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  Then again, Kinetic: The Man With Plenty Of Fear was a less-than-heroic title for a superhero comic book. Perhaps it was why no one had bought the rights to my life story.

  Antonio turned toward us. His beady, piggish eyes widened in surprise when he spotted me and Isaac. I used my powers to slam the door shut. I turned the deadbolt. I hoped the click of the lock was ominous to Antonio’s ears.

  “Welcome home,” I greeted Antonio with a cocky smile on my face, and an irrepressible flutter of fear in my heart. I’d said the words with casual confidence, as if I lay in wait for guys named Mad Dog every day of the week and twice on Sundays. Experienced Heroes like Amazing Man and Athena—the senior drill instructor at the Academy—always seemed completely unflappable, as if they would greet Armageddon’s Final Trump calmly and with a slight smile of anticipation. I tried to channel my inner Athena. Minus the boobs.

  I had to give Antonio credit: it only took a split second for the deer in headlights look to fade from his face. The ski masks we had on made it obvious Isaac and I weren’t here to sell Avon. Antonio reached under his shirt, moving faster than I would have thought possible for a big man. Then he froze with his hand inside of his shirt. He didn’t move a millimeter further, as if he were a movie someone had hit the pause button on.

  Antonio was doing his best statue impersonation due to me. Thanks to my echolocation abilities, I had already run my mind over Antonio’s big body—yuck, by the way—and determined he had a holstered pistol hanging from his belt that was concealed from view by his untucked shirt. I had stopped him with my powers before he could reach it. Though Antonio struggled mightily against my hold on him, he couldn’t move a muscle. I could barely feel his struggling. He was no match for my powers. I’d used them to pick up and fling tons before. It was akin to a man holding a grasshopper in place. The grasshopper didn’t stand a chance.

  With Antonio still frozen in place by my telekinesis, I pulled his gun free of its holster with my powers. Antonio also had a long folding knife in his front right pocket. I pulled the knife out too. I flung the knife across the room, where it hit the wall with a clatter. It fell to the floor.

  As for the gun, I lifted it into the air with my powers. I held it in front of Antonio’s unmoving eyes. He had no choice but to stare down the barrel.

  “We came here to have a friendly chat with our new chum Antonio here,” I said to Isaac, “and the first thing he does is try to pull a gun on us. What do you suppose Miss Manners would say if she heard about this?”

  “She’d say it was outrageous. She’d also say we should chastise Antonio for his rudeness by shooting him with his own gun,” Isaac said. We had an argument before Antonio’s arrival about which of us would get to play bad cop, and which would be forced to be play good cop. We had compromised and agreed to play bad cop-bad cop.

  “Maybe we will shoot him,” I agreed. Running over the contours of the gun with my powers told me it was a Smith and Wesson nine millimeter with a thumb safety mounted on the side. I made a great show of slowly turning the gun in midair so Antonio could clearly see the side of it. I flicked off the safety inches away from Antonio’s eyes. I turned the gun so he was once again staring down its barrel. “Whether our boy Antonio comes down with an acute case of lead poisoning all depends on if he does exactly what we tell him.

  “So, here’s the thing Antonio: We hear through the grapevine that you like to beat up your girlfriend Hannah Kim. Sometimes you rape her, too, when she’s not in the mood to sleep with you. Since my friend and I both frown on domestic violence, we thought we’d swing by and express our displeasure. And by displeasure, I mean that we’re pretty pissed. And when we get pissed, we tend to do things like shoot woman beaters and rapists in head.”

  “After we break their bones and beat them black and blue,” Isaac interjected.

  “Right. After we break bones and beat them black and blue. I almost forgot.”

  “How could you? It’s the best part.” Isaac smiled a smile at Antonio that was a combination of gleeful and ominous. If I hadn’t known Isaac as I did, I’d have thought that breaking people’s bones was how he liked to spend his weekends at the beach.

  Antonio’s bald head was now mottled red, either due to frustration at not being able to move, anxiety, fear, or all the above. His body struggled in vain to free itself. Antonio’s small, close-set eyes were wild-looking as they stared down his gun’s barrel. If a feral pig was injected with a boatload of steroids and started walking upright, I imagined it would look a lot like Antonio.

