[ff] Set In Stone
I’m not a top superhero. I barely get noticed, and for now that’s fine by me. Others pushed the Rikti back, gave their lives to save our city, our world. Others have done truly great things. Someday I hope to do truly great things. Every time I pass through Steel Canyon, I have to stop and look at the unknown hero’s statue in Blyde Square. Someday I hope to learn his name. Someday, I hope to be half the man he was.
I wasn’t always a hero. I wasn’t always a good person. High school was tough enough for an idiot like me. I was never any good at book-learning or any of that. I was always in the principal’s office or detention or something. I wasn’t that big, either, so sports weren’t much of an option. Too many rules, anyway. But when my old man bullied me into trying for the high school football team, the only chance I saw was to use steroids. Yes, I did it. I’m not happy about it, but I did it.
Football was my old man’s life, before he shattered both his knees in a stupid teenage car accident. My life was supposed to make his worthwhile. He got me the steroids. How do you “Just say ‘No’” to that? I couldn’t. I didn’t.
The regular steroids weren’t enough, though. Not to win. Some of the teams snuck supers into the roster. Looked like normal kids, but you’d slam into them and your hair would stick out all over when you fell over because of the electric shock that snapped you with, or some kid would ice the mud during a night game and send you on your ass, or all of a sudden you couldn’t see straight and there’d be a dozen extra guys in front of you and you’d tackle the air like a total idiot.
That wasn’t going to happen to my old man’s kid. No way.
We’d managed to squeak into the playoffs my senior year, but we didn’t have a prayer. Everybody knew it. My dad knew it, too, and it was killing him. He was drinking like a fish, and he’d go on benders and disappear for a whole weekend at a time.
It was half-time of the first game. We were down by 23 already. They’d actually been holding back, too, toying with us. One of their guys was a super. He was a speed freak and a chameleon. He kept switching appearances and positions in the middle of their huddle. he wasn’t big, but not my size, but he’d kick in that speed just before you hit and he’d bowl you over by momentum like you were standing still. He’d done it to me twice already. I managed to grab his shirt the second time, and the others tackled him when he spun around, but it was a total fluke.
Dad was hollering at me from the parking lot, leaning up against the outside the fence, when we were heading back to the locker room for the break. I hadn’t seen him for three days. Expected him to be passed out on some sticky barroom floor somewhere till well after this was over.
Something was wrong. I knew that. He was all excited. Still drunk from the smell of him, too. I was fairly certain what the syringe with the purple liquid was when he pressed it into my hand. I was one hundred percent certain he knew, too. But he was looking at me like it was Christmas, some junked up, crazy Christmas where a junked up, crazy kid could finally fix his father’s junked up, crazy life.
I could blame it on him, blame it all on him, but I’d be a liar, and I’m not a liar, anymore.
I wanted it. I’d even tried finding it in all the places I knew of, but nobody was selling. it was the real deal that every one of us non-capes wanted. I couldn’t get any and I was being stomped by a kid half my size because his dad had probably paid his way around the DNA test. We were getting rolled because we didn’t have any supers of our own to cheat.
And here was my father, slapping the answer right into my hand.
He didn’t say anything, then, and neither did I. I just walked straight into the locker room, into one of the stalls, shut the door, sat on the can, flicked the cap off the needle, primed it, then jabbed it through my uniform and straight into the artery on the inside of my thigh.
It wasn’t instantaneous, of course, though I sat there like a dummy for twenty minutes, telling people I was having a major crap, waiting for something to happen, waiting for I didn’t know what. I could hear coach pep-talking us out in the locker room. We could still come back. Keep our heads in the game. Don’t beat ourselves. He was a good coach. He knew damn well about the super, everybody was complaining, but the kid had gotten past the test. There was nothing to do but lose. That, or catch him in the act, but he’d already shown us he was too smart for that.
Well, I’ve never said I was the sharpest tool in the shed. When we got back out on the field, I was still feeling nothing, no different. I was standing on the sidelines during the kickoff, not daring to look back at my dad. I knew he’d be crushed. It began to crush me, too. We had put so much into this, so much hope. If we could only find it, everything would be great! It was the only thing we’d had in common, and now it was a lie. there was no short-cut to super-hood. Dad’d probably sold the house for that single needle full of Crey syrum, only to get a needle full of purple water, instead. He’d probably drink himself dead, now. Blame this one on me, too. Maybe I’d screwed up the injection somehow. Something.
They received the ball and ran it back. All of us on the sidelines stared the whole time, trying to catch the punk in the act, but we couldn’t see a damn thing out of the ordinary. it just looked like we were being beaten hard, the old fashioned way. They charged us, and our guys were knocked down or back, until Ed managed to strip the ball before going down, but the pig-pile still left them with the ball at our fifteen. Maybe the super had been pulled since they were so far ahead.
My brain switched into game mode as I jogged out and lined up for the play. Take in their positions, count them off automatically, size up my opponent, see where his weight sits, watch his hand placement, stare hard into his eyes. Tucker snapped the ball and it was on. I gave the guy a good lean and twist, spinning him easily off onto the ground. Into the hole popped the ball carrier, and I braced for the grab. He ran straight for me, arm out and shoulder locked. This time, he was mine. I was not budging and I was not letting go.
