There were countless punishing workouts, especially in our early days at the Academy, when Hammer could be found in the corner of the gym, vomiting noisily into a garbage pail. I knew because I often was right alongside of him, with my head between my knees and puking so hard it felt like I was throwing up the bones in my feet. I was more like Hammer than I was like Neha or Isaac. Whereas Neha was brilliant and things seemed to come easily to her, and Isaac was naturally athletic and charming, guys like me and Hammer had gotten through the Academy mainly through sheer determination and mule-headed stubbornness.
It reminded me of what President Calvin Coolidge had said: brains, talent, and education would not make you successful. “Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent,” he had said.
Wow, now I was quoting Calvin Coolidge. It was an occupational hazard that came with being the Old Man’s Apprentice. Thanks to my studies under him, I knew more about what famous men and women had said than Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations did. I would kick some serious butt if I ever got on Jeopardy.
Although Hammer was still overweight, now that I was seeing him again I would describe him as husky instead of fat as he once had been. He looked good. When I had first met him at the Academy, he was a pasty guy who looked like he ate a lot of pizza and played hours of video games in his parents’ basement. Now he looked like someone who played a lot of rugby and drank kale shakes.
“I can’t believe we actually made it here,” Hammer said. His eyes were filled with wonder as he looked around at all the costumed people around us. Hammer was of course merely his code name. I didn’t know his real one. Hammer and I had been friends at the Academy, but we hadn’t been close the way I was close with Isaac and Neha. Of my fellow Academy graduates, those two were the only ones whose secret identities I knew and who knew mine.
Hammer said, “I grew up reading superhero comic books and idolizing Heroes on TV. Even when I was little, I dreamed of becoming a Hero like the people I read about and watched. It was all I could talk about. Then, I actually developed Metahuman powers.”
He pulled a single red rose out of thin air. Hammer was short for “hammerspace,” the inter-dimensional realm he could pull items out of. Hammer handed the rose to Neha with a smile and a half-bow. She blushed behind her mask. I felt a sudden irrational surge of jealousy.
“Now I’m this close to actually being a Hero,” Hammer said. “I keep pinching myself. I can hardly believe it. Becoming a Hero is all I’ve ever wanted to do.”
“What have you been up to since graduation?” I asked Hammer, partly to distract myself from the claws of the green-eyed monster. Despite the fact Neha and I regularly slept together, she was not my girlfriend. Neha had made that crystal clear. She had told me long ago she didn’t want any distractions from getting her license, and a romantic relationship outside the bedroom would be a distraction. So, I didn’t have any right to get jealous.
Why, then, did I want to snatch the rose out of Neha’s hand and smash it over Hammer’s head? I found myself hoping the rose had thorns that Neha would cut herself on.
Hammer said, “Since I couldn’t get an Apprenticeship like you guys did, I wound up enrolling in a Hero trainee continuing education school in New Hampshire. One of the Heroes in Manchester certified my application to the Trials. I had to pester her to death before she would do it.” He grinned. “I suspect she only certified me so I’d stop bothering her. But as long as I managed to get here, that’s the important thing.”
People who had Apprenticed with Heroes after the Academy were more likely to be allowed to stand for the Trials than people who couldn’t get an Apprenticeship. The fact Hammer managed to get to the Trials despite not having an Apprenticeship impressed the heck out of me.
“Hey, any idea what those flying things are?” I asked Hammer, pointing up at one of the teardrop things that looked like liquid mercury. It had just scooted across the room to hover over the heads of a group of chatting Hero candidates.
“Yeah, that’s one of Overlord’s nodes,” Hammer said.
“You realize you’re speaking Greek to me right now, right?”
Hammer grinned sheepishly.
