Meta Box Set | Books 1-3, page 53
part #1 of Meta Box Set | Books 1-3 Series
Everyone is running up the stairwell, pushing and shoving each other to try to get to the roof. Some are on their way up there to try to get a better glimpse of the battle. They're the ones who don't know that the foundation to the building has already started crumbling. The others, the ones who know what's coming, are trying to reach the roof before the building collapses. They're hoping, against all odds, that some salvation is waiting for them on the roof: a helicopter or maybe another meta saving people from their fate.
Once everyone reaches the roof, there's nothing there, though. That's when the building starts to tilt. Everyone is sliding and clawing, desperately trying not to go over the edge, including me. The last thing I see before I wake up every time is my mom and dad right as they go over.
I thought my metabands had effectively cured me of my fear of heights. After all, it would be kind of hard to fly if it was still an issue. There's something different about this situation, though. I don't know if it's that my metabands aren't activated or if it's just the small detail of standing on a platform that shouldn't even exist let alone be floating a thousand feet in the air, but I can start to feel sweat beading up on the back of my neck. That familiar feeling from my nightmare is creeping in, and suddenly, I just want all of this to be over and for both of my feet to be back on the ground.
"You still with us there, Omni?" Nathanial asks me.
"Yeah, I'm here. Let's just get this over with."
"Second thoughts?"
"No, I'm just getting bored up here," I say.
Neither of them believes me.
"Okay, so here's how it works. We both take our metabands off and place them here on the platform-"
"Wait, no one said anything about taking metabands off," I interrupt.
"Relax, it's just for a few seconds. Have to make sure neither of us secretly has ours booted up, right? The only way to make sure is to have us both start from the same place, with both of our bands placed on the platform here. That way we can be sure there are no shenanigans," Nathanial explains.
I'm liking all of this less and less by the second.
"Fine," I say, slipping my metabands off of my wrists after powering them down. My fear of heights is only growing now that my brain realizes I'm back to being a frail human, the smushy kind that doesn't do well with a thousand-foot fall.
"Okay, now place them on the platform in front of your feet, just like mine," Nathanial says.
I involuntarily hesitate for an instant, the fear welling up inside of me, but I push past it in the hope that this will all be over soon and place my metabands down at my feet.
"Good. Stand up straight and get ready. On the count of three, we both grab our bands and jump. If you hesitate, Carter here will see it and you’ll lose. As long as that doesn't happen, then it's simple: last one to activate their bands wins. Ready?"
I decide against replying verbally out of concern that my voice will betray me and crack, revealing to Nathanial just how scared I really am. Instead, I simply nod, trying to keep my poker face as stone-like as possible.
"One ... two ..."
Nathanial never says three, though. Right after the count of two, as I'm staring intently at my metabands, barely able to wait to get them back on, I'm pushed. I never even saw the push coming because I could barely see Nathanial out of the corner of my eye, but I hear him laughing just as I go over the edge.
The platform above me is rapidly shrinking into the moonlit sky. I've fallen from this height before, higher even, but never without my metabands, metabands that are still sitting up on that platform, which is growing farther away from me by the second.
I'm used to time feeling as though it has slowed down in situations like this. Part of that is the abilities that the metabands give me when they're on, but another part is just the regular old human brain experiencing sensory overload and slowing down to try to interpret and compute it all. Without the bands on, though, it doesn't feel like there's enough time for my life to flash before my eyes before I smack into the ground.
I close my eyes and brace for the inevitable impact, but it doesn't come. Instead, it's replaced by laughter. Carefully, I pull one of my tightly shut eyes open to look around. I'm no longer feeling the sensation of falling, but I don't feel like I'm back on the ground either. I certainly don't feel like I hit the ground. That, I think I'd notice.
Above me, the platform, Carter, and Nathanial are all gone. Only the empty night sky remains. Below me is another story, though. Stretched out all around me from adjacent trees is what looks like a gigantic spider web. The only difference, besides this one being human-sized, is that it is also glowing in a bright red hue, like a grid of laser beams in a spy movie.
The net I'm caught in is slowly lowering back toward the ground at the speed of a fast elevator and the laughter is turning into applause. Beneath me, the group is cheering.
It was fake, some kind of prank that I’m the butt of. I momentarily consider trying to pretend to laugh along, like I was in on it the whole time too, but my body won't let my brain override the emotions running through it.
Once I reach the ground, the net vanishes and the applause begins to die off. A few offer me a hand to help get me back on my feet, but I don't accept any of them. I'm mad, and whether it'll do any good or not, I want everyone here to know it. This seems to make everyone laugh even more.
"Aw, come on. Don't be like that. It's just a little fun. We do it to all the new guys," Nathanial says.
Adrenaline is still coursing its way through my veins, and I'm so mad that I can't even speak. All I want to do now is find my metabands and go home. Not back to my crappy, tiny dorm room that I have to share with some entitled jerk. No, right now I just desperately want to go back to Bay View City. It doesn't even need to be the apartment. I'd settle for the old house Derrick and I had. If anything, I think I'd prefer that.
