We have another cool story for you this week, once again set in the High School Heroes Universe. This particular story has what might be one of the most powerfully dangerous teens, one whose imagination is the key to his powers. Imagine anything you can think of becoming reality. Now, imagine this power in the hands of an adolescent boy. He might not mean to be a danger, but that doesn’t stop him from being dangerous.
Read though this story, and see what happens when this boy is confronted with a threat.
Without further ado, we present…
“Yo! Eagan, wait up!”
I stopped and turned toward the voice, nearly getting trampled by the mob of students rushing to get out the doors. The last bell of the day rang and the populace of the school became a mindless throng of mutants, dead set on being the first to obtain their freedom. The situation was made worse by the fact that it was Friday, and we wouldn’t have to grace these hallowed halls of learning for another two days.
“What’s up, Nate?” I called back to my friend.
Nathan Samuelson waded through the sea of students. “I thought we were gonna hit Mo’s for a sandwich.”
“Oh sorry,” I groaned. “I can’t. Mom says I gotta get home and watch Susie. I completely forgot to tell you.” I hated missing time with my friends, but my mom did so much for me, I couldn’t bring myself to complain when she wanted something from me. I’d do anything to make her life a little easier.
Plus, she paid me really well to watch my sister, which meant I didn’t need to get a real job.
“No prob,” he said, but I could feel his disappointment. “We’ll get something tomorrow then.”
“You know it.”
We walked through the thinning crowd and out the doors onto West 102nd Street. The West Side skyline greeted us as we stepped through the threshold and got our first whiff of free air. It’s not that I hated school, it’s more that I couldn’t stand being cooped up inside a stuffy building for seven hours – especially not on a gorgeous day like today.
I sighed as I realized I’d be a prisoner of my apartment all afternoon too, babysitting my little sister while my mom worked. What a waste of a day.
Nathan froze where he stood. “Oh damn, Eddie, there she is.”
I followed his gaze, but I already knew who he was looking at – Missy Parker. Not the prettiest girl in school, but damn close. My unfortunate friend developed a stutter every time he was around her. He had the biggest crush I think I had ever seen.
“Go and talk to her,” I insisted, knowing full well that he would never muster up enough courage.
“I can’t!” He turned his back on Missy as if she would know we were talking about her. “Think I wanna be shot down in front of everyone?”
“What if I could guarantee you wouldn’t be shot down?”
“How could you do that?” He sounded doubtful, but hopeful at the same time.
“Look, I’ll make you a deal.” I pulled out my wallet and flashed a fifty at him. “I’ll give you this if you go over there, and ask her out on a date – for tonight – and she turns you down.”
He looked at the fifty, and then back at Missy. I knew he still thought he didn’t have a chance in Hell with her, but the fifty bucks was too much to pass up. He nodded, then swallowed – twice. Then, he strolled over to her.
I pictured their conversation in my head.
“Hey, Missy?” he would say in a meek voice, barely loud enough to get her attention.
Her two girlfriends would giggle, but Missy would turn to him and say, “Yeah?”
“I… I w-was won…dering…” he would begin, nervously scratching the back of his head. “Would you… and y-you don’t have to… but would you, maybe… wanna go see a movie tonight?”
The two girls would giggle again, both their faces turning redder than Nathan’s. But Missy wouldn’t giggle. She would smile at him, and nod her head. “You are too cute,” she would say. “Meet me at eight?”
And Nathan’s jaw would drop, as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard.
I began walking, knowing my friend wouldn’t need me around anymore. When I passed Nathan, I heard the exact words I’d imagined coming from Missy’s mouth.
“You are too cute. Meet me at eight?”
I smiled, and then sighed while I made my way down 102nd, toward Amsterdam Avenue. At least someone will be having fun tonight, I thought.
I didn’t know where the ability came from. About a year ago, I discovered it. I’d imagined myself getting an A on my history test, and even though I didn’t study, or paid attention for that matter, the test paper had an A when my teacher returned it. I thought it was a joke, but it kept happening. The cafeteria having barbecue chicken pizza for lunch, my math teacher forgetting to collect our homework, and a bunch of other almost insignificant things that I imagined happened. So, I kept doing it.
