Supers Box Set

by Kristofer Bartol

  “Across twenty-two years, sure, but this kid's done it in six.”

  “Cause he keeps getting handed all the good cases!” Singleton stands. “See, that's the real nepotism. We've been downhill of the river o’ shit for how long?”

  “Since the Chaukeedaar went up, at least. Either then or after nine-eleven. I know we had some good shit before nine-eleven.”

  “Cause we were young bucks! But then the First Responders came sauntering outta the ashes and took lead on all the big, big-time, big-boy cases—all the mutate shit and rogue supers. And we were delegated to the cheap seats.”

  “The back of the bus.”

  “Hey,” Singleton points, “I can say that—you can't.”

  Tessio shrugs. “The back row, then. Point is, we fucking stayed there.”

  “Now the only time they call on us is when a hullabaloo ain't worth anyone else's time.”

  “I swear, the supers don't even stoop as low as we do.”

  “I didn't see a single super flying into Grand National and scooping Fogman.”

  “No shit. There ain’t no glamour in a poop-scoop.”

  “What?”

  “Ain’t no glam- forget it, I'm just trying to be funny.”

  “And you try so hard.” Singleton sneers.

  Tessio blinks. “I can hurt you, you know.”

  ( I | IV )

  An urban youth sits hunched beneath his hoodie. Cold cement lords over him. To his right stands a partition of iron bars; to his left sits a glassy-eyed vagabond clad in brown—a brown once golden, but long-since sodden and soiled.

  The vagabond stares across the room, at the youth, who looks everywhere and anywhere else.

  The vagabond smiles. A wispy gray haze creeps across the floor, pooling between the two inmates. The youth looks between the growing cloud and the vagabond.

  “Are you,” he stutters, “are you doing this?”

  The vagabond curls his upper lip and blinks.

  “What are you doing?”

  The vagabond stirs the air with a limp finger, prompting the small cloud to swirl and expand, filling the void of the small cell. The youth scampers to his feet and backs against the bars.

  “Um,” he calls out, through the bars, “this guy's doing something!”

  The vagabond smiles as fog envelops him, and his visage vanishes within the haze. The youth's eyes widen.

  “Hey, yo! Officers! This guy disappeared on me!”

  A tired male voice hollers from the other room. “What's he doing?”

  “He disappeared in a big cloud!”

  The voice sighs, and insists, “No he didn't.”

  “What are you talking about, man? Look at this!” The youth presses his face against the bars and peers out the fog. “He poofed in a frickin' magic cloud!”

  “He's still there.”

  “Shit, guy, I can't see him and he was right next to me! Why do you think you can-”

  “Just listen.”

  The youth pauses. “Listen for what?”

  “Stop talking an’ listen. Hear breathing?”

  The youth turns back to the cloud, waiting. “Uh… no?”

  A falsetto voice pipes-up beside him, “Oh no, Fogman escaped! He totally escaped; how'd he do that?”

  The youth scrunches his brow, searching the air first with hawkish eyes and then with outstretched arms.

  The falsetto voice hollers louder, “Where is he? This is bad, mister policeman, you need to open the door and come in here right away!”

  “I'm not saying that,” says the youth.

  “Yes I am,” assures the falsetto.

  “See, kid,” shouts the officer in the other room, “Fogman’s makin’ a ploy. You're just gonna hafta sit in a cloud for a while.”

  The youth stirs. “Why?”

  “Don't ask me; he always does that.”

  “No he doesn't,” says the falsetto, “Fogman escaped, like he always does.”

  The youth sits down. “Is that supposed to be me?

  Silence.

  The cloud retreats from the edges of the cell, curling inward towards the center of the room. The fog compounds into a swirling orb before disapparating in a wet airburst. As the mist settles, the youth notices the vagabond prowling beneath his bench, hunched on all fours.

  Fogman turns his head to the boy, grinning smug.

  “Nearly had him, didn't I?”

  The youth sighs. “Yeah. Sure did.”

