Chapter 21- Just Super Enough
“We are gathered here to put these earthly remains to rest,” the priest said, “and bear witness to the departure of the spirit. We gather together, at times like these, to honor memories. Often times we feel that we can only capture glimpses of a person’s life, that they are smoke and we can’t hold on long enough. But the Lord is with us here today, beloved and friends, He who remembers all, past present and future. We have but to ask, and we will be rewarded life everlasting.”
“On days like these we are reminded that the day will come when we, too, will be that smoke slipping through the fingers of our loved ones, yet we will find ourselves in the hallowed halls of our Lord. I say this with every confidence, friends and beloved, we will sit on His comfiest of couches, and we will have all the time we need to watch every second, if we wish, on the Lord’s projection television. And, if we like, there will be plenty of time for reminiscence, for they will be waiting for us with the lights on.”
The priest went on. And on. He was jovial, in his way. He was amusing enough, not funny, no, you couldn't have funny at funerals. But death didn't have to be so heavy. The jokes lightened it up, brought heaven down to earth for a few seconds, enough for everyone to find comfort.
“Buck up,” Grandpa said. “Nothin ever so final as this, and we don't know as it is really the end. Mayhaps you get downloaded into the Big Fella's collective in the sky when you go. Or maybe you get started up again in a new body. Would be nice, you know, tryin' out being a woman.”
Stone, Michael Edward Washington Senior, nodded. Silvery tears glinted and fell from his eyes. It looked like he attempted a smile, but it rumpled painfully and disappeared.
“This ain't the end of the world, Michael,” Grandpa said. “You still got your boy.”
What was he talking about? Michael was only thirteen years old. He wasn't going to be having kids for another ten years at least, and probably never. Michael nodded anyway, and turned away while Kravens's relatives dropped sad white flowers on the polished casket.
He hadn't known Kravens well; hadn't known him hardly at all when you came right down to it. It was the type of thing you didn't realize until you didn't see his face anymore. They'd had the laughs, had the drinks outside Saigon, after trying to salvage something of Gwangzhou, but having drinks wasn't the same as finding out about the three kids Kravens had back in town. Why hadn't he known that? Come to think of it, he couldn't remember Kravens talking about anything except how the world was going bad, and how tiring it was all the time fixing it. This whole super hero business wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Maybe he'd get out of it.
Wait a second, he wasn't even in the super hero business. He was a seventh grade kid, and he didn't have any friends except...
“Charlotte!” he screamed, and woke up thrashing in his hospital bed.
He’d been in a forest of beeping machines and tubes before, but last time he’d been on some serious, can’t-lift-arms-and-barely-lift-eyelids sort of medications. That meant this time, when he jerked awake and started moving around, all the things sticking in him pulled back, and did they ever hurt. Michael didn't feel bad for the words that came out of his mouth. They seemed like the right way to dull the pain, to spit it out as acid words. Several nurses came fluttering in, exclaiming about that rising number or this falling number.
“Where is she?” he demanded. He was also aware of the bleeding. He was leaking life, and it didn't feel wonderful.
“She's fine,” the nurses lied. They had no idea who he was even talking about.
“Where is she, I want to see her!” he spat.
“Okay, alright,” she lied again. Behind her, two more nurses were murmuring to each other and filling up a syringe with something. He wasn't quick enough, his body was still too heavy, and they had it injected into the tube in his arm before he could stop them. It wasn't long before medicated sleep snuck up and pounced on him.
He dreamed of Charlotte's mom, of all people, and the twins. He hadn't seen them in ages, since Charlotte had been a prisoner beneath the Marcus Patterson building for so long. Yet now they swam into view like he was climbing out of a tunnel, and when he spoke, he had Charlotte's voice.
“I'm okay mom,” he said. Charlotte said.
“Course you are. You're my strongest girl.”
“I'm your only girl,” she said, and Michael felt her face lift into an easy smile. He also felt the mask over his face.
“I've got a few new 45's for you,” her mom said. Michael looked down at the stack of records. “I thought you'd want some doowop and some easy listening.”
“That's great mom.”
“Coming home?” one of the twins asked. “Charrit coming home?”
Charlotte's mom smiled, but there wasn't any warmth in it. It was a hollow smile, and the way her throat worked up and down, Michael was sure she was on the verge of tears.
