Meta 2: The Second Wave

by Tom Reynolds

  "What I want is all anyone wants. Liberty. Freedom. Happiness."

  "You have all of those things."

  "Do I? You tell me. You just escorted me from a jail where I was held without trial for over a month. A jail where I was not permitted to see the sun, breathe fresh air, or have visitors. A jail where I was held despite there being no evidence whatsoever that I’ve done anything wrong. A jail where I was held simply for the crime of possessing metabands, metabands I legally obtained while the man who murdered my wife was allowed to walk free."

  "That was an accident, and you know it was."

  "An accident?" Keane screams at me, coming closer. "An accident is when you spill a cup of coffee on your shirt right before an important job interview. Putting a forty-caliber bullet through an innocent person's spine is not an accident. I would have cooperated. I would have talked to them. I would have given them any information they wanted, if it had been requested in a right and legal manner. If they had issued me a subpoena, if they had gone through the court system.

  “But no, because I possess these bands, I was considered dangerous without any further discussion. And why? Because I chose not to don a silly costume and use my abilities ‘for good,’ as determined by The Agency? How I use my abilities is my business, not The Agency’s. Not anyone's. But that's not how they see it. They see it as you're either with them or you're against them. And if you're against them, they're going to find a way to put you in a hole in there," Keane says, gesturing toward the main Silver Island facility behind us.

  "I tried to play by the rules. I tried to keep to myself. I didn't choose to be one of those so-called heroes that cause more harm than good most of the time. Has anyone even stopped to think that maybe if these idiots weren't flying around the city 'saving' people that maybe there wouldn't be as many lunatics out there endangering people just for the attention?"

  "It's not that simple," I argue back.

  "Of course it's not that simple! That's my whole point. This whole damn world wants to make everything black and white. It wants to separate us out by deciding we're either good or bad. There's no gray. There's no room for anything in between in this new world. So be it, then. I'll put on a costume. I'll play by the rules. Now we'll see how good and righteous all of you really are when push comes to shove," Desmond says before moving incredibly fast over to Iris.

  She's sitting up now, but obviously still badly injured.

  "It's all right, sweetheart. I've got you," Keane says as he puts his hands under her, gently lifting her body up to his chest. Her eyes are only half open, but she instinctively puts her arms around Keane's neck to help support herself. His gaze turns skyward a second before he takes off with her still in his arms. They shoot straight up into the air. In another second, they’re completely gone from sight.

  I drag myself across the concrete loading dock toward Beta, intent on seeing if there's anything I can do for him, if there's even the slightest chance he's still alive. Before I can reach him, pain and the lack of metaband capacities overwhelms me. The last thing I see is the view in front of me turning the same color as the pavement below: gray. Slowly, my eyes close, and I lose unconsciousness.

  Chapter 29

  When I wake up, I'm in a familiar place. Well, maybe not necessarily a familiar place, but a familiar scenario: regaining consciousness inside of Midnight's headquarters. I'm on a cot, and my slowly recharging metabands are still working to help me recover and repair my broken body. Turning to my right, I see Midnight standing with his arms crossed, watching.

  It's not like him to wait. Any other time I've been here, I've always seemed like maybe the third or fourth most important thing on his plate at that moment. He's always been at his computer or tinkering with some gadget, but not right now. Right now, he's just standing there, not doing anything except staring.

  "Admiring the view?" I ask sarcastically as I lift my head and feel a tremendous pounding as blood tries desperately to reach my brain now that I'm in a somewhat vertical position. Midnight doesn't laugh, or move for that matter.

  Glad to see that at least his sense of humor, or lack thereof, hasn't changed.

  "Start at the beginning," he says as he clicks a button without looking over at the computer behind him. Presumably, the button is meant to start recording what he expects me to say.

  "No," I say, groaning as I swing my legs over the cot and sit upright. My head feels like it’s made of lead, and I can feel every individual heartbeat inside of it; they all hurt.

  "I'm not telling you anything," I begin, taking a moment to let out a brief grunt of pain, "until you tell me what the hell you know."

  Midnight's stance and posture do not change. He just stands there, staring at me. Waiting. He's a patient man, and I know I have no chance with him in a staring contest. So, I continue, whether he'll acknowledge me or not.

  "You know something. No, not something. You know a few things, and you're keeping them from me. You knew Iris wasn't Sarah. You were sure of it. How could you have been so sure?"

  "She was your girlfriend. I tracked her movements and communications. It became obvious very quickly that she wasn't Iris."

  "Bull!" I yell. "Well, I believe that you followed her because that's your style, but I don't buy that that's the only way you know Sarah isn't Iris. I think you know Sarah isn't Iris because you know who Iris actually is."

  "Even if I did, what makes you think you would deserve to know her identity? What makes her different than you? Why should you be afforded privacy and a normal, everyday identity to live your life, but she shouldn't?"

  "You think I lead a normal, everyday life when I'm Connor? I'm referring to myself in the third person again for God's sake. Is that normal? What on Earth could possibly make you think that anything about my life is ordinary anymore? I'm basically on the verge of being suspended for skipping or being late to school, my girlfriend dumped me because she thinks I'm a coward, and my best friend would disown me if he knew I was a meta. Explain to me on what planet that would be considered a normal, everyday life?"

