Meta (5 page)

  
Another theory was that the bands weren't used to give super powers to their original designers at all. That they were designed to aid an especially weak species. Or to give them some type of other ability. But like how certain medications can have different affects on different people, these bands gave lowly humans, a species they were never designed to work with, superhuman abilities.

  
Regardless of what theory you subscribe to personally, no one has any idea how they actually work. Everyone's bands seemed to work differently, or at least every person seems to gain somewhat unique powers from their own personal bands. If these unique powers lie in the bands themselves or in the person using it, no one knows. And we'll likely never know, because once a set of bands has been used, they never work for another person again.

  
I slip the bands off my wrists and put them under my bed for somewhat safekeeping. They come off remarkably easily, at least when you consider that they are thought to be literally impossible to remove when they are actually powered on.

  
In the living room, I find Derrick transfixed to the television. One of those twenty-four hour news channels is on. Ten years back, there were entire channels devoted just to news concerning meta activity, good and bad. Mostly the bad though. That's what got eyeballs. Most have gone off the air now. One or two still exist to show "classic" meta footage.

  
They're not showing old footage today, though. What's on the screen right now is in full HD and definitely recent; and it means that I'm not alone.

  
"Is that her?" Derrick asks me.

  
On the screen is a woman, covered head to toe in a tight black and purple suit that covers her entire body, leaving only her head uncovered. Her eyes are emitting a soft white glow, obscuring most of her facial features from this distance. Her hair is blond and long, flowing in the wind one hundred feet above the city where she is flying. We both watch as she darts in and out of a building on fire. Each time she comes out of the building, another person (or sometimes two) are in her arms. She brings them down to the ground slowly before bursting back into the building for another round.

  
"Definitely not," I say, my jaw hanging to the floor.

  
Derrick slowly turns his head around towards me. His eyes wide.

  
"So, you mean, there are two of them?"

  
"I guess so. That's definitely not the one who saved me." That much isn't lying. She's not the one who saved me. I'm the one who saved me. I need to find this woman, because whoever she is, she's got this whole metaband thing figured out a hell of a lot more than I do. Now there was just the question of how to deal with Derrick.

  
Somehow, I was able to get into my room without breaking through the wall while I was wearing my metabands. What I don't know is how to actually control them. Maybe I'd put them back on and be able to simply walk through my bedroom wall? But then again, maybe I'd put them on and go rocketing through the ceiling. There's no way to tell.

  
The way I see it; there are two options. The first is; I could pretend I am going to sleep and sneak out the window. This was definitely doable; I'd done it plenty of times before. The difference tonight is that if Derrick comes into my room in the middle of the night and I'm missing, he's almost certainly going to call the police. I'd just made my television debut as the "human sidekick" to the first meta seen in a very long time. Who knows what types of nut jobs could be out there looking to kidnap a person like that.

  
The other option is to tell Derrick that I am going out. He'd never let me, for the same reasons I just described: it's too risky for me to be out alone right now. I'd surely get a lecture all about how close I came to death last night, and how there will be people out there trying to find this meta, and that I'd make for pretty good bait.

  
I have to go though. If he tries to stop me, I won't let him. I don't care what he does. If it comes down to it, I'd just tell him. Tell him that I have metabands. That I'm now a meta. It'd be a gigantic risk, not only to my own well-being but also his. Ultimately though, I don't have a choice. If he tries to stop me, I have to do whatever it takes to leave, even if that means telling him the truth.

  
"Derrick. I'm going out," I state defiantly.

  
"Okay. Later," he says back, his eyes not even flinching away from the TV for a second.

  
Wow. That was easier than I thought. I'm halfway out the door before I realize that I haven't even brought my metabands. Not that I'm intending to use them tonight. I'm still terrified of them, but I should have them on me. Just in case. Plus, who knows what government agent could show up here tonight, maybe with a search warrant in hand, demanding that Derrick let them ransack the house.

  
I was lucky that poor little girl didn't realize I was the same person, she was probably too much in shock, but shock wears off. At first, they might ignore her insistence that I was the only one there, but after some time, they may begin to decide it's worth looking into. If tonight's that night, I can't take the chance.

  
I pull the bands out from under my bed. They're even lighter than I remember. I take a moment to look at them again. There really is nothing to them. For something so advanced and futuristic, they are exceedingly simple. You would not be able to tell the difference between these and a simple piece of aluminum. I slip one over my wrist, just to see what it's like again. It seems impossibly large around my frail little wrist and for a moment, I'm not even sure how I could keep these on without them just falling right off. Before I can complete my own thought, the band changes shape. The metal becomes almost liquid and wraps tightly around my wrist before becoming solid again. I can still move my wrist unencumbered, but now it is covered in a skintight metallic sheen. I guess that explains how they won't fall off.

  
I'm not worried about them falling now, but I've got a new problem: I can't get this damn thing off. It is literally skintight, and there is no way to wedge a fingernail or anything else between it and the skin on my forearm. Why did I do this? Maybe I need to activate them before they'll deactivate? Possibly, but that's an awfully big risk. I barely remember what happened the first time I activated them. Did it make a noise? A flash of light? Did it leave a three foot crater around where I was standing? I honestly can't remember what happened because I was in such a haze. I can't risk activating them in here, unless I'm ready to explain to Derrick why half the roof got torn off.

  
I stuff the other band in my pocket and look around for options. There in the corner of my closet is another hoodie. It's too hot out tonight for a hoodie, unless you're going down to the water, but I've got no other choice. I can't leave the house with my arm encased in liquid metal and expect no one to notice.

