The Omega Superhero (Book 2): Trials Page 4

  “You’d better get used to the notion of pushing a mop,” Neha said to him, “because that’ll be what you’ll have to do for a living once you blow the Trials. You’re liable to blow them so badly, they won’t even let you take them again.”

  “Nuh uh,” Isaac said.

  “Yeah huh,” Neha retorted. They grinned at one another. Their playful bickering made me feel a little better. Despite the fact the Old Man had doubts about me, I still would get the chance to stand for the Trials with my best friends. It really was a dream come true, if not the perfect dream I had been expecting since I’d become an Apprentice.

  Life had taught me a dream coming true was usually when the real work began. Over the next few weeks, I discovered entering the Trials was no different.

  Applying for the Trials was not like applying to enter Hero Academy. The Academy was required by law to accept any applicant who passed a background check and the mental and physical exams. The people who couldn’t cut the mustard were weeded out once they were in the Academy. With the Trials, the weeding out process began immediately. The Heroes’ Guild, which ran the Trials, was looking for a reason to not let you compete in them. Only the best and the brightest were allowed a shot at getting their Hero’s license. You could take the Trials only three times. After a third failure to pass them, you were barred from taking them again and barred from ever getting a Hero’s license.

  The first thing we had to do was fill out the application we downloaded from the website of the Department of Metahuman Affairs. The application was the length of a long-winded novella. In addition to having to answer the type of stuff any job applicant would have to provide—your social security number, your present and last addresses, character references, that sort of thing—the application asked a bunch of questions that seemed like a combination of an intelligence test, a psychological profile, a doctor’s office questionnaire, and an overly personal survey written by a nosy neighbor. The application stated in big bold letters at the beginning that the questions were to be answered honestly, in my own handwriting, and without collaborating with anyone else. Since I had worked too hard to get tripped up by an application, I answered every question by myself and as completely and honestly I could. Having to answer the questions about my sexual history was an especially tough pill to swallow. That was mainly because, if my sexual history were published, it wouldn’t be long enough to be a book. It would be a pamphlet.

  Oh, who the heck did I think I was kidding? It would be a line on a business card.

  The application’s last question read simply, “Is there anything about you that has not been covered by the previous questions?” The devil in me wanted to answer “I like big butts and I cannot lie.” Though the statement was true, I resisted the temptation to include it. There was a difference between being honest and oversharing.

  The application took me two solid days of writing to complete. My mind felt like a wrung out sponge by the time I finished. The unlucky soul who had to read it would know me about as well as I knew myself, and maybe a little bit better. I wondered if that person would also think I was too soft to be a Hero. Apparently there was a lot of that going around.

  At the very end of the application were several waivers I had to sign. In addition to giving the Guild the right to examine my life like a boy with his first girlie magazine—my wording, not the Guild’s—I had to, as one waiver put it, “release, hold harmless, and indemnify the Heroes’ Guild from any and all liability from your participation in the Hero Trials, including, but not limited to, severe bodily injury, maiming, and death.” I must admit that part about the “severe bodily injury, maiming, and death,” made me pause.

  Maybe being a farmer isn’t such a bad life after all, I found myself thinking.

  I pushed that cowardly thought to the side and hastily signed the bodily injury waiver before I could change my mind.

  The application had to be certified by an already licensed Hero who could attest to the applicant’s training and good character. The Old Man was, of course, the one who performed that certification for us three Apprentices. He signed the certification at the end of my application with big, sloping lettering. It reminded me a little of John Hancock’s signature on the Declaration of Independence. Then he poured a bit of red wax onto the certification. He pressed the front of a huge gold ring he had taken out of his office safe into it. When he pulled the ring away, the imprint of a masked man’s face was left behind.

  “You’ll get one of these if you pass the Trials,” he said of the ring as he put it back into the safe. I thanked him for the certification and left. Though the Old Man hadn’t treated me any differently than he always did since our conversation about his concerns, my feelings were still a little raw. I had a hard time making small talk with him.

  The completed applications had to be hand-delivered to a Metahuman Registration Center by the Metas who filled them out. So, Isaac, Neha, and I made an appointment at the nearest one and drove over there early one morning. It was located on Massachusetts Avenue in D.C. on Embassy Row, the informal name of the part of town that housed a concentration of embassies and other diplomatic buildings. The registration center was in the imposing, white brick building that had once been the Embassy of Peru. Peru no longer had an embassy in the United States. The U.S. had revoked Peru’s diplomatic recognition almost twenty years ago when the supervillain Puma had seized power there.

  Once at the registration center, the three of us were taken into separate rooms by technicians who all had the same bored expression on their faces. Mine attached what looked to be electronic thimbles to several of my fingers.

  “What are these?” I asked the technician.

  “Lie detectors,” he said. He handed me my Trials application and picked up a computer tablet.

  “Aren’t lie detectors unreliable?” I asked. “That’s why courts won’t allow their results to be admitted into evidence.” Though I probably didn’t know enough to pass the Bar, the law had been one of my main subjects of study during my Heroic training.

