by Brian Cody
“If we’re going to be technical, and if we’re going to go by how things should be run in this country: yes, you have a choice”, Lamback replied. “Your options are: ‘yes, I’ll join this program’ or ‘no, I’ll go to jail for the previous acts of vigilantism that the government can prove with ease’; of which, you all have enough acts of vigilantism to be put away for decades.”
“Wait”, David interjected, “they can’t just_”
“If that’s not enough, then the DOJ will tack on character-ruining false charges. I know how it feels, but when you’re dealing with someone with enough political clout to imagine and then implement a program like this (in virtual secrecy), you have to understand that the cards they’re able to play are worth infinitely more than whatever you’d be able to counter with.”
David looked with eyes gaping and fists shaking. The entire room, once more, silenced. All eyes were diverted to David Piekarsky or locked onto David Lamback. Agitation, perhaps disgust—they also filled the other five’s minds, but, even more so, was a horrific understanding of what David seemed capable of doing, of what he could, if pushed far enough, deal to a human form.
“They’re really good at ruining character.”
David turned to Erik, who looked while still leaning and cupping his hands. Erik’s expression, though not of complete insouciance, bore a discernible peace, perhaps something bordering a willful surrender.
David closed his eyes and sighed, dragging his hands through his hair and then nodding to Lamback. “Working with these guys…I guess it won’t be so horrible.”
“All right! That was easier than expected”, Lamback gasped as he slapped his legs. “I thought it would’ve been necessary to bring up terrorism or something.”
“So what now?” Turrisi asked as he wiped his eyes.
“Oh, now?” Lamback looked over the kitchen counter and to the oven’s digital clock. “It’s after five; you guys can get out of my apartment and get some rest.” He thrust his hands, causing the group to glance to one another and then to rise. “You can’t oversleep or you’ll miss your classes, and, for whatever reason, the government is really strict about its college-attending employees missing their classes.” Lamback walked to the front door and opened it, and the group exited. “Don’t worry about keeping contact; I’ll call you guys first if I need something.”
“Wait”, Bryen remarked as he stepped out and Erik followed, “it’s Sunday, we don’t have classes.” The door slammed behind Erik, and the group of five looked to one another, their gazes weakened as their bodies yearned for sleep and while some reeled with the bruises and gashes from their short bout. “What now?” Bryen asked as they ambled for David’s Escape.
“It might be a little weird if we all arrived at the dorm at once. We should spread it out or…something”, Erik suggested as they turned and descended the front stairwell.
“Huh; that sounds complicated”, David replied. “Shultz?”
“I guess; I’m kinda hungry”, Nate remarked, “getting wailed on does that to you.”
“Klinge”, David groaned.
“I’m down; I’m afraid of going to sleep. I don’t want to die from a concussion”, Shawn noted.
“I’ll go. I just can’t spend money after this…I’m serious this time”, Erik replied.
“Agreed to both things”, Turrisi averred.
“Shultz it is”, David finished as he opened the driver’s door.
***
“We’re pretty much all slaves to ‘the Man’ now”, David remarked as held a ball of aluminum foil—the empty container of a consumed hot dog—in his right hand. He closed his fist around the foil as he sat on the edge of a sidewalk, with his Escape parked about ten feet to his left and being one of two cars within the gas station complex. The complex sat alongside of a concrete wall topped with a line of dense but leafless trees dividing Lynchburg’s southeastern shopping region and the western edge of Igneous’s main campus.
David squeezed the uneven foil globe while staring past the main arrangement of gas pumps and the perpendicular dead-end lane, and over towards the parallel building, a brown and red structure lined with windows and encircled by both a parking lot large enough to hold twenty or so vehicles and two curving white lines marking the drive-through lane. A decades-old sedan, then, was parking in that lot. “I’m telling you guys, I’m starting to understand what the hippies meant”, he continued as he watched an individual exit that car and unlock the parallel building’s door.
“When they…did drugs?” Nate asked as he sat along an outdoor table along the corner of the food mart, the lights from within the store shining from the panes behind him.
