Meta (Book 3): Rise of The Circle

by Reynolds, Tom

  "Relax?"

  "Yeah. Well, that and I've been working a lot," Derrick says, surveying the room for himself. "I guess it has gotten a little bit out of control now that you mention it."

  "Yeah, just a little bit. You're not keeping your fingernail clippings in a glass jar somewhere now too, are you?" I ask.

  Derrick apparently doesn't deem the question worth answering.

  "I just ... I've never been on my own for this long. I guess it just kinda got out of hand. I'll clean it up. It's just stuff."

  "Really, really gross stuff," Michelle says as she lifts up the lid to a nearby pizza box before snapping it closed in disgust after seeing what’s inside.

  "Wait, what are you two doing here?" Derrick asks.

  "Fall break!" I shout as I walk over to the armchair where I have to sweep a pile of junk mail and catalogs onto the floor before I can make room for myself to sit.

  "Fall break? That's a thing?" Derrick asks.

  "Hey, it's not my place to question these kinda things. I just do what they tell me," I say.

  Now Michelle is giving me the same look Derrick did when I asked about the fingernail jar.

  "The campus had to be cleared out so neither of us could stay. It seemed like a good opportunity to come visit," Michelle says.

  I detect in her voice that she's slightly disappointed Derrick doesn't seem happier to see her. He must hear it too, because he comes over and gives her a hug and kiss finally.

  "I'm sorry. I didn't mean for it to sound like that. I'm thrilled you guys are here, both of you. A heads-up phone call about an hour ago wouldn't have diminished the surprise, though, and it would have given me the chance to clean a little-"

  "And put pants on ..."

  "But I'm still really glad that both of you are here. Don't take this the wrong way, but is it safe for him to be here?" Derrick asks Michelle.

  "I can hear you, you know," I say without looking up from the electronics catalog I found buried under all the junk.

  "He's promised not to use his metabands while he's in Bay View City," Michelle says.

  "Still here. Still can hear you. Maybe this would be a good time for me to go take a walk. I'm sure you two have lots of catching up to do, or at least cleaning up. That, I want no part of."

  "Where are you going to go?" Michelle asks.

  "I dunno, around. This used to be my city, remember?"

  "Yeah, I do remember. I remember the time you almost bled to death in the woods, the time you put a crater in Smith Street, the time you-" Derrick says before I interrupt him.

  "I get it. I get it. I'm not going to get into any trouble. I just want to stretch my legs for a bit, visit the old neighborhood, see how things have changed since I left."

  "You've been gone for a week," Derrick says.

  "I know, but this is a very up-and-coming neighborhood. I'm sure there's a new gelato place or something like that that's opened up in that time."

  "There actually is a new gelato place around the corner. How did you know that?" Derrick asks.

  "Really? I was just kidding. I don't think I even really know what gelato is to be honest with you. It's just one of those things that starts popping up all the time when rich people start moving in."

  "Says the sixteen-year-old living in a penthouse apartment."

  "Hey, you earned that money fair and square, Derrick. Don't let anyone take that away from you."

  "Let him go, Derrick. He'll be careful," Michelle offers while giving me a look that tells me I'd better not make a liar out of her.

  Derrick's sigh before he says anything tells me that he's already decided to relent and give up trying to keep me cooped up in this apartment the whole weekend.

  "Just don't-" he starts.

  "I know. I know."

  "What do you know?"

  "Don't use my metabands, don't get into trouble, don't do anything stupid. I know. I've got it. Do you worry about me this much when I'm at the academy?"

  "I don't have to; that's Michelle's job," he says, giving Michelle a smile, and she smiles back.

  "I'll be back later," I say. "And Derrick? Try to clean this place up a little bit. It's embarrassing."

  "What do you care? You don't live here anymore."

  "I didn't say it was embarrassing for me."

  Michelle catches my meaning quicker than Derrick and does her best to stifle a laugh.

  "All right. Get out of here."

  26

  It isn't until my feet hit the street that I realize just how much I’ve missed this place. I fell asleep on the drive in and really didn't see much of the city or if it had changed. I'm not sure what kind of change I expected to see so quickly, but so far the only difference is that the sky is strangely free of anyone flying around in it. What used to be the craziest sight you could imagine became the norm very fast. Now it seems strange to see it empty again.

  Almost instinctively, I find myself wandering toward where I always used to go when I had no place else to be: the nearest Squarebills. Technically, it's not the nearest since there are two others on the same block, but this one always has the fastest Wi-Fi and cleanest bathrooms, so it’s the default for me.

  The city is busy, and I have to remind myself that while I might be off from school, everyone else has work today. Suckers.

  I decide to take the long way since I'm not exactly in a hurry and should probably wait until after the lunchtime rush anyway if I want to snag a good table.

  The park is full of commuters enjoying, or at least tolerating, their lunches on benches and fountain walls. A volunteer tries his best to block my path and hit me up for a donation, but as I get closer, he must realize I'm younger than he thought. He decides to save his energy for the artsy-looking guy a few steps behind me.

  There's something else different about the city, something that I can't quite put my finger on. The people seem ... relaxed.