At the last moment, I recognized his eyes, and he shot into me like a bullet from six inches away, his hand stiffing my mask and his hip riding forward into my gut to shove me off. But I didn’t feel a thing. He bounced off me like a tennis ball off a brick wall. That super slammed into me, full on, exactly as he’d done twice before, but I didn’t move. Not an inch. I looked down at him, and he was rolling on the ground cradling his wrist and elbow. The ball had bounced away and was buried under a dozen other guys, but I didn’t even notice. I don’t know which of us was more surprised, but I do know I started grinning like a fool and shooting my mouth off like a jackass.
The ref had seen it all, though. He told me to step away, when he came over to check the kid, but I didn’t move. I tried, but I couldn’t. My feet wouldn’t lift from the ground. The ref got angry and I started to freak a bit and he told me to back off or get a flag, but I just stayed put. Try as I might, I couldn’t lift my own damn legs. What had that kid done to me?
Ten minutes later, I had blown the game for us. The ref finally had to ask my entire team to move me. Twelve guys and it was still like pushing an enormous piece of granite up a hill. They finally got me to the sideline, and the ref gave me the riot act, but when he showed the call for illegal superpower use, I felt everything go cold. Our team had to forfeit the game and was banned from the playoffs because I had used a superpower. My mind went blank. I was the one being nailed? The real super was getting off with a broken wrist, but they were going to the finals? He was the real cheater! I wanted to scream, but I knew there was no other explanation. When they did the DNA test back in the locker room, they were going to find the drug in my system. I had blown it all.
I spent the next half-hour stuck on the sideline like some stupid statue, listening to my teammates’ parents yelling at me, booing me, and then they started throwing things until another super, an official one, dropped from the sky like an angel. That was Valkyrie. She gave me a lecture about abusing my gifts and she wasn’t an angel to me anymore. Not for a long while, anyway. She just kept going on and on about being a hero and making choices and crap. I couldn’t get away, so I just shut my mouth and started making a list of everyone that I hated, starting with her, but also that super on the other team, the ref, my dad, the Rikti, my teammates’ parents, coach for looking so disappointed.
By the time she was done and had released me with some kind of flash of green light, I was already gone. Nothing she could have said would’ve made a bit of difference. If I couldn’t even cheat right, what was the point of doing anything right?
I know, it doesn’t make sense, but thinking things through has never been a strong point for me.
I didn’t go home again. Not for a long time. By the time I did make it back, it wasn’t home, anymore; not mine, anyway, just an empty building I could hide in. Dad had been dead for almost a year, I’d heard, and I was only there because the super-goodies were looking for me after I’d stolen that stash of Crey syrum from some Hellions, who’d stolen it from some Clockwork, who’d stolen it from a Crey lab from the label on the container.
I tore to pieces the house I’d grown up in after I stuck myself with all those needles that night. Or nights. It’s not very clear.
Nothing was clear to me, then. I was out of control. I knew it, but I didn’t care. I said I wasn’t always a good person. An understatement. I’d done many bad things. I kept thinking another fix would make me bigger, stronger, better. I could make those supers pay for this. It was their fault. I was so angry at everyone and everything. Except me, of course. I hated the world because it hated me. That’s the way I saw it, at least.
When Valkyrie landed in the rubble that used to be my house that night, I wasn’t even trying to think anymore. I was all twisted up from the syrum and I must’ve looked like death warmed over. I couldn’t tell you the last time I’d showered or even changed my clothes. I was still running around in my football uniform, but it was so filthy you’d never tell. She didn’t, apparently.
When I saw her standing there in front of me, all perfect and clean and golden and pretty and giving me a lecture like some twelve-year old, just like she’d done before, just like when it all started, her name was still at the top of my list.
It was the first time the sledgehammer appeared in my hands, but I didn’t even blink as I brought it down on her with everything I had. The syrum must’ve been working overtime, or she was totally not expecting a thug like me to kick back at a hero like her. I saw the look of surprise on her face as I knocked her backwards, across the street, and through the Robert’s front window.
Then I started thinking. She could kick me sideways, and twice on Sundays, without breaking a sweat. She was going to pulp me. She was a hero. I had just hit a hero. I’d never actually been quite that stupid. Until then, of course.
Terror chased me through the streets and down the alleys, until I popped out almost in the middle of Blyde square, right at the foot of the unknown hero’s statue. Nobody paid me a lick of attention, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was watching me, his saluting hand shading his giant stone eyes from the sun so he could stare at me, stare down at me, accuse me.
I took off, heading towards the warehouses in Coppertown. It should’ve been easy to find an empty room to lie in, a place to stop, a place to hide, a place that was safe. I just needed some time to think, some time to stop the roaring buzzing in my head, pounding away behind my eyes.
