Chapter 8

Cole woke to the machines' beeping in a chorus of mild irritation. He cracked his eyes open, slowly adjusting to the light. The machines turned angry, and a plump nurse entered to switch off the alarm. Outside his window, he saw the upper part of a familiar white obelisk.

“Good afternoon, sleepyhead,” the nurse said. “If you wait a moment, I’ll go tell your friends that you’re awake.”

He sat up and looked around. The hospital room was standard except that there was no I.V. drip going into his hand. The only tube on him ran up into his nose. He reached for it and pulled gingerly, but it stayed firmly in place.

A lower-pitched lady’s voice called from the door. “I wouldn’t tug too firmly on that nasal medication applicator. The docs would have to go up there with tongs.”

He looked up, and his eyes flared. A seven-foot-tall woman walked through the door in a golden-chrome suit of armor that covered her arms and torso, matching her wavy orange-gold hair and topaz eyes. Behind her walked a middle-aged woman with a salt-and-pepper pixie haircut, wearing a grey pantsuit and holding a tablet in the crook of her arm.

The golden woman offered her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Cazagaro. Welcome to Washington, D.C. My name is Titania, and I’m the leader of the Ladies of Liberty. You might have heard about us?”

Cole shook Titania’s hand and nodded, his mouth open. The Ladies were the country’s most powerful superheroes, and Titania was the group's most powerful member. The hairs on his skin near her seemed to stand on end, and he could see the air just above her skin shimmer. She smiled, but she didn’t tilt her head down as she spoke to him.

He blinked. “Yeah, you’re on the news all the time. Thanks for saving Cape Cod last year.”

“It’s all part of the job,” she said. “I’d like you to meet Agent Withcote. She’s an intelligence officer working in the US government.”

Withcote gave him a firm handshake with her slender hand. “Nice to meet you, son.”

She pulled up a chair with her back to Cole, swung her leg over it, and sat down. “Now, Cole, we need to talk to you about Aphelia and your interaction with her.”

“Last week, she landed in The Great Marsh in Ipswich,” he said. “Tephra flew down and was about to kill her, and while she was powering up, I found I was much stronger. I punched Tephra in the jaw and pulled Aphelia out of the crater. Then some soldiers came in a helicopter and took her away.”

Withcote lowered her reading glasses. “That was you? We’ve been trying to pull that bit of info from her ever since.”

Titania held up her hands. “We’re more interested in why she threw your truck in the ocean and punched you so hard you dug a trench. When we received a call from local police, they were digging you out of the sand.”

He frowned. “Aphelia didn’t punch me. Shannon did, a girl I met at a coffee shop. Shannon was mad I didn’t invite her to a party and had gone home with another girl. She came up and chewed me out, so I broke it off with her. The girl goes crazy and kicks my truck into the water and decks me!”

Titania raised an eyebrow. “This Shannon, did she have blonde hair and blue eyes that glow occasionally?”

Cole stared at Titania, his eyes slowly widening. He slapped his forehead with his palm. “That would explain a lot.”

Withcote nodded. “It does indeed.”

Titania pointed at his nose. “We suspected you were a supe, but we confirmed it when the doctors tried to use syringes, and every needle broke. We had to bring in tech to treat invulnerable supes by spraying medication up your nose.”

Withcote flipped through something on her tablet. “We don’t have you on any of our records. You’re a true late bloomer.”

Titania reached out and placed a hand on his shoulders. “You’re the first male supe in history to take a punch from an S-ranker and live.”

“Where is she?”

Withcote looked at Titania and said, “She tends to go AWOL when she loses her cool. Aphelia doesn’t know you’re here.”

The nurse came to his other side, disconnected the tube running into his nose, and he felt it loosen. He pulled it out and handed it to the nurse. “Well, Titania, that’s great and all, but I really need to get back home and finish that stone wall.”

Titania’s fingers gripped his shoulder harder. “What? Cole, the country needs you. We need every super-abled person to join up with Project Veltio.”

He looked at her hand. “Project …what?”

“Veltio,” Withcote said. She typed on her tablet, then showed a black-and-white video of men and women in ranks with the words “Secret - US Government” under it. “After the start of the Cold War, the US and other countries began experiments with various forms of radiation from technology found at UFO crash sites. Those that blossomed became some of the famous heroes you read in your textbooks.” The video showed recruits bending I-beams and shooting lasers from their eyes.

“What happened to the dropouts?”

Titania removed her hand from his shoulder and frowned. “Some were given a hero’s burial while others went back into society. We believe that you may be descended from those discharged volunteers.”

Withcote pulled the tablet back, stood up, and walked to the window. “If what you say is true, not only did you gain the power to act, but you ran in and did the right thing when you saved Aphelia. We need more men like you out there. The world is becoming more dangerous; new threats to civilization crop up every year.” She turned around. “So will you help us?”

Cole sat up and took a deep breath. “Fuck, no.”

The overhead lights flickered, and the space around Titania seemed to bend and ripple for a moment. The supe frowned, narrowing her eyes. “Excuse me?” Her voice sounded like seven people talking in unison.

He winced at Titania’s theatrics, then got out of bed. “I am no hero. I see someone about to get killed and try to help. A few days later, I end up in the hospital from the very same person I saved. Does that sound like a good reason to turn you down?” He searched the room’s cabinets, then found a clear plastic bag with his possessions. He tore the bag open and got a whiff of ocean.

Agent Withcote curled her fingers into a claw and gestured towards Cole. “Do you have any idea of how rare you are? How much of a difference you can make in the world?”

Cole pulled out his phone and checked if it still worked, pumping his fist silently when the screen lit up. “They’re a dime a dozen, Agent. Hell, Boston has a damned werewolf beating up pickpockets on the T.”

Titania stood up, the room filling with the sound of discharging static electricity. “Cole, you’re not the average male supe. Aphelia should have turned you into paté with that punch. I’m asking you to reconsider.”

Cole started to check flights on his phone while they waited for him to answer. He pushed his lips to the side. “Would you guys be able to spot me some cash to buy a plane ticket home? It’s going to be two hundred dollars max.”

Agent Withcote folded her arms and laughed smugly. “Fuck, no.”

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