Meta 2: The Second Wave

by Tom Reynolds

  "Not bad," he says as he grabs a towel and two bottles of water from the small refrigerator that I have never before noticed along the stainless steel wall on the east side of the room.

  He throws one of the bottles to me. I catch it from across the room before placing it on the ground to power down my metabands.

  "What do you mean, 'not bad'? I had you more than a few times," I say as I slip my metabands off my wrists and walk to the nearby table to set them down for a moment while I towel off.

  Keeping my metabands running on low power might have prevented me from breaking an arm when Midnight put me in a submission hold that would make a normal person cry, but they didn't do much to prevent me from sweating like a pig.

  "You're just pissed that someone beat you."

  "You didn't beat anyone," I hear Midnight say behind me.

  Even though I have my back to him, I can tell he's no longer on the other side of the room and is instead only a few feet away from me. The next thing I know, I'm looking at the ceiling. He got me, I think to myself. In the split second I’m in the air, I assume that he’s swept my legs or thrown me over his shoulder. Now I’m just waiting to feel my back hit the mat.

  Except the ceiling is still moving, the room itself is upside down now, and in another instant, it's right side up once again. I'm on my feet. Midnight is not. He's crouched down, finishing a sweep kick right where my ankles were milliseconds ago. He was trying to sneak up on me, take me out, teach me a lesson about respect or whatever, but he missed. Or rather, I dodged it.

  Midnight stands up and looks at me. We both have the same look of confusion on our faces. At least I think we do since I can't see much of his. I'm the first one to look over at the table where my metabands are resting. Midnight quickly follows my line of sight and sees them too.

  "That's not possible," Midnight says, softer than I've ever heard him speak before.

  "I ... I don't know. I just reacted," I stutter back.

  Midnight picks up the metabands and examines them. I have no idea what he’s looking for. When they're off me, which they rarely are due to Midnight's orders, they’re completely plain and uninteresting looking.

  "Do you feel any different?" Midnight asks me.

  I think for a moment, taking a mental inventory of how I’m feeling. "No," I say after a few seconds, once I'm sure.

  "I had a hunch that the metabands would allow for increased muscle memory and motor skill learning, but this.... You've somehow retained what you’ve learned today even without the metabands active or even present," he says, slumping down into a chair, genuinely shocked.

  "So, I have my powers without the bands now?" I ask.

  "Pick that up," he commands as he gestures toward a concrete slab covering a maintenance access point on the other side of the room.

  I rush over to it and take hold, excited that my powers are seemingly no longer limited to having to wear my metabands. That excitement doesn't last long, though, as I nearly throw my back out trying to heave the immovable slab.

  "It won't budge," I say before I sense something wrong.

  Turning around, I catch a very large textbook on quantum mechanics that Midnight's hurled at me and was inches away from smashing into the back of my head.

  "Hmm," Midnight says as he rises from his chair and walks over to me.

  "What if I didn't catch that?" I ask, frustrated.

  "It would have hit you in the head. Maybe even knocked you out," Midnight answers.

  I don't know why I even ask questions like this any more.

  "So, I don't have my strength, but somehow I have superhuman reflexes?" I ask, not sure if Midnight has any more idea of what's going on than I do right now.

  "No. Not superhuman. Heightened, but not superhuman. Today's training altered the pathways in your brain. The metabands have allowed you to learn quicker than you would have ever been able to under any other circumstance. This is something I accounted for. What I didn’t expect is that these learned behaviors have seemingly been permanently retained," Midnight says.

  "So what you're saying is that you're not the only bad ass around here any more, huh?"

  Before I know what’s happened, my head smashes into the mat so hard that it bounces. I'm flat on my back with my left arm twisted and completely immovable, being held down by Midnight, who also has his right knee firmly dug into my back.

  "I didn't teach you everything, kid."

  "Fair enough. Uncle."

  Chapter 21

  It's late now, and I've spent the vast majority of my Saturday getting my ass handed to me by Midnight in his water tower. I say the vast part and not the entirety because the last few hours of sparring are more or less even, often ending in stalemates where one of us eventually calls for a timeout so we can grab some water and rest.

  My metabands have come on and off during the day as Midnight has taught me. Although I'd never tell him, mostly because I'm sure the sentiment wouldn't be appreciated, it means a lot that he trusts me enough to spar even when I have my powers activated. It hasn't been easy to learn how to control them, so the confidence Midnight has in my abilities, and more importantly, restraint, isn't something I’ve overlooked. Either that, or he just thinks he can still take me out, metabands or not. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume it's the first one.

  "Not bad," Midnight says, picking himself up from the mat for the tenth time in a row. It's the closest thing I've gotten to a compliment in hours. "You're retaining what you're learning well. Computer," he says out loud to the room itself, "time since metaband deactivation."

  "Four hours, thirty two minutes, sixteen seconds," a computerized voice replies from unseen speakers somewhere in the ceiling.

  "Four and a half hours since you've taken your metabands off, and you're almost able to keep up with me," Midnight says as he grabs a towel and wipes the sweat off the little bit of his face that's exposed through his mask.

