Human Superior

by C. S. Won

  But Oliver didn’t run. Instead, he suddenly widened his stance, and jerked his head up towards the ceiling. “This is for my people!” he shouted. People close by jumped away, startled by the screaming man. Oliver threw his coat open. Harold fumbled for his gun, panic running through him. A gasp swept the crowd.

  What the hell? Does he have a bomb? I checked him—he was clean!

  And Harold was right, he was clean. There was no bomb, just the same navy suit that he saw prior. Oliver looked down at his own body, appearing perplexed by the nonevent. “No,” he said. He ran his hands across his torso, searching for whatever was supposed to be there. “No!” He shrugged his coat off to the floor and began to search more frantically, but found nothing—no bomb, no dynamite, no C4, no explosives, not even some flares to fake an explosion. Nothing.

  With a screwed sort of smile on his face, Oliver looked up at Harold. “Damn it. I forgot the bomb.”

  Al tackled him to the ground, driving him hard against the floor, using his weight to mash Oliver’s face against the marble. A crowd had arrived now, forming a circle around them, many of them shocked by the scene unfolding before them. A few had their phones out, recording the incident. Harold ran in and helped his partner, wrenching Oliver’s arms behind his back and cuffing him. Al had him pinned down, digging a knee into his spine, and pressing a hand against the back of his head. Oliver struggled to break free, writhing about like a thrashing animal, his eyes bulging in madness.

  Al pulled him to his feet. Harold grabbed him by the collar. “Who are you?”

  Oliver looked at him, refusing to answer. The nervous kid Harold had met before was gone now; all he saw was a determined killer. Oliver’s mouth cut across his face in a hard, straight line, and his eyes were narrowed into thin, hateful slits. There was a flash of bared teeth, and a web of blue veins running up the side of his neck. His face was beet red with righteous fury. Harold thumbed over his shoulder. “Put him in holding. I’ll contact the police.”

  Oliver began to laugh. Al started to drag him away, pulling him by the elbow, but Oliver continued to laugh, undaunted.

  “I just remembered why I didn’t bring a bomb,” Oliver said.

  “Shut up. No one gives a shit,” Al said.

  “Because I am the bomb.”

  A brilliant orange light emanated from Oliver’s body. Al stumbled away from him, tripping over his own feet. The light grew brighter, near blinding, encasing Oliver’s faint silhouette in a dazzling glare. People had their hands raised to shield their eyes, many shouting in confusion and fear. A few turned and made a run for it.

  Harold strained his eyes to look at Oliver, peering through the openings between his fingers, the fear rising in his throat.

  “Are you proud of me now, dad?” he heard Oliver say.

  A flash swallowed the world. Harold screamed, and hundreds screamed with him.

  PART ONE

  Blowback

  Chapter One

  Jae Yeon remembered the building that used to stand there. It was tall, majestic, a marvel of human design and engineering, and a landmark symbol for Atlanta’s rising stature in the world. With its golden crown at its apex, the structure was easy to spot in the distance, even in dense fog. One Atlantic Center it was called, also known as the IBM Tower, a testament to the city’s limitless ambition.

  It stood no longer. As Jae cupped his hands over his face and stared at the ruin around him, all that remained of it was a sea of jagged steel and concrete, colored black by an overlay of ash, with plumes of smoke billowing from its corpse.

  The attack came suddenly and quickly. He felt the rumble of the explosion even from the station, miles away from the blast, and then moments later heard it. Threads of smoke were visible in the distance, and unseen flames painted the horizon blood red. They hurried onto their trucks and rushed to the scene as quickly as they could, weaving through traffic with reckless abandon, even driving on the sidewalk if need be. When they finally arrived, it was as if Hell itself had arisen. Fire engulfed the streets. Smoke covered one end of West Peachtree to the next. The dead, if they were found, were either in small pieces or altogether unrecognizable. The wailing of sirens filled the air. Neighboring buildings bore tremendous scars from the destruction, slashed with long, deep cuts or punched in with large, concave holes. A cloud of ash choked out the morning sun, rendering the sky a mute charcoal.

  People wept, and even more bled.