“King Garment Works: Steel Canyon Distribution Center” it said above the loading dock door I bust through. Good. Abandoned. Find a corner. Pick a spot. Sit down. Stop. Think. What’s happening to me? I just hit a hero! Every cape in Paragon would be hunting for me now. There was nowhere to go. I’d really screwed up, finally.
I tried to tuck in between a couple of storage containers, but nothing felt safe. They’d see the door. Why did I have to smash it? I had to get out of her, and now. I got up and started running again. Stupid! Was I trying to get myself caught?
Looking back, now, I would probably answer ‘Yes’ to that question, if I could give my totally underused sense of justice credit for such influence.
Back and forth up a set of stairs, down a short hall to some kind of common room filled with chairs where a TV was on up on the wall in a corner. People were shouting. A girl was crying, sobbing.
I stared at the talking head in the suit on the screen for several moments, confused. I realized the sound was muted because the Hearing Impaired display was running across the bottom.
“No, please!” the girl’s shout came again. “Mommy! Help!”
The cried were coming from behind me. I turned and looked through the other entrance to the room, out onto a steel balcony which opened onto an enormous warehouse space far below. The voices came from somewhere on the floor of the warehouse.
“It’s okay, Maria,” urged an older woman, a little hysterically. “It’ll be okay! They’ll find us soon! Just be strong. The heroes will find us. Just hold on!”
Perfect! I thought. Finally something going my way. The supers would track me in here, but they’d have to stop for these two, whoever they were. Heroes always help people in distress. It’s in the handbook. I turned back to where I’d come in, planning to run back to find another way out.
“Help!” the girl shouted. “Daddy! Where’s Daddy?!”
“Hold on, Maria!” her mother shouted back, almost angry. “Just hold on! Daddy’s coming! I’m sure! Just hold on!”
I forced myself to the doorway, to start heading back, but I didn’t make it more than five steps. That girl was waiting for her dad, and I knew for certain that he wasn’t coming. Dad’s never come through. They run off and drink themselves to death because they’re too cowardly to face the truth. They’re too weak to stand up and take it. I didn’t know about moms, I never had one, but I knew there was no dad coming.
I wasn’t thinking about being a good guy, or doing something nice. I wasn’t trying to be a hero. That was the furthest thing from my mind. I just wanted to go tell that girl the truth about her daddy, about the kind of slime that would leave her like this. I was actually hoping to feel a little better by making her feel worse. Misery loves company.
That’s why I didn’t hear the Clockwork patrol before I got the first shock.
Half a dozen beams ripped out at me, and I could feel my teeth shaking in their sockets as I danced like a puppet, but when it stopped, I was different. There was gravel all over the metal floor around me, bouncing hollowly in the open space. When I looked down, I saw it was all from me. I had no more feet! Blocks of rough grey and black stone covered the ends of my legs and my hands, too. They were turning me to stone?!
They came running and flying at me, then, their gears and levers and copters and all whirring and click and hammering away in my ears, mixing with the girl’s cries and her mother’s surprise shouts and calls for help. But, panic filled me. I was being turned into a statue and there I was going to die like this, alone here, with no-one to know!
The first of them to reach me was carrying his own head in the crook of one arm and pulling back to clobber me with the other. In that moment, I was back on the field, back on the green and mud, back in the game with that super, back in the revenge fantasy I’d been cultivating since that night, and I’ll tell you something I’m not very proud of, but I can’t shake it: I felt better right then than I had ever felt in my entire life to that point.
When it was over, though, I was on my hands and knees, throwing up on the cold metal of busted gear arms and glassy eye filters, and crying my eyes out. I don’t remember seeing the girl or her mother. I don’t remember much of anything besides smashing things and screaming at my father.
It was silent when I finished puking. I sat back and there was Valkyrie. She still looked perfect and clean and golden and pretty, but she wasn’t trying to fix me, she wasn’t looking down at me, and she wasn’t lecturing me. I looked back at her as I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and choked back a sob. I wanted to be angry with her. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of seeing me like this. She did this to me. I tried to be angry, but I couldn’t do it. I was empty. I had nothing left.
After a moment, she reached out her hand to me, palm up, and asked, “I’m sorry,” she said, and I believed her. “I was wrong, earlier. Do you want some help?”
I know it sounds stupid. I know it sounds like one of those crappy after school specials where everything always works out in the end and everyone’s friends and there’s a happily ever after. I know it sounds like a lie, but when you’ve spent a long time running from everything, when you’ve spent a long time digging yourself into a hole, it’s truly amazing what a few simple words can do. All through my life people had told me what I was doing wrong, but not once, not even once, had I ever heard anyone ask me if I wanted help, much less admit they were wrong. Not until then.
As I’ve said from the beginning, I was not always a good person, and, honestly, I’m not always a good person, now. I don’t know anyone who’s good every moment, either, but I try. Just like they do. I try hard because I can. I try hard because nothing is set in stone. Not even me. I’m trying to be a hero, now, because being super isn’t about capes or powers or beating up bad guys. Not really. It’s about waking up every single day and acting like a hero.
True heroes don’t save us from the darkness; they help us save ourselves.
“Yes,” I said to her.