Pride

Wayne Ligon

 

I was in line at the local Chinese buffet waiting for a free cashier when the robbery went down. They weren’t pros; that much was apparent right off. It’s just two of them, and they do way too much yelling and screaming. “Down on the floor! You move, you die!” That sort of thing. And of course, they’re robbing a Chinese buffet instead of a bank. Maybe they were working their way up to that.

I squeezed the bridge of my nose. My therapist says it helps relieve tension. This was going to make me late back from lunch, and I’d probably get canned because of it. I did not get down on the floor. It was damp outside, and my left knee was giving me problems.

Thug One stuck a gun against my head and screamed, “You a fuckin’ hero, man?”

Well, as a matter of fact…

Two seconds later, both of them were screaming like little kids as my telekinetic field flared up and clamped down, blue foxfire light flickering along their bodies. I twisted the guns around and into their mouths, forcing their fingers to stay on the triggers. They give off muffled screams as they go to their knees, fighting not to blow their own brains out. “Down on the ground!” shouted a Concerned Citizen of Detroit, pointing his Second Amendment penis substitute at me.

“Do not pull that shit with me, Cornfed. I am not in the mood,” I said. “I’m regis—” BLAM! I go for my card, and apparently, it’s not slow enough, so Barney Fife shoots me. The bullet hits my reflex field, and there’s a little show as I bleed off its kinetic energy into waste light and heat. Then, I let it drop. He stammers, and I pretzel his gun before he shoots someone’s mom.

I flash the bright red card since none of them will be able to tell it’s worthless. “Do Not Panic,” I say in a calm, steady voice. “I am a registered freelance law enforcement specialist. I am also off-duty. Can I please get some orange beef to go?”

For once, things go my way, and the manager takes care of my food. The cops are there by then; I release the would-be robbers to them and avoid the looks the rookies give me. At twenty, I’m not old enough to join the force even if that was allowed, and I put away a good fifty or so guys like these before my license was placed “under review.” They didn’t know that though. I slip out the side door before I have to talk to one of the plainclothes. It’ll take too much time.

It doesn’t much matter though because I’m still ten minutes late. I trot outside and push off from the sidewalk, the flickering light surrounding my body as I vault into the air. I wince at the sound of a fender-bender below. Another looky-loo whose inattention is going to make my metahuman tax (sorry, I mean “insurance”) go up another five bucks. I hopscotch over rooftops and drop down into an alleyway to wolf down cold orange beef and rice.

It’s 12:13 when I go over the back fence of the construction area. Immediately, I pick up a pile of bricks and have the mass follow me like a dog. Calm, casual, just been around the back of the site and already diligently at—

“I got my eye on you, Carmichael,” says a gravelly pack-a-day voice.

“I know you do, Matt—Mr. Foster,” I correct hastily. I put on that neutral smile I’ve been cultivating and meet the man’s eyes square on. “Sorry, I was just looking for these for the facing. They need ‘em up on third.” Butter would not melt in my mouth.

Foster’s left eye twitches, and I think this might be the day he goes for me. He likes to mess with me because he knows he can take me in a fair fight—powers aside, I’m just a skinny slacker kid—but if I hit back with my gift, I blow my probation and do life in Leavenworth for powers use on a normal. I keep the smile neutral. It does not move a millimeter.

Foster’s boss saves about ten thousand a day using me as an illegal substitute for earthmovers and other machinery and their operators. My alpha-class gift means I can juggle I-beams if needed, but union rules were strictly pro-norm. No super-strength, no robots, no cyborgs, no alchemists, no teeks like me.

Hundreds of class-action suits were still grinding their way through the legal system like huge paper glaciers along with all the other meta-rights legislation. We were people; wait, no, we were corporate property; no, we were classed as WMDs. In nine states, we could marry. In six, we were barred from coming within a hundred feet of any concentration of children. I could not eat from a salad bar in Rhode Island. Every school kid in Alabama was required to be tested for “genetic abnormalities” before the onset of puberty, when most metanormal gifts got a kick in the backside from the hormone stew and decided to manifest. Fear of just this kind of shit is why heroes wore masks for real before JFK convinced them otherwise.

“Ask what you can do for your country,” my ass. In twenty years, I might be able to work legally somewhere. Probably flipping burgers ten at a time with my mind.

Foster looks me over and walks off. I keep up the neutral smile until he’s out of sight. He’d love to bust my balls on general principles because I was everything he wasn’t—slim, young, able to get a date—but he got a bigger cut under the table than normal because of me, so he usually let it slide.

