Peter Clines - Ex-Heroes

They say you never forget your first time.

Itd been about three months since the Incident at the lab. Incident was how they kept referring to it in the news and in the therapy sessions, and the word had been beaten into my head by constant use. Thered been a lot of publicity around me at first as the sole survivor of the explosion, but the news quickly shifted to focus on the twelve people who had died and the scandal of poor chemical storage. Of course, who could blame the University for not designing their building to resist a meteor strike?

Of the twelve victims, seven took a few hours to die. One took a whole day. There was a lot in the papers regarding the wave of chemicals wed been exposed to. Things that could poison you, twist your body chemistry, or taint your blood. Even corrupt your DNA, according to some people. I also read lots of articles about that meteorite and the odd wavelengths of electromagnetic energy it threw off. Lots of stuff on Wired news about it for a few weeks. I think NASA ended up with it, farmed a ton of work out to MIT, and then it just sort of dropped off the radar.

I was in quarantine for a month. Three more weeks passed and I faded back into obscurity, too. Well, George Bailey did, anyway.

Yes, George Bailey. My names been my curse my entire life. To this day Ive got no idea why my parents were so cruel. And, yes, I own the deluxe DVD edition and I prefer to watch it in the original black and white.

Anyway, itd been three months when I noticed the strength. That was first. Physical therapy after the explosion had felt kind of easy and weights seemed a little lighter at the gym, but nothing amazing. One day I was running to beat the street-sweepers (if you live in the Koreatown area like me, street-sweeping rules your life) and somehow managed a fumble-drop-kick that left my keys under the car. I was stretching for them when my shoulder pushed against the frame and shoved my Hyundai a foot up onto the sidewalk.

Odd, yes, but its amazing what you can justify when parking enforcement is closing in on you. It wasnt until a few days later, back at work, that something happened I couldnt ignore. I got pissed, lost my temper at a dumpster with a stuck lid, and kicked it through the side of the applied physics building. By the time a crowd gathered and security showed up, people already assumed some drunk had slammed it with his car.

Even that I probably couldve rationalized somehow, but a week later I was taking a shower and had a rasp in my throat. One of those little tickles thatre a bit too coarse, like youd hiccupped a bit of stomach acid but it didnt quite make it to your mouth. I hacked to shake it loose and belched a cloud of fire a little bigger than a basketball. It melted part of the shower curtain.

I was smart enough to start testing my limits out of sight.

People tend to be surprised how much empty space there is in Los Angeles. You can wander some parts of Griffith Park and youd never guess youre still in one of the biggest cities in the country. So getting away to practice lifting boulders or breathing fire isnt impossible, but it still has some risksespecially when youre training yourself to vomit on command. I hate to admit it, but I started one of those fires that was on the news. Not the big one that threatened the Observatory, but one of the small ones that followed it.

Lifting rocks bigger than me wasnt too much effort. If I got my leverage right, I could get most cars off the ground. I got the Hyundai over my head twice.

This was the kind of stuff distracting me. Thinking about picking up boulders and coughing like a flamethrower. This was running through my head every day at work, at each meal and when I stretched out on my cheap-ass futon at night. It distracted me enough I tripped and fell down the stairs one morning.

Or at least, most people wouldve fallen. I coasted across the stairwell and floated to the floor. Once I was sure no one else was in the hall, I threw myself down the next three flights. Each time there was a weird little buzz, sort of a twist between my shoulders, and I felt light. Id drift down and land with a tap of my feet on the floor.

Flight was sort of the last straw, in a good way. Maybe Id read too many comic books as a kid or watched too many superhero movies as an adult. I dont know. Could be I was just stupid enough to think this had happened to someone like me, in a city like this, for a reason. That one man could change things.

I spent another three weeks up in the Hollywood Hills. I snuck into Runyon Canyon at night and threw myself off hills and cliffs. Theres a bench at the very top of the dog path that turned out to be a great launch point. There are some great ones out in Malibu, too, like all those rocks at the end of Zuma Beach. I just needed to watch out for night surfers.

Its not real flight like Superman or the guy from Heroes. Its more like a hang glider, I think, where you have lift but no actual propulsion. I can soar pretty far and pretty fast thanks to my enhanced muscles, but I always come down.

A few crashes confirmed I was a lot tougher, too. My skin, my bones, even my hair. I wouldnt say invulnerable, but at the time I felt safe thinking bulletproof. I spent one weekend trying to break my skin with sewing needles, an X-acto knife, and even a cordless drill. Heck, the stove burner cooled off in my hand while I watched it.

The last detail was the costume. The ski suit from Sports Chalet was already silk-screened to look like red scales, and the gauntlets and boots were all black. The mask was two or three different things from Party City mashed together, enough so I wouldnt be looking at a copyright lawsuit. I had to reinforce the Halloween cape with the folding arms from a pair of umbrellas, which worked pretty well all things considered. The idea was to increase my hang time, as it were. Not all of us own a multibillion-dollar company with an R&D lab in the basement, yknow.

My first night out was June seventeenth, 2008. A Tuesday. At this point it had been over half a year since the Incident. No news coverage in three months. Itd be tough for anyone to link my new identity to it.

I took the whole mess up to the roof of my apartment in a duffel bag. Didnt want to risk any of my neighbors seeing me. I changed in the shadow of the elevator tower and hid the bag behind one of the air vents. Id never wear this costume under a shirt and a pair of jeans, thats for sure.

From the roof of that old building you could see all of Los Angeles. Griffith Park Observatory. The Hollywood sign. Downtown. Century City. Wilshire Center. And the pit my section of town had become. I didnt have to turn my head to see three or four cans worth of graffiti and gang signs spread across the sidewalk. XV3s. Seventeens. All fighting over an area where people just wanted to live in peace.

I remember my heart was pounding, and a dozen things were running through my head. Bulletproof was still just an idea at that point, and I knew enough about guns from GTA to know all firearms are not created equal. Hell, looking back on it, an AK-47 wouldntve been unrealistic to run into.

After ten minutes of telling myself how stupid this was, how ridiculous I looked, and that I was probably heading out to my death, I got a running start and jumped off the roof. I focused and felt the small twist between my shoulders. The cape caught the wind and the umbrella arms snapped open.

And I was flying.

I crossed Beverly and Oakwood, sailed over the hill and landed on the roof of a laundromat on Melrose, just past Normandie, six blocks north of my starting point. As far as I could tell, no one had seen me. I launched myself back into the air and this time I kicked off a phone pole when I started to lose momentum, flying right over the 101 freeway. I leaned on the cape and swung back toward Hollywood.