CHAPTER 2
“Welcome to the Super Corps, Michael!”
Based on his nameplate, the speaker was a Mr. DiAngelo. Medium height with dark brown hair, a bulky, muscular build, and a distinct Staten Island accent, Michael was making a stab in the dark, coupled with the name, that he might be of Italian background. And since he had the build of a Flyer, that meant he was probably Italian Falcon. Or, as Michael had decided to tag him, Dago Duck.
Michael Robert Edwards, recent resident of Baltimore, had never been into Supers, but since Acquiring he’d been brushing up. His recovery had been expectedly rapid considering his newfound “gifts,” yet they’d kept him in the hospital a few extra days anyway. He’d spent his time researching his new group of peers and had a whole list of insulting nicknames ready to go.
As the office chief, Mr. DiAngelo apparently rated a nice, though not altogether large, corner office on the sixteenth floor of the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building in New York City. The office had a lovely view of Tribeca, if such were possible. Also, the Hudson if it weren’t for all the other buildings in the way. Decorations were fairly spartan but blended patriotic with “caring supervisor”—complete with a professional library of the latest trending books on leadership.
“I’m Anthony DiAngelo,” Mr. DiAngelo continued, fulsomely. He stood posed by the window and seemed to be reading from an internal script written for a superhero movie. “Italian Falcon,” he added, nodding confidently.
Damn, got it in one.
“You can call me Tony,” he concluded.
“Okay,” Michael said then: “Sir.”
Don’t call him Dago Duck. Do not even think the name . . . Damn, I thought it.
“I understand there were some . . . issues with your Acquisition,” Tony said as he took his seat.
“Oh, no issues,” Michael replied, shrugging. “Motherfuckers needed to die. They tried to kill me, I objected strenuously, they lost. Fair’s fair. Besides, they were MS-13. That’s a death penalty offense in any reasonable jurisdiction. I admit, I’m still looking for that reasonable jurisdiction but it’s the journey, not the destination, right, D . . . Falcon?”
Michael was pissed. He’d just managed to establish enough street rep in Baltimore people generally knew to leave him alone. The minor little dustup with MS-13 that only resulted in ten or twelve dead. But now he’d been sentenced to join the Junior Space Eagles over some fucked-up bullshit gun charge.
It was not working out to be the greatest week ever.
He thought about his life up to this point and had to admit it wasn’t the worst. Not by very long stretches of the imagination. Probably somewhere down in the hundredth worst. Though, the very real possibility that the Supers were controlled by The Society moved it up the list.
Having superpowers was nice, though the ability to throw dirt around wasn’t exactly the coolest power on the block. Of course, the applications were intriguing . . .
“I was talking about the, uh, charges,” Tony said, obviously trying to adjust.
“Fucking bullshit,” Michael said, pulling his earlobe. “Yeah, duh, I was armed. Going ‘Yeah, sure, all those bodies were self-defense, but you were carrying so you’ve gotta go to jail’ where . . . lemme see, MS-13 would kill me! So, yeah, six months ‘community service’ in the Junior Fucking Super Corps was an improvement over, I dunno, come to think of it, being stuck in the slam with MS-13 with superpowers . . . Can I rethink this? Was this the right move . . . ?”
He casually looked out the window. It really was a decent view. Better than any view he’d ever had, at least.
“But, hey, a move to New York City and out of God Damn Baltimore! Fantastic. I can hide out of town in a new . . . Oh, I don’t get a new identity? But I’m going to be able to lay low in New York, right? Like in witness protection or something? No? I’m not a witness? But I’ve witnessed lots of stuff.”
Dago Duck raised a hand to try and regain control of the meeting, but Michael was just getting warmed up.
“Instead, I’m supposed to parade around Central Park in some costume, to be determined, that will ‘disguise my identity.’ Lessee, a thirteen-year-old Earther manifests in Baltimore and a few weeks later a thirteen-year-old Earther turns up in New York City. Fortunately, MS-13, who lost three of their little brown tattooed fuckers to an Earther Acquisition, are never going to put two and two together and, say, turn up in Central Park with a bunch of fully automatic weapons, again, and spray bullets everywhere, again, and hit a whole bunch of innocent bystanders trying to kill me, again, ’cause . . . lessee . . . that shit’s illegal!”
Michael held his hands up, palms upward, and waved them back and forth.
“Right? Right? That shit’s against the law! Unlike, I dunno, gang-raping twelve-year-old girls and pimping them out? Or, you know, chopping up people with machetes or . . . I dunno, just generally killing people? They’re totally not going to try to gun me down in the park! Who would dare?”
“You done?” Falcon asked.
“I’m barely getting started!” Michael said. “Where was I? You realize that if they’re trying to shoot me and I’m, you know, standing near the other junior Guardian Angel Vigilantes with really weak and shitty Superpowers and No Policing Authority, and whereas we of the super persuasion, unless invulnerables like, say, you, do not harden and become bullet resistant until we are eighteen, and whereas let it be known to all here gathered that all four members of the New York Branch of the Junior Super Cadets would presumably be standing together, maybe in a group, getting pictures taken, by like civilians who would be in the line of fire, where it be further known to all and sundry that you might have to stand up and tearfully explain to the general populace of the New York Metropolitan Area and indeed the citizenry of These United States how you lost three of the four members of Junior Super Corps, New York Branch, and sixteen idiot tourists to one fucking ‘active shooter incident.’”
