Adam Mason

I sat on a leather barstool clutching my thirteenth bottle of medical ethanol. That was the most frustrating thing about all of this. Apparently, it was nigh impossible for me to get drunk anymore. Next time I was going to experiment with something stronger to make me woozy. I don’t know. Maybe I would chug gasoline or bleach or something. I wish I could turn my super powers on and off. But hey, that was the price for being invincible.

I did have a slight headache, however. Not exactly what I was hoping for from the ethanol, but I was drinking enough to kill a normal man a hundred times over. Ah well, that was a problem for future me to solve. Maybe there was some dose out there that could make me feel like I used to—those lucky nights when I swiped a bottle of vodka and drank myself silly under the stars.

Glancing over at my side, I couldn’t help but chuckle. Given the way my new friend was shooting shots of whiskey, it seemed I wasn’t the only one who had trouble getting drunk.

We had escaped with his teleportation. For a regular person, the experience would’ve been nauseating as we blinked in and out of places in milliseconds. We stopped by a clothing store to get my… awkward situation fixed, and then we raided nearby bars (and a hospital) for all the drinks we could carry. Then it was back to teleporting until we found ourselves in a long abandoned bar in a ruined shopping center.

The place had been grand once. Probably a happening spot for all the rich people back in the day. It had a certain class, you know? The day’s sunshine streamed in from boarded up windows. The red and gold carpet wasn’t completely soggy from all the stagnant pools of water. The booths weren’t completely ratted out. The tables looked fairly sturdy after decades of neglect. Hey, and the bar we sat at? There were a few bottles of tequila on the… whatchamacallit, the damn shelf where they put all the liquor on display.

I dunno.

Whole joint was exclusive too. Nobody within several miles. We were right on the edge of civilized territory. Here there be bandits and ruffians, though since it was the two of us, we didn’t exactly need to worry.

“Never thought I’d be sharing a drink with the Nighthawk,” I finally said, trying to pick up the conversation. “Or fighting the Urban Defenders for that matter.”

“I didn’t think any of this was going to happen.” Daniel poured himself another shot. “It’s been a crazy few days.”

“You can say that again.” I sighed, still trying to process everything that happened. “You know you guys technically got this whole ball rolling to begin with? That place you broke into? With The Ghost?”

“Seattle Vance?” Daniel asked.

“Yeah, I saw your news broadcast. Figured that place was good for looting. And well, I was accosted by our mutual friend, was arrested, and woke up with superpowers.”

“You weren’t born with powers?” Daniel looked confused.

I burst out laughing. “Hell no. You think I would be fucking living in City 57 if I were? Nah, that Seattle guy jabbed something into my neck. I know, I know, it’s the… enzyme or whatever. That stuff the Democratic Union uses on regular people to turn them into supes.”

“How the fuck did The Ghost get his hands on something like that?” Daniel asked, slurring his words. “Thought those things were supposed to be secure.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Less secure than they say.”

“But doesn’t that mean you have a deadline? One day you drop dead?”

“Yeah, but I have no idea how long I got. You’re the superhero. Aren’t they supposed to keep you in the loop about these things?”

It was Daniel’s to burst out laughing. It took him a few minutes to calm down. I waited with a half-grin on my face, not quite sure what set him off. He looked me and shook his head, taking another shot. “I never got it from a street perspective. What do you think we superheroes do?”

“Fight crime. Be famous. Have awesome sex.”

Daniel giggled and threw his head back with another shot. “Well, you’re right about two of those things. But we’re not free. We’re glorified errand boys in spandex. Day after day, being told what to do where and when, occasionally who to kill. And then we’re paraded out in front of our donors who treat us as entertainment.”

“Can’t be too bad. You aren’t starving.”

“That’s what they all say,” Daniel muttered under his breath. “That’s what they all fucking say,” he said, not without a little hate in his voice.

I think the whiskey was finally getting to him. He was really slurring words. I envied him for that as I downed my fourteenth bottle of ethanol. I wonder how people lived like this, feeling absolutely nothing all the time. There were natural class fives out there, and if they weren’t braindead in a lab, they would’ve felt this since childhood.

It was like all my experiences suddenly constricted to how I felt at room temperature. The world lost so much color and texture that I never appreciated before. I felt the wind, yes, but it could never chill or warm me up. I could eat, but I could never feel full. I suppose I could still feel pain, but nothing more than tiny annoying pinpricks on my skin.

I’m not a religious man by any means, but I had what you might call an epiphany of sorts. People weren’t made to be comfortable like this—or at least they shouldn’t be. Take it from someone who has seen the other side, living a room temperature life is exactly as awful as it sounds.

Or to put it another way, from what I heard from a junkie, shooting up for the first time feels amazing. But each time you get high, you get used to it. You burn out. You lose the ability to feel anything except the next high. The scale gets so out of whack that everything else feels like room temperature. Maybe even worse. The whole world turns grey. But I suppose an addiction might just be a roundabout mercy. You’re still allowed to feel something, even if it’s only pain.

