Daniel, Izzy, Jeremy, and I left for my room shortly after. We didn’t say much. I didn’t have anything I wanted to say that could be said aloud.
Daniel could have created a four way telepathic conversation, but he didn’t.
When I shut the door to the room, Jeremy started talking. “I never guessed! This is so crazy. I wanted to see the League and everything, but this…”
His voice trailed off, and he started talking more quietly (which was good because he’d been way too loud at first). “You’re the Mystic, and you’re the Rocket, and that was Night Cat and Captain Commando back there…” He looked up at Izzy. “I’m not sure who you are.”
That was totally okay.
Instead of telling him, Izzy glanced at Daniel and said, “No one you’ve heard of.”
Which was totally true since she hadn’t decided on a name or costume yet.
Daniel gave a smile that seemed a little sad, and a little sympathetic. “While it’s good to finally meet you, this is a major problem for us. You know what happens when people find out who a super is, right?”
Jeremy blinked. “I’m not going to tell anybody. The last thing I want is to out you guys.”
He stopped, his mouth open, but not saying anything at first. Then it all came out in a rush. “You’re not going to make me forget this, are you?”
He looked up at Daniel, checked behind himself. He stood in front of our window. Even if he was willing to climb over the stereo and jump through it into the darkness, we were on the third floor. He probably wouldn’t survive the fall.
Not that Daniel or Izzy would let him fall.
Daniel shook his head, “I won’t unless you want me to.”
Jeremy swallowed. “I don’t.”
Jeremy seemed nervous, and I suddenly realized how it would look from his perspective. Both Daniel and Izzy stood six inches taller than he did. Plus, Izzy’s shirt didn’t cover her biceps, and they were pretty well defined.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Not that it mattered, but even if I wasn’t as intimidating, I was there too.
Daniel nodded, still looking concerned. “That’s good. I didn’t want to do that anyway. If you’re going to remember though, we need to make sure that someone can’t just pull it from your head. I’d like to create a mental shield. It’ll make it hard for a telepath to notice you thinking about us, and hard to find anything if they dig in. It’ll also make it impossible for you to accidentally talk about our secret identities.”
Jeremy’s eyes narrowed. “Impossible how? Something like my jaw locks up if I try?”
In the same calm voice he’d been using, Daniel said, “That’s exactly it. We’ve all got variations on the same block. You’re not being singled out.”
Slowly Jeremy said, “It’s better than forgetting, but it’s going to suck when I’m online. I’m on a bunch of cape boards, and I’m not going to be able to tell anyone anything, am I?”
Daniel smiled a little. “Sorry, but no. It’s too much of a risk. You’ll be able to pass on anything that you don’t learn from knowing us, but that’s all.”
“I guess that’s all I ever did before.” Jeremy said. Then he grinned. “Oh my god, I have a pile of questions to ask you guys. It’s all speculation on the boards, but what really happened up in Canada? Why was Rook here, and what did you do there? Was it really a nuke, or just a big bomb? And…” He looked at all of us in turn. “Is there really a super school? I heard there was a super school. I also heard that they’re training them to fight aliens, but everyone knows there aren’t really aliens. People on the boards think they’re going to take over the government.”
I stared at him. “What? There are too aliens. I’ve spoken to them.”
“For real?” Jeremy didn’t quite sound like he believed me.
“Yes. The League’s jet functions as a spaceship. Besides, that whole alien war in the 70’s? It’s in the history books. The League blew up their base on the moon. Wasn’t that covered in your high school history class?”
“Well, yeah, but everyone knows that was a cover-up. Didn’t the League basically destroy the group Dr. Mind was with before the Nine? The Neo-Nazi group? I heard the aliens were genetically engineered by those guys, but they really weren’t aliens, and the government used them to distract the League from Watergate. Didn’t you see the documentary?”
So, that was completely nuts.
I’d heard that people didn’t believe the League fought aliens, but I’d never run into one.
“No, I never saw the documentary, but that’s because I’ve seen alien spaceships. It’s not hard. You can’t always see the Jay and Kay with a telescope, but the gate’s there.”
He sat down on the lower bunk. “Everything I’ve read says its just space junk arranged into a weird shape.”
Back on our first day of the Stapledon program, Bullet had been worried about the public connecting most capes' powers with aliens. If the general public believed stuff that was even half as crazy as Jeremy, the problems he worried about might be an improvement.