Seduction of the Innocent

Sebastian gazed across the ring, an atoll of chairs and students spread out as wide as the little second-floor room would allow, studying the angelic face of Evangeline Garver. Her pink lips curled in a pensive moue and her eyes narrowed in concentration, her irises like tiny serpentine moons rising above the hills of her plump, freckled cheeks. She seemed not to notice his staring, seemed not to notice anything besides the spirited controversy, except once to irritatedly brush from her eyes a long coil of her red hair. She was totally absorbed in this boring, pretentious exchange of unsubstantiated assertions and jumbles of concepts only half-understood by those that uttered them. He wondered why.

A forlorn sigh left his lips and he slumped against the back of the plastic chair. He had come only at Evangeline’s bidding; she was confident that he would at least be interested, if not engaged.

“You have opinions,” she had said. ‘Yes, yes,’ he wanted to say, ‘but none so puerile, and none on such a tedious and irrelevant subject.

The cause of metahuman rights had no ally in Sebastian Pereira, though he was, of course, secretly one himself. In his opinion, even uttering the phrase was a sign of a careless mind, easily provoked to reaction by shoddy logic and emotional hot buttons. He despised the movement rhetoric and the cavalcade of phonies that claimed to be speaking for him as they worked themselves into a lather over largely imaginary grievances. It was an obscenely disingenuous play for special privilege, seeking power that nobody should have in the guise of demanding rights they already did have. In the Commonwealths, Talents had always been equal under the law; there was nothing that even superficially resembled the talent bondage of New England's National Program, yet these activists never shut up about the oppression and slavery they spied around every corner.

A good example of this foolishness made the news last week, and the item had already been broached in this debate: a known talent had been refused service at a bar. Sebastian assumed that everyone would’ve understood the owner’s right to refuse whomever he wants for whatever reason he wants, even if they thought his reasons were bad. After all, wasn't that the same right a potential customer had? Even he, who had recently been kicked out of a bar merely for defending his honor, could raise no objection. But not this fellow, who is now agitating for laws to force (one imagines) everyone to be friends with everybody else. The old meta supremacists like Gravitas had blood on their hands, but at least their arguments were honest.

But what Sebastian found most odious about these activists, even more than their assaults on free speech and free association, was the mendacious attempt to reframe seemingly every unusual occurrence and notable figure throughout human history as a talent in disguise. Mythological creatures, religious texts, folklore, even well-attested historical personages — no one and nothing were safe from this revisionism. Once, he wrote a facetious essay to the Talent Action Network that North America enjoyed its notably higher concentration of talents because Virginia Dare, first English colonist born here, who in legend transformed into a white doe, must have been a zoomorph. His sarcasm went undetected amongst the Tanners, who acclaimed his “bold” and “open-minded” analysis of history.

With such a history of profitless interaction with these partisans, Sebastian had no intention of breaking his silence, though the temptation to rebut was maddening. He glanced down at the sheet of yellow paper on his lap, a copy of a flyer that had been circulated at the start of this session. On it was a rank of shouting figures, all in silhouette, with angry fists raised above their heads. Some of the heads had zig-zagging arrows radiating from them, a common graphic shorthand for psychic powers. A banner above and around it screamed:

Smash Mundanarchy! Direct Action against Bigotry, Intolerance, and Injustice!

Sebastian rolled his eyes, unwilling to read any more of it. He would try to tune out and keep on looking at Evangeline; he could do that all day.

But then C.J. Gravish, his pinched-nosed, oval-faced classmate who had been monopolizing the discussion, made a declaration so outlandish that it overwhelmed Sebastian’s filters, and when he heard it he laughed like it was the punch line of a good joke. When Sebastian looked up again, the back-and-forth had ceased and a constellation of accusing eyes stared at him.

C.J. looked at Sebastian for a moment, pursed his lips and set his jaw like it was taking a great effort to master himself.

“You disagree with my characterization of Magnetrix as a crusader for talent rights?” he said finally, his voice pitching higher as his pique increased.

“Well, I sort of assumed it was a joke that nobody else caught,” Sebastian replied.

“You don’t think much of her advocacy,” C.J. continued. He eyed Sebastian ferociously. Clearly, he was caught up in the rush of the argument and was at the stage where no point of disagreement, no matter how trivial, would be left unshredded. Sebastian recognized it, knew it well. C.J. was trying to draw him out for a decisive blow.

C.J. fancied himself a master of rhetoric, and although Sebastian had other ideas about that, he knew him to have a sharp tongue and a biting wit. Sebastian had those qualities, too, so he knew that he would receive little sympathy from the crowd if he was, for once, the target of a few barbs.