  I said to him, “For some mysterious reason that boggles the mind, Hannah is in love with you despite how you treat her. If she knew we were here, she’d probably step between you and the gun pointed at your ugly face. But, unfortunately for you, she’s not here. The only people here are you—a walking argument for abortion if there ever was one—and two pissed off guys with Metahuman powers. Our powers are why there’s a gun floating in front of your face. They are also how we broke in here without leaving a trace.

  “Despite being pissed, we’re reasonable men. As such, we’re going to offer you a deal. You’re going to call Hannah today. You’re going to break up with her. Tell her you found someone else. Tell her your job busting shopkeepers’ kneecaps keeps you too busy to have a girlfriend. Tell her you’ve realized you’re gay and that you’re moving to a tropical island to do some dick diving. I don’t care what you tell her so long as you end things with her. Then, you’ll never see her or get into touch with her again.

  “In exchange for you doing that, we won’t break every bone in your body, beat you to a pulp, and then shoot you in the head with your own gun.” I of course had no intention of doing all that—I was a Hero after all, not a hoodlum like Antonio—but he didn’t need to know that my threats were hollow. He just had to believe that they were not. “As I said before, we’re Metas. Pretty powerful ones at that. That means there isn’t any place on the planet where you can run where we won’t find you and end you if you don’t cut off all contact with Hannah.

  “So, which is it going to be, Antonio?” I asked. “Break up with Hannah and live, or refuse and die a painful death?” Isaac cracked his knuckles ominously, which I thought was a nice touch. The cracking sounded like fireworks in the enclosed area.

  Antonio didn’t say anything.

  “Speak up, we haven’t got all night,” I said sharply. I twisted the gun in the air and slugged Antonio on the temple with the butt of it. I hit him hard enough that it would really hurt, but not too hard. Despite this guy being a piece of crap, I wasn’t trying to kill him.

  I brought the gun back down to point the barrel at Antonio’s face. Blood began to stream down from the gash I had opened at Antonio’s temple. It dripped into his left eye. Antonio did not blink it away, which I thought was odd.

  Oh! In my fervor to come across as a vicious thug who’d kill as readily as swat a fly, I’d forgotten I had Antonio’s body completely frozen. He couldn’t speak even if he wanted to. Feeling like a complete doofus, I released my powers’ hold, but only on Antonio’s head. He blinked furiously and shook his head as if he were awakening from a dream.

  “Well?” I said, trying to keep my embarrassment for my oversight out of my voice. I couldn’t imagine that an actual violent thug would sound abashed. If Antonio and I hadn’t been on opposing teams, I’d have asked him to find out for sure.

  Antonio stared at me with rage in his pig eyes. The blood on the side of his face made him look even more fearsome than he already did, which was plenty.

  “I’ll rip your heads off and shit down your necks,” Antonio rasped in a voice that was surprisingly high for a man his size. It reminded me of Mike Tyson’s. “You don’t know who you’re fucking with.”

  So much for scaring Antonio to death.

  “Sure we do,” I said. “You work for the mob. But, your friends aren’t here to protect you. Even if they were, we’d stomp them just like we’ll stomp you if you don’t do as you’re
told. We’re Metas, remember? You don’t scare us.” We eat guys like you for breakfast, I almost added, but that sounded over-the-top cheesy, even to my inner critic.

  Antonio opened his mouth again. This time, no bluster came out. Instead Antonio spat out something that looked like a yellow glowing marble. It grew exponentially in size as it shot from his mouth toward us.

  It was more instinct and training than conscious thought that made me raise a force field around me and Isaac right before the glowing ball hit us. The ball exploded with an ear deafening boom when it slammed into it.

  It happened too fast for me to brace myself against the concussive force. Isaac and I were blasted backwards, off our feet. We hit the back of Antonio’s couch as if we had been picked up and thrown there. The heavy couch toppled backwards from the force of the impact. Isaac and I hit the vertical blinds that covered the floor-to-ceiling window, then the window itself. The blinds rattled like a nest of rattlesnakes. We bounced off the window and hit the floor below it with a bone-shaking thump. The couch fell on top of us. The upturned couch covered us like a tepee, swallowing us in near darkness. I felt like a well-shaken martini.