“Soon, bud,” she rasped. There it was. On cue the tear slipped down her cheek.
“Quit it,” Charlotte said.
Her mom just nodded.
Charlotte's mom blurred, and suddenly Michael was staring down at Mr. L. The fat, bald former teacher already looked thinner. And Michael was, well, he was enraged. A feeling he'd never before experienced went all through his body, the pure anger of a man who has carefully laid out the silverware, plates, folded up the napkins into peacock fan shapes, put on low candles and expected a pleasant dinner date, only to have some slob sit down at the table just before the conversation got interesting. Archibald was this slob, he was the man interrupting a scheme that was building up, and this was not at all something you just got wrong. This was the rendezvous, the soiree, the gala to end all galas, and when the French made up a word that slithered its way into English, you had better believe it was the perfect word.
“No manners,” Michael said coldly. “You're the type of man to be third at a dinner for two, and not even ask to pass the rolls. Am I right? You'd just reach over and grab whatever you like.”
It was a day of firsts. Michael had never before dreamed of Mrs. Sulszko, never woken up half boy, half tube. He had also never before seen Mr. L scared.
Now he was. Sweat ran down his face. The little hair he had was frizzy and stuck out to one side. His glasses, gone. This was not the time to be messing with Michael Washington.
“Sir, please, listen,” Mr. L said. Where was that smug grin now, Michael thought.
“Oh yes, you think you've done us a grand favor, don't you? You think you've made everything easier for us. You're wrong.”
“But, I, I don't—” Mr. L spluttered.
“The Alphas were nothing before. Now they will come back stronger and better prepared than ever. The same for the citizens of their pathetic settlement. There was no shield before. Our agents were confident of a full-scale collapse within a few months, but only if you had done your job.”
Mr. L's face contorted in pain, and he began screaming. He was tied to a chair, and he struggled uselessly against it. As Michael watched, several places in his face became like liquid, running over into foreign places. His cheek collapsed, and an ear slid down until it was at the corner of his mouth. There was no talking, just a growing scream that started out impossible to hear. It slowly ran up all the way to MAX, until Mr. L was drawing great gulps of air in between full throated screams.
And then he woke up again.
This time he drifted awake, like the hospital room was coated in a thick layer of fog and he was slowly burning it away. He could hardly open his eyes for all the drugs still circling around in his body. He didn't know what they'd given him, but he couldn't move a muscle. Dragging his eyelids open was more difficult than trying to climb that thirty foot rope in gym class. He hated that rope.
They were whispering to each other, his mom and dad. “Jackson's got his work cut for him then.”
“Between working on just about everybody in town, and getting ready for Alpha training, I'd say so.”
?
??And working on the shield.”
His dad snorted laughter. “Say what you want, maybe he was lazy and manipulative before, but he won't have enough time to be anymore.”
“We just better make sure someone's watching over his shoulder. I still don't trust him.”
Michael roared with effort, but just managed to pull his eyes open for a second. His mom and dad were sitting in the visitor's chairs a few feet beyond his hospital bed, well away from the cloud of beeping machines.
“I thought maybe...” his dad said. “Maybe this was it. You know, we talk about it sometimes.”
“Oh Michael,” his mom said. Michael couldn't sort through a statement like that, so loaded with feeling he'd have to separate them with a shovel.
“I can't lose you.”
“You're not going to,” she said.
“And you're not going anywhere, right? Because my dad said you told him—”
She sighed. “I just don't know, Michael. This place, it's...it's dangerous. It seems like its more dangerous than safe right now. Maybe it always was. You just can't put these people together in a town like this and expect everybody to cooperate.”
“But...but it's been that way for the last fifteen years.”
“I know, and we had some close calls. But nothing like this. And you know what, Michael? I don't think Archibald was the real deal. I think he was the tip of the iceberg.”
Michael opened his eyes again, and locked on with his mother's.
“Somebody's waking up,” she said.
“Welcome back to the land of the living, bud,” his dad said.
He could only manage a tiny 'mmm', and open his eyes for a fraction of a second. His mom and dad were sitting before him, smiling in some unfamiliar way. It took him a while to realize they were both worried and relieved: happy, mostly. They also looked bone tired.
“You were asleep a while there,” Dad said. “Your mom and I started to get worried you were getting carried away in whatever dream you were having.”
