They came through the south-side entrance; a large man and a thick, greasy-haired woman, both in tight black shirts and cargo pants, both wearing sunglasses. Between them, at their forefront so they flanked him either side, walked a short, slick-haired man in a blue pinstripe suit, his brown leather dress shoes clacking the concrete with every step. They approached the waiting soldiers cautiously, heads turning as they took in their numbers, their positions, their guns. Traces of unease flickered across the newcomers’ faces, though they nevertheless continued forward, advancing until the two groups stood ten or so feet apart.
“Thought you’d come alone,” said the man in the pinstripe suit. He was lean and wiry, perhaps mid‑twenties to thirties, with too much product in hair the colour of rat’s fur and an unrefined hunch in his shoulders that no amount of expensive clothes could uncurl. He clicked his tongue at the old man sitting on the chair in front of him, rotating a well-chewed piece of gum.
The grey, vulture-like man remained sitting, and remained impassive. “Did you?” His eyes flicked once to both the man’s companions. The newcomer bristled.
“Yeah, well, it’s for my protection innet? This ain’t just a collector’s item no more. This is serious.”
“And on that note,” said the old man, sounding bored, “Let’s see it.”
The TV continued to blare in the background, undisturbed and ignored.
*
“Alright, let’s take it back a second,” the host continued, “Let’s start at the beginning. You’re an ordinary guy, you’re living an ordinary life – except you don’t have a power.”
“Yep.”
“When did you first find that out?”
Matt hesitated. “When I was about twelve,” he answered truthfully, “I started getting worried. I… I went around trying to figure out what it might be, like I tried reading people’s minds, I tried talking to our dog-” the audience laughed, “-and, just, nothing, you know? And, like, I remember… I’d just turned thirteen and we’d had sex ed, and I was lying awake in bed that night going ‘man… something’s wrong with me. What if I genuinely don’t have a power?’”.
The audience murmured. Leno looked sympathetic.
“That must have been a scary place for a kid.”
“It was scary! And it was only a couple of years after the Neutroheal thing happened, do you remember Neutroheal?”
“That was, ah, yeah, that was the girl with Down Syndrome right?”
“Right! And I’m like: ‘what if I’m like that? What if people want to study me?’”
“What if the government sends SWAT teams to take my blood?” That got a laugh, though it quickly darkened with discontented murmurings. Leno shot the crowd a quick, sly smirk.
Matt grimaced. “Exactly,” he said, “So… I don’t know, I just went off. I came up with this dumb, thirteen-year-old’s plan where I was going to pretend to be a clairvoyant, but just kind of a not very good one?” More laughter, more light-hearted this time. “And then, I don’t know, I just… kept doing it. And I read books about, you know, trick clairvoyancy, and I watched videos, and I just kept on faking it and faking it and‑”
“And nobody caught on.”
“Nobody caught on!” Matt threw up his hands. “I don’t know, it’s unbelievable, in retrospect it’s, how did I… how did nobody catch me? How come no one looked at this more closely? But I guess that’s the way the world works a lot of the time, you know… you keep your head down, you act confident, and you just do things, and people just sort of… ignore you.”
The host nodded sagely while the audience tittered a mixture of amusement, amazement and agreement. He indicated to Jane.
“And then she shows up.”
“Then she shows up,” Matt said with an over-dramatic sigh. The audience laughed and Jane fixed him with an expression of mock hurt. He grinned and patted the back of her hand, then continued.
“So, ah, yeah, Jane shows up, she transfers to our school-”
“Senior year?”
“Senior year. And then I’m walking home from school one day and I see her, and we get talking, and then I’m just sort of not thinking, and I take her hand.”
“Oh.” The host’s voice curled rich and falsely mortified, and the crowd let out a brief burst of laughter. “Oh no. You held her hand? But you weren’t even married.” More laughter.
“I know!” agreed Matt, “Thinking about it now I’m like, dude, are you kidding me, I’m so stupid, but yeah I just… forgot. I don’t know. Brain fart. I forgot she was an empath. “
“And then of course, she felt you had no powers.”
“She felt I had no powers.”
“How did you react to that?” Leno asked, turning to Jane. Jane shrugged.
“I thought he might’ve been a giant baby,” she replied. The studio cracked with laughter.
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The host chuckled. “So your secret’s out,” he pressed on, “Someone knows. And then as if that isn’t bad enough, a few months later…”
“The Legion of Heroes.”
“The Legion of Heroes.” Leno turned towards the studio audience, who erupted in a ringing cheer. The host smiled. “Yeah. Ah-ha. Yeah, the Legion, exactly.” He let the cheering fade, then turned back to his guests. “God they’ve had a tough run.”
Matt nodded, grimacing his agreement. “I know right? So obviously they’d been notified by the DPR or something that there was an adult clairvoyant, because I’m eighteen now, and then they come to my school, and they’re like-”
“‘Hey kid, how’d you like to become a superhero?’”
“Hey, come train your powers at our Academy, exactly.”
“What went through your head when you heard that?”
Matt’s face split into a sheepish grin and he glanced between the host and the cameras. “Ahh… nothing I can say on TV.”
The room rang with laughter. Leno let it run its course, then raised his hands.
“Okay, okay. So you say no, right?”
“No, I say yes.”
“You say yes?!”
“Well I can’t just say no,” Matt explained, “Because then it might look like I was actually hiding something. I had to come up with an excuse, see, why they couldn’t take me.”
“Right, it had to seem legitimate.”
“Right. So I say, hey, this is Jane, she’s a pretty incredible fighter – because she was actually, even back then – so, hey, I’m glad you want me, that’s great, but if you want me you have to take her, because that’s fair.”
