Robert Crane: Alone

I sighed, mostly for effect. Maybe it was because I’d never had the company of a man anytime in memory, but I was enjoying myself so much I almost forgot that I didn’t have any friends, just a suspicious number of desirous and questionable “allies.” “Maybe,” I replied. “I’m still thinking about it.”

“Tough choice, I guess.” He sounded sincere. Maybe he was. “Your whole world gets turned upside down and you’re left without anyone to rely on. Gotta figure out who’s telling the truth.”

I flashed him a tight smile, and I felt my heart beat faster than it should have after such a short walk. “Or figure out if nobody’s telling the truth. You all have fantastic stories of meta-humans with amazing abilities, but so far the closest thing I’ve seen to the truth of that is a grubby mountain of a man that looks like he could have stumbled out of a pack of wolves.”

Zack grinned. “It does sound kind of crazy.”

“You’re all saying that there are people with superpowers, and that I have one but no one can tell me what it is unless you ‘test me.’“ I rolled my eyes. “Forgive me for not jumping to sign up for that medical experiment.”

His smile faded. “But…you realize how strong you are compared to a normal human, right?” He stopped as we neared the entrance to the gymnasium. “You realize how much more powerful you are?”

I started to suppress my instinctive reply but I was a half second too slow. “I don’t know what to think. I don’t know where to go. And I have no idea who to trust.” And I don’t have idea why I told him that.

He kept his distance and his hands slid into his pockets. I almost felt like he was doing it to avoid patting me on the shoulder or something. He took a step back to the concrete bench sitting in the shadow of the entry and did a double take as he looked down at it. “I can’t help you fix all those problems. But maybe I can give you one answer.” He pointed to the bench. “See this?”

“I may be meta-human, but I’m not blind.”

His face twisted with a touch of condescension. “Nobody but Ariadne and Old Man Winter call them meta-humans. M-Squad just says ‘metas’ and it’s kinda stuck for everybody.” He leaned down and tried to push the bench. “It’s a few hundred pounds, easy.” His eyes glimmered with mischief. “Why don’t you try lifting it?”

My stomach made a noise and I hoped only I could hear it. I walked over to him and studied the bench. It was concrete, with a nice pattern around the legs to give it some aesthetics. And Zack was right: it looked like it weighed quite a bit.

I reached down and grabbed hold by the edges. I cringed and counted down from three in my head and lifted with everything I had.

It flew off the ground and swung up, almost popping me in the mouth before I stopped it. I could feel the weight of it, but it wasn’t that significant. I swung it around and hoisted it over my shoulder, holding it with one hand. “Wow.”

“You never lifted anything like this before? Never tested your strength?” Zack kept his distance. I think he saw me lift it a little too aggressively and assumed (rightly) that I may be able to lift it, but I couldn’t necessarily control it.

I shrugged, almost dropping the bench from my shoulder. I caught it and laughed. “What in our house would I have lifted?” I worked to keep a smile plastered on my face in spite of a sudden disquiet within as a memory of my hand pounding against metal, drawing blood, flashed through my mind.

“Odds are that your powers didn’t manifest until recently anyway,” he said with a shrug. “You might not have been able to do this a month ago. Metas I’ve talked to say it onsets over a few weeks or months…you just start getting faster, stronger, more agile than you used to be.” My eyes glazed over for a moment as another memory floated to the top of mind. Zack looked at me with a quizzical expression. “What?”

I blinked. This one wasn’t so bad. “A couple weeks ago, Mom and I were in the basement, sparring like usual. We trained martial arts a couple hours a day, and I’ve never been able to lay a hand on her. She’s super fast, like a blur, and she always dodges. Always encouraging, you know – ‘Keep it up, that’s good, you came close there…’. But that time, a couple weeks ago, I thought she was a little slow and I dodged one of her kicks and tagged her in the ribs.”

Zack nodded. “Ariadne and Old Man Winter said your mother was one of the most powerful metas in her generation. That’s pretty good if you got a hand on her like that.”

“Yeah…” I gazed off into the distance.

“What is it?” His brown eyes were rimmed with concern. Not an act, I think.

My eyes snapped back into focus and landed on him before I flicked my gaze away again. “Nothing…well…after I hit Mom, I was all flushed with victory. I took a step back; point scored, you know…formalities of sparring. I dropped my guard when I went back to my ready stance. She didn’t even hesitate – she planted one on my jaw that knocked me off my feet and blurred my vision.”

Zack physically recoiled and his eyes got wide. “That…that’s horrible.”

I felt the wind run through me and clamp down on my heart, pushing it into my throat. “No, it was good.” I wiped any trace of emotion from my face. “She was trying to teach me not to ever let my guard down because it can cost you.” The pain in my chest swelled as I pictured Mom’s expression after she struck me down – fire blazing in her eyes; that look of spite and revenge all rolled into one as she looked down on me.

My mind raced, trying to think of something to ask Zack to change the subject. “You said my mom was one of the most powerful metas in her generation? So not all metas are the same, power-wise?”

“Yeah, there’s a scale – some metas are stronger than others.” He looked up at the bench still balanced on my shoulder. “That’s why Ariadne wants to test you. Even without knowing what your other powers are, knowing your strength could give some insight into what kind of meta you are.”

“Hm.” I whipped the bench as if to smash it against the ground and noted the panicked look in Zack’s eyes as he flinched and brought his hands in front of his face. I stopped it a few inches from the walk and gingerly placed it back where it had started and shot him a dazzling smile. “Fraidy cat.”

He looked at me, eyes wide. “I couldn’t tell you without testing, but seeing the way you handled that bench, I think you’re right up there with your mom on the meta power scale.”

I looked down. “I don’t know about that. I fought back against Wolfe and he shook off my attacks and grabbed me like I was nothing.”

“Yeah, but Wolfe is a freak of nature. Most metas don’t live for thousands of years. He has.”

“I don’t doubt that, but he manhandled me. His strength was incredible; I couldn’t fight back at all.” I felt the bile rise in my mouth as I said that. Mom had always dominated me, but she’d never completely crushed me the way Wolfe had. It made me sick – and angry.

“He’s THE top of the scale for power and he has millenia of experience fighting. He’d give M-Squad a run for their money, and they’re all way up on the scale, and there’s four of them.” He shook his head. “I want you to promise me something.”

I looked up at him and felt a tremble. “What?”

“You ever run across Wolfe again, do what the rest of us do – run like hell. He’s a beast. And he will kill you.”

Zack showed me around the grounds and after we walked through more buildings and met more people than I could possibly remember, he took me to a four story brick building, a perfect square but with windows spaced every five feet on each floor. There were entrances at each corner. We walked into one of them to find the interior indicated it was a much older building than most of the others.