  
When I pick up the hoodie, I notice something beneath it in a pile of clothes: a ski mask. The kind that covers your entire face except for three holes for your eyes and mouth. I'd already told myself that I wasn't going to use the bands, but it would seem that my circumstances have changed. It's at this point that I realize I'm smirking to myself, because of course it would be awesome to actually turn these things on again, regardless of how I try to convince myself otherwise. I stuff the ski mask inside one of the side pockets of the hoodie and head out.

  
"See ya Derrick," I say as I pass him by.

  
I barely get even a grunt in return. He's sitting so close to the TV that he's going to go blind. On the screen is a slow motion replay of the woman with the glowing eyes, staring right into the camera, even though she must be hundreds of feet away. The camera zooms in digitally, the type of zoom that's really just blowing up the image itself and her face becomes larger. No more clearer though. She still looks as though she's staring right at the camera. Right through it even, into my living room. Right at me. I open the screen door into the night.

  
As I leave I pull my phone out of my pocket and glance at it. There's three missed calls and a bunch of texts from Jim. The last of which says he saw me on TV and to call him. Sorry buddy, it's gonna have to wait tonight.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Finding a meta isn't as easy as it seems. Well, to be honest, I didn't really think it would be that easy. I also didn't have an idea about how to search for her. So, I just kinda found myself wandering the streets.

  
Bay View City has definitely seen better days. I wasn't around for those better days of course, but I know they couldn't have been much worse than this. You can still see the beautiful classic architecture underneath the facades of the newer buildings. The $0.99 Stores built over buildings that have been there for close to a hundred years with ornate fixtures on their roofs that reach high into the city sky. The dive bars inside of what used to be swanky hotels. The hotel rooms above them turned into rooms rented by the hour and crack dens.

  
It was beginning to look hopeless that I'd find the meta woman with the glowing eyes. I'd been wandering around for nearly three hours without even a hint of luck. I visited the now burned out building from which she saved nearly fifty people earlier tonight. Nothing.

  
The idea of setting up a honeypot crossed my mind. Maybe get myself into trouble and see if she appears. It was too risky though. What if she didn't show up? After all, there has to be plenty of crime happening tonight, and it's not like anyone else has seen her since the building fire. I knew, I'd spent the night with one earbud in, listening into the police scanner through an app on my phone. A little bit easier than the old days I imagine.

  
If I did set up a honeypot and she didn't show, I thought I might be able to fall back on my metabands. But that was still too risky. Firstly, I had no guarantee that the metabands would even work when I needed them to. Secondly, I had no intention of accidentally killing someone, who was just trying to mug me for the fourteen dollars in my wallet, in case the trap I set didn't work.

  
That was when I remembered last night. That I killed a man. Sure, you could say that he deserved it. According to the news, this wasn't his first offense. Walter Houser. A convicted child molester, rapist and murderer. Sentenced to forty-three years in federal prison only to have his sentence reduced to twelve due to overcrowding. Overcrowding in the prisons became a big problem during the metahuman rising. Metas were able to round up criminals better than any law enforcement agency ever could, and combined with the media attention and the general public's wanting to perceive these new metas as our saviors, meant that conviction rates had never been higher.

  
He deserved to die, but did I deserve to be the one who killed him? A monster like that could never be reformed. That much was certain. But that didn't mean that I had the right to be his executioner. A lot of the old metahumans killed. It was part of who they were, but some had chosen not to. It was an attempt on their part at setting a positive example for the rest of society. Showing them that just because they had powers, didn't mean that suddenly they were gods.

  
Metas did occasionally screw up. When they did, the same media that had vaulted them into fame and stardom turned on them quickly. The most famous of which of course was the case of The Magician. The public loved him and he could do no wrong. While he wasn't necessarily one of the most powerful or famous metas, he made up for what he lacked in abilities with his charm. In a world where most metas were considered to take themselves way too seriously, The Magician was always quick with a joke and willing to appear on morning talk shows, late night shows, etc. His power was relatively simple: he could make things disappear. Just about anything really, there weren't limits, it seemed. Where they went, no one knew, not even The Magician himself. While this might not sound like an especially amazing ability to have, it came in handy more than once.

  
The Magician was famous for appearing just in the nick of time during a tense situation, maybe a kidnapping or police stand-off, and immediately diffusing the confrontation by making the weapon involved disappear. A gunman becomes much less of a threat when his gun simply disappears from his hands. Or so one would think.

  
There was an especially tense and high profile stand-off that The Magician was called in for by the police. It was outside the home of a famous actress, Lauren Richards. Beautiful and talented, it was rare for a summer to go by without a new blockbuster movie starring Lauren Richards. She was even known to have dated a couple of metas. Of course these relationships never lasted very long. I can't imagine how a relationship could when both people involved are essentially living double lives.

  
The situation was about as routine as these things got for The Magician. All he had to do was find his way down to the police barricades, a feat easy for him since he could make himself disappear and reappear wherever he pleased, focus on the weapon and make it disappear. From there, the police would just storm the stunned gunman and take him into custody.

  
The Magician arrived unbeknownst to the crazed stalker and crouched behind a squad car to focus on the gun. He had it within his sights and put the first and middle finger of each hand to his temples to focus on the gun and make it disappear. This is when Starlight, one of Ms. Richards’s former "friends" appeared in the sky and yelled, "Let her go!”

  
No one had expected Starlight to appear out of nowhere, so understandably everyone was startled. Unfortunately that included The Magician. His gaze and focus shifted in the split second he had intended to make the gun disappear. Only a foot to the right, but it was enough. Lauren Richards was a foot to the right, and in an instant she was gone. The stalker's gun went off but only shot empty space. He stood stunned, as did the police, before eventually rushing in to grab him.