  I approach the Squarebills counter and order my usual gigantic iced coffee. It’s always the usual, even in the winter. As I ease into one of the booths out of the way from the main entrance, I look around at the people sitting here. There's a couple on what looks like a lunch date, a few businessmen working on presentations, and several aspiring writers working on their screenplays. These people didn't stop existing when the second wave started, but it isn't until just now that I notice I haven't seen normal people just doing normal things like this in a while.

  People didn't stop going to places like Squarebills a few months ago, of course, but they would avoid ones like this in the middle of the city. Or if they came in, they'd take their coffee to go. It wasn't something that anyone talked about or that the news covered, but there’s something different now. Most people weren't afraid to be out in the middle of the city before, but the energy was different. There was a nervous excitement about it. It could be dangerous if you were caught in the crossfire, but it could also be something extraordinary. You could be out for a coffee break and look up into the sky to see people doing the impossible.

  You might think that would make most people feel like their own lives were boring and humdrum in comparison, but the opposite was true, I think. It made people, some people at least, feel like they were alive during an extraordinary time filled with extraordinary possibilities. I have to imagine that it was like this when we first landed on the moon. Sure, everyone was terrified that Russia was going to launch their nukes at us at any given second, but seeing images of someone playing golf on the surface of the moon might have made it feel like it was all worth it on some level. There are a lot of different opinions about what it's like to be alive right now when all this is happening, but the one thing no one could ever call this time is “boring.”

  I'm so lost in my own thoughts that my brain almost doesn't even register when Jim walks in. He sees me right away and a broad smile crosses his face. He decides to skip the coffee counter and just come straight my way.

  "What are you doing here?" I ask.

  "What
am I doing here? What the heck are you doing here? You didn't get kicked out of that fancy-pants academy already, did you? I hope Derrick can still get his deposit back," Jim says.

  I stand up to greet him and surprise both of us when I decide to hug him instead of just slapping hands with him.

  "Wow. You haven't been gone that long."

  I break off the hug and immediately feel foolish. I didn't even think about how that kind of display of affection would look to Jim. He doesn't know that I know about his involvement with the Blanks. “Involvement” is my way of trying to distance Jim’s actions further away than he actually is. He isn't just “involved;” he's one of them. He's part of a group that hates metahumans like me. I have no idea how he would react if he ever found out the truth, so I still intend to keep it to myself.

  "Sorry, new school just kinda sucks. It seems like it's been a really long time since I've seen a real-life friend," I offer as an excuse for my behavior.

  "It's no problem. I miss having you around too, but you're telling me that after all of this time, changing schools every year or so, you still don't know how to make friends?" Jim asks.

  "You can lead a horse to water, but that doesn't mean you can make him drink it."

  "I'm not sure if that saying applies to this situation."

  "I don't think it does either, but it sounded like it could."

  "No, it didn't."

  "You're right; it didn't. And yeah, I still suck at making friends."

  "You're lucky that when you were at Bay View I decided to take mercy on such a loser."

  "Oh, like you're Mr. Popular now?" I ask.

  "You haven't been around. I've had to broaden my horizons. Try out some things outside of my comfort zone. Spread my wings a bit."

  It hadn't occurred to me that my virtual disappearance from Bay View City would affect someone like Jim. Maybe he's just being sarcastic, but then I can tell there's a grain of truth behind his words. If my new life as Omni drove Jim toward the Blanks when I wasn't around, then my moving away has to be making it worse.

  It seems like classic cult mentality: find the ones in the crowd who feel alone and disenfranchised. They're always the easiest to force your own opinions and beliefs on in exchange for something as simple as friendship, somewhere to be, something to do. The destruction of our old school couldn't have helped either.

  In that moment, I suddenly and desperately want to tell Jim my secret. I want to tell him why I was distant and why I had to leave. Maybe it's the relative calm that the city is under, but the Jim sitting across the table from me feels like the Jim I used to call my best and only friend. He feels like the one that I could tell anything to without judgment and vice versa.

  "Jim, listen. There's something I've got to tell you about," I say.

  "Is it about the new guy Sarah's dating? I've already heard about that. Sorry."

  "Wait, what?"

  "Oops. I guess that wasn't it. Forget I said that."

  The idea of telling Jim my secret is violently thrust out of my brain by this new information, which pushes everything else out of the way too. I'm not sure why this feels like such a punch to the gut. I mean, I suspected it after all, but hearing it from someone else now still just sucks.

  "Crap. I really wish I hadn't said that," Jim says. "You're back in town for two minutes and the first thing I do is rip your heart out of your chest."

  "No one ripped my heart out of my chest. We're not together anymore. It's not like she needs my permission to see someone else now," I say, meaning every word, of course, but still not being thrilled about the idea of it.

  "Well if it makes you feel any better, I hear the guy's a real ass."

  "Why would that make me feel better?"

  "Would you rather hear that he's awesome and better than you in every possible way?"

  "No, but I'd kinda rather not hear anything to be honest with you."

  "Right. You're absolutely right. Forget I said anything. Let's change the subject. What was it that you were actually going to tell me?"

