Meta Box Set | Books 1-3, page 9
part #1 of Meta Box Set | Books 1-3 Series
"That's fair, but it's not like he has any control over how the media portrays him," I argue.
"Whatever. I'm sure he's feeling very pleased with himself and smug about all of this," she says. "Anyway, excited about your first day here?"
"Me? Oh yeah. Super excited. Can't wait in fact," I say.
"Awesome. You're going to love it here. I had no idea you were even a lifeguard," she says.
Dammit.
"Oh. I'm not a lifeguard actually. I'm cleanup crew," I say.
There's a few steps of silence.
"Oh. Well, that's fun too, right? You're still outside! Well, I mean not when you're cleaning the toilets and stuff, but still. It's better than digging ditches," she says.
"Yup," I reply.
"I mean, there is some ditch digging, I guess, when you have to help out with the fire pits, but that's like maybe five percent of the job. Tops," she says, not making me feel any better.
We approach the entrance gate together and head inside the facility. The lake itself is private and only accessible to members who pay a yearly fee. In exchange, they receive access to all the amenities on offer, which include separate men and women's locker rooms, showers, a playground for kids, beach chairs, towel service, an exclusive members-only restaurant, etc. It's basically a notch below a country club, and all in all, not a bad place to spend the day. Unless that day is spent picking up garbage and cleaning toilets, naturally. But hey, at least I'm making exactly one dollar above minimum wage!
Sarah sees some old co-worker friends as we head in through the gates together and excuses herself to say hi to them. That'll probably be the last time I get to talk to her, let alone, any of the lifeguards since they basically see themselves as a separate class from us cleaners.
"What the hell are you doing here?" A voice laughs behind me. I turn around and see that it's Brad Turner. Looks like I was wrong. I will get to talk to another lifeguard here. Awesome. Great.
"Hi Brad. I'm working here. I have a job here," I say.
"As a lifeguard?" He asks incredulously.
"No, as a cleaner," I reply.
"I know as a cleaner, you ass. You thought I really thought you could be a lifeguard?" This question makes him laugh. Laugh and laugh and laugh. I turn to walk towards the group that seems to be gathering for orientation. As I do, Brad grabs my shirt and pulls me in close to his face.
"Look. I know everyone thinks your some kind of hero or something for that little stunt in the woods, but I don't buy it. You didn't do shit and honestly, I think the whole thing stinks," he says.
"What do you mean?" I ask.
"You know what I mean," he says.
"No. I don't, actually," I reply.
"Just know that I've got my eye on you, loser. I don't buy into everyone else's garbage about you." And with that, he releases me from his meaty hands and walks towards the orientation group.
Whatever Brad's view of me is, it certainly does not gel with how the rest of the city sees me. I was 'famous' for being the regular human sidekick that helped save that little girl for exactly three seconds before the credit was given to the meta, and the news cycle moved onto the understandably more interesting story of the return of metahumans. Pointing this out isn't likely to change Brad's opinion of me. He's not exactly known for having an open mind.
I make my way over to the rest of the group of roughly fifty employees and find a seat on a bench. Everyone seems to know each other and are already deep into conversations. Everyone that is except me, of course. The new kid who got the job through his new crazy, masked vigilante friend hacking into a computer. I sarcastically think to myself how this summer is going to be just fantastic, when I feel a punch in the arm and hear the question, "What the hell are you doing here?" This is starting to get old now.
But I turn around and it's Jim! What a gigantic relief and the first actual nice surprise I've had in weeks now. I completely forgot that he works at the lake every summer.
"Hey man! I'm working here," I tell him.
"Really? That's great. Maybe that means I'll actually get to, you know, see and hang out with my friend once in awhile now," he replies.
"Ugh. Yeah. Sorry about that. I've been-" I get out before he cuts me off.
"Don't worry about it. I know what... happened in the woods was pretty traumatic. I wasn't sure if you blamed me for us getting split up there, or what, so I thought I'd just leave you alone for a bit. Give you some breathing room," he tells me.
