I sit there, remembering everything that happened the day I escaped the lab, Paul still looking at me on the TV screen. “That should have unlocked a lot of memories for you. I hope it doesn’t wake up your brother. I hope it’s been long enough that he’s starved out. But now you know the truth about what happens when you try to be a big damn hero. You die, kid. So I want you to find a way to live a normal life. The life you deserve, the one where you’re not bleeding out on the streets. But I know that it won’t be with me. I’m sure you hate me far too much for that, knowing that I put him in your mind like that. I’m sure you’re wondering why I went along with it. I wish I had an answer to that other than, ‘It was my job.’”
Paul sighs and shakes his head. “I shouldn’t turn this into a video about me. One last little bit of advice, Gabe: there’s a difference between self-reflection and angst. You don’t quite got that balance right yet.”
“Pot calling the kettle black.” Without thinking about it, the words come to my lips, and Paul apparently had the quote on his mind, too. We say those words in unison. He chuckles.
“If there’s one thing I want you take away from what I’ve recorded, it’s that you gotta save yourself before you save others, kid.”
The video ends. The screen goes dark.
He waits in the reflection of the screen after the TV shuts off. Megajoule- no, Gabriel - stands in the corner of the room, his arms crossed, his blazing green eyes lasering into me with disdain.
“You…” I manage, knowing the truth. “I understand what you are now.”
“And so do I.” Gabriel sneers at me. “Paul thought he could bury me in your trauma. It worked… but now that you remember, I do, too.” He flexes his hands, grinning at me. “Now, it’s time to have it out, little brother.”
After everything I’ve been through, I’m not gonna roll over for this stupid ghost. Doesn’t matter whose ghost it is. “Not on your fucking life.”
“No,” Gabriel says, his grin widening. “On yours.”
He disappears. Then his hands reach into me and my stomach starts to turn like he’s personally spinning it around in my guts. My lungs press against the prison of my ribcage, threatening to break free, and I cough ink and smoke.
The ink washes over my eyes. The world tears in two around me, and I’m not in Thanh’s apartment anymore. I’m in a void, surrounded by a mass of limbs, my brothers all staring at me with broken, melted faces in the dark. There is no floor, only the bodies of clones, dead or dying.
Gabriel wraps arms of iron around me. I’m in two places at once - his embrace, and in the living room, where I’m rising into the air against my will, drinking in the energy of gravity.
Heat flows into my fingertips - “Let’s burn it all down, brother!” Gabriel says - and I reach to drag them across the wall, to set this entire place on fire.
“You have to fight it, Gabe!” Home Run says.
I have no fire here, no kinetic energy. My ghost against his. We brawl and kick and punch, as my brother’s hands wrap around my wrists and ankles. He has so many hands, like he’s made of all the dead siblings we’ve left behind.
“Isn’t this just like us? Fighting like old times?” Gabriel grabs my face in the void, tries to squeeze my cheeks like we’re not dueling for control over my body. “C’mon, Gabe! Just let go!”
“No!” I jab my fingers into his eyes.
And then I’m back in the living room, in one piece.
Gabriel kneels in the corner, scowling at me. “It’s fine. I can wait.”
I’ve retained control, for now. I glare at him. “I’m not giving up, ever.”
“Neither am I,” Gabriel says. “But I don’t need forever. I just need you to fracture a little more, and then I’m taking over. You only need to have one bad day. You can’t get rid of me, not without killing yourself.”
I squeeze my fists. If it comes down to it… “Then that’s what I’ll do, if I can’t kill you.”
“You’re not going to do that. You’re too weak. Do you know how I know?” he asks.
“We’re done talking,” I say, getting up. “Go hide wherever you usually do.”
“Because you’re afraid of yourself,” Gabriel continues. “Of your own power. You’re so scared of hurting someone you love that everything you do, you hold back. You’ve never used your power to its full potential. But I can show you its proper use.” He paces back and forth like a tiger in a cage. “I can show you what we were meant to do!”
“No!” I shout. “I’m not you! I’m not a monster!”
“Yes you are! You were purpose built to be!” Gabriel crawls onto the couch grabs at my ankle, and oh Metis, I actually feel it. “We both were. If you surrender to me, we can finally do it.”
“I said, fuck off.”
“If that’s how we’re doing things, then you’re on your own.” Gabriel appears two inches from my face. “You don’t work with me, I don’t give you my engrams.”
My stomach drops at that threat. The night he took away the engrams when I fought Mr. Spiral was miserable. All the power I’ve grown accustomed to - it’ll be gone.
Gabriel grins and stands up over me, green eyes blazing. “The power will be there. You can use it any time you want. But if you use it… you’ll be handing me the reins.”
Even with that, I still can’t bear the idea of letting him take control. Not with that blood thirst of his. “I don’t need your power.”
Gabriel’s grin turns into a pout, and he flips me his middle finger. “You can figure your mess out on your own then.”
And then he’s gone.
