I sat up straighter in my seat, removed my earbuds, and listened in. Down at the front of the train car where the connection to the next section stood closed, a professionally dressed redhead sat staring up at a guy wearing what could charitably be called ‘rags’. Though she was controlling her facial expression well, I could feel the dread spreading through her stomach like acid.
“They’re everywhere,” the guy was saying.
Though there were plenty of empty seats on the train, the guy hadn’t taken one. Instead, he clutched the pole like it was the only thing keeping him from being pulled away into the darkness. His eyes were wild, like he’d seen a ghost, and a brief touch along the surface of his thoughts was all it took to get me to recoil away from his brain.
His mind was a wash of confusion and fear, bordering on complete insanity. The terror I felt inside of him made the woman’s anxiety feel like small potatoes in comparison.
“Please,” the redhead whispered, clutching her briefcase tighter. “I don’t have any money. And I don’t know what you’re talking about. Could you just leave me alone?”
I don’t think he hears you. Whatever shit this guy had been through, it was the kind that slammed a permanent barrier between you and the rest of reality.
I felt bad for him—he wasn’t a villain, just a crazy guy who needed some help—but that didn’t give him the right to bother random people on the subway and scare the shit out of them.
“The government doesn’t want you to know about them!” the man said, his eyes nearly bugging out of his head. “I’ve seen ‘em, I’ve seen ‘em all! They punch little holes in the paper—holes that let the light through! Except it isn’t light, shit! It’s not light at all!”
“Please stop,” the redhead whispered again. She looked around the half-empty subway car for some form of help. No one moved.
That pissed me off.
Without me even meaning to, I pushed outward with my powers and touched the minds of everyone in the subway car. What I felt made me sick to my stomach.
In a few of them—too few—I could feel their shame at not coming to the woman’s aid, along with their own worries of being attacked by the crazy guy if they stood up to him. But most people weren’t feeling that way at all. They were annoyed by the inconvenience—or even worse, completely self-absorbed.
I could feel my hands balling into fists. Don’t do it, I tried to tell myself. You’ve got an exam tomorrow—thirty percent of your grade. You’re not responsible for righting every wrong that happens in Potomac City…
Maybe not. But fuck, there were so many wrongs. It was like no one gave a shit anymore, not since Autarch took over and SENTRY became the police and the government all wrapped up in one.
Back in the old days, people wrote comics and stories about superpowered heroes helping protect the innocent, saving the weak from the strong. But reality was the opposite of that dream.
Supers did whatever they wanted in this city, and treated the rest of us like the NPCs in their personal Grand Theft Auto session. Like we were insects to get stepped on while they got their rocks off from it.
The guy’s ranting got even louder. Now the redhead pressed her back to the window as hard as she could, looking not to other people but to the little screen showing how long it would be until we reached the next station.
I knew I should have let her wait it out—that she’d probably just sit there and bolt as soon as the train stopped. The ashamed would stay ashamed, and the people who didn’t care probably wouldn’t even notice.
But it’s hard to stop yourself when you’ve got super empathy.
I’m probably going to regret this, I told myself as I picked up my backpack. But fuck it.
As I stood up, I thought I heard the sound of a cat meowing, like I’d startled it from its hiding place. I looked around, thinking how absurd it would be for a feline to be hiding on a subway train, but there wasn’t anything around me except empty seats.
Must have been someone’s cell phone. People selected the craziest shit to tell them they’d gotten a new notification or text message.
The woman was halfway out of her seat by the time I got to her, on the point of fleeing. Not that it would have done her much good.
The guy clinging to the pole looked like a kettle about to boil over. Spittle flew from his lips as he ranted and raved. A cursory touch of his mind told me he was agitated and about to become very, very unpleasant.
I put myself between the business woman and the guy yelling at her. “Hey man,” I said, plastering a smile to my face as I prepared to work my magic. “What’s up?”
Several heads turned in my direction. Whether they were self-absorbed or just too ashamed to do anything, no one had actually expected another passenger to come to this woman’s aid. Seeing me step up to the task gave them something to look at. It was a show.
“Eh?” The man gave a little start. He hadn’t expected this, which was exactly how I wanted it. “Who’re you?”
A gentle push against his mind and I felt the terror within him easing a touch. I’d refocused him, and now it was time to give him a new outlet for his ravings. People loved talking about themselves, especially when they felt like they were being listened to and appreciated it. I hadn’t realized that before I gained my powers, but now I took advantage of it whenever I could.
“Just somebody who’s interested in the truth, man,” I said, keeping my voice casual and my powers focused on the inside of the man’s skull. Whatever emotions he was planning on feeling, I wanted to know about them even before he did. “I don’t think she’s been listening to you, but I have! Tell me about what you saw. She obviously isn’t interested.”