I hadn't even thought about the idea that Jim would think I was mad at him. The reality literally couldn't be further from the truth, but I can't exactly explain how my entire life has been turned upside over the past few weeks.
"Oh, dude. Forget about it. I never thought that," I tell him.
"Whew. That is a huge relief. I thought you just never wanted to even see me again."
"Not at all."
"Great! So in that case: where the hell have you been?" he asks.
Whoops.
"Oh, you know. Just busy. Just trying to get everything back in order. I'm sure you heard about what happened at Electrotown," I say.
Sure, that was only a day ago and doesn't explain why I dropped off the face of the Earth before then, but at the very least, it's bound to change the subject.
"Oh my God. You were there?" he asks.
"Yeah. I thought you knew."
"No! I had no idea. Holy cow, man. You're having a rough couple of weeks."
"Ha. Yeah. A little bit," I try to laugh it off.
"Seriously though. That's really strange," he replies back.
Uh oh. I can practically see gears turning inside his head. Of course it's weird that I've been in two different places, where not only have there been deaths, but deaths caused by metahumans. The first metahumans anyone has seen in a decade. Yeah, I'd say that ranks pretty high up there on the coincidence chart.
"Hey!" A gruff voice yells at us. I've never been so happy to have someone yelling at me in my life. "I know taking out trash and cleaning toilets isn't rocket science gentlemen, but if you want to start getting a paycheck, I need you both to shut the hell up and pay attention for a goddamn minute."
This elicits a chuckle from the rest of the employees, most of whom have less demeaning jobs than Jim and myself this summer. The man yelling at us, I gather, is the general manager of the place, 'Big Jeff'. I remember Jim complaining to me about him last summer. Although he is indeed quite a large man, both in height and rotundness, I hadn't actually noticed his entrance, or the fact that he had started addressing the group. I guess I was too worried about my best friend possibly deducing that I was a metahuman within all of two minutes, when seeing me for the first time in days.
"Sorry," Jim apologizes to Jeff on behalf of both of us.
"Who are you?" Jeff asks, his eyes directed towards me.
"Connor. Connor Connolly," I reply.
"Never seen you before."
"It's my first summer here."
"Well you're off to a bad start. I've got my eye on you," he threatens.
Great. Another person with their eye on me. For years and years, no one had their eye on me, and now when I need to be invisible, everyone seems to have their eye on me. Jeff strikes me as more bark than bite, but all the same, his attention is the last thing I need. I'm here to earn some money this summer, get into better physical shape and hopefully fly under the radar as much as possible.
In a world that is teeming with cameras monitoring every corner of the globe, the lake is refreshingly old fashioned in that respect. No need for much security, since there's not much to steal. Sure, kids sneak in at night to go swimming, which is dangerous, but it's a big lake. If they didn't do it on this shore, there are thousands of feet of lakefront they could go to instead, so there's no point to having much security.
The orientation is predictably simple. Most of the other employees have been here summers in the past. Even crap jobs like mine are desirable because, hey, at least you're outside in the summer, right? Once someone secures a job at the lake they don't give it up easily, even after they've gone away to college.
The caste system at the lake is pretty simple too and doesn't take too long to figure out. At the top are the lifeguards. They get paid more than anyone else and basically can get away with absolute murder as long as they sit on a lifeguard stand when they're supposed, which is approximately one eighth of the day.
Below them is the people working the ticket booth at the front. While this is an extremely boring job where you are essentially isolated from the rest of the lake and its employees, it is also by far the absolute easiest job on Earth. Since entering the lakefront requires a membership, they don't even have to handle money. Literally, all they have to do is look at membership cards as members enter and make sure they're the right color for this year. That's it. A monkey could do it if you could teach a monkey about colors. And if it could talk I guess, but that's barely a prerequisite.
