If you had told me before I learned I was a Metahuman that the Guild had a top-secret space station, I likely would have called you a liar, and then peed my pants with excitement if you gave me proof. It was a testament to all the crazy things I had seen and been through since developing my powers that I hadn’t been even slightly surprised when Pitbull told us new Heroes of the space station’s existence at our swearing-in ceremony. These days, if you told me Santa Claus was real, a Hero, and used delivering toys during Christmas as a cover to check people’s houses for criminal activity, I wouldn’t bat an eye. I had seen too much.
The royalties Mechano raked in for his various commercially available inventions were immense, making Mechano one of the richest men in the world. Much of that money was used to underwrite the Sentinels’ expenses. Being the world’s preeminent superhero team was not cheap. In addition to them maintaining a sprawling mansion on the outskirts of Astor City that was part headquarters, part residence, part fortress, and part tourist attraction, they used various forms of high-tech transportation to travel around the world to trouble spots. They also paid their members handsomely, something only a handful of other Hero teams in the country like the Heartland Heroes, the Gulf Coast Guardians, and the Sunshine State Warriors could afford to do. As a result, the Sentinels were full-time Heroes, unlike people like me who had to work a regular job to keep bread and butter on the table. Sometimes I couldn’t even afford the butter. I was an entry-level employee at a newspaper—hardly a thriving industry—after all.
Famous superhero teams like the Sentinels and the Heartland Heroes were part of the reason why Isaac had moved to Astor City with me. He wanted to get enough crime-fighting experience to eventually apply to join one of the major Hero teams. Being on such a team would give him the biggest platform to help the most people possible, Isaac said. He wanted to follow in the footsteps of his father Herbert, a California state trooper killed in the line of duty when Isaac was fourteen. I suspected that was all true, but only part of the truth. It had been the goal of Isaac’s hated stepbrother Frank Hamilton, aka Elemental Man, to join one of those teams. Frank would never be able to do so as I had defeated him during the Trials. Though I was no family psychologist, I thought one of Isaac’s motivations for wanting to join an elite Hero team was to be able to rub Frank’s nose in it.
The handful of elite Hero teams didn’t let just anyone join, of course. They only accepted cream of the crop Heroes with solid track records and tons of experience. Isaac figured moving to Astor City with me would get him the experience he needed. Our months in crime-ridden Astor City had convinced him he had made the right move. “Getting my license was like getting a college degree in being a Hero,” Isaac had once said. “Operating as a Hero in Astor City is giving me my PhD.”
As a lifetime admirer of the Sentinels generally and Mechano specifically, the fact that a Hero at Mechano’s level had tried to kill me would have been almost flattering had it not been for the fact his attempts had nearly been successful. Someone repeatedly trying to murder you tended to knock fanboy adulation right out of you.
The problem with me tattling to the Guild about Mechano as Isaac suggested was that I’d be telling on myself and Hacker as well. If I reported Mechano to the Guild’s investigative arm, it would ask me what evidence I had. The only evidence I had was buried deep inside of Overlord, and the only reason I knew it was there was because I had cheated during the Trials. The Guild would take a dim view of me cheating. Even though I had only cheated because I didn’t think the test was fair, there were three things I knew for certain: women liked bad boys more than nice guys (Hannah and Antonio were Exhibit A for the truth of this); Peter O’Toole was a double-phallic name; and, that the Guild could not care less about what I thought was fair. If I told the Guild I knew Mechano was out to get me because I had cheated on the Trials, the Guild would likely not only revoke my license, but those of Hacker and Isaac as well. If it had just been my license on the line, I would have risked it in the interest of getting to the bottom of what Mechano had against me. I would not risk the licenses of Hacker and Isaac, though. Not when they had worked so hard to get them. Plus, Isaac had nothing to do with me cheating. He still didn’t know about it as I hadn’t told him. I wasn’t planning to. Despite his constant jokes, Isaac was even more of a Boy Scout than I was as indicated by his threat to tell the Guild about our run-in with Antonio. If I told him I’d cheated during the Trials, there was the distinct possibility he’d report it to the Guild. I didn’t think he’d do it since it would get me into trouble, but I wasn’t willing to take a chance. Not with three people’s licenses on the line.
So, reporting Mechano to the Guild was out of the question. Besides, as Dad had often said, “If you have a dog who needs to be put down, you don’t farm it out to someone who might botch it. You do it yourself.” The older I got, the more I realized Dad and his Jamesisms were on the money more often than not. If Mechano was the one responsible for Dad’s death, I wanted to be the one to find that out and take care of Mechano. I didn’t want to hand the responsibility over to the Guild’s investigators, despite how competent Ghost seemed and how terrifying he was.