“It’s her musical ability that I don’t think much of. I never knew her to be a serious advocate for anything, except for herself,” Sebastian replied.

C.J. signaled his derision in his usual, effeminte way with a cluck of the tongue and roll of his eyes. “You really weren’t aware of her past in the Global Parahuman Revolutionary Army?” he scoffed.

“I am aware that she was kicked out, and that she was eager to turn state’s evidence against her terrorist buddies in return for immunity. Probably because she only signed up for publicity.” The statement provoked an isolated chuckle.

“That’s certainly the perspective of a few of the GPRA...terrorists, as you identify them,” C.J. allowed. “Probably you are ignorant of the strong themes of self-acceptance and social tolerance in her most recent album.”

Sebastian smiled wryly. “I would plead ignorance of any but the basest and most lascivious themes in Magnetrix’s music.”

“And ignorant of Born Strange, the philanthropic organization she founded to fight intolerance and violence against talented youth,” C.J. went on.

“Now that one I’m aware of,” Sebastian said.

“But that doesn’t meet your high standards for advocacy.”

Sebastian had known C.J. for half his life and hated him almost as long. This was how he talked to everyone, all the time. Perpetually moralizing and endlessly disappointed in his audience, he was a one-man stage show scripted by his middle-aged divorcee mother, the failed playwright and Unitarian minister. God only knows the reason she kept sending him to a Catholic school; probably to punish the faithful. He could have gagged at the performative indignation.

Sebastian locked eyes with him and slowly folded his arms across his chest, pumping his pecs and biceps in a vulgar display of masculinity. “To me, advocacy implies some level of sincerity. Magnetrix is a ruthless self-promoter who does what she thinks is most likely to attract attention. Positive attention, ideally, but when that can’t be had, any attention will do. She wears causes like other people wear hats — or more appropriately for her, a pair of knickers, kicked off at the first invitation.”

That really kicked up laughter. C.J. didn’t appreciate that at all, and darted furious glances at everyone. While he was distracted, Sebastian raised his voice above the commotion to tie up his point. “In short, Carl,” --he called C.J. by his full first name, which he had done ever since he learned it pissed him off because he hated his namesake, his father-- “I think Magnetrix is a bad pop singer, and nothing more.”

Sebastian leaned back in his chair and looked over at Evangeline. She wore a little close-lipped smile, like she was trying to fight it. When his eyes met hers, she dropped them bashfully and scribbled something in her notebook.

“All right then, Sebastian," C.J. said, pronouncing his name like a curse. "Whom do you consider to be a worthy representative of the cause of metahuman rights?”

Sebastian surreptitiously took a snapshot of the flyer with the miniature camera mounted on the nose of his eyeglasses. Then he made a show of crumbling it up and pitching it in a garbage can. “Oh, I don’t know, really. I don’t believe in metahuman rights,” he replied casually.

Somewhere a pin dropped and everyone heard it.

Now that he'd delivered his coup, Sebastian was eager to disengage from the argument and was busy packing his backpack, so it took him a moment to notice the uneasy quiet. When he raised his eyes, the first face he saw was Evangeline’s. She looked at him numb and disbelieving, as if he’d said he hated cats or called her a whore.

“Well, uh, what I mean is— ”

“You don’t believe talents have rights?” gasped some outraged girl on the other side of the room.

“No…”

“Cabotist!” someone else shouted.

“Of all the repugnant, reprehensible beliefs…” C.J. Gravish began, but his tone was out of phase with his expression. He was nearly smiling.

“I mean there’s no such thing!” Sebastian stood up, slinging his backpack over one shoulder. “You can’t just go around inventing rights. There are only natural rights, the same we all have, no more and no less. Now, that’s all I can take of this stupidity for the day. Feel free to traduce me after I leave, though.”

Only a few minutes later, Evangeline caught up with Sebastian. She must have followed him out of the room; he could still hear raised voices from the room.

“For a while, I thought you weren’t going to say anything at all,” she said softly.

He shot her a cross look. “I hope you understand now why I don’t bother. I told you Politics Roundtable was just a clique of self-righteous posers.”

“I don’t remember you saying that before now,” she said.

“I guess I forgot to tell you. Sorry. They’re a bunch of emotion-driven wimps and they wear their causes just like Magnetrix. Come on, you don’t think Carl is a talent, do you?”

Evangeline seemed to shrink back. “I don’t think you have to be metahuman to have a sincere opinion on the matter,” she said in a small voice.