Under the booth workers are the concession stand employees. Flipping burgers, frying potatoes and scooping ice cream all day is by no means a cakewalk, but there are some perks. First off, they're the only employees who get to enjoy air conditioning. Secondly, they essentially get all the free food that they want. Not only that, but they control the supply of free food. Nothing makes a teenager more popular in a controlled environment like the lakefront, than the power to give someone a free cheeseburger if they deem him or her worthy.
Below them, and everyone else, is me and the rest of the cleaning crew. We're paid the least, have the worst hours, are outside in the hot sun pretty much all day, have the hardest work, and have to deal with everyone else's garbage. Literally. We not only have to collect, but also dispose of, any and all garbage on the lakefront grounds. When you have a place where hundreds of people are coming through every single day, they're going to produce a lot of trash. We deal with that trash.
But honestly, it isn't that bad. For the first few days there, I'm happy to be doing something mindless that, well, helps me keep my mind off of things. The meta sightings haven't slowed down, if anything they've ramped up but, thankfully, they've all been in other cities. I haven't heard from Midnight in awhile, but he's the last person I'll ever have to worry about. It makes sense that he's not around now that Bay View City has stopped being such a hotbed for meta activity. This has also helped me adhere to his whole rule not to use my powers while he's away.
For the first time in what seems like a very long time, I'm just enjoying being sixteen and not having the responsibility of being a meta who doesn't even know fully how to control his own powers hanging over him. Jim and I become close again and start hanging out more frequently, now that I have less to hide. Sarah starts spending more of her breaks hanging out with me too. She even helps me pick up some of the garbage sometimes! If that isn't maybe, kinda, sorta, possibly 'like', than I don't know what is.
She also becomes the first person in a very long time that seems to have the courage to actually ask about my parents. It happens one day, completely out of the blue, as we're walking along the beach. Me picking up ketchup covered napkins out of the sand, and her just asking. There's hesitation, but no pretense.
"So if you don't want to talk about it, I totally understand..,", she starts, and I already know what she's going to ask, "...but since I don't really know, I thought it would be better to ask you than assume: what exactly happened with your parents?"
I tell her about how Mom had arranged to meet Dad that afternoon for lunch. Jones' last attacks had occurred in Skyville so most in Empire City felt a false sense of security. That safety didn't last through the appetizers though. Jones attacked the building they were in. His powers had multiplied. Somehow, he had harnessed a power not seen in any of the metahumans before: the power to release energy directly from his metabands. Later, some suspected he had tampered with the bracelets in some way, allowing them to directly release the raw power they held directly from its source. Some believed that's what actually killed Jones in the end. That this power was simply too strong for him. Or that his lack of super-ego was what allowed him to fully tap into the power of the bracelets in the first place, something which any sane person would never release.
Regardless of how it happened, it was this release that cut a two foot section out of the first floor of the building my parents were in. Ironically, if he had cut faster the engineering experts suspect that the building would have simply dropped the two feet with little damage. Like a magician pulling the tablecloth out from under a table full of place settings. But instead, the slow blast caused the building to topple, right into the building across the street, destroying both. They were the first two of over fifty buildings that would be destroyed that day.
The rest of the story she already knew, since it was a story the entire world knew. The Governor had responded within minutes, but it was too late. So much damage had already been dealt. Some blamed him for much of the damage. While the heat blast from Jones caused a majority of the damage, later studies showed that much of the damage actually came from Jones and The Governor's battle. Two straight hours of repeatedly throwing each other through buildings certainly couldn't have helped.
The Governor tried repeatedly to move the battle away from the city. He would throw Jones seemingly half way around the world, only to have him return to the exact same block, determined on the total destruction of Empire City. The final time The Governor grabbed Jones and took off into space, we thought we might never see either of them again. They were gone for over an hour before the warnings came. Emergency systems around the world wailed, warning everyone within hearing distance to head indoors. Shield their eyes. And under no circumstances look at the sun. To this day, everyone in the western hemisphere remembers where they were during "The Flash". It was unavoidable. The blast of heat was felt around the world.
