Meta 2: The Second Wave

by Tom Reynolds

  "Does this look like the type of neighborhood where people have contacts with oil tycoons? The gambler was desperate and untrustworthy. Hard to prove your goods are the real deal without the customer testing them out to make sure.”

  "Yeah, but then you just promise them their money back if they don't work."

  "And if you're the owner of a new set of metabands, what stops you from just taking the money back by force any way?"

  "I didn't think of that. Why wouldn't he just use the metabands himself then? He'd be able to fight off any enforcers coming to collect at the very least."

  "Maybe, or maybe the metabands he found didn’t have any type of physical powers attached to them. What if all they did was give him enhanced vision or hearing? Hard to use those to protect yourself from a crowbar to the side of your head."

  "Is that what happened?"

  "Yes."

  "Ugh."

  "Frankie's only gotten worse since then. Turns out, the metabands are somewhat powerful and their new owner has increased strength and invulnerability. He's since used those powers to branch out on his own."

  "Let's go back to the water tower and get my metabands, then. This guy would be a piece of cake for me. I can make sure he doesn't hurt anyone else ever again."

  "We're going to do that, but we're going to do it without your bands."

  "How?" I ask as I watch Frankie walk up to the front door of a large apartment building, take out his keys, open the door, and go inside.

  Midnight doesn't respond.

  I sigh and start to turn to him again. "You know, the whole not answering my simple questions thing is getting kinda ol—" Never mind. He's not there.

  I jump to my feet and swivel my head around the rooftop, looking for him. Out of my peripheral vision, I see movement below. It's Midnight sliding down the side of the building across from us and landing on the ground below without a sound.

  "I'm going to go follow Frankie, Connor. Do you want to come? Sure, I'd love to Midnight. Thank you so much for asking. That's very polite of you," I say to myself mockingly as I find my way back to the fire escape and begin heading down the steps as quietly as I can manage.

  The front door of the apartment building is slightly open when I reach it on the ground. I'm guessing this is Midnight's way of telling me to follow him. The hallway inside is dark and narrow. The only sound I hear is Frankie's footsteps as he plods his way down the hall, presumably to the front door of whatever hellhole apartment belongs to him. Midnight is in here too, but I'm not surprised that I don't hear his footsteps. He's pretty good at hiding things like that, or at least a hell of a lot better than Frankie. In Frankie's defense, though, he doesn't know that he has a reason to be hiding the sound of his footsteps. Something tells me that there isn't a hell of a lot that Frankie’s afraid of, even before "finding" his set of metabands.

  Frankie's footsteps stop on the fourth floor of the cramped, walkup apartment building, and one flight above where I am right now on the stairwell landing. Above me, I hear the jangling of his keys as he pulls them out of his pocket followed by the clicking sound of the key sliding into the keyhole before he turns the knob and enters his apartment. I wait a few seconds after the door closes behind him before I slowly grab the stairwell railing and turn the corner to climb up the flight of stairs to Frankie's floor. I'm not sure where Midnight is, but if I were a betting man, I'd say he's already inside the apartment waiting for Frankie to power down his metabands.

  The hallway outside of Frankie's apartment is empty. It's old wooden floors creak under my feet despite my efforts to remain as silent as possible. I pass under a small archway as I tiptoe down the hall, my eyes darting back and forth along the corridor that’s lit with only one forty-watt light bulb, hanging exposed, all the way at the other end.

  "Shhhhh," I hear almost inaudibly from behind me. Spinning on my heel, I turn to find nothing but darkness. What was that? A second later, I have my answer in the form of a soft "ahem," coming from above. I should have known is all I can think as I tilt my head up to see a barely visible Midnight in the corner of the archway, pressing his feet and back against opposite walls to keep himself wedged three feet above my head. He puts one finger up to his mouth to indicate to me to keep my mouth shut.

