“We need more beer.” David signals for another pitcher.
“What happened to you? If you want to be seen so badly, why did Breakpoint disappear?”
“Oceanside doesn’t need me.”
You grit your teeth. “Those innocent kids needed you today. The city needed you during the earthquake last month. The robbery at First National. The factory fires.”
“They needed Breakpoint. But no one wants me to be Breakpoint.”
“You’ll have to explain that one.”
Killer Sloth deposits another pitcher of amber brew in the centre of the table. She grins at David. “That’s the best Breakpoint costume I’ve ever seen. You should enter the contest later.”
“Thanks, but we can’t stay long,” David says.
You pour another glass of beer and chug it down. You’re starting to feel it. You’re lightheaded, you know your face must be getting bright red. Everything around you seems to be lagging like a slow video feed. David drinks two-thirds of the pitcher himself, but it doesn’t seem to faze him at all. Can he get drunk?
“What happened?” you ask again. “You’re more popular than ever. You were. They made that movie about you!”
David winces.
Is that it?
There’s a new movie about one of the Enhanced® practically every week, thanks to the sheer number of real-life heroes out there to base them on. Most of them were low-budget independent or direct-to-video, but Breakpoint had a budget of 230 million dollars and grossed more than a billion dollars worldwide. There was even talk of an Oscar for best Superhero Film.
“You didn’t like the film?” you ask.
“You did?” David looks upset. Disgusted. He runs a hand through his short, spiky hair. “Nothing in that movie was real. I hope that isn’t why you came to Oceanside.”
It was, but you were looking for any excuse to leave Mitchell (aka “Hell”), South Dakota.
“What about your powers?” you say.
“‘Break Time™’ doesn’t look anything like that,” he says. “And I don’t call it that. I don’t call it anything.” He tilts his head. “Once. Once, I called it a ‘time out.’ To myself.”
The film had made it look like Breakpoint enters another dimension when he uses his power, one in which everyone is frozen. Shimmery blue lines showed how people were connected, sparkling orange trails showed how events were linked by cause and effect.
“The stunt in the women’s locker room, when you were discovering your powers?”
“Not true.” He drinks. Smiles. “It wasn’t the women’s locker room.”
“Oh.” You’re surprised to feel disappointment, but it’s just another example of how little you know yourself.
“Um, but those trippy special effects?” you say.
“All artistic license.”
“Too bad. They were really spiff.” You sip your beer and study him. You want to ask, but it seems too personal.
He sighs. “I wasn’t romantically involved with Augur either. She was my friend, my partner. But this life gets to you and she decided to retire that identity.”
Augur, aka Nan Jones, had worked with Breakpoint for almost five years. Apprenticing with an established HeroSM was a great way to get into the business, to take over a city when the HeroSM retired or died or get assigned to a new city. The media always called Augur his sidekick, but the movie had made them out to be much more than that.
“Why? She was amazing!” you say. “You were a great team. Your powers complemented each other perfectly. You saw the past, and she saw the future.”
“But what about everything in between? That’s a big blind spot. Augur decided this wasn’t what she wanted. It took me a while to understand why.” David leans back and spreads his hands, as if to say, “And here we are.”
“I still don’t understand,” you say. “The movie wasn’t good—”
“Seven percent on Rotten Tomatoes.” David seems pleased about that.
“But what does that matter? You’re the real thing. Your approval rating is through the roof. Or it was.”
David finishes his beer and stands. He tosses a wad of bills on the table. “Let’s walk.”
You start to drain your own glass, but you think better of it. You push yourself to your feet and grab your crutches. You’ve already drunk enough to be unsteady so you make yourself a touch lighter to get your balance, then settle back down onto your crutches. You’re drunk enough to think this is a good idea, or enough to not care. You’re feeling bold and stupid.
Maybe that’s why David has been so lax about protecting his secret lately. He just doesn’t care anymore. And it sounds like he doesn’t have anyone to worry about becoming a target if his identity was exposed. Perhaps those things are related.
You follow him out of the bar and onto the street. His buttonless shirt still hangs open, but no one gives him and his Breakpoint costume a second look. Curious.
Mind control, you think. He must be able to cloud people’s minds so they don’t see who he really is. He’s been trolling us, making it obvious that he’s Breakpoint but then making us unable to believe it.
But then why doesn’t it affect you?
You appreciate the way David slows his stride subtly to match your pace. Everyone wants to be noticed, he’d said. Yes, but only for the right reasons. You’re invisible to most, but the people who do notice you don’t see you, they only see your crutches. They don’t care about what you can do, because they’re only thinking about what you can’t.
Growing up in a small city like (Mitc)hell, it seemed everyone knew about your spina bifida. You stood out more because your eyes are different from everyone except your Chinese father. It’s been worse in Oceanside; add in your gender, and you have three strikes against you before you even open your mouth. Which means you rarely get an opportunity to change anyone’s opinions of you.
It was hard not to take David’s previous rejections personally. But you finally have your chance, and you’re taking it.
“Where are we going?” you ask.
