“No thanks,” I said, going to the refrigerator to instead get a bottle of water. I sat on a stool at the island across from the Old Man. “Besides, the drinking age in Maryland is twenty-one.”
“You’re an Omega-level Metahuman and a graduate of the Hero Academy. You’ve fought supervillains and have seen, done, and been through things most people can’t even imagine. If that doesn’t make you an adult, I don’t know what does. If you want a beer, have one.”
“I’m good with water.”
“Suit yourself. Salud,” he said, raising the fresh bottle of beer. I raised my bottle of water in turn. We each took long pulls. A companionable silence stretched out between the two of us. I found myself thinking again of Dad and the night that changed everything.
“Still having the dream?” the Old Man suddenly asked, jarring me out of my reverie.
I nodded. I had told him before about my recurring dream. But, how did he know I had it again? I smiled ruefully. “Are you sure telepathy isn’t one of your powers?”
“It doesn’t take a mind-reader to decipher the look on your face. Plus, why else would you be up at this ungodly hour?” His face was uncharacteristically serious. The half-smile that normally adorned it was missing. It was as if the Old Man went through life not taking it completely seriously.
“Feel like talking about it?” he asked me.
“No,” I said, taking another drink of my water. Then I realized that I was wrong—I did want to talk about it. “He’s still out there.”
“‘He’ being Iceburn, I assume.”
“Yeah. I kind of thought that after I became a licensed Hero—if I become a Hero—I would track him down.” I surprised myself by saying that aloud. This was the first time I had shared that with anyone but Isaac and Neha. I did not tell the Old Man the whole truth, though. I did not intend to wait until I was licensed before I found Iceburn. I would hunt him down as soon as I could do it without the Old Man, Neha, and Isaac interfering. Despite my earlier promise to Neha and Isaac, I had come to realize I had to confront Iceburn on my own. Neha and Isaac had almost gotten killed the last time they helped me go up against Iceburn. I would not put them in harm’s way again. My problem with Iceburn was precisely that: mine. I would handle him alone. Dad deserved as much. Plus, I did not want anyone around when I killed Iceburn. They might try to stop me. Or, the authorities might think they were in cahoots with me when I murdered him. That was what I planned: murder. No need to mince words about it. Might as well call a spade a spade. I would not be able to live with myself if Neha and Isaac went to jail or lost the chance to become a Hero because they helped me.
Between graduating Hero Academy and the months I had spent under the Old Man’s direct tutelage, I was no longer the weak boy Iceburn had first encountered. And, I was even stronger and more adept in the use of my powers now than when I crossed swords with him the second time. I felt like I was now finally ready to tackle Iceburn and take him down. Or, die trying. Maybe that was why I was having the dream about Dad’s death with increased frequency lately. Perhaps my subconscious was anxious to get on with the task at hand.
If I managed to track Iceburn down—no, when I tracked him down—I would make him pay for the night he killed Dad. Every second of it. I found my eyes welling up with tears again at the thought of it. I blinked them back, embarrassed. Grown men did not cry. I had seen Dad cry exactly once in my life, namely at Mom’s funeral. What would the Old Man think if he saw me cry?
If he saw me struggling to contain my emotions, he had the good grace to not show it.
“Do you have any thoughts as to how you’re going to find Iceburn?” he asked. “A guy like that is not going to be easy to find if he does not want to be found.”
I nodded. “I know. Frankly, I have no idea how I’m going to track him down,” I said. I was lying through my teeth. I had devoted a lot of time to thinking about how I would find Iceburn. I had settled on a plan I would execute as soon as I saw an opportunity. I felt guilty about lying to the Old Man, but I did not want to tip him off as to what I planned on doing. “I’ll find him, though. Even if it takes me the rest of my life, I’ll find him.”
“And then what Theo?” the Old Man said quietly. He looked at me intently. “There’s no statute of limitations on murder. Will you turn Iceburn over to the authorities and let the system do its job? Or, will you take matters into your own hands?”