I jerked a thumb behind me at the redhead, who was staring at me the way people getting mugged in old comic books used to stare at Batman. I actually felt a little bit like a hero as I blocked her from getting the worst of the crazy guy’s ranting. People around us watched me like they couldn’t quite believe what they were seeing.
The man let off feelings of surprise. Clearly he hadn’t expected anyone to be receptive to his story. The fact that someone was there left him calmer.
“It was horrible,” he muttered, shaking his head back and forth. “Once you see it, you can never unsee it. The holes, they’re hiding them—they don’t want anyone to know how many of them there are! They can’t control it, y’see—it’s the one thing they don’t control…”
I wasn’t expecting the bolt of bitterness that filled my stomach at the man’s words. He’d just hit the nail on the head, a lot better than anyone had expected him to. I didn’t believe whatever gibberish he was telling me about ‘holes’ in the world, of course, but it certainly did feel like we were under someone’s boot.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
“Tell me about it,” I said, chuckling gently like a coworker around the water cooler. “SENTRY’s got the whole city locked down tighter than a bug’s ass. Supers fight supers, and ordinary people get crushed. When Crimson Queen tosses some low-level cape through a building and destroys the whole thing, those are real people inside. Don’t they care about that!?”
Now I was getting heated. I couldn’t help it. It made me mad, watching the strong prey on the weak.
People were trying to rebuild Potomac City, turn it back to what it was before the ‘bad old days’ when it was a free-for-all between all the new superhumans discovering their powers, but how could you rebuild a city when a bunch of assholes with superpowers kept destroying it? It wasn’t like Autarch gave a shit.
I expected the man to agree with me. After all, we’d established a rapport. I’d fed into his delusions without stoking them, giving him the outlet he so desperately needed in order to calm down. In my peripheral vision, I could see the lights of Yamaoka Station just up ahead—in thirty seconds, we’d be pulling into the next stop and this would all be over.
Instead, a wave of fear and insanity washed over the man’s mind.
“It’s you!” The guy clutched at the side of his head, as if he could feel my phantom fingertips grazing the surface of his thoughts. “You’re one of them!”
Guilt flooded me. Once again, the guy was more right than he knew. Could he actually feel me using my empathy on him, or was it just a lucky guess? The possibility that he could, that maybe the guy had powers of his own he didn’t even know about, flickered through my mind but was quickly discarded.
“I’m not anybody,” I said, forcing out a laugh and holding up my hands. “I told you, man, I was just listening in—”
Suddenly the guy had a knife.
It looked clean and sharp, like he’d just stolen it from a butcher’s shop or the kitchen of a restaurant. He’d had it in his pocket the whole time, and as he drew it, it shook in his dirty fingers.
I heard passengers gasp, and someone on the other side of the subway car went for their cell phone and started recording.
“Fuck you, monster!” the guy roared, spitting onto the floor of the subway car. “You’re one of them—you’re the reason we’re in this mess—!”
He charged me. I could have dodged away, jumped to the side and put as much distance between myself and the crazy guy as possible. That would’ve been the smart thing to do, for sure.
But that would have left the woman behind me wide open. She’d have been the one getting stabbed, not me. So I took it head on, and did my best to stop the guy.
His insanity gave him strength, but it also made him unsteady on his feet. I managed to get one hand around his wrist and push the knife upward, aiming it toward the ceiling of the subway car instead of at one of the passengers. The man twisted, his face right next to my face, as we grappled over the knife.
“He’s one of them!” the man roared, tears streaming down his face from sheer anger. “You took everything from me! You ruined this city! You ruined the whole world…!”
Even as we struggled, I felt another pang of guilt deep inside. The guy was crazy, but he wasn’t wrong.
Superhumans had destroyed everything that was good in this world. Humanity nearly went extinct when the first wave of supers gained their powers, and even now, civilization veered on the edge of total and final collapse. Only in a few major metropolises, like Potomac City, did life go on like something close to the old days.
That guilt consumed me as I pushed the man back into the pole. He’s right, I thought, all the hatred and unfairness and injustice of Autarch’s reign filling me up like a strong drink. Fuck him, but he’s right…!
“Ahh!” The man backed away and dropped to his knees. The knife fell from his nerveless fingers and landed on the floor of the subway car. Quickly, I kicked it over to the other side of the train. I had no idea what had just happened, but I wasn’t about to squander the moment.
The sound of grinding gears filled the car as the subway decelerated into the station. A few dozen pedestrians lingered in the underground metro, their faces growing confused at the sight of what was happening in the car they were about to enter.