The Governor had thrown Jones into the sun, destroying his bracelets and killing him. Releasing the power source responsible for the bracelets themselves. The power source that was stronger than anything else the world had ever known, and one which is still not understood to this day.
The Governor returned to Earth two hours later, crashing into a desert in the Middle East. At least they assume it was The Governor. The body was so badly mangled there was no way to ever really even know for sure. His metabands were never found.
I'm so lost in telling the story, that I don't even notice Sarah's eyes have begun welling up with tears. I stop and apologize.
"What are you apologizing to me for?" she says.
"Because I upset you. Sorry. I didn't mean to," I say.
"No, don't ever apologize for that. I'm sorry that that happened to you. I can't even imagine what it's been like," She says, wiping her eyes and regaining her composure.
"Thanks," I say, because I don't know what else to.
She looks at me for a long moment and nothing is said. Usually, I'm incredibly awkward during these types of breaks in conversation, but there's something about her, something about her eyes, that puts me at ease with the quiet. It's something I haven't felt before, but it's nice.
It's a full week before I start to get worried that I haven't heard from Midnight at all. No sightings of him on the news either, although that isn't really that usual, considering his predilection for staying out of the spotlight.
There are a handful of incidents involving The Controller's "creations" across the rest of the country, always in cities where metas have started popping up. While there's a lot of general mayhem when these happen, there's minimal collateral damage, meaning few, if any civilians wind up getting hurt. And the metas always win. There's something suspicious about all of it. It feels like The Controller is just testing the rest of us. Finding out what our strengths and weaknesses are, and making sure that there's an audience. If I've figured this out, I'm sure that Midnight has already done the same.
16
I wake up on Thursday morning and jump out of bed before I realize that I actually have the day off. A day off. I haven't had an actual, honest to God, nothing to do at all, day off in what feels like forever, so naturally that means I have no idea what to do with myself and start going crazy.
Derrick is actually at the office for a change so I have the house entirely to myself. Jim's working today so he won't be around. It's been over a week since I've heard from Midnight, and it doesn't seem he'd be interested in spending a day off going to the movie theater with me, anyway.
I get out of bed and take a shower then pour myself a bowl of cereal and park in front of the TV.
TV. It seems like I haven't had time to even watch TV lately. I start flipping through the channels. The cable news networks, that focused exclusively on covering metas during the first meta wave all those years ago, have flipped their formats back for the most part. From what everyone can tell so far, the number of new metas is still relatively low, nowhere near the heights of the first meta rising. I wonder how many more there might be that are just flying under the radar, though. After The Battle a lot of people stopped idolizing all things meta and started becoming very suspicious of humans that possessed powers strong enough to nearly level an entire city.
Along with the possibility that many of the new metas are staying hidden right now, there's also the fact that bad metas are already emerging. Last time it wasn't for awhile before anyone that could be considered a 'villain' appeared. There were plenty of opportunists and metas that pledged allegiance to nothing but the almighty dollar. Mercenaries who worked for whatever government, corporation or organized criminals paid the highest amount. While this was looked down upon by the general population, for the most part, it didn't affect their day-to-day lives. A meta taking out a mob boss isn't scary. What's scary is when a certified maniac like Jones appears and has no motivation other than chaos. It's the randomness that scares people. When they can't understand someone's motivations.
The news covers Blue Lightning's latest 'heroics', if you can call them that. Blue Lightning is apparently the name that the meta who showed up at Electrotown has decided to take on. He responded to a domestic abuse situation outside the city where the husband was threatening the wife with a hunting knife. She had barricaded herself inside the bathroom and called 911. Unfortunately for the husband Blue Lighting got there before any of the police had a chance. The wife never even saw him apparently. Later when they were pulling her out of the bathroom she told them that all she heard was her husband, who had been yelling and screaming, banging on the door, suddenly become eerily quiet.