“Let’s find out.”
“Um,” you say. You still wonder what changed. Why did he accept your invitation tonight? You haven’t come any closer to learning why he’s given up on being Breakpoint.
“Hey,” someone says to your right.
A man in a shabby black suit stands in a darkened doorway. He points a gun at you. You instinctively insert yourself between the man and David.
“What are you doing?” David whispers.
“Shut up! Get in here,” the mugger says.
David puts a hand on your arm. Gently. “Did you plan this?” he asks.
“Yeah, right. Did you?”
“Planning isn’t one of my strengths.” David looks thoughtful. “But somehow I did lead us here. Didn’t I?”
“Move it, lovebirds,” the mugger shouts.
David sighs and the two of you enter the building as the man keeps his gun trained on you. The store is empty. Musty. The long rows of barren, dust-covered display cases suggest this is an old jewelry store. A clock somewhere in the darkness ticks ominously.
“You must be new here,” David says. He stands up taller.
The man looks David in the eyes. “You aren’t Breakpoint.”
David’s shoulders slump slightly. “You were expecting Chris Lowell?” David asks, naming the actor who played him in Breakpoint. “I think he’s busy filming the Citizen Kane remake these days.”
“They’re calling it Rosebud now,” you say.
“Breakpoint isn’t a Chinaman,” the man says.
“Come on. I’m Korean. Korean-American,” David says. Breakpoint’s trademark growl seeps into his voice. “Why can’t I be Breakpoint?”
The man glances from David to me. The expression on his face says he knows he made a mistake, but he isn’t sure what it is.
His mistake was waking up today, you think. No, it was being born. To racist parents.
David peels off
his shirt. It almost takes your breath away to see Breakpoint at last, right there in front of you. You’ve been working three desks away from him for weeks, you’ve just shared beers with him, but this is the Master of Time, Oceanside’s guardian angel. He’s back.
“E-even if you are Breakpoint, you aren’t b-bulletproof.” The mugger takes a step back, swinging his gun around to point at David.
David reaches back with his right hand, fingers open. An invitation. You grab it.
And everything freezes around you.
David grunts. “You’ve got quite a grip there.”
“Oh, sorry!” You loosen your hold, but he squeezes your hand tightly.
“Better not let go,” he says. “I let go of Augur once while doing this, and it was . . . unpleasant. She didn’t talk to me for a week.”
“She holds a grudge?”
“No, she forgot how to talk. It came back to her, though she still sometimes mixes up words.” He tilted his head. “She could be doing it on purpose. She has a strange sense of humour.”
You look around. “Holy wow, is this Break Time™?”
David groans. “Please don’t call it that. Everything is just paused.”
He steps forward and you gape as he steps out of his body, so it looks like there are two of him. He tugs you forward, once, twice, and you topple out of your body too. But you’re still you, crutches and all. You aren’t in some weird astral state, the way the Projectionist gets around. You’ve simply sidestepped time, fallen slightly out of phase with everything.
It’s very calm and peaceful. No sounds, the air still.
“This is better than the special effects in the movie,” you say.
“I tried to tell them what it’s like, but they said it wasn’t cinematic enough.”
“So your visor, that’s what lets you see the connections between people and events?” you ask.
Breakpoint pulls a rectangle from his back pocket with his left hand. He snaps it and it extends like one of those plastic slap bracelets you remember from school. He hands it to you.
“Really?” you ask.
He nods, and you try it on. But everything looks exactly the same through them, only with a pink hue to it.
“I get it, only you can use it. Because of your power. Or the visor has biometric security?” You hand it back to him.
“No, you see exactly what I do.” He puts it on. The mirrored surface reflects your slanted eyes, but his own are hidden.
“It’s only a disguise?” you say. “But the movie—”
“They made something up to explain why I was wearing it.”
“To protect your secret identity, I thought.”
He shakes his head.
“I have to wear it to hide my identity, but not for my protection. Kind of for everyone else—to protect them from seeing something they don’t want to. Why do you think they cast a white guy as Breakpoint?”
“Because Hollywood.”
“Yes, but because no one wants an Asian guy to save them, especially in Oceanside. At least, according to the HRAA.”
Your mouth falls open. The Hero Registration and Assignment Authority was the international organization that classified people with enhanced abilities to support law enforcement and perform heroic deeds.
“They whitewashed you?” you ask.
“How many Asian superheroes are there?” David asks.
You start counting them in your head. There’s FU-Man and Jaded and Neko Bust and the White Tiger and Yellow Dragon and . . .
“In the U.S.,” David adds.
You’ve done this math already. You point at David. “Just you. But no one knows that you’re Asian.”
“You did,” he says. “It’s why you came to Oceanside.”
“I wasn’t sure. I came to find out,” you say. “Last year a photo went around online that showed you without your visor.”
“The Mad Matador knocked it off me in battle,” David says.
“I was stunned when I saw your eyes. Then I was overjoyed. Until that moment, I didn’t think there were any Asian superheroes in America. I wondered if it was even possible.”