I was almost on the corner of Amsterdam when a woman stood in my path.
She looked to be about in her early twenties, and wore a business suit – black – with long pants and a jacket. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail. Her sunglasses totally obscured her eyes, but even if I couldn’t see them, I could tell they were just as beautiful as the rest of her. There was only one word to describe this woman: HOT!
I was so stunned by her looks, that I hardly paid attention when she asked, “Edward Eagan?”
Once I recovered my senses, I managed to stammer out, “Uhhh… yeah.”
What she did next was more than enough to knock me back into reality. The woman flashed a golden badge at me. “I’m going to need you to come with me.”
Of course, I thought. It couldn’t have just been a hot woman wanting my number. The badge read: MHDA. I couldn’t say what the letters stood for, but the fact that they didn’t say NYPD, FBI or CIA, made me fully understand what she was here for. I guess they figured if they threw a good looking girl at me, I would submit willingly.
This wasn’t the first agent from the agency with the strange initials. Two weeks ago, another such agent knocked on my door while I was watching Susie after school. At the time, I thought I’d done something wrong. So, when the man asked to come in to talk to me, while I was hesitant, I agreed – I didn’t want to get into any trouble.
I quickly realized he didn’t want to arrest me. He told me that he knew about the things I could do. “There’s a place for people like you,” he’d explained. “We would like to extend an invitation for you to join us.”
Then, he handed me a business card. It read “MHDA” and had a phone number scrolled across the bottom. That same card still rested in my wallet at that moment – right where I’d left it while trying to decide whether or not I should call. The biggest reason holding me back was the fact that I couldn’t just leave my mother and sister like that. Without me, they’d be lost.
There was also something about these MHDA agents I didn’t trust. They think I didn’t notice the black SUV parked outside my apartment building, and the strange men they had standing on the corner near my school. I ignored them, but I knew they were watching me – like I was some criminal or something. But I hadn’t done anything wrong.
Even if I had thoughts about going to this “place” the agent had talked about, the way they’d kept me under surveillance while they waited for a decision, would have made me think otherwise.
With the appearance of the hot woman though, I got the message they were tired of waiting.
Looks like I won’t be babysitting Susie today after all. At the same time the thought ran through my head, I dropped my schoolbag and did what any fifteen year old would do in that situation – took off down Amsterdam as fast as I could.
The suddenness of my reaction, and the fact that I’d imagined my escape beforehand, made it impossible for her to catch me. Tires screeched behind me as I bolted down the sidewalk, pushing through the students, still milling about, and running for my freedom.
I didn’t know where to go. I couldn’t run home. They knew where I lived. So, I took a turn down 101st and headed to the only place I could think of: Central Park. It was only three blocks from here, and I was pretty confident that once I got off the streets, I could easily lose them.
I turned off my cell phone, knowing from movies I’d seen that they would be able to track me if it was turned on.
I sprinted the whole way, only slowing down as I reached the edge of the park and the cover of the trees. I looked back over my shoulder. The woman wasn’t there. I couldn’t believe my luck. There was no way it could’ve been that easy.
Casually marching into the park, I couldn’t think of what to do next. It was too dangerous to go home, and I wasn’t at all eager to spend the rest of my life in a cell – the “place” I was now confident they were talking about. It wasn’t even as if I had done anything wrong. I was just… different.
I followed the path down to the baseball and soccer fields, a very familiar place. This was where our school played our baseball games, and being that I was pretty much the star of our team, I’d come here an awful lot. Sitting on a rock and looking out on the fields, I wondered if I would ever play again.
Not knowing what to do, I simply sat there to collect my thoughts. What would my mom do with Susie when I didn’t show up? She was going to be angry, but I would rather her be mad at me, than worrying about me being carted off to some prison.
She didn’t need to be involved. She had enough to worry about – raising two kids by herself being on the top of that list.
