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“Here we are.” Jack gestured to the inside of his room. “Have a seat.”
“Where?” I asked. Piles of ancient DVD cases were stacked next to a worn, broken down couch. Open soda cans littered the floor near a large TV, and a chipped dinner plate sat atop one of the DVD stacks. His room was only slightly less outdated than the brig.
He smirked. “Anywhere you can find.”
I avoided the scattered papers and twisted aluminum cans, then sat at the center of the couch. Tim squeaked as it sagged underneath him, its springs too broken to fight even his scrawny frame.
Jack punched a button on a boxy machine under the TV. “You guys should like this—it’s a superhero game.”
The screen changed to a warning and a bold logo, followed by a growing crescendo of music and flashing images. The speakers blared, filling the room with pulsing energy. The music throbbed, faster and heavier than the music I was accustomed to hearing. Whatever this was, it wasn’t classical. An unbelievably huge grin crossed Lance’s face, and Tim eyed the speakers with caution. I resisted tapping my foot to the beat, waiting to see how it played.
“What exactly are superheroes?” I asked. “You mentioned them earlier.”
“Right—” Jack squatted beside a mixed pile of books and papers, then tossed us a stack of flimsy booklets.
I passed a handful to Tim, then cautiously took one for myself. Firelight: Volume 23.
The cover flaunted a bold woman in a shiny, skin-tight outfit that was a bright mix of orange and red. I flipped through the pages with their numerous images and short bits of dialogue. The woman on the cover, Firelight, fought a man with green, glowing hands. Looking at these costumes, I could see where certain E-Leadership members got their ideas of fashion.
“Superheroes,” Jack explained loudly, “are people who have special powers. Kind of like us—’cept we’re real. They use their powers to thwart super villains...” He pressed a button on his bulky remote. “...someone who uses his powers to harm others or cause destruction. Sometimes you have an anti-hero, and you can’t tell who the real bad guy is.”
After eyeing my comic book, Tim carefully laid his back in the stack and exchanged it for one that had subdued, grungy tones. “So, a superhero tries to save the Community from a super villain, who wants chaos?” he asked.
Jack grunted. “These were written well before the Community. Now forget the books; we’ve got a game to play.” He tossed us each a block of plastic with several buttons and two small, circular thumb sticks.
“What are we supposed to do with these?” I wasn’t sure how to hold it.
“Press this button to fire.” Jack clicked the right, trigger-like button. “Press this one to use your power.” He went on to explain movement and how to change inventory. “Now make your characters.” The screen split into four segments, each with a different character. A little experimentation on my part resulted in changing the character’s sex, hair, and form-fitted attire, and then revealed a list of weapons: a sword, an oddly shaped club called a baseball bat, a rifle, and two pistols. I chose a sword for my blond-haired, yellow suited lady.
According to Jack, we were supposed to run our tiny characters around the screen, destroying things for points and beating up “bad guys.” Jack, of course, killed the villains with ease. As for us, Lance kept hitting the pause button instead of the attack button, resulting in multiple deaths before he figured out what each button did. Meanwhile, I managed to take out a couple bad guys before seeing my character gutted in painful slow motion.
If this is what happened to actual heroes, I wasn’t sure I wanted any part of it. I remembered Chill’s death all too well.
“Look!” Tim grinned at us, his hands free of the controller. “I can move my guy around just by thinking!”
Jack twisted his lips. “Good for you, kid.”
I wasn’t sure if he was annoyed or impressed... though I couldn’t believe Tim’s techno sight power let him do that.
Lance grunted as his character died again. “Eh—This game’s not really for me. I’m gonna see what else is going on.” He nodded politely to Jack before tripping over the wires on his way out.
“You might at least watch the cords,” Jack grumbled, leaning over to plug the controller back in. “Did you guys want to keep playing?”
I frowned. Lance only ran away like that if something upset him. “I’ll be back in a moment. Go on without me.” I hopped over the mess of wires and peered out the door. Lance stood by the stairwell, his back to the wall.
“You all right?”
“Hmm? Yeah, I’m fine.”
I squinted, trying to make heads or tails of him. Normally I would have thought he was upset, but right now he seemed more contemplative than anything else.
“What’s up?”
He rested his hand on the hilt of his sword and stared at his distorted reflection in the wall. “All this time, I’ve wanted to go into Special Forces. I wanted to be the best of the best. You know, like my mom.”
I leaned against the wall next to him. “Yeah, I know.”
He sighed. “Then I end up here, and I like it better. Fewer rules. Fewer regulations. Immediate training on the weapon I want. The video game’s not that great, but the comic books are cool. It’s like... the perfect world.”
“Except that these are the people we’ve been told are a threat.”
“Exactly. But the rebels haven’t said anything that makes me think they’re lying. To be honest, I want to look around for myself. See what I can find without them looking over my shoulder.”
I glanced behind me, but there was no sign that anyone was watching us. “If you’re curious, check out the brig. It’s just upstairs, and it’s filled with old books. There’s a computer, too. I don’t know when they used it last. You could probably sneak in there and take a look around. The door doesn’t lock.”
He smirked. “I take it you’ve been snooping?”
“Sort of, but Jack caught me.”
He looked me over, then let out a slow breath. “Be careful, okay? They could turn on us without warning.”
“I’ll keep Jack busy with the games for a little while. Just try not to get caught.”
He grinned. “I was training for security. I can run an investigation.”
“Sure,” I teased, and I couldn’t help but smile.