  “These detectors were designed by Mechano himself,” the tech said. Mechano was the mechanical genius and Hero who was a member of the Sentinels. “If you tell me so much as a white lie, it’ll show up here,” he said, indicating his computer tablet.

  The technician then had me read aloud my answers to several of the application’s questions. He stared at his computer tablet as I read. The answers he had me read seemed to be at random, but maybe there was some sort of rhyme or reason I couldn’t discern behind the answers he picked. Now I was glad I hadn’t added the line about liking big butts.

  “All your answers are truthful,” the technician said after about an hour and a half of me reading various of my answers.

  “What would have happened if they hadn’t been?” I asked, curious.

  “You’d be barred forever from standing for the Trials and becoming a Hero,” he said. He removed the lie detectors from my fingers. “The Guild’s philosophy is that if you can’t be trusted to answer an application honestly, you can’t be trusted to be a Hero.”

  Forever barred? Yikes! I thought. I was suddenly glad I had resisted the urge to fudge the truth when the application had asked me what I thought my greatest weaknesses were. “Caring too much and working too hard” was what I had almost said before coming to my senses and instead putting down what I really thought.

  “How many people lie on their applications?” I asked.

  “More than you would think,” the tech said. “Too many people write what they think the Guild wants to hear rather than what is actually true.”

  I stood up and handed the man my application back. “So what happens next?”

  “I’ll forward your application to a panel of handwriting experts who’ll analyze it for any red flags. If they clear it, it will then be forwarded to the Trial Application Committee. They’ll coordinate your background investigation and physical and psychological exams.”

  I soon fou
nd out that “coordinate” meant going over my background, body, and mental state with a fine-tooth comb. I had thought I had been examined thoroughly when I had been admitted to the Academy, but it was nothing compared the examination I got now.

  Two doctors and three nurses wound up examining me like I was a thoroughbred race horse they were contemplating buying but who they suspected had a well-hidden ailment. I whinnied when one of the doctors had a probe up an orifice I had hoped to never have a probe in.

  “Did you say something, young man?” the doctor asked.

  “No sir. Just horsing around.” There was no longer any doubt: spending so much time with Isaac had definitely rubbed off on me.

  “Well don’t,” the doctor said disapprovingly.

  “Yes sir.”

  In addition to the physical, they took scans of my eyes, prints of my hands and feet, and impressions of my teeth. Once the world’s most thorough examination was finally over, the doctors pronounced me “as healthy as a horse.” It took a real effort to stop from laughing out loud at their word choice. The doctor who had told me to stop fooling around eyed me with suspicion.

  After I was declared physically fit, one of the nurses gave me multiple shots that she said were vaccines.

  “But I was already fully vaccinated as a kid,” I protested as she jabbed me over and over like she was a busty sewing machine. The needles she used on me were big and fat, like normal needles on steroids. They distracted me from the fact the nurse was not only busty but cute, and not too much older than I. I felt like the nurse was turning me into a human colander. Despite having fought criminals, supervillains, and natural disasters during my training so far, I had not lost my dislike of needles. If a Rogue named Needle Man ever went on a rampage, even if I got my Hero’s license, they’d have to find some other sap to combat him.

  “You weren’t vaccinated as a child against the kinds of pathogens you might face in the Trials,” the nurse said as she stabbed me again. It was all I could do to not yelp in pain. My head was already averted so I couldn’t watch the needles go in. If I fainted while getting vaccinated, surely they wouldn’t let me stand for the Trials. Heck, maybe these were the Trials. Let’s see how many needle jabs this dude can stand before he passes out or punches out the nurse, some fiendish test-maker might have thought. “These vaccines are for the various forms of exobiology you might encounter,” the nurse added.

  Surprised, my head snapped around in time to see another needle sink into my arm. I got lightheaded. I tried to stave the feeling off by focusing on what the nurse had said.

  “Exobiology?” I repeated, shocked. “As in extraterrestrial life?”

  The nurse’s face dimpled into a smile.

  “You’re cute and you read? That’s quite a combination,” she said.

  I was stunned into silence. I now barely noticed the continuing needle jabs. No one had called me cute in . . . well, come to think of it, no one had ever called me cute. If I had known all I had to do to get girls’ attention was to train night and day to be a Hero, I would have pretended I had superpowers and signed up for the process they day I hit puberty.

  In addition to all the physical stuff, I also had to have daylong sessions with two separate psychologists. The first I just had a casual, free-wheeling conversation with. It was like chatting with an old friend. Or at least I thought it was casual and free-wheeling at the time. That night I realized she had managed to get me to talk about every major event in my life, how I felt about it, and what I would do differently, all without me realizing it. I told her things I had never shared with another human, not even Isaac and Neha. I think it was her kind eyes and her approachable manner. I felt like I’d been duped. If there wasn’t a blues song entitled Never Trust a Pantsuited Woman with Kind Eyes, there should have been.

  I went to the second psychologist the day after the first one with my guard up, determined to not reveal too much this time. That was probably why I, when that psychologist showed me what seemed like the ten thousandth inkblot and asked me what it resembled, instead of saying what it looked like—a spider—I said “It looks exactly the way a psychologist would look if a psychologist looked like something else.”