  My mind blanks when I try to remember at first, but then it comes back to me that I was just about to spill my guts to Jim about my metabands for pretty much no reason other than I was just glad to see him and didn't want him to hate me. It's probably good that he dropped the Sarah bomb to bring me back down to earth a little bit. I might trust Jim, but I have to assume he's still a Blank, and that means I wouldn't be just trusting him with my life, but also with the lives of everyone around me if he knew the truth.

  "Oh, um, I forgot. Sorry," I lie.

  Jim rolls his eyes at me, either to make fun of me for forgetting something so quickly or because he doesn't believe my lie. I'm not quite sure which.

  "So how's the new school, besides the fact that you haven't made a bunch of new rich friends yet?" Jim asks, trying to change the conversation himself.

  "It's ... weird."

  "How so?"

  I spend half my day a mile underground with a bunch of other super-powered freaks that have no idea how to use their powers or what to do with them, I think.

  "Just really small classes. Makes it harder to goof off without it being really noticeable," I say instead.

  "I hear that. Can't be smaller than the current classes at Bay View High, which consist of exactly zero students, though."

  "They haven't set up anything temporary yet?" I ask.

  "They have, but it means taking the bus like two hours each way, so a lot of us just opted for homeschooling."

  "Who homeschools you?"

  "Technically, I do."

  "Does that actually mean anything?"

  "Well I'm sitting in a Squarebills in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday, so I'll let you figure that out."

  "But what about college applications and stuff like that? Aren't they going to ask a lot of questions about that?"

  "They would. I wouldn't know, though, since that would require actually planning on going to college."

  "You're not going to go to college?"

  "No way. Why would I? Do you know how many CEOs and millionaires are high school dropouts?"

  "Yeah, but that's all anecdotal."

  "Whos-a-whatal? Sounds like someone got themselves a thesaurus at that fancy new school."

  "It just means that they're one-offs. There are cases where people have dropped out and gone on to be successful, but they're the exceptions."

  "Technically, I didn't drop out of school, so I've already got a leg up on those guys."

  "What are you going to do instead?" I ask.

  "I dunno. I'll figure it out, though. I mean, I've got a whole eighteen months. Anything could happen in that time."

  "Well, not really anything."

  "Look at how different your life is from eighteen months ago."

  If you only knew the half of it, I think to myself.

  "I just think you should probably reconsider. It's already really tough out there. It's gonna be even worse without a college diploma."

  "So you think because you started going to some private academy that all of a sudden you're some scholar doling out advice everyone should listen to?"

  "No, of course not. I'd be saying this no matter what."

  "Well, whatever. You don't have to worry about me."

  "It's not worrying, Jim. It's just that I hope you're thinking everything through."

  Jim is about to respond when the words are stolen out of his mouth by the horrifying sounds of metal screeching against pavement. Everyone in the Squarebills turns their head to the big plate-glass window at the front of the store just as the sound is accompanied by a huge crash followed by a pop.

  People are on their feet, hurrying to the window with looks of dread that I recognize from when this city wasn't metahuman free. It's that mix of morbid curiosity combined with the hope that you don't see anything truly horrible because you know that you won't be able to look away if you do.

  From my seat, I can see clearly what's happened, or t
he aftermath at least. There’s a small, dark blue hatchback pinned against an oak tree at the edge of the park. The pinning is being done by a van that is at least three times its size. Jim reacts first, jumping out of his seat and running for the door. He glances back, and without a word, I follow his lead.

  Jim is sprinting across traffic as it slows to a standstill of rubberneckers. I struggle to keep up with Jim as he pushes past a small crowd of onlookers keeping their distance. He reaches the hatchback and climbs in through the backseat window without hesitation.

  Before I'm able to reach the car myself, I feel a heavy hand grab me by the bicep.

  "Stay back," the hand's owner says to me, more of a warning than a suggestion.

  He's a Blank, his voice heavily distorted to protect his anonymity. More Blanks are emerging from different corners of the park. They may have been dispatched to try to help with this emergency, but they may have been around the entire time, only donning their masks when there was a need to act.

  I look back at the car and can see Jim struggling to free himself from the wreckage he jumped into without a second thought. There's an arm wrapped around his shoulder. It's the driver of the car, a father holding a crying toddler in his other arm as he braces against Jim to steady himself. His face is bloody, but all things considered, he looks okay. Jim brings him over to a group of three Blanks who guide him to a waiting sport utility truck, explaining that they’re going to take him to the hospital.

  Once Jim hands the pair over, he turns back to the wreckage. Just then, there's a small explosion. Fire and thick black smoke begin pouring out of the other vehicle, a white cargo van. A weak cry for help comes from somewhere unseen in the wreckage. Jim runs toward the sound but is headed off by a Blank who walks out from around the other side of the accident scene.

  "Don't," the Blank says to Jim.

  "What do you mean, don't?" Jim asks back.

  The Blank holding me is watching this scene as well, and I take advantage of his temporary distraction to wiggle free of his grip. I run toward Jim, with the Blank chasing after me. Jim hears me coming toward him and turns. He waves off the Blank behind me without a word.