The bearded, tan middle-aged man held out his open palm to me from the comfy black seats, beckoning with his fingers for me to get into the limousine with him.

“You should get in quickly, Gonzalo, people are still looking for you.”

My head bounced back slightly.

“How do you know my name?!” My lungs, chest, legs all ached, but the shock overrode them for a moment. I clutched the cool metal of the fifth avenue lamppost I had held onto when I stopped to breathe, clinging to it as an anchor. Maybe if this guy turned hostile I could rip it out of the sidewalk and smack him with it.

“There’s no time now,” said ‘Commander Abram’. “I’ll explain on the way. Come on, Gonzalo.” He beckoned again and waited for me.

I took a step backwards, still holding on to the lamppost. “I don’t know about you, mister,” I wheezed, “but my Mom told me never to accept rides from strangers…”

The man had dark brown eyes, but just for a moment the glare from a passing cab caught in them and they flashed yellow. But if he was frustrated, he hid it. He smiled his kindly smile at me again, faint crows’ feet forming at the corners of his eyes, and said “She taught you well. But I told you, Gonzalo, I’m not a stranger. I’m a friend. I’ve picked up your case. I’ve spoken to Dr Black on the phone.”

That raised my eyebrows. I took a step forward. “You know Dr Black? So he reported my case?” It had been about a week since my hospital appointment and still no phone call, so I had begun to wonder if he had even done that.

“Of course he did,” said Abram. “I work for the government department that looks after people like you.”

I blinked a couple of times. Finally. This was more like it. I let go of the lamppost and threw my hands up in the air.

“I was supposed to get a phone call! Where was my fucking phone call?”

Did I really just say that? The events of the night had not done wonders for my mood. I must have few inhibitions left, if any.

Abram closed his eyes for a moment as he spoke, then opened them again. “I’m sorry that it has taken so long, Gonzalo. This is your ‘phone call’. It takes time for a case like yours to move through the proper bureaucratic channels. And people can take time to process things because your kind of case doesn’t come up very often. In fact, yours is the first case of its kind, in this country at least, to lead to a recruitment. These things take time. But I’m here now. Will you please get in the car?”

Sirens were blaring in the distance again. I took another step towards the car, then hesitated.

“‘Recruitment’? Why exactly are you here?”

Abram sighed, but his tone remained level, devoid of anger. “Must we do this all outside in the cold? I’m here to recruit you to our secret metahuman initiative. You’re going to be a superhero, Gonzalo. If you want to, that is…”

“YES! I knew it!” I said and ran the rest of the way to the car. Just as I reached it I stopped, my hand on the shiny chrome door. “Hold on. How do I know that this isn’t all some kind of trick? How do I know you’re not really on the same side as the guys who were just shooting at me?”

“I understand your caution,” said Abram, still holding out his hand after all this time. “But you’re going to have to trust me. Have I tried to shoot you yet? If I was going to do that, wouldn’t I have done it by now?”

The sirens were getting louder again. They were coming towards me.

“Fair enough,” I said as I ducked my head inside the car. Even if he does try to shoot me, it’s not like he’ll be able to hurt me anyway, I reasoned. And I can always break out of this car if I need to. I’m invincible! I remembered the bullets bouncing off me back at my apartment and a sudden surge of euphoria rushed through my head, making me dizzy.

I sank into the plush leather seat which Abram indicated and shut the door behind me. Abram sat a little way over from me, a big arm rest between us that held a crystal glass of something fizzy. He leaned forward and tapped on a sheet of black tinted glass at eye level in front of us.

“Drive on, George,” he said, and the car sped off at once.

I strapped on my seatbelt like a good boy then slouched back in the chair, my body at last deciding that it was no longer under threat. All my muscles relaxed as I breathed out slowly, the tension starting to seep out of me, and I relaxed so much I almost wet myself. I clenched down to stop myself just in time. That would have been embarrassing, wouldn’t it? Starting my superhero career by peeing all over my boss’s car…

“You’ve been through a terrible ordeal,” said Abram next to me. I threw him a glance. The patches of grey and white in his beard made him hard to age, but he was definitely middle-aged. Somewhere around the age of my Dad. It was hard to tell though because you could see even through his suit that he was well-built and strong. He did have a kind of ‘commanding’ air to him.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

I didn’t reply right away, but went through a mental review of all the things that had just happened to me, trying to recall what ordeal he was referring to. I was half-delirious from exhaustion and stress, so I had to think quite hard to summon back the details.

Detention with Ali. The party. Being pretend beaten up by half the school football team. Ali showing up and saying she wasn’t my friend. Revealing my powers and actually beating up half the school football team. Running home from Queens to Brooklyn. Being attacked by a load of armed men in my own apartment. Running to Dad’s, him not even letting me in. Yes, I have been through an ordeal, haven’t I? Hang on, I’ve missed something…

“MOM!” I shouted and sat bolt upright, my back stiffening.

The car wobbled a little. There was a click and an electronically reproduced voice came over the crackle of a circular intercom speaker built into the dark glass. “Is everything alright back there, Commander Abram?”

