She felt lighter in my lap. No longer was she a zaftig woman with dyed blonde hair. Now she was a small-boned old lady with a narrow, pinched face and long stringy grey hair. Her loose, crinkled skin was freckled with liver spots. She still wore a tight pink halter top and matching hot pants. They looked like bandages instead of clothes on this old lady. She was flat-chested. The wad of cash under her top bulged out like a deformed third breast.
Soon, even most of Cassandra faded away. I stopped being aware of her weight, her appearance, and the burning of my scalp where her long nails dug unto me. The only things left were Cassandra’s eyes. They seemed to have swallowed the rest of the world whole.
The external world, that is. Internally, in my mind, it was as if countless doors were opening, revealing a new world that had been hidden before. Through them I could see . . . well, everything. I could only see the images hazily, though, as if I viewed them through a thick glass bottle. Though it was hard to be sure, I thought I caught glimpses of my parents when they were young and full of life. Here was Neha, looking so beautiful even with the distortion. There was Isaac, Truman, Mad Dog, Hannah, the Old Man, Hammer, Iceburn, the Three Horseman, the blonde who had planted the bomb on me, the old lady whose tire I changed in Washington, D.C. right before Iceburn attacked me, Athena, Elemental Man, Pitbull, Mechano and the other Sentinels, Avatar, Omega Man, and countless others. Hero and Rogue, Meta and non-Meta, friend and foe flashed before me. Some I recognized. Most I did not. But I knew I was connected to all these people, even the ones I didn’t know, in ways I could almost but not quite understand. It was as if we were all suspended in one massive spiderweb, with each movement we made affecting everyone else, some strongly, others faintly.
I knew without knowing how I knew that everything I sought, everything I wanted to know—everything I could ever know, no matter how big or small—was all right here. But despite how much I concentrated to bring the distorted images into clear view, I couldn’t. Everything was just beyond my grasp, like a chased rainbow.
“You have but a single question, and a single answer,” came a voice that echoed in my mind. It did not sound like Cassandra. The voice held an ancient, timeless quality the stripper’s voice had not. Even so, I knew it was her. “What is your question?”
I had prepared for this, of course. Ever since Truman had told me I could only ask Cassandra one question, I had turned over in my mind how I should ask about Mechano. Now that I knew with visceral certainty that anything I wanted to know was at Cassandra’s fingertips, I hesitated. Should I ask something else? There were so many things I wanted to know: Where was Antonio? If I found him, what should I do with him? How could I make Neha love me the way I loved her? When would I die? When would my friends die? Would I ever be happy? Was time travel possible? Could I go back in time and keep Hammer from being killed in the Trials? Could I prevent Hannah’s murder? Save my father from Iceburn? Prevent my mother from ever getting cancer and dying?
Compared to some of those questions, why Mechano had tried to kill me seemed trivial.
My thoughts kept leading me back to my parents, Hannah, and Hammer. Over the past few years I had seen and done things I never would have dreamt were possible before I entered the world of Heroes and Rogues. I had flown faster than the fastest bird, gone to other dimensions, and seen creatures that were supposed to be myths. I had seen the impossible made not only possible, but into a hard reality. What else was possible that I did not yet know about? I realized as I equivocated over what to ask Cassandra that, in the back of my mind, I had been subconsciously harboring the hope that someday I would find a way to go back into the past and fix things, to make sure that the people who had died did not die. Dad’s and Hannah’s deaths had been caused by me. They would be alive today if I had made better decisions. If I could go back in time, I could do things differently, make different choices. I could make sure they lived. And, though I did not cause Hammer’s and Mom’s deaths, they still had been so unnecessary. So unfair. Neither of them had deserved to have their lives cut short.
Maybe I would one day meet a Meta who could time travel and who would be willing to take me into the past with him to make sure no one I cared about died.
Or, maybe I would one day meet a scientist who was working on time travel technology. Yes, time travel tech sounded like something out of science fiction, but not too long ago so did computers you could fit into your pocket. And yet almost everyone had a smartphone with more computing power than the computers that put a man on the Moon. Yesterday’s science fiction was often today’s science fact. Perhaps time travel was the same.