And here I was, an addict without an addiction. I think suffering just might be a blessing in disguise. It reminds you what you’ve given up… and what you’ve lost.

I was stewing in my thoughts for a while until Daniel slammed his fist on the counter. The old me would’ve jumped out of my seat. Instead, it only caught my eye.

“It’s not fair!” Daniel yelled. “It’s stupid! All of it’s stupid!” He was keeping his words surprisingly straight for how much he had drank.

“What is?” I asked.

“Walter. The ASA. All of it. This is sick! Why is the world like this!” Daniel stumbled up from his barstool and threw it at a cracked mirror on the other side of the counter. It shattered into a thousand pieces on the floor.

He flattened himself on the counter. “All the lies! All the bullshit! Why did I have to go along with it!? Why did it have to be me!?” He banged his fist against the wood.

I wasn’t sure what to do. I sat there, watching concerned. I knew we weren’t exactly friends, but I didn’t have anyone else, and he didn’t have anyone else. We were both stuck in the same boat.

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Daniel turned to me. His eyes were red with tears. “Do you know what I would do for a second chance? Why is that so much to ask? Why is that so much?” He broke down.

I got up and gently put a hand on his shoulder. “Hey man, you got out. You’re free. We’re free, the both of us.”

“I’m not.” He shook his head. “They made me just like them. They took thirteen damn years from my life! I lied for them! I lied for them!” He repeated with growing horror. His voice lowered and trembled. “I killed for them. Why can’t I take it back? Why?”

I didn’t know how to answer that question. Really I didn’t. What was I supposed to say to him? That it’s all going to be okay in the end? You know, my parents used to tell me that bullshit, right up until it wasn’t. And you know, there are some things you don’t bounce back from. There are some things that don’t stop hurting, no matter how much they preach to you about healing.

But Daniel had a different sort of pain, something I was only beginning to grasp.

All my life I wanted to be at the top. I wanted to be the one who had girls hanging off his arm. I wanted to be the one who had a pool in the penthouse. I wanted to go to bed every night drunk off my ass.

But what people can’t seem to wrap their minds around is that you don’t get drunk off your ass every night if you’re actually happy. I still didn’t quite understand Daniel, but I think I was starting to.

We’d both been cheated out of our lives one way or another. And given what I could do now, I swore in that run-down, dirty bar that someone was going to pay.

…

Daniel passed out a short time later, and I tucked him away on the second floor with some blankets I could scrounge up. Given that I still didn’t feel woozy in the slightest, I took to wandering the empty halls of the abandoned shopping center.

You don’t really see people scavenging the really old ruins anymore. Everything has been picked clean a dozen times over. And if there isn’t radioactive dust in the buildings, there’s probably some dangerous chemicals or toxic gas or what have you. Back in my scrounging days, I stuck to whatever I could get from fast-food dumps and the rat meat they bartered in the encampments.

Surrounding me were dark halls lined with stores. It would’ve been pitch black had I not been able to see in pitch black. Apparently people holed up here at one time, probably shortly after the bombs fell. Inside shuttered stores, I could see remnants of tents and sleeping bags and surprisingly enough a few campfires. Campfires—in an enclosed space, with questionable air circulation, I guess people were stupid even back then.

I even saw a few skeletons, tattered cloth hanging off their picked-clean bones. No idea what killed them though, probably other people. I heard most deaths weren’t even from the bombs. Once everyone realized the world was ending, they finally snapped. The only tragedy in all of it was that the world didn’t end, and we had to live in the mess that came after.

Occasionally, a few rays of sunlight poked in from the roof. They were like little spotlights in a mausoleum to the past. I wandered by faded signs and advertisements for products that hadn’t existed for decades if not a century. There were portions of the mall that had collapsed in on itself. The whole building was rotting. I kicked some rocky debris and sent it flying into the thirty-foot ceiling over me.

Yeah, it was a damn tragedy that there’s no such thing as a clean slate.

I played in the food court for a while, throwing chairs and tables around. I know I said everything felt like room temperature, but this still got a thrill out of me. I found one of those dinosaur rides that swing back and forth; the ones you apparently you used to slot a quarter in, and it would swing like all heck.

I wouldn’t know. I’ve never seen a working one in my entire life.

It was a pitiful thing. The dinosaur was all cartoonish and the like with a huge grin across its bent face. It had probably been a character from a tv series or video game. I hopped in and tried to make it swing by pushing off the floor with my leg. The rusted hydraulics snapped in half and I fell to the floor face-first.

Dusting myself off, I continued wandering for a few more hours, picking my way through the wreckage of the old world.