“Everything’s fine, thank you George,” said Abram, looking at me with his dark brown eyes. “Nothing to worry about; drive on.”

The intercom clicked off before I said “Everything’s not alright!” I looked for the door handle. “There is something to worry about! My Mom’s in danger, I’ve got to warn her!” An idea came to me. “Do you have a phone?” I asked Abram.

Abram chuckled. How could he be laughing at a time like this? “Gonzalo. Don’t look so worried. Your mother is quite safe. I had a car waiting for her at your building when she got back from her evening engagement. The police spoke with her and passed her on to one of my drivers. She’s been taken to a nice hotel in the city for the night.”

I wasn’t satisfied. It was one thing to trust this mysterious man with my own life when I was basically invincible; it was a totally different thing entirely to trust him with my Mom’s life.

Abram must have seen I wasn’t satisfied because he took out a phone from his inside jacket pocket and said “Here, talk to her if you really need to.”

It was a sleek black touch-screen, the latest model, already calling my Mom’s cell number. (I knew it off by heart.)

She picked up almost immediately. “Hello?” Her voice was breathy, urgent.

“Mom, it’s me!”

“Oh, Lolo!” she exclaimed. I had to hold the phone away from my ear for a moment. “Halleluyah! I’m so glad you’re safe! There was a break-in at our building! Did Mr Abram tell you? Thieves trying to steal from the ground floor apartments! Our front door was bashed in!”

I looked sideways at Abram. He gave me his kind, knowing smile. “Yeah, I heard, Mom. I’m glad you’re safe too.”

“I’m very safe,” she said reassuringly, with so much emphasis it was a bit weird. “They’ve put u—me up for the night in a five-star hotel while they repair the door. It’s so fortunate that this happened on the night when you finally got your phone call and the government agency came to pick you up! Mr Abram is such a nice man. He explained everything to me on the phone.”

I looked at Abram again. Still smiling.

Suddenly, just for a moment, Mom went into maniacal Jewish matriarch mode. “Gonzalo, you could have rung or texted me sooner to tell me what was going on. It would have been nicer to find out from you directly and not from Mr Abram first. Is it really so much to ask you to keep your poor old mother informed of what’s going on?” She switched back. “But I understand, you must be very busy! Oh Gonzalo, I am so excited for you!”

I was about to protest that I had texted her and left a voicemail on her phone, but just then I heard another voice on the line in the background. ‘Deborah’, did it say? It was low, imploring. Was that a male voice?!

There was a crinkling sound, the rumour of whispers. I heard Mom…giggle? Giggle?! Why was she giggling? What the hell did she have to giggle about at a time like this? Everyone seemed to be laughing at everything right now, except for me.

“Mom, what are—”

“Gonzalo, I’m sorry but I’ve got to go now,” she interrupted me. She sounded like she was trying to control her voice to stop herself bursting into hysterics. I heard a little thump, and then her voice dropped, serious again for a moment. “Gonzalo, you are a very special boy. You work hard there, OK? I am very proud of you. Shalom,” she signed off.

“Bye Mom,” I said, but she had already hung up.

I looked at the phone in my hand, bewildered, to check if it was really her number that had been called. That was her number alright.

“You see?” said Abram beside me, startling me out of my bewilderment.

I handed the phone back to him. “Well, she certainly sounds safe… More than safe, actually…” I wondered who the man’s voice in the background had been. I wondered why she hadn’t picked up my voicemail. But I didn’t want to think about those things right now. I had a thousand other questions to occupy me.

“You’ll understand,” said Abram, “that we intercepted the messages you originally sent her, of course. It wouldn’t have been helpful to worry her unduly, and they actually could have put her in danger. It was better for us to send a car to her directly.”

“You intercepted my call?”

“A necessary precaution,” he said. “We didn’t want you worrying her unnecessarily, and we didn’t want your—or her—location being traced by your assailants.”

“You know about the people who attacked me?!”

“Yes,” said Abram straightforwardly.

“Who were they? Why weren’t you there to protect me? And what part of the government do you work for anyway? What did you tell my Mom? What did she mean ‘work hard there’? And how did you find me?”

Abram chuckled again. “Questions, questions…” His voice was deep, authoritative, but benevolent; he came across a bit like someone doing ‘the voice of God’ for a movie script and that actor who voiced Mufasa in the Lion King. Only he wasn’t black. He was tan, like me. “Don’t you want to know where I’m taking you first? We’re nearly there. I can answer all your questions once we’re inside.”

He pointed out the window. The glass of the limousine was one-way. From inside I could see out but everything was tinted slightly grey. As I’d been on the phone to Mom the primary colours of the Manhattan nightlights had been streaming by but I hadn’t paid them attention. Now as I looked I could see that we were approaching a tall, elegant scraper that jutted out a little from the rest of the buildings on the street that it was nestled between. I realised where we were: First Avenue.

“Isn’t that the UN headquarters?” I said.

“Correct,” said Abram, smiling. “Well done, Gonzalo.”