“No,” Sebastian agreed, “but with most of them it’s phony outrage.” His words were angry, but his tone was matter-of-fact. The subject wasn’t all that important to him, and it was only Evangeline’s reaction that had left him flat-footed. She was the only one there whose opinion he really cared about, but she was still talking to him. Of course Evangeline would understand him.

“So, when you say you don’t believe in metahuman rights…”

Sebastian slumped visibly. “I meant exactly what I said. You know, I was just thinking — literally, just now — that you, out of all people, would understand what I am saying and not try to make me out to be a neanderthal.”

“No, I get it, I do! Natural rights,” Evangeline said. “But what about when they’re dealing with entrenched discrimination? They’re at a disadvantage then; it’s not a fair situation. Isn’t it OK to try and correct that?”

“Speak precisely, please.”

“What?”

“You don’t really mean ‘try to correct that.’ What you really mean is ‘have the government coerce people into acting the way you want them to.’ And the answer is always no. No, it’s not OK to do that.”

Evangeline was about to reply when the heft of his statement hit her, right between the eyes, as you might say. She opened her eyes wide and her mouth hung open, speechless.

“OK,” she said after a little while, “but what about the talents that get beaten up, or worse?”

“Or conscripted, like in New England? Of course that’s evil, but we don’t live in New England.”

“It’s not just in New England. Meta kids get assaulted all the time in Pennsylvania.”

“Assaulted? Oh, brother. I don’t think that’s true, at least not that it happens any more often than normal kids getting in fights,” he said.

“Well why not?”

“It just sounds unreasonable! Don’t you think? I mean, if you have actual superpowers, I’m sure you can handle yourself,” Sebastian replied.

“But not every talent has violent abilities!” Evangeline insisted.

“So what, jocks are going around beating up spoon-benders for fun? How would they even know? And even if they did, is that really any worse than picking on the kids with the overbites and the orthopedic shoes?” He arched his eyebrow at her. “Or the girls whose skirts are covered in cat hair?”

“I think it is worse,” she muttered.

“OK, well I don’t,” he said, and stopped short of adding, ‘…and you’re wrong.’ “It’s the same problem with a different face: some people are jerks and they get off on hurting other people. It doesn’t pay to overreact to it or to try to reengineer society to get it to go away. It’s never going away. We live in a fallen world.”

“So we just have to accept injustices? Is that what you mean?” asked Evangeline, sounding testy.

“Not accept them, no. But understand that they’re not going away just because — ”

“Because that’s just nihilism!”

“It’s not nihilism!” he protested. “Look, there’s a right way and a wrong way to deal with problems. Two wrongs don’t make a right and all that. All of the ‘solutions’ ginned up by the professionally sanctimonious pimps in the meta rights lobby aren’t just wrong, they’re stupid. God hands them extraordinary abilities and they act like it’s a burden. ‘Pity me, I have superpowers!’”

“It’s probably a lot more difficult for them than you’d think, Sebastian.”

The taut muscles of his jawline rippled with tension as he clenched them, but he said nothing.

“Anyway, I should get going to work,” she said, turning away.

“Hey.” His voice was soft as he grabbed her arm. “What time is that thing tomorrow?”

She looked back at him sadly, then flicked her eyes away. “Um, what thing?”

“Tomorrow’s Wednesday. That thing you said you wanted me to accompany you to. You never said what it was.”

“Oh, yeah. Well, don’t worry about it. Something else came up. It, uh, probably wasn’t a good idea anyway,” she said, shaking her head.

“Well hold on now,” Sebastian began, but lost the words as the disappointment welled up in his chest. “Is this because of what I just said? Are you mad at me?”

“Have a good night, Sebastian,” she said, unable to keep her own twinge of anger and disappointment out of her voice.

He laughed mirthlessly, incredulously. “So because I don’t share every opinion with you, I’m not good enough to bring along? Fine by me, Eva. I’m not a three-ring circus for your emotions!”

That afternoon, Sebastian went directly home and tried to nap. He had no energy or enthusiasm for anything else after his altercation with Evangeline. Yet he found himself too bothered by it to get any sleep, either. And so he lay on his back and stared up at the ceiling, watching the light dim through the filter of his curtains as the sun westered and sank. On a whim, he reread the flyer that Carl had distributed at the beginning of the roundtable, the one he’d taken a snapshot of before theatrically tossing it in the trash. He sneered at the oh-so-clever and contemptuous neologism mundanarchy. The shadowy clipart figures and clenched fists, the ill-defined but ominous phrases like direct action and resistance: it was standard radical boilerplate, and he wondered if all such organizations used the same printers, maybe even got a bulk discount. Then he saw clearly for the first time that it was no mere piece of propaganda, but an invitation. It read:

Join TOGETHER, Talents and ungifted, a UNITED FRONT for positive CHANGE.