  I regretted the words as soon as they were out of my mouth. The psychologist frowned slightly and started writing furiously in his notepad. I feared he was writing, “The applicant has a smart mouth and is an obvious arachnophobe. I recommend he be prohibited from taking the Trials.” Or, maybe he was simply jotting down a few items he had left off of his grocery list. I envied the Metas with super vision.

  My background also got a thorough examination. All the people I had listed on my application as extended family members, acquaintances, and character references were interviewed by Guild investigators. The interviewees were told I had applied for a job with the federal government that required secret clearance to avoid compromising my secret identity as a Hero-in-training. Even so, I got a call from my freshman English professor I had put down as a reference.

  “Are you in trouble, Theo?” Dr. Rich asked after telling me government agents had asked him a slew of questions about me.

  “Honestly, I don’t know yet,” I said, thinking about the Trials’ high mortality rate. “Time will tell.”

  After a few months of my body, mind, and life being examined under a microscope, I was declared fit to stand for the Trials. Neha and Isaac were too. Neha in particular had been worried about the background investigation since her father was the notorious supervillain Doctor Alchemy.

  As I read the letter from the Heroes’ Guild telling me my application to stand for the Trials had been accepted, I could not help but focus on two statistics noted by the letter:

  The Trials had an eighty-six percent failure rate.

  They had a twenty-two percent fatality rate.

  So, it was more than likely that I wouldn’t pass and get my Hero’s license. And, there was an over one in five chance that I would die trying.

  I really didn’t like those odds.

  The letter from the Guild started with the word “Congratulations!”

  There was way too good of a chance “Condolences” was more like it.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Old Man saw me, Isaac, and Neha off the morning we headed off for the Trials. We Apprentices were dressed in brand new costumes that were a pre-Trials gift from the Old Man. I was very pleased with mine. I looked like an actual Hero in it. It made me so confident, I was starting to feel like the Trials would be a snap despite the concerns the Old Man had expressed to me and the Trial’s passage and death rates.

  “I want each of you to know that I’m very proud of you,” the Old Man said. Though he wasn’t leaving the mansion, for the solemnity of the occasion of us starting off for the Trials, he was dressed in his chrome blue and silver costume and matching blue domino mask. His costume was tight, hugging his muscles like a second skin. He also had on his white cape. The cape was bordered with blue and black. The black on the cape matched the black accents on his costume. The cape was worn asymmetrically over the Old Man’s right shoulder.

  Even after seeing the Old Man in costume more times than I could count, seeing him in costume this morning was still inspirational. When most people heard the word “superhero,” they thought of someone who looked like Amazing Man. I knew I did. We Apprentices ourselves looked pretty snazzy in our new costumes, though. Maybe one day, when someone thought “superhero,” they’d think of us.

  “With that said, I’ve had four Apprentices over the years other than you three. Each of my previous Apprentices passed the Trials on their first try. I will be most displeased if one of you breaks my perfect record.” The Old Man’s eyes twinkled behind his mask. “If you do, I’ll add a dunce cap to your new costumes.”

  Isaac looked over at me and Neha.

  “So not only do we have to avoid the all too real possibility of being killed or maimed, but we also have to buck the odds and pass the Trials on the very first try,” he s
aid. He rolled his eyes. “Fantastic! I’m not feeling any pressure at all. This’ll be a walk in the park. Perhaps we’ll bring peace to the Middle East once we’re done.”

  “Let’s knock the Middle East out right after lunch,” Neha said. “I promised the United Nations we’d solve world hunger tonight.”

  “I wish you had said something earlier,” I added. “I told the freedom fighters in Peru we’d fly down there tonight and depose Puma.” I shook my head. “So much to do in too little time. We need to hire a social secretary to coordinate everything.”

  The Old Man grinned at us.

  “I don’t know how I didn’t notice I’ve been housing the Three Stooges all this time.” Then the Old Man sobered. “I want all of you to keep your eyes peeled for any new threats to Theo. We still don’t know who hired Iceburn to kill him. We also had no luck in tracking down the blonde woman who slipped that explosive into his pocket. Someone might still be gunning for him.”

  “I don’t need babysitting. I can take care of myself,” I protested, still smarting over the doubts the Old Man had expressed about me.

  “No one’s saying you’re a baby,” Neha said. “We’re friends. Friends look out for on another.”

  “And it’s a good thing you’re not a baby, Theo, cause I don’t know nuthin’ ‘bout birthin’ babies,” Isaac said in a spot-on impersonation of Butterfly McQueen from Gone With Wind. If it hadn’t been for my Apprenticeship with the Old Man, I probably never would have seen that movie or a bunch of other classics. The Old Man had made us watch them because, as he had said, “There’s more to being a Hero than merely punching people in the face. You’ve got to understand the culture you’re operating in. Movies are a part of that.” Isaac had wanted to add Deep Throat to the list of classic movies we had to watch, but the Old Man had vetoed that one.

  The Old Man shook hands with each of us solemnly and wished us luck. I felt a lump in my throat as we walked out the front door of the mansion. I was so grateful for everything the Old Man had done for me that I was almost sorry I had cursed at him earlier.