And as soon as he’s gone, this terrible pressure falls on my body. Like something is pinching every cell in my skin. I start… shivering. Like people do when they’re cold. And I realize what’s just happened, what horrifying sword has fallen and cut me open.
I’m not immune to temperature anymore.
I stand up, shocked, shuddering under the power of this sensation. For the first time in my entire life, I’m chilly. I seek something, some way to stop this, searching for the power within me.
The horrifying thing is, he’s right. I can still find his… our… power. Within me, I can feel two distinct energies, one a smaller beast, buzzing with intensity that would cut me just to use. The other, a huge well of engrams, radiant with positive emotions. That smaller one is Home Run’s power. The larger one belongs to Gabriel. I won’t be able to hold as much heat and I’ll likely not be able to spend it as fast or powerfully as I normally do. And apparently, without enough engrams, I’ll start to feel the real world’s temperature.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
#
Thanh returns after a while with a plastic bag full of medicine. I let him treat me, although there’s not much he can do about the bruising. My bones seem unbroken, no major cuts. As usual, the damage only goes skin deep. That probably won’t be the case going forward.
“I’m a mistake,” I tell Thanh as he packs up the bag.
“Eh?” Thanh asks, arching an eyebrow at me.
“How did he do it? He always saved the day. He never came up short.” Not even in saving my life. He fought Gabriel just long enough for Carnality to save me. He did all of that just for me and I can’t help but feel like he threw his life away.
I can’t fight it anymore. My face feels like it’s gonna slough off with the tears and snot. I did everything wrong. I’m doing everything wrong. And he didn’t. He did everything so right that the Vanguard couldn’t bear the thought of losing him, so they made an army of him.
“He saved so many people,” I cry. “The way everyone looked at him. No one has ever looked at me that way. They only look at me like I’m a fuck up. I’m a fuck up who can’t even stop a two-bit slaver. I’m a fuck up whose friends can’t count on him. I’m a fuck up. I’m a fuck up.”
In the back of my mind, Gabriel’s voice tickles: “Just a little more.”
“He left and I’m stuck here.” I bury my head in my forearms.
Thanh interrupts my pity party, his hand finding my shoulder. “Gabe?”
I pull my glasses from my face, wipe my nose and eyes, and try to say something. No dice.
“You’re not a fuck up. Every single job I’ve ever needed, from big to small, you’ve handled for me. You never failed me, not even once,” Thanh says. His voice is gentle, and kind, and I can’t help but bury my face into his arm. He sighs, and softly pats my head.
“Every since I’ve known you, you always looked like you were carrying something so heavy, I’d crumble under the weight. Paul told me it was the heat you were holding with your power.” Thanh kneels next to me to wipe my eyes with a handkerchief. He makes a “tsk tsk” sound and says, “I don’t think that’s true. I think you are carrying around enough shame to crush you into dust.”
I cough, unsure of what to say. No one’s ever talked to me like this before, just told me what they really thought I was doing wrong. No one’s ever really analyzed me and laid bare what I was refusing to acknowledge.
“There’s no reason for you to carry all this shame. You are worthy of your own life.”
Well, that’ll just about do it. I start crying again, and Thanh hugs me.
“For all the time I’ve known you, Gabe, you’ve been my hero. Not him, not any cape in the Vanguard. You.” Thanh clasps my shoulder. “What are you thinking?”
“That I don’t know what I’m thinking.”
“Good,” Thanh says. “Why don’t you start from zero, then? What do you do now?”
“I can’t try to get Mateo back. I can’t try to contact Bedevil; who knows where she’s gone. The only people I could try to reach out to are the Front, but I don’t know where they’ve gone. And even if I do get in touch with them, I don’t know what we’d do? Storm the Houston Shrine? No matter what, I think my life is over.” Even though I stare down that particular barrel, with everything that’s happened, it feels like a bargain. It means Gabriel goes with me.
Thanh frowns and then nods. “I think a few days of rest would do you good.”
#
A few days pass. The bruises fade, Gabriel doesn’t come out of whatever corner of my mind he’s hiding in, and Pawpaw doesn’t leave my side. Still, sitting in this apartment, doing nothing every day, I feel like I’m only delaying the inevitable. And every day I’m not doing anything, I have no idea what’s happening to Mateo. I have to find him.
While Gabriel’s been quiet, the other voice in my head has been going nonstop. Home Run, I think. “You know where Mateo is. You know they’re keeping him in the Shrine. You stopped the greatest hero in this city. Surely a few more capes aren’t going to stop you.”
“That was with Gabriel’s engrams. I might have a decent store of engrams built up as Home Run, but I’m not nearly as strong as I was. Besides, it won’t be a few capes. It’s every cape. I’m a cloak, now. I’m among the supervillains and things that go bump in the night, as far as they’re concerned.” I rest my elbows on the counter and ponder that description. Not too far off from how I really feel.
“Then go bump in the night,” Home Run says. “You need to break them. You know they worked with Pandahead. Not all of them, but enough, and you know that they’re doing things that regular people would never support if they knew about it.”
