FALL RUSHED by in a blur. Instead of leaves changing and apple picking, my days were taken up with time on the doc, and going to campaign events for Vice President Bergeron. It was like they kept us on file as stock images of happy teenagers whose lives were going to be improved by this guy running the government.Instead of celebrating Halloween properly this year, we were forced to attend another stupid campaign event. I felt like we were being used as props, local school children to pan the camera to when they needed to make a point about the youth. I also secretly suspected they wanted to make sure the Harris High Misshapes were included to quell the rumors that there had been Hero/Misshape fighting in Doolittle Falls. Sure, the story was nonexistent in the eyes of the media, but that seemed to me like a big conspiracy. But even the tightest container has leaks. Having us there, smiling, was probably more evidence that all the stories were fake.

The event was at the Miskatonik University auditorium, where they normally had basketball games. We walked in, passing an enormous white tent for the media, and Ms. Frankl led us through three layers of security along with a few other government classes filled with Normals. The Normals had no trouble getting through, but they had to call over the Paladin Division for us. Every Misshape had to wait while enormous men with powers galumphed toward us to wave special wands over our bodies. This time they didn’t accost Butters for nearly as long, but he was also able to keep the Spectors at bay until we got through.

The basketball court had been transformed into an enormous amphitheater. There were rows of bright red chairs lined up in all directions. In the center of the court were two podiums, an enormous presidential seal, and a heavily decorated table with microphones on it. Men and women were scurrying around fixing the lights, checking wires, moving chairs around, directing the audience. It felt a lot like the movie set for Annihilation Day.

After we were seated, the ushers led groups into the various sections. They carefully selected people off the chart to make the room look as diverse as possible in every way; white next to black; fat next to thin; rich looking next to working class; Hero next to nobody; and Misshape next to Normal, albeit only Misshapes who were clearly Misshapes, like a man with large yellow plumage around his neck.

Once the auditorium was filled the moderators from the major stations came in and sat at the long table. There was Fox Tackler from RNN, Ken Beck from HOUND News, and Ann Glanton from WXBS. I was amazed that HERO BIBLE was there, considering that her husband, J4 worked on the Vice President Bergeron team. She had on her distinctive scarf.

Fox stood up with his microphone and explained the rules of the debate. The usher would give everyone two cards, and they would write their name and their question on both cards, then hand one card back. The ushers would review them and then give the best ones to the moderators, who would review them further, and then select twenty questions. The ushers would then return to the person that wrote it down, inform them of their selection, and tell them to be prepared to ask the question they wrote down. This whole process took an hour. I could tell by the quickness that our usher looked at our cards that we weren’t getting picked. A few minutes after our cards were summarily dismissed, she whispered something into the ear of a freckle-faced junior at Harris High, whose face lit up as she clutched her card to her chest.

The candidates came in to polite, but loud, applause. They were given a few minutes for opening remarks, which were unremarkable, and then the audience started peppering them with questions. They trotted out canned answers, sometimes in response to the question, and other times, they changed the question to fit their response. The moderators held them to the fire when they avoided the questions and asked follow-ups. There were questions on tax policy, jobs, the economy, education, the cost of rent, healthcare, natural disasters (and whether Heros could do more), high college tuition, gay marriage, marijuana policy, and the penal system.

And Bergeron made sure to trot out his Hero bonafides whenever possible, including answering every foreign policy question with a call for more Hero involvement in combatting terrorism and small asides about his Hero friends like Freedom Man and The Red Ghost. Once, on a question about healthcare, he even started by saying, “As my good friend Freedom Man once said, who, mind you, has never needed a doctor in his life, the best medicine is an active life and a healthy home-cooked meal like his mom used to make.” He answered any question about the enormous prison population and the fact that it’s exploded with seven hundred percent more inmates over the last thirty years with a reference to the effectiveness and efficiency of the supervillain prison, The Luther. It was hard to hear The Luther being thrown around so casually. Even though I knew my mom wasn’t there in my heart, I knew, also, that she spent some time there. I didn’t want to think of my mom being tortured when she was innocent.

Behind the curtain, I could see the team of candidate advisors. J4 was there, paying particularly close attention.

Ever since learning Mom was on the PeriGenomics board, something that would have been meaningless to me a year ago, I’d been fixated about the other board members. In fact, I’d become the family conspiracy theorist.

“What do you know about J4?” I asked my brother.

“Hero pedigree. Went to prep school all the way through the academy then Hero College. He’s the fifth generation of his family to go to the Academy. All mind readers. All total jerks,” Johnny said.

“His great-great-grandfather’s super power was massacring Native Americans for fun,” Hamilton added.