"Whatever. I'm sure he's feeling very pleased with himself and smug about all of this," she says. "Anyway, excited about your first day here?"
"Me? Oh yeah. Super excited. Can't wait in fact," I say.
"Awesome. You're going to love it here. I had no idea you were even a lifeguard," she says.
Dammit.
"Oh. I'm not a lifeguard actually. I'm cleanup crew," I say.
There's a few steps of silence.
"Oh. Well, that's fun too, right? You're still outside! Well, I mean not when you're cleaning the toilets and stuff, but still. It's better than digging ditches," she says.
"Yup," I reply.
"I mean, there is some ditch digging, I guess, when you have to help out with the fire pits, but that's like maybe five percent of the job. Tops," she says, not making me feel any better.
We approach the entrance gate together and head inside the facility. The lake itself is private and only accessible to members who pay a yearly fee. In exchange, they receive access to all the amenities on offer, which include separate men and women's locker rooms, showers, a playground for kids, beach chairs, towel service, an exclusive members-only restaurant, etc. It's basically a notch below a country club, and all in all, not a bad place to spend the day. Unless that day is spent picking up garbage and cleaning toilets, naturally. But hey, at least I'm making exactly one dollar above minimum wage!
Sarah sees some old co-worker friends as we head in through the gates together and excuses herself to say hi to them. That'll probably be the last time I get to talk to her, let alone, any of the lifeguards since they basically see themselves as a separate class from us cleaners.
"What the hell are you doing here?" A voice laughs behind me. I turn around and see that it's Brad Turner. Looks like I was wrong. I will get to talk to another lifeguard here. Awesome. Great.
"Hi Brad. I'm working here. I have a job here," I say.
"As a lifeguard?" He asks incredulously.
"No, as a cleaner," I reply.
"I know as a cleaner, you ass. You thought I really thought you could be a lifeguard?" This question makes him laugh. Laugh and laugh and laugh. I turn to walk towards the group that seems to be gathering for orientation. As I do, Brad grabs my shirt and pulls me in close to his face.
"Look. I know everyone thinks your some kind of hero or something for that little stunt in the woods, but I don't buy it. You didn't do shit and honestly, I think the whole thing stinks," he says.
"What do you mean?" I ask.
"You know what I mean," he says.
"No. I don't, actually," I reply.
"Just know that I've got my eye on you, loser. I don't buy into everyone else's garbage about you." And with that, he releases me from his meaty hands and walks towards the orientation group.
Whatever Brad's view of me is, it certainly does not gel with how the rest of the city sees me. I was 'famous' for being the regular human sidekick that helped save that little girl for exactly three seconds before the credit was given to the meta, and the news cycle moved onto the understandably more interesting story of the return of metahumans. Pointing this out isn't likely to change Brad's opinion of me. He's not exactly known for having an open mind.
I make my way over to the rest of the group of roughly fifty employees and find a seat on a bench. Everyone seems to know each other and are already deep into conversations. Everyone that is except me, of course. The new kid who got the job through his new crazy, masked vigilante friend hacking into a computer. I sarcastically think to myself how this summer is going to be just fantastic, when I feel a punch in the arm and hear the question, "What the hell are you doing here?" This is starting to get old now.
But I turn around and it's Jim! What a gigantic relief and the first actual nice surprise I've had in weeks now. I completely forgot that he works at the lake every summer.
"Hey man! I'm working here," I tell him.
"Really? That's great. Maybe that means I'll actually get to, you know, see and hang out with my friend once in awhile now," he replies.
"Ugh. Yeah. Sorry about that. I've been-" I get out before he cuts me off.
"Don't worry about it. I know what... happened in the woods was pretty traumatic. I wasn't sure if you blamed me for us getting split up there, or what, so I thought I'd just leave you alone for a bit. Give you some breathing room," he tells me.