A murmur from the crowd. Leno leaned back, his hands on the table.
“That’s very noble of you.”
“Noble?” Matt scowled, “I thought they hated her. I thought it’d make them buzz off!”
The audience laughed, though it quickly turned into an ‘Aww’ as Jane made a face. The host shook his head, chuckling as he turned to her.
“He’s mean, isn’t he?” he asked tongue-in-cheek, gesturing to Matt.
“He's lucky he’s cute,” she replied. Leno laughed.
“Alright, so, Jane,” he continued, turning to the girl more fully, “You always wanted to be a superhero?”
“Yeah.”
“Ever since you were a kid.”
“Yeah.”
“So, this is a dream come true for you, right?”
“Pretty much.”
“Was being part of the Legion everything you thought it was going to be?” the host asked. Jane considered for a moment.
“It was tough,” she finally admitted, “You had to work hard. But I think… they’re good people.”
“Well, that’s great to hear. So they take you in, both of you-” they nodded, “-and then you’re there, Jane, working really hard, and you’re there-” he gestured to Matt, “‑what?”
“Trying to get expelled,” Matt finished, causing another wave of laughter to erupt from the audience.
“And how did that go?” Leno asked.
“I don’t know…” Matt replied, mock-reluctant, “Don’t kids watch this show?”
There was more laughter from the crowd. Jay Leno raised an eyebrow.
“Alright, alright, yeah, maybe we shouldn’t go into that,” he said, raising his hands, “That’s my mistake for asking.” Another peal of laughter. “Ah anyhow, but you didn’t get expelled.”
“No.”
“You were a failure at failing.” The crowd laughed.
“Yeah exactly, it sucked, I couldn’t get it right. Because I’m trying to maintain this balance, right, like I’m trying to keep going with this fake clairvoyancy so I don’t get uncovered, but at the same time I’m doing all these things, and being such a bad student and…”
“They really wanted your clairvoyancy.”
“They really wanted my clairvoyancy! And it’s like come on guys seriously, these aren’t the droids you’re looking for, what do I have to do?” There was more laughter.
The host smiled – then his tone turned serious. “And then I guess we come to the darker stuff.”
“Yeah.” Matt’s mouth set into a line and he gave a jerky, almost forced nod. “My, um… one of my friends, at the Academy. Guy named Ed. Genius. He, ah… well, everyone thought he killed himself.”
A sympathetic murmur rolled through the crowd. The host’s face was a mask of impeccable sympathy.
“I’m so sorry to hear that. That must have been tough.”
“Yeah, it… it sucked.”
Leno turned to the camera. “And I just want to remind everyone, for our viewers at home, that if you are having a hard time out there, you know, sometimes life is tough – hang in there, alright, there is help available, Larry can we- yep we’ve just put up a number, this is the number of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention- if you’re feeling down, if you need someone to talk to- this is the number to call. Mental health matters, doesn’t it, I think we can all agree-”
“Absolutely,” said Matt, nodding along with the encouraging noises from the crowd, “It’s really important. You’re never alone. There’s always help.”
“Absolutely. There’s that number up there. So- you thought your friend committed suicide.”
“Yes.”
“Except he didn’t.”
“Turns out, no.”
“It was the Black Death.”
“The Black Death. He’d… um… Ed, he’d…” Matt paused, suddenly teary. He drew a shaky breath.
“It’s okay. It’s okay.” Leno reached over and put a gentle hand on Matt’s arm, then turned to the crowd. “I think, we’ve all lost people. I mean, we talk about this stuff, and we’re happy, I think, everyone’s happy that it’s all over, but the tragedy- we can never forget- this man took peoples’ lives.” Murmurs of agreement rippled through the studio. “Thousands- millions of lives. That’s not something you just get over, okay? That’s not something you just get over. For you. For any of us.” He paused as Matt sniffed. “It’s alright, take your time, take your time.”
“No, it’s- I’m fine,” assured Matt, “I’m fine. You’re right, he- he killed so many people. And… Ed was just one more, wasn’t he? He… found him out, he figured out Heydrich was faking it, faking being Captain Dawn, and so… he killed him. Just like that. Just another death on the list.”
“But that got you thinking,” the host continued, steering the conversation gently away, “Didn’t it?”
“It did,” Matt agreed, “Because I knew him, Ed, and it didn’t make sense to me, it didn’t make sense that he’d killed himself.”
“So you started investigating.”
“Both of us. Jane and I. We started looking into… into suspicious deaths. Into Captain Dawn’s past.”
“Yeah.”
“And we found… it was horrific.”
“Oh God I… I shudder. I shudder to think.”
“He’d been killing- Heydrich- he’d been killing hundreds of people, secretly. Maybe thousands.”
“Jesus, it just never ends.”
“No, it doesn’t. He’d been killing these people, all these people who knew the original Captain Dawn at some point, like his old classmates, and neighbours, and teachers, and… it was psychotic!”
“He was a son of a bitch,” said Leno. He turned to the crowd. “I don’t know if I can say that, I don’t know if that sort of language is okay on commercial television but screw it, I’m going to say it, he was an absolute son of a bitch.” The studio rang with clapping and cheers. “Rarely, I think, do we see someone who so clearly just embodies… the worst of humanity. The absolute worst. He was a monster. And if we never see the likes of him again, the world will be a better place.”
The room descended into thunderous applause. Leno waved the noise down with his hands. “Let’s just, I think take a moment of silence to remember everyone who’s been lost. Would you, would you be alright-?”
“Absolutely.”
“Of course.”
“Yeah. Let’s just- everyone, yep, okay- just for a moment.”
And for the first time, truly, since Matt and Jane first stepped out onto the stage, silence descended on the studio.