Chương 1: What he left

The coffee maker made a sound like torn metal, as if one of those Supes with incredible strength and little care for property damage had decided to show off to some reporter by lifting a car without remembering about the laws of physics. It sputtered and died, leaving the small cup half full with sludge that I didn't think could ever be called coffee.

"What on Terra did you do to my machine?" came the scream of the owner as he saw the smoke rising from the top of the thing and rushed over. The coffee machine was a piece of junk, already on its last legs, wheezing and leaking all the time. I hadn't even been the last to touch it! There was no way it was my fault, and I tried to tell him that, but he just looked at me with his hands over his hips and a slight tilt to his body, with an expression in his eyes I recognized all too well.

"Listen, Adrian," he began.

"You know I was doing you a favor taking you in like this, but…" he trailed off, shaking his head.

"It's clear to me that this is not your calling. You should be doing something else with your life." Just like that, I was laid off, left to aimlessly wander the great boulevard by the beach. The first tourists had already arrived, enjoying the warmth of the spring sun, with some of the more adventurous ones already testing their resolve by taking a dip in the sea. Me, I didn't like cold temperatures much, although today felt like cold shower after cold shower.

My landlord sent me a text while I was walking, telling me he was going to increase the rent.

"Nothing personal." His sheepish, subdued tone seemed to bleed through the written text on my phone's screen.

"The season's the season. You know, with the summer coming and the insurance prices." If I couldn't afford the increase, it was no problem. He understood, and I was more than welcome to rent his place again at the normal rates from October to May. But in the summer months? He was going to cater to tourists. That's all that Halford, this quaint little town by the sea, seemed to be good for, lately. It felt like my life was falling apart in slow motion. One thing after the other.

Whipping out my phone, I sent a text to my grandpa, explaining the situation. He replied instantly.

"Just catch a train and come on over. I need some done in the garden, better if l pay you and not some stupid contractor." I smiled. It was his way of helping, I knew. When I arrived, he grinned through his long, unkempt white beard and immediately put me to work, tilling the soil and removing weeds. The sun felt good on my skin after the frigid ride on the over-air-conditioned train, and the work made me forget all my woes for a while.

"Thanks," I told him as we sipped beer on his porch.

"I needed this." Gus Hale was the only family I had left. He was a complex man, haunted by his own demons, prone to ranting about this and that. His most common rant, and one that over the years I learned to associate with him, and that strangely calmed me and soothed me, had to do with superpowers. When I was younger, I liked to listen to him rant about the injustice of it all. About how the world was just a fucking lottery that gave people powers they didn't deserve nor earn, randomly, without rhyme or reason.

It created monsters, he said. I would listen and think to myself, I'm different. I'll get a cool power, then he'll see that Supes aren't all bad. Now, with my twenty-sixth birthday coming in a few months, I knew I wasn't going to get shit. You could awaken powers between the ages of 18 and 25. Never before, never after. It just didn't happen, and the closer I got to what in my mind was becoming the end of all hope, the more my grandpa's bitter rants began to make sense.

When the Onset arrived and changed the face of Terra forever, old men like him were left out, too old to awaken. Now I was going to be left out too. Then I was back in the same-old routine, scrambling to find another job so that I could hold onto a semblance of life for just one more month. The old man had overpaid me for what little I could do in his massive garden, somehow managing to give me enough to cover rent and groceries, as if he knew exactly what my expenses were.

He'd been doing that, calling me for some work, rants, drinks and then handing me some cash, every time I found myself in dire straits like today. I hated having to rely on him, but he was my family and I loved him very much. A few days later I got a call from an attorney.

"Adrian Hale?" he asked. After I confirmed my identity, he sighed theatrically.

"It's about what to do with your grandpa's properties. You know, after his passing." I found myself in that little windowless office in a daze. What do you mean my grandpa is dead? What do you mean I can't see the body? They did an autopsy already, and it turns out he fell while picking apples and broke his back, and by the time they found him he was already in shock? Apples? But isn't it spring, and apples harvest late summer?

But I didn't have time to dwell on that, because there was an avalanche of information trying to drown me. They did all they could but he died in the ambulance, before even reaching Central City Hospital? And his properties are being seized to pay back the deep debts he had found himself in, with the ambulance ride only adding up to a drop in a bucket?

"I am so very sorry for your loss," the nameless lawyer said to me. His name had slipped away from my mind in the flood of sorrow I was feeling.

"As I explained, you won't be getting any of your grandpa's properties and money, unfortunately. But he did leave you this." The man shuffled a small envelope across the table to me with a heavy look.

"He spent a lot of money making sure all this happened off the books," he said.

"He paid for this… consultation, let's call it, beforehand. You are all clear." Back in my car—well, the beater truck I called a car, at least—I finally opened the thing he gave me. Suddenly, it felt like the whole world was watching me. Passersby stealing glances at me, random people who could be hiding who knows what superpower, and danger. A siren wailed in the distance, followed by a Supe flying through the air so fast it made my truck sway and forced me to roll up my windows.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. I wasn't going to open the envelope here. Whatever it was, it felt important, heavy. So I rushed home, because it looked like I wasn't going to be homeless this month yet, and finally got to take a look at its contents. A key. A key and a note, and on the note was written: "This opens more than just the front door, just so you know," along with a single string of numbers.

I spoke into my phone, using the AI search feature to divine whatever those numbers might mean, and it turned out that they were coordinates.

"A key, a cryptic line, and a set of coordinates…" Checking the satellite, the coordinates led to a dilapidated house perched on a hill near Halford. I never knew he even had it, and apparently, it was already mine. I checked online, and it was registered under my name, with all the bills automatically paid for by my grandpa, at least until the time of his death. It was… as dilapidated as the satellite images suggested.