  In the blink of an eye, he's back on the ground, standing in front of me. Somehow, I couldn't even walk down the hall without making so much noise that I thought Frankie would come flying out of his apartment to find me any second, but Midnight can drop from nine feet in the air and land without making a sound. He motions with his hand for me to follow him back down the stairwell. I take one step, and immediately the floor beneath me creaks even louder than before. Midnight stops in his tracks and turns back to give me an angry look.

  "Sorry," I half mouth, half whisper to him.

  He turns back toward the stairs, and I follow, being extra, extra careful to avoid any plank that looks especially creaky. Once we're down the flight of stairs, Midnight turns again to address me.

  "Are you ready?" Midnight asks.

  "Ready? Ready for what? I thought we were leaving."

  "We're not going anywhere yet; we just need to wait somewhere you can’t make so much noise."

  "Sorry I'm not a ninja, Midnight."

  "It's okay."

  "That was a joke," I say.

  Nothing back. It's like talking to a wall sometimes.

  "I've been monitoring Frankie for the past few weeks," Midnight begins, completely ignoring my joke. "He's not too smart, but he has a routine. Every night, he comes home and does the same thing, without fail. He walks inside, pours himself about a pint's worth of vodka, takes a big swig, uses the bathroom, then powers down his metabands before sitting back in his recliner to watch TV where he usually passes out for the night."

  "Fascinating."

  "You're not paying attention. Most nights, he blasts the volume on the TV so loud the neighbors complain the next day. It's a surefire sign that he's fallen asleep or passed out. His routine is our opportunity to seize him when he's most vulnerable."

  "So we just wait until we hear the TV, and we know he's got his metabands off and ambush him?"

  "That's better," Midnight says.

  As if on cue, the canned laughter of an old sitcom comes blaring down the hallway. Frankie’s sitting in his recliner, metabands off, and has no idea what's about to happen. Midnight turns to me slightly.

  "Ready?" he asks.

  I get the feeling that whether I'm ready or not, he's going in in about two seconds. I nod and wait for his cue.

  Before the cue comes, though, there's the muffled sound of voices wafting down the hallway from Frankie's front door. It's hard to tell at first, but after a few seconds, it's obvious that the voices aren't coming from the television. Midnight's eyes narrow as he tries to decipher what they’re saying to each other, and who exactly they are. Or at least, I assume that's what he's doing since that's what I'm trying to figure out.

  The volume of the voices rises suddenly. Whoever is in there is being yelled at by Frankie, which strongly implies that this person isn't exactly his friend.

  "We're going in," Midnight says to me without waiting for me to agree or protest.

  Before we can even move, though, the sound of the television and the yelling is cut by the distinctive sound of shattering glass.

  "Now!" Midnight yells as he breaks into a sprint.

  I run behind him as fast as my legs will carry me. In front of me, Midnight doesn't break his stride as he leaps into the air, battering his shoulder into Frankie's front door. The door splinters apart as though it were made out of balsa wood. At first, I can barely tell what's happening, but inside, through the dimly lit apartment, I can see a figure. It's slender and obviously not Frankie. Past the figure is a shattered window that leads to an alleyway outside. I'm no detective, but it doesn't take much to deduce that whoever this person is, they're responsible for that broken window. Or rather, Frankie’s responsible for breakin
g the window, but this is the person who pushed him through it.

  "Grab him!" Midnight yells back at me as he again leaps into the air and through the shattered window, missing the jagged edges of the broken glass now protruding from the wooden frame.

  The figure inside Frankie's apartment is stunned by the fact that a masked vigilante just came bursting through the front door, and it takes him a second to process the words that just came out of Midnight's mouth and realize that he's not alone.

  There's only an instant before I make contact with the figure where I get a good look at him. I'm running on adrenaline at this point, and although my optic camo makes me hard to spot from a distance, it doesn't make me invisible. Especially when I'm moving. Even more especially when I'm moving as fast as I am. My training and instincts take over, and I leap into the air, thrusting both of my feet in front of me toward the figure. Right before I make contact, the figure turns to me, and I see his face, or rather, lack of face.

