Meta (Book 3): Rise of The Circle

by Reynolds, Tom

  The group I'm heading toward looks like they only have a few items with them. From what I can see there's just a few folding chairs and a Bluetooth speaker playing music. They’re lit from what looks like a fireball hovering overhead in midair. I guess there's no need to bring a flashlight when you've got enough metas around. Get more than a few together and odds are one of them will have some kind of power that will take care of it.

  As I get closer, Winston walks over to meet me halfway and claps me on the back, handing me a cup.

  "So glad you could join us. We were starting to get worried that you got lost or accidentally got yourself pinned underneath that boulder up there," he says.

  "No, I figured it out eventually," I reply.

  "Great. Let's get you introduced to some people here," Winston says as we approach the group.

  Heads start turning toward me, and I begin to feel incredibly self-conscious all of a sudden.

  "Everybody, this is Connor. Connor, this is everybody," he says.

  The crowd responds by saying, "Hi, Connor!" in unison, making me feel like I'm at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting before I reply back sheepishly, "Hi, everybody."

  They then turn their backs again and go back to their own conversations.

  "You're not going to introduce me?" I ask Winston quietly.

  "I did introduce you," he says.

  "But you didn't tell me any of their names."

  "That's all on you, big guy. Say hi to people. Make small talk. No one's going to bite. Oh, except for Steve. That's one of his powers," Winston says.

  "Really?" I ask.

  "No, not really. Loosen up a bit, dude. We might be a little different, but we've all got one very big thing in common that most people don't have," Winston says, holding up both of his wrists to show me his metabands.

  I smile and nod to him, silently agreeing to follow his lead and try to be as little of a social weirdo as I possibly can.

  "Hey, you're from Bay View City, right?" a girl closest to me asks, apropos of nothing.

  I guess that's just how conversations start? I realize that I recognize her and spend half a second trying to remember where from, before it comes to me that I saw her at the training facility yesterday. Duh. She was the one literally running laps around everyone at the track.

  "Uh, yeah, I am," I say before the silence between us gets any more awkward than it already is.

  "Did you leave once the Alphas kicked out all of the metas too?" she asks.

  "Yeah, but not because of that," I say.

  "Why then?"

  "Well, yeah, I mean technically because of that, but I wasn't running away. Just had to regroup, you know. Think things through for a bit. Michelle suggested it'd be a good idea to come here."

  "So what kind of powers do you have?" she asks. It feels strange to be having a conversation like this out in the open. I've never spoken with anyone in a group setting like this about my abilities when I've been out of uniform. There are a dozen other kids here, all metas, and this passes for just normal, friendly chit-chat, I guess? I'm definitely going to have to get used to this.

  "Um, let me think. Strength, flying, speed, invulnerability, vision stuff," I say.

  "What kind of vision stuff?"

  "Just ... like ... enhanced vision, I guess? I can see through a lot of different materials, like an x-ray almost."

  "That's a lot of abilities. If you could teleport you'd have all the big ones locked down."

  "I can teleport. Or at least, I used to be able to teleport."

  "What do you mean, 'used to be able to'? How did you lose one power but still hang on to the others?" she asks.

  "It's my metabands. They were damaged. Ever since I just haven't been able to do it."

  "Your metabands were damaged? They're literally the strongest things known to man. How could they have gotten damaged?"

  I hadn't noticed up until now, but there seems to be a decent-sized group eavesdropping on our conversation. With the revelation that my metabands are damaged, they are a little less shy with pretending that they haven't been listening. One by one, individuals have started turning their full attention to this conversation, inching closer so they can hear. No one seems concerned with pretending anymore. I wouldn't be either if I had just overheard someone saying that their metabands had been damaged.

  "They were damaged in a fight ... with the Alphas," I finally say.

  "Holy crap. You're Omni," a voice from the crowd says.

  I nod.

  "Weren't you the first to find one of the second wave metabands?" Susan asks.

  "Yeah, supposedly," I reply. Suddenly I'm starting to feel even more self-conscious than I was before.

  "Are we supposed to be impressed by you or something?" another guy from the crowd asks. He's taller than I am, with jet black hair and a vintage-looking t-shirt.

  "What? No. I didn't mean to make it sound like-" I start.

  "You think you're better than us or something?" the same guy says to me.

  Somehow I've managed to almost start a fight just by answering what I thought were some simple small-talk questions. Now I remember why I hate small talk.

  "Look, I don't think I'm better than anybody, and I'm not trying to impress you or anything. Susan was curious about who I was, and I told her. That's all. I'm not trying to cause any trouble," I say.

  This seems to work for the time being, and individuals go back to their previous conversations, and the crowd around me thins out. Out of the corner of my eye, I spot a small cooler filled with drinks and excuse myself in an effort to go grab one.

  Okay, so going over and grabbing a soda will take approximately twenty seconds or so if I include the time it takes to open it. Now I've just got to figure out what I'm going to do to fill the time after that.

  Everyone else seems to be deep in their own conversations, and I feel like the odd man out. I hear laughing a little bit farther down the cavern and decide that following it is probably a good way to occupy myself. Better than standing around like the only weirdo without anyone to talk to at a party, at least. And besides, when has following the sound of laughter down a dark, mile-long underground cave ever gotten anyone into trouble, right?