Tires screeched to a halt on the street behind me. Somehow, I knew that woman—whoever she was—had caught up with me. Ending my rest, I began running again. I headed south, toward the reservoir, the biggest lake in the park.
If she wasn’t giving up, I would give her enough reasons to. I wasn’t a violent person by nature, but this was a matter of self-preservation.
The mind was a powerful tool. Mine was more powerful than most. I knew it could be dangerous and I was now determined to show the woman and the agents chasing me just how dangerous it could be.
A long narrow bridge spanned the reservoir and led to the southern part of the park. As I reached the northern gatehouse, I looked over my shoulder. Four men in black combat gear, carrying some rather mean looking sub-machineguns were closing on me.
If I could have, I would have leaped off the ground and taken to the skies. However, there were two limitations to my powers I’d discovered so far. One of them: flying – the other: raising the dead. Being told I couldn’t do these things since birth put some sort of block on them in my brain. If I couldn’t believe it was real, it couldn’t become real.
Instead of flying, I ran through the gatehouse and onto the bridge, pushing baffled people out of my way. I made it a good fifty feet down the bridge when screams came from behind me. The men had apparently reached the gatehouse already, and the sudden appearance of men, dressed in black and carrying guns, must have given even the most courageous person some fright.
I didn’t look back as I sprinted across the bridge. I was an open target as long as I stayed on that path, but I’d picked the reservoir on purpose. I closed my eyes and concentrated. It had to be absolutely real or it wouldn’t work.
Just as I grew the mental image in my head, a loud and powerful voice behind me shouted, “Freeze!”
For some reason I was compelled to do what he said. I stopped running and instinctively put my hands over my head. Footsteps rushed up behind me, but I continued concentrating on the image in my head.
The heavy footfalls of the men slowly came to a stop. Only then did I reopen my eyes. I looked to my right. Floating now, not sixty feet from the side of the bridge, was a pirate ship, complete with the Jolly Roger flapping wildly in the breeze. It was just as I had imagined it.
The ship had obviously taken the men by surprise, because all four stood, gawking at it, their rifles lowered to their sides.
With them distracted, I took off running again. I looked back only when I heard the unmistakable boom of cannon fire, and the subsequent exploding of the bridge behind me. There was a gaping hole now in the bridge that would be impossible for anyone to cross.
I turned again and continued running toward the south gatehouse. The men turned back the way they came to come around the edge of the reservoir. The pirate ship faded away into non-existence as quickly as it had formed.
Once through the gatehouse, I again stopped running. I needed to catch my breath. If those men were going to run around the reservoir, it would take them a few minutes to reach me.
I’d never imagined anything so big as a ship before. It had taken its toll on me and I felt both physically and mentally exhausted.
Maybe the MHDA, whoever they were, wanted to study me – to find out what made me tick. But being dissected wasn’t an option for me either.
They would never get me. I was only limited by the power of my own imagination. The image has to look and feel absolutely real before it can become a reality. Like the flying thing – I’ve never been able to dream myself into flight, which would have come in handy right about now.
My mother knew nothing about my ability. I made sure she never found out – another thing I did for her. It was my way of protecting her. The amount of stress she’d have if she knew I could make pretty much anything I wanted to happen, actually happen – I think she’d kill herself.
It was so hard sometimes. When dad left, mom started working extra hours at her job. She would leave work just long enough to pick Susie up from school and then wait for me to come home. I didn’t like it sometimes, but she did it so we could keep our apartment, and stay in the “good” schools. She always made sure we had what we needed: food, clothes, a good cell phone. She never stopped sacrificing for us – even going so far as to work nearly eighty hours a week at the end of the year so we’d have good Christmas gifts. I knew it was difficult for her, but she did it because she loved us. So, she would never hear me complain about watching my sister.
I’d tried using my powers to find my dad once. It would have made mom so happy to have him in her life again. I think she really blamed herself because he’d left, which wasn’t true at all.