I walk around to the side and stack the bricks. One of the Mexicans crosses himself, and I shake my head. I try to explain in halting Spanish that it’s just a talent like anything else, but he’s not having any of it. He spits out “brujah,” witch, and gets in the lift. I shrug and send the bricks up after him, ten at a time, to the third floor. He sends down a huge hawk of spit that I flick aside. I snap one of the bricks in half and then quarters with the strength of my mind, keeping my eyes on him. I give him the same smile I gave Foster. He pales and backs off into the interior, muttering curses.

“Carmichael! Peterson wants you. Emergency,” comes over the loudspeaker. I leave the remainder of the bricks behind and bolt for the basement. Peterson isn’t someone to cry wolf, and he’s trying to get the plumbing into shape. I levitate down an open shaft and fly through the narrow maze of maintenance passages, dodging valve wheels and other workers. Most of them are heading the other way; a couple point the way, and I give them a nod as I blur past.

I flash into a flooding basement room, and Bill Peterson screams at me, “Pressure valve is broken; this whole set of pipes is going to blow! Please, can you—” He’s cut off by the squeal of metal even as I reach out with my gift.

I usually say it’s like a small electrical shock that keeps going, which is a barely adequate description of what it feels like to use my power at its peak. I reach out and clamp down on the entire assembly, letting my power permeate the metal into the rushing water behind it. I brace and strengthen the pipes from the inside and the outside, but the welds are not going to hold.

My power flares out from me, light strobing gently around me like a fluorescent bulb about to go out. The room shakes. Some of the onlookers scream and run. Yeah, you better run, you monkeys. This is what an alpha-class gift is really like.

Alpha-class or not, there’s nothing I can do. The whole assembly starts to break apart in my grip: substandard metal, faulty welds, parts forced to fit together that shouldn’t be within a hundred miles of each other. It all comes to a head. I throw Bill and two other guys out of the room and let go. The valves burst apart, and the pipes explode under the pressure, shards of metal flying out like spears shot from a gun. I sink waist-deep in water, nothing left to levitate myself, and throw up a shield across the entire length of the room. Shrapnel floats, caught in nothingness. Water surges and batters against a barely-visible, flickering blue wall. My eyes are glowing white by this point.

I wave my hands like fucking Harry Potter and then make fists so tight my palms bleed. I know, intellectually, it doesn’t do a damn thing, but it helps my concentration. And that’s all that counts. Half of the room fills with water as the pressure eases, but then it starts to mount again. Shouts come from behind me.

“Get everyone out! I can’t hold this for very long!” I yell, already hoarse. I start to back out, the wall sliding with me. I can hold the door better if the physical walls will hold. I send feelers out into the concrete and steel, sensing the weight of tons pressing down on them from above. The walls will hold at least. I back out, eyes closed, hands up and open. The sound of evacuating workers dies away. Slowly, I pull back on the wall, sliding it across the room and then contracting it until I’m just blocking the door. I can feel blood running down my face: nosebleed.

Then I’m trapped. I can’t leave without the plug fracturing, and I can’t fly fast enough to outrun the water that’s going to come erupting out of there. So I stay, trembling slightly.

“Are you shutting the mains off?” I yell. No response. I wait—wait for the panic to subside and someone to remember what needs to be done. They’ll need to call the city guys, get a crew here, all that. It takes time.

What the fuck am I doing? I don’t owe anyone anything. The City of Detroit shafted me good and hard already, back when I wore a mask as a member of Detroit’s Teen Corps One.

I was drafted into the Teen Corps after “an anomaly” showed up after a routine doctor’s visit. I’d been keeping my power a secret from everyone exactly like you are not supposed to do, so right away, that put me on every watch list in the country. It wasn’t literally a federal offense like it is now, so they put me into a pair of tights and told me I was an apprentice.

I was a sidekick. It was worse than driving school. Due to federal regs, I wasn’t allowed to go solo until I was twenty-five, so I was paired with an older paranormal who would train and oversee me.

A day shy of my sixteenth birthday, my mentor messed up a simple bust and put a woman in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. She sued the city for millions and won. My mentor blamed the whole thing on me. He told me that since I was a minor, they’d go easy on me whereas he had a wife and kid to support and a pension to protect. A year or so in therapy, and I’d be free. I was an idealistic fool and signed the papers saying I was at fault.

I got my year in therapy all right courtesy of a federal supermax facility. The ACLU went to bat for me and won my release on some technical grounds, but things didn’t get much better. I was out of prison but not free. Any paranormal that messes up and hurts a normal with his powers gets put on permanent probation. One strike, and you’re back in prison forever. Depending on your ability, they also dope you up so you’re not a public nuisance. Your parole officer comes by once a week to give you a shot, and you get to play normal for the rest of your life. My gift was too powerful to blunt with the drugs they had at the time without killing me, so they did the next best thing.

They took my mask.