If I wasn’t going to go to the Guild, then what? Saunter up to the front door of Sentinels Mansion and ask to see Mechano to accuse him of several felonies? What would I say? I could see it now:
Hiya, Mechano. I’m Kinetic. I’m a big fan. Or I used to be before I found out you tried to have me killed during the Trials. I know that because I did a teensy bit of cheating on my final test. Help a brother Hero out and don’t tell the Guild about that. I’d hate to have to give up my Hero’s cape before I’ve even broken it in good. It took a month before I could get it to hang just right. Anyhoo, I’d thought I’d pop over and sock you in the metallic jaw for trying to murder me. But before I do that, I wanna ask if you also hired a Rogue assassin named Iceburn to kill me. He killed my Dad instead, so I’m still a little irked about the whole thing. While you’re at it, be a good scout and tell me whether the rest of the Sentinels were involved. If they were, even though they’re the world’s most powerful Heroes, I’ll have to kick their asses too. Why are you laughing? I didn’t know machines could laugh. Anyway, you pinky swear to tell me the truth about the Sentinels’ involvement? That’s a good robot. Uh, cyborg. Android? Well, whatever in the hell you are.
I had studied enough military strategy to know, as plans of attack went, that one blew. So, I had spent much of my time since moving to Astor City trying to formulate a better one. Through exhaustive review of news archives available to me as a Times employee and from multiple visits to the public areas of Sentinels Mansion, I now knew more about the Sentinels generally and Mechano specifically than the president of their fan club did. Almost all my time not spent working or fighting crime was spent thinking, planning, and scheming, trying to come up with the best way to deal with Mechano and find out if he was behind my father’s death. Even my nighttime crime-fighting I saw as preparation for confronting Mechano. Despite having studied hard in the Academy, I now knew that being a Hero wasn’t something you learned how to do from a book. It was something you learned in the skies and on the streets.
Despite studying the Sentinels and preparing to confront them, I felt I had made zero progress. I was no closer to dealing with Mechano than I had been when I first moved to Astor City. I wasn’t sure what was holding me back. Fear? Intimidation? Indecision? Doubt? All the above? After all, Mechano was world-renowned, beloved, and rich. Whereas I was . . . not. Yes, I was just as much of a Hero as Mechano was. That was like saying someone who had just graduated law school was the equal of a Supreme Court Justice. The thought of me going up against Mechano was more than just a little daunting, like being at the base of Mount Everest and staring up at the heights you knew you had to climb. Plus, I was afraid my relative inexperience and less-than-cosmopolitan background would lead me into taking the wrong step against Mechano. After all, I was the guy who had been chomping at
the bit to take Mitch and his minions out until Isaac had counseled me—correctly, I now realized—to proceed with caution.
I suffered from paralysis by analysis as I dithered these past few months over the best way to deal with Mechano. I needed to act. As Dad had often said, “If you think too long, you think wrong.” But knowing you needed to do something and knowing how to do that something were entirely different things.
“Hello! Earth to Theo.”
Startled, I realized Isaac had been speaking while I had checked out, thinking about Mechano and the Sentinels.
“I’m listening,” I said.
“Lying is definitely not one of your superpowers,” Isaac said. “What I was saying was you’re trying to tell me you went postal on Antonio because of your frustrations over Mechano?”
“Not just Mechano. I’m frustrated over the way this whole damned city operates. On that note, did you hear that Silverback is out of jail?”
Isaac looked startled. “Already? We stopped him from robbing that armored car just last month. Wasn’t that his third strike? I figured he’d be cooling his heels the rest of his life in MetaHold.” MetaHold was the federal government’s primary prison for detaining criminal Metahumans. Iceburn was imprisoned there. It was on Ellis Island in New York, near where the Statue of Liberty had been before it had been destroyed in the 1980s by Black Plague. The government official who came up with the idea of imprisoning Metas in the same place millions had once streamed into this country seeking freedom must have had one heck of a sense of ironic humor. Give me your tired, your poor, your incarcerated superpowered masses yearning to break free.
“They released him the day after we caught him,” I said. “Yesterday he successfully robbed two more armored cars. He got away clean as there weren’t Heroes around those times to stop him. I just heard about it today.”
“You’ve got to give the guy credit for consistency, if not for good citizenship, by sticking with robbing armored cars. Maybe a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, but apparently it also does wonders for a Rogue’s bank account. So why did they let him out? It can’t be because of his winning smile.” Silverback was a bigger, scarier-looking version of the gorilla he had named himself after. Real silverback gorillas didn’t have razor-sharp fangs as long as your forearm and the strength to pick up a tank like it was a paperweight, but Silverback did.
“That’s what I wondered. So after hearing today about the new robberies and his earlier release, I went to the police precinct we had turned Silverback over to. I flashed my press badge and told them I was researching a story about Metahuman criminal activity. The cop I spoke to said Silverback had been released because the Heroes who had brought him in had violated Silverback’s civil rights in apprehending him. Supposedly we had used excessive force.”
Isaac snorted. “That’s a load of bull. We captured Silverback by the book. Besides, you didn’t hear me complaining about excessive force when Silverback tried to screw my head off like it was a bottle cap.”
“You’re preaching to the choir. The whole civil rights violation thing is baloney. So, when I got back to the office, I used the Times’ computer databases to run a few checks on the cop who authorized Silverback’s release. A Sergeant Martin O’Donnell. Turns out that, a little over a week after Silverback’s release, O’Donnell registered a brand-new sailboat with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Now how does a lowly police sergeant afford a six-figure sailboat?”
