Everybody’s Got One: Part 8

Tara grinned, and when she did, I was reminded that whoever had designed the supersoldiers she was descended from, had obviously been designing for looks too. Not for the first time, I wondered why. Still, she was in a good mood, and considering the memories I must have brought up, that wasn’t a bad thing.

“I hope you don’t think I’m telling you he’s a bad person.” She paused but didn’t give me time to respond. “He’s not. It’s just…” She stopped. “You know that I grew up in Infinity City. I grew up on the run from the True, the supersoldier group my parents left. They worked as muscle all over the city, training me the entire time because they knew the True would want me too.

“When we came here and I enrolled in the Stapledon program, the guys didn’t first of all think of me as a soldier. They thought of me as the new, hot girl. Some of them had a betting pool on who could ‘score’ with me first. I didn’t think anything of all the attention at first, but when I thought about it, I put everything together. After that, I got angry.”

I’d never seen Tara angry, but thinking about how she could use her mind to create complex strategies and tactics and then adjust them on the fly…

Nodding, she said, “You get it. I found out exactly how much the healer could handle at once, the next time we had a group combat training exercise, I hurt them hard enough that they couldn’t fight anymore, but nothing that was a real danger. I made sure it would hurt. Kid Biohack was in the group.”

She frowned. “It would have worked better in Infinity City. There’s no central authority there. If you want justice, you make it. It wasn’t a good idea here. I nearly got expelled.”

I shook my head. “What about them?”

Her lips twisted, and she said, “They nearly got expelled too, but after that suddenly no one was getting expelled.”

I tried to wrap my head around that when she leaned forward, and in a softer voice said, “I think I know why. Bullet was the one working hardest for my expulsion. He knew some of the guys’ dads. But other supers knew they needed someone who knew Infinity City, and my dad knew it better than anyone.”

I nodded. “And he wasn’t going to be much help if you were expelled.”

“And I know more than almost anyone else here about how to live in Infinity City. They needed me too.” Tara finished her drink. “I think it might be part of the reason Bullet isn’t running the program anymore, or at least part of me does.” She tapped her head. “I don’t have evidence, just a lot of little details pointing in that direction.”

Frowning, she added, “But I do think it’s for the best. I learned later that it wasn’t the first time he’d covered something like that up.”

I thought about Bullet. He’d welcomed my class during our first year, but faded away after that. He taught specific sections of  combat training, but nothing else. Daniel’s dad had said something about changing the program. Quietly sidelining Bullet could have been part of that. He’d also said that Kid Biohack had powerful friends.

“You’re doing your internships and mandatory post-Stapledon service for the next two years, right?”

She nodded. “I’ve got to line up someone this year. I have places in mind.” She flashed me a grin.

I wondered how directly to say it. “If you have any trouble finding someone to do your internship with, tell us. We might know somebody who’s looking for an intern. We, also, and this is the crazy option, might be able to arrange something ourselves. We’ve got a team. The team has an income, and stuff happens in Grand Lake. One of our board members might be willing to act as your supervisor.”

She glanced toward the ground, checking where the line was. It ran from one glowing red gem to another. She was still on the right side. “That’s sweet of you to offer. I don’t think enough people in the community want to get me back for that that I’ll have trouble, but I’ll keep it mind. My dad had friends and a couple of them sound like they might take me on.”

“Good,” I said.

“Thanks,” she said, stepping across the line, and tossing her plastic cup into the nearest trash can. It landed perfectly in the center, dropping into the can.

Daniel and Izzy walked up to me as she walked away. Izzy’s jaw was set, and her jaw muscles stood out. “I’ve never heard anything about that. Every time I begin to feel good about the program, I discover another thing like this. I wonder what else Bullet covered up and who got hurt?”

Daniel met Izzy’s eyes. “We’ll do something about it. I’ll talk to my dad, and see what he knows.”

After that, the night was just talking. When we were done, we cleaned up, and all left together, still talking. It felt a lot like a movie night, but with a few more people. Whenever we did expand, we needed to pull in Samita, Rod and Amy officially— Tara too.

When I got to the room that Daniel and I shared, I fell asleep almost the instant I hit my bed, forgetting all about Kid Biohack and The Thing That Eats for a few hours.