“So, what, you say I go public with it?” I ask. “What good would that do? The Vanguard would just quash it.”
“Not if it’s you. You look like Megajoule, Gabe. Use that to your advantage. If you say something, people will listen. You could get the masks together. Get them to help you. They’ll do it if they know who you are.”
I stew on that for an hour. And then I write a note for Thanh. I dress in my Home Run outfit again, and it does feel like I’m sliding on a second skin. Gabe, Megajoule… Home Run is who I am. The voice I’ve talked with, it’s nobody’s but mine.
Once I’m dressed, I find Pawpaw sitting on the couch. I drop to my haunches. “C’mere, boy.”
Ever the good dog, my old yellow Labrador jumps down and stuffs his head into my hands for pets. He licks my fingers, nuzzles my arms with his nose, and shakes his whole butt to wag his tail. I swallow the lump in my throat. “Thanh will take real good care of you, Paw. I’m sorry I can’t anymore. But I gotta go save the world.”
#
Saw Off’s auto garage hideout doesn’t look like it’s been raided, which is good. I know for a fact that Mateo never saw it, and I never visited it while I had that tracker in me from Bedevil. So, hopefully, theoretically, this is a safe place that Saw Off would have gone to when things went south.
I sneak up to the door, not sure if this is a good idea, but I still knock. At first, there’s no one, nothing, but then I sense (much more faintly, I’m noticing) a heartbeat moving closer. The whisper of heat of a young woman approaching. She opens the eye slit, and her eyes go wide.
There are very few things I expect from Saw Off besides shooting, cursing, and flirting. Among the things I never expected from her are a heartfelt, teary-eyed hug.
“Home Run!” she cries, wrapping her arms around me. “I was so worried about you! Are you okay? I’m so sorry about what happened with the raid and leavin’ ya behind. It was downright shitty of me.”
At first my anger demands that I yell at her… but then I see her face, the state she’s in. She’s not in her mask outfit, not at all: she’s traded her baggy cargo pants and camo jacket for a fuzzy sweater and pajamas, and her hair is loose and free to her shoulders. Her face is bare and I’m reminded that like me, she can’t be pushing more than 22.
“It’s not your fault,” I tell her. “You tried to stay.” And to be honest, now that I’ve had time to gain some perspective, Epione made the right call as she saw it. To her, I was someone who betrayed them to the capes, and even if I didn’t mean to, I kind of did.
“It was pretty amazing to see Cosmoworld go up in smoke. You could hear it for miles.”
I shrug. “It was nothing.”
Saw Off slaps my back just above my ass, like that’s as close as she dares to go. “Nothing my butt! You fucking stomped Houston’s Hero! It was fucking awesome.”
“I don’t feel good about it,” I admit. Not with everything I know about Gabriel, how he was pushing me to take that fight so much farther than it needed to go. I sit down on the shitty couch by the ping pong table, thinking about that night long ago when I first encountered Pandahead. Really it’s only been a little under half a year.
Saw Off sits next to me. “What do you want, Homie?”
“I came because I need to track down Epione again.”
She grimaces, gets up, and finds a bottle of whiskey from a nearby cabinet. She fills a glass for each of us, and brings them back along with the whole bottle. I’m in no position to say no to a drink and to be so transparent, I need one. I down it in one gulp, feel the fire in my throat. I struggle not to cough.
Saw Off laughs at me a little before shooting her own glass down. She swallows, wipes her chin, and says, “She’s calling a gathering of masks at the old university off Broken 45. This Friday night. Very need to know.”
“The Front?” I ask.
“What’s left of them.”
“What’s left?”
“Ton of gangs left town, Gabe.” Saw Off leans back on the couch, bouncing the whiskey bottle against the armchair. “The Front’s trying to pick up the pieces. Not that I’m going. I think I’m done with all this mess.”
“It’s my fault.” I stand up. “I’m sorry to bother you. But thanks for letting me know. You always did right by me, and I was pretty abysmal to you.”
Saw Off groans again. “C’mon Gabe, stop beating yourself up. It’d be manipulative if you weren’t so dang stupid. What are you planning on doing? Bark up their tree again… to do what?”
With all sincerity, I say, “I’m going to topple the Vanguard.”
Saw Off raises an eyebrow and then falls into uproarious laughter. “Oh, Metis, you said it so seriously!” she says between peals. She doubles over, clutching her stomach.
I’m a little too far beyond reason to be offended at this point. I know what I said was absurd. “You liked that one, huh?”
“You should really look into comedy,” Saw Off says, wiping her eyes. “You’d do great at stand up.”
“You know, they won’t trust me if I show up alone.” I look at her, hoping to see readiness in her eyes.
Saw Off turns away from me. She leans on the counter, supported by her hands, and looks like she carries the weight of the world on her shoulders. At last, she says, “Not a chance. You can go, but I’m not.”
I’ve got one big card left to play. “You wanted to know if the face matched the muscles, right?”
Saw Off looks over her shoulder. “You’re gonna show me your face?”