“Maybe his wife is loaded. I hope she has a cute sister. My retirement plan is to marry into money. Depending on how much money she has, she doesn’t even have to be cute. If she has enough loot, she doesn’t even have to be a she.”
I ignored most of what Isaac said. I did that a lot. “Maybe, but since his wife is a secretary driving a fifteen-year-old car, I doubt it. I checked her out too. I think it’s more likely money changed hands between Silverback’s attorney and O’Donnell, and a week later O’Donnell goes from being a landlubbing sergeant to a sailboat captain.”
Isaac took his feet off the table and leaned forward. He carefully examined my face. “Who is this cynic and what has he done with my innocent friend Theo?”
I shook my head. “This city is killing my innocence. What little was left of it after the Trials.” The funny business that had gone down during the Trials was a recurring subject of conversation between me and Isaac. Not only had Mechano twice tried to kill me by tampering with Overlord, but I strongly suspected Pitbull had broken Trials protocol by pitting me against Isaac in the final test when our opponent for that test was supposed to be picked at random. I had angered Pitbull by mouthing off to him before the final test and by refusing to apologize for punching Lotus, another of the Trials’ proctors. On top of all that, several people had died during the Trials, including our friend Hammer. Though I hadn’t thought while I was in the Trials too much about the implications of those deaths—trying to not follow in Hammer’s footsteps had afforded little time for philosophical reflection—time and perspective had made me question how the Trials were conducted. Were Heroes who sorted through Hero candidates by killing them worthy of being called “heroes”? That was another reason why I hadn’t gone to the Guild about Mechano: I wasn’t sure I entirely trusted the Guild anymore after what it had put us through during the Trials.
Was I any better, though? After all, I was the guy who had just beaten Antonio bloody. How far would I have gone had Isaac not stopped me? I was also the guy who cheated during the Trials. Yeah, maybe Pitbull had himself broken the rules by making me go up against Isaac, but my parents didn’t raise me to believe two wrongs made a right.
I let out a long sigh. “Silverback, Mitch, Antonio, Mechano, the Trials, life in the big city . . .” I trailed off, shaking my head in frustration. “Being a Hero is not as I expected it to be.”
“What were you expecting?”
“I was expecting there to be a clear right thing to do, and a clear wrong thing to do. A Hero would do the former, and avoid the latter. When I was a kid thinking about what the life of a Hero must be like, I figured they were the good guys who had life figured out. That to them, things were either black or they were white. Now that I’m both an adult and a Hero, nothing seems black and white. Take Deshaun, our friendly neighborhood pharmacist. If the world worked the way I thought it did when I was a kid, he’d either be working an honest job or in jail. Instead, he’s lounging around outside, bold as brass, corrupting society one clear baggy at a time. And as crazy as it seems, the neighborhood’s probably better off because he’s there. Or take Mechano, a renowned inventor who’s helped save the world more times than we probably even know about. And yet, he’s tried to kill me at least twice. What other nefarious things has he done that we’re ignorant of?” I shook my head again. “Makes it mighty hard to figure out who’s the bad guy, and who’s the good guy.”
Not for the first time, I wished Dad were still alive. Though he had not been an educated man, he had wisdom you couldn’t get from a book. I just knew he would be able to point me in the right direction. I missed Mom too, but she had been more of a nurturer than an advice dispenser. At least she had been before cancer had hollowed her out, sapping her of her vitality, making me and Dad her nurturers instead of the other way around.
I started tearing up at the thought of my parents. Feeling like the world’s biggest baby, I yawned and stretched, pretending like I was tired so I could rub the tears from my eyes before Isaac saw them. A 20-year-old licensed Hero and I still got misty-eyed over my deceased parents? Maybe I would change my code name to Crybaby.
If Isaac noticed my tears, he had the good grace to not say so.
“People are neither all bad nor all good,” he said. “Nobody’s just one thing. Take you for example. You’re a good guy, but you still lost it with Antonio last night.” His gaze was uncharacteristically serious again. “You know that can’t happen again, right? We’re Heroes. Even if there are some who don’t follow the r
ules, that doesn’t give the rest of us the excuse to not follow them too. If we stop following the rules, that means we’re no better than Antonio or Silverback.”
“Yeah, I hear you. I’ll try to not let it happen again.”
Isaac sat back, again putting his feet up on the table. “Good. As for all that other stuff, I don’t have a good answer for you. I’m not all-wise. Who do I look like, black Buddha?”
“Then what good are you?”
Isaac chewed on that for a few moments. Then he brightened.
He said, “I have a gallon of unopened rocky road ice cream in the freezer.”
I grinned. “I withdraw the question.”
We went to look for answers in the bottom of Isaac’s ice cream. Though we didn’t find any, it was still a pretty good time.
7
Hannah did not show up for work the next morning. There was no email to her supervisor, no call, no anything. I did not think much of it. I just assumed Antonio had done as I demanded and had broken up with Hannah, and that she was too upset about it to come to work. Even so, I thought it was weird that Hannah did not contact her boss. She was normally very responsible. I guessed Antonio breaking up with her had really knocked her for a loop. Oh well, I thought. Better to be knocked for a loop than continue to get knocked around.
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