The door barely budged after I managed to unlock it with the key I'd been given, needing a good dose of shouldering to slowly grind it open as it dragged on the raised floorboards. Inside, it smelled of dust and a faint whiff of mold under all the tarps hiding the furniture. I couldn't help but smile like a moron.

"Grandpa, grandpa," I muttered. His life had been more complicated than I had thought. And yet… he somehow managed to leave me this. I didn't really get it, to be honest. If he had a whole-ass homestead near Halford, and I was his only surviving family anyway, why did he stubbornly remain near Central City instead of moving closer? Here, he would have been happier, I knew. Or, maybe, I could have moved there. Except he always told me I'd hate Central City and that the homestead wasn't yet for me.

I guess it was, now. And it was also something else: a lifeline. A three-story stone house out here in the country near Halford, overlooking the city on one side and the rolling hills on the other, surrounded by a massive garden overrun with weeds. And it was mine now. I immediately texted my old landlord, quite glad I hadn't yet paid the increased rent, and told him I would be looking for another place to crash while I figured myself out.

He, for his part, sounded genuinely sorry it had come to this, but I couldn't care less! I had a house. It came with baggage and a huge hole in my heart, and my smile cracked a little. I was all alone now, no more help from outside. I needed to figure out my shit myself, get myself sorted out. But this house, grandpa's last act of defiance against a system that screwed him over and a society that changed against its will and left him behind along with his whole generation? It was a sign.

It was his last push to help me. It was his way of saying: "you got this, lad," as he'd always say after his rants had spent all his bitterness and he was left a nice old man, who loved his grandson and didn't know how to really express such a strange emotion.

"Well, then," I said to myself.

"I'll show you, grandpa. For you and for myself. Perhaps you were right all along. Perhaps I really got this." ◈◈◈ I had some time to think on the half-hour drive back to my old place, and I thought some more while I gathered my belongings since I had been told to vacate the house at my earliest convenience (meaning, now.) I really had a lot of questions about my grandpa. The world around me looked… normal.

The sun was shining, birds were singing, and for the first time in more than a year I felt light enough to appreciate its beauty. A lot had changed in the years since the Onset, since that fated day when a bunch of teenagers and young adults simply woke up and realized that they were no longer just human. That they were more. It had upset grandpa Gus to no end. Why only some people, and not others? And what's this strange business with the hints?

Because, it turns out that when you get a power, you also get this strange hint that's supposed to help you sort it out. Still, even after all these years, society was still adapting. And in places like the quaint little town of Halford, where I lived, which was all about beaches and pastoral countryside slow living, the changes were even slower. Not like in Central City, where grandpa used to live in his youth. Back then, it wasn't even called Central City.

The change only happened after the Onset, when a particular combination of monsters and careless Supes turned the old city to rubble. Grandpa took it as a sign and ran to the literal hills, and hid away in his homestead. You know, it stung that he didn't just… come here. He did have a house in Halford, after all. But he must have been attached to Central City, even with all its changes.

I wondered, for a moment, what the banks that requisitioned it were going to do with his homestead now, then decided it was best if I at least pretended not to care. It would hurt too much otherwise.

"Alright, let's see… phone, make a checklist," I said as I drove.

"We need to check utilities, then see if the house is eligible for state-aid with Supe insurance."

"I can make a search," the phone's AI supplied. I shrugged. Why not? Searches like this had improved by leaps and bounds since after the Onset, with mad scientists using their powers to finally crack the code and turn AI from a gimmick into an actual tool. That had been, together with telepathy, one of the two things that had been immediately regulated by all of the world's most important governments. Everything else was still…

shaky, as the world came to terms with Supe-heroes, villains, vigilantes and all the grey inbetween. The house was not eligible, it turned out. Too far away from the city, and with monsters beginning to roam the countryside, neither the government nor the insurance companies were willing to take chances. A Supe broke your house? Alright, someone can probably pay. A monster wrecks your super-rich villa away from civilization?

Insurance companies demanded you better pay a good enough premium to make the risk worth their while, while the government simply said straight-up no and told you to relocate to better defensible places. Hence why, I thought, cities like Halford were probably screwed. They either lost their soul and became just like all the other big cities, or they were bound to be the first to go.

Because even though right now tourism was booming, it was all going to change the moment crossing from one city to the other stopped being a matter of taking the highway or the train, and became a fight for survival against monsters. Gus had seen it coming, and had hated it with all of his heart. Cities were better defensible from monster attacks, sure, but only because they were crawling with Supes, which he thought was a bigger problem than even mutated wildlife with powers.

Monsters were still animals, after all. Just much more dangerous. But Supes? They were people. Yeah, I thought with a chuckle that brought back good memories. Grandpa wasn't a fan of people. Aaaand there I was. Back at the house, with all my stuff in the truck. Now that I took in the sights again, I truly saw the sorry state it was in. I was going to have the work cut out for me, wasn't I? It was like the old man's death had brought the house down with him. I shook the bad thoughts away, focusing on the good ones.

All the work around the house and the yard I did with the old man. This was just more of the same, and while I wasn't an expert… he taught me some stuff. And I had, well, not a lot of money but… enough to perhaps make the place livable? Yeah, money was going to be a problem. But one thing at a time. The house was mine, rent-free, and taxes weren't due for another few months. Utilities were paid for this quarter, and food… I had canned food and cheap stuff. I could survive. And then, I could maybe even thrive.

Perhaps the old man was right. Fuck Supes and their powers. I didn't need 'em. So why did I break down crying when, a few weeks later, I finally awakened?