I met his gaze. I should have just lied again and told him I would turn Iceburn over to the authorities like a good little Hero-to-be. However, I could not bring myself to outright lie again to the man who had taught me so much and whom I admired.
“I don’t know what I’ll do,” I answered. “I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.” Burn that bridge is more like it, I thought. In my mind’s eye, I had killed Iceburn more times and in more ways than I could count. In one scenario, I had ripped his legs off with my powers, grabbed one of them in my hands, and used it to bludgeon him to death. In another, I ripped Iceburn’s heart out of his chest with my powers, gleefully watching the expression on his face as I did so. I held his heart up in front of him, letting him watch as his heart beat weakly before coming to a stop forever. I often wondered which would stop working first—his eyes, or his heart.
The Old Man studied me for a few moments, and then nodded. I was glad he could not actually read my mind. Silence filled the room again as we sipped our drinks. I finished the water, and put the empty bottle down. Staying seated, I opened the refrigerator with my powers. I floated a beer out, removed its cap, tossed the cap into the trash, and moved the beer through the air into my hand. I took a long pull. One beer would not kill me or derail my training. The Old Man watched me with an amused look.
“Well, if this whole Hero thing doesn’t work out, you have a bright future ahead of you as a bartender,” he said.
I did not respond. I polished the beer off with several quick swallows. I put the empty bottle down. I floated another beer out of the fridge and put it down in front of me. I would stop at two. The beer sat in front of me for a bit as I thought long thoughts.
The Old Man was the first to break the silence again.
“Did I ever tell you that some of my family were murdered, too?” he asked. Surprised, I shook my head in the negative. The Old Man rarely spoke of his personal life.
“I was in grad school when it happened, studying toward my first PhD,” the Old Man said. “My powers had manifested years before then, but going through the process of becoming a Hero was the furthest thing from my mind at the time. I had followed the law and had dutifully registered as a Metahuman when my powers first appeared, but had no intention of or interest in actually using them. I was content with living a normal life, going to school, dreaming of making a boatload of money, chasing girls, hanging out with my friends, the usual.”
He sat his beer down. He looked off into the distance as if he was replaying events in his mind’s eye.
“And then one day I woke up with a feeling of dread. It was as if something somewhere was wrong. I went on with my day, but I could not shake the feeling. I went to lunch with a couple of my fellow grad students, and I remember telling them about my feeling. They were scientists, and they laughed at me. ‘Maybe you’re psychic,’ one of them teased me. ‘You should go buy a lottery ticket,’ the other said.
“When we got back to the university lab, there was a message waiting for me. My sister Simone had called. She was four years older than I. We were completely different from each other. Like night and day. We had nothing in common other than swimming in the same gene pool. Perhaps because of that, we weren’t even the slightest bit close. The only time we saw each other or spoke was during holiday gatherings. So, her calling me was unusual to say the least. With the feeling of dread I had been carrying around all day, my first thought when I saw she had called was that one of our parents had died and Simone was called to tell me.
“I immediately called her back and asked her if everyt
hing was okay. I could hear her husband Dale shouting in the background and their daughter Sybil crying. Simone said everything was fine. I asked her why she had called me then, and she just told me never mind and hung up. I just shrugged and went on with my day.”
The Old Man picked up his half-empty beer bottle. He held it up to the light. He peered at the amber liquid like it held the secrets to the Universe.
“Dale shot and killed Simone within an hour of her getting off the phone with me,” he finally said in a soft voice. “He then shot Sybil. Killed her too. Simone was twenty-six. Sybil was two.” The Old Man shook his head. “One spouse killing another is not uncommon. Not that this justifies anything, but Simone had a way of finding and tap dancing on your last nerve. So Dale getting mad enough to want to kill her I can at least wrap my brain around. Though I can’t excuse it, I can understand it. But shooting a two-year-old? Your own daughter? What kind of animal does that?”