The next morning on the way to the cafeteria, though, I happened to walk past Alex.

A little taller than I was, Alex was tanned with hair bleached blond by the sun. Wearing a t-shirt that advertised a surfboard company, he looked every bit of my surfer stereotype. He didn’t quite live it, though. Stereotypical surfers were supposed to be calm.

“Nick,” he put his hand on my shoulder. “I heard that Kid Biohack was in your town. We’ve got to talk.”

19 thoughts on “Everybody’s Got One: Part 8”

  1. Nice to hear a bit more about Infinity City… “We’ve got to talk.” – very rarely is that followed with good news…

    Typo(s):

    “It would worked better in Infinity City” – missing ‘have’ or “‘ve”.

    “He taught sections of combat” – this isn’t wrong, but it doesn’t read right.

  2. ain’t it time for Travis and Rachel to get back togheter ? have been hints about it the whole story haha or have i gotten it wrong ? would like them to becoma a couple again! same for Vaugh and Cassie

    1. We’ll see. Some romantic subplots are too big a deal to have them take place in the background. Those two, if and when they happen, deserve a lot of attention.

  3. I’m starting to think that the “one” that “everybody’s got” is an opinion on Kid Biohack.

    1. That’s a good idea. I want to try it, but I’m going to have to careful about it. I don’t have a lot of extra time to write, so I might be able to get away with it once a month, but even then I’d be taking away time from working on the third LoN book to do it.

      If I felt comfortable about offering extra chapters, I’d have started already because you’re right, it is a good idea.

      That said, I’m not against taking a shot at it. I’d just have to figure out how to work it out.

      1. It’s just like anything else. You have to decide what you can cut from your current schedule. Maybe you could stop eating, or sleeping. Sleeping itself is a huge time sink, taking about a quarter to a third of it. You don’t need that much! Or you could just forget about your family. Do they really need your time and attention?

        I AM TOTALLY KIDDING ABOUT ALL OF THAT, *ESPECIALLY* YOUR FAMILY!!

        On a (more) serious note, I am pretty happy that you post as consistently as you do. I just need to vote more consistently than I do now. 🙂

        This is an excellent story. I think you do a great job of weaving fantasy magic and superpowers and sci-fi into one story. Each one is distinct, but also interact with each other in a “realistic” way and are respected by each other. Furthermore, (and more importantly) the characterizations are superbly developed/-ing, and seem to match how real people would act, from the established heroes and governments to the rising heroes and young people to the villains and monsters.

        1. Thanks for all of that. I really do want to try to do extra updates, and I’m sure I’ll be able to work something out eventually. I just don’t want to promise and then not deliver.

          As for the realistic characterization… That’s the major thing I’m trying for. I think that if I can get that right people will be able and willing to go along with the “kitchen sink” (as in, it includes everything but the kitchen sink) nature of a comic book universe.

  4. In the passage where Tara and Nick are talking, it’s not clear to me what Bullet was covering up. Tara beating up her harrassers? Them harrassing her? The way some of the adult supers used political influence to keep Tara from getting expelled?

    1. He was trying to cover up the way they were harassing her, but also (and this wasn’t mentioned) the fact that it wasn’t the first time they’d done this to women in the program.

  5. I think there might be more to the story about Bullet than we are being told. The way I hear it, it’s hard to say with any certainty that he did anything wrong.

    The guys were assholes, but nothing in Tara’s story suggests that they crossed the line. They got the shit beat out of them, which probably taught them a valuable lesson about relating to other metahumans.

    Tara, meanwhile, was threatened with consequences for assaulting others. Nothing came of those threats. So her ‘punishment’ mostly came down to making her sweat.

    End result? Those guys (should’ve) learned to be careful about irritating people with powers. Tara received a lesson on dealing with social networks. The only harm anyone suffered was some fear and pain. Fear and Pain are part of the superhero job description.

    1. Bullet did do wrong in that he was very vocal about expelling Tara do to his friendshio with some of tge kids fathers, and while it was stated that they only made bets on who could score with Tara and other girls, it is quite possible that they did more than that but Bullet covered it up.
      Now i am nit saying they forced anyone but they could have done stuff that came close or at least left some people with some emotional baggage and anger over hkw they were treated.

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