The keys click on Kaiden’s keyboard, an unbalanced soundtrack to the otherwise silent room. He can hear talking from across the hall, but as of right now, he’s the only one in the dry-aired classroom that he’s been allowed for his free period. As the only senior in his class-C school without a math class, he’s also the only senior that has nothing to do for his sixth block. So the school gave him a vacant room with a fan and a desk and a couple old posters from the English teacher that had been using it the year before.
“You read this poster; now try a book,” one reads. He remembers reading that poster every day in his freshman year, and even quoting it to his mother because he had thought it was so clever. He smiles at the memory, before turning back to the essay he’s been writing for the last forty-five minutes.
Kaiden’s eyes droop. The weak air conditioning turns on, not enough to change the temperature, but enough to make an excessive amount of noise in this room that Kaiden wishes could just stay silent. Someone sneezes in the hallway. The air conditioner hums in response. He closes his laptop and sets his head in his hands. They’re warm and smell like hand soap.
He’s tired. Tired of staring at his reflection in the mirror and wondering when it’ll be himself that stares back. Tired of tracing every line and divot in his own face and thinking ‘hmm, when did that get there?’ as if inspecting a used car. Tired of his body always feeling as if it has low blood sugar when he’d just had a cookie and chocolate milk for lunch.
And he is tired of the shrill ringing of the bell, which has just begun to erupt into sound, breaking him out of his trance. Kaiden begrudgingly stands up, sets his laptop into his backpack, and makes his way out into the surprisingly crowded hallway.
“Yo, Rojas!” A gritty voice speaks right into Kaiden’s ear before a heavy hand is set on his shoulder. He doesn’t need to look to know who it is.
“Hi, Duncan,” Kaiden sighs out, “What have you been up to?”
“Oh, dude, this is gonna rock your world - me and the boys planned a whole thing to organize a walkout for, like, super-violence, I think? I’m not completely sure what it’s for... It was Matthew’s idea.”
“That’s a pretty cool idea… have you cleared it with the faculty?”
“Isn’t that, like, the whole point of protest? You don’t need approval, man, it’s all student-led!” Duncan’s eyes seem to gleam at the prospect. “Plus, I dunno, with all the recent outbreaks… I’ve been a little nervous about it, okay?”
“Right,” says Kaiden, sighing, “it’s been getting weird and scary lately… You’d never admit it, though, would you?”
“Not to anyone but you, bud,” says Duncan, patting Kaiden’s shoulder one last time before parting ways to turn the corner to his own class. “I hope you feel special,” he calls back to Kaiden with a dopey smile before disappearing into the crowd.
Kaiden makes his way to his next class, which happens to be Yearbook, thinking of the interaction that he just had. Duncan, tough as he may be, is right to worry. This recent outbreak of super-violence is, as Kaiden had put it, scary. Normally it’s like a teetering seesaw, heroes fighting villains and vice versa. Insurance is through the roof in big cities, understandably so; you can never guess when a hero will use your car as a shield from a bomb or some kind of magical tidal wave. And Kaiden doesn’t necessarily live in a small town. Regardless of how empty Ohio is, the population of Columbus is nothing to sneeze at.
He wishes he could live in a small town. All of the good aspects of living in a large city like he does are taken away by the looming, overwhelming amount of danger that comes with it. He’s seen it firsthand; a peaceful night turned awry by someone turning all of the trees in a 3-mile radius to ash and screaming from a megaphone that he’s now the “God of Nature Itself” before being arrested and thrown into some underground metal dome, never to be seen again.
He’s seen the way life resumes afterward, how the people just carry on with their day, treating the incident like some traffic jam; something to mention to your friends at work, and nothing more. It’s funny how easy it is to be desensitized to that kind of trauma. On the bright side, gun violence isn’t nearly as much of a concern anymore. It’s been replaced by the fear that your school or workplace may be just a casualty in an intense battle between two minor supers that no one even knows the name of.
Kaiden would give anything to live in a small town and still have something to do. He’d give anything for a lot of things: his mom, his childhood hamster, his old house… Right now, he’d give anything to be home. Just one more hour. One more hour. He repeats the mantra in his head until it means nothing to him.
Turning into his yearbook classroom, Kaiden is almost immediately greeted by a couple acquaintances whom he waves at before sitting down and getting out his notebook to write ideas for captions. Since it’s still relatively early in the school year, there’s not much else to do; there aren’t very many pictures in the database just yet, not until the yearbook photographers actually do their job.
