She was
different. It didn't matter a single iota what I was; it didn’t matter to her.
If you
passed a Super on the street, you'd never know. They look like us.
One people, One power...
I had to
admit, it had a nice ring. It’s an idea that made me take the leap and apply,
after months of agonizing uncertainty, and imposter syndrome.
We were the
same.
The Paragon
Academy believed so, too; they had a special intake stream for people like me –
‘category Z’. Sure, the stats were dire for Z’s; over 86% failed to graduate,
and of those, 93% did not survive the first year post-graduation. But her
effusive mantra kept sounding in my head as I read through the intake
application forms. And then, again, when I finally received my acceptance
letter.
“ONE PEOPLE! ONE POWER!”
She had
hovered onto the grounds of the packed Hammerhead City stadium and declared
this mantra to an additional home-viewing audience. Her diaphragm was so strong
she did not need a microphone. I was watching on the TV, swearing she was looking
down into my eyes, saying it directly to me, including me in her gated-off
world. Then the moment broke as she did some mid-air aerodynamic twirls and
spins -- like a gymnast on an invisible rope – which the social media
commentators dubbed ‘space flipping’, and the stadium broke into cheering. Snapping
the hypnotic hold she had over the stadium, she accelerated into the sky so
fast it was like she’d been sucked up by an alien tractor beam moving in fast
forward – but faster. And of course, there was the signature departure sound, a
sharp spurt like a bottlerocket. The internet called it the ‘shuf!’ (like
‘shook’, not ‘shut’) and it spawned memes, which she at first said was ‘cute’
and later confessed irritated her, on a talk show:
“I’m still mystified that shuf! got the
traction it did – I love those old retro comic text bubbles as much as anybody
-- but for a little while it defined me and definitely had me questioning
myself when I got up in the morning, my vocational choice, whether people were
making fun of me, and brought on this deep, searching kind of identity crisis.
Shuf! was on memes and t-shirts and everywhere but I realize now, I am not shuf!
I am so much more than shuf!
At the Hammerhead
City stadium, ‘shuf!’ caused a sonic boom, sending the TV broadcast to a
ringing test pattern for ten minutes.
***
Outside,
the sun hadn’t yet risen. My breath came out in a mist. Good thing I had
grabbed a padded jacket last minute before leaving the house; I was wearing my
Paragon-issue jumpsuit underneath, and it did little to shield the cold. These
things were designed to vent body heat during physical exertion – glorified gym
clothes – not get you through a cold winter.
A black
Chevy rolled up and stopped in the driveway of the house next door, and an
older man got out, with a dark crew cut. He’d moved here about a week ago. He
was physically fit and I wondered if he was maybe a PE teacher or something.
This time
he actually spoke to me:
“You live
by yourself, Steve?”
He walked
up to the dividing fence and leant an arm across it.
I wondered
how he knew my name.
“Just me,”
I nodded. “I haven’t been here that long, either, about a month.”
“I thought
so. The neighbors didn’t seem to know who was living here.” He smiled. “I never
caught you, but I knew there had to be someone because earlier this week those
gadgets mysteriously appeared on your roof.”
He motioned
up at my rooftop, where an array of outlandish aerials and satellites were set
up. And what I used them for was even more outlandish.
When I
didn’t say anything, he speculated:
“You must
be able to pick up secret broadcasts from North Korea on those things. Unless
you’re trying to talk to aliens.”
I always
affected a projection of confidence when I talked about dangerous or sensitive
subjects. Deflect suspicion with bravado or a joke. The problem was I relied on
this strategy so much I was starting to create a very not-me alter ego. I answered non-committedly:
“Possibly one
of those, yeah. But which one? Am I paranoid or am I crazy?”
“Well, kid,
you tell me.”
He offered
his hand over the fence, and I shook it. His name was Brandon Vega, and he was
a forensic detective, a CSI cop. I wouldn’t have guessed, he didn’t seem like a
cop. He seemed surprisingly patient and soft-spoken, and quick to smile. A real
life Friendly Neighborhood Cop.