And it was followed by an address and a time: Birdie’s Tavern, Rain Street, East Liberty. 9PM Tuesday

His curiosity was satisfied by a few minutes of research on the grid. Birdie’s, it turned out, was known as a talent bar, the way some others were biker bars or swingers’ bars. The place had a bad reputation, too; one might almost call it notorious. It was the sort of bar where people leave in ambulances fairly regularly, but the cops don’t bother to show up. The owner had been a member of Nemesis, the defunct metahuman supremacist/terrorist group, and had served time for some low-level felonies. Rumor had it he was a bagman for the GPRA.

‘A recruitment drive?’ he wondered. And for soldiers or patsies?

It took only a minute for Sebastian to decide he was going.

~*~

‘This is not the sort of place I should be going alone,’ thought Sebastian, even as he took hold of the old brass latch to the front door of Birdie’s Tavern. He had squared off against a couple of talents before in his short career, but never had he gone out expecting to be literally surrounded by a hostile crowd of them. And they would be hostile, potentially, even if they didn’t know his low opinion of super-powered radicals or the GPRA, even if they didn’t know what he was really there for. And did Sebastian know what he was really there for? He was there to find out who was recruiting and for what, but beyond that, it was hard to figure out what his options were once he found out.

He’d gone as Torrent, pulled his masked hood down over his nose and clamped it on his face with his blue-tinted goggles. Nobody noticed because he didn’t look out of place; a dozen other customers had masks on, mostly domino masks or bandanas with eyeholes, but a few were of more elaborate composition. It was a throwback to the 1940s and ‘50s when masks and capes were the height of fashion, the same way everyone used to wear powdered wigs and top hats. The ones he looked at now were the hard-times versions of those glamorous accessories, adopted by workaday outcasts to identify themselves as part of a scene, or an expedient for lowlifes to confuse witnesses and CCTV cameras. By association, Torrent felt vaguely ashamed of his own appearance.

A bouncer perched on a stool by the door, fat and burly in a tight black T-shirt, hairless but for a neckbeard, with big arms covered with tattoos. The bouncer nodded at Torrent but didn’t ask for proof of age — luckily, for he hadn’t even thought of that. Now, Sebastian had bought a gun before with his own money, and four weeks out of the year he bivouacked with his dad’s company in the militia; he could have walked into any pharmacy and put down $10 for an ounce of dope — and gotten it, too, if the pharmacist wasn’t all that conscientious — but when it came to booze, the state of Pennsylvania was more reticent. Anywhere else in the Commonwealths, hell, in most of the rest of the continent, the legal drinking age was 16, but here in Pennsylvania it was 18, and he was more than a year shy of that magical age. It was an amusing thing to scruple over considering the prevalence of alcoholism in the state. Never mind! Birdie’s was not the kind of bar that carded customers.

The air was dimly lit and smoky. The floor was dotted with stained wooden chairs and cheaper particle board tables; Torrent guessed that they got broken regularly. High brass stools stood against the bar, behind which hung the obligatory mirror, a trick to make the cramped interior seem less claustrophobic. Torrent found a gap at the bar and slid in sideways, asked the prune-faced bartender what was on tap. She directed his attention to the tap handles with an unfriendly toss of her head and waited for him to decide.

“Uh, Yuengling, please,” he said, not thrilled with his options, and slid a couple of dollars across the wet countertop. He glanced up at the clock on the wall as she returned and took the fee.

“I guess since I ain’t never seen you before that you’re here for the meeting,” she said.

Torrent nodded. “I am, indeed.”

She tossed her head again and her stringy, gray-brown ponytail bounced. “Back room,” she said.

“Thanks, and keep it,” he said. He took a swig and walked over to the swinging door at the end of the bar. A nervous-looking guy with the collar of his winter coat pulled up and his eyes glued to the floor walked fast across the room, nearly colliding with Torrent. The guy looked up for a moment, wide-eyed, and muttered an apology. Torrent recognized the round face and the pinched nose and the swoop of black hair pasted with sweat to the forehead: it was C.J. Gravish.

C.J. slipped through the doorway, fortunately not identifying him. Torrent was surprised to see him; true, Carl had passed out the flyers, but Sebastian never, ever imagined that he would come here himself.

The back room held a small crowd, only four of them besides Torrent, plus a man and a woman standing on a raised platform facing the crowd. He pegged these two for the meeting’s organizers.