I hadn't even thought about the idea that Jim would think I was mad at him. The reality literally couldn't be further from the truth, but I can't exactly explain how my entire life has been turned upside over the past few weeks.
"Oh, dude. Forget about it. I never thought that," I tell him.
"Whew. That is a huge relief. I thought you just never wanted to even see me again."
"Not at all."
"Great! So in that case: where the hell have you been?" he asks.
Whoops.
"Oh, you know. Just busy. Just trying to get everything back in order. I'm sure you heard about what happened at Electrotown," I say.
Sure, that was only a day ago and doesn't explain why I dropped off the face of the Earth before then, but at the very least, it's bound to change the subject.
"Oh my God. You were there?" he asks.
"Yeah. I thought you knew."
"No! I had no idea. Holy cow, man. You're having a rough couple of weeks."
"Ha. Yeah. A little bit," I try to laugh it off.
"Seriously though. That's really strange," he replies back.
Uh oh. I can practically see gears turning inside his head. Of course it's weird that I've been in two different places, where not only have there been deaths, but deaths caused by metahumans. The first metahumans anyone has seen in a decade. Yeah, I'd say that ranks pretty high up there on the coincidence chart.
"Hey!" A gruff voice yells at us. I've never been so happy to have someone yelling at me in my life. "I know taking out trash and cleaning toilets isn't rocket science gentlemen, but if you want to start getting a paycheck, I need you both to shut the hell up and pay attention for a goddamn minute."
This elicits a chuckle from the rest of the employees, most of whom have less demeaning jobs than Jim and myself this summer. The man yelling at us, I gather, is the general manager of the place, 'Big Jeff'. I remember Jim complaining to me about him last summer. Although he is indeed quite a large man, both in height and rotundness, I hadn't actually noticed his entrance, or the fact that he had started addressing the group. I guess I was too worried about my best friend possibly deducing that I was a metahuman within all of two minutes, when seeing me for the first time in days.
"Sorry," Jim apologizes to Jeff on behalf of both of us.
"Who are you?" Jeff asks, his eyes directed towards me.
"Connor. Connor Connolly," I reply.
"Never seen you before."
"It's my first summer here."
"Well you're off to a bad start. I've got my eye on you," he threatens.
Great. Another person with their eye on me. For years and years, no one had their eye on me, and now when I need to be invisible, everyone seems to have their eye on me. Jeff strikes me as more bark than bite, but all the same, his attention is the last thing I need. I'm here to earn some money this summer, get into better physical shape and hopefully fly under the radar as much as possible.
In a world that is teeming with cameras monitoring every corner of the globe, the lake is refreshingly old fashioned in that respect. No need for much security, since there's not much to steal. Sure, kids sneak in at night to go swimming, which is dangerous, but it's a big lake. If they didn't do it on this shore, there are thousands of feet of lakefront they could go to instead, so there's no point to having much security.
The orientation is predictably simple. Most of the other employees have been here summers in the past. Even crap jobs like mine are desirable because, hey, at least you're outside in the summer, right? Once someone secures a job at the lake they don't give it up easily, even after they've gone away to college.
The caste system at the lake is pretty simple too and doesn't take too long to figure out. At the top are the lifeguards. They get paid more than anyone else and basically can get away with absolute murder as long as they sit on a lifeguard stand when they're supposed, which is approximately one eighth of the day.
Below them is the people working the ticket booth at the front. While this is an extremely boring job where you are essentially isolated from the rest of the lake and its employees, it is also by far the absolute easiest job on Earth. Since entering the lakefront requires a membership, they don't even have to handle money. Literally, all they have to do is look at membership cards as members enter and make sure they're the right color for this year. That's it. A monkey could do it if you could teach a monkey about colors. And if it could talk I guess, but that's barely a prerequisite.