“This ended
up in our mailbox by mistake,” he said, voice strangely hushed as if shy, as he
handed me a letter. “It’s addressed to you.”
I did a
double take. The letter was addressed to ‘Master Occupant’ and was indeed my
address, and, alarmingly, had the Paragon seal. If Brandon was a detective, he
would have known what it was.
“What a
puzzle. I have to check with the post office. Looks like a mistake.” I stuffed
it in my pocket.
Brandon
just smiled, shrugging it off, but his eyes were very intelligent ad scrutinizing.
It was obvious he didn’t believe this, and I immediately felt ashamed for
trying to dupe him with such a dumb lie.
“Look, it’s
the crack of dawn and I just got off my shift,” he said, mercifully dropping
the subject, “and you look like you’re going somewhere, so we’re all out of sync.
But if you’re free sometime, we have to get you on in for a meal – what do you
drink?”
I imagined
sitting around his dining table with him, probably his wife, as I tried to keep
the conversation dancing around and around the Paragon thing, which he now
knew, and I knew – and his wife probably knew – and it would be just another
shameful dupe to pretend I didn’t know anything about it, while struggling to
refuse beer or anything that would make me talk more freely.
“Water,” I
said.
“So, you’d
probably find us too boring,” he said ironically. He looked at me like he was
reading my mind, in fact I sensed he knew more about me than I knew about him.
And that wasn’t so far-fetched; he was a detective.
“Well, you
know I talk to aliens,” I said quickly, “so you basically know all about me.
I’m pretty boring myself, to be honest.”
“We’re
boring too, so we all get along. You’ll be okay for dinner,” he reassured me. “And
then there’s just my daughter,” he looked me up and down, “she’s about your age.”
Daughter? I thought. But I already had a girl in my
life, and I didn’t want to do a thing to jeopardize it.
He carried
on:
“It’s just
a seat at the table, you don’t have to spill your guts. We’re not big talkers,
either. Well, my daughter can be quite outspoken if she likes someone.”
“Okay,” I said,
now stuck in my false projection and doubling down, forcing enthusiasm to
breaking point. “Let’s do it!”
Pleased, he
headed back to his front door.
“Catch you
another time, Steve. And if you want to bring something, don’t. Just bring
yourself.”
He waved a
goodbye salute and shut the front door behind him.
*
The theme
park was lit up against the red evening sky. Show crowds bustled under the neon
signs; all the Natural kids enjoying their end of school year, high-fiving that
final exams were done.
And we
happened to have just started ours. We were about to step in and put our pens
to the paper.
I parked
the Academy-hire car on the other side of a line of carny vans, close to the
exit. Before switching off the ignition,
I checked the fuel gauge. The car was gassed up in case we needed to flee. I
turned to my associate, Summer.
She was a
studious, even brooding blonde with brown eyes, and was a ballerina from age
five, going on to win multiple Ballet competitions, until finally being
disqualified from an adult show when the judges discovered her arabesque
allongé had no anatomical limit. A family doctor certified that she was a
Super; a super-contortionist, she could stretch and twist her body like rubber.
She was a Flexer.
The Academy
stuck us together as assignment partners, and we immediately clicked, being
both high achievers and power-shy. I loved her policy of secrecy and that she
had never, ever asked me what my power was. Purely businesslike, she assumed
that when the time came, my power would manifest naturally for the correct job.
We weren’t show-offs.
Now, we sat
in the car, taking a couple of minutes to collect and prepare ourselves. The
radio was jabbering: commentators offering their views on snippets of a speech
delivered at the UN by a visiting Miss Venus.
Summer
listened and then all of a sudden spluttered with laughter.
“What?” I
said.