  “Is now a good time to say I told you so?” Isaac gasped. I could barely hear him as my ears rang from the explosion.

  Before I could respond, the couch exploded into smithereens.

  Isaac and I were thrown backwards once more. We hit the window again. This time, we collided so hard we smashed right through it.

  With a crash and tinkle of breaking glass, we were flung into the cool night air outside.

  The wind shrieked in our ears. We plunged toward the ground far below.

  CHAPTER 2

  Isaac and I doing shooting star impersonations outside of Mad Dog’s tall apartment building could be directly traced to when I met his girlfriend Hannah Kim during my first day of work at the Astor City Times newspaper about six months ago.

  I knew there was something amiss with Hannah the moment I laid eyes on her. Maybe it was because my Heroic training had made me good at reading people. Well okay, perhaps “good at reading people” was a stretch. After all, I was the guy who had almost gotten his head blown clean off by the bomb-smuggling hot blonde in Chinatown and who had just been caught flat-footed by the fact Mad Dog was a Meta. My ability to read people was certainly not at a Sherlock Holmes level. Heck, it probably wasn’t even at Dr. Watson’s level. Thanks to my Heroic training though, I certainly was better at reading people when I met Hannah than I had been when I lived on the farm. Back on the farm, I had been better at reading when sweet potatoes were ready to be dug up than I had been at reading people.

  Maybe I knew something was amiss with Hannah because, as someone who had been pushed around and bullied a lot as a kid, I was hyperaware of the signs of it happening to someone else. Maybe it was the fact Hannah wore a skin-concealing, long-sleeved turtleneck when I met her even though it was warm outside and the Times’ offices weren’t cold. Maybe it was the fact I had volunteered at a dog shelter when I was in high school and had dealt with an abused Rottweiler there named Kiara. Kiara always had a slightly fearful look in her eyes, as if she suspected you’d haul off and hit her when her back was turned. I saw an echo of that same look in Hannah’s eyes as I shook hands with her during my tour of the Times’ offices.

  Regardless of why I sensed something was amiss with Hannah when my Times supervisor introduced me to her, I did. An educated guess made me reach out with my left hand as my right one shook Hannah’s to grab her forearm, as if in an overly enthusiastic greeting. Hannah winced when I lightly squeezed her forearm. Since I certainly had not squeezed hard enough to hurt her, I didn’t need to be as smart as my estranged friend Neha Thakore, who under her code name Smoke had been the valedictorian of my Academy class, to deduce that Hanna’s long-sleeved sweater concealed some sort of injury.

  As I had been sworn in as a licensed Hero the month before I met Hannah shortly after completing the Trials, the words of the Hero’s Oath had still been ringing in my ears:

  No cave so dark,

  No pit so deep,

  Will hide evil from my arm’s sweep.

  Those who sow darkness soon shall reap.

  For in the pursuit of justice,

  I will never sleep.

  I didn’t need a graduate degree in poetry to interpret the words to mean I was sworn to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves. My oath, plus a healthy dose of nosiness about what had caused the injury I had surmised was on her covered arm, made me try to befriend Hannah in my early days as an employee of the Times. I didn’t even have to go out of my way to do so as my job duties took me to the art department almost every day. Hannah worked there as a graphic artist. Despite my important sounding title of Assistant Staff Writer, as the newest hire in the paper’s editorial division and as someone who had exactly zero newspaper experience, I was in reality a gofer and errand boy who one day in the far distant future might be allowed to write something for publication if I kept my nose clean, demonstrated I could type without breaking the keyboard, and consistently got the reporters’ and editors’ lunch take-out orders right.

  Anyway, I got to know Hannah in my daily visits to her department. At first, she thought I was trying to hit on her. Maybe I would have if I hadn’t still been messed up in the head from Neha rejecting me weeks before when I had told her I loved her. If I had hit on Hannah, I doubted anyone with eyes would have blamed me. Hannah was super cute, and just a few years older than I. She was of Korean descent, with light brown skin and straight glossy black hair worn long. She had rich, dark, and slightly troubled eyes that focused intently on you when you spoke as if you were the only person in the world. She had unmistakably feminine curves despite probably only weighing a hundred pounds dripping wet. She was also smart, having graduated with honors with an art degree from an Ivy League school before getting a job at the Times.