If it was not a rhetorical question, I did not have the answer. I said nothing. What was there to say?
We were both silent for a long time.
“I often think about how things could have been different if I had done something,” the Old Man finally said. “I knew something was wrong. I had powers. I could have flown over to Simone’s house. I could have stopped Dale. I could have taken the bullets instead of Simone and Sybil. Although my powers weren’t fully developed, I was mostly invulnerable even then. The bullets would not have hurt me, at least not much. Simone and Sybil weren’t so fortunate.
“Simone and Sybil dying are what made me become a Hero. After their deaths, trying to live a normal life seemed silly. Frivolous. I had been gifted these powers, this ability to change things, whether for good or ill. I did not help Simone and Sybil, but I could help other people. You know what’s strange, though? With all the people I’ve helped over the years, all the lives I’ve saved, it still doesn’t make me feel better about Simone and Sybil. When I started out as a Hero, I thought it would.” He shook his head ruefully. “I was wrong.”
I thought about that for a bit. “What happened to Dale?” I asked.
“Dale wound up pleading guilty to two counts of first degree murder. His lawyer initially had made some noise about pleading insanity, but they gave up on that idea in exchange for the prosecutor agreeing to not seek the death penalty. This all happened in Alabama, where they’re looking for an excuse to stick a needle in your veins and kill you. They don’t coddle violent criminals down there the way they sometimes do up here. Dale’s currently serving life in prison with no possibility of parole. He’s been there for many decades now. Periodically I check to make sure. One of the dirty little secrets of the criminal justice system is that life in prison does not actually always mean life in prison, even in Alabama. Laws can be changed, palms can be greased, sentences can be commuted, pardons can be issued. Especially when enough time passes and people forget exactly how heinous someone’s crime was.” He paused. “I for one will never forget. Dale will never see the light of day outside of that prison again. I’ll make sure of it.”
I thought of Iceburn. “Did you ever think of, uh, taking matters in your own hands?”
The Old Man looked at me frankly.
“Every damn day,” he said. “I know the prison they are keeping Dale at. It’s a prison for non-Metas. There’s security, of course, but it’s not Meta-proof security. It’s not like MetaHold, the federal facility that’s designed to keep Meta criminals in and also keep them out. It would be child’s play to go into that Alabama prison and get to Dale. I could open that place up like a tin can. No one would be able to stop me.”
“But you don’t.”
“But I don’t,” he agreed. “I’m a Hero. It’s not what we do. There are rules. There are limits. If people like us don’t follow them, who will? We are supposed to set an example for the rest of society, even when we don’t want to. Especially when we don’t want to. Never forget what we taught you at the Academy: Society before self. Those aren’t just words. They are a way of life.”
That thought marinated in the room for a while. The Old Man finally spoke again.
“Look Theo, nothing you can do will bring your father back, just as nothing I can do will bring my sister and niece back. All we can do is try to make sure what happened to us and our families doesn’t happen to anyone else. That’s impossible, of course. There’s a big world out there full of some mighty scary people, and there are only so many Heroes to go around. We can’t save everybody.” The Old Man smiled grimly. “But we can try.”
I thought about that for a bit. In light of what the Old Man said, I felt guilty about my plans for Iceburn. Only a little, but some. The guilt would not stop me, though.
I then raised my still undrunk second beer. “To trying,” I said.
“To trying,” the Old Man repeated, clinking his bottle against mine in a toast. We both drank. The Old Man put his now empty bottle down. He wiped a bit of foam off his mouth with his hand.
“I think I’ll suit up and fly around the city a little. Clear my head.” The Old Man smiled grimly. “If I run across a Rogue, so much the better. They can help me work off some steam.”
“You want some company?”
“No offense, but no. Sometimes a man needs to be alone with his thoughts. Besides, you’ve got a full day of training and tutoring ahead of you.”
