Meta Box Set | Books 1-3, page 51
part #1 of Meta Box Set | Books 1-3 Series
The blond girl talking with a group of students near a piece of bronze art outside the hall turns around.
It is her.
She glances around at first, not quite sure who called her name. Then her eyes catch mine. At first she looks confused, no doubt as surprised to see me on campus as I am to see her.
"Connor?" she says as I get closer. She squints her eyes as if she isn't completely sure that it's me.
"Yeah, it's me," I say.
She turns to the group, which hasn't noticed me, and tells them that she'll be right back. She walks to meet me halfway, jogging a little at one point to save me a few extra steps. It's only been a couple of days since I've seen her, but she hasn't seen me, or me as Connor rather, since we broke up more or less.
"Oh my gosh, what are you doing here?" she asks.
"Going to school, duh. Why, what are you doing here?" I reply.
"Smart ass," she says as she punches me in the arm. Things feel like they haven't changed between us for a moment, but that couldn't be further from the truth, and I need to keep reminding myself of it. "When did you get here?" she asks.
"Derrick just brought me up yesterday. What about you? I didn't even realize you were here."
"Yeah, sorry about that. Me and my dad had to leave Bay View City pretty quickly. Something about the board at his company being nervous about operations being based there with everything that’s going on, I think," she lies. "It all happened pretty quickly. I meant to text you once I got settled here."
"You seem like you're settling in pretty quickly," I say, motioning toward the group she just walked away from.
"Oh, them? They're in my physics class. We're meeting for a study group during lunch."
I'm not surprised to see Sarah making friends so quickly. It's one of the things I've always liked about her. The fact that she and her dad were almost killed a week ago is something you wouldn't believe, even if someone told you. That's just the kind of person she is. Resilient. Whatever is going on inside her head doesn't stop her from keeping up with the outside world. It's a skill that I've been envious of since even before I had to worry about juggling two different identities.
"And what about you? Are you fitting in here okay so far?" she asks.
"Me? Oh yeah, of course," I lie.
"Connor Connelly, you know that I know when you're not telling me the truth still, right?" she asks, completely oblivious, I hope, to just how wrong she is about that.
"I'm getting there. Just a little burned out after my first day."
"You'll be fine," she says.
"Hey, Sarah, come on. You're holding us up again," one of the guys in the circle of study buddies waiting for Sarah yells over to her. He's taller and looks older than me, and I'm immediately jealous.
"I better get going. I'd offer you to join us, but I wouldn't want you to try killing yourself with a spork while you listen to all of us going on and on about physics."
"Oh yeah, sure, of course. I have to get going anyway. I just stopped by to grab something quick before I headed off to my next class," I say, glancing down at the time on my phone to see that once again, I'm already late. "On second thought, it looks like I don't have time for that. I'd better take off before they suspend me for being late so many times on my first day. I'll see you around, though?" I ask.
"Yeah, I'm sure of it."
"See you later, Sarah."
"Later, Connor," she says before heading back to join the group of students who are beginning to enter the dining hall. A few look back at me, and I can see them asking her who I am. I can't hear her response, and I wonder what she told them. It doesn't matter now, though. We're not together. Both of us have secrets we're hiding from the rest of the world, and it's not like the world has been getting any less complicated lately.
Just worry about getting to training, I tell myself. Everything else takes a backseat to that.
"Who was the hottie?" a voice behind me that I don't recognize asks.
I turn around and see that it's Winston, the meta with the ability to control luck that I met yesterday.
"That hottie, as you put it, is my ex-girlfriend."
He winces in embarrassment at what he just asked.
"Sorry about that."
"It's no problem. You didn't know. Unless you did know. In that case, you're a real jerk," I joke.
Winston smiles and slaps me on the back, happy that I'm not mad at him.
"Well, look man, there's no need to cry over it, right? Plenty of fish in the sea and all of that. You don't want to be tied down when you're here with literally thousands of other potential future ex-girlfriends."
"That's easy for the guy who can control luck to say."
"Hey, I can tip luck in my favor, but not people. That's free will. I can't control what folks think."
"Sucks to be you."
"No way. Can you imagine what it would be like to be able to control someone's thoughts and actions? That's too much power, too much responsibility. How would you use that? How would you know when it was right and when it was wrong? Nope. Those aren't the kind of decisions I want to have to deal with, thanks. So what's your girlfriend doing here? Is she a meta too?"
"No. I thought she was for a little while, but she's not."
"That's lucky. It's best to keep this whole meta business and real life separate, I think."
"Well that wasn't the case either. She wasn't a meta, but she was involved."
"She knew you had powers?"
"No, it wasn't like that. It was ... complicated," I say, realizing that I have to watch my words. Sarah's secret isn't mine to share. Hell, Sarah doesn't even know that I even know her secret.
It feels strange to be able to talk to someone like this. Only a few people knew my secret before, and even they couldn't really put themselves in my shoes. You might find this hard to believe, but Midnight wasn't the best at listening when it came to my girl problems. This is different, though. Winston might not have the same powers as me or have gone through everything I have the exact same way I did, but we're more alike than we're different.
