“Do you solemnly affirm that you will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, under pains and penalties of perjury?”

“I do.”

The prosecutor nodded. “Very well, Mr. PowerJack,” he said. “Please describe what happened on February 27th of this year at 2348 Barnes Street here in Dallas, Texas.”

“I was walking down the street, when I noticed someone climb through the window of that house,” I replied. “I asked a passer-by to call the police, then entered the house from the same window, and found the defendant in the process of filling his pockets with valuables.” I shrugged. “So I picked him up, and held him until the police got there.”

Another nod on the part of the prosecutor. “And are you sure--”

A muffled explosion sounded outside. Then another one. Through the courtroom windows, which were open because of the anomalous heat wave that was sweeping the city, we could hear screams.

I stood up, then hesitated. I turned to the judge.

“Your honour--”

“Go,” he said. I nodded, and launched myself through the window, landing in the street outside.

I felt as if I was suddenly in a war zone. The ground was scorched in several places, and a few cars were overturned, one of them burning; there were a handful of bodies strewn around. As I surveyed the devastation there was another explosion, to my left, and I turned towards it.

“...Ray?” I said.

Solaray didn’t even answer, he just lifted his arm and let loose an energy blast at me. The strength of the impact sent me flying backwards, slamming against the courthouse wall, but I wasn’t injured, of course.

“Ray, what the hell?” I shouted.

Once again, he didn’t answer me. He just turned around when he heard footsteps behind him, saw a few people trying to run away, and let loose another blast, which incinerated them.

I was on him in a second. I made him lose his balance, threw him to the pavement, and positioned myself above him, pinning his arms to the ground.

“Stop, Ray!” I shouted once more. “Why are you doing this?”

His eyes were… Weird. His whole expression was weird. It was as if he was dazed, like… I don’t know, have you ever see someone sleepwalk? It was as if he wasn’t even aware of where he was, or what he was doing. Or who I was, for that matter.

He opened his mouth, and out of it came an energy blast, which knocked me clean off of him and half a block away. It was the first time I’d seen him shoot his energy from anywhere that weren’t his hands – I guess he had always kept that trick up his sleeve.

As I got up, I saw him run off, towards the city centre. His energy powers made him faster than humans, but not as fast as I could run. Or fly, for that matter.

I decided to try another approach. As he fired another blast towards a group of civilians I swooped in, picked him up, and flew up in the sky.

“Ray! Ray, wake up!” I screamed in his ears, trying to shake him. To make him realise his actions.

Once again, he twisted in my grip, and shot an energy blast at my face. I reflexively dodged it – even though it wouldn’t have hurt me – and in doing so I dropped him. He landed a hundred feet below, using an energy blast to soften the impact, then immediately resumed blasting away at civilians.

I just hung there in the air for a few seconds, looking at what he was doing. Then I came to a decision.

“Forgive me, Ray,” I whispered, and launched myself towards him. He barely saw me coming, managed to turn towards me, before I landed my punch.

Then everything went white. I couldn’t see anything, I couldn’t hear anything. It was as if… You ever been in one of those sensory deprivation tanks? Like that. Just white, and a buzzing noise, which gradually subsided.

When I opened my eyes again, I was standing in the middle of a crater. The buildings around me were crumbling, a few even collapsed in front of my eyes. Rubble and bodies… Parts of bodies… Were everywhere.

And it was my fault.

Tears filled my eyes. “I’m sorry,” I managed to whisper.

And then I ran away.

I just fled. Escaped.

I am not proud of that. I am not proud of many things I did that day, but that was probably the worst. I made a beeline for my childhood home, and crash-landed into the ground near it, still at supersonic speed. I buried myself deep inside the mountain. Part of it even collapsed as a result.

I don’t know how long I was there. Days, probably. I even tried to turn off my invulnerability, to let myself die, but some unconscious part of my brain wouldn’t let me do that.

Eventually, when I emerged, I had come to a decision.

PowerJack had to disappear.

As Claire finished her story, I just sat there on the couch, looking at her. She was staring at the floor. Tears still filled her eyes, and she sobbed occasionally.

“It wasn’t your fault,” I said finally.

“Wasn’t it?” she said, her voice bitter. “Nine hundred and twenty-seven people died that day. Because of me. Because… Because I couldn’t come up with a solution that didn’t involve killing.”

“You couldn’t have known,” I protested.

“What? That Ray would just… Explode? When I killed him?” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. It was a direct consequence of my actions.”

“But…”

“I killed him, Tonia!” Claire shouted. “I killed them! A thousand people, dead, because of me!”

She took a deep breath.