Under the booth workers are the concession stand employees. Flipping burgers, frying potatoes and scooping ice cream all day is by no means a cakewalk, but there are some perks. First off, they're the only employees who get to enjoy air conditioning. Secondly, they essentially get all the free food that they want. Not only that, but they control the supply of free food. Nothing makes a teenager more popular in a controlled environment like the lakefront, than the power to give someone a free cheeseburger if they deem him or her worthy.
Below them, and everyone else, is me and the rest of the cleaning crew. We're paid the least, have the worst hours, are outside in the hot sun pretty much all day, have the hardest work, and have to deal with everyone else's garbage. Literally. We not only have to collect, but also dispose of, any and all garbage on the lakefront grounds. When you have a place where hundreds of people are coming through every single day, they're going to produce a lot of trash. We deal with that trash.
But honestly, it isn't that bad. For the first few days there, I'm happy to be doing something mindless that, well, helps me keep my mind off of things. The meta sightings haven't slowed down, if anything they've ramped up but, thankfully, they've all been in other cities. I haven't heard from Midnight in awhile, but he's the last person I'll ever have to worry about. It makes sense that he's not around now that Bay View City has stopped being such a hotbed for meta activity. This has also helped me adhere to his whole rule not to use my powers while he's away.
For the first time in what seems like a very long time, I'm just enjoying being sixteen and not having the responsibility of being a meta who doesn't even know fully how to control his own powers hanging over him. Jim and I become close again and start hanging out more frequently, now that I have less to hide. Sarah starts spending more of her breaks hanging out with me too. She even helps me pick up some of the garbage sometimes! If that isn't maybe, kinda, sorta, possibly 'like', than I don't know what is.
She also becomes the first person in a very long time that seems to have the courage to actually ask about my parents. It happens one day, completely out of the blue, as we're walking along the beach. Me picking up ketchup covered napkins out of the sand, and her just asking. There's hesitation, but no pretense.
"So if you don't want to talk about it, I totally understand..,", she starts, and I already know what she's going to ask, "...but since I don't really know, I thought it would be better to ask you than assume: what exactly happened with your parents?"
I tell her about how Mom had arranged to meet Dad that afternoon for lunch. Jones' last attacks had occurred in Skyville so most in Empire City felt a false sense of security. That safety didn't last through the appetizers though. Jones attacked the building they were in. His powers had multiplied. Somehow, he had harnessed a power not seen in any of the metahumans before: the power to release energy directly from his metabands. Later, some suspected he had tampered with the bracelets in some way, allowing them to directly release the raw power they held directly from its source. Some believed that's what actually killed Jones in the end. That this power was simply too strong for him. Or that his lack of super-ego was what allowed him to fully tap into the power of the bracelets in the first place, something which any sane person would never release.
Regardless of how it happened, it was this release that cut a two foot section out of the first floor of the building my parents were in. Ironically, if he had cut faster the engineering experts suspect that the building would have simply dropped the two feet with little damage. Like a magician pulling the tablecloth out from under a table full of place settings. But instead, the slow blast caused the building to topple, right into the building across the street, destroying both. They were the first two of over fifty buildings that would be destroyed that day.
The rest of the story she already knew, since it was a story the entire world knew. The Governor had responded within minutes, but it was too late. So much damage had already been dealt. Some blamed him for much of the damage. While the heat blast from Jones caused a majority of the damage, later studies showed that much of the damage actually came from Jones and The Governor's battle. Two straight hours of repeatedly throwing each other through buildings certainly couldn't have helped.
The Governor tried repeatedly to move the battle away from the city. He would throw Jones seemingly half way around the world, only to have him return to the exact same block, determined on the total destruction of Empire City. The final time The Governor grabbed Jones and took off into space, we thought we might never see either of them again. They were gone for over an hour before the warnings came. Emergency systems around the world wailed, warning everyone within hearing distance to head indoors. Shield their eyes. And under no circumstances look at the sun. To this day, everyone in the western hemisphere remembers where they were during "The Flash". It was unavoidable. The blast of heat was felt around the world.