He thought the girl, who looked about his age, was exceptionally pretty in a down-home, back-country sort of way, with little imperfections that worked to highlight her natural attractiveness. She had a clear complexion and wore no make-up except for indigo eye shadow. The straight, full-bodied mane that tumbled down past her shoulders was glossy black. She had the farmer’s daughter’s build, slender but strong, with athletic curves accented by her tight denim jeans and tapered jacket.

The man beside her looked older, but maybe only on account of the field of rough stubble on his blocky jaw. What little hair he had was done up in a faux-hawk, but the rest of his pate was shaved by choice, not to cover up early baldness, unlike the fat bouncer. He stood with his booted feet planted shoulder-width apart, his arms crossed, flexing his thickly muscled forearms. Torrent at first assumed they were a couple, but soon noticed a distinctive family resemblance in their eyes and facial structure, and he wondered if they were brother and sister.

The pair waited five minutes past 9 to get started, apparently hoping in vain more people would show up.

“Lock the door!” the faux-hawk’s voice suddenly boomed. Torrent tried to keep himself from jumping in surprise. Someone crossed behind him and slammed the bolt on an old slide-lock. Torrent tried to shake off the feeling that he’d made a big mistake in coming here.

“I hate being interrupted,” he continued with a Kanawha mountain twang. “If they can’t show up on time, we don’t want ‘em anyway.” There were a few growls of agreement.

Sebastian sipped his beer and examined the weight and thickness of the glass, just in case.

The girl stepped forward and smiled coyly, showing off a dimple beneath her strong, high cheekbones. “At least there’re some men with balls in this city,” she said, to a chorus of affirmative grunts.

“Let’s get down to business.” She slipped out of her jacket and tossed it over an old crate. Torrent sucked in a breath of air between his teeth and stared. She wore a tight, electric blue compression top that left her flat abdomen bare. Softly glowing filaments traced her navel, winding their way up her body until they disappeared under the shirt and reappeared again on her shoulders and the sides of her neck, curling up to her chin. The network of sub-dermal fiber-optics and body heat-powered diodes traced out an elaborate scene of twisting ivy and blooming flowers. He always thought tattoos looked trashy, especially on women, but now he was having second thoughts. The delicate lines and diffuse, ethereal glow of her electoos were enticingly otherworldly, far classier and elegant than anything that could be scrawled out in ink.

“I’m Cascade, and this is my brother, Scald. We’re with the Paras. And we didn’t come here to waste time sweet-talking and cajoling you. You know what we want, and I guess if you’re here then you want the same things.” She started counting off on her fingertips: “First, we want our freedom; freedom to live as we are and the freedom to remake the world as it should be. Two, we want our rightful due, all the good things that have been denied us by a hateful and greedy system of oppression. Three, we want vengeance. Vengeance against every person and every institution that wronged one of us, or sat by, silent, while one of us was wronged. And that means making life uncomfortable for a lot of people.”

‘Finally, some honesty!’ thought Torrent. Her list was terrible, but it was a breath of fresh air compared to the meandering duplicity of C.J. Gravish’s politics workshop. He immediately looked over at his classmate to study his reaction. He was nodding vigorously, almost vibrating with nervous enthusiasm. ‘The little worm,’ Sebastian thought, and he wondered if indeed Carl wasn’t a talent, or at the very least a spoon-bender. How else could he be so sanguine about that “new world” that Cascade talked about building, a world that wouldn’t have much place for soft, ungifted Carl Gravish. Was he so naive as to think her rhetoric was as empty as his own?

“I’ll be honest with you: this job is hard. This job is dangerous. The pay sucks, and there are no vacation days or retirement plans, except maybe a prison cell or a shallow hole in the ground. But you don’t join the GPRA for a comfortable living; you join the GPRA because it’s the right thing to do. You join because it’s your duty. You join because your brothers and sisters in New England live and die in bondage. You join because talents make up 5% of the population but 15% of the prisoners, because of parents who neuter their own children with Psicloban, because of the talent kid that was shot to death in Wheeling last week, with no charges filed. You do it because you know the incidence of talent expression has declined steadily over the last decade from all the poisons that government and industry have pumped into your air and water.”

Cascade paused, and then looked at each one of them in turn. “And you do it because you know the war is coming and that we’re sure as hell going to be the ones to win it. And believe me; you don’t want to be counted among the collaborators when it’s all over.”