  Hours had passed since their arrival, but things were no better. Jae picked his way forward, debris crunching underneath the weight of his boots. Over a short distance he saw Gabe Kwon and a few others, leaning against a large slab of concrete, trying to push it over. A number of diggers had search dogs with them, letting the hounds roam to see if they could pick up the scent of the buried. He saw his station chief, Santiago Flores, directing traffic, his helmet tipped back to reveal a long, bony face black with soot. He was a lanky Latino with olive skin and a bushy moustache, the replacement the state had sent in to lead the station one week after Adam Erste killed Chief McAdams so many months ago.

  There were others dotted about too, firefighters from other stations, police officers from across the state, and rescue workers and civilian volunteers rummaging through the wreckage, their arms grey with residue and slick with sweat, and masks over their faces to prevent toxicants from entering their lungs. Some worked in silence with their heads down while others had to stop every so often to squat where they were and sob out their sorrow. Helicopters roamed the skies like metal hoverflies, and just about every media organization in the country was on hand, noisily reporting on the tragedy.

  Jae looked down and saw a flap of blue cloth poking out underneath a pile of rubble. He bent over and began to dig, flinging large chunks of debris over his shoulders. Hope flickered that a life had survived, or at least a body that he could recover, but when he took aside that last piece of slab, there was nobody. Just a larger flap of the blue cloth, stained with blood and black with burns. Jae frowned and picked up the cloth and, upon closer inspection, realized there was a name tag attached to it although it was barely legible due to the damage it suffered. Squinting, Jae slowly read the inscription: Harold Varney, Security. Jae pocketed it and muttered an apology to Harold. Just as Jae had failed to save Madeline, he was failing to save the people he was sworn to protect. With his strength he knew he could be doing more, but he felt so lost and helpless, and the thought of it filled him with a simmering rage.

  Always a step behind, no matter what.

  Jae continued to dig well into the afternoon, as the sun grew hotter and the wind turned warmer. Hours spent on his hands and knees, trying to find the dead, his arms up to his shoulders turning dark with filth. And while he made great gains in excavating through the debris, he came up empty-handed, finding nothing but bloodstains and seared shadows. There were no tokens of remembrance, nothing left behind to indicate a life once lived. The people who were caught in the explosion were completely destroyed, snuffed out in an instant like a campfire in a rainstorm. He could only imagine how many were caught in the blast zone—hundreds, maybe even thousands—and how so many probably did not even see their end coming.

  It took everything he had to not sink to his knees and cry out in anguish.

  More time passed, and the work never seemed to end. No matter how much or how fast Jae dug, it felt as though he was working against a bottomless pit. Rubble piled on top of more rubble, repeating itself in endless stacks, and before he knew it, the sun had nearly retired, the sky adopting a darker tint, a light purple glow kissing the city’s edges. Mentally drained and physically exhausted, Jae walked away from the ruins and went to his fire truck, taking his helmet off as he sat on the rear bumper. He ran a hand through his greasy, sweaty hair, and looked at the people who were still working. Their shambling steps, exhausted gait, and grey skin reminded him of ghosts, wandering aimlessly as they searched for the souls buried beneath their feet. They seemed lost—they were lost, bew
ildered by the devastation that surrounded them. Jae couldn’t blame them, because he was lost too. It was difficult trying to comprehend firsthand such a catastrophic enormity.

  Gabe Kwon emerged from the ruins on the other side, with shoulders slumped and his walk slow. He saw Jae resting against the truck and made his way over to him, plopping down next to him with a heavy sigh. He pulled his helmet off, revealing a mop of black hair tinted with dust and sweat, and wiped his brow down with the sleeve of his shirt. His eyes were muddled pearls in a face caked with ash. He coughed into a gloved hand and sniffed.

  “Christ,” Gabe said.

  Jae nodded. A sufficient summary of the events thus far.

  “Christ,” Gabe said again to emphasize the point.

  “Yeah.” Jae exhaled through his nose.

  “Why?” Gabe gestured at the ruined landscape before them and jabbed an angry finger at it. “Why?” he asked again, this time in a weary whisper.

  “I don’t know,” Jae said and patted Gabe on the back.

  “What did we do to deserve this?”

  Jae was too tired and shell-shocked to expend the energy necessary to ponder the question. “I don’t know.”