"Fine, okay. Mission accomplished. You hazed me. I've been initiated. I get it. Now please just give me my metabands back," I say, breathing in through my mouth and out through my nose to try to bring my heart rate back down and get my anger under control.
I look around, trying to spot where my metabands are, but I don't see them anywhere. The group that assembled to watch me almost crap my pants has started to splinter off. Some look like they're going home, and others are heading back toward the hole, eager to continue their night off now that the fun of watching me be humiliated is over.
"Seriously, guys, I need my metabands back," I say. There's barely any response. A few turn their heads toward me and offer a shrug of their shoulders, suggesting that they don't know where they are either.
I'm tired, and I've had enough tonight. Up ahead I can see Nathanial trailing behind the group, busy recounting what just happened to a small group of other guys who are laughing along with him. I call out his name. I can't tell if he doesn't hear me or is purposefully ignoring me, but in either case, he doesn't turn back.
I jog up to catch up with them, still calling out his name. I know that I'm close enough for him to hear me, but there's still no response. My blood is nearly boiling as I jog a few steps ahead of him and plant my two feet, standing directly in his path. There's no way he can ignore me anymore.
"Give them back," I say as calmly as possible.
"Give what back?" he asks in return, which gets more giggles from the idiots hanging around.
"Enough. Just give them back so I can go home," I say. Behind me I can hear whispers and shuffling feet. The others have started heading back in our direction now that there's a chance of more drama.
"Tell you what. Why don't you just go home, and I'll take a look around for them first thing in the morning," Nathanial says.
"Now," I say. I can feel my face becoming flush red.
"Ohh, I didn't know you were a tough guy. That changes everything then, doesn't it? It's too bad you didn't have a pair like this back when you let half your city get destroyed."
13
They say that hindsight is 20/20. I've always taken that to mean that looking back at a situation and seeing things clearly is easy, but seeing things for what they are in the moment? That's what we have trouble with. While I know intellectually that that's true, in hindsight, I think I still would have punched Nathanial in the face. I mean, deep down, I knew in that moment it was a bad idea. I don't regret it, but I maybe wish I hadn't punched him quite so hard.
Most of the time nowadays I rarely regret hitting someone harder than I should have, but that's because nowadays, when I'm hitting someone, it's because they're a “bad guy,” and I'm a “good guy.” Before I got these metabands, the number of physical altercations I'd been in was very, very low. Single digits for sure. And I never, ever started them. Back in those days, I was a near master at avoiding fights. When you've moved around as much as I have as a kid, you either have to get good at fighting or really good at avoiding fights. Luckily for Derrick's health insurance, I picked the latter ninety-nine times out of a hundred.
The main problem with deciding to be the one who started a fight, for once, is that I was the guy not wearing metabands. And that's why I'm sitting here with approximately half of the bones in my hand broken, fractured, or just plain shattered.
I'll probably be blamed by the others for being the one who brought faculty attention to the cavern, but the truth is that there were already faculty members on their way out to the site before the punch even happened. Someone else on campus had posted on social media about seeing Nathanial, Carter, and myself up in the air. A team was dispatched into the woods within seconds to find out what was going on.
They were probably relieved that it was just students out there in the woods at first. I'm sure their worst fear was that someone else had stumbled on the cavern by accident, which could have led to others becoming curious about what else was hidden on campus. If they were relieved, that relief was short-lived and quickly replaced by anger.
All of this has led to me sitting here, back underground, waiting for X-rays of my hand. You might think it's a colossal waste of time and energy to take X-rays of my hand when putting my metabands back on would fix all the crushed bones in a second or two. Personally, I think it's a giant waste of time and energy. Michelle disagreed, though.
Nathanial gave up my metabands pretty quickly after the faculty threatened him with expulsion if he didn't, but the metabands were handed over to them, not me. It's not like you could really “hand” something to me in this condition anyway. Any section of my right hand that isn't broken is too purple and bruised to move. Michelle decided that this would be a good time to teach me a lesson.
So that leads us to the present, where I'm sitting on a metal hospital gurney deep within the underground facility, clutching my bandaged and broken right hand and wanting even more desperately than before to just go home.
"Hi there. You must be ... Connor?"
The question comes from an older man as he enters the doorway. He's balding, with salt and pepper gray hair, and a tightly manicured matching beard. He's wearing a white lab coat and flipping through pages on a tablet that he's looking at over the top of a pair of circular wire-frame glasses.
"Yeah, that's me."
"It's a pleasure to meet you. Although I will say that I had hoped it would be under slightly more accommodating circumstances."
"You don't like meeting people for the first time when they've broken part of their own body doing something stupid?" I ask.
"No, that part I don't mind. I've met plenty of people that way over the years. The part that I mind is getting dragged out of bed in the middle of the night to do it."
"Fair enough."
"I'd shake your hand, but, well, you know. In any case, I'm the physician."
"I kinda figured that part out, with the lab coat and all."
He pauses to look down at how he’s dressed.
"No, no, that's not what I meant. Well, that is what I meant, but I meant you can call me The Physician."
