Chương 32: Blank

Sam's gaze didn't break from mine as she told me those words. There was this pit in my stomach forming as my mind forced the images in my head of what that could even mean.

"How did-" I tried to say, the words failing me as my mouth suddenly dried. The doctor took a deep breath before speaking.

"About a year ago, Christian was visiting his sister at her middle school, up in Maryland. At the same time, someone with a gun came in." She knew I didn't need many details.

"Chris stopped the shooter, but was too late. He'd apparently always had his powers, but avoided using them. He stepped in then and there to deal with the shooter after his sister was shot." The "How did" wanted to erupt out of me, my mouth prying open a little, but just a weak breath coming out.

"He managed to stop them. There were ten dead in total, including the shooter." Including?

"You're saying Chris-" She nodded.

"Yeah. During the legal proceedings, he stated his powers clearly on record, and that he had used them to eliminate a shooter who had no powers. No Blue Card, used his powers on a regular person." He was in the same pit as me.

"Tancred approached him and offered him a founding position with an upcoming league called The New Sentinels. Told him it was his chance at a new start." There was nothing that could prepare me for any of this. But now it's reframing everything. I crippled a politician's kid, Chris killed someone. Jairo's got a parasite that turns him into a superhuman monster. One that can't see normally. What would give him a similar track record? What could May have done? What could Sam have done?

My head suddenly went upright as her voice cleared my ears again.

"You're spacing out. I can't read your mind, but you're probably thinking about the rest of us, right? Unfortunately I don't have any idea if they did anything. Christian confided it in me early on because he was still really beating himself up over it. May and Jairo haven't implied anything." That was missing a name.

"What about you?" I inquired. The doctor gave me a shrug.

"So, I haven't killed anyone if you were worried about that. I'm not some reformed evil scientist or something. But I am a criminal. You're not a politics guy, but have you heard of H. R. 534?" Could only answer with a head shake.

"It's called the Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2003. It's a federal ban on humans trying to clone each other. Happened after when, a couple years after Dolly was cloned, someone said they made a human clone called 'Eve.' Eve's genetic make-up was all messed up, turned into a monster." Never even considered something like that would occur, but I think shock turned that into something almost logical.

"That prompted the act. Human cloning is illegal. Straight to the Firmament. I... didn't really care at the time. I was 15, learned about the Eve case, and was baby crazy like any hormonal kid is. So I..." She rolled her hand.

"Collected some of the stem cells from my bone marrow and wisdom teeth, repurposed them into reproductive cells and... Dolly the Sheeped myself. Sam and Sam aren't really my kids in the classic sense. They're my clones." There weren't words for the emotions that confession put in me. Disgust and confusion danced at the edges of it, but the real feeling itself just was impossible to make itself known. She just decided to play God. She put two new lives out in the world.

She's the exact opposite of Christian, but I think whatever she did might be a little worse. The shooter chose to get himself in a position where he would die. Those kids didn't have a choice in having to live.

"Not perfect clones. I intentionally introduced some genetic variations so they would be as close as you can get to being offspring and not clones. They're happy, healthy, normal. Emphasis on normal. Normal intelligence. Not like mine, where I was practicing for the SAT at their age." That almost sounded like it hurt her to say. Maybe it should have. But I couldn't really just say that. Part of it felt easy to just sling out at her that what she did was atrocious.

If that Eve clone she talked about turned into a monster, what the Hell could happen to those kids? They didn't deserve that.

"Never did figure out why intelligence wasn't passed on. I'm thankful, it means they're not gonna end up like me." My head tilted, some social parasite in me trying its hardest not to make it clear how repulsed I was.

"With the ten doctorates and a probably bottomless government budget and security?" Sam shook her head.

"No, from feeling like an alien because everything pieces itself together for me perfectly to the point it makes people not want to get near me. No one hated me for it, but it took me until I was a teenager to figure out how to talk with people. And even then, they avoided me like I was going to dissect them with my eyes." Fuck. She's not the opposite of Christian. I'd been looking at it wrong. She's me. She's me if Tancred didn't drag me by the short-hairs.

I would've gone and done something just as dangerous and stupid. All because I was all alone and was pissed off at people being pointlessly scared of me. Is that why she did it? The reason I terrorized those scumbags? Just to make that fear warranted?