“Three of four?” Falcon asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Amigo Podus is a hulk,” Michael said. “Invulnerable. Duh again. You’re a Flyer, you don’t know you’re invulnerable to bullets? Is this a new thing? Or did I miss that class?”
“‘Hulk’ is considered an offensive term,” Falcon said, clearly trying not to sigh.
“I hear ‘Pigeon Poop’ isn’t something to go with as well,” Michael said. “I also hear tell where California Girl particularly objects to Tink—”
“Just stop there,” Falcon said, holding up both hands. “Jesus, you’ve got a mouth on you, haven’t you, kid? Have you ever even thought about trying to make friends?”
Michael looked out the window again and spotted a news helicopter hovering over Tribeca. He watched it for a moment while crafting his response.
“So, I’m eleven years old sitting in this abandoned chemical facility straight out of . . . well, a superhero movie,” Michael said, tugging on his earlobe. “Figured it was going to take twenty years off my life from cancer so my newfound regenerative healing and well-nigh total resistance to disease or toxins is appreciated at least. The inability to get drunk is less so. I’m done cleaning the two guns I took off of the two full-grown male assassins who had kidnapped me and my social worker.
“I hold the guns up and look at ’em.”
Michael made two gun-fingers in front of his face.
“‘Michael,’ I says to myself, ‘You gots a superpower.’ You ain’t no good at makin’ friends but you gots more people trying to kill you nor you gots bullets.’ Then couple of days later, the gang found me. They was a mite offended I’d torched they Escalade but I was a mite offended about them trying to kill me over, honestly, a beef with another kid at school.
“Anyway, I objected strenuously to their offendedness, they raised counter objections, we objected back and forth for a bit in the court of lead and souls, and they lost. Fair’s fair. Also, the reason I’m a firm supporter of the Second Amendment. Twelve adult males going to kill a ’leven-year-old, ’leven-year-old ain’t got no chance ’cept he gots guns. Same deal with a juvie Earther with a range about from here to the wall and a super-duper ability to maybe throw a pebble. And lemme guess: There ain’t no way you’re going to let me patrol with, say, a full SWAT rig and load-out, is there?”
“Okay, I see your issues,” Falcon replied with an assuring nod and smile as if he had the solution. “They have been recognized, discussed, and considered. FBI informants say that MS-13 has dropped the hit against you since, you know, super.”
“Ah, the FBI,” Michael said. “The most competent police force on the face of the planet.”
“The subject has been deemed not an issue, Michael,” the office chief said, now with a frustrated grimace since the smile and nod didn’t work.
Michael kept his peace. He was going to have to either figure out how to train his powers or find a piece. He hadn’t been afraid of death since he was eleven. Honestly, with his life either way was fine. But he just hated to lose. And letting people kill him was pretty much the definition of losing.
There were still unexplored options. He hadn’t had a chance to check in with Gondola since Acquiring.
“Junior Super Corps is, normally, entirely voluntary . . .”
Michael snorted while trying to keep a straight face.
“You disagree?” Falcon said, clearly trying to keep calm.
“Every Acquisition you go black, and you see a quantum vacuum energy pattern of plasma discharge . . .”
“A what?” Falcon asked.
“Quantum vacuum energy pattern of plasma discharge,” Michael repeated. “You see black shot with blue and red and purple and what looks like those patterns you see when you close your eyes. You are a super, right? Or did I miss that? Some people say it looks like blue and red lightning. What you’re seeing, though, is the QVE pattern of a plasma discharge. Trust me, I know for physics. What you saw when you Acquired slightly before the comet took out the dinosaurs.”
“Oooo-kay,” Falcon said dubiously.
“I didn’t get recruited to Stanford at the tender age of ten for my boyish good looks and charming personality,” Michael said. “And you hear the words ‘The Storm is Coming.’ Right?”
“It was . . . actually, it was while I was hunting a mammoth . . . He was coming right for me . . .” Tony said, shrugging. “Next thing I knew, I was flying. And shortly after that became the Great Hunter of the Warthog Tribe.”
“My sincere apologies, sir, at misjudging your antiquity by between sixty and sixty-five million years,” Michael said, nodding and giving the office chief a minor note for a sense of humor. “My bad. My point being, during the Acquisition Event, previously referred to as the now unacceptable ‘Transition Event,’ you have a lack of ego awareness. That is, during that event you have no rational control over your actions.”
The news helicopter turned and disappeared behind a high rise.
“And the event, whatever you call it, is always while under some distress. Drowning. Bullying. Abuse. Four abdominal and three thoracic GSWs from some camping asshole are, I assure you, distressing in the extreme.
“Then your powers manifest and take care of the problem without conscious volition. Depending on the power, it may be kinetic or otherwise.
“Firestarters: all male, frequently due to wrestling around with somebody and, well, whoever they’re wrestling with just went to the burn ward. Electros . . . hope whoever is distressing them lived, ’cause those have the highest rate of death in an event. Waters: always female—same as all Earthers are male—generally something directly water related, drowning or being dunked common, and rarely lead to deaths. When they do, it’s exploding all the water in their attacker’s body, and it gets . . . very messy. Et cetera.”