“Ugh,” I said, already regretting having to work out with a bellyful of beer. “Don’t remind me.”
The Old Man stood.
“Hey, no complaining.” He grinned down at me. “Being a Hero is a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it.”
27
“I have some bad news, and some good news,” the Old Man said. He sat in an armchair in front of me, Isaac, and Neha. The three of us were all clustered on a large curved couch. At the Old Man’s request, we three had skipped our morning workouts and we were instead assembled in the mansion’s great room.
“Let me guess,” Isaac said. “The good news is that I’m the best Hero Apprentice you’ve ever seen.” He grinned. “The bad news is that these other two are the worst.”
“Apparently, in your bizarro world, best means worst and worst means best,” I said to him.
“Does the sun only shine at night in your fantasy world too?” Neha added.
“I’ll jump in with a question before you three come to blows,” the Old Man said. He smiled. “Though if that happens, my money is on Neha. She’s meaner than you two. Fights dirty too. Since we’re talking about things in reverse, here’s a question for you Isaac: what mythological creature has backward feet?” With the Old Man, everything was a teachable moment.
Isaac’s face was blank. He shrugged.
“The Abarimon,” Neha interjected when it was clear Isaac did not know. “Despite their feet being on backward, they were said to be able to run at incredible speeds.”
“Nobody likes a show-off. Or a know-it-all,” Isaac said. Neha stuck her tongue out at him. The Old Man laughed.
“Neha is exactly right,” he said. “Since your powers are myth-based, you really should have known Isaac. Two weeks from today, I want you to research the Abarimon, write a fifteen page paper about them, and be able to successfully transform into one of them. And don’t double-space the lines and give them overly large margins this time. You’re not fooling anybody. I mastered every formatting trick known to man before any of you were born. Assuming you don’t go, that is.” Isaac groaned before stopping himself.
“Go? Go where?” he asked.
“That’s what I was going to tell you all before you got me sidetracked. The Heroes’ Guild needs me and a few other Heroes to go into space for a secret mission. The good news is I pulled some strings, and my Apprentices are allowed to accompany me.” The three of us perked up. We were going to go into space? What self-respecting Hero’s Apprentice would not want to go on a mission into space? “The bad news is that only two of you can go as there’s limited room. One of you will
have to stay behind.”
The three of us looked at each other.
“Wait, back up,” I said. “Two of us are going into space? How will we get there? And what’s the mission?”
“The answer to the first question involves a transporter. Beyond that, I’m not allowed to discuss it with all three of you since one of you is not going. As for the mission, that too I cannot discuss with someone who is not going. It is a secret mission, after all. The two who go with me will also have to keep our mission under wraps. I know you three are tight, but the one who stays behind cannot be told of our mission. All I can say is that we’ll be gone for at least a week and probably longer.”
“So who’s going to stay behind?” Neha asked. “Isaac or Theo?”
“Us?” Isaac said indignantly. “What about you? I’ve seen every episode of Star Trek and every Star Wars movie. Even the three bad ones. I’m practically an astronaut.”
“And definitely a nerd,” she said.
The Old Man stood. “I’ll leave it to you three to decide who stays and who goes. I don’t care how you decide as long as it doesn’t involve murdering one of you. Let me know by the end of the day what you decide. Whoever stays behind won’t be able to use his or her powers while I’m gone as I won’t be around to supervise. I’ll need to brief the two who are going and we’ll need to make preparations. We will leave in two days.”
The Old Man left the room. The three of us looked at each other questioningly.
“Does anyone want to volunteer to stay behind?” Neha asked. A long pause. No one said anything. “I’ll take that as a ‘no,’” she said. “I didn’t think anyone wanted to voluntarily stay behind, but it was worth asking.”
“We can decide who stays using rock, paper, scissors,” Isaac suggested. The three of us decided a lot of things we could not agree on that way. I was about to protest when Neha jumped in before I did.
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