  Midnight doesn't respond. Not at first. He just stands there with his back to me, and I can tell he's agonizing over his decision. I want to know. I have a right to know. He's on the ropes, and I'm close to finding out the truth. There's no way I'm letting go of this now.

  "Sit down," Midnight softly asks without turning around.

  "I don't want to ..."

  "Sit down!" he shouts.

  I sit.

  "You want to know the truth? You want to know who your little friend really is? Once you know, there's no going back. There's no forgetting about it or seeing her as you see her now any longer."

  "But you already know who she is, and you don't see her as some horrible person, whatever it is. If you can see her that way, then I can too."

  "Iris is Jones's daughter," Midnight says.

  It feels like time grinds to a halt as my brain works those four words over and over in my head, trying to make sense of them. Anyway I put them together, though, it just does not compute.

  "How ..." I begin.

  "That's why she doesn't have metabands. She doesn't require them. She inherited her abilities through her father. Passed down through his metaband-altered DNA. The metabands she wears are a decoy. Simple aluminum alloy bracelets, nothing more."

  "I don't understand."

  "I don't expect you to. It's a lot to take in."

  "And The Battle?" I ask.

  "She had nothing to do with The Battle. I promise you that, Connor."

  "How do you know all of this?"

  "It's not the right time to tell you that, yet."

  At this point, I've heard so many excuses I don't even bother to push further. Iris is the daughter of Jones, the man who killed my parents, the man who killed tens of thousands of innocent people.

  "Is she like him?" I ask, fearing what the answer will be.

  "I'm not sure yet. She has the potential not to be. She has good in her. Y
ou've seen that yourself. She also has whatever it was that haunted him in her too."

  "And what about her powers?"

  "I don't know everything about them. Not yet. That's the truth. I've been studying her since she popped up, cataloging all of her sightings and demonstrated abilities. She doesn't know that I know her secret. I'm not sure if she even knows her secret."

  "I thought you knew her, though? Why did she help us take out The Controller if you don't know her?"

  "I thought I knew her. I'd reached out to her, just as I had you. Before I found out who she was, I could see the potential in her. I knew there was something different about her. I knew whether she used her powers for good or for evil that she was going to be a force to be reckoned with. She resisted my guidance, insisted that she didn't need my help, because I’m not a meta. She said there was nothing she could learn from me. I haven't spoken with her since the showdown with The Controller. That's the truth."

  "Every time you tell me something is ‘the truth,’ it makes me think everything else you've told me is a lie."

  "I've told you what I know."

  "And what about my metabands?" I ask.

  "They're in bad shape."

  "Thanks a lot for that, Sherlock."

  "I don't know anything beyond what you know about their current state. I've analyzed them as extensively as possible, but I can't find anything out of the ordinary."

  "The ordinary being that you can't detect any type of energy within them anyway?"

  "Not necessarily. There are some readings I'm able to get off of metabands."

  "Well, you're just full of revelations today, aren’t you? I should almost get killed more often."

  "The information I have about metabands, and specifically how they work, could be extremely dangerous in the wrong hands."

  "I know, I know."

  "You don't know. I'm not just talking about metabands used as weapons kind of dangerous. I'm talking about accidentally boring a hole through the Earth kind of dangerous."

  "Oh," I say. That shuts me up.

  "Whatever depleted your metabands was not just extremely powerful, it was specifically tuned to the way they work. Yes, it was strong, very strong, but no stronger than the energy you were able to generate when you put a hole through The Controller."

  "So it can destroy metabands? I thought nothing on Earth could destroy metabands?"

  "Nothing that we knew of. These metas aren't like any we've ever seen before."

  "Metas? As in plural?"

  "Yes. I've picked up similar energy signatures throughout the globe. Three to be exact.”

  "It’s Alpha Team. It has to be. That was Beta there today, but according to Derrick, they’re all dead. They were killed during a mission trying to retrieve a cache of metabands in Uskzil. How could they be alive and have this kind of power? It doesn’t make sense."

  "No, it doesn't, but there’s one possibility I've come up with that might explain both of these circumstances."

  "I'm all ears."

  "It's possible that the members of Alpha Team recovered and activated the metabands themselves prior to the missile strike. If that were the case, it would explain how they were able to survive the blast. There’s a precedent for metas surviving nuclear blasts."

  "You're talking about Destroyer."

  "You know your history."

  "Are you forgetting who my brother is?"

  Destroyer was a meta during the first wave. His story isn't that well known outside of Russia since the Russian government, to this day, has never officially acknowledged it. According to the story, Destroyer was a somewhat dimwitted local farmer who happened upon a pair of metabands and was quickly discovered by the Russian government. At first, they tried to integrate him into the Foreign Intelligence Service, intending to use him as insurance against the United States in case the Cold War ever sparked up again.