Tony waved a hand again and shook his head. “This is great and very informative, but I know all this. How you know is worth circling back to, but—”
“In my case,” Michal continued, undeterred, “the immediate problem that caused my Acquisition being nearly the last of the little brown tattooed fucks, three of them, finally had me dead to rights. But only because of that camping asshole and the abdominals and thoracics. I could have taken them if it wasn’t for that.”
“Earther Trans . . . Acquisitions rarely cause death,” Tony said. “Especially filling three guys full of glass shards.”
“Silica,” Michael corrected. “Shaped silica shards drawn from the concrete walls. Which probably fucked up the concrete as well. I don’t recall. I went straight from Acquisition to waking up in Mercy Hospital, again, in the emergency department, again. At least it wasn’t recovery from emergency surgery. Again.
“My point being that ninety percent of Acquisition Events involve the Acquirer doing harm to someone whether they deserve it or not—and I assure you, those three LBTFs totally deserved it. And despite a complete lack of ego awareness—which is technically labeled ‘temporary insanity’—we get charged for any damage anyway.”
Mr. DiAngelo tilted his head thoughtfully, as if he might be catching on to Michael’s point.
“And even in rare cases where they don’t do harm, the G Man from J. Edgar Vacuum-Brand and Sons gets all shirty if you don’t join Junior Super Doofs and ‘learn the proper way to be a Super.’ ‘Proper’ being whatever is the Hot New Thing ’cause apparently the Secretary—who, have you ever noticed, looks suspiciously like California Girl—is a flaming progressive, no matter what administration, and no matter what administration, they’re always into the Hot New Progressive Thing.
“Currently that would be transgender and I’m down with that,” Michael finished, pointing two gun-fingers at the office chief. “’Cause I am a currently male-presenting female homosexual. Rabidly homosexual.”
“Oh . . .” Falcon had opened his mouth to say something but paused and creased his forehead as he tried to parse it out.
“Lesbian in a man’s body,” Michael translated.
“Just . . .” Tony said, facepalming. “We are a department of the federal government,” he continued, holding out both hands to forestall the inevitable reply. “A department. We have a member of the Cabinet in charge of three hundred and thirty-six individuals . . .”
“’Cause of the Supers Act,” Michael said, nodding. “‘The Secretary shall act to ensure the Civil Rights of America’s smallest minority.’ Which was an incredibly bad precedent in statutory law, in my humble opinion, and I am always amazingly and magnificently humble.
“Now there’s got to be a Department of Asian Affairs, whose acronym wouldn’t be too bad, Doh-Ah-Ah, Do-do-do-aaaaaap, Doh-AaaaaaaahAh-Ah-Ah-AH! But by the time you get to a Department of Persons of Color Affairs you get Doh-Pah-Cah, which sounds like the guy you get on the phone when you call Tech Support . . .
“‘Hello, this is Dopaca, how can I help you with your computer today?’” Michael said in a bad Indian accent. “‘Have you tried turning your computer off and back on again . . . ? No? Okay, let’s start with that . . .’”
“Stoooop!” Tony screamed, grabbing his head and clearly trying to hold back laughter. “Just stooop! For the Love of God! Stop!”
He motioned for Michael’s mouth to close.
Michael stopped, watching warily.
“You . . .” Tony said, very carefully. He jabbed a thumb out the window toward the city. “Are going to be out there . . . in public . . . representing the entire United States government—”
“In some stupid fucking costume that has no variation for the enormous temperature changes experienced by New York City . . .”
“Mggh! Mgggfh! Zip! Zip!” Tony snapped, making zipping and mouth-closing gestures.
Falcon drew in a calming breath and regarded Michael carefully, who innocently looked back. It wasn’t, quite, a staring contest.
“Representing the Super Corps,” Tony continued, quietly. “And the entire United States government. There are approximately sixteen bazillion cameras in people’s hands in New York City . . .”
“The average person . . .” Michael said.
“Zip . . . !”
“. . . only has one and there are . . .”
“Zip it!”
“. . . only eight million people . . .”
“Just . . .”
“So, a better approximation would just be eight million, sir,” Michael concluded rapidly and made a zipping motion across his lips, then folded his hands in his lap.
“There are approximately eight million cameras in people’s hands in this city,” Tony edited. “Plus some number of tourists . . .”
“New York City receives approximately sixty-five million visitors each year,” Michael said. “Many, if not most, are business travelers . . .”
“Wait . . .” Tony said. His hands had balled into fists, but now they flattened onto his desk. “You actually know the numbers?”
“I was trying to figure out how many cameras would be pointed at me on an average day,” Michael said. “The average Instagram account has only one hundred and five followers. So, with about one hundred thousand visitors to Central Park on, say, Saturday and we’ll encounter about ten percent, let’s say, at most that works out to ten thousand people. But everything they post will be seen by about one hundred people. So that’s nearly a million impressions per visit.”
“That tracks with our studies,” Tony said, interested.
“So that means I get to piss off approximately thirty thousand of the most vocal crybabies on the face of the planet, Every! Single! Patrol!” Michael said, throwing his hands in the air. “The crybullies are going to be calling for me to apologize every single patrol! I’m sure to get protesters! People will be throwing horse manure and bottles of frozen water! I’ll hide behind Amigo Podus . . .”
“Who . . . ?” Tony said, grabbing his head again. “Who the hell is Amigo . . . ?”