“Vincent Hale, aged thirty-eight. An accountant. He was just walking down the street, going to visit his father-in-law with his wife, Eileen, thirty-seven, and their two daughters, Arya and Melissa, seven and five. All dead. Manuela Brooks, age twenty-seven. A para-legal, she was in the courtroom that day. I’d met her before my testimony. Nice girl. Dead.”

She looked up and gave me a piercing stare. “I know all of them. I’ve memorised all of them. Every week, I write them all out so I don’t forget. There must be a dozen lists of their names littered around this house. A thousand lives, a thousand stories, just cut off. And how many more people knew someone who died that day, and suffered as a result? It’s all because of me.”

I looked at her. I didn’t know what to say in response to that, so I thought it would be better to change the subject. “Do you know why Ray did that?”

“Of course I do,” she said. “It happened too fast for me to realise at the time, but there’s only one explanation. Pierson.”

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“Larry Pierson. The Puppeteer,” Claire replied. “We… We from the Association, I mean. We’d run into him a few times before. He’s a Numan, of course, and his power is that he can control people.”

I was floored by the revelation. I opened and closed my mouth a few times, searching for words to describe the dread and horror I was feeling. “He can what?” I said in the end.

“Of course he has limits,” Claire said. “Like all of us. He has to be able to give commands verbally, and he needs to know the name of the ones he wants to control. That’s why we never used our real names while in the Association, even between close friends. I don’t even know what Helen or Ray are actually called.” She shook her head, sadly. “He must have found some way to trick Ray into telling him, or coerced him, in the week he was missing.”

Still, I was puzzled. “But… Why? Even if the Puppeteer managed to control Solaray, why would he make him attack Dallas?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Claire replied. Her eyes were sad once again. “To get at me. Pierson and I have some history. I’ve stopped him several times, so I guess he wanted revenge.”

I digested what Claire had told me. A thousand people had died, because of some petty vendetta. That was horrible.

But there was still one piece of the puzzle missing.

“So you ran away,” I said. “And you decided to disappear. Fair enough. But… Why this? Why disguise yourself like this? And how?” I asked, gesturing at her.

Claire looked at me, puzzlement in her eyes, but a half-smile on her lips. “Disguise?” she replied. “Oh, no, Tonia. For once, you’re way off the mark.” She paused, took a deep breath. “I… I’d already decided to transition. Even before… Even before Dallas. I just didn’t knew whether to come out publicly, or retire the PowerJack persona and start over with a new identity.” Her smile turned brittle. “What happened just made that decision easier.”

...Huh. Interesting. Of course, I’d met a few trans women before, but I never would have thought…

“But how?” I asked. “I mean, I’ve done my research. I’ve seen pictures. Video clips. PowerJack… You were…” I stopped myself before saying built like a brick shithouse out loud. “How do you even go from that, to this?” I gestured at her again.

“Have you ever heard of the Sculptor?” Claire replied.

I turned that name over in my mind. It seemed familiar – and of course it would, since I’d read almost everything regarding Numan heroes and villains while doing research. After a few moments, I remembered.

“You mean… The surgeon turned serial killer? That Sculptor?”

“They were framed,” Claire said, raising a hand in warning. “Think about it: they can alter human flesh as if it were clay with the merest touch, why would they need to leave bodies cut to pieces in apparent botched surgeries just lying around? Besides,” and for the first time in a while, Claire smiled, a true, full smile, “Morgan’s a sweetheart. They’re a great person, and one of my best friends. I check up on them once or twice a month, they’re a very successful plastic surgeon in the Midwest. They even do pro bono stuff for trans people.”

“...Huh,” I said, out loud this time. That did explain it, I guess.

“But still,” Claire continued, her smile turning sad once more. “I’ve never had the chance to tell my story. To ask for forgiveness. Even though I know I don’t deserve it.”

She shook her head. “So when Helen called me, and told me a journalist would be coming to Montana to try and find PowerJack, I decided to meet up with you – incognito, of course – to see if I could trust you to tell my story without any bias. But I never expected to fall in love with you.”

I blinked. Once, then twice. Running what Claire had just said through my mind many times. There were several important pieces of information in that few sentences I needed to address, I just didn’t know where to begin. I grasped for words. “No, wait, go back. What did you just say?” I asked.

“That I didn’t expect…”

“No, the one before,” I said.

“That I decided to meet up with you?”

“Before that.”

“That Helen called me and told me you would be coming to Montana?”

I stared at Claire. “Helen. Helen Spencer. Moonshine. That Helen.”

“...Yes?” She replied.

“And she called you, to warn you I would be coming.”

“She did,” Claire confirmed. “Of course she would. I reached out to her a couple years after Dallas, and now we talk to each other once or twice per week on the phone. We’re even Facebook friends.”