  Fortunately for us, but unfortunately for them, Destroyer turned out to be even stupider than they thought. He's rumored to have accidentally killed over a hundred soldiers during training exercise accidents. Apparently, most of those accidents didn't even happen during training exercises. They happened during downtime. He was a sleepwalker and would activate his metabands in his sleep, destroying entire barracks. Even after he removed his metabands under their orders and put them in a secure location at night, there were still incidents during the day when his bands were active. He trampled other soldiers during marches, squeezed tanks full of commanders like tinfoil when he was asked to move them onto aircraft carriers, etc.

  Eventually, it got to the point where no soldier would go near him, and no branch of the military wanted him under their command. The Russian government refused to waste such a useful tool, despite having trouble getting him to follow simple orders. A plan was devised to squeeze the last bit of usefulness out of Destroyer before they were done with him.

  He was ordered to the middle of the Siberian forest for a special training exercise. A solo exercise, he was told. What he was not told was that the training exercise was just an excuse to lure him out to the middle of nowhere so the government could “safely” drop a nuclear bomb on him. They didn’t do this to get rid of him, there are cheaper and easier ways to do that, including just ordering him to surrender his metabands. No, they did it because they wanted to see what would happen. The world's superpowers were racing to convince metas to fight for their side if World War III ever happened, but also to figure out how to destroy a meta if the need ever arose.

  The blast leveled a ten-mile radius and was seen hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away. What it didn't do was kill Destroyer. However, it did make him very, very angry. It took him a week to find his way back to civilization. Again, he wasn't very smart, but once he did return, he took out his full rage and vengeance on everything in his path. Entire villages were leveled, and cars were found miles away from where their owners had left them.

  It wasn't until they found a trusted bunkmate from his early training days that they were able to stop him and convince him that the attack had not come from his own government, but instead from the United States of America. Destroyer immediately tried to swim to America to continue his rampage, but was convinced by his former bunkmate that he should take advantage of one of the nearby Russian rockets to help him get there faster instead.

  The Russians blasted him into space and never looked back.

  "The timing of the bombing in Uskzil could explain what you saw today. It's possible that the metabands were exposed to the energy of the nuclear blast shortly after being activated. If that was the case, who knows what type of effect it could have had. The time immediately following their initial activation seems to be very important, and is also potentially the time when the metabands are first programmed to the individual's DNA," Midnight says.

  "They're tied to DNA?"

  "Or something like it that we haven't discovered yet as a species. It explains the limitations of other individuals being unable to use a set of metabands once they've been paired to a specific person. It also explains how Iris is able to still possess her abilities without having a pair of metabands. The abilities are hardwired into her DNA through her parentage. Jones's abilities could have been passed down genetically, inherited the same way you got your green eyes."

  "But that's impossible. Iris has to be at least my age. That would mean she was born before Jones was first sighted. Hell, it'd make her older than the first sightings of any metas."

  "I'm aware. It would mean metas have been around longer than we’ve suspected, living in secret."

  "Yeah, I've heard this one from Derrick before."

  "The timeline for their first appearances is hazy at best. There are lots of reports of sightings before the first one was ever caught on camera. Not to mention previously unexplained events that many suspect were the work of metas in hiding."

  "You mean Bigfoot and all that stuff?"

  "Exactly. Jones may have been around for a long time b
efore he made himself known."

  Suddenly, there’s an alarm sounding in the room. The words “Incoming Media Alert” are displayed on all the monitors surrounding the inside of the water tower. A moment later, the televisions switch over to all of the major broadcast news channels.

  "What is this?" I ask.

  "If more than two networks run an identical newsfeed, the computer is set to switch to them automatically. It usually indicates a breaking story that might be of interest," Midnight replies.

  The screens flicker past different channels before all arriving at the same feed. It's Charlie from Alpha Team, except he looks different. Enhanced. His military helmet and mask remain intact, but they've been streamlined. Somehow changed and enhanced by his metabands. His once baggy camouflage fatigues are now as tight as my uniform and darker in color. The fact that he’s on TV strikes me as bad. Very bad. I doubt he's taken over all of the media feeds just to introduce himself.

  "Residents of Bay View City. You don't know me, but I have looked after and protected you for a long time. I have protected this city from metahuman threats that you were never even aware of," Charlie says.

  "What is it with these guys? Is videotaping themselves the only way they can get attention?" I ask sarcastically, trying to get a laugh out of a guy I've never heard laugh, because I'm actually terrified of what I’m about to hear.

  "Look," Midnight says. The television camera is slowly zooming out, showing that Charlie is in what looks to be the city center, and speaking to a group of reporters who are gathered in front of him. "He's not hiding," Midnight continues. "He's out there in broad daylight. This isn't like the others who hide in their homes, ranting in front of a webcam. Whatever he's saying, he doesn't care who comes to challenge him over it."

  "Recently, myself and my compatriots were tasked with returning a number of metabands to the United States from the hands of foreign terrorists. We were unable to complete this task because The Agency decided to terminate the mission before it could be completed. The way in which they terminated the mission was by dropping a nuclear bomb on my team in the hopes of eradicating both the metabands and the terrorists wishing to retrieve them. We have gone into every single mission knowing that it might be our last, knowing that we might not come home.