“What’s his super name?” Michael asked. “Hombre! That’s it! Hombre do POTUS . . . ? No, that sounds a bit off . . . Hombre . . . ?”
“Hombre de Poder?” Tony asked, grinding his teeth.
“That one. Anyway, the Secretary, who”—Michael stuck his finger into the back of his mouth and made vomiting noises—“actually posts fucking selfies on Instagram, is going to go absolutely ballistic!”
“Which is exactly what I’m trying to avoid!” Tony snarled.
“Anyone who posts selfies gets what they deserve,” Michael said. “. . . Thus taking me off of patrol and preventing harm and death to uncounted people including my fellow Cadet Space Rangers!” he finished triumphantly. “Except Hombre Do the POTUS, who is, of course, invulnerable to even heavy machine-gun fire. Or has that changed? Did I oversleep and miss that class? Where is that classroom?”
Tony hung his head in his hands.
“If you call Hombre that to his face you won’t have to worry about the Secretary,” Tony said, not looking up. “’Cause he’ll rip your arms off and beat you to death with them.”
The office chief looked up with a not-yet-defeated expression.
“So, you’re going to piss people off just to get out of patrol?” he asked.
“Jury’s out,” Michael said calmly.
“Jury’s out?”
“You may find this hard to comprehend, Italian Falcon,” Michael said seriously, “but most people don’t pay too much attention to Super Corps or supers in general. One in a million Acquire. Every super gets concentrated in New York or LA with a small team in D.C. ’Cause those cities, apparently, are the only cities that exist in These United States of America. Well-known fact. There really is no, say, Philly much less Boise. They’re figments of the imagination. Boise being a really weird fantasy that involves red cloaks and bonnets for some damned reason.
“Ask anyone in, say, New York and they’re not sure that Washington exists much less Peoria. Most people have at best a vague clue that the Spangly Tights Brigade exists despite your Secretary’s apparent frenzy to get you into the news cycle at the slightest opportunity . . .”
“PR gets Congress to get us funding . . .” Tony said wearily. “‘Spangly Tights Brigade’ . . .” he added with a groan.
“Oh, got that,” Michael said. “But it still means that hardly anyone really cares about supers. Which is one issue of funding. Sure, there are the cape fanatics. They’re all over social media to the point they seem like bots. But they’re actually a relative handful in the total population.
“I couldn’t have cared less. You impinged not at all on my daily round of trying to survive East Baltimore. Even if there was a super in Baltimore, he’d be prancing around the Inner Harbor or Leakin Park, taking selfies with people or stopping the occasional purse snatcher. He wouldn’t be stopping some foster dad from beating me half to death ’cause he just doesn’t like me. He wouldn’t be stopping some girl from getting gang-raped in the next room. He wouldn’t open up a closet door to find two black kids dead of starvation and the sole white kid just barely alive . . .”
“That’s a . . . ?” Tony said cautiously.
“Read my fucking file,” Michael said, his face hard. “He might have turned up when there was an ‘active shooter’ incident downtown. Probably just in time to fly me to the hospital to be ‘saved’ by the healer instead of, you know, being transported by ambulance.
“US supers are so weak our freaking Healers can only treat four or five people a day. That Dr. Howard’s right there at Johns Hopkins. When she found out I’d been recruited to Stanford she asked why I hadn’t gone to Johns Hopkins. I said I had been there. I didn’t add twice in the burn ward when I was five. Two separate incidents. I didn’t say the third was a month recovering from being deliberately starved to near-death and the other two kids died. But I had a question I didn’t ask her about.
“I assume a healer can’t do much for starvation. But where was she the two times I was in the burn ward when I was five? The second time there were even three little black kids, one female. So where was the healer?
“Ever been in the burn ward, Falc? Get burned before you Acquired? Forget the skin grafts which are, to be clear, peeling your skin off your body in small strips. Literally, a well-known torture. Skinning someone alive. Want real bad? That’s debriding.”
Tony straightened and his face softened. Give the guy credit, he knew when it was time to let a kid vent.
“See, the problem, Falc, is the class two and three burns, if they leave the burned meat, they get infected, and you die. So, it has to be removed. The burned skin and meat. On your body.
“So, what they do is five or ten nurses hold you down and say soothingly, ‘We’re doing this to help you . . .’ while a doctor who is, and this is not an exaggeration, chosen specifically for his, her, or its sadism, it/he/they takes this thing like a cheese grater and scrapes the burned flesh off.”
The office chief flinched a little. He was doing his best not to show his discomfort, but his left hand was fidgeting in and out of a fist.
“You remember burns, Falcon? Remember how you’d get a burn from some hot oil popping off the stove and how much it hurt? Now take that cheese grater in the drawer yo mama used for grating Parmesan and grate your skin and meat off in strips until you’re so weak and literally dying from the pain that they take you back to the ward to rest and heal up for a couple of days until you’re strong enough to . . . go back to being debrided.
“Over and over again.
“Five years old, Mr. DiAngelo. Twice. Forget the Spanish Inquisition. Just send campers to the burn ward.”
Tony just nodded his head and bit his tongue for a second.
“So where was ‘Dr. Bethany Howard,’ Mr. Falcon?” Michael asked, his jaw working. “Where was this amazing Super Corps when me and three little black kids were being set on fire in a ‘fiery but mostly peaceful protest’?! I mean, we were right there at Johns Hopkins, for fuck sake. I knew there was a healer there. It was all over the news, about how great Super Corps was and their amazing Healers! I literally begged them to please get me a healer. Both times. And you know what? Prayers and begging do as much good as crying—none.”