The Governor had thrown Jones into the sun, destroying his bracelets and killing him. Releasing the power source responsible for the bracelets themselves. The power source that was stronger than anything else the world had ever known, and one which is still not understood to this day.
The Governor returned to Earth two hours later, crashing into a desert in the Middle East. At least they assume it was The Governor. The body was so badly mangled there was no way to ever really even know for sure. His metabands were never found.
I'm so lost in telling the story, that I don't even notice Sarah's eyes have begun welling up with tears. I stop and apologize.
"What are you apologizing to me for?" she says.
"Because I upset you. Sorry. I didn't mean to," I say.
"No, don't ever apologize for that. I'm sorry that that happened to you. I can't even imagine what it's been like," She says, wiping her eyes and regaining her composure.
"Thanks," I say, because I don't know what else to.
She looks at me for a long moment and nothing is said. Usually, I'm incredibly awkward during these types of breaks in conversation, but there's something about her, something about her eyes, that puts me at ease with the quiet. It's something I haven't felt before, but it's nice.
It's a full week before I start to get worried that I haven't heard from Midnight at all. No sightings of him on the news either, although that isn't really that usual, considering his predilection for staying out of the spotlight.
There are a handful of incidents involving The Controller's "creations" across the rest of the country, always in cities where metas have started popping up. While there's a lot of general mayhem when these happen, there's minimal collateral damage, meaning few, if any civilians wind up getting hurt. And the metas always win. There's something suspicious about all of it. It feels like The Controller is just testing the rest of us. Finding out what our strengths and weaknesses are, and making sure that there's an audience. If I've figured this out, I'm sure that Midnight has already done the same.
16
I wake up on Thursday morning and jump out of bed before I realize that I actually have the day off. A day off. I haven't had an actual, honest to God, nothing to do at all, day off in what feels like forever, so naturally that means I have no idea what to do with myself and start going crazy.
Derrick is actually at the office for a change so I have the house entirely to myself. Jim's working today so he won't be around. It's been over a week since I've heard from Midnight, and it doesn't seem he'd be interested in spending a day off going to the movie theater with me, anyway.
I get out of bed and take a shower then pour myself a bowl of cereal and park in front of the TV.
TV. It seems like I haven't had time to even watch TV lately. I start flipping through the channels. The cable news networks, that focused exclusively on covering metas during the first meta wave all those years ago, have flipped their formats back for the most part. From what everyone can tell so far, the number of new metas is still relatively low, nowhere near the heights of the first meta rising. I wonder how many more there might be that are just flying under the radar, though. After The Battle a lot of people stopped idolizing all things meta and started becoming very suspicious of humans that possessed powers strong enough to nearly level an entire city.
Along with the possibility that many of the new metas are staying hidden right now, there's also the fact that bad metas are already emerging. Last time it wasn't for awhile before anyone that could be considered a 'villain' appeared. There were plenty of opportunists and metas that pledged allegiance to nothing but the almighty dollar. Mercenaries who worked for whatever government, corporation or organized criminals paid the highest amount. While this was looked down upon by the general population, for the most part, it didn't affect their day-to-day lives. A meta taking out a mob boss isn't scary. What's scary is when a certified maniac like Jones appears and has no motivation other than chaos. It's the randomness that scares people. When they can't understand someone's motivations.
The news covers Blue Lightning's latest 'heroics', if you can call them that. Blue Lightning is apparently the name that the meta who showed up at Electrotown has decided to take on. He responded to a domestic abuse situation outside the city where the husband was threatening the wife with a hunting knife. She had barricaded herself inside the bathroom and called 911. Unfortunately for the husband Blue Lighting got there before any of the police had a chance. The wife never even saw him apparently. Later when they were pulling her out of the bathroom she told them that all she heard was her husband, who had been yelling and screaming, banging on the door, suddenly become eerily quiet.