‘Hot damn, she’s good,’ Torrent thought, feeling a dark and brutal corner of his psyche stirring. He had to remind himself that her numbers were questionable and that the story about the kid in Wheeling was, at best, a half-truth to keep himself from agreeing. Her delivery was perfect, and she hit all the right emotional chords, including that final, supremely confident, with-us-or-against-us note.

“Where do we sign up?” a gruff voice shouted, followed by approving hoots.

“What do you think this is, the 4H?” Cascade laughed, and her tinkling laughter was intoxicating. “There’s no sign-up. You join by doing. And we’ve got plenty for all of you to do.”

“But you start at the bottom and work your way up,” Scald barked. “We got to know how reliable you are.”

While the other four men, Carl included, went forward to see what the GPRA asked of them, Torrent hung back, committing to memory whatever he could of their features and voices. He sipped his lager and strained his ears to hear what tasks Cascade and Scald had set out for them. Each was asked what their talent was; one of them said he could see in the dark, and another said something about always being able to find who he was looking for. He was especially interested to hear Carl’s answer and to gauge their reaction, but he couldn’t hear and Scald’s back was turned. Torrent lay his glass down and stepped forward, ready to put himself in the thick of it.

He was stopped by a slender hand pressed against his chest. “Now, you look like the sort of man who’s already gotten his hands dirty. Am I right?” Cascade said, smiling up at him.

Torrent smiled back, showing his teeth. “Do I have that look about me?”

“What I mean is that your outfit isn’t just thrown together. You’ve put some thought and maybe some money into it, like a man who knows he has to prepare himself for trouble,” she said, fingering the straps of his harness and glancing at the black nylon holster that held his retracted stun baton. “And when most people first put on a mask, they can’t figure out how to keep it covering their face without it getting in their eyes, but you seem to have figured that out.”

“It did take some figuring,” he admitted.

“So I’m right?”

“You are right, Cascade,” he said.

“I knew I was.” She cocked her head sideways and ran her fingers down his sleeve. “And what should I call you? Your war name, I mean.”

“Torrent.”

“Torrent? And what’s your talent, Torrent?”

“Oh, I have a couple,” he said. “What about you, Cascade? What do you do, besides giving good speeches and wrapping men around your little finger?”

Cascade let out a little laugh and might have even blushed, but it was hard for him to tell between the dark room and the tint of his goggles. “Can’t you guess from the name?” She leaned against him and turned sideways, gesturing to the half-empty mug of beer he’d left on the table. Quickly the frothy alcohol streamed up the sides of the glass in defiance of gravity and congealed into a spinning and flashing globule suspended in the air.

Torrent hummed and inclined his head. The floating glob suddenly shot up into the air and burst into a rain of ale. Cascade looked startled that it had been wrenched out of her psychic control.

“And I thought you’d have guessed mine,” he said.

“Hydrokinesis,” she said, quickly hiding her surprise. “And strong, too. I had a good grip on that, Torrent. And you said you had other talents?”

“I’ll keep that to myself for now.”

“Ooh, mysterious,” she teased.

“Cautious.”

“Prudent,” she nodded. “It’s not just your outfit. You do have that look about you. Confidence, determination. You’re that way because you’ve actually measured yourself against people, gotten things done. Don’t worry, I won’t ask what just yet. But I know how it is to go off on your own. My brother and I freelanced for a little while before we enlisted.”

“Enlisted?”

“In the Revolutionary Army, of course. It’s a little joke we have. That’s what you came here for, isn’t it?”

“Maybe,” he said. “You gave a lot of good reasons to do something, but not necessarily good ones to join the Paras. Maybe I end up in jail or a morgue anyway, but I don’t want to get there because you folks got sloppy or stupid, understand?”

“Very prudent,” she repeated. “Torrent, we’re the real deal and deadly serious. We don’t screw around in what we do.”

“Or who you associate with?” he said.

“Exactly.”

Torrent replied with one word: “Magnetrix.”

Cascade winced. “Take a walk with me,” she said. “Outside.”

He watched her gesture to her brother that she was going out, and that everything was OK. She led him to a darkened exit and pushed the door open.

“Allow me,” he said, and held the door for her. “After you.”

“You’re very courteous, also,” Cascade said.

Torrent smiled. “Or maybe just prudent?”

Torrent scanned the narrow alley and Cascade kicked the door shut behind them. “See? Nobody waiting out here to clobber you and take your fancy goggles.”

“You’re wondering if they have something to do with my other talents,” he said, with a sudden burst of intuition.

“Are you a shrewd guesser, or merely a mind reader?” Cascade asked wryly.