Michael paused and looked the office chief in the eye.
“Most people don’t care about the Super Corps,” Michael said. “Supers don’t matter to people on a day-to-day basis at all. My interest in supers died when the only people who would help four burned kids in a riot were some contractor mercenaries. Not the news crew they were guarding. For damned sure not the Super Corps or their precious Healers.
“More people care about the Kardashians than the Secretary—which, based on her . . . everything is one of the things that pisses her off more than . . . anything. But now I’ve got these powers. Which I’m supposed to keep weak? Because of some dude who went off the reservation literally before I was born.”
Then again, Michael knew the truth behind the Nebraska Killer, and the part The Society played in his psychosis.
“Yeah,” Tony said, nodding definitely. “Because it was before you were born, Michael. I was there. You weren’t. NK was . . . not easy to take down.”
“Got it in one, Mr. DiAngelo,” Michael said. “Got the memo—I’d say in school, but I dropped out when I was eight. But here’s the thing, Mr. DiAngelo: The Storm is Coming.”
“I do understand . . .”
“I really don’t . . .”
“Stop,” Tony said, making the close-mouth motions again. “When I heard those words, I knew, in my bones, right then, that I had to be ready for anything. I’m from here . . .”
“Really?” Michael said, acting surprised. “Jeez, you sound exactly like you’re from rural south Alabama! I figured you for a Lynyrd Skynyrd fan! I would never have guessed you for a paisan from Staten Island!” he added, shaking his head in wonder. “What a world . . .”
“You . . . effin’ kid . . .” Tony said, shaking his head and laughing. “But as I was saying . . . I knew, right in that moment, that I had to protect my town, my country, I had to, yeah, protect the Island. I had to be ready. The Storm was coming. And”—he paused and looked out the window—“I did get some training, yeah? Cally . . . Some other people . . .
“But that was then, kid,” Tony said, sighing. “That was before J . . . the Nebraska Killer . . . That was before a lot of things. My transition was . . . jeez, is it thirty years already . . . ?”
“‘Twenty years now, where’d they go?’” Michael sang. He had a pretty good singing voice courtesy of years of training in ABE choruses and a fortunate puberty voice change. He took in the view again for drama’s sake. “‘Twenty years, I dunno. I sit and I wonder sometimes . . . where they’ve gone . . .’ You don’t look a day over . . . twenty-five, give or take? Pretty good for a guy who was hunting mastodons . . .”
“Mammoths, kid, mammoths,” Tony said. “Great Hunter. Also, we’ve got regenerative healing, which looks like it might, yeah, add some years onto our maximum lifespan. My wife is not happy she looks twice my age. Point being . . . Storm never comes. It’s like that play . . . Waiting for somebody . . .”
“Godot,” Michael said, tugging his ear. “Waiting for Godot.”
“You know it,” Tony said.
“Lucky guess.”
“Point being, again . . . Storm never comes,” Tony repeated. “Right now, here, today, we’ve got people to save. People to help . . .”
“Selfies to take,” Michael said.
Tony got that look again and puffed out his cheeks, at which Michael did the mouth-shut motion.
“Oh, you think . . . ?”
“Muff!” Michael said. “My turn. I have the talking stick.”
“There is no talking stick,” Tony said.
“Do not make me pull it out and disprove that statement,” Michael said, reaching for his zipper.
“You have the talking stick,” Tony said, holding up his hand and turning his head to the side.
“My point being . . .” Michael said, then paused. “Was your dad a cop?”
“Yeah,” Tony said, nodding. “Retired as a sergeant in the NYPD. Still lives out in Staten.”
“We come from different viewpoints,” Michael said. “Staten Island is sort of tough from what I’ve heard . . .”
“Very,” Tony assured him.
“Sort of place where you get hit by a bouncer in the leg when you’re six playing ‘Let’s Do a Drug Deal,’” Michael said. “Which was ironic ’cause as the white kid I was the one who always got shot anyway. That sort of place?”
“Not . . .” Tony’s brow furrowed. “. . . often . . . ? Let’s do a drug deal?”
“Kids mimic what’s going on around them,” Michael said. “Let’s Do a Drug Deal, somebody’s getting shot, Pimpin’ Out Yo Ho, somebody’s getting knifed, Jackin’ a Cah, there will be a chase. Runnin’ from the Poh-leese, that’s ‘Tag’ to people from, say, the Hamptons. Bangin’ wit’ the Poh-leese, that’s Cops and Robbers, but the Cops are always the ones who get shot; I was always the cop. Jackin’ a Licker Stoh, everybody gets shot . . .”
Tony’s jaw dropped and his eyes went wide.
“You probably got beat down to the point of being put in the hospital nine times, minimum, right, Mr. DiAngelo? At least sixteen in total, what with the all the times you were in the burn ward and the starvation? Oh, and the getting shot over and over again. You’ve had your heart stop in the ambulance, right? And in the ED? And on the table? That’s a thing when you were a kid, right? Thrown across the room into a wall by your foster mom’s boyfriend when you were two? Beaten for putting the toilet lid down—note I said lid down—instead of leaving it up, when you were four, back in the hospital, broken clavicle, assaulted every single way, yes, that way, thank you for not asking.”