“Sorry, I’d already forgotten you just walked in. One of the Trials’ proctors explained to me earlier what Overlord is. Overlord is the artificial intelligence system that runs the Trials. Well, runs it along with the Hero proctors. Those flying nodes you see hovering in the room are the way Overlord senses things. The way it was explained to me, those nodes are Overlord’s eyes and ears. Overlord monitors everything that goes on at the Trials. In a lot of instances Overlord decides whether or not you pass a test in the Trials. It’s set up that way to avoid human bias and error. Like much of the high-tech stuff the Guild uses, Overlord was designed by Mechano himself. You know, from the Sentinels.”
As Hammer spoke, I noticed Isaac was looking off into the crowd of costumed people. He got a weird look on his face, one I had never seen there before. The look was a combination of anger and disgust, as if he had seen someone kick an old lady’s cane out from under her.
Isaac harshly excused himself. He started making a beeline toward someone off in the distance, rudely pushing people out of the way as he went. Hammer broke off in the middle of what he was saying, puzzled by what Isaac was doing. Neha and I looked at each other in bewilderment and concern. We had never seen Isaac behave this way before.
Sensing that trouble was brewing, I turned to follow Isaac. Neha and Hammer followed in my wake.
By the time I caught up with Isaac, he was almost literally toe-to-toe with another Hero candidate. Their faces weren’t lined up, as the guy Isaac was squared up in front of was an inch or so taller than Isaac. Instead of the two standing nose to nose, the other guy could have used Isaac’s nose as a snorkel.
The man wore a black and metallic gray costume that covered him from head to toe except for openings for his nose, mouth, eyes, and the top of his head. Even with his face covered, you could tell he was male model attractive. He was white, and had what appeared to be natural blonde hair. It was perfectly coiffed into elaborate waves that reminded me of the surface of the ocean. His lips were thick and slightly pouty. His eyes were crystal blue, and piercing. His body was built the way most women wished every man’s was built. In short, the guy looked like Hitler’s Aryan fantasies personified.
“Well if it isn’t Demented Man,” Isaac said to the guy. His voice dripped with venom. “You’ve come to flunk the Trials for the third time, I see. Or maybe you’ll do the world a favor and die trying instead of embarrassing yourself yet again.”
“You know that’s not my name,” the guy responded. His eyes flashed with anger. “It’s Elemental Man.”
“Elemental . . . Demented,” Isaac shook his head. “It doesn’t matter the letters you use, it all spells asshole to me. Tell me, Captain Asshole: do you know you can’t stand for the Trials again after you flunk them this time, or are you too stupid to have realized that yet?”
Elemental Man’s fists balled up. It looked like he was about to take a poke at Isaac. Before now I had been too stunned by Isaac’s uncharacteristic behavior to move. Isaac was usually so easy-going and friendly toward everyone. But now I noticed one of Overlord’s nodes had come to float high up above Isaac and Elemental Man. If Hammer had been right, it was recording everything the two of them said and did. I couldn’t imagine getting into a fight before the Trials even started would endear Isaac to the Guild.
That thought made me move to squeeze in between Elemental Man and Isaac before I even consciously realized I was doing it. The chests of both of them pushed against my shoulders.
“Fellas, can’t we all just get along?” I said. It was the best I could come up with on the spur of the moment to try to defuse the situation. I wondered how some Heroes seemed to have just the right thing to say at just the right time. Maybe they practiced their quips every morning in the mirror. Or, maybe they had ghostwriters.
“Who’s this litt
le twerp? Your boyfriend?” Elemental Man asked Isaac as he looked down at me. “What watermelon patch did you find him in?” I felt myself flushing. I always forgot about my Southern accent. To me, my voice was simply my voice.
Elemental Man’s eyes moved away from me to assess Neha and Hammer. “In addition to this trailer park trash, you’re hanging out with a fat fuck and a flat-chested brown bitch. You’ll never stop being a loser like the rest of your people if these are the guys you associate with.”
Before Elemental Man said all that, I had been feeling charitable toward him since Isaac was the one who started this. That charitable feeling immediately went away.
Elemental Man’s lips twisted in a smirk. He said to Isaac, “I’m glad you stopped masturbating while dreaming of your dead sister naked and found yourself a boy toy instead. It’s still creepy, but it’s a step in the right direction.”
