2.1

“Nah, I’d like my lawyer, please.”

The officer sighs. Again. “Miss, if you’d just work with us —”

“No, I want a lawyer.”

He shakes his head. “Listen, there’s only so much we can do for you here. But maybe if you —”

“Lawyer.”

He looks to the heavens. “Please. We can work something out.”

He’s been trying to get me to work something out with him for the past twenty minutes, and I haven’t budged. The guy seems nice, but the white walls lined with steel, the heavy-looking exit door and the one-way glass on one side of the room makes the situation feel distinctly hostile. At this point I’m just waiting for bad cop to stroll in.

I glare at him. “Not happening. I want legal counsel.”

The officer looks about ready to do something drastic when finally, the door slides open, and someone new enters the room.

“That’s not how this works,” she says, voice filtered and robotic. Lights glitter all over her armor, and her boots clunk on the tiled floor, accompanied by the slight whirring of servos. The door quickly slides closed behind her.

“R — Rook?!” The officer looks confused, and a little intimidated.

“Leave.” The guard hesitates for a second before scrambling for the door. Then, Rook and I are alone in the interrogation room. She stares at me in silence.

I look around, awkwardly.

“You’re a super,” she states. I had hoped to keep that to myself.

I huff. “Sure, fine. How’d you find out?”

“Mundane civilians don’t usually go looking for supervillain meetups.”

“I guess.” I lean back in my chair.

Rook nods. “Before we begin, what should I call you?”

I scowl. “I’m not telling you my name.”

She shakes her head. “Not your name. Do you have an alias yet? A nickname, even?”

“Uh, not really.”

“Fine. Then for now, I’ll call you Red,” she says. I do a bit of a double-take. Where’d she get that from? My hoodie?

She pulls out a tablet from a tactical pocket on her dress, seeming to scroll through it for a moment before speaking.

“You have two options here, Red. The first one is simple, and likely the most beneficial. You join the USMC.”

She’s trying to recruit me? I just got arrested, is that really wise? I stay silent, waiting for her to continue.

“We will provide you with a stable career path, resources to explore and manage your powers, and regular tutoring in both core and supplementary material. All you’d have to do is sign this, and obviously, fight crime.” She lays down the tablet in front of me. It displays a contract, with a line for a signature.

“What’s the other option?” I say, eyeing her.

I can’t see her expression under the mask, but she sounds like she’d be frowning. “The second option is you reject this offer. You would be listed as an unaffiliated super, and with this incident staining your record, you could be registered as a villain. I think you know exactly how that would go.”

I do. I’m beginning to realize how little of a choice I actually have in this matter.

I sigh. “Fine.” I pick up the tablet, and write down my name.

She hesitates as I hand it back. “Hm. This is your legal name, correct? Is that what you’d like to be called?”

I roll my eyes. “No, probably not.”

“Want to tell me what instead, then?”

I shrug. “Dunno.”

“I think I’ll just keep calling you Red.” She stores the tablet in one of her tactical pockets and motions towards the door. “We’ll expedite your recruitment some other time — we’ll contact you. For now, Jennifer will take you home and inform your guardians. Let her do the talking.”

Conveniently, the door opens, and who I assume is Jennifer steps in. She’s a short asian woman with straight black hair tied up in a high ponytail, and a face bordered by short fluffy bangs. Her suit’s only a little ruffled, mostly because she has the jacket part tied around her waist, and her shiny black dress shoes click neatly against the tile, in contrast to Rook’s clunking. She wears slim rectangular glasses with a blocky chunk of tech attached to one side, threaded with wires that lead down the back of her shirt. She stands by the door and nods at the hallway beyond it, readjusting a large book bag hanging from her shoulder.

The tech is weird. I don’t know what to make of her, yet.

“Come on, let’s get you home.” Cautiously, I rise from my chair and step out into the hallway. It’s decorated similarly to the interrogation room; that is, it’s not really decorated at all.

Jennifer follows me out, and gestures for me to come along as she walks left down the hall.

I walk alongside her, trying to get a read. What’s her deal? Is she a social worker?

“Can I get my stuff back?” I ask.

She glances at me. “Any weapons? Illegal substances?”

“Uh… no, not unless a bat and pepper spray counts.”