  ( I | V )

  The radio crackles back to life as the car emerges from the tunnel; dayglow strikes Singleton across the face. He lowers the visor and raises the volume. A woman’s voice spins confidence into concern:

  “Two months ago, we experienced the climactic conclusion to a two-year reign of terror brought upon by the mutate Burden in the five boroughs of New York and the counties Bergen, Hudson, and Passaic of New Jersey. The nation is split on the ethics of the deposition of Burden, with some saying vigilante intervention was hasty, dangerous, and damaging, whereas others say it was a necessary evil.”

  The woman continues, tempered, “I’m Michelle Bellicoso. With me today I have Dr. Phoebe DeSimone, interim director of the Arche Energy Research Group in Stamford, and Dr. William Johannsen, professor of anthropology and transhuman studies at the University of Columbia. Let’s begin with Professor Johannsen.”

  “Yes, good afternoon,” starts the scholar. “First of all, Michelle, the intervention of the Archeon Assembly was not a necessary evil; it was necessary, yes, but not evil; frankly, it was what the situation needed. The government had two years—that’s over seven-hundred days—to curtail Burden’s activities yet they did not do so. You know what’s evil? Negligence. Ignorance. You see, Burden was evil—truly evil—and when it became clear the government would not stop him, well, we are lucky that somebody else stepped up.”

  The moderator clears her throat. “Doctor DeSimone, a rebuttal?”

  “I don't know where to begin,” she begins, “but the professor seems rather quick to demonize the American government.”

  “You can address me directly, Phoebe.”

  “Okay, professor—you seemed a bit eager to heap the blame on the government. There's thousands of factors at play. For one, we didn't know where Burden was operating from until the rogues found him. Second, nobody knew he was behind it. These were, on the surface, unmotivated chaotic events; riots, fostered by hostile mutates, unassuming and unleashed; no costumes, no flair, no agenda. The situation did not appear to have a mastermind behind it.”

  “They would’ve known of a mastermind had they investigated. Every riot begins with a kernel of anger, or fear, or contempt; there was no spark with these people—and these were normal people, need I remind you. Mutated, sure, but prior-to and after each riot these men and women were unaware of their abilities, or the mayhem they wrought. Like they were sleepwalking: One minute they’re at a business meeting, a dinner date, or tucking their children in for bed, and in a snap of a finger they're hurling tornadoes, spitting fire, and rattling the earth—only to, two hours later, wake-up in midtown, bruised and confused, wearing scorched clothing and soaked in sweat.”

  “Leading the D.o.D. to wonder if these were the actions of another Soviet sleeper cell.”

  “What are you talking about!”

  “Come on, professor, you’re my age, for chrissakes. Rezidentura, Pervoye Dykhaniye; the ‘First Breath’ Residency Operation, nineteen-eighty-seven. Six Soviet agents, mutated by a bastardization of Knoxville Project secrets, wiped of their previous identities, and hidden in six different American cities; their real minds suppressed and waiting for activation; masquerading as American civilians.”

  “The Soviet Union collapsed long before the reign of Burden.”

  “Sure but if Putin retains as much of the old ways as reports say he does, any programs active in December nineteen-ninety-one were active in January nineteen-ninety-two. None of the Depraved detained by the police were willing or able to comment
on the riots, all recycling the same story: they don’t know what happened.”

  “Of course they didn’t! They were brainwashed by a hive mind! Forcibly given powers by some Christian zealot with a vendetta… and isn’t it rather uncouth to continue to call them Depraved? They were pawns in a coordinated chess game, not hostile actors.”

  “I’m using the term bestowed upon them and recognized by relevant agencies.”

  “With that language, you’re enabling a system of victim-blaming and historical whitewashing.”

  “I have an article, here, from CNN—your preferred news network, I’m guessing—after the defeat of Burden and the release of his control.” She clears her throat. “Through the use of his powers, Burden was able to corrupt mutables (potential mutates) with acutely-sickened minds—thriving on malice, cruelty, and sadism—and limited powers—the basic forms of abilities he'd previously absorbed. These easily-manipulated thralls… careless, inhuman, and depraved mutates… in a breed of mayhem ‘reminiscent of the post-Horizon gang wars—but, instead of the tenuous territorial and moral restrictions, there are none.’”