“Oh,” she
sighed disdainfully, “those little microphone crackling noises you hear before
the speech are the stilettos. The UN,” she repeated dubiously. “The shockwaves
from her stilettos as she walked across the hall. Of the UN Assembly.” She said with mock grandiosity: “Could you
imagine? Our newest Ambassador elect: Captain ‘choice footwear’.” Her voice got
low and disinterested, “She dropped in from some arts and fashion festival.”
“Her glutes
and quads would be made of steel to make those stiletto landings,” I pointed
out, trying to appeal to Summer’s hobby, and added, “You have to admit, it’s
very graceful.”
She
countered a little testily:
“You don’t want
steel pylons for a graceful landing. Steel can’t deform under pressure.”
I conceded:
“Okay, so you
don’t follow her on Twitter.”
She gave a
small sigh.
“She has
this grand vision of ideal society where the rules are inverted. It’s called
post-feminism and means trashy equals chic. I don’t follow that.”
Summer came
from at least four generations of hardline, no-nonsense, drab-costumed,
strictly utilitarian, ‘power-on-only-when-necessary’ Supers, and the new wave
of post-Millennial showiness and increasingly skin-baring costumes seemed to
quietly rub her the wrong way.
“She knows
what she’s doing,” I suggested. “It’s clever. She’s so good at what she does, she can afford to wear a mini-skirt for a
costume and not take herself seriously. It’s a calculating move to trick the
adversary into underestimating her.”
She shot
back:
“You mean
she’s good at what she does? She’s
the bouncy, cringey commercial break before the arrival of our next great
Super.”
I winced
inwardly and looked for a distraction. Luckily, the theme park provided many.
“Go time,”
I exclaimed, unclipping my seatbelt. “Power ready!”
It was our
last assignment before graduation, upon which our final grade hinged. I was
practically trembling with excitement. I couldn’t help myself. The goofy,
cavalier alter ego didn’t need compelling; it was coming out on its own from
the excitement.
Summer on
the other hand had nerves of steel (though her nerves were, literally, more
like rubber) and merely scoffed.
“Leave the
catchphrases until we get our grades. If we receive the top grade – as I
anticipate we will – I will personally come up with a catchphrase for us. And you can figure out the cheer dance
routine.”
“’Us’,” I repeated, catching her eye askance.
“Are you possibly suggesting that after we graduate,” I swallowed, trying to
sound casual and cool, like my ultimate Hero idol, Superblazar, “you want to
team-up?”
“Let’s see
you in action tonight, cadet,” she was being tongue-in-cheek since she too was
only a cadet. “And then, if you impress, maybe there is a future for us working
together. Wait until I make Captaincy,” she added coyly, “…and then hand in
your application as my honorary sidekick.”
I
remembered our mid-year exam, where I’d tried dismally to karate chop a gun, failed
to disarm the actor-playing-bad-guy and almost got a dummy round blasted at my
chest, when Summer – my exam partner – Inflated her body like a shield to catch
the round (rubberizing herself made her almost invulnerable), saving the exam,
and then shot me a very serious look that said ‘Why the hell didn’t you power-on?'
Back then,
the incident felt very sour. But now, on reflection, it made me feel pride that
she was my partner. Her response had been so fast, so reflexive, that maybe she
wasn’t just trying to salvage our exam score…maybe she genuinely felt something
for me, and was keen to save my skin or my feelings. She didn’t have to catch the bullet.
I replied:
“Honorary
sidekick…” I repeated slowly, feeling for the sound of the phrase. “So, Captain
Sagittarius and Cadet Rockwell.”
“Summer,”
she said smartly and nodded at me, “Steve.” She pushed open the door. “Come on.
Time lengthens…”
We got out
of the car, both wearing our ordinary ‘civilian’ clothes. We wouldn’t get our
official Superhero costumes until the grad ceremony. I’d had my measurements
done and my costume was finished and waited impressively in the Academy
showroom. I had designed it myself.
This was
the first part of the test; get in fast. In a real life crisis, hostage lives
were on the line. If we bought a ticket and waited in line we would have failed
the exam.