They got him water when he was finally able to ask, and watched him while he drank it.
“You feeling okay sport?” his dad asked.
“I got shot didn't I?” he asked.
“Pretty brave, everything you did. I heard all about it.”
Mr. Terry Pratchett had some interesting things to say about bravery, Michael knew. You could cook up a completely insane plan, like charge a dragon with a blindfold on and one hand tied behind your back. If you survived: brave. You died: crazy, stupid.
“Thanks,” he said anyway.
“You did...” his dad looked away, wiped his face, then turned back. “You did better than I did.”
“Michael,” Susanna said gently. It was her way of saying the whole thing wasn't anybody's fault, and most especially the funeral.
“Somebody died,” Michael said. It was half a question, and his dad nodded.
“We had the funeral just yesterday, while you were still recovering from the surgery.”
Surgery. He'd been out for at least an entire day, on whatever sorts of drugs they used to put you to sleep, for however many hours they needed to cut you open, do some business inside your body, then sew you back up again.
“That super sucks,” he said.
“Language,” his mother admonished. Still, the grunty chuckle out of his dad was worth seeing.
“How long...” he asked.
“Two days.”
“They wouldn't tell me about Charlotte,” he said.
“She's going to make it,” his mother said, and still managed a look of distaste. Wow, even after all this, after Charlotte had saved his life, she still wasn't going to cut the Sulszko family any slack. He wanted to see her, but knew enough about his mom to keep his mouth shut. When he could walk, he'd walk. Find Charlotte. Ask her what it was like to be a wolf. Try to pretend he hadn't bared his soul to her.
“Well bud,” his dad said. “Your mom and I are going to get some rest. Doctor's orders. Somebody hasn't gotten any sleep in the last forty-eight hours, has she?”
“Some things are more important than sleep,” his mother said, but a touch of smile hit her face. Soon they struggled to their feet, left him with his e-reader and the TV remote, and shuffled out to get some sleep.
He wanted to bring up the Omega Syndicate, but they hadn't even talked about the Alphas. They hadn't talked about much, except that Michael was awake, Charlotte wasn't headed for the light at the end of the tunnel, and someone on the Alphas didn't make it.
They didn't mention how Stone had been contacted, and how they'd arrived back in town less than twelve hours after the situation got serious. They barely talked about Michael and his mother leaving forever. If there was ever a talk to be had and closed up, that was the one.
His dad was playing it very smart. In the coming days, Michael knew, his mom's mood was going to dictate the future of the entire family. They couldn't leave anything up to chance, not when she might cut herself chopping vegetables and then be packed to leave town twenty minutes later. This was the whole reason for the Keys. They were so silly, yet so important, weren't they? If Michael disappeared, his dad might collapse, and what would happen then? An Active with nothing to live for, no reason, well, they might just start thinking things like Mr. L had.
Mr. L, good old Archibald. The details of the dream snapped into focus. He shuddered when he thought about what had happened to Mr. L's face. He had every reason to believe it had really happened too, and that somewhere out there was a person much scarier than Mr. L, a person with plans in the long term. Plans maybe older than Michael. Probably older. Someone patient and exacting, someone...
...someone who still had agents in town.
Michael had to tell someone, but now wasn't the time. Charlotte was the most important right now. He wanted to see her, and she was the only one who would understand about this.
Who else could he tell? The other adults in his life had their own agendas, or they were forced to talk to him, like Mr. Springfield, in which case they were part of somebody else's agenda. Which was just sad, when it came down to it. He was just a thirteen year old kid. He didn't need to be in the middle of something this huge.
He stopped.
“Huh,” he said. “Course I don't. I don't need to know anything about it.” And at the core, it was true, wasn't it? It was an adult thing, and the only thing he was going to get by involving himself was hurt, confused, and upset by what they weren't telling him.
But he was a part of it now. Active or no, adult or no, he had gotten involved. He couldn't just back out now. Too many things would circle around his head until he went crazy.
He swung his legs out of bed and hobbled out to see whether Charlotte's mom had actually cried.
He bumped straight into Mr. Terrence Jackson as he was about out his hospital room door. Just great. He hadn't even started looking for the one person he wanted to see, and already he smacked into the last person on his list.
“Going somewhere, Mr. Washington? You should be in bed. Doctor's orders.”