"Okay. You don't have another name you like to be called by?"
"Well my real name is Doctor Phillips, but what's the point of agreeing to be the on-call physician for metahumans if you can't have a little fun?"
"So ... you want me to call you The Physician? Like, pretend it's your meta name or whatever?"
He glances back up from his tablet and smiles, which I take to be a confirmation.
"Okay, so, The Physician ..." I say.
"Yes?" he replies, beaming at the fact that I'm calling him by the name he's asked me to use.
"When can I get my metabands back so I can fix this hand up? Michelle did a great job bandaging it before she left, and I don't mean to make light of her work, but I just really think I could do a much better job once I have my bands back."
"Of that I have no doubt," he says, still not looking up from his tablet.
There's a long silence as I wait for him to continue, but instead he just keeps leafing through the pages on his screen while muttering to himself.
"It's just that the pain medication Michelle gave me isn't really doing the trick, you know?" I say, trying to push the subject.
"Ah, yes. Of course, sorry," he finally says.
He places the tablet on a nearby metal table, like the kind you'd expect to see a scalpel and other surgical tools resting on. With the tablet secure, he begins riffling through the pockets of his lab coat. Finally, he pulls out my metabands from deep within and hands them over to me.
I take the bands with my one good hand and place one in the crook of my left arm so I can hold it steady while I gently guide my bandaged right hand through it. The other is slightly easier to put on by holding it in my lap as I guide my left hand into the opening. With both bands in place, they instantly adjust and tighten around my wrists. The feeling of relief comes quickly, and I feel better already. Inside my right hand, I can hear tiny snaps and pops as the muscles move out of the way for the bones to snap back into place.
"Thank you, doctor," I say.
"Umm," he says, pointing to his name badge, which I hadn't noticed before now. It clearly says “The Physician” right on it.
"Sorry. Thank you, The Physician," I say, which makes him smile again.
"Connor," he begins, picking the tablet back up off the nearby table to reference, "I assume you know that we didn't withhold your metabands purely for the sake of punishment."
"I assumed you didn't do it just to punish me," I say as I start unwrapping the bandages off of my right hand now that I won't be needing them anymore.
"Well, no, punishment was definitely part of the reason we withheld them. It just wasn't the only reason," he says. He can see the look of surprise in my eyes and continues. "I had nothing to do with that decision of course. That, you will have to take up with Michelle. However, I was called since we rarely get the chance to inspect cases like these."
"Cases like what?"
"Cases where the owner of a pair of metabands has somewhat seriously injured themselves and doesn’t have immediate access to their personal pair of metabands. We wanted to take a closer look at your hand and the healing process, to see what, if any, residual effect the metabands have on your physiology after they've been deactivated and removed from your person."
"And what did you find?"
"Nothing conclusive at this point, but some very interesting data to pour over in the coming weeks."
"Well, I'm glad I could be of help to someone tonight then. I don't mean to be rude, but am I able to go back to my room now? I'm going to go ahead and guess that you don't give out sick notes, and I've got a 7:30 a.m. math class that I was dreading getting up for even before my unexpectedly adventurous night," I say.
"Yes, yes, of course. We have all the samples we wanted so you're free to go."
"Thanks, doct— I mean, Physician," I say as I hop off the gurney and head toward the door.
"Actually," The Physician announces, "there was one thing that I wanted to ask you about, if you have the time."
"Sure," I reply reluctantly as I halt my march toward the door to turn and give The Physician my attention.
"Your metabands. While they were in my possession, I had them examined and run through a full spectroanalysis as well. There are some elements to them that are quite different from previous sets I've seen in my time as a researcher. I'm not quite sure what the differences mean at this point, or if they're of any importance or not, but there was one element to them that I am positively sure I've never seen before: the tiny cracks that are running throughout both."
"Yeah, I know the ones you're talking about," I reply.
"My apologies if you've already answered these questions for Michelle. I haven't had a chance to look through your entire file yet. Usually I'm brought in for a full medical exam for all incoming students, but your arrival was a little later than usual, and I was unavailable at the time. Can you tell me, were the cracks present when you first found the metabands, or have they only become visible since the metabands came into your possession?" he asks.
"No, they weren't there when I got them. It happened recently. During the fight over Silver Island."
"Hmm, I see. Is it safe to assume that this was the work of Iris then?" he asks.
"No, it was one of the Alphas, before Iris came after me."
"That's not very reassuring news to hear."
"Iris isn't bad, you know," I say.
"You mean the same Iris who freed a prison full of metahumans and left you for dead?" he asks.
"I know how it looks, but there was something ... different about her that day. I'm not sure what it was, but that wasn't her."
"You knew her well then?"
"Well, no. Not exactly."
"So your judgment that she was acting out of character is based on...?"
"It's hard to explain, but I could just sense it. There was something wrong."
"Well there are cases of metahumans gaining additional senses in some instances. Since these senses were not present at birth, it can take some time for the subject to adjust to them and learn how to interpret them. In your case, I would be careful to trust those types of instincts before you fully understand them."