  “Okay, I know that article, and you passed-over the accreditation of one quote, ‘careless, inhuman, and depraved mutates,’ which, if I recall correctly, came from an alt-right purveyor of news and was referenced in such context. In fact, that whole section was expository; the author—an acquaintance of mine, actually—concluded with the notion that his ‘thralls’ were free-acting but nonetheless ‘irresistibly obedient’ to Burden's orders, given his telepathic control over them, and so, he concluded, ‘they shall not bear the burden of blame’ in our historical record.”

  “Regardless, there’s nothing redeemable about a man with stone skin battle-ramming a school bus, or about a flying postal worker sending two-hundred volts through a laundromat.”

  “I’m not commending them, I’m proposing we absolve them; they were not conscious actors.”

  “So a band of demented partial-mutates comes traipsing down Main Street, attacking civilians, and you’re-”

  “These offenders were civilians, just the same, and still are! An incredibly-powerful mutate attacked them, like a virus disseminating mayhem, doing only what was done to him! Does that make it okay? No, but it gives us an understanding. When Adjudicator killed Deadline, in twenty-fifteen, all those powers he absorbed over the years had to go somewhere. It’s the first law of thermodynamics.”

  “The explosion.”

  “No—well, that and the transference of powers. The blast was concussive; it didn’t kill anyone.”

  “It killed, like, two hundred people.”

  “Phoebe, you can’t be this dense without doing it on purpose. We’ve studied it for two years now. Witnesses confirm. We have the J. Sedgwick video.”

  “The J. Sedgwick video is photoshopped.”

  “That’s an image editing software; the video is an unedited upload, directly from his phone—which metadata has proven—clearly showing Adjudicator’s final strike on Deadline; clearly showing the interior collapse of Deadline’s constitution, followed by a radial concussive blast. Did it damage buildings? Yes. Did it knock people down? Yes. Did it set-off car alarms? Yes. Did it kill anyone? No. Three seconds later and you can still see those people moving; writhing. Only four restabilize, and we determined who three were—Bishop, June Bishop; Gideon, Joshua DiGregorio; and Chimera, Gage Anderson—through their recent appearances and social media, but that last survivor—Chris Mellen, a.k.a. Burden—we only realized it was him after the fact.”

  “Jonas Sedgwick is a known graphic designer. He works on Madison Avenue.”

  “It’s unedited footage! The code has been analyzed by hundreds of independent researchers.”

  “Code-monkeys, on reddit.”

  “Experts in their field, using that particular site as a collaborative space, yes, but that doesn’t change the fact it’s unedited footage. Semi-translucent streams of light, as thin as ribbons, escaped Deadline’s body and found each of the four people who survived—not survived the blast, mind you, but survived the bio-radioactive energy released thereafter; that which imbued them.”

  “I observe the transference of powers on a weekly basis, in my facility, and it does not manifest in such an appearance. What you’re describing is a pseudoscience.”

  “No, I’m well-aware of your credentials, but this was organic, not mechanical.”

  “These four had the genes that allow for mutation, and three of them went on to become mutates. There’s not enough evidence to confirm a natural transference of powers. For all we know, the blast killed as many mutables as it didn’t. We’ve been experimenting with transference for a decade and only now do we have a basic understanding of how it works.”

  “Your ‘basic understanding’ is evident, but natural transference has been around for a millennia. Even, what, fifty years ago, we had Wraith.”

  “She was gone before we knew she was here. We can’t prove her capabilities.”

  “Wendigo. Bael. Vampir.”

  “Folklore.”

  “Your struggles to replicate a natural phenomena is only proof that you are not God; it does not mean it is an artificial product. It’s not tupperware. We struggled for nearly a decade to harness the atom, and it took us even longer to get a basic understanding of its manipulation, but this is a process performed a hundred million quadrillion quadrillion times every second in the center of our solar system; it’s one of the oldest processes in our universe. Our feeble, fleshy, temporary bodies and brains have a limit on potential—but the universe does not. Our sentience has made us arrogant, but we are neither smarter nor more powerful than the universe.”