David stands still, as frozen as if his power has started working on him. You can’t read his expression.
“Then websites started to retract the image. The photographer claimed it was Photoshopped. I assumed you were trying to protect your secret identity, and that explained the movie casting, but now I guess they were trying to cover up your ethnicity?”
“Is that all you wanted? To satisfy your curiosity?” he asks.
This is the moment, and you let it go with a shrug, suddenly too shy to say more. He waits a long moment before saying, “Would you believe there are seven of us?”
“Really? Who else?” you ask.
David smiles. “I can’t speak for everyone, but Nan wouldn’t mind.”
“You mean Nan Jones?” you say.
“Originally Nancy Kim,” he says. “She changed her name.”
“Nan also retired, so she doesn’t count.”
“She changed her name,” he says again.
You think about the new female heroes who have appeared on the scene in the last year, but there are almost as few of them as there are non-white male heroes.
“We’d better hurry.” David nods to the man with the gun. The bullet hovers just beyond its muzzle.
You squint. “Is it still moving?”
“I am not faster than a bullet. I can temporarily stop the world around me, but the wider the area, the more strain it puts on me and the less control I have. Things aren’t frozen, just moving very, very slowly. And when our time runs out, we’ll have to return to this exact moment.”
“Oh no,” you say. “I didn’t know that.”
“I didn’t share everything with those screenwriters. There’s a reason I can generally only use my power once a day, except for narrow, localized effects. This is gonna give me a heck of a hangover.”
“How wide an area are you working right now?” you ask.
“Everything, I think,” David says.
“The planet?” you ask.
“The universe?” David shakes his head. “Hard to tell. It’s a bit tricky! Kind of like when you start peeing, but then you hold it midstream.”
You raise an eyebrow.
“Anyway, there’s something we need to do before I have to, uh, let go.” David squeezes your hand. You nod and follow him out.
You get a couple of blocks away when you realize that you’re slowing David down. He seems nervous about it, but he hasn’t said anything.
“David.” You stop walking. He turns and looks at you expectantly.
You drop your crutches and feel a mixture of excitement and sadness at his worried expression. But you don’t fall. You hold on tighter to David’s hand—so you won’t float away.
He grins. “Thank you.” His smile is like another superpower. It gives you strength. If you weren’t already, it would make you feel lighter than air.
“You knew?”
“I suspected, but my power. . . . As much as it can reveal about people, it doesn’t show me everything, especially about other Enhanced®. I knew where you were from, about your condition, and why you’re here. Some of why you’re here. I can’t know more than you do, more than you admit to yourself.”
“I’m here because of you,” I say.
“Right. I just don’t know why.”
“Keep walking,” you say.
He walks and he pulls you along, like he’s holding onto a helium balloon. You hate the way it feels; this part of your power makes you feel completely powerless. You hold onto your crutches with your other hand. You have to exert effort to make them as light as you and your clothes. David’s peeing analogy comes to mind.
It’s just like that, you think.
Also, you do have to use the bathroom. But you’ll have to hold it.
“At least tell me how you found me,” David says.
“It wasn’t th
at hard. I figured you would want to work someplace where you could keep tabs on the news, and what better place than a social media analytics company like Wave Function? Oceanside is slightly more ethnically diverse than Hell, but not by much. Do you know there are only three Asians at the company?”
He nods. “And people mix me up with the other guy all the time, even though we look nothing alike.”
“Me too!” you say.
“No! That’s messed up.”
“As for why, I guess I came here to tell you how much your existence means to me. You inspire me. I felt like if you can be a superhero, I could be whatever I wanted to be.”
“And what’s that? Not a HeroSM?” David continues walking, eyes straight ahead.
“I want to help people. I know I should,” you say. “But look at me.”
“Yes?” David looks up at you. “I see someone who cares about others who has been blessed with the gift to help make a difference.”
You shake your head. “My arms are super strong, but they’re useless when I’m floating. I don’t have any traction to use that strength.”
“When you stop thinking about what you can’t do, you’ll figure out what you can,” David says. “Speaking of which, we’re here.”
David has brought you to Oceanside High School, the scene of the hostage crisis earlier that day. The whole area is cordoned off with yellow police tape. News vans line the driveway, their bright lights turning night into day. The scene is tinged with red, gradually shifting into blue, as the police car lights slowly strobe.
He grimaces. “I should have been here.”
“Yes,” you say. “Why weren’t you?”
He pulls you down to stand beside him. “Why weren’t you?”
“Well, what can we do now?”
David looks around. “I don’t see connections the way that movie showed them, like mystical lines or whatever. It’s more like a feeling.” He meets your eyes. “I had a feeling about you, ever since you arrived here.”
“But why did you let this happen?” You wave a hand at the school.
“It took me a while to realize that I can’t solve every problem. Sometimes, I’m just a temporary fix. It’s up to everyone to step up to change it.”
“You were testing me,” you say. “Waiting for me to do something, to reveal myself, while I was waiting for you to do the same.”
Where The Stars Rise: Asian Science Fiction and Fantasy Page 26