Jennifer nods. “Might not get the pepper spray back, but everything else should be fine. Here.”

She takes a detour into a room on our right, and I follow her. It’s a locker room with a desk near the entrance, staffed by a bored-looking receptionist.

He snaps to attention when we enter. “Ah, um — yes?”

“Evidence locker…” she hesitates, and a light on her glasses blinks blue. “ C7? Registered a couple hours ago.”

“Sure, sure,” the guy says, pulling out a card from under his desk. “You know where it is, right? Third row from the right?”

“Of course,” Jennifer states, already heading to a row of heavy metal lockers, each with a high-tech lock built into the door. She taps the card to the one labeled C7 and opens the door to reveal my bag hanging on a hook inside.

I take the bag and sling it around my shoulder.

“Anything else?” She asks. I can’t tell if she’s being sarcastic.

“Nah, let’s go.”

Jennifer nods, and leads the way back out the hall and, finally, towards the set of double doors at the end of the building.

It’s late, really late. Pushing midnight, and while you can never really see the stars around here, the moon is high in the sky and the city’s floodlights are on in full force. We move through the facility’s lobby and into the parking lot, where heavy duty containment trucks and USMW personnel vans litter the tarmac, along with a mundane civilian car which I assume is Jennifer’s. It stands out among the heavier equipment.

It makes her stand out as well. Why is she here? Can’t just be for me.

I hop in the car alongside her, and we drive past the facility walls and into the wider city. The USMC headquarters stands tall and intimidating only a couple blocks away, surrounded by efficient, brutalist armored flooring and two large domes connected to the main pad where the teleporters are stored. Large roads stream in and out of the complex in a tangled mess of highway. They’re always clogged.

The tower itself brushes the clouds with a sharp, sleek design that looks vaguely like a weapon. Blocky spires stretch even farther from its center and choice spots around its hull, breaking up the idealistic shiny metal plating in favor of more pragmatic tech. Some of it even looks like stuff Rook would make, especially since I’ve never seen it on any of the other hubs.

We pass by towers of steel and concrete, brutalist overhangs and floodlights connected to ugly offshoots. Wires string across over the road and along alleyways, only occasionally hopping to and from a stray power pole. Everything’s haphazard around here, not much point in putting effort into something that’s going to get lasered or blown up in the next couple weeks.

“You know my address?” I ask.

Jennifer nods. “I do. Got your file pulled up when we left.”

“Creepy.”

“Necessary,” she snipes back.

“Really?”

Jennifer sighs. “Red, right now we have no clue what you can do. If you go rogue and start vaporizing hospitals, we need to know everything we can. So, yes, really.”

“Huh,” I say, turning to study her face. She focuses on the road, but her expression remains carefully neutral.

While we drive through brightly-lit industrial highways, I note that she’s wearing matte-black gloves, with metal cuffs attached to the ends. Been wearing them since we met, I think.

The rest of the ride back is made in silence. The uncaring metal blocks give way to slightly more degraded urban areas, where the metal rusts and the concrete’s covered in bright graffiti. Then, even further out, we near my neighborhood, where the houses are almost nice, and backyards actually exist. Further away from the city, you start to see grasslands and woods, and nested somewhere deep in there you can see the tip of the blast wall from the roof of my house cresting over the leaves.

We roll slowly down the street until we get to my house, where Jennifer expertly parks without hesitation next to my dad’s truck. He’s home, which is… great.

Jennifer shuts off the car, and I grab my bag as we step out. The lights in the house are still on, which is weird, considering how late it is.

Or maybe not. Maybe they were worried about me?

“Anything I should know?” Jennifer asks as we walk up to the door.

“Uh, I… didn’t used to look like this?”

She gives me a side eye. “Really.”

I shrug.

She seems like she wants to say something for a moment, but visibly drops it. Instead, Jennifer knocks on the front door of my parent’s house.

I hear rustling and hushed voices inside before the door swings open, revealing my dad standing on the other side, looking a little imposing. He looks angry before he registers who’s on his porch and starts looking confused instead.

The expression looks comical on him, tall, dark hair with bushy eyebrows and a bushier beard. He’s still wearing his dress shirt and slacks from work at an office building somewhere near the city center.

