The Middleman is dead, and Nathan Singe has no idea how to feel about it. Should he feel pleased, relieved, scared? He doesn’t know. What he does know, though, is that his mind is too tired to wrap around the situation. The air is cold, and though Nathan can feel it, he doesn’t shiver; in fact, he shows no discomfort at all. His outward indifference differs from the feelings currently washing through his mind in slow waves; pure exhaustion, undefeated and constant.
Today, Nathan isn’t feeling great, if it’s not obvious. Every time he shuts his eyes, they want to stay that way; if Nathan could fall asleep standing up, he’d have been past that point long ago. Unfortunately, though, he can’t. There’s no time. He looks at his watch as a chilly gust of wind almost blows him off-balance. That’s the problem with high altitudes like that of the roof he stands on. Whatever weak breeze there is on the ground is drastically amplified once you get to a point where there are no structures around to block it from sweeping you off of your feet.
“Singe. You’re early,” says a dark voice from behind Nathan’s back. But he doesn’t turn around. He doesn’t have to.
“Yeah, I had nowhere better to be,” says Nathan with a shrug, checking his watch once again. 4:54.
“Face me when I speak to you,” says the voice, adding while Nathan turns around, “Come on, it’s just basic respect. I wouldn’t face away from you while you talk to me...”
“Okay, okay, I get it,” Nathan says, raising his hands in a feigned surrender. The owner of the voice, his associate Nuclear Sentinel, stands a few feet from Nathan with his arms crossed. Another rush of wind blows past, and Nuclear Sentinel pulls his cape tighter around himself. Nathan eyes him. “Why did you choose to meet all the way up here, if you’re so cold?”
“I like the view. You can see the whole city from up here.” It’s true, and the view is breathtaking, Nathan must admit to himself. Before he can respond, Nuclear Sentinel continues, “Plus, this is one of the only roofs that doesn’t have security cameras.”
At that, Nathan quirks an eyebrow, and Sentinel elaborates. “I have highly classified information, but you need to keep it quiet. It’s not something I could say over the phone.”
“Great, finally, some excitement. What is it?” Nathan asks, though his voice displays no trace of the ‘excitement’ he refers to.
“You’ve heard about the Middleman, I presume?” Nuclear Sentinel asks, and when Nathan waits for him to go on, he doesn’t. He just stands and waits for a response with solid eye contact.
With a scoff, Nathan answers, “Obviously. Is that seriously what you wanted to talk to me about? It’s all over the —”
“No, that’s not it. Listen closely. There’s some mystery Super causing trouble… They killed the Middleman, and left a mess to clean up,” the Sentinel’s voice is low and grave, communicating an air of absolute urgency. He continues, quickly, “The Allied are on edge. They have no idea who it could have been. And furthermore, neither do we.”
Yet another blast of wind rushes into Nathan’s ears, and he can hear his own heartbeat. “What do you mean, neither do we? It’s pretty easy, just ask everyone who had an issue with the guy.”
“Oh, wow, I sure wish we’d thought of that!” Sentinel says, his eyes widened in sarcastically simulated awe. Like the flick of a switch, his facial expression instantly returns to what it was before: absolutely vexed. “We’ve been busy, Singe. I took Pandora to every knave who’s had a history of altercations with the Middleman. They all denied killing him, though, and Pandora did her thing; all of them were telling the truth.”
“So then it’s gotta be someone who just… didn’t have a history. Maybe this was just an altercation that ended badly?” Nathan reasons. Sentinel looks at him doubtfully.
“There’s more. The shape that the Middleman was found in, well, it wasn’t something that just happens. It was seriously repulsive, even to me — and I’ve seen a lot.”
“What, was the guy inside out?” Nathan asks, fully unamused. But, to his mild surprise, the Sentinel doesn’t fire back. He just looks uncomfortable.
After a pause, Nuclear Sentinel answers, “Well, Singe, it was damn near close.”
“Oh.” There is a longer, much more awkward pause.
“The point is,” Sentinel continues, “with the ‘injuries’ dealt, we could easily rule out multiple different powers — atmos, pyros, hydros, all of them are out of the picture. Maybe telekinesis, maybe phase shifting, definitely not flight or invisibility. We went to every knave on the record that possibly could’ve done it. Nothing.”
“And you’re sure none of them are lying?”
“What did I say?” Sentinel asks with a twinge of irritation, “Pandora doesn’t lie, and she seemed just as confused as us, which only increased our concern.”
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Nathan blows out with his mouth. “So… What does it mean? Why are you telling me this?”
An expression that Nathan can’t decipher crosses across Sentinel’s face. “It means there’s someone new out here, someone who’s not on the record. And they’re powerful.”
“And?”
“And,” snaps Nuclear Sentinel, “I’m only telling you because I care about you. If you meet this person, maintain good standing. We’re trying to keep this on the down-low; as long as the Allied think that it was one of us, we have an element of fear on our side, which we can use.”
“Why does it even matter who did it in the first place?” Nathan asks, “I mean, why did you do so much work to try and figure it out?”