Maybe, as an Omega-level Metahuman, I myself would one day become powerful enough that I would figure out a way to use my powers to time travel. Maybe there was some twist on how to use my powers I had not yet thought of.
Or, maybe there was some other way to travel back in time that did not involve technology or Metahuman powers.
Maybe time travel was possible. Maybe saving the lives of all the people I cared about was possible. Maybe, as Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” I did not know.
But Cassandra did. And even if time travel was not possible, Cassandra would know if resurrection was. If a carpenter from Nazareth could pull off resurrection millennia ago, surely a husband and wife from South Carolina could today.
But, what if I asked Cassandra if I could travel back in time to save Hammer, Hannah, Dad, and Mom or resurrect them somehow and the answer was No? I would waste my one shot at asking Cassandra a question. More importantly, I would kill off the hope that they all could be saved. It was a hope I had not even been aware I harbored, a hope that kept me going when times were tough. If I didn’t have hope that tomorrow could be better than yesterday, what was the point of living?
I remembered something Dad once said, one of his Jamesisms: “The past can be the wind in your sails. It can also be an anchor.” I knew if Cassandra told me there was no way the people I cared about could be saved, it would be an anchor that would mire me in a sea of despair, perhaps forever.
I wrestled with the subject of the question I should ask. Mechano, or my friends and family?
Seconds passed. Or maybe it was hours. I could not tell. Time seemed to have little meaning in the internal world Cassandra had sucked me into.
I made up my mind. I needed to know if there was some way to save Hammer, Hannah, and my parents. It didn’t matter if Cassandra’s answer was no. I had to know for sure. Mechano could wait. I had put off dealing with him this long. Besides, as Isaac had suggested days before, I could simply turn what I knew about him over to the Heroes’ Guild and let it handle him. My family and friends should take precedence.
Unbidden, the words of the Hero’s Oath I had sworn during my cape investiture ceremony bubbled up to the forefront of my mind. Saying those words along with the other five people who had passed the Trials—Isaac, Neha, Hacker, Hardcase, and Zephyr—had been one of the biggest moments of my life:
No cave so dark,
No pit so deep,
Will hide evil from my arm’s sweep.
Those who sow darkness soon shall reap.
For in the pursuit of justice,
I will never sleep.
The words echoed in my mind, their meaning sinking in in a way they had not before. I could not simply report Mechano to the Guild and let it deal with him. I was the Guild. Even though I was inexperienced compared to Heroes like Truman, Athena, the Old Man, and Ghost, I was as much of a Hero and a member of the Guild as they were. According to the oath I had sworn, it was my job to deal with people like Mechano, not to foist him off on someone else. I knew he had tried to kill me during the Trials, both with nanites and with a bomb. With the latter, he had nearly killed and injured others. What else had he done wrong that I did not even know about? How else had he violated his own Oath? It was my responsibility to bring him to justice.
If not me, who? Truman and Isaac only knew about what M
echano had done because I told them. Other than me, the only other person with direct, non-hearsay knowledge of Mechano’s foul deeds was Hacker. I would not hold my breath on her acting against Mechano. She didn’t use her powers to fight crime. She worked for some big tech firm in Seattle. Though she had never come right out and said so, I was under the strong impression that the only reason Hacker had pursued her license was so she could legally cash in on the use of her Metahuman ability to communicate with computers. Besides, maybe it was just as well Hacker did not plan on being a crime-fighter. She had not even known who Spiderman was until I told her during the Trials. Though Spiderman was not real, a Hero really ought to know something about the mythology of superheroes. A Hero not knowing about Spiderman was like a writer not knowing about Shakespeare’s plays.
Even if Hacker was not interested in the justice-seeking component of being a Hero, I was. With that being the case, how could I let this opportunity to act against Mechano pass me by? How was it the Old Man had put it years ago when I had been in his Heroic Feats, Ethics, and Theory class at the Academy? “A hero is someone who sees what must be done, and he or she tries to do it regardless of the personal cost.” That definition had sounded right to me then, and it still sounded right to me now.