  He's a Blank. I’ve heard rumors about them from Derrick but wasn’t completely sure I believed them until right now, when I’m actually staring at one. According to him, they started popping up only a few weeks ago. A gang of anti-meta vigilantes who all wear the same lead-lined, mirrored masks to protect their anonymity.

  I can't see the expression on this Blank’s face thanks to the mask he’s wearing, but I imagine it's one of surprise as my feet slam into his chest and knock him backward into the television, shattering it instantly. He slumps down onto the floor as I pick myself up. He’s alive, but hurting. I approach and rip off the reflective mask. The face of the man underneath it is mostly unremarkable. Late twenties, shaved head. He has neck tattoos that I can't immediately decipher. He could be a gang member or a hipster coffee barista. So hard to tell nowadays.

  "Get down here!" Midnight's voice echoes from the street below.

  We weren't expecting much trouble tonight, so we didn't go through the hassle of figuring out what my codename should be. Calling me Omni would give away my alter ego, and yelling “Connor” would be about a million times worse. In any case, when I hear Midnight yell, I can only assume he's talking to me. Before I give my brain too much time to think, I take off running toward the broken windowpane, unsure of what’s waiting down below.

  "Here we go," I say out loud to no one, but I swear I hear a faint grunt of recognition from the nearly unconscious Blank lying on the ground before I leap into the air and sail clean through the window, missing the jagged pieces of glass sticking out and threatening to shred whatever part of my body they might catch.

  No metabands, which means no rapid healing. It'd be easy to think I can't take any chances tonight, but right now, taking chances is the only choice I've got.

  The funny thing about jumping out of a fourth floor window without thinking about what you're doing is that the fall takes a lot longer than you anticipated. It feels like I'm hanging in mid-air forever before inertia takes over and I start falling to the alley below. Looking toward the ground, I see what it was that Midnight wanted help with: there are dozens and dozens of Blanks canvassing the alley and surrounding Midnight.

  The one directly in front of Midnight is bigger than the others, and he’s holding up a bloodied and badly injured Frankie by the back of his torn shirt.

  "Ladder!" Midnight yells to me, causing all of the Blanks to look up and see me cannonballing out of a fourth floor window without much of a plan.

  There's only an instant to process what Midnight's shouted to me, but it's enough. I see the rusted fire escape ladder directly ahead of me and reach out both arms to grab onto it like I've never grabbed onto anything before.

  At first, it feels as though my arms are going to rip right out of their sockets, but before they have a chance to, my momentum swings me forward, causing the ladder to break free from its lock and begin sliding down to street level. This would be great for me, if I were able to stop my body from still flying forward. I hang on as tightly as I can when my legs swing out in front of me. They reach the same level as my head and my fingers give out, flipping me head over heels into the air.

  The next thing I know, before I have time to even think, both feet are planted firmly on the ground. I don't even wobble. Whoa. I guess that training from today decided to stick around in my head for a while after all. It takes a few long seconds of disbelief on my end before I realize that everyone, including all of the Blanks, are staring at me. Apparently, they can't believe what I just did either. Scanning the crowd, I eventually find Midnight directly to my left. He gives me a look that says “not bad” as he nods in approval before very subtly tapping an unseen button on his left forearm.

  The instant he taps the button, there's a small popping noise, and everything goes white. I'm completely and utterly blinded. Judging from the screams I hear all around me, it sounds like the Blanks are too. The yelling is quickly drowned out by the sounds of fists hitting meat and bones breaking. I rub my eyes as hard as I can to try to regain some of my vision and help Midnight out before he takes this entire mob out by himself.

  Luckily for him, a punch directly to my gut from an unseen assailant helps speed up the recovery process. My vision isn't completely back yet; there're a lot of spots floating in front of my vision from the flash, but it's back enough for me to start hurting people rather than them getting in cheap shots at me.

  The training that Midnight has given me kicks in, and I instinctually start taking down Blank after Blank.