The chattering around him blurs into one constant hum while Kaiden continues to scribble down dumb puns and anecdotes. ‘Pin it to Win it’ for the bowling team… or maybe it should be for the wrestling team? Beginning to doze off once again, Kaiden doesn’t even notice that the television in the corner of the room has been turned on, and the news is playing loudly. He doesn’t notice until all of the talking in the room has ceased, and he looks up to see everyone staring silently at the thick screen.
In big letters, the words “THE MIDDLEMAN FOUND DEAD” flash.
“Man, another one?” A girl speaks up above the thick silence that’s filled the room. She’s immediately shushed by the rest.
Shock fills Kaiden’s system like a flash flood, and he finds his eyes glued to the screen that shows wreckage; a demolished rooftop, an alleyway crawling with brown-coated investigators, and a covered stretcher being carried by four men away from the destruction. “At 1:48 PM EDT, police found the body of the S-tier super that had been one of the most renowned in the organization The Alliance. The body was found and retrieved in an alleyway in outer Columbus, Ohio. Current investigators speculate that this may not be where the hero died, but instead where the body was, for lack of better terms, dumped after the fact,” says a reporter over the visuals.
“Today we mourn the loss of one of the nation’s most beloved heroes, a charming asset to our national security, and Ohio’s-” The words begin to blur together immediately after entering Kaiden’s ears, and he finds his mind can’t decide if it cares or not. It begins to flip back and forth between devastation and apathy - a swinging pendulum with no favorable side. He knows — knew — the Middleman — oh god, how is he dead? — Middleman’s whole deal is — was? — being able to redirect powers and whatnot, acting as a sort of bouncy energy refractor. This caused him to develop hyper-vigilance; he had trained himself to detect so much as the smallest bit of movement — not well enough, apparently — in preparation to redirect anything that gets thrown at him.
What was thrown at him? This is the worst possible thing. It doesn’t affect Kaiden — Middleman was considered to be greatly overpowered, what does this mean for the rest of us? — but his stomach has begun to feel queasy. The apathy has melted away and underneath it is a feeling of sheer panic. The pendulum is still swinging, causing his stomach to churn. He reminds himself that heroes die all the time; there are so many more to protect the nation. But for how long? He reminds himself, I’m only panicking because I knew him. Everything is fine. I’ll be fine — We will never recover from this — We didn’t need him. We didn’t need him.
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But I did.
“Kade, you tweaking?” Says a voice, and though it may be far from Kaiden, it sounds as if it is being spoken directly into his head, the image of warm breath on his neck sending a spike of hard chills down his spine. Kaiden shakes himself out, realizing his face is probably ghostly white. He stands up, picks up his bag and notebook.
“May I go, please?” He speaks over the quiet but thick layer of conversation that’s broken out about the situation. The teacher, Mr. Vera, nods. It wouldn’t have mattered had he declined the ask, though, because Kaiden was already well on his way out the door.
Breathe. Think of the facts. The Middleman had saved Kaiden’s ass on multiple occasions — he was also one of the only heroes with truly pure intentions that Kaiden had ever met. A plus side of having a ridiculous amount of power in sight is that Kaiden could see through any front. The Middleman was someone whom Kaiden could trust wholeheartedly. Maybe that’s what made him more vulnerable. Trusted people trust people.
It would be fine without him. The only problem is that if there’s someone out there who could take down the highest-rated super in the entire state of Ohio, then no one is safe. All of this hits Kaiden harder with every step he takes until he feels as if he’s trudging through cement, each stride weighing dozens of pounds more than the last.
Kaiden signs himself out in the office, and walks out to his car. He needs to get home, and fast. He has somewhere to be.
Kaiden walks into the Domicile lobby, right on time, to pure ruckus. Some people sit in chairs while others stand, but the one constant between everyone is the energy; pure, chaotic unease. There’s so much movement it almost hurts his eyes, all centered around one podium, in the center of the room. On it stands Chameleon, the appointed vice president of the Alliance.
“Alright, alright, please calm down!” Chameleon yells over the chaos that’s filled the room. His skin shimmers with overwhelmed irritation. “Listen up. Yes, it’s true, the Middleman is dead.”
Disarray erupts once more. “But,” Chameleon continues, then pauses until the room is quiet once more. “But there's no reason to panic. It’s a part of being in the biz. People die. It happens. We all need to just-”
“What if we’re next?” Someone in the crowd blurts out. Heads turn to see that it’s none other than the niche micro-celebrity Miss Mole, speaking from the chair she sits on. “I mean, we’re all thinking it! Middle could fight anyone, and he’s still gone. How do we know that any of us are safe?”