I guess Claire saw my face had a weird look on it, because she asked, “Tonia, what’s wrong? You’re pale. Are you okay?”

I barely heard her, I was so busy replaying the interaction I had with Moonshine in my mind.

“Did you have any contact with PowerJack after that?” I had asked.

“None whatsoever. I haven’t seen him or heard from him since then,” had been the reply.

And that small voice, that feeling I heard in my mind whenever I used my power had piped up, and said truth.

And now Claire was telling me it wasn’t the truth, actually.

My power had never failed me before. How…?

“Tonia?” Claire said again.

I shook myself. Figuring out what went wrong a few months earlier, back at the Association headquarters, could wait. I had to focus on the present for now.

“I’m okay,” I nodded, though I wasn’t really sure. “So I guess the first time we met, at the steakhouse… Wasn’t a coincidence?” I asked.

Claire sighed. “No, it wasn’t,” she said. “Neither was the second time, when your car broke down. I arranged that, actually.”

“You arranged that…?” I said, my eyebrows rising towards the ceiling.

“Yeah, I was hiding in the trees near the road, and I made sure your car would break down. Then I ran back and got into my truck,” she said, “So I could run into you by coincidence and pick you up.”

“You made sure my car would break down?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“And how did you do that?”

“I threw a rock at the engine. I have good aim too, it went right through the front grill. Luckily you didn’t notice the hole.”

I gave Claire a blank stare. “You threw a rock. At the engine of my car.”

“...It was a small rock,” she said defensively, and a bit sheepishly.

I sighed, and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Okay, fine, that’s not the point right now. What’s important at this moment is: what do I do with everything you’ve told me? With all this information?” I asked.

Claire just looked at me. She seemed deflated. Defeated.

“I can’t stop you from writing your piece, Tonia,” she said. “I mean, I could, of course, but I won’t. I just…” She sighed. “I just ask that you consider my side of the story before putting it out there.”

She looked at me, her eyes pleading. “Will you do that? Please?”

I paused, deep in thought, for a few moments. Yeah, Claire had lied to me from the very beginning, hadn’t she? But she had done so to make sure she could trust me. And there was the question of journalistic integrity to consider. I had to give a voice to every side.

Or maybe I could just not write the piece? Give up on it? Claire had already been through so much, and even though it wasn’t her fault that the Tragedy had happened, she clearly seemed to think so. Would really it be the right thing to just expose her to the whole world?

I just didn’t know.

I sighed. “I--”

I was cut off by a knock at the front door of Claire’s house. I looked at her, frowning, and then at my watch: we’d talked for so long, it was past midnight. Who could be knocking at the door of a farmhouse, in the middle of nowhere, at such a late hour?

Claire stood up, walked the few steps to the front door, and opened it.

Moonshine was just standing there, looking down at the floor.

“Helen?” Claire asked. “What are you doing here?”

Moonshine didn’t answer, but lifted her face to stare at Claire. From the couch I could see her eyes were weird, sort of glazed over, almost as if…

Almost as if she were sleepwalking.

“Claire, look out!” I shouted, but the warning came a bit too late. Moonshine launched herself forward, punching Claire straight in the stomach, and sending her flying backwards into the house. In a second Moonshine was on top of Claire, but she’d already recovered from the surprise attack, and flipped Helen over, to crash against a bookcase, which splintered under the impact.

As Moonshine was struggling to her feet, and Claire was squaring to respond to the next attack, I saw another figure at the front door.

“Claire!” I said, pointing.

Claire glanced briefly at Moonshine, who was still unsteadily getting up, and then pounced with incredible speed towards the new threat.

“Ross Kyle! Stop!”

The command sounded loud and clear in the living room, and Claire froze in mid-air: she just stopped there, in an awkward pose, her dress hanging weirdly from her frame, and her fist mere inches from the figure’s face.

I took their appearance in. A man, standing up straight, with greying, close-cropped hair. Middle aged. I recognised him.

It was the soldier. The one who’d given me the radar data which had allowed me to track Claire to Montana. But his expression wasn’t neutral and no-nonsense like the last time I’d seen him: his lips were drawn back in a horrible, gleeful smile, which was almost a sneer.

What the hell was he doing here?

“Hello, Jack,” he said. Then he cocked his head to the side, and asked, mockingly: “Or is it Jackie now?”

Claire’s eyes narrowed; and for the first time, I saw a new expression in them. Pure, undiluted hate.

And then she said a single word, almost spitting it out, making it sound like a curse.

“Pierson.”

And I felt my blood run cold.

To be continued in: OF NO IMPORTANCE