“I guess so”, David replied as he dropped the aluminum sphere, then under half an inch in diameter. David shifted his legs and leaned back to rest on his arms as he watched that person move through the parallel building about one hundred feet across from their lot. Behind him, the side entrance’s chime signaled the opening door, and, as David looked back, Bryen, Erik, Turrisi, and then Shawn stepped out, with Shawn’s face devoid of the dirt that had disguised his cuts and his black right eye.
The remainder of the group sat around and behind David with food and drinks in hand, while Shawn lowered himself to the ground across from David, about a few feet from the Escape. “Sorry”, David called as Shawn sipped through a plastic straw leading to a large cup with a golden-brown cola.
“What?” Shawn asked as he turned to David.
“Sorry about your face”, David replied.
“Oh, not a problem, bud. We all make mistakes sometimes, and I know I didn’t help much, but I figured if I drink something cold, it’ll ease my concussion”, Shawn replied before opening a pack of Reese’s.
“Uh…sure”, David replied as he looked to the fast food restaurant. “I’m so tired, but I’m still so hungry”, he sighed.
“Wailing on people does that to you—gives you the munchies, ya know?” Nate remarked as he held a plastic cup.
“Shut up, Klinge”, David muttered. “I’m gonna do it”, he proclaimed as he brushed the tops of his pants. “You guys are welcome to stay, but I’m just gonna let you know now: this is not an endeavor for boys; but for men.” David looked to Erik a few feet to his right with a bag of candy and a generic energy drink in hand, and then to Bryen, who sat in front of the table where both Nate and Turrisi ate.
“What are you gonna do?” Shawn asked before taking another sip.
“Okay, are you ready for this?” David asked to Shawn. “I’m gonna stay up and wait for Chick-Fillet to open.” Shawn’s chest tightened and his jaw dropped as he spun towards that restaurant.
“Piekarsky”, Bryen called after sipping from his twenty-four ounce cup of cappuccino.
“No, stop it!” David interjected. “Come on, B-money; for once, do something spontaneous!”
“It’s Sunday”, Bryen replied before placing the cup on his left side, reaching to his right, and opening a container of two glazed donuts.
“Your point? Chick-Fillet is God’s fast-food. You could still catch church after, and then I could surprise Clare by bringing her breakfast. It’s freakin’ genius!” David exclaimed as he slapped his left knee.
“No, it’s Sunday; it’s not open”, Bryen finished before taking a bite out of his first donut.
“Wait, what are you…?” David turned to the restaurant, where he watched that individual—who had walked into it—then closing the front door and locking it. The individual then boarded his vehicle and drove off, leaving Chick-Fillet unopened and unlit. “Are you freakin’ kidding me!?”
“Always on Sunday—the cravings always come on Sunday”, Erik remarked.
“We could break in, cook ourselves food, and then leave our money_” Bryen began.
“Brilliant, let’s do it!” David interrupted with a handclap.
“_But I’m about ninety-percent sure that God would strike us down the moment we started eating. We’d be consumed by worms”, Bry
en remarked before finishing his second donut.
“But how would you break in?” Shawn asked before taking a bite out of his second Reese’s cup.
“What?” Bryen asked, his cappuccino inches from his mouth.
“What would you do to break into the store without triggering the alarms, and stuff like that?” Shawn explicated as he chewed and then nodded.
“I was…joking”, Bryen replied before taking an elongated sip.
“I guess what I’m getting at”, Shawn began as he leaned around David and looked to Bryen. “What can you do? I know Dave Lamback said something about your eyes, but is that it?”
“Shawn, he walked down the side of a tree. We can safely assume his eyes aren’t his only power”, Nate remarked as he stood and turned around the corner to thrust his refuse into a trash can. “My guess: he’s a vampire. He has little emotion”, he began as he turned back, “doesn’t like doing activities during daytime, and never smiles (because of his vampire teeth)”, he continued as he started for the table, “That’s a vampire in my book_”—Nate yelped as his legs gave and his torso arched. He hit the top of his back on the sidewalk, his legs flinging over him and almost back-flipping him, but Nate, on the ground and cringing as the point in his right shoulder resonated throughout his chest, regained enough concentration to thrust his legs down to rest on his back. “Awe f_!”
