It felt like everybody in the restaurant was staring at us, at me.

I was too embarrassed to say anything so I just sat looking down at the pristine tablecloth, waiting for one of the adults to break the silence. Underneath the embarrassment, my gut had started to twist itself up in rage.

How could she have told him about Miracle Force? That’s classified information! It’s meant to be our special secret! How could she break the non-disclosure agreement Abram made her sign? And all for this washed-out middle-aged medic?

I felt the anger rising up in me again like boiling liquid beginning to fill up from my stomach, through my torso, into my throat. If it reached the top of my head I wasn’t sure I would be able to contain it. I was tired of holding my feelings in. I was going to have another outburst, I knew it.

Thankfully just at that moment the waitress arrived with our food and I was socially obliged to restrain myself for a little while longer.

She was older than me and had a stressed out just-doing-this-job-to-pay-for-something-else look around her eyes. Maybe Mom and Dr Black had seen her coming and that was why they had stayed quiet too.

“Seafood pizza,” she said, and surprised me when she put down in front of me the pizza that had tunafish, mussels, prawns and even some squid sprinkled on top. Damn it, I thought. I didn’t even like seafood. I should have paid more attention when I was ordering.

Mom got a tagliatelle carbonara and Dr Black got a standard old spaghetti bolognese.

That was when Mom made her next move.

“Ah, you know what?” she said. There was a light quiver in her voice, like she was trying to hold herself back from crying. “Now I need to use the restroom. I won’t be a moment,” she said to Dr Black, ignoring me completely.

A tactical retreat. That’s cowardly, I thought.

“We’ll wait for you,” said Dr Black kindly. Smarmy prick.

“No!” she said, a bit louder than I was expecting. “I mean: no, please, don’t worry. The two of you go ahead and start. This will give you both a chance to get to know each other a bit more...” She hurried off towards the bathrooms, clumsily knocking into her chair on the way. Like mother like son, I guess.

What is she doing? She wanted to get away from me, I realised. She must feel ashamed of having told Dr Black about my confidential secrets.

I looked at Dr Black. He sat stiff and tense. He looked uncomfortable, like he was having lunch with some kind of alien. “Well, why don’t we start?” he said eventually. He spun himself a forkful of spaghetti, lifted it to his mouth and then slurped it down self-consciously, a few flecks of orange sauce spattering around his mouth. The way he did it made me want to grab his stupid head and smash it facedown into the spaghetti.

I held myself back. There was something I really needed to deal with. “Listen, Dr Black,” I said, putting my hands out facing each other on either side of my plate. I couldn’t bring myself to call him ‘Alistair’. I didn’t even bother touching my pizza. “You may have heard some things from my Mom about the...school I’ve been going to recently. You should know that Mom can be quite...imaginative sometimes. She’s very creative. So not everything she’s told you is necessarily true.”

Dr Black took another slurp of spaghetti and then allowed his tired, sallow eyes to rest on me. I couldn’t discern any colours in there, just the dark voids of his pupils. Maybe if I looked really carefully or tilted my head a little there was the faintest penumbra of grey around those.

“Oh, is that so?” he said. I could tell he was patronising me, while trying to sound like he wasn’t. “Actually...she did mention something along those lines.”

“What did she mention?” I demanded at once. “What did she say?”

“Oh, just what you’d expect. She only passed on what you’ve told her. But honestly, Gonzalo, you’ve really got nothing to worry about...” He dabbed his mouth with his napkin. “Your secret is safe with me. The truth is, I’ve known about Miracle Force for a very long time, you poor, sweet, stupid little boy.”

I gripped my chair underneath me. Did he really just say that?

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Dr Black leaned in close to me as the latest string of spaghetti disappeared into his mouth like he was sucking down the tail of a snake. I swear he swallowed it whole without chewing. He opened his mouth. His breath stank of mincemeat.

“Yes, I’ve known about Miracle Force for a very long time,” he said quietly, so that only we could hear. “I knew about all of it before your mother ever told me: The Base, the other recruits, your training, your missions, the Commander, everything.”

My head span. “Wh-what?” was all I could stammer. My anger had evaporated and the bottom of my stomach felt like it was going to drop out.