"... I get that, I think." I didn't think. I knew. The doctor then let out a sigh.

"Thanks. But yeah. I was outright told that was a big federal no-no. I lost out on grants because of it. They were planning on taking my kids. Tancred gave me a chance to use my knowledge for more constructive things." She finally looked off towards one of the walls, rubbing her face.

"The New Sentinels is clearly meant to clean up our messes. Our lives as we knew them ended and now we need to start elsewhere." Mine ended ten years ago. Her voice spoke again, weaker than the prior sentence.

"Didn't mean to really even go into all of that, but I guess it gives you some more perspective on everything. I'm gonna go get the kids' rooms ready for when they get home. Don't let the briefing get to you, okay Leo?" She asked. I nodded, knowing full well that was a lie. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. With that, she got up and left. And I had basically let the rest of the day blur by.

I practiced that bladed stance for a bit, still dwelling on that entire conversation. Most of us were met with some threat of prison time. Either directly or indirectly. The Hell could May and Jairo have done? One's a kid and the other seems completely normal. Then again, I had thought Christian was relatively normal too, if annoying. I'd need to find out. I was the one who got called a bomb, but it looked like I was surrounded by powderkegs.

Sam didn't seem as high risk as someone who's killed before, but God only knows what she could do. The issue, honestly, wasn't even the killing. If I was in Chris' position, I'd probably have made an even bigger mess than he could have. The issue is, was it completely just reactive? Was it him realizing there was no better choice? If it was a case of just snapping after seeing his sister die, he's high risk. Even if he's not strong like me, however his crap works let him put me on my ass. On a regular person?

He could surgically dissect them. Jairo is unpredictable. He seems amicable and there's no sign of prior issues, but the fact he literally can't even see when his power is used, and that it comes from a monster binding into his body is too high risk as well. Chris could seriously maim people. Jairo could be a kaiju in the making. I had no way of knowing. May, meanwhile, is her own flavor of nuke that I couldn't even figure out the risk factors on. She seemed sociable and normal, even averse to violence.

But that doesn't mean she was as stable as she looked. At this point I considered feigning being sociable just for some way to get a measure out of her. I didn't like being so tangled up in my opt-"So how are people gonna know to come to the demo?" spoke Christian. I was in the van. Surrounded by the others. That made no sense. Was I that trapped in my thoughts all day? Billy's voice, far less rattled than the first time I heard him, answered.

"Admin team's been sending notices to press and social media that a superhero-related event is happening at the venue, a decommissioned racetrack. We're estimating a couple hundred people showing up." This didn't make sense. I'm getting too caught up in my thinking now. I lost half a day to that. Was there something wrong with me? No one even seemed to react to any shock that might have been on my face. Sam was looking out one of the monitors in the van. Chris was busy talking to Billy.

Jairo and May were looking at their phones. There wasn't even a reaction. Was I silent? Usually someone would prod at me or something. Was I just on autopilot? How did this not catch any of their attention? We were at the theater fairly quickly. I wasn't really confident in my tracking of time right now, though. Everyone had managed to get through their rehearsals without issue this time. Jairo's was actually quite impressive. His speed actually impressed me. The boy was a blur.

And he could stop as fast as he started, could turn on a dime. That must've been from the stance he uses. Would the boxing stance fit me better than the bladed stance? Worth keeping in mind. I managed to keep my focus to not lose more time to getting on stage. That didn't make my rehearsal any better. I tried, but I didn't know how to make being strong look different than what I do. I don't need to put effort into anything physical, so I had no real muscle memory to wind up for much of anything.

That was wasted movement. There were little things I tried doing. I let my arms swing out further when I ripped open the safe. When I put down the anvil, I actually kicked a massive gouge in it first before folding it together. With the car, I just swiped out large swathes before flipping it over. It didn't feel right, and the look on Perry's face agreed with me.

"Well, you did better than last time. But it's still too half-hearted looking. Not even in just your face, it just feels like you were scripted to do it," he told me. Technically I was.

"Whatever. It's a step up, but I think you should start mulling over some ways to try and convey strength." He waved me off. After some awkward waiting in the audience seats, we were shuttled back to the common room. Christian spoke as we all piled into the room.