No matter how hard I tried, no matter how many different ways I imagined him walking back through our front door, he never appeared. It was how I learned about the second limitation to my powers. I hadn’t realized it at first, of course. Until, I decided to imagine a news report in the paper about my dad. It came in the paper the next day, buried on the tenth page. He’d been gunned down outside a gas station in Toledo, apparently after ticking off some drug dealer here in New York.
I couldn’t help but wonder ever since if he’d left to protect us. The truth was, I’d never know, because I couldn’t bring him back. I never told my mother of course – better for her to think he was some jerk that walked out for no reason than to discover the truth. There were still many nights I knew she thought about him, where he was and what he was doing. She still loved him, both of us did – I think Susie was too young when he left to remember him.
One night, a few months ago, we were watching TV, laughing at some stupid show I can’t remember the title of, and she suddenly stopped and started crying. I don’t know what it was that set her off, but once she started, I began too. We sat there, hugging each other for the longest time, both missing him, but only I knowing the truth.
“When you’re old enough,” she told me, sniffling as she did. “I want you to find him. I know you can.”
“Okay, mom,” I said – not really meaning it. I wouldn’t go looking for him, because there wasn’t anything to look for.
I managed to catch my breath, and began walking further into the park. I continued south until I saw Cleopatra’s Needle looming over me. I don’t know why people go all gaga over the Washington Monument in D.C – it looks exactly the same as the Needle, only bigger.
As I looked at the Needle, I figured a great place to lose the idiots chasing me would be across the street, inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art. With all the rooms and corridors in that place, not to mention the thousands of people sure to be inside, it would be perfect. Plus, I doubted those men would open fire in such a crowded place.
I spotted a tour group just entering the museum and strolled through the entrance, hiding myself among them. Once inside, I split away and meandered through one of the medieval galleries.
It was only a few minutes later that I heard the screams come from the entrance. Damn. How had they caught up with me so quickly? I needed to find a place to hide, and fast.
I moved away from the screams and found myself in the “Hall of Arms” – at least that’s what I called it. I had no idea what the museum’s actual term for the room was, but it was where they exhibited all the old suits of armor.
They really kept the things in excellent condition. If I hadn’t known any better, I would have said that most of the pieces were brand new. The armor was still shiny, and with a few exceptions, none even looked dented, which suggested they never saw battle. As the heavy footsteps approached, I knew that was soon going to change.
There were very few people in the room, which was for the best, because what was about to happen would probably give most people a heart attack. I closed my eyes and imagined all the suits of armor coming to life. I kept my eyes closed and concentrated on that one thought, forcing it to become a reality in my head.
I heard the scrape of metal on metal, and the chinking of rattling chains. I opened my eyes, as several of the suits stepped off their displays. One of the samurai suits broke through the glass with its katana and jumped out of its display in a battle ready stance.
The men were approaching, so I felt it was time to make my exit. As I ran out the opposite side of the room, I passed by a pair of Japanese tourists, posing excitedly and snapping photos of each other in front of the animated armor.
Okay, so maybe I was wrong about giving someone a heart attack.
Even the Japanese tourists ran, clearing the room, when the suits of armor started attacking the MHDA men though. The men, doing what came naturally to them, fired at the suits in defense. Not that it did them much good – since there was technically nothing to kill.
The gunshots were more than enough to scare off everyone else in the museum. Once the first shots were fired, everyone began panicking, and a scrum, not unlike what I had seen at my school less than twenty minutes earlier, formed at each of the exits.
Instead of heading for one of those exits, which probably would have been expected of me, I went for the northern wing, where most of the Egyptian artifacts were held. If the armor wasn’t enough to scare them off – maybe a mummy would!
Walking through the panicked crowd wasn’t easy. It was like being a salmon, trying to swim upstream. I might have been able to visualize an easy path through them, but was much too weak.
I finally entered the large glass room. It held a small stone building that I assumed must have been a tomb a couple thousand years ago. It had a large pool in the middle of the room as well, that had large black statues, made to look like pharaohs, surrounding it. The room was completely empty by now, and the distant sounds of gunfire echoed off the glass walls and ceiling. If they came looking for me here, I would just imagine one of the statues flinging itself through the glass, then escape back into the park.