  "Almost keep up? The only thing I'm not keeping up with you on is falling on my ass," I reply.

  Midnight's white eyes narrow as he glares at me, indicating he doesn't find my smack talk very amusing.

  "This isn't a true test though. We don't know if what you've learned today is permanent, or if it'll eventually fade away once your metabands are off."

  "What does it matter? I've got the metabands, sooooo I'm not really getting the point of training so hard without them."

  "Because there will be a time when you're without them. There will be a time when you can't activate them, and you'll still need to step up."

  "Right, but I'm only going to be trying to diffuse a situation long enough for me to run into a phone booth or whatever and activate these bands. I get the training, but this seems excessive. Once I activate my metabands, it's game over for anyone who’s still looking to pick a fight, especially if they're just some normal person."

  "And what happens if you lose your bands tomorrow?"

  "Already planning the end of my career?"

  "Exactly. In your mind, your metabands are what make you an ally to those who need one most. If your metabands are all that make you a hero, then you'll never actually be one," Midnight says as he throws the towel into a bin at the edge of the training area.

  "What is that supposed to mean?" I ask.

  "It means that this, all of this," Midnight says, motioning toward the training mats and around the tower, "doesn't mean anything if you're only in this because you've got those stupid gadgets on your wrists."

  "So now they're just stupid gadgets?" I ask, raising my voice. "I don't remember them being so stupid the time I used them to take out the Brute who would have turned you into wall pizza had I not had them."

  "What good are they if that's all you are?" Midnight asks rhetorically.

  There's a small silence where I don't know what to say next, but I can feel my blood beginning to boil.

  "I know what this is about," I begin. "You're jealous."

  Midnight doesn't turn ar
ound or give any kind of response.

  "That's it, isn't it? You're jealous. You might have all of these gadgets and training and intellect or whatever, but at the end of the day, you're just some guy."

  "Watch it," Midnight growls without turning to face me.

  "What's the matter? Did I hit a nerve?" I ask.

  He still refuses to turn and face me.

  "Whatever. I know the truth. You know, I come here and I work with you and I try. I give it my all. There's nothing engraved onto those metabands that says I have to use them for good or that I even have to use them at all. I could go throw them in the lake, or I could use them to get rich or get my own TV show, but I don't do any of that. I hide in the shadows with you, and I try to do the right thing. I try to help. And what do I get from you? Accusations that my heart's not in it, or that I don't care.

  “I'm sick of it. I trust you one hundred percent with my life. I rely on you to show me the right way to do this, and you still don't trust me, even after everything I've been through. Even after you almost watched me die. We're supposed to be allies. Right now, I'm not a meta. I'm just some guy too."

  Midnight still doesn't turn around.

  "I'm not asking for a lot, just a fraction of the respect I give you."

  "You're right," Midnight says so quietly that at first I think I misheard him.

  "What was that?" I ask.

  "I said, you're right," Midnight says in the more authoritative tone that I'm used to.

  What happens next, I never could’ve expected. Midnight reaches both of his hands toward the back of his head, right up the base of his skull. He presses his index fingers into two nearly imperceptible grooves in his helmet-like cowl. There's a small hiss and the sound of a click. I can't believe what I'm seeing as his hands move to the front of his face. His fingers reach under the front of the cowl and pull it forward, and then back over his head.

  His hair is longer than I ever would have expected, almost past his ears, blond with streaks of gray running through it. He waits for a moment, takes a deep breath, and then turns to show me his face.

  He's older than I expect. Midnight has been around for over ten years, but in my mind, he's always been the same age. It also isn't exactly easy to tell how old someone is when they spend their entire life hiding half their face from the world. He has crow's feet around his eyes, but if I had to guess, I would put him at no older than his early or mid forties. Again, it's hard to tell since I don't think a year in Midnight's shoes is equivalent to a year in the shoes of the typical middle-aged office worker. His years certainly take a harder toll.

  There's one last thing I immediately notice about Midnight's face: I don't know it. I stare hard at it, and once the initial shock of what he's done wears off, I wrack my brain trying to place him.

  "You're ... nobody," I finally manage to say.

  Midnight smirks slightly at my less than profound statement.

  "Thanks."

  "No, I don't mean it that way. I just mean you're not anybody. No, that's just me saying the same thing a different way." I'm really struggling here to find the right words to convey my shock. "I don't recognize you. That's what I mean to say. You're not anyone that I've ever seen before."

  "You were expecting different?" he asks.

  "Yeah, actually, I was," I reply.

  "Why?"

  "Why? Why? Because it's not exactly normal to keep your face hidden from the world throughout your entire life. You've kept it hidden from me all this time, even when you've let me in on so many of the other secrets about you. Why would you keep what your face looks like from me if I wouldn't even know you from a random person on the street?"

  "So I can stay that random person on the street. It's dangerous to both of us for you to know who I am. Now I'm not anonymous to you. You no longer have plausible deniability if you're ever compromised. You can't pass me in the street without a flicker of recognition in your eyes. That makes you knowing who I am, even just what my face looks like, a liability."