  On the edges of the light, I find a small group of six all laughing hysterically at the one in the middle. The one in the middle is frantically trying to find something, which is making all the others just laugh even harder. I start to feel concerned, but then I can see that the one in the middle is laughing a little bit too, even if his eyes are watering.

  Finally, one of the members of the group relents. He puts his hand out into the air with his palm facing skyward. Tiny flecks of blue and white begin swirling in the air, forming a tiny tornado in his hand. The specks begin to stick to each other and multiply. Within a few seconds, he's holding a perfectly spherical ball of ice.

  I don't think it's even fully formed before the kid in the middle lunges for it and shoves it into his mouth. His face is completely enveloped in steam as soon as the ball of ice hits his tongue. I'm still confused about what's happening, but everyone else is laughing even harder now and a look of relief passes over the kid's face.

  "How long was that?" he asks once he seems to have caught his breath.

  "Thirty-eight seconds," someone from the crowd tells him.

  "All right, not bad, not bad," another says as everyone starts to mockingly applaud.

  "Hey, what are you guys doing?" I ask the guy who just created the ice ball, showing the full extent of my party-mingling social skills.

  "Do you want to try? Are you invulnerable?" a girl standing next to him asks me.

  "Pretty much. But what am I agreeing to try?" I ask.

  "You know the cinnamon challenge?" the ice maker asks me.

  "Yeah. When you try to swallow a full tablespoon of cinnamon without coughing it out? Is that what you guys are doing?" I ask.

  "The idea's the same, but we don't use cinnamon," he tells me.

  "So what d
o you use then?" I ask.

  Without saying a word, the girl next to him picks up a nearby rock the size of an acorn. She holds it out in her hand and concentrates. As she does, the pupils of her eyes begin to glow red as though they were lit from behind by fire. A second later the rock in her outstretched hand is glowing bright red.

  She's using her abilities to heat it up to the point where it's almost lava.

  "What do you say?" the ice ball maker begins. "Think you can keep one of my sister's fireballs on your tongue for longer than thirty-eight seconds?"

  "Oh, I don't really think-" I begin before I'm interrupted.

  "I knew it. This guy isn't invulnerable," Ice Guy says.

  "I'm invulnerable. It's just that invulnerable or not, I don't really like the idea of putting something like that in my mouth."

  "Aw, come on, new guy. It doesn't really hurt that badly. It's just a little bit of fun," the fire starter says. "We barely get anytime to ourselves, and when we do, there's not a whole hell of a lot to do around here. We've got to find some way to blow off a little steam."

  "Is that supposed to be a pun?" I ask.

  "It wasn't, but it was pretty good. I'll have to remember that one," she says as she puts her hand out toward me and begins to heat up another rock. It's nice to see that even at a fancy private school and with superpowers, kids still find new and inventive ways to peer pressure each other into doing stupid things that nobody really wants to do.

  "Fine," I say, relenting to it. I haven't made many strides in the whole friend-making thing since I got here, so I'd better start somewhere, even if it is with putting molten rock into my mouth. I stick my hand out to grab the rock, hoping that maybe I can cheat a little bit and grab it before it's at its hottest.

  Right before my fingers touch the rock, I can see her expression start to change, but it's too late. My pinky finger grazes the palm of her hand right as she tries to pull it away and out of my reach. Her mouth has already started to form the word “don't” when I feel it.

  The pain. It's unbelievable. The heat is so intense that it actually feels like cold at first. For an instant, it feels like my pinky finger is going to fall off, and in that instant, I really, really wish it would if that means this pain would stop. Before the full pain has even hit, I've retracted my hand back into my chest, covering it with the other hand, and collapsed onto the floor into the fetal position. After the brief moment of worry has passed, the sound of laughter fills the cavern again, even louder than before.

  "You're not supposed to touch it with your hands, dummy," the fire starter whispers into my ear just as I'm getting my feet back under me, working to stand up again. "The rock is hot, but when I'm using my power, my hands are the same temperature as the surface of the sun. Even when you're invulnerable, that's going to sting."

  "Note taken," I say, shaking my hand violently in the air like that's actually going to do anything to rid the lingering pain.

  "Here," the ice-maker brother says before slapping a big pile of fresh ice into my hand. "This will take a little bit of the sting out. It's supercooled to absolute zero, so it'll keep frozen for while. Just don't leave it on there too long or else you're going to have the opposite problem with frostbite, and trust me, that can be just as bad. My name's Calvin, by the way."

  "Connor," I say, using my free hand to awkwardly do a lefty handshake with him.

  "Sorry about all of that," he says.

  "It's fine. I mean, it was pretty funny," I say, able to crack a hint of a smile now that the impulse to try to rip my own arm off just to stop the pain has faded.

  "No, it wasn't funny. It was very, very funny," Calvin says.

  "When did you get here?" another member of the group whose laughter has subsided to that of a chuckle asks me.

  Wait, did this really work? Can you really just make an ass of yourself and people will just become friendlier? Why hasn't anyone told me about this sooner?