"Sam, do you know how to put internet videos on our TV?" She spoke while not even looking at him.

"That TV's got Miracast, I'm pretty sure I put that on everyone's phones. Check for an app of a little smartphone next to a TV." Tapping away at his device, his eyebrows raised.

"Oh, awesome! Leo, I want you to come check this out." My head tilted as usual, before the TV was turned on and a video was presented. It was definitely old. A hazy blur to it. Out of focus. The video depicted a torn apart landscape, small buildings with holes broken in them, burning cars, the like. Then I saw the people in the shot. On one side: A hulking humanoid, bright blue except for a large pair of red fists. His eyes were a vibrant shade of red as well, the size of dinner plates. Guapo Galera.

A non-human superhero. Most people know about him because of his position in the Wave of Hope, and because of his moonlighting as the primary force against kaiju attacks by punching them so hard they go reeling back into the water. He stood like some kind of action figure, arms at his side, but confident. His expression couldn't be clearly read at the distance the camera was shooting from. On the other side: A brown mass. As the shot cleared up, I could see it was humanoid.

Brown almost entirely all over, except for green hanging from his face, coming off as long hair and a beard almost. Redwood. Part of the Jungle Brigade. A walking, talking tree man. He was old since before I was born. His posture seemed out of place, though. He was lurched over, arms hanging between his legs. He seemed almost possessed.

"People tend to not realize why Guapo Galera didn't go into the exclusion zone during 9/11," Chris spoke.

"Because of this, a year earlier. One of Kraken's weird mind-control slugs took over Redwood. He ran wild for a while until Guapo Galera could intercept," he explained. My head stayed tilted, words echoing diagonally from my mouth.

"Why didn't The Saint do anything?"

"He was on a mission out of the country. Kaiju attack Southeast Asia. Guapo could get to the United States faster, apparently, so he just asked The Saint handle the kaiju while he dealt with Redwood." Redwood and Guapo began approaching each other.

"What you're seeing is a news crew covering the destruction who were saved by Guapo, what little they could get. They called it the Clash of the Titans. When Agent Tank told us about the Wyrdwood stuff, I wondered if Redwood's powers tied to it. Redwood is one of the physically strongest superheroes alive." In a blink of an eye, the two superheroes clashed massive fists, the blow causing the camera recording to start fritzing out.

In the wake of the dust and visual interference, they were both in tense stances, their right and left fists pushing into each other.

"But so is Guapo Galera." They both recoiled from the hit, following up with mutual body-blows. Shockwaves from the impact.

"I saw how you were having a hard time with how strong heroes are supposed to look, so here's some of the best footage you'll ever see of two strong supers fighting." Redwood pulled back after the blow, trudging over to a mangled car before rushing back to Guapo. With an uppercut swing, he slammed the car into the giant shrimp. Guapo, meanwhile, raised his arm up and swung down, splitting the car in half, letting the two halves fly off into the distance.

"Look at how they're hefting up every blow. They know everything they do feels light, so they put in the effort for if it was heavy, to give that much force." Looked like they were just wreaking havoc. Guapo Galera hooked his right arm down, parallel to his waist, bringing it back.

"Watch how he rears back. He usually saves that for the kaiju." Redwood lunged in for another punch. There was only a split-second of it I could see of Guapo's fist snapping forward before the footage cut out.

"The blow was so strong it destroyed the camera. Thankfully the filming crew were saved by Crimson Coyote at the last minute. Guapo managed to yank the slug out." Chris faced me again, his eyes wide with some kind of excitement.

"Don't you see what kind of cool stuff you can do when you're super strong?" It... did nothing for me. That wasn't a hero of any kind. Those were two gorillas in the zoo, ripping their cages apart and making a mess. Sure, one of them saved people, but it was from a mess the other made. John was talking about emulating heroes I wanted to exist, and Chris was showing me heroes to try and emulate that already existed. They were both pushing me to the same idea, in different directions: Be who I'm not.

I needed to find a better path. One where I'm not just some ape. That was my goal. Be strong without leaving a fucking mess everywhere like those morons. The press conference was tomorrow. I had to figure it out. But... I bet I could do that punch, too.