As the danger passed, the people who’d been ashamed began to rise from their seats. I knew they’d tell themselves later that they’d taken action, but really they’d all been cowards. Instead of giving a shit about them, I touched the man’s mind again, trying to figure out what happened.
What I felt shocked me.
His terror had been replaced with confusion, and guilt. He sobbed against the floor of the subway as the car ground to a stop and the doors opened, looking around like a child who got lost in a store.
Guess he had a change of heart, I thought, turning to the redhead behind me.
“Come on,” I told her. “Let’s get out of here.”
She stared up at me blankly. I didn’t need my powers to know that she was struggling to process everything she’d just seen.
“But this isn’t my stop,” she whispered in a faint voice.
“Then get on another train,” I said, tugging her. “That guy’s not going to stay down forever.”
The redhead and I stepped off the train, and so did everyone else. Someone carried the knife from the car and tossed it into a trash can, wiping their hands vigorously with a handkerchief after doing so. The man in the dirty outfit was still sobbing when the doors closed and the subway car rattled off into the darkness.
The redhead and I watched it go, her hand still in mine.
“My goodness,” she finally said with a sigh of relief, staring into the darkened subway tunnel like the man might come barrelling out with his knife. “That was a close one, wasn’t it?”
I gently opened myself to her emotions, sifting through them. She feels guilty about the man, I thought, and is asking herself if there’s anything she did to set him off. She’s also pissed that it took so long for someone to notice and help her.
Sorting through someone’s emotions was difficult even at the best of times, but I’d gotten very good at it.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I told her, giving her hand a squeeze before letting it go. “I saw that guy talk to a couple different people before you. If it hadn’t been you, he’d have gone off on someone else.” I made a face, not needing to hide my disgust for the rest of the car. “I’m sorry no one else got up and said something. If I’d noticed sooner…”
The woman gave me a surprised look. “You’re apologizing to me? Young man, you may have just saved my life!” I could tell that both of my statements had hit the mark, soothing away exactly the worries she’d been carrying after the conflict. “It feels like someone should show up and give you a medal. You’re a hero.”
The smile fell off my face, and a wave of bitterness washed over me. “There are no heroes in Potomac City,” I said, shaking my head. “Just different types of villains.”
I could tell it wasn’t the most optimal thing to say. Still, this woman was feeling pretty grateful toward me. It wasn’t every day that someone put their body on the line to protect you.
“Well,” the redhead said, pulling up her sleeve and checking her watch. It was expensive, and thanks to Miss Kennedy, I knew exactly how expensive. I was a little surprised she wore it in public. “I was heading home after work, but after an encounter like this, I could use a drink or two to steady my nerves.” She looked me up and down, evidently liking what she saw. “Would you like to join me for dinner, young man?”
Shit. I really liked the way she called me ‘young man’. I bet it would’ve sounded even better in bed, but I’d already turned down Bailey. And that exam really was going to be make or break when it came to my econ grade…
I bit back a sigh. “Normally, I’d love to,” I said, hefting my bag. The redhead saw the corner of my textbook and nodded, recognizing my status as a student. “But I’ve got an exam tomorrow I need to hit the bricks for. As much as I’d love to be wined and dined by a beautiful woman, I have my studies to think about…”
The corner of the redhead’s mouth curled in a smirk. “Not much of a partier, I see,” she said, reaching into the pocket of her jacket. “What a studious young man you are! Perhaps I could treat you tomorrow, then, to celebrate your no-doubt excellent performance on the exam?”
It was the exact same offer Bailey had made, which made me smile. “Sure,” I said, figuring I’d find a way to juggle Bailey later. “Let me get your number?”
The two of us put our numbers into each other’s phone. Then, giving me a look that was almost awkward, the redhead leaned over and planted a kiss on my cheek.
“It’s good to know that there’s still people who care in this city,” she whispered, smiling at me. “I’m looking forward to getting to know you a little better tomorrow, young man.”
As was I.
I had an extra spring in my step as I walked the subway platform. The redhead stayed behind to wait for her train, and I sincerely hoped she made it home without any more incidents.
As for me, I had a couple blocks to walk to get to my apartment. No big deal—
Something black raced out of the shadows.
I nearly tripped over it. A slender black cat ran beneath my feet, meowing loudly as it raced for the stairs. What the hell?
“Who let a cat down here?” I asked, shaking my head. “Shit, this place is really going to hell, isn’t it?”
Trying my best to ignore the cultural implications of having a black cat cross your path, I took the stairs leading to street level and headed home.
I’d done my one good deed for the day. Now I’d spend all night studying, and trying not to think about Bailey or the redhead I’d made dinner plans with.