“You didn’t see the Middleman, Singe. Absolutely horrific. For one, we didn’t know we had anyone that powerful on our side. For two, we want to make sure we keep it that way,” explains the Sentinel with a mirthless chuckle.
“Well, don’t worry, my lips are sealed,” says Nathan, miming zipping his lips shut. “Is that all you needed me for?”
“Yep. Just… stay careful out there, bud.” Sentinel’s hard exterior has cracked, allowing a trace of concern to show through. It’s almost immediately replaced by the cold expression that previously occupied his face.
Nathan says nothing, just nods and turns back away to face the mile-high view. He knows that Nuclear Sentinel will get the hint. And lo, shortly after, he can hear the receding footsteps. He lets out a breath that turns into a cloud of fog in front of his face, carefully evaluating the information he was given.
A new Super. A mystery Super. Nathan rolls the words around in his mind, trying in vain to force them to mean something. He appreciates the heads-up, don’t get him wrong. It simply confusing the way that so many of his “colleagues” include him, a very much inexperienced rookie, in any drama at least semi-worth reporting, like they’re all in high school.
Sentinel himself is older than Nathan by at least ten years, but he doesn’t act like it. In many ways, Nathan sees him more as his friend or coworker than his senior. In fact, he was one of the first “knaves” that Nathan had ever met in real life. The others that followed were like a tight-knit system Nathan had to wiggle himself into, but Sentinel was one of the most welcoming, one of the people that made Nathan feel comfortable making his way into the system.
It’s funny how things like this work. The community of knaves in Nathan’s city really is more of a family than anything, however twisted that may sound. It’s not like a life of crime necessarily makes you a bad person; it just makes society view you as such. Nathan doesn’t want to hurt people. In fact, he prefers the contrary. If he could get through some heist with no casualties, he would in a second. But things don’t always go so ideally.
Still, Nathan has never killed, and he never intends to do so. As one of the only knaves he’s met with a strong moral compass, he considers himself a walking contradiction. That being said, most knaves don’t commit crime for the sole purpose of committing crime. There are multiple motives, and Nathan’s is one that he refuses and will continue to refuse to admit to himself: Control. It all boils down to control. Being able to choose his own path. Setting his own rules.
And, admittedly, some people seek out control in much more severe ways than Nathan does. It’s like comparing a murder-suicide to cyberbullying — yes, the latter is bad, but in comparison to the former, is it really? Pulling a heist on a billion-dollar corporation or starting destructive fights with the arrogant “heroes” of the city don’t measure up to some of the things that Nathan has seen his colleagues do. Maybe it’s a sign that he shouldn’t be on their side, but he doesn’t see it that way. He sees it, through his own meandering rationalization, as different degrees of extremity to one cause.
Nathan can’t fathom being on the same side of those whom he despises. From the now-late Middleman to lower-classed heroes like DetoNate, every hero that Nathan has met has been either nauseatingly self-righteous or ridiculously excessive. Especially those of the government-funded corporation The Alliance. If Nathan had to fight alongside any one of those snobs, his dignity wouldn’t be the only thing hanging. And he means that.
For as long as he can remember, Nathan has been treated like a villain. The child who performs deliberate acts of malice; did you see Nathan somehow managed to set his homework on fire? He can’t even blow bubbles without the stick melting into goo in his hands!
His tendency to be exceptionally hot-headed didn’t help. He didn’t mean to; he would yell to feel heard, he would throw things to get attention from the adults who discounted him as a “bad kid” the moment they laid their eyes on him.
It’s hard to unstick the behavioral patterns that have been engraved into your mind — Nathan of all people knows. Getting weekly detentions in the third grade can do something to a person; the humiliation of getting that little pink slip in front of the class starts to fade into the background, and all your mind begins to think about is the ways you can do better next time. Soon that fades too, replaced by ways you can not get caught. Finally, after being held back in the fifth grade, he set a new goal for himself: Be quiet. Speak when spoken to. Commit your acts of defiance on your own time.
Discovering there’s a whole community of people who do just that was like discovering sliced bread. A whole group of people who understood, with whom he could truly belong! He’s never had doubts about it thus far.
And now, the Middleman, one of the highest-tiered Allies in the state, has fallen. Really, Nathan is conflicted. There will certainly be chaos over the next few nights; knaves who’d previously been foiled by the now-dead man will celebrate his termination, while those grieving will either take it out via anger or stagnation.
There will certainly be much more excitement around the place. But, he worries about it getting out of hand. What if it ends up interfering with the safety of his family and friends? All he can do is hope it doesn’t come to that, and that’s the thing that drives Nathan insane; there’s nothing he hates more than the feeling that he has no control.
Now, his watch buzzes on his wrist, a reminder of the time gone by. He quickly swipes off the notification — a reminder about a soon-to-be-due assignment — and makes his way away from the edge of the roof. If everything could stay alright for just a day, he would kiss the ground in gratitude. If only he was that lucky.