  “We were supposed to be safe from all this, especially after 9/11. We were promised safety and security. What happened to that promise? Why were we not protected?”

  “People are trying their best.” It was a weak answer and Jae knew it, but he didn’t know what else to say.

  Gabe buried a hand into his face and groaned. “You see this sort of thing on the news, and you think to yourself you’re safe from all that because you’re so far removed from the violence that it might as well have happened on a different planet. We convince ourselves that we live in a bubble that can’t be pierced, but then someone comes along with a needle and punctures it, and boom, you get a dose of cold reality right in the face.”

  “Out of sight and out of mind, until it isn’t,” Jae said.

  A firefighter ran up to them, boots slapping the ground. “Guys . . .”

  “What is it?” Jae asked.

  The firefighter took his helmet off, revealing a drained and worn face. Tears bubbled in his eyes.

  Gabe stood. “What’s going on? Why are you—?”

  “There was another attack.” The firefighter wiped his eyes before the tears could fall, brushing away some of the ash from his cheeks to reveal patches of pink skin. “Another bombing.”

  The only sounds that followed were from the activity that surrounded them. Workers digging through the debris. Machines whirring, buzzing, and sawing. People barking orders. People crying.

  “Here?” Jae’s voice came out in a croaked whisper.

  The firefighter shook his head. “Chicago.”

  Chicago? “How is that—?”

  “They brought down the Willis Tower.”

  Gabe looked dumbfounded. “You’re shitting me.”

  “When did this happen?” Jae asked.

  “About ten minutes ago,” the firefighter said.

  Two bombings, separated by several hundred miles, occurring within a span of a few hours of one another. How? Was that even possible? What was going on?

  “We have a live feed, if you want to see . . .” The firefighter gestured to follow, before turning away and departing.

  A small crowd of firefighters had gathered around a ten-inch tablet propped up against a column of concrete blocks. Jae and Gabe threaded their way through the assembly to get a closer look, and what Jae saw on the tablet reflected what surrounded him here—a smoke-drenched sky, rubble as high as any hill, and both the dead and the injured sharing the same space. It was devastation as far as his eyes could strain to see.

  “This is . . . Chicago?” Gabe asked to no one in particular.

  “Yes,” someone answered.

  Gabe opened his mouth to speak again, but couldn’t find the words. He let his jaw hang there, too stunned to even lift it.

  “Who did this?” Jae asked.

  No one spoke up, not even to speculate. After a few moments, Jae walked away from the group, moving until his legs went numb and weak and forced him to sit on a pile of blackened concrete blocks. The world went dark when he buried two ashy hands into his face, and in this quiet, harrowing moment of solitude, surrounded by so much despair, he thought of Madeline and the chain of events that led to her death, and how, despite his tremendous strength, his inability to prevent tragedy was starting to define him. It was the cruelest of ironies to be so powerful, and yet be so useless. It’s not your fault, the voice in his head told him, and it assured him that he was not to blame for these attacks either, as there was no possible way to know these attacks was even coming, but the hurt and guilt he felt harkened back to the hurt he felt back then.

  A hand fell on his shoulder, and when Jae looked up, he saw Gabe standing next to him, gesturing over to the distance. A group of people were affixing the United States flag on top of an unsteady mound, and a mild cheer rose up once it was firmly entrenched in the wreckage. A nice gesture—a hopeful gesture, something needed to lift the people’s spirits.

  Gabe sat next to Jae and exhaled. “You missed it when you left, but the news said no one has claimed credit for these attacks yet. Not even the usual suspects.”

  Jae said nothing, only staring at the flag fluttering in the wind.

  “I wonder who it could be,” Gabe said.

  When the wind waned, so did the flag.

  “Whoever it is, I’m going to stop them,” Jae said, even though he didn’t know how. Gabe didn’t challenge the assertion, perhaps knowing, much like Jae did, that it was more wishful thinking than anything else, something that was said to assuage frustration, anger, and misplaced guilt. The reality was that there was probably not much Jae could do, even if he found himself in the same room as the terrorists. He didn’t even know what they looked like. And even if he did, would he be fast enough to stop them before they committed another attack? Could he evacuate hundreds of people before another bombing? Could he even save one life?