Torrent inclined his head significantly. He wanted to be careful to not reveal too much about himself, and to keep her off-guard, if only to make it harder for her and Scald (and whatever other allies might be lurking around) to close in on him. He allowed that he was doing a pretty fair job of it, too. His stomach had butterflies, and not just because he was alone with a sexy girl in a dark alley. He was excited to play the game.

'Keep it cool,' he told himself.

“It’s uncommon for a person to have multiple talents,” she said as she walked down the alley. “That’s extremely valuable for our cause.”

“Where are you taking me?” he asked.

“Away from the riff-raff,” Cascade replied.

They debouched into an open space, or so it seemed, for it was too dark to see much away from the dimming light that burned over the doorway. But the walls had receded and the fierce April wind whipped about them. They heard the moaning of leafless trees straining against the gusts, invisible somewhere behind them.

“What do you know about Magnetrix, Torrent?”

He shrugged. “Only what all the reporters said, and maybe a bit more that I surmised. I can’t figure out why, if you’re so deadly serious, you let such an obvious liability enlist.” On that point he was genuinely curious, but it was also his way of deflecting any well-placed suspicion they might have of him.

“Good question,” she said, bitterly. “And Scald and I asked the same thing. But we didn’t have anything to do with it. If it had been up to us, or a lot of other people, it would never have happened. I’d have dumped that whore in a hole and had it paved over.”

“It sounds like maybe you had to work with her for a while,” Torrent observed.

“Maybe I did, and maybe I didn’t. But what I did and who I know isn’t any business of an outsider,” she said curtly.

“Right you are. Still, you’re not allaying any of my concerns about joining with you.”

“She was powerful, and maybe that was enough for some people. And she had a podium with her music, and people thought she would take our message mainstream and get us the manpower we need for what’s coming. Whatever, they were wrong.” And she added sinisterly, “those responsible learned their lesson. Trust me on that.”

For a little while, neither spoke. Then, Torrent said: “I came here tonight for a reason. I want to test the waters, but only test them, now, until I’m satisfied that this organization can really get something done, something besides making a laughingstock of itself.”

“I understand completely,” Cascade said. “You have to prove yourself to us, and we have to prove ourselves to you. We’re up to it.”

Her teeth began to chatter. “Damn it, it’s cold out here,” she said, and threw herself up against Torrent, slipping her arms into the pockets of his hood. For an instant, Sebastian was stunned, but then he wrapped his arms around her back and started to rub his palms vigorously against her bare skin.

“Oh,” she whispered, “you’re not that cautious after all, Torrent.” Cascade ground against him and leaned her forehead against his. “I like you. I like men who do instead of talk. I like men who are men.”

With those words, her hot breath on his lips and her body pressed against him, Torrent had all but forgotten about the GPRA’s revolting ideology, even the borderline psychopathy manifest in her speech. Did she really mean what she said, intend the things that she talked about? He told himself she didn’t and couldn’t. He leaned forward to kiss her; she pressed his head back and slipped her tongue between his lips, whimpering. In that hot, hormonal instant all of those considerations were worthless. She wanted him the way a woman wants a man, and she was ready, eager to take what she wanted. Like him, she did while others talked, and it didn’t matter that what she did was bad. Boldness itself had to be respected. What could petulant, self-righteous posers like C.J. and Evangeline know about any of that? Cascade could be mastered, he decided, once she’d been pulled out of her circle of cretins. If it came to it, he could slap some sense into her, and she would be grateful for it.

But then again, he thought, as he crushed her body against his and her fingertips wended under his clothes and pressed into his skin, maybe she was right about some things, too.

She pulled back suddenly and, looking him in the eye, licked her lips. “OK,” she said breathlessly, “Let’s get your feet wet.”

“What do you need me to do?” Torrent asked. And already he had forgotten that he wasn’t supposed to do it.

~*~

Burleigh Multimedia was a small print-on-demand company that ran out of the basement of an office building in Bloomfield. They weren’t a publisher with editors and marketers, they just printed things — mostly pamphlets and small books, whatever their customers were willing to pay for. They stood behind only the quality of their binding and covers; the content of the pages was someone else’s worry. And the GPRA was worrying, because one of Burleigh’s customers was a local writer with an anti-talent bent whose inflammatory political commentaries and full-color charts of metahuman conspiracies rolled off its presses before being distributed for free in newspaper boxes throughout the city. The circulation of these writings was enough to earn the author a living from advertisement fees, but by any reasoned assessment, his influence on the tenor of talent/mundane relationships was negligible. That didn’t matter to the Paras, nor did it matter that this was only a small fraction of the printer’s output: Burleigh Multimedia had been warned, had refused to bend, and now was to be sent a message. Cascade told Torrent all of this, along with how this was the perfect mission for him. By bursting a few pipes in the building overnight, he could flood the basement and damage all their back stock and machinery. With some luck, they’d go out of business entirely. “Let’s get your feet wet,” she said, and she meant it literally.