Lance headed upstairs and I returned to the noisy video game.
“Kid all right?” Jack asked, never taking his eyes from the screen. Tim was giving him a run for his money, forcing Jack to dodge a slew of fireball attacks.
“He’s just restless,” I said quickly.
Jack grunted affirmation, and a weight lifted from my shoulders. He didn’t know Lance was planning to look around. I jumped back in the game. It was like self-defense practice, only I didn’t feel so bad about the idea of hurting anyone. It was a nice relief from thinking about home. Well... what used to be home.
An hour later, Jack turned off the console and shooed us out. I wandered the halls, looking for any sign of Lance, but he did a good job of staying out of sight. On the upper deck, Pops’ voice echoed from inside his room. “...be careful. I don’t want you getting caught between them.”
I edged the door open. “Pops?” It felt weird to call him that. Informal.
He lowered his radio momentarily from his lips, then finished what he was saying. “I’ll talk to you later, Gwen. Good luck.”
I couldn’t tell what the voice on the other end said, but Pops put away the radio and smiled. The skin crinkled at the edge of his eyes. “I was wondering when you would stop by. I assume you have questions?”
He motioned to a chair with a simple metal frame and blue, crosshatch-patterned fabric. LED efficiency lights glinted off the metallic walls and lit the picture frames hanging there. One was of a woman in a simple green dress holding the hand of a young boy, and one was of a family picture with my dad, mom, and myself when I was only a couple years old. The final photo was of a charismatic man with his brown hair combed back. His dark eyes resembled my father’s, and his hand lay on the shoulder of someone who might’ve been my grandmother. His other hand rested on the shoulder of a guy my age. But the photo had seen better days. The spot with Pops’ name tag had been ripped, and there was a dried blood stain on its tattered corner.
Pops rearranged the materials on his desk, pausing at a small, pixilated picture of me from my freshman year in high school. “It took a lot of work to find you after your father moved.”
“The family database isn’t password protected. Shouldn’t have been that hard to find me,” I said carefully.
“I was excommunicated from the Community. Made it harder to keep tabs on your father—and you—once you were born. Unfortunately, Ron failed to see that you were in danger.”
I eyed the torn photo and the faded blue and yellow symbol painted on the front of Pops’ desk. The woman being tortured.
I averted my eyes from the symbol. “You said the Camaraderie uses a beast army. But forcing a transformation should use more resources, not less. Why spend all the money to produce a pill that blocks powers if only a small percentage of the population is likely to have those powers? It’s not efficient.”
His lips parted in surprise, but he raised his chin in acknowledgement. “You are correct. But the Camaraderie could not control a population that knows the extent of their lies. They need powers to be a secret. It’s how they maintain control.”
“They use powers for Special Forces; why not other fields?”
“They do,” Pops said softly. “Certain powers don’t translate well into beasts, and certain people don’t make good soldiers. Yet those people find themselves hired with the assurance that their powers are little more than a side effect of the treatment for theophrenia. They’re told to keep it secret, and what they’re told varies by what best benefits the Camaraderie.”
I frowned. “Seems like a good way to get caught.”
“By blocking powers in the general population, they don’t have to single anyone out before assessing their personality, and this way, they don’t worry about powers upsetting their governing bodies.” He rubbed his salt-and-pepper beard thoughtfully. “You said Tim hacked the health network. Imagine fighting hundreds of hackers, all wanting to know their secrets. Some malicious, some merely curious.”
He had a point. Besides, if the Camaraderie wanted to blame theophrenia for the disappearances, they couldn’t very well take toddlers away from their parents without raising suspicions. They’d have to come up with a decent explanation for a disease that only affected children... though that sounded simpler than their current procedure.
“Fine. Where do you fit into all this?” I leaned back in the chair, but it wasn’t nearly as comfortable as the one in Jim’s room.
“The Camaraderie is too strong to fight directly, so we find alternative methods to subvert its power. We run errands for other rebellions and make minor acts of sabotage. Recently, we’ve been contacted by a village in Guatemala. Gwen, our ambassador, is negotiating with them now to protect an artifact, which, according to the village, may have the power to let us stop the Camaraderie at its source. While I doubt there’s anything truly special about it, the fact that Camaraderie mercenaries are snooping around the area leads me to think it has to be of some importance. Either way, I have a few calls to make before I give Gwen the go-ahead to make the arrangements. Did you have any other questions?”
“Actually, yes. Why doesn’t my cell phone have a signal?”
“We jam signals whenever we’re near a tower. They would make us an easy target. It’s the same reason we don’t use wireless networks. Instead, we use radios for long range communication.” He held up the radio he’d been using earlier.
“So... I won’t be able to contact my parents?”
He shook his head. “Your parents use EYEnet and none of us have the hacking skills to break in.”
“Tim might.”
“The three of you are too close to the Community. For all we know, you could contact security the moment you get a signal.”
I sighed. At least he was honest. “I’m going to want to talk to my parents eventually.”
“I understand. But right now, for your safety and theirs, we can’t risk contact. The Camaraderie will be keeping a close eye on them.” He placed his hands in his lap. “I realize this is overwhelming, but I appreciate you coming to talk with me. I want you to feel at home.”
“You’re right, it is overwhelming,” I said softly, “but I don’t think I can ever call this place home.” I stood to leave. “Regardless, thanks for being honest.”
“Of course,” he said. “That’s what makes us different from the Community.”