I really hoped it wouldn’t come to that. It was bad enough I’d had a hand in dismantling those medieval artifacts. I didn’t want to be responsible for destroying these even older Egyptian ones as well.
Eventually, the gunfire stopped, and an eerie silence, never found in New York, settled over the building.
I wished I could’ve called my mother. By now she had to be angry with me for being so late. I was sure that she must have tried calling my cell several times. Since it was turned off, she wouldn’t have been able to reach me. I wondered if I would ever be able to talk to her again.
Now, I wished I had told her about my powers. The only time I ever used them around my apartment was when I babysat Susie and needed to keep her calm. There’s nothing like watching a five-year old prance around the living room with her favorite cartoon character. Of course when she told my mother these things, Mom chalked it up to the imagination of a preschooler. Susie and I knew better.
I would probably never see my little sister again either. Even if I escaped, I would never be able to go home. I would have to run. It sucked – but I would never drag my family into this.
Even as I thought about where I would go, I knew that somehow my family would be dragged into it anyway. These people chasing me would question my mother to no end, making her think I was a criminal. They would follow my mother and my sister – if they weren’t already – to make sure they weren’t secretly meeting with me. It would be unbearable for them, especially my mother. I couldn’t put her through that.
I pulled my cell from my pocket and switched it back on. It wouldn’t take them long to trace my position, so I quickly found the “Home” entry and pressed send. On the first ring, my mother picked up.
“Eddie, where are you? I’ve been trying to call you. I need to get to work, and now I’m going to be late. If I find out you’ve just been hanging out with Nathan, I’m gonna—”
“Mom,” I interrupted. “Listen. I’m not coming home.”
“What do you mean you’re not coming home? Edward Eagan if—”
“Mom, just listen. I don’t have a lot of time.” I sighed. “Remember what you said I should do when I was old enough?”
“What do you—”
“I’m going to find him, Mom. I’m going to find him and bring him home.” Tears streamed down my face as I thought about what I was doing. This was still going to kill her, but it was less horrible than telling her the truth.
As if on cue, the four men entered the room the way I’d come in. Through the only other exit, came six more, all dressed the same, and all carrying the same type of sub-machinegun.
“Eddie, what do you mean? You come home this instant!” I could practically hear the tears echoing mine through the phone.
“Sorry, Mom,” I said, as calmly as I could. “I’ve got to go. Tell Susie I love her and I’ll miss her. And I love you too.”
Before my mother could protest further, I hung up and threw the phone on the floor. I never took my eyes off the men surrounding me. Like my father, I was sacrificing myself to protect the ones I loved.
The woman then came strolling into the room, her shoes tapping on the marble floor with each step. “Meta-Human Detection Agency,” she said in a very formal business tone. “Since I’m sure you’re wondering what the initials on my badge stand for.” She stopped about six feet away from me. Smart – just out of striking distance. Not that it mattered, if I wanted I could always imagine the floor melting under her feet.
“Nice to know.” I tried going for sarcastic, but my voice shook too much.
“Are you ready to give up? Or would you rather destroy more of New York first?”
“No, I’m done. Just leave my family out of this.”
She smiled. Not the kind of friendly, warm smile a friend or relative might give. This was more a smile of satisfaction, like she’d just claimed victory in a game of chess. “You have yourself a deal, Mr. Eagan.”
She held out her right hand, as if we would seal the deal with a handshake. I didn’t even think about not accepting it. I took a step toward her and held out my own hand. As soon as our hands clasped together, her left hand swung around and jabbed me in the neck with a very large needle. Before I could react, everything below my neck went numb and I collapsed onto the ground.
I looked up at the beautiful woman, smiling down at me. When she spoke, her voice sounded ghostly, as if the words weren’t coming from her mouth. “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. We’re going to take you to a place where you won’t be a danger to others.”
I’ve never been a danger to others before.
The last thing I could remember thinking, before I blacked out was, I may not have my freedom. But at least I was able to keep my family safe.
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