Who knows, maybe it'll be nice to talk to someone like this who understands, as long as I'm careful to make sure that the only secrets I spill are my own.
"Yeah, I know complicated. Listen," Winston begins, "I've got an idea. Why don't you come hang out tonight. It's just a small group of us, but we can make it into an official welcome party for you."
"You don't have to go through that kind of trouble," I say.
"It's not trouble; it's a good excuse. Better than the current reason we're using to have it."
"And what is that?"
"That we're bored."
This makes me laugh.
"I'm serious," Winston says. "You don't even know yet. It sounds like a great idea, living on campus, not having grown-ups around and everything, but the reality is that when everyone else on campus goes home for the night, and after we're done with meta training, it is boooooring here. Plus, it'll help you keep your mind off of old what's her name."
"Sarah."
"See, I've forgotten all about her already. You will soon too. Trust me."
10
If I thought that the center was out of the way from the rest of campus, the place I'm heading to makes it seem like it's the center of the universe. I'm currently trudging through an undeveloped, heavily wooded part of campus that I actually needed Winston to show me on a map in order to find.
The reason this particular area is so far out of the way is that it was originally intended to be part of the meta training facilities, except it never got even close to finished. The underground tunnel was dug and cleared out, but nothing was ever built on top of it. Since it would look really suspicious for students to be walking out into the middle of the woods everyday and seemingly disappearing, the decision was made to abandon this part of the facility. There's talk of one day linking it to the rest of the training grounds, but for right now, there's really no need for it. There aren't enough metas here to fill even half the current training areas as it is.
As I continue my way through the woods, I check my phone again to see what time it is. It's already close to eleven, and I'm hoping that the rest are still actually here. Sure, ten isn't that late, but the hours here are brutal. Classes start at 7:00 a.m. and go until 3:00 p.m. Then from three until seven every day, we're expected to train. After that, we can eat dinner and spend our free time however we want, as long as we remain on campus.
Apparently I'll get used to the schedule, but I was dead on my feet by the time dinner rolled around tonight, and I wound up sleeping right through it. Tonight's gathering would have started hours ago, so considering everyone else has to get up early too, part of me expects to not find anybody. I'm kicking myself for sleeping through dinner and not tagging along with everyone else up here. Out of every school I've been to throughout my childhood up until now, this is the one that I'm the most desperate to fit into, because if I can't fit in with a bunch of other metas my age, I don't even know what else to try.
Finally, after what seems like an eternity of searching, I find it. I'd be lying if I said that the idea that this was all some kind of initiation prank hadn't run through my head a few times, but here it is. Since there's no building to disguise the entrance to the underground facility here, the powers that be decided to use the next best disguise they could think of: a gigantic boulder.
Keep in mind, of course, that the people who made this facility in the first place didn't count on the building above it never being built. But when it wasn't, they didn't want to just flood the tunnel with cement or collapse it with a controlled explosion, just in case they later changed their minds and decided the tunnel would be useful for something. After all, building massive underground tunnels isn't exactly easy, or cheap, even if you're using a meta labor to dig them. You still need engineers to make sure that the structure itself is viable, otherwise you'll find yourself trying to rescue people stranded a mile underground one day.
The nice thing about using a boulder to cover up the entrance is that it's really pretty easy for a metahuman with enhanced strength to get in, though. According to Winston, none of the faculty knows that any of the students know this place exists. Actually, according to him, most of the faculty doesn’t even know it exists. The only way the students stumbled upon it in the first place was through echolocation. One of the metas here apparently heard this place from miles away and could tell there was something hollow far underground where it shouldn't be.
Winston warned me that if I was late I'd have to pick up the boulder by myself, which really wouldn't be an issue unless I didn't happen to have enhanced strength, but lucky for me, I do. I bring my hands out and flick my wrists to make my metabands appear back on my wrists before tapping them together to activate. I consciously decide not to activate my uniform since I don't want to be the guy that shows up to a party wearing his work clothes unless I'm sure everyone else is doing it.
I push my shoulder into the boulder and dig my feet into the damp earth underneath me. The boulder moves with little effort and rolls slowly over to one side, exposing a shaft plummeting straight down into the earth. It's so long that the end of it is represented by just a pinhole of light. There's a ladder, thankfully, for those who can't fly or just those who are invulnerable but don't feel like taking a mile-long free fall. On the underside of the rock, I can also see a simple, crude metal handle mounted to the rock itself. I take it that this is there to pull the rock over yourself when you descend down the ladder, which takes care of my question about how I'm supposed to get the rock back in place once I'm inside.
For a moment, I wonder again if I've already missed the party with my stupidly timed nap, but when I focus I can hear the faint sound of music wafting up from the tunnel below. It sounds like people are still here, so I swing my legs into the shaft and grab onto the boulder's handle to pull it back into place on my way down.
Geronimo.
11
"Hey, Connor! You actually made it," Winston says as I approach.