“That’s right, young man,” he carried on whispering. “Did you forget that I was the one who reported you to him? I’m very well informed. Now, you listen to me. Listen very carefully. If you ever take the initiative to defy the Commander’s authority again like you did on your last mission—when you asked Mute to shut him out of the mind link—I repeat, if you ever, ever do anything even remotely like that again, I will come down on you like a tonne of bricks. Do you understand me?”

Stunned, I nodded. It was all that I felt I could do right now.

“Excellent. Now, here’s what you’re going to do: You’re going to be the picture of politeness for the rest of this meal. You’re going to be the charming and obedient son, and you’re going to do everything that your mother wants of you. You’re going to make friendly small talk with me, you’re going to ask me about my life, you’re going to make an effort to get to know me, you’re going to be polite to your mother, and you’re going to do it all with a big smile on your face. If you don’t, if you make any more of a scene, or if you ever challenge Abram’s authority again, I will make your life a living hell. I will make your life a waking nightmare. I will pull you down into a pit of blackness so dark that you will beg me to end your life rather than stay alive for a single moment longer.”

As he said these things his eyes seemed to bulge and his voice grew deeper and quieter.

But then he blinked and wiped his mouth with his napkin, and his voice returned to its normal timbre.

“Is that alright?” said Dr Black.

I sat frozen stiff in my seat. The hairs on the back of my neck had stood up. How did he know these things? How could he know these things? Why was he saying these horrible things?

I bunched my hands into fists under the table as my survival instinct kicked in. “Don’t you threaten me,” I snarled through clenched teeth, “whoever you are. Don’t forget: I have powers.”

Dr Black only chuckled at that. “Oh, Gonzalo,” he said. “Don’t forget: I am in a relationship with your mother.”

I could feel the colour draining from my face.

“Sorry, that took a little longer than I thought it would,” said Mom as she reached our table, back from the bathroom. She put on a smile I was sure was fake. “How are my two favourite boys getting along?”

Dr Black and I both looked up at once. Mom rubbed his hand again as she sat down.

“Oh, we’re getting along just fine,” said Dr Black. “Aren’t we, Gonzalo?”

I forced a smile onto my face myself. Not because I wanted to please Mom, but because I was literally nearly shitting myself and needed to go along with whatever Dr Black said for the moment.

I’ve known about Miracle Force for a long time.

How did Dr Black know about Miracle Force? Had Abram told him when he had phoned in to report me? How did he know so much? And what had he meant by underlining that he was in a relationship with Mom? My mind swam with questions but it was too foggy with fear to even begin to answer them.

I remembered that I still needed to take my turn in the conversation. “Yes, that’s right,” I said, reaching for a lie. “Dr Black was just telling me about how long he’s been practicing medicine.” If I could steer the conversation towards the doctor’s life then maybe I could find out some more useful information about him.

The three of us all began to eat our food and slipped into small, superficial conversation about the external details of our lives. I had to work hard to retain my composure.

I made myself force down my pizza, though I picked off as much of the seafood as I could and left it in a stack on the side of my plate. I listened to how Dr Black came from upstate New York, Pittsford, and how he had trained at Columbia and then at Mt Sinai hospital here in the city. He had for a time been an extremely successful psychiatric consultant, but had then gone into more affordable (“for the patients”) general medicine in order to “give something back”, as he put it. He said that part with a smirk for Mom that just radiated false modesty.

He was divorced and had three grown up children by his ex-wife, whom he still saw from time to time. He was so glad to have met my mother and to have “found the courage” to ask her out on a date; he felt like they were both being given a second chance at life together. There was more hand holding and sickening smiling with this.

Bleurgh.

I listened to all of it with a fake smile of my own. Sadly, none of it really gave me any significant insight into Dr Black. Of course it didn’t. For all I knew he could be lying through his teeth. For all I knew he had made it all up and he was just going out with my Mom in order to be able to manipulate me because of my powers. As he spoke, my mind continued to whirr. I needed to work out what was going on not only to protect myself but to protect Mom. She was putting herself in danger by being in a relationship with this man.

But I was completely lost at sea. On the inside my head and stomach were floundering in a whirlpool of confusion while on the outside I willed myself to appear the picture of the polite, genial teenage son like Dr Black had ordered me.

What the hell am I going to do? Who can I go to for help?

Really there was only one place I could go, I realised.