  Hannah wore a blue and white striped hat that was in the style of the hats train conductors wore. She always had it on, even indoors and even if it clashed with the rest of her outfit.

  “My boyfriend Antonio gave it to me,” she had said with pride when I had asked about it in one of my first trips to the art department. She emphasized the word boyfriend slightly, as if to say, “So don’t get any ideas.” Since I had been standing over where Hannah sat, I got a flash of a fresh bruise on her throat despite the long neck of her sweater. I had wondered at the time if Antonio had given her that bruise as well as the hat.

  When I had persisted in talking to her in my subsequent trips to the art department despite knowing she had a boyfriend, I think Hannah mentally put me into the friend zone. Story of my life. She slowly opened up to me over the course of several conversations, both in the office and over lunch.

  At first, she told me that the bruises and injuries she often came to work sporting were caused by her natural clumsiness. “Oh, I tripped and fell while running on the treadmill,” she said on one occasion. “I burned my hand ironing,” she said on another. Like clockwork, a day or two after Hannah came to work with a fresh injury, she’d show up wearing a brand-new necklace or a bracelet or flowers were sent to the office for her. I didn’t have to be a social worker specializing in abuse victims to know Hannah was lying to me and that the gifts she got were someone’s way of making things up to her. Not even the Three Stooges were as clumsy as Hannah pretended to be.

  Hannah had finally confessed the true cause of her injuries after weeks of me asking about them. It’s amazing what people will tell you if you’re patient and listen more than you speak. Maybe I should have hung up my Hero’s cape and instead become a priest specializing in taking confessions. Thanks to my romantic overtures being rejected by Neha, I already had the celibacy part of priesthood down pat.

  “Antonio doesn’t mean to hurt me. Sometimes I talk back and it makes him mad. It’s mostly my fault really,” Hannah had said when she finally confessed to me. Her train conductor’s hat had been accessorized
with a swollen shut black eye that day. I wondered what gift Antonio would get her to make up for punching her in the eye. Maybe a gem encrusted eyepatch.

  Once Hannah had let the abuse cat out of the bag, it was hard to get her to stop talking about it. She told me I was the only one she had told about what Antonio did to her. I think it was a relief to get what was happening to her off her chest. She told me all about Antonio and their time together, both good and bad. Though she danced around coming right out and admitting it, I was convinced that Antonio also sexually forced himself on Hannah when she wasn’t in the mood.

  Hannah also told me what Antonio did for a living. He was an enforcer for the Esposito crime family. His street name was Mad Dog. Though I had only been in Astor City for a couple of months at the point Hannah told me this, I knew about the Esposito crime family thanks to my after-work crime-fighting efforts, both alone and alongside Myth. It would have been impossible to not know about the Espositos. Fighting crime in Astor City and not knowing about the Esposito crime family was like fighting global warming and not knowing about greenhouse gases. When it came to illegal activity in Astor City, blacks and Mexicans ran the drug trade, a Metahuman named Brass Knuckle ran the whores, and the Esposito crime family ran pretty much everything else. There was an uneasy balance of power among the various groups that would occasionally flare up into violence when one group or another overstepped its bounds into someone else’s territory.

  Despite me urging Hannah to break up with Antonio and go to the police, she refused. “I don’t want to get him in trouble,” she had said. “Antonio loves me.” She always said his name worshipfully, like he was the Jesus Christ or something.

  “Must be mighty hard to see that through one eye,” I said. If she heard me, she completely ignored me. Her uninjured slanted brown eye had shone almost maniacally.

  “And I love him. We’re going to get married one day. He’s big and strong and tough and brave. Sure, he does things that aren’t exactly legal, but everyone’s got to make a living somehow. Besides, even if I went to the police, they wouldn’t do anything.” She had added with perverse pride, “Antonio tells the cops what to do, not the other way around.”