As much as it pained me, trying to bring Hannah, Hammer, and my parents back to life would have to wait. I had an oath to live up to, and a responsibility to shoulder.
“Why has Mechano tried to kill me?” I finally asked Cassandra.
The images in my mind reordered themselves, like a deck of cards being rapidly shuffled. I caught quick glimpses of them. Though they started off as blurry and out of focus, each became clearer as it flashed by. I saw Omega Man, the greatest Hero the world has ever known, flying straight through the side of the V’Loth mothership in his successful attempt to kill the aliens’ queen and stop their invasion in the 1960s. I saw Omega Man’s statue on top of the Heroes’ Guild National Headquarters building in Washington, D.C. I saw me and Neha flying towards the building years ago for the Trials and talking about the legend that Omega Man would return when the planet faced another great threat. I saw Avatar being shot and killed, the bullet somehow piercing his impenetrable skin. I saw a group of costumed Rogues sitting around a conference table, planning and scheming about something with worldwide implications. I saw me and the Three Horsemen in the college bathroom the day my powers first manifested. The football players were flung violently off me and through the air thanks to my telekinesis. I saw Millennium, Seer, and Mechano talking inside Sentinels Mansion. They were talking about me. I saw my father, consumed by the fire Iceburn had set.
Finally, I saw Omega Man’s smoldering body after he had sacrificed himself to destroy the V’Loth queen. The omega symbol emblazoned on the front of his costumed chest rose from his body, white hot, like a phoenix from ashes. It zoomed toward my mind’s eye, blotting out everything else with its brightness.
With the omega symbol burning in my mind, Cassandra spoke, answering my question about Mechano.
“Because you are the reincarnation of Omega Man,” she said.
CHAPTER 15
The cold wind blew in my face as I stood alone on top of the UWant Building. I wore my Kinetic costume and mask. I was supposed to be on patrol. What I was actually doing was being in a funk. The beauty of nighttime Astor City stretched out below me. The view barely registered on me. My mind was too busy reeling from what Cassandra had told me yesterday. Since then, I had been in a stupefied haze of shock and disbelief.
You are the reincarnation of Omega Man. Cassandra’s words rang in my head like a clarion call. How could it be true? I did not feel like someone’s reincarnation. I just felt like me, the same jumble of doubts and insecurities and uncertainty I always felt like. I was just a farm boy from South Carolina. A farm boy with superpowers, sure, but a farm boy nonetheless. Omega Man was the greatest Hero the world had ever known. Omega Man and Theodore Conley did not belong in the same sentence, much less in the same person. Yes, we were both Heroes, but that was where the similarities ended. The fact that a mouse and a lion were both animals did not mean they were the same thing.
The whole idea was ludicrous. Cassandra must have been wrong. It must have been a mistake.
“I don’t make mistakes,” she had sniffed when I had suggested that to her yesterday. After she had dropped her Omega Man bombshell, her eyes had immediately turned back to normal, as if a switch had been flipped. I had been abruptly pulled back into reality and out of the image-rich dreamland I had been in. Cassandra was still in my lap, again as big, busty, and young as she had been when I first had laid eyes on her. She had no memory of what she had seen and told me during the time her eyes had gone black. She still knew I was a Hero, of course, having gleaned that with her rudimentary telepathic powers before we had even gone downstairs. She said she would not tell anyone. “It’s part of the service,” she had said when I had asked her to keep my secret. She had seemed somewhat insulted I would even ask.
Regardless of Cassandra’s assurances that her powers were never wrong, all day I had been trying to convince myself there was a mistake, a glitch in the matrix somewhere. But, despite my efforts to talk myself into believing otherwise, in my heart I knew there was no mistake. The images Cassandra had conjured up in my mind, while bizarre, had been real. I knew in my gut they were. They were what Cassandra had based her answer to my question on. And if those images were real, that meant Cassandra was right about me.