His face feral, Isaac’s fist quickly reared back to hit Elemental Man. Before he could move forward it to make contact, he stopped. His body was frozen in place by my powers.
Isaac’s eyes were first surprised, then full of realization of what was happening, then mad. They found mine. “Let go of me,” he said through barely moving lips.
“No. Not until you calm down. You’re making a scene,” I said. That was true: in addition to the Overlord node hovering overhead, the people around us had gotten quiet, watching what was going on.
Elemental Man reached out to pat Isaac on the cheek condescendingly. “Listen to your boyfriend. He just kept you from getting the shit beat out of you. For the third time, I believe. But who’s counting?”
I felt Isaac struggling against the hold I had on him as Elemental Man walked away and was lost in the crowd of people. Once he was out of sight, I released my hold on Isaac.
As soon as I let go of him, Isaac turned on me like a rabid dog.
“How about you mind your own goddamned business?” he yelled, right in my face. He looked like he wanted to hit me now.
I was starting to get irritated. “I’ll start minding my own business as soon as you stop acting like a jerk,” I yelled back. “You started this. Do you want to get thrown out of the Trials before they even start?”
“What’s your beef with that guy anyway?” Neha asked him.
Isaac shook his head angrily. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I don’t care what you want. Kinetic stopped you from getting into a fight. Both he and I have the right to know what the deal is.”
Isaac shook his head again.
“It’s so typical for you to take his side.”
“What do you mean, it’s so typical for me to take his side?”
“I mean that just because you’re sleeping with him, you don’t have to always take his side. Yeah, I know you’re screwing each other, so wipe that surprised look off your faces. I’m not an idiot. Besides, you two are about as subtle as cats in heat. You don’t have to jump to Kinetic’s defense every time there’s a disagreement. Which do you want to be: his whore, or his mother?”
Neha slapped Isaac’s face so hard, his head was flung to the side. The slap rang out like a gunshot.
Our little group was frozen in place for a moment. Isaac, Neha, and Hammer looked stunned by what had just happened. I certainly felt stunned.
Isaac was the first to recover. Muttering darkly, with a red splotch on his cheek where Neha had hit him, he walked away from the rest of us. He was soon lost to view amongst the others in the huge room.
Neha and I looked at each other. She looked shocked by what she had done. There were tears in her eyes. I had gone years without seeing her cry. Now I had seen it twice in one day. Before today, there were times I had wondered if she even knew how.
As for Hammer, astonishment, not tears, was in his wide eyes. They darted between me and Neha as we regarded each other silently.
After a bit, Hammer said, “Do you three always get along so well?”
7
It turned out that whether you were on Earth Prime or on Earth Sigma, a written exam was just as mind-numbing and as nerve-racking in either dimension.
It was the third and final day of the written phase of the Trials. If I passed this portion, I would go on to the scenarios phase. There, the Trials’ proctors had assured us Trials’ candidates, we’d be risking our necks and other body parts.
As it was right now, the only risk to my neck was getting a crick in it.
I sat in what looked like a college classroom, furiously typing on a computer keyboard while peering down at the screen sunk down into the desk in front of me. Since I had been writing almost eight hours a day for the past three days, I also risked carpal tunnel syndrome along with a neck crick. If I became a Hero but wound up having to wear a wrist brace as a result, I wouldn’t blame supervillains if they laughed at me.
I sat high in the tiered classroom along with the thirty-six other Hero candidates taking the Trials. Neha sat to my right at the long, curved desk that took up most of the width of the classroom. Hammer was to my left. I could see Isaac below us, near the front of the room. It was as if he had drawn up a mathematical formula that told him which seat was furthest from me, Neha, and Elemental Man. Hitler’s Youth—which was what I had started to call Elemental Man mentally—was a couple of rows ahead of me on the far end of the classroom.