  “We still have a lot of work to do.” If Jae couldn’t save lives, then the least he could do was resume with cleanup and recovery. He stood, dusted himself off, then put his helmet back on.

  “How long do you think it’ll take to clear this out?” Gabe asked.

  Jae shook his head. “Weeks. Months. I don’t know.”

  Gabe stared at the destruction with a blank expression.

  “Come on, let’s go,” Jae said.

  Resigned to his fate, Gabe shrugged, and made his way back to the ruins. With nightfall imminent, floodlights were being set up to provide illumination for the work ahead. Around the perimeter of the wreckage, a candle light vigil had begun to form, people crowding the streets with lit candles gripped in their hands. Some of them started to sing, a mournful hymn for those who had perished.

  Jae followed Gabe to the rubble.

  Chapter Two

  The diner was quiet. The pre-morning crowd had thinned out, leaving only Jae and a few others in peace. The first rays of sunlight streamed in through unfiltered windows, basking the restaurant in a warm, yellow tint.

  Jae sat at the counter, a cup of black coffee lukewarm in his hands, watching CNN on a TV mounted on the wall behind the counter. A live feed of a destroyed building, layered in high mounds of twisted metal and smashed concrete, was being shown. Dotted here and there were people wearing masks, picking their way through the devastation, going slowly about their work. Search dogs sniffed through the wreckage, pawing away at a stone, or pushing against a bent piece of steel.

  Chicago, Jae knew.

  The camera panned to a reporter standing away from the debris, and he gestured at the scene behind him. He gave a summary of events, discussing the difficulty of the work, and how workers were trying their best to find survivors after a week of digging. He relayed how some of the workers admitted pessimism at the prospects of finding anyone alive and lamented their overall low morale. Having exper
ienced it himself, the feeling was something Jae was familiar with. The lows of rescue work were something that could easily corrode away at the soul and spirit of man.

  “Lord have mercy, what a tragedy,” Mary Simpson, the waitress at the counter, said.

  The scene shifted back to a stern, stoic-looking news host sitting inside a studio, where he transitioned the report into their next segment: a press conference Morgan Duffy held with reporters the night prior, where he was engaged in his most favorite activity—attributing every ill set upon the world, new or old, on people like Jae.

  “Morgan Duffy, outspoken founder of controversial PMC Red Mars, slammed President Gates last night for what he called a weak response to the attacks, and condemned him for his passivity,” the news host said.

  They showed footage of Morgan Duffy in a room surrounded by a bouquet of microphones, his face lit bright with studio spotlights. He was a wide-built man, with a mane flowing white like ice and a square jaw crowned with a well-groomed beard. He had the look of a man who wanted to strap on a bazooka and wage war in the name of God and country.

  “Did I not tell you that this would happen? Did I not tell you, for weeks on end, that the neo-humans hated us and that they would attack?” Morgan asked.

  Neo-human. It was the label given by the media to people like Jae—people who were struck by the global storm over a year ago and were somehow augmented with mysterious new powers. It was an easy, identifiable label people could use to group those who were, and those who were not. This is us, this is them. They’re different from us. A dissociative term. There were other labels too, of course, some respectful, some steeped in awe and fear, and some more vulgar and disparaging, but they all referenced, in one way or another, the power people like Jae wielded.

  “Did I not say that something had to be done before we regretted it? I warned you all that a neo-human attack was inevitable, and every last one of you, the biased, lazy, fake news media, ignored me. We could have prevented this, but instead I stand here as a prophet, my words regrettably come true. Do you people believe me now? Do you finally believe in the neo-human threat?” Morgan banged the podium with his fist, to emphasize the point. “We now exist in a perilous and uncertain time, where a single man can destroy all those around us with just a snap of his fingers.” He snapped his fingers, to emphasize the point. “These . . . things, these neo-humans as we like to call them, possess terrifying capabilities, the likes of which the world has never seen before. Does it not frighten you to know that one man can potentially destroy the world ten times over? There are no checks and balances in place to restrict their power, no law or rule stating that they cannot do as they please. All it takes is just the wrong man at the wrong time to make all of this go away. A genocide to end all genocides, and you have already seen the nascent beginnings of that with the tragedies that have befallen both Atlanta and Chicago.”