  “You almost sound like Burden yourself.”

  “That’s, uh, that’s real funny.”

  “I mean, what is God if not the universe? In all practical senses, that is: the creator of all things; the guiding hand; the everlasting judge, providing the rules and framework of our reality… As a devout and reverent Christian, Burden had a very simple motive-”

  “Careful, you wouldn’t want to sound like you’re commending him.”

  “Motivated simply by his adherence to the Bible’s good word. If the mortal man was made in the image of God, then these ‘magical bastards’ were not of God’s creation; they were corrupted; they were abortions. And when Chris Mellen realized he was one of them, he couldn’t handle it; it was contradictory to his core beliefs. Some men could read minds or breathe ice or lift freight trains, but he had one of the most godlike abilities: the bestowal and theft of powers. He was not an abortion; he was a messiah.”

  “He believed he was a messiah. He was not actually-”

  “He told himself he was a messiah; that his ‘burden’ was the catalyst for humanity’s salvation. So he strategically designed incidents of mayhem to sharpen the distinction between ‘the natures of man’ and ‘those of beast.’ Civilians were to be convinced that supers were dangerous and harmful; to help further new regulations, discriminations, and eventually a holy war against God’s abominations—those like himself.”

  “You sound two breaths away from apologizing for him.”

  “I mean, I don’t think what he did was right. It was smart, and it was misguided, but he had one point: What we have to remember is that mutates—forced or accidental or whatever—they’re the same as supers, except the term ‘supers’ tends to denote the genetic kind; the kind born with their Chrysalis Gene already activated. True supers are the most dangerous, but—in the end—they’re all dangerous.”

  “Oh, please, with your fear-mongering; trying to lump mutates and supers into one category, like it’s black and white. There are as a diverse array of transhuman personalities as there are human. If it weren’t for some supers, we would be defenseless against most of the other supers.”

  “Why do we need supers at all?”

  “They’re exemplary of the human race! Hell, you and your team have been blasting people with Arche Energy for a de
cade, trying to create your own damn mutates! And despite your hypocrisy, and despite your proclamations, the first of your forced-mutations have all undertaken the noble cause. In fact, they were the ones who found and eliminated Burden! And you want to condemn them?”

  “The Archeon Assembly were six washed-up millennials who couldn’t afford a higher education, so they brokered a deal—”

  “Wow, I can’t believe you’re condemning your own achievements.”

  “—so they brokered a deal with a government contractor for fully-funded tuition to any state school on the condition they submitted to a series of tests. Furthermore, these six are only the ones who emerged changed from the AERG tests; if only two-point-five percent of the population have the Chrysalis Gene, then you’re looking at a minimum two-hundred-forty millennials who opted for the easy way out of a college education. And after having their mutations activated, these six eschewed school altogether! Broke their contract with the government; became vigilantes—lawbreakers and rogues. Is that the model we want to set and praise for our kids, the next generation?”

  “If you want to bring ethics into the argument, then you’d best recall your own track record: Discovery of a rare gene mutation granting panthiest superpowers to the host, and then meticulous mechanical engineering and routine live-subject testing in an attempt to synthesize the effects of the Chrysalis Gene. Testing done on incarcerated and homeless individuals, first, with the ‘Whip’ device, absorbing ambient background radiation and flooding a collection of bodies with bursts of concentrated Arche Energy, resulting in an undocumented but presumably-high number of horrific deaths; vaporizing non-mutable mortals; melting their skin, boiling their blood; cooking their internal organs—”

  “You’re reading too many forums.”

  “And the ‘Cape,’ a doorframe-shaped device, based on the ‘Whip,’ slowly and deliberately channeling local CMBR into flowing streams-”

  “Cosmic microwave background radiation; our listeners aren’t all as studious as you are, professor.”

  “Fine—the residue of the Big Bang, channeled into Arche Energy, exposing a person to metamorphosis in a controlled manner, under the belief that prolonged exposure to radiation could unlock a mutable's abilities, advance a mutate's current abilities, or grant a super additional powers.”