Now the office chief looked away again in discomfort.
“Staten Island is definitely a place where you trip and sprawl face-first running to the school bus, all the kids laughing at you, ’cause you didn’t quite clear the hurdle of the dead and starting-to-bloat body . . . I mean, that was a thing when you were growing up, right, Mr. DiAngelo? Tripping over dead bodies on the way to the school bus and the part that was bad about it was the kids laughing at you? In ‘very tough’ Staten Island . . . ?”
“Not . . . so much . . . ?” Tony said, shrugging defensively. “Is there a point?”
“You come from a really tough place, obviously,” Michael said. “So, you know, coming from a tough place, that you cannot let your guard down. It’s literally impossible for you to not be on alert one hundred percent of the time. It’s a PTSD thing. Forget ‘the Storm is Coming.’ The Storm was here before I ever cared about supers. It’s around every corner. Behind you. In every nook and cranny. There is no place that is safe—not your bed, not your home, not anywhere for sure on the street.”
Falcon raised an eyebrow and looked lost.
“I’m sure that in Staten Island you’d grab any electronics that hadn’t been stolen from you and sneak into a coffee shop somewhere, dressed like a homeless kid, complete with stink, and hide in the corner on the floor with your back to the wall so you could put on headphones and watch two college lectures at a time, sped up to triple speed, rocking back and forth like a drug fiend waiting for his next hit . . .”
“Why didn’t you go to Stanford?” Tony asked, shaking his head. “I was told you had a full ride; they’d fly you out there, put you up . . . ?”
“’Cause I’d never have gotten there . . . Tony,” Michael said.
“That’s kind of defeatist don’t you think?” Tony said.
“Here’s how it would have played out,” Michael said, matter of factly. “‘Hi, Baltimore City Department of Social Services? This is Stanford University! We would like to offer one of your foster children a free ride to Stanford! He’s white, which sucks, but we’ll take him anyway!’ ‘That little motherfucker Michael Edwards is getting recruited to college! That’s white privilege for you!’ ‘Where?’ ‘Somewheres in California!’ ‘Man, he don’t need to go to California! There’s a college right here, ain’t they?’ ‘That right, John something!’ ‘That way we can keep his ass in the ghetto and keep them fat stacks rollin’ in! Call them perfessers over at John Something, tell them we got a ghetto kid gettin’ recruited by some university in California but they get him! Long he stay the ghetto an’ we keeps getting’ the moh-ney. Tell ’em, ‘Sorry he ain’t black . . .’
“Then I’d be noticeable. Then I wouldn’t have the freedom to break into those abandoned houses to just have somewhere halfway safe to think. Then I couldn’t curl up on the floor of a coffee shop and listen to lectures.
“The one good thing about anarchy is it does represent a certain form of freedom.”
“That’s sort of . . .” Tony said uncomfortably.
“You really think they were going to let me go, Mr. DiAngelo?” Michael asked. “The only way they were letting me go was if the federal government came along and said ‘Yeah, that kid? He’s moving to New York.’”
He wistfully looked across to the adjacent building, where there was a gym a few floors down. Sadly, it wasn’t close enough to get a good look at any of the women working out. Michael closed his eyes and sighed.
“I got found in an alleyway with my umbilical cord attached and they left me there. In the fucking ghetto. Because ‘children should be raised in their native culture.’ Since my whore mother was probably . . . a whore, I guess that might count for my ‘native culture.’ No child should be in the ghetto, and for sure and certain no foster child! The state could have put any of the children I was fostered with anywhere in the damned state. The state was responsible for our care. Every single horror I’ve lived through and witnessed, the precious state could have avoided.
“The state is my mother, the state is my father, and my mother is a whore and my father is as much of a bastard as I am. The ghetto has a massively higher rate of CPS cases just like it has a massively higher rate of every other offense against God and man. So why leave kids there? When you can put them anywhere?”
“Because . . .”
“Money,” Michael snapped, locking eyes with DiAngelo. “Filthy lucre. Fat stacks. Because every child in foster care represents a little pile of green. The more children, the more green. The more children, the more social workers, which means more promotions and more green. If they could just get the green without the pain-in-the-ass kids, they’d be happier.
“And if anyone so much as mutters ‘Is it really wise to put children in a place with so much violence, hell, and anarchy?’ they’re called ‘racists’ and ‘white supremacists’ and people who want to ‘take money out of the mouths of poor children’ and ‘people who want to destroy urban black culture’ who are, let me make sure everyone hears in the back, ‘RAAACISTS!’”
“Okay . . .” Tony said, wagging his head from side to side.
“Want to know how bad foster care is, Signor DiAngelo?” Michael asked. “Not just Baltimore in the ghetto. Everywhere. There are very few things that are one hundred percent with Homo sapiens, Signor DiAngelo. We are, automatically, without considering race at all, a very diverse bunch. One hundred percent are not heterosexual. One hundred percent cannot spell or count. One hundred percent are not born with all their limbs.
“One hundred percent of females in foster care are raped by someone in or associated with foster care by the age of sixteen.”
Tony froze and looked horrified. “All of them?”
“All. Of. Them,” Michael replied. “The average national age of first rape in foster care is nine. Right here in These United States and, I quote, ‘Greatest Country in the World.’ That’s the average. Want to know the average in East Baltimore?”