A proctor named Brown Recluse in a brown and tan costume with a huge spider on the front of it wore the traditional white cape of a licensed Hero. He leaned against the metal desk at the front of the classroom, looking bored as he watched us Hero candidates typing furiously. Two of Overlord’s nodes were overhead, hovering like miniature zeppelins.
Isaac hadn’t said a word to either me or Neha since Neha slapped him days before. I had tried to talk to him a couple of times, but Isaac had walked right past me as if invisibility was my superpower. After trying to talk to him the second time only to be ignored like a geek at a sorority party, I had given up in disgust. I now ignored him as assiduously as Isaac ignored us. If he was going to be a big baby, I could be a big baby too.
Like invisibility, maturity was not my superpower.
All thirty-seven candidates taking the exam were in costume and mask, though most of us had left our capes off. The room looked like a cosplay convention. Today’s exam was on Hero Law and World History, two subjects I had studied at the Academy and as the Old Man’s Apprentice. I was over halfway through the exam. I felt pretty good about it so far. I could not say the same about the exam I had taken on day one, which had focused on Metahuman Math and the Science of Superheroes. Talking with Neha afterward had convinced me I had completely muffed one of the questions where you had to calculate the trajectory and destination of an intercontinental ballistic missile armed with a nuclear warhead launched by Russia. My calculations told me the missile would land harmlessly in the ocean. The correct answer apparently was that the missile would strike New York City. It was a good thing I wasn’t in charge of the United States’ defense program.
I was hip-deep in regurgitating facts about the V’Loth invasion in the 1960s and analyzing whether Omega Mad really needed to sacrifice himself to take out the aliens’ queen when I thought I saw something move on my keyboard.
I blinked a couple of times, thinking I had imagined it. After all, my eyes were bleary from three straight days of staring at a computer screen.
Tiny jet-black objects seemed to be surging with increasing speed out of the raised chiclet keys of my keyboard, like ants swarming out of a disturbed nest. I thought I was hallucinating until the tiny objects started crawling under my fingernails.
The sharp stabs of pain I began to feel under my fingernails were no hallucination.
I lifted my hands to my face. My nails were now black, their color changed thanks to the swarm of black objects under them. My fingertips started to feel hot, like they were getting closer and closer to an open flame. As I watched with increasing fear and confusion, the black objects began to travel up my fing
ers, right under the skin. My skin rippled as the objects spread. It was like watching something out of a horror movie.
“Uh, guys?” I said, trying to get Neha’s and Hammer’s attention. I heard someone shush me. Brown Recluse, maybe. The black objects were now past my wrists, marching up my arms like an advancing army. Intense pain followed in the wake of their advance.
“Guys?” I said louder. I stood up, knocking my chair over in my haste. The room had been quiet other than the sounds of people furiously typing. The chair hitting the floor sounded like a shotgun blast going off. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw people staring at me. Neha was now on her feet. So was Myth. He started to climb the stairs toward me. One of the Overlord nodes dropped from overhead to a couple of feet in front of my face. Maybe I was anthropomorphizing, but it seemed to regard me with silent curiosity.
“A little help please,” I said, the words coming out in a near scream. The objects under my skin were now in the middle of my forearms, moving higher and higher implacably. Now it felt like my veins had been injected with molten lava. My skin over where the objects were passing rippled like a shedding snake’s. The pain was excruciating. I somehow sensed that the objects would keep traveling up my body until they got to my brain. I didn’t know what they would do when they got there, but I had a feeling it wouldn’t be to make me better at calculating missile trajectories. I was faintly aware of Neha touching my shoulder and saying something soothing. I didn’t need comforting, I needed saving.
The words Trust in God, but tie your camel came unbidden into my head. It was an Arab proverb I had learned in the course of my Heroic studies. It was from a story in which the prophet Muhammad noticed someone dismount from his camel and leave it without tying it. When Muhammad asked the man why he didn’t secure his camel, the man said he trusted in Allah to secure it. Muhammad had responded with “Trust in God, but tie your camel.”
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