He looks between us rapidly. “Who the fuck are you?”

Jennifer clears her throat. “My name is Jennifer Zhao, I’m a primary agent for the USMC. There have been a number of developments I feel you and your wife should be made aware of. May we come in?” She says, gesturing past him.

Dad looks like he wants to protest, but I can see my mom standing a little ways away in the hall, looking nervous. “Come on, honey, let’s see what they have to say.”

He stands aside, and we all shuffle through the house as mom leads the way to the dining room table. I notice leftovers sitting on the counter in a box, as well as a plate of food next to it. It’s probably cold by now.

We all take our seats, and it seems like my dad can’t hold himself back any longer.

“So, spit it out. What happened?” He huffs. Mom shoots him a scathing look.

“We don’t know anything’s happened, Richard. This could be unrelated.”

“Get real, Jose’, there’s no coincidences in this fucking city,” he barks.

“This is about your child, legal name Jacob Miller. But it isn’t necessarily bad. Your child is unharmed, I assure you,” Jennifer interrupts. Dad, surprisingly, goes silent.

Jennifer takes advantage of her momentum. “Your child was involved in metahuman activity earlier this night, and as a result your child has been affected.” She gestures to me.

I wave. “Hi.”

My parents stare.

“Tomorrow morning and subsequently, following a schedule which will be discussed sometime soon, your child will be brought in to USMC headquarters in order to determine if this change is the result of personal or external metahuman effects.” Mom starts sweating, and I’m afraid she’s going to have a heart attack. Dad stays silent, staring at me.

“If it is the former, your child will join the USMC Junior division, and we will do our utmost to provide a clear and stable career path. If it is the latter, we can direct you to several clinics that specialize in metahuman effects.” I shoot Jennifer a look. Pretty sure there aren’t any clinics like that in Westpoint.

She ignores me, taking her tablet out of her bag and sliding it across the table. “The information about the program is here, as well as the initial evaluation we will be conducting.”

Dad grabs the tablet and starts scrolling through it, while mom looks around at us frantically. “I — how did this happen?!”

“You’ll likely be briefed during the eval, but for now this is all I can say,” Jennifer replies stoically.

My mother ages about twenty years. “Isn’t there any way you can — can fix this? What do we do?”

“We’ll see during the evaluation.”

“Fuck your evaluation!” dad shouts, slamming the tablet on the table. It doesn’t break, which seems to frustrate him. “You need to fix this immediately! Our son can’t go to school — can’t go through life — looking like that!” He says, stabbing a finger in my direction. I reflexively shrink away from it.

Jennifer’s mask slips a little, and she shoots a glance at me.

I don’t know what she sees, but she seems to steel herself. “Mr. Miller, I know this is an… unusual situation, but I promise you — this will work out.” She reaches over to slide the tablet away from him. He looks like he wants to fight it, but… his gaze slides to me, and he seems to deflate. “You have my number?”

“We have both of your numbers, and you’ll also both receive an email with the details attached,” Jennifer confirms. “I’ll send someone to come by and collect your child some time tomorrow, unless you’d rather make the trip yourselves,” she says, looking around at us.

“No, no, the provided transport is fine,” dad rumbles. “Just — just leave.” He stands from the table and walks away.

Mom scrambles to follow. “Richard — Richard, you — I’m sorry, he’s just overwhelmed; Richard!” She disappears deeper into the house with dad.

The dining room is quiet all of a sudden. Belatedly, I realize I’m hunched over and my hands are shaking.

I didn’t notice.

I take a breath and try to relax.

“You made the right decision,” Jennifer says, standing. “I look forward to seeing how you progress.”

“Wait,” I call out as she heads for the door. She stops.

“You’re Rook, aren’t you?”

She adjusts her gloves, and the light on her glasses blinks. “I am.”

“You — you’re the top hero in the entire city basically.”

“...Yes.”

“Why’d you, uh. Personally come to meet my parents?”

Rook looks back at me over her shoulder. “I don’t know how you found Cook,” she states. “You’re driven. You’re unpredictable.”

She looks away. “You’re dangerous, Red. I’m hedging my bets.”

Rook opens the door and steps out onto the porch. “Don’t let me down.”

The door closes behind her.