“My dad was a cop,” Tony said, nodding. “Young.”
“Eight,” Michael said. “Oh, sorry, that’s the average overall in East Baltimore. Overall, the average age that a girl is raped in the ghetto is eight. The average. And, again, very few make it to sixteen.”
“Jeez . . .” Tony said, shaking his head. “I thought Crown Heights was bad.”
“Pussies,” Michael replied. “The point to yet another diatribe, Mr. DiAngelo, is that I didn’t grow up somewhere ‘tough.’ I grew up in anarchy and blood and pain and death and hell . . .”
Michael stopped, sighed, and looked back at the gym across the way. Even if he couldn’t see too well from here, he could make out women in tight spandex and imagine what they’d look like closer up.
“The only thing I’ve ever wanted in my life was the things I only saw on Tee-Vee,” he said sadly. “A clean house. Clean cars, clean yards, clean people . . . A wife who loved me, some kids, maybe a dog. That stuff was as far away as Mars in East Baltimore, but I was going to make it. I was going to escape gangster’s paradise. Assuming I survived. I was going to succeed and escape and never go back again . . . All I’ve ever wanted was some gentle Eden . . .”
He looked at Falcon and shook his head.
“Don’t feel sorry for me,” Michael said, grinning ferally. “If what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, I be diamond, Mr. Falcone. I am a katana, folded, spindled, and mutilated a thousand times, sharpened to a nanometric edge . . .”
“Wait, wait . . .” Tony said, his brow furrowing. “Isn’t Falcone one of the bad guys in Batman?”
“Yes,” Michael said, looking at him side-eye. “And it literally is Italian for falcon. You named yourself Italian Falcon. I assumed you knew that.”
“No,” Tony said, shrugging. “My family hasn’t spoken Italian in a couple of generations. I think my granddad spoke it and he’s dead.”
“Questo spiega alcune cose,” Michael said, tugging his ear.
“Que?” Tony said, brow furrowing again.
“Moving on,” Michael replied. “The Vishnu—the Indian supers—and the Chinese Super Force are dialed up to the point that is—I hate to say it as a Believer in the One God—very much god-like . . .
“The Vishnu are human nuclear weapons. Which presupposes that whatever we are going to face will require that sort of power to defeat. That magnitude. I’m hoping for Mechagodzilla and if it’s A Quiet Place I’m going to be so totally annoyed.”
“What?” Tony said, trying desperately to keep up.
“Did you even see the trailers for Two? They started in a small town in the South. Right ’chere in the land of the Free and the home of the Second Amendment. And those things came out of nowhere, right? And everybody died from them, right? Got killed and eaten . . . Are you fucking kidding me? That’s the plot? That’s how the world ends? That’s Armageddon?
“Those ‘we can’t see so we depend on sound so stay really quiiiet’ dragon whatchamahoozits could eat people so presumably they could be eaten. There are four hundred million guns in private hands in These United States. And those idiot bird/lizard/whatever cannot hear you beyond pistol range!
“If the Storm is anything like A Quiet Place, it might be bad in Manhattan—like in that later movie—but not Brooklyn or Queens, and I have a hard time imagining there are enough suddenly appearing to affect the population numbers in a megacity. It’d be like a salmon run but the bears are all lizard dragon whatsits that don’t have any eyes. People’d still be going to work.
“‘Where’s Bob? Out sick?’ ‘Dragon whatsit got him, poor guy.’ ‘Eh, better than the muggers, there’s more of those. Does our insurance cover dragon whatsits or is it under “Acts of a Humorous God”?’ New York Post: ‘Last Dragon-bird-whatever killed by mugger in Times Square’ and that’s the end of the dragon whatsits. Muggers got ’em. Pissed-off muggers ’cause dragon whatsits never have any cash on ’em. Fucking cashless society.
“But the place to be is somewhere in Louisiana. Bet they make spectacular jambalaya,” Michael concluded.
“Eh . . . uh . . .” Tony said, shaking his head. “WHAT?”
“You can say ‘The storm never comes’, Mr. DiAngelo but when it comes, and it will come, and when people are calling upon the Lord for a Savior, I might just ask them, ‘Does a white one count or would you prefer that I go find someone from DoPoCA?’
“‘Hello, this is Dopaca, how can I help you with your Armageddon today? Have you tried turning your country on and off? Oh, you’re just turning it off? That’s a method, I suppose . . .’”
“God, God, God . . .” Tony said, very carefully banging his head on his desk.
“If nobody else is going to be prepared, I am too paranoid, too terrified of all the giant monsters that have already populated my fucked-up existence, too beaten, too abused, too familiar with hell to not find a way to become the most powerful super the US has ever seen. So that if no one else in this country survives, I will. And maybe, maybe, I’ll help some people as well as I can. Assuming they’re also willing to accept me as the screwed-up alien from Antares I am and help as much as they can.
“No serial-killer super-terrorist boogieman from before I was born, or a Cabinet secretary for that matter, is going to stop me.”
Tony just held his head in his hands and shook it back and forth. Due to concerns about Society control over the supers, Michael had been torn over whether or not to be honest with Dago Duck about his intention to develop his powers. But he seemed genuine, and Michael had spent most of his life developing a sixth sense for evil people—of whom he’d encountered far too many. Tony wasn’t one of them, and he’d handled everything Michael had said remarkably well. So, despite Michael’s extensive trust issues . . .