“I—” he started. The old familiar deference to elders was springing up, closing up most of the parts of his mind except for the manners, and his mother's first lesson was clearest: no talking until your elder asks you a question.
“Have a seat. We need to talk.”
He did. Jackson sat next to him. Right away Michael noticed the dark circles already under his eyes, like he'd been punched twice. He looked a bit like a raccoon. His hair stuck out in odd places, and he clearly hadn't had a shower since before Michael was in the hospital. Yuck.
“Think you were pretty clever, electrocuting the entire town, don't you?” Jackson said. “You'll get the hero's welcome from the rest of them, but not me. What you did was foolish and could have gotten a lot of people killed.”
Michael found himself growing angry. This was a sort of normal reaction to Mr. Jackson. Even when Michael had cleared him of being in the Omega Syndicate, and while
he was riding that train of thought, there might still be Omegas in town. Mr. Jackson could still be one of them.
“I'm not sure I understand, sir,” Michael said.
“Course you don't.”
“So you're saying, if I left Mr. L doing what he was doing, a lot of people wouldn't have been in danger of dying?”
“That's the sort of thinking, Washington, that gets innocent people killed. It isn't up to you to decide, boy. We leave the decision-making to the people of this town. They know the risks when they move in here. They know that at any time, a thirteen year old kid might Activate and go straight up nuclear on the town.”
Meaning he, Michael, might just destroy half the town at any given time.
“What happened with Mr. L was anticipated. We had planned for it.”
Michael made a noise. “Psshhhyeah, and that worked out real well. The Alphas—”
“The Alphas were the distraction for me to engage Mr. L,” Jackson snarled. “You just delayed that. You can keep your judgments and speculations to yourself.”
Michael could just see it: Mr. L along with twenty of the town's Actives flying out to fight his father and the team. Everybody would have been dead, home and away teams. Of course, being an adult made you right. Even if being an adult made you impossible, you were automatically right.
“And you can feel free to wipe that look off your face. I may not be able to read your thoughts, young master Washington, but your feelings are very clear on your face.”
“Yes sir,” he said. Kill em with kindness. Or at least manners. Being kind to Terrence Jackson was always going to be much more than a stretch, it was going to be like cutting his own throat.
“So we are agreed then,” Mr. Jackson said. “You leave the defense of this city to the people who spend their days thinking of such things, and I leave the play time and the girl-chasing to young people who have very little concept of how the world works.”
Play time. Girl-chasing. Who did this guy think he was?
“Yes sir.”
“Wonderful. And if I hear your name, or see your face in connection with anything outside of LADCEMS for the rest of the year, mind you, what happened at the library is going to be absolutely nothing compared with what will happen when I'm not worried about Archibald Lansing.”
For a brief moment, Michael's entire body shuddered with remembrance. Or was Mr. Jackson doing something to him right now? It seemed like all the hairs on his body were standing on end, and there was a painful, awful itching in his fingers and toes. But it lasted only a moment, and then it was gone.
“We understand each other, I trust,” Mr. Jackson said darkly.
“Yes sir.”
He shook his head and left.
Michael set out, straining his tiny non-adult brain to its maximum capacity in order to find Charlotte. She wasn't in the extended care portion of the hospital, so he eventually had to ask one of the nurses where he could find her. In the end, after the nurse tried asking him to go back to his room, and after she threatened to call security, and after she told him Charlotte was in no condition to see him or anybody right now, she relented. After that it was a matter of heading down a few floors and patiently, with good manners, telling them to go suck an egg, that he was going to see Charlotte, and there was no way they could stop him without an Active. Plus he threatened (lightly, lightly) to inform his grandfather that they had stopped him from just looking in and saying a few words to the girl who had basically saved the entire town. At least, she'd saved his life.
A rush of emotion hit him when he finally saw the door. He'd told her about liking her. He was pretty sure he wasn't going to see her again at that point. Now it seemed really stupid. The situation was going to be awkward. Ugh.
Mr. Jackson was wrong. Michael didn't want to worry about girl stuff. Making up plans to fight Mr. L was much better than this sappy, crying stuff. What would he say? Sorry I got you shot? Thanks for turning into a wolf? Thanks for putting your neck on the chopping block and hoping that Mr. L would miss when he swung his ax? I'm glad you're not dead? Everything sounded really horrible, either silly or something out of a romance movie like his mom watched all the time. Which made them horrible. So, horrible either way.