Around the
side, we stopped at an unmonitored barred fence away from the crowds, hidden around
some tall bushes and below the metal scaffolding of the great serpentine ‘Booster’
gold rollercoaster. As fluid as water, Summer went thin through the bars, and
twisting elegantly to reappear, reformed on the other side of the fence.
“While the
sun is still up, Steve,” she said.
My brain
was going a mile a minute. If the fence wasn’t barred I could probably have
taken a running leap and ‘parkored’ up, but if I tried that here, my hands and
feet were going to slip through the gaps.
“I know, ‘specialist’ power,” she drawled,
reciting the excuse I’d given her so many times before. “I’d love a
demonstration before graduation. The suspense is killing me. Literally, killing
me.”
She was
usually gentle, and kind of shy, but she was so grade-driven that exam settings
turned her into a different person. But this was our last exam, then we could
relax again.
The Booster
rollercoaster clanked and hissed above, rounding with a chorus of screams.
Below,
Summer’s legs stretched until her head appeared over the fence, while her arms
‘spaghettified’, arcing over the fence and coiling tight around my chest in a
bear hug. My cheeks went hot, and not merely from having the air squeezed out
of my lungs. I grabbed her arms for stability an instant before she gave a
powerful, elastic full-body jerk to vault me at the fencetop. The top bar
struck my abdomen, stopping me half over. Gasping, I pulled myself over and fell
onto the ground.
Meanwhile,
she was already hurrying into the park.
“Up and at
‘em!” she called back, giggling with nervous anticipation. The bubbliness was
an act; she was trying to fit with the crowd. It was also really cute, unusual
for her, and made my heart go faster.
I jumped to
my feet and scraped the dirt off my hands. My hands were red and stung; she’d
given me rubber burn.
Past the
wheeling arms of the red ‘Tornado’ pendulum ride, there was a painted warehouse
into a ride that was closed for maintenance. It used to house the purple
‘Phantom train’ ride, but the ride had been dissembled now, most of the ride
parts and machinery hauled off site. Now the entry was roped off and a sign
said:
Testing Zone 4A
Premises closed while testing in session:
X15SS; Z68SR
Those codes
were our Paragon Academy student usernames.
“Summer, stop!”
I called her. She doubled back, saw the board, and grinned.
“Nice find,
Rockwell!” she said genially, clapping me on the shoulder.
I glowed.
We rushed
past the testing sign, and a standing placard that said: You must be this tall to ride, before reaching the warehouse’s
double doors, which was padlocked.
Summer cast
a quick look around – the throngs of people moved briskly past us as we stood
in the warehouse’s shadow – and in the time it took to blink, Summer stretched
one finger very thin and picked the lock.
We cracked
the door open and went into the building, where big ride props and machine
parts stood in shadow.
“I think my
back-up’s arrived,” a man was saying into a walkie-talkie. He was wearing a park
maintenance outfit. “Uh, something weird is –” He came out of the dark and got
a look at us. “Hey! You’re not allowed in here!”
One of
Summer’s arms had already begun snaking around behind him. Lucky it was dark,
her arm could flatten and trace the shadows. Her forearm lifted and made a sudden
snapping motion, like an elastic band being released, which brought her fist
into the back of his head. He made a small groan and crumpled forward onto the ground.
“Hey, not
good!” I said, trying not to panic already. “How do you know he was a bad guy? He
might be park staff! He might be a hostage sent as a messenger!”
Summer
swept a hand impatiently over her brow, as if to neaten up her hair.
“Steve,”
she tutted, “stop overthinking this. They’re not trying to slip us up. He’s a
bad guy,” she nudged his shoulder with a foot. “This whole building is exam
zone. They’re all actors.”
She
beckoned me ahead.
“He came
from that way. Come on!”