  A command is shouted from one of the leaders: "Don't hold back. They're meta sympathizers! Blank Four, kill Botticelli before they have a chance to give him back his powers."

  That doesn't sound good. Botticelli is a bad person, but we're not here to let someone get killed on our watch.

  A punch comes within centimeters of my nose, but I pull my head back just in time for it to go sailing past. Without thinking, I grab the would-be nose breaker's arm and pull it downward, striking him in the sternum with my knee hard enough to put him down, but I’m still careful not to cause permanent damage. These guys are lucky they're coming after me because I don't think Midnight is being as gentle.

  That's when I feel an all-consuming, searing pain across the length of my back. I turn to see a Blank holding a plank of wood he’s either brought with him for this special occasion, or he’s found lying around somewhere. It doesn't really matter where it came from because my back hurts like hell. I'd almost forgotten what this type of pain feels like thanks to my metabands. It's all I can think about, and the instant it starts to subside, the pain is replaced by rage. I can't see the face of the person behind the reflective, blank, metal mask he’s wearing, but I have to assume he has a look of terror after seeing how angry he’s made me.

  In one fluid motion, I grab the plank out of his hand and drop it to the ground, bringing my left leg behind both of his to sweep his feet out from under him. His legs are taken out from under him so quickly that he’s almost parallel to the ground. I'm back on my feet before he hits the ground, grabbing the Blank by the throat and slamming him hard onto his back and into the pavement.

  All I can see is red, and all I can think about is how much my back hurts. If he'd hit me in the head, I would have been knocked out for sure, possibly even killed. Whether he missed or intentionally made an effort not to kill me, barely enters my mind. All I can think about is this pain and how badly I want this coward to feel it too.

  His back takes the brunt of the fall. Good. Hope it hurts even half as much as mine does. His mask flies off and goes skittering across the alleyway.

  Jim. It's Jim underneath the mask. The pain in my back is replaced by dizziness from what I'm seeing. How? How could this be? I must be seeing things or imagining them. Jim is a Blank? Why?

  "Please, please don't hurt me. I give up. I surrender!" Jim pleads with me, nearly in tears.

  "Get Botticelli out of here!" Midnight yells as he throws another Blank off his back and into a nearby wall, before reaching behind his bac
k and pulling out two metabands that he throws toward me.

  Midnight was holding out on me. He brought my metabands after all. I'm not exactly surprised that he managed to swipe them out of the safe he had me place them in before we left. I never trusted that the safe wasn't a place he could access without me never even knowing or seeing him do so.

  The metabands fly up into the air after Midnight tosses them, but in midair, they seem to defy the laws of gravity and redirect course. They align themselves perfectly with my hands and are drawn toward them; it’s as if my hands are magnetized. My arms actually jerk backward when the metabands slide onto my wrists because they hit me with such force. After finding their proper places, they constrict around my wrists and are ready.

  I bring my wrists together to activate them, and in the next instant, my powers and my suit are back. So much for keeping a low profile. The remaining vision problems I had are gone, and I can accurately see everything that is going on around me. Midnight continues to take out multiple Blanks at a time, but more keep on coming. Around the corner of the alleyway, dozens more are sprinting from a nearby street. Reinforcements.

  "Omni! Get him out of here!" Midnight yells at me again as multiple Blanks jump on his back.

  For a second, I think about helping him instead of listening to his command. I don't have long to think about it, though, because an instant later, Midnight explodes out of a pile of Blanks, sending them flying into the air in every direction. He can take care of himself. Time to get Botticelli out of here before someone takes him out permanently.

  I glance down at Jim one last time. He's terrified. He thinks I'm going to finish him off. Make him pay for hurting me. There isn't a way to tell him that I would never, ever want to hurt him. That he's one of the people I care most about in this world, and that I'm so confused right now about what he's doing here. I know he was becoming increasingly upset about the metas in our city, but this? To become radicalized to the point where he’s become part of a mob, essentially a gang, that has taken it upon themselves to be judge, jury, and executioner? Only pure hatred can cause this type of reaction.