The room is surprisingly quiet after such a statement, like sound itself has paused to consider. Slowly, whispers pick up. Chameleon looks like he wants to disappear, a sentiment which makes the corners of Kaiden’s lips turn up.
“We- ah, well,” begins Chameleon, “We have a couple proposals to vote on. The vote is tomorrow night, just so you know; we know some of our members couldn’t be at this meeting today.” Kaiden watches as Chameleon glances up to the poster that displays the smiling face of Solar Starling, the president of the Alliance, before moving his gaze back to the anxious crowd before him.
Before he can continue, the doors open, and Kaiden’s close friend Invisiboy steps through. All heads turn toward the late Super, and he ducks his head and moves his gaze to the floor as he scurries to Kaiden’s side. “Sorry I’m late…” he grumbles, before whispering to Kaiden, “How did you get here so fast?”
Kaiden smiles and shakes his head, keeping his eyes fixed on the now exasperated Chameleon standing stiffly on his fixture.
“Alright, so here are our propositions: For one, we can have a buddy system.” A chorus of groans erupts from those surrounding Kaiden, but Chameleon continues, his skin a slight shade of red. “Listen up. One of the biggest flaws that I see everywhere is the ‘I Work Alone’ mindset. Middleman had it too; now he’s dead, and any of you could be next. It wouldn’t be a big deal, we would simply pair you up with another Super of your rank. When you go out, they go out too. When you fight, they fight. If they can’t, you don’t. It’s that simple.”
“What if there’s an odd number of people in your rank? Is there gonna be a group of 3?” Someone shouts out.
“Well, we can figure that out when we get to it, can’t we?” Chameleon says, his skin glistening once again with frustration. “We could probably-”
“Sorry, but what would the consequence be if someone just… doesn’t follow the system?” Another person interrupts.
An aggravated deep breath from Chameleon. “You would risk losing points and being deranked. If you get to rank F and still can’t seem to follow the rules, well, you can consider yourself no longer a part of the Alliance.”
This statement hushes some of the chatter that has gradually filled the room, effectively grabbing the attention of the crowd. Miss Mole speaks up. “Wait… what do you mean, no longer a part of the —”
“What I mean is,” Chameleon’s eyes harden as he begins his elaboration. “If you want to be a part of the Alliance, you need to follow whatever rules the Alliance sets. This isn’t even a set policy yet, though, so calm yourselves. The vote is tomorrow. Eight PM. Assembly room.
“And, it’s not the only option,” he continues, “The other choice is to have a sort of a neighborhood watch. There would be groups created, with some supers from each rank in each group. Each group would be assigned a certain night to patrol the city, picking up anything that seems suspicious and reporting it back to us. If you do well, you’ll be rewarded via extra points. If you miss your shift without having a good reason, you will be deducted.”
“Okay, but how long do either of these systems need to be in place?” Someone asks.
Chameleon breathes in through his nose as if preparing himself for outrage. “Indefinitely.”
It takes a second for the audience to process this answer. Kaiden can almost see the cogs turning in the brains of those trying to wrap their heads around it. Until someone bursts out, indignant, “Wait, do you mean forever?”
“Not forever,” Chameleon says, cringing, “Just… until we can figure this out.”
“Figure what out?” snaps the same voice, and Kaiden looks over to see who is speaking so angrily. It’s Flit, a skinny man almost shaking with frustration as he levitates about an inch and a half from the scraggly carpet. “Yes, the Middleman is dead. We’re all sad, whatever. But this happens all the time! I mean, come on, have we ever started a whole new policy just because of a casualty? What is so special about this one?”
There is a moment of silence. Flit breathes deeply, angrily, forcefully. No one dares to say a word.
“The difference,” Chameleon begins, slowly, calculating each and every word, “is the state in which we found him. Casualties happen frequently, yes. People fall in battle. But Middleman… this was no normal lost fight. This was a grotesque crime scene. And until we can figure out what happened, who did it, and why, we’re putting up defenses. We can’t risk losing more S-tier Supers — panic spreads like a plague these days.”
Though Flit is wordless, his facial expression is that of pure outrage. Still he lowers himself back to the floor, defeated. Chameleon darts his eyes across the rest of the crowd. It’s a deliberate motion, daring anyone else to say something contradictory. No one does.
“No other counters?” He asks. Silence is the only response. “Good. Dismissed. The vote is tomorrow, 8pm.”