You know, I’ve never been to a cemetery before. Seen a lot of mass graves though—buried a few people in them. This place felt exactly like that. You just couldn’t put it in the ground fast enough, to make the memories go away. But the funny thing is, what hurt the most wasn’t that the before times were better. It was what the people might think of you now. I’ve always been a man of low self-esteem, and if weren’t for my parents, I would’ve felt right at home dumpster diving with the rest.

But that didn’t feel right either. Even as I stood in this garbage heap of a mall, I felt that that I should stand with my back fucking stood straight. It wasn’t to live up to legacy or any of that shit. It was to prove these ghosts all wrong. Yeah, here you stood, and here I am—better than all of you. And you better remember it.

As the hours passed by, I noticed that the sun was getting low. Wanting to see the sunset, I flew up to the ceiling and punched through. I flew around, searching for a good perch on the roof. Now, I know people didn’t exactly design these things for sitting on, but finding a nice ledge was surprisingly difficult. The whole mall was this twisted curvy thing that seemed to be made for no other purpose than to be an eyesore.

As I was looking around, I sensed Daniel nearby. He had already found the perfect spot, where two steel beams converged into a concave surface that made a nice improvised bench. I landed and sat down next to him.

I couldn’t help but notice that he still had a bottle with him, but he seemed to have sobered up a little, and he wasn’t shooting down like he was before. It was a good location to watch the sunset too. It was one of those afternoon skies when you look and realize you’re living in a painting, and you have been your entire life. You just didn’t realize it until now.

The sun was setting over the ruined City 57, casting crimson hues over wispy clouds as far as the eye could see.

I still didn’t know what I wanted, but I knew enjoying the sunset with someone was part of that. I looked over to Daniel.

“You all right?”

“Yeah, I’m better,” Daniel muttered. “Sorry about that. The drink got it out of me.”

“It does do that to people.”

“The thing is, I’m deep in the shit, and I don’t even know what to do anymore. There’s people I still care about back there. And there’s someone I still haven’t said goodbye to.”

“I’m not holding you back. Do whatever you want.”

“It’s more complicated than that. I don’t know what I would say to him. He stood up for me. He did a lot of things he didn’t have to, all because he wanted to keep me out of Gen Pop. And I threw all his hard work away.”

That did make me a tad more guilty for threatening to kill his friends. But to be fair, they were the ones who picked the fight with me.

Daniel seemed to realize the implications of what he was saying, and he turned to me. “Would you kill me if I said I regretted leaving?”

It didn’t occur to me that he might be afraid of me suddenly turning on him. The thought honestly hadn’t crossed my mind.

That’s right. I can kill anyone whenever I please. I could reach out and snap a neck without a second thought.

That disturbed me probably even more than it did him. I know I killed that interrogator, and I knew I could take on anyone I wanted. I just hadn’t really considered it from the other guy’s perspective. How can you ever truly relax around someone who could murder you on a dime? I don’t think anyone really could.

I sighed. It was just one more thing separating me from everyone else. If I ever did try to seek out a new life, I knew I couldn’t ever show my powers again. It would eventually break every friendship one way or another.

I shrugged my shoulders. “It doesn’t make a difference to me. I’m just along for wherever this ride takes me.”

Daniel breathed a sigh of relief. That was definitely eating at him, but I knew he could never really be at ease.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

“I have to say goodbye. And then I don’t know.”

I was never the type to boss others around, even if I would miss the company. “Whether you want to stick with me or not, that’s on you. All I can say is that it’s been nice having someone to talk to.”

“Nah, I think I’ll stick around.” Daniel sucked in a deep breath. “I’m just figuring how I want to go out. I don’t want to be on the run forever.”

“Don’t think about it. That’s how I got by, and just look at me now.”

“I wish I could. I really do.” Daniel stood up and stretched his arms. “I’ll be back later tonight. Or not. Depends if they catch me.”

“You need any backup?”

“It would be better if I try to sneak in. But if I don’t come back, you can go ahead and wreck their shit.”

I nodded.

Daniel suddenly paused with a look of surprise on his face. I looked at him quizzically.

“It’s quiet,” he said. “I can’t hear anything. Nothing at all. I can’t remember the last time it was like this.”

I cracked a smile. “Yeah, it’s pretty nice, isn’t it? That’s what freedom is.”

He grinned as well. “Yeah.”

Daniel disappeared a moment later. I couldn’t see him, but I could sense him quickly hopping from building to building across the city. About a mile or so out, I couldn’t track him anymore. I was left alone watching the sunset, and it was gorgeous.

A sharp pain suddenly erupted in my head. I grunted and pressed my hands against my temples. The sensation passed quickly enough, but I knew the headache was lurking somewhere. It had been bothering me for a while now, going on and off all day. But it had never gotten this bad. I rubbed my face and relaxed. It was probably from all the ethanol I had been drinking. Not exactly the brightest idea, I know. I felt a dripping sensation, and I held my hand to my nose. Confused, I looked down at my palm.

In the center was a single splotch of blood.