The Confidential Files of A Superhero

Onyx: Eleven

Alex’s Point of View

Soundtrack: Lonely Cowboy by Kaley

“I’m not acting weird, you’re acting weird,” I grumbled back to him, folding my arms over my chest and slouching even further back into my chair.

“You know, for a man with a secret life as a superhero, you are in fact a terrible liar,” Ben said, clearly trying to start a fight with me now. Nevertheless, after this comment his eyes drifted back to the computer screen and he went back to working away. My teeth sank into my bottom lip, fighting the urge to grumble back something about only learning it from the best, my older brother. I managed to restrain myself, knowing that brewing a fight between the two of us would only lead to talking about more than I wanted to right now.

Yet, I should have known better than to expect the conversation to completely die off. If anything, by not answering him and engaging in the fight, Ben was only increasingly alarmed by my behaviour. I could practically feel his eyes now burning into the back of my head as I refused to look anywhere else but the monitors. I was scanning every screen now, desperate to find a reason to escape this place.

“So?” Ben was the first to break the tension brewing in the silence between us. My eyes flickered to his for only a moment, not long enough to take in the background, for just behind him was the one place the two of us were afraid to look. We knew what waited there for us, and it was exactly the last thing I wanted to think about right now. But now that he had brought it up into the conversation, her presence was stronger than ever. I might not be able to see Sabine, but I imagined her sitting on the other side of that concrete wall and attempting to stare into my soul.

That fake smile came out, plastered across my face as I calmly tried to turn my attention back to the screens in front of me. Silently, I was begging for an alert at this point. My eyes narrowed in on a shady looking man moving through the downtown core, and a dark part of me hoped he might sneak into a store and attempt to rob the place. Or maybe, beneath that sweater he was hiding some sort of weapon. Maybe I should head downtown to investigate before it even gets to that stage. Sure it’s the middle of the day but if I flew high enough into the cloud line, then no one would see me.

I slid from my chair, with every intention of leaving this room as fast as my feet would carry me, but Ben was suddenly on his feet as well. In a few long strides, he closed the distance between us, acting as a barracked between myself and the exit. His hand pressed to my chest, fingers spread out in a way that said a strong shock would follow if I didn’t sit my ass right back down. “Don’t even think about it,” his eyes locked on mine, burning brighter with a rage I didn’t often see from my brother. I’d been jerking him around long enough though, I had to know this was coming. It had been an entire summer and the two of us had barely spoken, especially not about Sabine.

“Yes brother, what can I help you with?” The words came out sickly sweet, another lame attempt at pretending I had no idea what he could be talking about. It was a mockery though, we both knew it. There was a massive elephant in the room, and for the entire summer she’d been staring at the two of us from behind the now cement walled training room. Life was going back to normal now, which meant we couldn’t ignore our problems forever. We had to face it, and I knew this conversation was coming whether I wanted it to or not, but why did he have to bring it up today of all days?

“Are you going to do it or not?” He asked and instinctively I shook my head. Of course we weren’t going to ease into this. No, Ben had to be his usual impossible and rational self and wanted to deep dive into the root of the problem. Our father may have asked him to study Sabine, but what he’d asked of me was so much worse. He’d asked me to change her, to look into her mind and take away all the dark things that had turned her evil. I thought about those chilling eyes of hers and wondered, for the hundredth time this summer, what would even be left of this woman if I took that away?

Hell, my father nor I even knew if I was capable of doing that, but regardless he wanted me to try. His father, my grandfather, had tried it once years ago. Clearly my father hadn’t learned from his mistake then, because my grandfather lost control of Sabine and thus began this entire cascade of events that led to my life-threatening injury last summer. My dad was taking precautions this time, keeping her contained to the walls of our training room and he had this other plan to make the room toxic with a little bit of monazite leaked in the air as a way to control her strength and powers.

Not only was it a horrible idea, but it was also cruel. My dad was an i***t to think that making a second attempt at this was going to be any better. Plus, grandfather had supposedly had a lot more practice with this. I’d never tried to manipulate someone’s mind this severely, nor had I ever tried to manipulate the mind of another super powered human like myself. It was far too risky. Yet, when I thought about the shell of the woman we were holding in that cell, I wondered if any of this even mattered. She’d lost everything that had once had value in her life, perhaps it would be a blessing to take even some of that pain from her memory.

“I can’t, we both know that. My powers don’t work on our own kind,” I spun out the same words I’d been repeating my entire life. Although, a lot more frequently in the past weeks since our guest had joined us. Usually I kept them to myself, a mental assurance that I didn’t have to follow through on my father’s plan, but this time I needed them to justify my reasoning to my brother. As if the morally wrong thing wasn’t enough anymore.

The light in Ben’s eyes darkened as his gaze intensified on mine. His finger tips flexed and the slightest tingle spread through my chest. The hairs on the back of my neck raised in anticipation of what we both knew came next. That electricity that would leave my flat faced on the floor, proof that there was no immunity of powers between our own kind, even if I was choosing to live behind this lie our parents created.

“You know they do, have you even tried?” He asked an eyebrow raised and I knew this time it was out of pure curiosity. It was true that if I ever made the decision to even entertain my father’s idea, Ben would probably be my first practice attempt. We both knew it, we’d been using each other as training dummies for years. I was the first super-powered being that Ben learned to electrically shock, and he’d be the first I ever attempted to manipulate the mind of, if I ever dared to try it.

I turned my head away, refusing to meet my brothers gaze. “No,” I mumbled back at him and finally he stepped back, pulling that electrically charged hand from my chest. The relief rolled off of me as the tension in my shoulders finally dropped. This conversation was still far from over though.

“Well, maybe it’s time you did. Just try it, so then we know if this is even a feasible option. Worst case scenario it doesn’t work, but then we can tell dad we at least tried it and it’s not possible. He’ll have to accept that and move on with his plan B,” Ben surprised me by saying, but at the mention of my father’s plan B, a chill ran down my spine. I didn’t even want to think about what his Plan B would be. I mean technically Plan A had been to kill Sabine on that horrible night in June, so wasn’t bringing her here actually plan B? My father wanted her alive, that was clear, so I knew whatever his next plan was definitely wasn’t going to be good.

“Come on, make me believe monsters are real or something,” Ben continued to push onwards. I finally turned to look back at him, our eyes locking and for a split second I actually thought about doing it. I wanted to know if it would work, my own curiosity needing to be quenched. But a part of me also didn’t want to know. What if I tried it and it worked? What if I learned today that I was capable of something so dangerous? But today wasn’t the day to find that out, because just in the nick of time, my watch began to buzz as an alert blasted through the echosphere. I had somewhere else to be.