  "Then why show me?"

  "Because, right now, it's more dangerous for you not to trust me than it is for you to know what I really look like underneath. Do you trust me now?" he asks.

  "I never stopped trusting you."

  "Good," Midnight says as he grabs a pile of gray fabric from a motorized drawer that slides out from a seamless stainless steel wall. He examines the fabric for a moment before throwing it to me. "Then let's go have some fun."

  Chapter 22

  "Soooo, what do we do now?" I ask.

  "We wait. Stop asking," Midnight replies.

  Night's fallen, and we're both perched on top of a five-story building. Midnight took the faster, more dangerous way up: jumping to it from another not-so-nearby rooftop. I opted for the fire escape. Despite my insistence that I wouldn't use them, Midnight has insisted that I leave my metabands back at his water tower. Insisted might be too delicate of a word for how he actually put it to me.

  I should be more nervous about being out here, waiting for whatever it is we're waiting for, without my metabands, but I'm trying to put that out of my head for the moment. I've had them on and off most of the day to help with my training, and while I feel great, they probably need a little bit of a rest to recharge. This is the only true way to tell if the training from this afternoon, with the metabands on, will actually stick with me permanently or even for an extended period of time.

  Since my normal suit actually comes from the metabands, wearing it tonight wasn't an option. Luckily for me, Midnight had a change of clothes: a suit made of some type of optical camouflage that allows me to blend into the nearby surroundings seamlessly. A simple gray, domino-style mask with white lenses is all that obscures my identity, but Midnight says it's enough. It's not like he has extra cowls lying around in a variety of sizes, and as Midnight put it, my “head is too big anyway.” Thanks a lot for that. He also had concerns about my ability to stay aware of my surroundings if I wore anything bulkier over my face.

  "Where did you get this camo suit? It's ridiculous," I ask.

  Midnight doesn't respond, he just continues looking out over the city through a small pair of binoculars that he procured from somewhere on his uniform. Where, I'll probably never figure out.

  "How come you don't wear it?" I ask, trying to find a question that maybe he’ll be a little more open to answering.

  "Don't need it," he replies.

  "Yeah, but it couldn't hurt," I reply.

  "The suit you're wearing weighs almost one kilogram more than the suit I have on due to the electronics and sensors embedded throughout. That kilogram would slow me down."

  "Come on. It couldn't possibly slow you down that much."

  "Fractions of a second matter when you're not invulnerable."

  "Oh, right. I guess I wasn't factoring that in," I say. "So, when do I find out what exactly it is we're doing here?"

  "We're here to help."

  Great. Perfectly vague answer. Midnight puts down his binoculars for a moment and turns to me.

  "Do you know this neighborhood?" he asks.

  "I know it's a bad one. Other than that, not really," I say.

  "It's an area that the police don't come to anymore," Midnight tells me.

  "Why not? It's bad, but it's not that bad."

  "They don't come here anymore because it's crawling with metas."

  "That doesn't make any sense. If it were crawling with metas, I would know about it."

  "It's not crawling with the types of metas you encounter. These metas usually can't fly, or walk through walls, or any of the other neat little tricks that get you notoriety. These metas are just bruisers. Strength and some invulnerability, no flashy powers. They have no interest in being heroes or villains; all they care about is what they can get for themselves. They're low-level thugs who don't bother with the flashy suits and code names. They're too powerful for the police to deal with and too mundane to attract other metas for a fight. As long as they keep to
this neighborhood, they can do whatever they please."

  "And what is that?"

  "Extortion. Robberies. Muggings. Drugs. No daring bank heists or diabolical schemes here. Just scum picking on the easiest prey in society, and no one thinks they're important enough to do anything about it."

  "And we're just going to clean up an entire neighborhood in a night then?"

  Midnight turns his head to me. "That's exactly the attitude that let's these animals get away with what they've been doing. Those that are in a position to help think that this neighborhood is too far gone for anyone to make a difference, so they leave it alone. To rot."

  "Fair enough. Where do we start then?"

  "That's a better question, and your answer is heading down Washington Place right now."

  Below us, on an otherwise empty street, is a lumbering brick wall of a man walking down the sidewalk almost three blocks away. His suit is old and ill fitting for his overweight body. If I had to guess, I would say he's in his early forties, but his face looks like it's at least ten years older thanks to hard living.

  "Who is that?" I ask.

  "Frankie Botticelli. He used to be a low-level thug in the Scolari crime family."

  "Used to be?"

  "He struck out on his own a month back when he happened to find a set of metabands hidden under the floorboards of a local shop that was owned by someone who owed his boss money. The shop owner intended to sell the bands to pay back his gambling debts, but he couldn't find a buyer willing to pay what he was asking."

  "How much was he asking?" I ask.

  "Ten thousand dollars," Midnight replies as he picks up his binoculars to take another look at the end of the street.

  "Ten thousands dollars? You're kidding, right? There's no way someone wouldn't be able to get rid of a pair of metabands for ten grand. Don't get me wrong, ten thousand dollars is a lot of money, but there are oil tycoons paying millions for these things on the black market."