I had not told either Truman or Isaac what Cassandra had said. I was too busy processing the shock of it to go around telling people about it. Besides, maybe they would not believe me. I could scarcely believe it myself.
I had gone to Cassandra looking for answers. The answer I got had led to a slew of brand-new ones. If I really was Omega Man, what did that mean? Urban legend said that Omega Man would return if the Earth faced an existential crisis again. If I was the return of Omega Man, did that mean the Earth was in danger? The world was certainly in a mess. Climate change, pollution of the air and water, Rogues like Puma running amok, people exploiting, subjugating, and killing others because they looked or worshipped differently . . . the list of problems went on and on. However, based on all the history I had studied during my Heroic training, the world did not seem like a bigger mess now than it always has been. Men have always been men, with all the savagery interspersed with moments of brilliance and transcendental beauty that entailed. Evolutionarily speaking, we modern humans were no different than our ancient ancestors. Like Truman had said on the drive to Areola 51, our bodies and minds were Stone Age hardware and software in an Information Age setting. If I, as Omega Man, was supposed to save the planet, what in the world was I supposed to save it from that was new? Reality television?
I had a hard enough time running my own life. Dad was dead because of me. I had completely botched handling Antonio, leading to Hannah’s death. If the fate of the world rested on my shoulders, I should get a tombstone and carve on it Planet Earth: Rest In Peace right now.
So many unanswered questions. If I was Omega Man, what did Mechano have against him/me? In addition to being the greatest Hero of all time, Omega Man had been one of the founding members of the Sentinels in the 1940s. I would think that Mechano, one of the modern Sentinels, would want to shake the hand of one of the team’s founders, not try to kill him.
The biggest unanswered question of them all: If I really was the reincarnation of Omega Man, why me? Why not someone worthier? I was just a guy from the sticks with an unfortunate tendency to screw the pooch. I had gotten Dad and Hannah killed. I had cheated on the Trials. I couldn’t even get Neha to love me. If I were to pick someone to be Omega Man, I certainly would not pick me. The Old Man was wise; Athena was a badass; Truman was tough and experienced; Isaac had a heart of gold; Neha was ruthless. The world was chock full of better candidates to be Omega Man than I was.
“Why me?” I asked aloud. The gusting wind picked up in intensit
y, as if in response. Unfortunately for me, I could only break wind. I didn’t speak it too.
Add thinking of stupid fart jokes to the list of reasons why me being Omega Man was ridiculous.
I had tried to ask Cassandra all the questions I had about being the reincarnation of Omega Man. She had cut me off.
“I couldn’t answer any of your questions even if you owned the UWant Building and signed its deed over to me,” she had said. “My powers have strict limits. Think of them as a well that goes dry after you drink from it. No double-dipping. If you want a lap dance, on the other hand, that I can accommodate you with.” I took a pass on the lap dance, of course. Areola 51 had completely turned me off the strip club experience. Besides, what Cassandra had revealed to me had driven women and sex completely out of my mind. That was a feat I would have thought impossible before yesterday. Then again, I would have thought me being Omega Man was impossible before yesterday, too. What a difference a single day could make. Who would have guessed that discovering you were a reincarnated version of a Hero who had been dead for over fifty years would turn your libido completely off? I don’t recommend it as a form of birth control, however. The shock of it is too hard on your heart.
Why me? I thought again.
Why not you? came the immediately response from my subconscious. It sounded like a Jamesism, though I had never heard him say that particular one before. Perhaps it was my own creation. I was channeling Dad more than I was channeling Omega Man. Perhaps Cassandra had gotten her wires crossed and the correct answer scrambled. Maybe that was understandable. Communicating with people in the afterlife had to be the longest possible long-distance call.
I needed answers. Standing on top of this building, brooding, and making unfunny jokes about communicating with the dead were not providing any. The problem was I did not know who had the answers I wanted.
No, that was not right. I knew exactly who I could ask. What was it Truman had said about Cassandra before we went inside Areola 51? “Short of asking Mechano directly, asking her is the quickest way to find out what Mechano’s beef with you is,” he had said.
Sentinels Page 17