  "Just this morning, actually," I reply.

  "Wow, they're really just throwing you in the deep end, huh?"

  "Yeah, I guess so. As you can see I'm still wearing my floaties."

  This joke falls so flat on the floor that you would think it was another one of my superpowers.

  "Are you new to being a meta?" the fire starter asks.

  "No, I've had my bands for a little while now, actually."

  "Wait a minute," a different girl says. "You're Omni, aren't you? I heard that they were going to try to recruit you for here."

  "They already told you about me? So much for the whole secret identity thing."

  "There's no such thing as secret identities here. Everyone's an open book ... within the group that is, at least. It's the only way they say we can stay sane."

  "What does that mean?" I ask.

  "They call it metahuman dissociative disorder. They say it's what happens when someone with metabands keeps them active too long and decides to just ignore or abandon their normal, pre-meta life. It's supposed to lead to all sorts of delusions of grandeur, lack of empathy, you name it. It's what they think happened to Jones that turned him so crazy, you know, in the end," Calvin says to me.

  "Well it's not like talking about having metabands is something most regular people would understand," I say, finally starting to regain feeling in my hand.

  "Exactly. That's part of the reason why this place exists. Hell, I still think that they know we come down here at night sometimes but just allow it because it helps us from feeling like we're under constant surveillance."

  "Allow it? I say they built this place so we'd have a place to go. I still don't trust that there aren't cameras hidden here everywhere. I'm Clara, by the way," the girl who nearly burned my hand off says as she offers her own for me to shake. "Don't worry, I'm powered down."

  I hesitantly stick my hand back out to shake hers. Right as I'm about to touch it, she grabs it and screams, causing me to yelp and jump. The entire crowd starts laughing again, and I realize that that was the point.

  "Weren't you the one who let all of those detained metas escape from Silver Island?" a voice asks from the newly gathered crowd.

  This momentarily stops all other side conversations, and suddenly the cavern is very quiet. The person who said it works his way through the crowd while many of those gathered move to get out of his way.

  It's Nathanial, the weapons expert from yesterday. The one with a bad attitude who seemed like he especially didn't like me. I guess we can tally that up as a certainty now.

  "I didn't let them escape," I say, trying not to start a fight but still standing up for myself. People I care about were hurt that day, and I can't just let someone say it was my fault without correcting them.

  "But you didn't stop them from escaping either, did you?" Nathanial asks, now stepping out from the crowd completely.

  This garners a gasp and a few scattered murmurs from the crowd. This was the one place where I thought I maybe had a chance at fitting in, but so far, this Nathanial guy seems to be going especially out of his way to let me know that that won't be the case.

  "I did my best to stop the prisoners from escaping, but my primary concern that day was protecting the lives of the employees there," I tell him.

  "But people still died, didn't they?"

  "What's your point?" I ask, beginning to lose patience even though I don't want this to escalate further than it already has.

  After everything that's happened, though, I just don't quite have the inner Zen required to let this roll off my shoulders.

  "My point is that not only did innocent people die, not only did meta-powered prisoners escape, but you also created the exact kind of power vacuum that the Alphas needed. And look at what's happened. They have an entire city under siege and there's apparently nothing anyone can do about it. And it all happened because you thought you were different. You thought you were someone special."

  "No, I didn't."

  "Yes, you did," Nathanial says, raising his voice. "You though
t because you were the first of the second wave that somehow the rules didn’t apply to you. You thought that you could just go into any old situation, guns blazing, and come out smelling like roses. You never thought about the hard decisions that should have been made that day."

  "And what decisions are those, since you seem to be such an expert?" I ask, kinda surprising myself even with how aggressive I'm being, but I'm mad, and I don't intend to back down from this anymore.

  "Come on. You know what you should have done. Everyone here knows what you should have done. You should have killed those prisoners so it never would have come to that in the first place. They deserved whatever they had coming to them if they weren't willing to give up their bands after they did what they did. And you should have taken out your little girlfriend, Iris, too. It would’ve saved one of us the trouble down the road."

  This is the straw that breaks the camel's back. I move to take a step forward, but before my foot can touch the ground, I feel a burning heat on my shoulder. I turn back to look at Clara, who is shaking her head at me.

  "It's not worth it, Omni," she says.

  "My name isn't Omni. It's Connor."

  "What are you going to do, Mister First Meta?" Nathanial asks. "You know you weren't even the first meta in the second wave. There were plenty of other metas out there already. You were just the only one vain enough to step into the spotlight, and now we all have to deal with your consequences. We'd be up on the surface instead of a mile underground if your stupid stunts hadn't scared half the country to death."

  "You can't fight him," Clara whispers to me.

  "Yeah, I can. He barely even has powers," I say to her without ever breaking eye contact with Nathanial, letting him know I'm not afraid of him.

  "No, I mean you can't fight him. The school has a zero tolerance policy for violence. You agreed to it the second you stepped on campus. That's the only way this place can remain safe, and more importantly, secret. Nathanial's been here for a while. He knows the rules, and that's why he's trying to bait you. He knows that once you throw a punch at him, that's it. You're gone."