Regardless, Viola was fun, and I enjoyed being around her. Maybe I was silly for living the life of a warrior monk, as Isaac had put it.
I was in the middle of thinking that perhaps Theo Conley could lead a normal life while Omega simultaneously led a decidedly abnormal life when a costumed Rogue fell out of the dark sky. Broken asphalt went flying when he landed directly in front of Viola’s speeding car.
CHAPTER 8
“Oh my God!” Viola shrieked. She had the presence of mind to not try to swerve out of the way since we were boxed in by cars on either side of us. Instead, she slammed on the brakes. I choked on the smell of burning rubber.
No use. The Rogue was too close and we were going too fast. We skidded toward him like a bowling ball toward a pin. Hairy fists the size of ham hocks pumped up, then swung down like a guillotine. They hit the hood of Viola’s Civic with a terrific smash. The blow and our forward momentum sent us sailing into the air, tail end first, spinning end over end.
Viola screamed. The world spun like a kaleidoscope around us.
We landed with a smash on the street again, roof-side first. We skidded. Sparks flew. We slammed into a car, then another. The second impact slowed us, then brought us to a bone-rattling halt.
Viola and I hung upside down by our seat belts. The stench of gas and exhaust filled the air. Viola frantically ran her hands over her body, like a coked-up doctor examining a patient.
“I’m not dead,” she said in wonder, almost to herself. “How am I not dead?” Even her glasses were still on, though they dangled from her nose since they were upside down.
“The Japanese know how to make cars,” I said. Though true, Japanese engineering had gotten a secret assist from my powers. When we had gone airborne, I had encircled the car’s passenger compartment with a force field. It had prevented us from being shaken like a martini while in the air, and from doing a pancake impersonation when we hit the ground. The car had crumpled around my field, leaving us completely unhurt. I had also stopped the car’s air bags from deploying; they would have just gotten in the way.
I fumbled for the seat belt release. “Sit tight. I’ll see if I can get us out of here.”
“‘Sit tight,’ he says. Where would I go?” She was surprisingly calm. I was impressed. Most people would freak out. Even my heart raced, and I’d been through this sort of thing before.
I unfastened my seat belt and slid off the seat onto the crumpled roof. I twisted around, feet facing the passenger side window. I kicked the closed window. My first two kicks only cracked the window more than it already was. The third kick, with an assist of my powers from a surreptitious finger flick, made the glass pop out of the frame like a contact lens out of a dry eye. I wiggled out feet-first.
I scrambled to my feet. My watch buzzed insistently. I glanced at it. A message from Augur. It read, “Rogue sighting on Greene Street in Astor City, Maryland.” No shit, Sherlock, I thought.
In front of us was the SUV we had slammed into. Its rear end was a crumpled ruin. We were surrounded by cars that had stopped haphazardly in the middle of Greene Street. Some had run into one another, no doubt to avoid my and Viola’s failed flying Jetson car impersonation. Honking filled the air. People were getting out of their vehicles, gawking, pointing. Many had cell phones in their hands, pointed down the street, taking pictures and recording video of the Rogue who had started this mess.
I turned to look at him too. With one arm, he flipped an empty stopped car out of his way like it was made of cardboard. The car sailed through the air. It smashed against the stone façade of a building on the other side of the street. The sound was like a metallic thunderclap. The wreckage burst into flames with a whoosh. People screamed. Others cheered and applauded. Idiots. Some people acted like life was an action movie, with death and destruction merely a fun show.
The Rogue was Silverback. It was impossible to mistake him for anyone else. Over eight feet tall, he had an absurdly muscled, hunched-over body garbed in a brown and tan costume, arms that almost dragged the ground, long fangs sticking up from his lower jaw, and an ugly mug. I had run him out of town over a month ago and threatened to make his life a living hell if I ever saw him again. Before I had chased him out of Astor City, he’d been all about smash and grab robberies—bank vaults, armore
d cars, high-end jewelers, that sort of thing. Wreaking havoc in the middle of the street for no apparent reason was not his usual modus operandi. I wondered why there was a change in his behavior, and why he had gotten the courage to show his face in Astor City again.
It didn’t matter. What did matter was that I stop Silverback before somebody got hurt.
Since so many others were already doing it, I lifted a hand to point at Silverback. I used the movement to mask activating my powers. Though Silverback was a nasty costumer, I had been able to subdue him back when I was merely Kinetic. He certainly was no match for Omega. I’d trap him in a force field and hold him until the authorities arrived. Silverback would be under control before I could say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, though I didn’t know what in the world would possess me to say such a thing.
Silverback turned slightly. He seemed to look straight at me even though we were separated by rows of stopped cars and a large stretch of the street. He stepped forward, moving through my invisible force field as if it didn’t exist.
What the hell?
Then I tried to latch onto his body with my powers to immobilize him. Nope. No dice. Trying to hold onto him was like trying to hold onto a fistful of air.
Taken aback, I blinked in surprise bordering on shock. Maybe I should have said supercalifragilisticexpialidocious after all. My powers not working on someone hadn’t happened since I had tussled with Iceburn years ago.
Silverback advanced implacably in my direction. Upright as he was now, he didn’t move as quickly as he could when he dropped to all fours, much like the gorilla he took his name from. Silverback shoved and flung cars out of the way as he approached. The sound of rending metal and breaking glass filled the air.
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