“But your question, if you recall, was about my being in the Corps,” Michael said. “I said ‘jury’s out,’ which you were surprised by. And the answer is yes. And I’m even going to try not to cause a stir.”
“What?” Tony said, raising his head and looking at him skeptically.
“I’m smart,” Michael said. “When the Storm comes there may or may not be a federal government. But if there is, having it as an enemy would just mean one person having to fight a two-front war.”
Especially as whether or not the Society controls the supers, they most definitely control most of the federal government.
“I am the humblest person in the world, without question,” Michael said, then paused and looked up at the ceiling in a heroic pose and nodded. “My greatest strength is my humility. That and my fanatical devotion to the pope. My two great strengths are . . . Never mind. But I must relate that, humbly, fighting the Storm and feds simultaneously is potentially doable. Oftimes when you have two problems, they cancel each other out. So I could, for ex, let the federal government—if it survives at all—fight it out with the Storm, whatever it is, and take on the loser . . .”
He paused for a moment and nodded in thought, rubbing his chin.
“Not that I would ever contemplate anything like taking over the United States and ruling it with a firm but—mostly—benevolent hand with the exception of the compulsory harem duty, which is why the capital shall be moved to Boise,” Michael said. “If you do any investing, you might want to go long on red and white cloth.”
Tony set his forehead on his hand and just started laughing, softly.
“The freaking Handmaiden reference was what finally got you?” Michael asked. “Interesting.”
“I’m just trying to keep up,” Tony admitted. “You were saying about being in the Corps?”
“Having a marginally civil relationship with the federal government has a potential value and is not at all luring them into a false sense of security about my true intentions, which do not at all involve taking over this fucked-up country and fixing some of the many issues by, for example, killing a bunch of bureaucrats and whipping the rest. Not into shape. Just public floggings at random so they get the idea that reaching for something mildly resembling competence should be their one true goal—not just screwing people over and drinking coffee.”
Tony chuckled. Apparently Michael had found the proper balance of absurd so as to make Dago Duck think he was mostly joking.
“Ergo: Try to get along in Junior Spangly Tights Brigade. I do not intend to cause a stir or a scene that will bring the Secretary down upon you like some enraged banshee. I intend, to the best of my ability, to just answer the questions from stupid tourists as if they are not, in fact, stupid and to generally act as if I’m from . . . say . . . Tennessee as opposed to New York. Or Baltimore, for that matter. Politeness and courtesy is the order of the day. Are the order? Politeness and . . . Politeness and courtesy are the order of the day. Orders . . . ? I growed up the ghetto. My grammar ain’t all that.”
“So, what was”—Tony waved his hands vaguely in the air—“that?”
“That was me getting off my chest just how stupid this is,” Michael said, throwing his hands in the air again. “Always has been. Kids wandering around in the dark in Central Park with the law enforcement training of . . . What law enforcement training? In spangly tights that have no real functionality at all when one of them is being hunted by a transnational gang whose motto is literally ‘kill, rape, intimidate’?
“It’s not that little brown tattooed fuckers are hard to kill, but there’s thirty-five thousand of them and it’s just work, work, work all day long, Falcone.”
“This is gonna . . .” Falcon said, holding his head in his hands and shaking it back and forth.
“That forty-five-minute diatribe when you were expecting and scheduled for a five-minute meet-and-greet was me venting. I am smart. An entire department of the federal government complete with Cabinet secretary based on comic books is . . . Words fail.”
“Finally,” Mr. DiAngelo said, rolling his eyes.
“I can find more,” Michael said, pointing a finger. “I have words.”
Tony held up his hands and shook his head.
“Lemme, okay?” the office chief said. “We’re . . . glad you’re here. Just . . .”
He grimaced.
“No doing the Dopaca routine in front of cameras,” Michael said. “Do not reference horror movies as training for the Storm . . . ?”
“Just . . .”
“No greeting German tourists with a Nazi salute . . . ?”
“No . . . what?” Tony said.
“Ever read the Skippy’s List?” Michael asked. “I have. I have it memorized. You should brush up. Is there a Super Corps anti-mime campaign? There should be. Those guys are creepy . . . THERE IS NO WALL, YOU MORON! THERE IS NO FUCKING WALL! JUST KEEP WALKING!”
“Oh, God!” Tony snorted, finally breaking down in howling laughter. He was laughing so hard he hit the top of his desk—which promptly broke in two. “GOD DAMNIT, NOT AGAIN!”
“Not again?” Michael said, belly laughing. “Not again?”
“Well, God damnit . . .” Tony said, shaking his head. “MIRRRRI!”
“You rang, boss . . . ?” the forty-something brunette office manager said, sticking her head in the door. “Oh, not again . . .”
“NOT AGAIN!” Michael said, still howling.
“Can you get this . . . this out of here?” Tony said, pointing at Michael. “Alexander will be showing you around. Be nice!”
“Like rice,” Michael said.
Miri walked up beside Michael, smiled, and politely waved a hand toward the door.
“Okay . . .” Tony said, standing up from his desk and shaking off bits from the desktop. “I know I’m going to regret this: How is rice nice?”
“It doesn’t have lice?”
“OUT!”