“Klinge, watch your language!” David roared as he jumped to his feet and stepped to Nate before stopping and looking at the movements in front of him. Passing from under Nate’s legs was a blackened material, free-flowing like oil but bearing the visible texture and opacity of a darkened shadow. As it moved beyond Nate’s feet, the material swayed from side to side, coiling, turning, and slithering atop itself as if it were made up of hundreds of different strands of the ethereal matter, moving in synchrony, and, as the seconds and the feet passed, concentrating into a serpentine bed and receding into Bryen’s silhouette. Then, as Bryen squeezed his right fist, the material soaked into his shadow, and his shadow darkened from the added matter but then readjusted to a natural shade.
“So…” Turrisi began as Nate pulled himself to his feet and looked to Bryen’s shadow. “You’re not a vampire.”
“Nope”, Bryen replied as he took another sip and looked to Chick-Fillet.
“I think the government ‘took care’ of all the vampires”, Eric murmured.
“So…” David continued as he looked groundward, turned to Bryen, and tapped at Bryen’s shadow.
“I can alter the properties of matter”, Bryen sighed, “increase friction, decrease friction, et cetera; I can also make my shadow into a semi-solid, form shapes with it, cut through stuff, and kind of make myself invisible. There are other things too, but I don’t use them often enough to want to expound upon them.”
“Does this hurt?” David asked as he tapped at Bryen’s shadow.
“No, that doesn’t do anything…can you not do that?” Bryen asked.
“So it does hurt!” David proclaimed.
“No, it really doesn’t”, Bryen replied, “it just_”
“Now that I think about it”, Shawn interjected as he finished his soda and crumpled his Reese’s wrapper. “I feel like there have been times where I’ve noticed that your shadow was darker than usual.”
“Uh…really?” Bryen asked, his gaze slanting as he took another sip.
“I feel like you’re just saying that”, Erik remarked. “Okay, I really want Chick-Fillet now.”
“Always on Sunday”, Turrisi repeated.
“Are you guys curious about what I can do?” Shawn asked.
“Well let’s see”, Nate replied, “you can fly, you’re pretty strong, pretty invulnerable seeing that I shocked you kinda hard and Piekarsky wailed on your face yet you’re still conscious, and then there’s that paper-thing.”
“Well, you don’t know if there could be more”, Shawn remarked as he stood and meandered to the trash can.
“There isn’t”, Nate replied.
“There could be”, Shawn suggested as he thrust his items into the container.
“There isn’t”, Bryen repeated, “Albanius.”
“What did you say?” Shawn grunted as he stepped back.
“Albanius”, David repeated as he stepped from Bryen’s shadow. “It took a little bit, but I figured out who you are.”
“How!?” Shawn blared as he crossed his arms.
“You’re joking, right?” Bryen asked. “All of us with powers, except for Erik, are from the Northeast. We’ve at least heard of your family. As far as gifteds go, the Albanius lineage is the closest thing to nobility in the US. Your primary power might be weird, but your family’s stable. You’re, what, the eighth or ninth generation to have paper powers?”
“Tenth, going back to the American Revolution”, Shawn replied. “I knew other gifteds knew about my family, but I didn’t think you’d all know. What about your family, B-money? You’re from South Jersey too, but I’ve never heard of your power before.”
“That’s because I’m the only one in my family with powers”, Bryen replied as he looked to Chick-Fillet.
“Lucky you”, Shawn chuckled. “I bet you didn’t lose many arguments at home.”
“They don’t know”, Bryen uttered.
“That’s impressive”, David noted as he kicked once more at Bryen’s shadow, before stepping back and stretching his arms.
“What about your family, Piekarsky?” Shawn asked.