It wasn’t a big deal, actually; petty and mean-spirited, but easy enough to pull off, with minimal exposure to danger and very little chance of getting caught. After all, pipes burst all the time on cold nights like this. At least until the Paras took credit for the attack — which they would, of course — but it’d be hard to tie back to him. And as far as criminal penalties went, he’d already done things as Torrent that would have left him open to worse punishments. There was some danger, of course. The place was probably monitored with cameras and he’d have to get close enough and linger around long enough for his hydrokinesis to do the job. He would show Cascade that he could be trusted to do a dirty job and do it right, and that he was willing to stick his neck out for the cause.

Torrent stared at the Burleigh Multimedia sign on the side of the building, fully prepared to walk across the empty street and give those pipes a piece of his mind, but he couldn’t explain why. He had walked all the way over here from Birdie’s never once thinking that he was actually going to do it, telling himself he was just putting on a show. Now that he was here, he had to convince himself not to do it.

If he burst the pipes, he told himself, some ruined printers and reams of paper would be a small price to pay to get him into the bowels of the GPRA in Pittsburgh. Then he could stop whatever serious crimes they were planning. Besides, this writer was a dick — Cascade had showed Torrent a pamphlet, and it was full of Unionist propaganda — and so was Burleigh for printing his garbage. They deserved it.

“Now you’re thinking like a cop, not a crime-fighter” he muttered to himself, bristling with self-loathing. But it was worse than just that. Those were just excuses, in the literal sense. The real reason he was about to destroy this business was so he didn’t look like a chump in Cascade’s eyes.

What a load of crap. Had God made him a superman just to be a simp?

What would his dad or his big brother Rob have said if he saw him now? What would Alex say once he told him? No, Alex could never hear about this, Sebastian quickly decided. No one could.

Torrent turned around and started the long walk back home. His thoughts repeatedly turned back to his contempt for his classmate, C.J. Gravish. He’d laughed at Carl’s naiveté, but it didn’t seem so laughable now. Whatever C.J.’s motivations, at least it was possible that he actually believed in this cause. Sebastian, on the other hand, was ready to abandon both good sense and principle for the sake of a hard-on. That was a tough thought to sleep on.

~*~

The next day at school, Sebastian didn’t talk to Eva. He had been humbled enough by the previous night’s misadventure that he was ready to apologize for his surliness and smooth things over, but he never got the chance. She didn’t meet up with him on the morning walk; he didn’t see her at all until around noon, and then she went home without eating lunch. But all day he wondered what C.J. might have gotten himself mixed up in last night.

C.J. stayed very late that day, until nearly three o’clock, when the preceptors would force everyone out and lock the doors. Curious, Sebastian hung around and kept an eye on him, but never picked up any clue as to what assignment he’d been given. If C.J. had a guilty conscience about anything he did last night, or had any butterflies about anything he was supposed to do today, then he hid them well. Sebastian debated confronting him directly, or tailing him home, but ultimately decided not to risk exposing his alter ego by doing so. His brother’s keeper he might well be, but his responsibility for Carl could only go so far. He wouldn’t leave him entirely without advice, however.

When C.J. opened his locker to get his coat, a folded-up piece of paper fell out of the door. The handwritten note read:

Don’t get involved. It isn’t 4H, after all.

-Someone Who Knows

C.J. quickly crumbled up the paper as another locker door slammed behind him. He turned around, his face white.

“G’night, Carl,” Sebastian said. He walked past him without sparing a glance.

“Oh, uh… yup. Good night.”

~*~

Sebastian went right home that Wednesday. He thought about calling Eva, mentally rehearsed their conversation, but he couldn’t pull the trigger. Instead, he spent two hours trawling her YOrbit profile and the personal site with her poetry and short stories, all the contact info she’d shared with him when they bumped mobis the first day they met. It was the first that he’d spent any length of time going over it, and the more he read — her status updates, her random thoughts, her lonesome verse — the more his anger and hurt over their broken date subsided. His eyes tracked the cursor down to her universal contact line, finally ready to give her a call.

Then he noticed something he never expected. It was a link to a profile at another social network: ‘MetaFriends - the Grid’s best place for Talents to network anonymously.’

“TheUnprisonedFlame,” he read the profile headline out loud, his eyebrows arching. “A 15-year-old female Thermokinetic.”