I'm walking down a monstrously huge cavern toward a group of maybe about a dozen people. They’re quite a ways away from the entrance but easy enough to find since there's really only one way to walk once you get down here.
Winston wasn't kidding when he said they never finished the facility down here. Aside from the ladder and the fact that the tunnel itself looks to be almost perfectly circular, you wouldn't know that it was manmade. Everything is exposed and dark. The ceiling is at least fifty feet above me. The ceiling, walls and floor beneath are all just exposed rock and dirt.
The group I'm heading toward looks like they only have a few items with them. From what I can see there's just a few folding chairs and a Bluetooth speaker playing music. They’re lit from what looks like a fireball hovering overhead in midair. I guess there's no need to bring a flashlight when you've got enough metas around. Get more than a few together and odds are one of them will have some kind of power that will take care of it.
As I get closer, Winston walks over to meet me halfway and claps me on the back, handing me a cup.
"So glad you could join us. We were starting to get worried that you got lost or accidentally got yourself pinned underneath that boulder up there," he says.
"No, I figured it out eventually," I reply.
"Great. Let's get you introduced to some people here," Winston says as we approach the group.
Heads start turning toward me, and I begin to feel incredibly self-conscious all of a sudden.
"Everybody, this is Connor. Connor, this is everybody," he says.
The crowd responds by saying, "Hi, Connor!" in unison, making me feel like I'm at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting before I reply back sheepishly, "Hi, everybody."
They then turn their backs again and go back to their own conversations.
"You're not going to introduce me?" I ask Winston quietly.
"I did introduce you," he says.
"But you didn't tell me any of their names."
"That's all on you, big guy. Say hi to people. Make small talk. No one's going to bite. Oh, except for Steve. That's one of his powers," Winston says.
"Really?" I ask.
"No, not really. Loosen up a bit, dude. We might be a little different, but we've all got one very big thing in common that most people don't have," Winston says, holding up both of his wrists to show me his metabands.
I smile and nod to him, silently agreeing to follow his lead and try to be as little of a social weirdo as I possibly can.
"Hey, you're from Bay View City, right?" a girl closest to me asks, apropos of nothing.
I guess that's just how conversations start? I realize that I recognize her and spend half a second trying to remember where from, before it comes to me that I saw her at the training facility yesterday. Duh. She was the one literally running laps around everyone at the track.
"Uh, yeah, I am," I say before the silence between us gets any more awkward than it already is.
"Did you leave once the Alphas kicked out all of the metas too?" she asks.
"Yeah, but not because of that," I say.
"Why then?"
"Well, yeah, I mean technically because of that, but I wasn't running away. Just had to regroup, you know. Think things through for a bit. Michelle suggested it'd be a good idea to come here."
"So what kind of powers do you have?" she asks. It feels strange to be having a conversation like this out in the open. I've never spoken with anyone in a group setting like this about my abilities when I've been out of uniform. There are a dozen other kids here, all metas, and this passes for just normal, friendly chit-chat, I guess? I'm definitely going to have to get used to this.
"Um, let me think. Strength, flying, speed, invulnerability, vision stuff," I say.
"What kind of vision stuff?"
"Just ... like ... enhanced vision, I guess? I can see through a lot of different materials, like an x-ray almost."
"That's a lot of abilities. If you could teleport you'd have all the big ones locked down."
"I can teleport. Or at least, I used to be able to teleport."
"What do you mean, 'used to be able to'? How did you lose one power but still hang on to the others?" she asks.
"It's my metabands. They were damaged. Ever since I just haven't been able to do it."
"Your metabands were damaged? They're literally the strongest things known to man. How could they have gotten damaged?"
I hadn't noticed up until now, but there seems to be a decent-sized group eavesdropping on our conversation. With the revelation that my metabands are damaged, they are a little less shy with pretending that they haven't been listening. One by one, individuals have started turning their full attention to this conversation, inching closer so they can hear. No one seems concerned with pretending anymore. I wouldn't be either if I had just overheard someone saying that their metabands had been damaged.
"They were damaged in a fight ... with the Alphas," I finally say.
"Holy crap. You're Omni," a voice from the crowd says.
I nod.
"Weren't you the first to find one of the second wave metabands?" Susan asks.
"Yeah, supposedly," I reply. Suddenly I'm starting to feel even more self-conscious than I was before.
"Are we supposed to be impressed by you or something?" another guy from the crowd asks. He's taller than I am, with jet black hair and a vintage-looking t-shirt.
"What? No. I didn't mean to make it sound like-" I start.
"You think you're better than us or something?" the same guy says to me.
Somehow I've managed to almost start a fight just by answering what I thought were some simple small-talk questions. Now I remember why I hate small talk.
"Look, I don't think I'm better than anybody, and I'm not trying to impress you or anything. Susan was curious about who I was, and I told her. That's all. I'm not trying to cause any trouble," I say.
This seems to work for the time being, and individuals go back to their previous conversations, and the crowd around me thins out. Out of the corner of my eye, I spot a small cooler filled with drinks and excuse myself in an effort to go grab one.