Not knowing about her reaction was worse than being afraid of Mr. L and his legion of zombies. His palms were suddenly sweaty, and his face was probably on its way from red to purple. Did he smell bad? He'd just been sitting in his bed. Maybe he should just go sit this one out. She was awesome, the most awesome girl in the entire world. Surely she would come and see him.
...unless she hated his guts. If she hated his guts, then he was wasting his time even being here. She would shout and rant at him until he had to run out of the room before crying in front of her.
His only friend in the world, and he had to go and tell her he liked her. What an idiot.
Well, there was no way to know how she felt unless he went into that room and stared into her eyes, talked to her (somehow anyway). There was no way to prepare, he just had to summon up the willpower.
“Just go and talk to her,” he muttered to himself.
He pushed open the door and tried to sneak in. It was silly, he knew it. He couldn't stop himself though. Beyond was another sterile room with pastel yellow walls and too many machines quietly beeping away. Only this room was dark. Somebody had pulled the venetian blinds closed and left Charlotte in shadow.
She was wearing a mask, just like in his dream. It was clear and made her look a bit like a jet fighter pilot. The nearby machines pumped a little accordion up and down, and spat out a thin roll of paper showing how close she was to death. She was paler than he could ever remember it, so white it almost seemed like he should be able to see through her skin to whatever was hidden underneath. The bed dwarfed her, shrank her down somehow until she was the size of an eight year old.
He just stared.
“Hey,” she said, after a while. He hadn't seen her eyes open. Her voice was muffled through the mask.
“Hey,” he said.
“What've you been up to?”
“Oh...you know, doom and gloom from my parents, from Mr. Jackson...and, oh yeah, the nurses are all trying to kill me.”
She shook lightly. At first he thought there was something wrong, but he soon saw that she was laughing.
“I dreamed your mom came in here,” he told her.
“Yeah, she was in. She had to take the twins out.”
“I saw her cry.”
Charlotte's smile widened. “You know already, my mom never cries.”
He stared at her some more. There were a lot of things he didn't want to say. He didn't want to look stupid again. But something inside made him want to tell her that she was really important to him. He liked her. A lot. But that couldn't come out. It already had. What would be the point of telling her again? She knew.
She sat there, just looking at him. A slow smile started creeping up beneath the mask, and he felt himself heat up around the neck and ears. She didn't even have to say anything and he was embarrassed. He went over and opened the window.
The falling sunlight transformed her. He didn't know how, but when he turned around, there was Charlotte. She hadn't been there before. It was only a shell. Now this was the real thing, alive and sparkling. With a little sun on her, he realized he'd just helped her start to glow. Because that's what she did, she glowed.
“You're super, Michael,” she said.
About the Author
Brent Meske lives, works, takes care of his son, loves his wife, reads, writes, and does book cover design very close to the border between North and South Korea. Some nights he dreams of transforming into a superhero and ending the communist regime in a little under three hours.
Brent writes to find out how it ends.
Author’s Note
Thank you so much for reading this book.
An awesome fan might also write a review for this book wherever one found and downloaded it, hin
t hint. I welcome folks to my Facebook page, like and look around for some inspiration, reading, news, and coming work. You're also welcome to email me your thoughts at
[email protected] A special thanks goes out to Matt, who helped me polish this one up, Kevin and Brian, who weighed in on the cover design, and Renee who’s been relentless in supporting everything creative I’ve ever done. She’s kind of my hero.
More Alphas and Omegas
If you're keen to read more in the Alphas and Omegas series, I would be delighted. Here are some links to get you on your way:
Super Anybody (Book 2)
Super Everybody (Book 3)
Super Gamma (Book 4)
Super Beta (Book 5)
Super Alpha (Book 6)
Also check out the twelve Alphas Mission Files, which are not young adult, but feature the adventures of Stone and Co.
Other books by me!
I have some other books, about Korea, about candy, about an assassin school, another one about the assassin school, and the latest one is a swashbuckling tale in the vein of Jumanji. I'd be delighted to hear what you thought about these as well!
A Preview of
Super Anybody
Alphas and Omegas: Book Two
(Available now)
Chapter 1
One Last Normal Summer