“Then what?” Alice asked. “After graduating was he on a Hero team?”

“Nope. Straight to the military,” Johnny said.

“Was he in the blue brigade?” Alice asked.

“What’s that?”

“It’s the all Hero brigade. Mostly they’re for entertainment. They go to parades and show up in commercials, since the Rittenbaum treaty bans Heroes in combat treaty,” Hamilton said.

“Well officially, but no one follows it,” Johnny said. “They are allowed in non-combat, which means they end up in fights all the time. Anyway, he was not in blues. He was in the hero units you don’t know about.”

“Ohh!” Alice and Hamilton exclaimed quietly.

“Ohh, what? What are you talking about?” They were getting way too into Hero minutia and Hero politics. I just wanted the straight gossip.

“Secret military groups, black ops, no public record,” Johnny said.

Johnny had a deep wellspring of knowledge about crazy Hero theories. I think he spent time on Paladit, the website, and he did consider himself a quasi-expert on this kind of thing. Ever since he’d been in the band, though, he didn’t seem to spend any time at home or nearby his computer.

“Like the ones fought all shadow wars during cold war in south America and Cambodia?” Hamilton asked.

“Yeah. Also the ones that hunt down US enemies, assassinate them or torture them in black op sites,” Johnny said.

“Crap, that’s serious!” I said a little too loudly. The usher gave me some serious stink eye and we all whispered. But mine was the Irish whisper.

“Bunch of fascists,” Alice said, not whispering.

The usher gave us a death stare then walked up to the junior, who stood up and was handed a microphone. The girl said, “Hello, my name is Natalie Baker, I’m sixteen years old and I go to Harris High School in Doolittle Falls, Massachusetts. I’m too young to vote but I am still concerned for the future of the country. Vice President Bergeron, you have said that you support using our Hero resources in more productive ways to spur our economy and fight crime. But Governor Mather has said you are just going to lift the restrictions on Heroes and allow vigilante law in the land. Are people with powers capable of helping us? Or is it too risky?”

Bergeron’s face lit up. He prattled on for a while longer than started in on his plan to deregulate the Bureau of Superhero Affairs. I could see that J4 was particularly focused during this question. It sounded like he was going to let every Hero go totally Batman on crime, and I didn’t like the sound of that future. After all, Batman was a lone loony who only had his money to keep him warm. Other Heroes who fought with teams actually changed the world. Batman just changed his own world.

Johnny got real quiet. “Sarah, this guy is bananas.” He continued, “I never believed who he was. After ten years in the army, but no record to show for it, he makes national headlines by saving a bunch of marines pinned down in the mountains. He gets medals, press, and a Hero’s welcome.”

“What’s wrong with that, though?” I remembered when Bergeron was a national hero, even though he was a Normal.

“It was so perfect it seemed staged. Like, he’s got no record of service because he’s been doing black-ops for years, then out of the blue, he does something amazing right as he’s about to end his secret black-ops career, the perfect thing to help his transition to a new life. He comes home, does some talk shows, and starts his political career. Meanwhile people accuse him of all sorts of heinous crap, including torturing people in the most terrible ways imaginable with mind control, but he’s a hero, people owe their lives to him, so they get no traction.”

I watched Bergeron on stage. People whispered in his ear. Bergeron’s replies were perfect, right timing, no missteps. He had the rhythm of the debate nailed. Started, stopped, excused.

“He’s also on the PeriGenomics board,” I noted. I just found that out the other day. It was why I was a little bit more interested in politics than I wanted to be at the moment.One of the large fans cooling a light fell over and pointed directly at the moderators. For a second, Ann Glantons’ scarf was blown from her neck. She quickly grabbed it and wrapped it back around, but I saw what her neck looked like. Just like Christie or J5, I would’ve guessed. Underneath the scarf there wasn’t a distinctive metal color, but plain pink flesh. I looked at Johnny immediately and could see that he saw it too. Ann didn’t have a collar. She was broadcasting the news without any inhibitions on her power.If she had done this for her whole news career, this changed everything. Innsmouth. She was there at Innsmouth. She told the whole world that my mother was a supervillain who ruined Innsmouth. If she was on the scene at Innsmouth without a collar or anything, who knows what she was sending out through the airwaves?

I whispered to Johnny, “Can she control minds through the television?”

His eyes widened. “I have no idea.”

Bergeron droned on, but Ann’s lack of a collar was all I could think about. I had plenty of time to do so, anyways, as the usher chided us, once again, with a “Be quiet!” She was staring. It was time to pay attention to the debate. I heard a small noise two seats over from me. I looked. Alice was half-asleep, snoring.