We passed
the shelved ride parts and equipment to another locked door. A couple of voices
murmured on the other side, a man and a woman. They must have been the actors
playing the criminals we were supposed to take down, and probably guarding the
actors playing hostages.
Summer
turned her back against the door and stared at me.
“Last exam
question, Rockwell: who handles the bust, and who pulls off the rescue?”
We’d talked
about this earlier: one of us would go in and power-on create a distraction,
give a signal command, and the other would follow, to confuse the bad guys.
I did
everything possible to keep my voice assertive and level:
“I can go
in.”
Literally,
I could go in, but I would probably
run into a bad guy with a dummy gun stationed across the other side of the room,
and I had nothing up against that. It wouldn’t kill me but it would be
humiliating as hell to drop before saving even one hostage.
Summer’s
lips pressed together, seeing something in my expression. She was so
businesslike and level-headed it was intimidating, but I felt another rush of
gratitude she was my partner, even if she played loose with the rules
sometimes, she always owned her decisions, and never panicked.
She was
already picking the lock.
“No, I’ll go,” she said. “You take too long
to do a perimeter sweep. It’s a criminal head count, not a rote memorization
test. I know you want to check all the boxes by the book, but you have to learn
to move first and then stop and think later.”
“We’ve got
to move exactly according to plan,” I countered, “otherwise we’re going to
surprise each other.”
“Try to be
more flexible, Steve. Learn to improvise.
Come in after me and we’ll finesse the plan as we go. And don’t be afraid to
get power-happy, there’s no use-penalty in the grading criteria. Let’s start a
small riot.”
She went to
open the door.
My chest
went tight. Desperate, I let out:
“Summer, wait…I
don’t have one.”
She
blinked.
“You don’t
have a plan?”
“Power,” I
said quietly. “No power. I don’t have one.”
Outside, the
rollercoaster car clicked and rattled down the track, riders screaming. We both
tensed, and relaxed again once it passed. Or, she relaxed. My tension didn’t lift.
She
pronounced very slowly:
“Oh, you’re a Natural,” and looked at me as if she’d never met me before. “Hmmm,”
she said under her breath. There was no heightened emotion in her voice, which
was usual for her, but now it seemed oddly lacking. “I guess…that makes sense.
I wondered why you kept going over the case studies so many times, like you’re
terrified of making the tiniest mistake.” But she still looked puzzled as her
eyes scanned my face. Her brows pinched above icy blue eyes. “How did you even
get into the cadetship program?”
“I went
through the category Z stream,” I said, stomach twisting into knots.
I had never
planned to tell her I was a Natural, and now it just came out in panic like
sand pouring out of a split sack. But if I hadn’t told her, we would get into
another situation where I got into danger and she had to save me. This wasn’t a
preparatory lesson, this was the real thing: the final exam. I couldn’t let
that happen again. It was more important we were totally on the same page with
each other, and that mean telling her the truth. If she thought I was keeping
secrets from her she’d never trust me enough to let me work with her.
“The what category?”
“Z. The not X or Y category.”
Supers were
admitted into category X for people with ingrained ability. Z stream was for
people with no ability. There was also a Y stream for a rare slice of the
Natural population who had been exposed to Super power, which had even less
intake than Z stream, even more stigmatized as the bucket ‘dislocated’ students
were dropped into because they didn’t fit into X or Z. The Zs and Ys made up
such a tiny proportion of the student body the were practically invisible and most
Super students just assumed everyone was
X stream.
“Oh yeah,”
she remembered out loud. “Holy shit,” she emphasized, sounding morbidly
fascinated. I couldn’t understand it; she wasn’t
angry. It seemed to be…okay.
“You wait,”
she restated, in a kinder, maybe even pitying tone, “I’ll give you the signal,
and…um…you do your thing. Honestly, two bad guys – what the heck examination
board? Set us such a chill job. You’ll be fine.”
“Right on,”
I said weakly, but she had already gone in, moving down a dark corridor,
turning a corner and was out of sight.