“Oh mine?” David yawned before lowering his arms. “We’re nothing that special. There are a decent number of us, but only three or four different powers among the ones who are gifted. However, I remember my dad telling me something when I was in middle school. I’m not one hundred percent on this, so it stays here: he said that our family might be distantly related to a hero named Sterling Blue.” A hard cough sounded from David’s left. He traced the sound and found Bryen leaning, while a vapor trail of cappuccino dissipated in front of his face.
“Wait a minute!” Erik yelped, redirecting David, “Sterling Blue, as in the Sterling Blue!?”
“Have you guys heard of him?” David asked as he lifted his arms and turned to Bryen rubbing his forehead.
“Heard of him? Are you kiddin’ me!?” Shawn blasted. “My dad collected his old newspaper clippings when he was a kid! He still has some of them!”
“The guy’s a freakin’ legend in the FBI!” Turrisi blared. “He helped modernize law enforcement. I heard a rumor that he did work with the DOJ as late as the Eighties. He was just that valuable!”
“Of course he was valuable”, Bryen gasped as he stood, his voice bearing a more discernible level of intonation, “He was the superhero. He was the poster-boy that every other hero in America, perhaps the world, sought to match! I heard a rumor that he was the inspiration for Shuster and Siegel!”
“For who?” David asked.
“Shuster and Siegel, they created Super_”
“I heard he was born and raised in PA, not far from where I lived!” Nate exclaimed as he jumped from his seat.
“Whoa now, I heard he was born in Jersey”, Shawn retorted to Nate, “somewhere around the central or southern area!”
“Bull crap to both of you!” David roared. “The man was a born-and-bred New Yorker, and you’re never going to convince me otherwise!”
“I actually heard New York too”, Bryen remarked to Shawn.
“B-money, you gotta stick up for your home state!” Shawn exclaimed.
“But the source I read suggested that he was probably from southwestern New York, towards the PA border”, Bryen explained.
“Yeah, but you can’t prove it, and you can’t let New Jersey lie by the wayside, while New York and maybe even Pennsylvania get the attention!”
“New Jersey kinda sucks”, Bryen uttered as he scratched the back of his head.
“Nope!” Shawn bellowed, “You’re false!”
“If Sterling Blue were from New Jersey, honestly,
he’d lose a couple points in my book”, Erik remarked.
“Only a couple?” Nate asked.
“You’re all false!” Shawn roared as he thrust his arms and stomped.
“All right!” David groaned. “It’s too early to be arguing over birthplaces.”
“Because we know I’m correct, and everyone else is false”, Shawn muttered.
“We can’t prove anything!” David grunted. “Let’s just chill.”
The group silenced, and, in random order, and over the next few minutes, glanced to Chick-Fillet and felt a yearning for at least a chicken sandwich. During that time, Nate glared at Bryen’s shadow, and, while rubbing his chin, recalled the half-dozen times he had slipped upon what should have been stable surfaces—all of which occurred after annoying or taunting Bryen. Bryen finished his cappuccino with an extended, three-second swig before lobbing it into the trash can. As he held the canister’s door ajar, Erik lobbed his energy drink into it, and, breaking the silence, Turrisi yawned before rubbing his eyes.
“All right”, David called as he crossed his arms and faced from the group. “I’m still kind of pissed about us being drafted into the government, but if it’s any consolation, it’s weird-slash-funny that we all wound up in the same hall. Do you think we would’ve seen each other’s powers before we graduated, even if the government never intervened?”
“I mean, one of us would’ve slipped up eventually”, Shawn noted. “B-money said he suspected you and Nate.”
“It’s a little more common than the government would like”, Erik began, “gifteds inadvertently meeting one another, that is. There aren’t very many of us in our age group who are aware of their powers, but there are still enough that, once every couple of years, two or more of us meet, and, for whatever reasons, become friends, due to education or being raised similarly.”
“Why Igneous?”
David, Shawn, and Erik turned to Bryen who had, by then, thrust his hands into his pockets while staring at Chick-Fillet. “What do you mean?” Erik asked.