Most metahumans wear masks for the same reason narcotics cops do: to prevent retaliation by the people they bring to justice and to give plausible deniability to their higher-ups in case something goes wrong. “Kid Kinetic” became simple Calvin Carmichael of such-and-such address. My family was put into Witness Protection, and I haven’t seen them since. Most of my rights would never be reinstated. If I ever moved from the federal housing project they installed me in, I’d have to get signatures from everyone in the neighborhood after explaining I was a potential metahuman threat. There was a lot more. I lived under a set of restrictions that made me yearn for the freedom of a repeat sex offender.

“Cal, what the hell is going on here?”

His voice paralyzes me for a second. I guess I knew they’d send him. I take a deep breath, pretend I’m having trouble maintaining the plug.

I look to my side, sweat pouring down my face. Black Saber, head of the Detroit Defenders, the state-and-local-backed team of emergency-response metahumans. He was taller than me by a head and was dressed in his working clothes: black, skintight Preflex uniform with gold and white highlights and accessories. He wore a crossed-swords emblem over his broad chest.

Saber is a super-speedster, able to run about fifty times the speed of sound. The only other alpha-level talent in the city besides myself. My former mentor. He trained me, and then he betrayed me. He was also the guy they sent when there was a mess to clean up.

“Ah, just another day on the job, Saber. Holding back about a hundred tons of pressurized water. Everyone out of the sub-levels?”

“They are,” he said casually, eyeing the water surging against the doorway. He smiles tightly. “You always tried to do the right thing. What’s your plan here?”

“You grab me and super-speed out of here, and their basements flood until the city gets around to shutting off the mains. Nothing is wrong with the foundations, so everyone wins.”

“No can do,” Saber says casually. “The mayor is heavily invested in this building; it’s the centerpiece of his renovation initiative. If it’s late going up, he stands to lose a bundle.”

I set my jaw. “Dude, really? It is going to flood. Nothing can stop that…” I paused. Oh.

He saw the look on my face and nodded. If the building flooded and they spent six months pumping it out and exposed all the substandard plumbing, the mayor would lose both his shirt and the next election. On the other hand, if the building were damaged by a metahuman terrorist, then it was ice cream and insurance payments for everyone. Guess what industry the mayor’s brother had in his back pocket? Hint: He didn’t own a Baskin-Robbins.

“So,” I said way more casually than I felt, “They really just need a body.”

“A trial would take too long, Calvin, and it would certainly blow up into a federal matter.”

“Can’t have the Feds sniffing around the Defenders program,” I said, my voice carefully flat and reasonable. That I did know. Just the kickbacks and under-the-table benefits coming to light would bring a squad of federal super-soldiers down on Detroit. The entire program would revert to federal oversight, and it would be the end of the gravy train.

A small voice said, At least you won’t go back to prison.

No. No, I was still in prison, and I was damn tired of it.

Slowly, I expanded my plug against the arch, pushing microscopic cracks down and out as far as I could through the concrete. I closed my eyes and bowed my head like I was resigned to my fate, was waiting for the blow that would save face for everyone. Actually, I was pushing myself further than I ever had before. With each heartbeat, I pushed harder and harder, extending those cracks while keeping the concrete solid.

Black Saber smiled, his mouth and jaw visible, the armored cowl rendering his eyes into unreadable white slits. Any split-second, he’d go for the Mach-4 snap-punch and break my neck, the way he used to do to crackheads on Eight Mile. In his mind, he was doing me a favor For Old Time’s Sake by not letting me drown.

“I knew you’d understand, Kid,” Black Saber said softly.

I dropped the plug the same instant he tried to kill me, my reflex shield shunting the energy of his multi-mach punch off into the surrounding walls. They shattered like glass, sending an earthquake-level shockwave ripping through the entire structure and down into the very bedrock. The foundations and every load-bearing support turned to gravel. Then, the mains and sewers blew upwards, turning everything to quicksand. There was a blaze of pain, and the world disappeared into a tornado of muddy water as I fought to keep my shield intact.

Here’s a little-known fact: When your paranormal power is “I run really fast,” being underwater sucks balls.

If the mayor wanted a body so badly, let him have one.

I rose out of the wreckage flaring like a star bright enough to throw shadows in the suburbs, the energy of the domino-effect collapse feeding into my own. Emergency crews fled as I threw two of the backup Defenders through a nearby office building. The looky-loos scattered. See the monkeys run. Run, monkey, run.

I didn’t bother going back to the shitty fed apartment. The only thing waiting for me there was a lifetime of four walls and shock therapy.

I’m not going to live like a prisoner anymore. Not me and not the thousands like me and not the thousands waiting to be born. Paranormal Pride, bay-bee.

It feels good to put on a mask again.