Into the Fire“Hold still,” the seamstress said. She was kneeling at Mike’s feet, trying to get the material to fit properly around his ankles. She slid a pin into the bunched cloth above each heel and then stood up. “It looks great,” Missy Barnes said. “Turn around.” Mike spun slowly, showing off his new superhero costume to Missy, who the society had assigned to him as his personal liaison. He was on the fifty fourth floor of a downtown skyscraper. One wall was all glass and showed a spectacular view of the city of Los Angeles. A set of three mirrors, two angled forward, like you see in a department store, showed the all white figure with the sunburst on its chest. It was just like Mike had drawn in his notebook. He drew it again for the society people and they agreed it was a cool design. They had even provided white gloves and shoes. The shoes blended in with the costume, basically sneakers with elastic tops that pulled up over the ankles. Tom said they were pretty standard, and came in colors to match almost any costume. Mike had joked about getting them from a Superhero Supply Catalog, until Tom placed a copy of that exact catalog into his hands. “You think superheroes all sit at home and sew their own costumes?” Tom asked. Mike looked at himself in the mirrors as he turned. He agreed with Missy, he looked great. The only thing missing was something for his eyes. He had drawn the costume with no eye holes, but he knew that wouldn’t work in reality. When Mike turned his face to the mirrors, his ordinary brown eyes looked out through holes in the mask. Missy put her hand on Mike’s shoulder and shivers went through him. Missy was the hottest woman Mike had ever met. She was probably ten years older than he was and she set off every male nerve ending in his body when she touched him, or looked at him with rapt attention as if he was the most interesting man in the world. “Look out world,” Missy said, “here comes Sun Man!” “I still don’t know about that name,” Mike said. “I decided against it before.” “It’s perfect, though,” Missy said. “You glow like the sun. You’re as strong as solar energy. You bring light to the world.” “What do you think?” Mike asked the seamstress. She was a short Filipino woman who had talked about her sister back in Manila as she measured and pinned. “Take off so I can sew now,” she said. “OK,” Mike shrugged. He reached back to grab the back of the mask and pull it over his head, but something caught his attention. In the sky over L.A. Several helicopters were hovering. Each one was still, like a wasp pinned to a board. They were arranged in a semicircle, obviously pointing cameras at one central location. It didn’t take long for Mike to figure out what the helicopters were so interested in. Black smoke rose from a building of five or six stories, right next to the freeway. Flames filled the windows of the building and threw sparks into the sky. “Hey, kid,” Tom Nelson said as he entered the room. “These might work for your eyes.” Mike turned and grabbed the mirrored sunglasses that Tom offered. They had an elastic strap attached. He pulled them on over the mask. “Looks like I have my first job,” Mike said. He looked at himself again in the mirrors. The sunglasses wrapped around his face and were a little more bug-eyed than Mike liked, but they would do for now. “You’re not ready, Mike,” Missy said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Your costume isn’t even finished.” “Let the fire department handle it, kid,” Tom chimed in. “That’s their job.” “Show me the way to the roof or I’m going through this window,” Mike said, gesturing at the glass wall. “You know I can do it.” “All right, all right,” Tom said. “This way.” Tom and Mike took the elevator to the top floor, and then some stairs up to the roof. Tom entered a code into a keypad and a door opened onto a windswept expanse of cement. A helipad was marked on the roof. That was interesting, Mike thought, but not what he was there for. At the edge, with cold wind blowing through him and whipping Tom’s hair, Mike said, “A hero’s gotta do what a hero’s gotta do.” “You were thinking up that line all the way up, weren’t you?” Tom asked. “Yup,” Mike said, and threw himself off the building. He had wanted to try something since he learned he could fly. He had seen base jumpers on TV fall as far as they could before they activated their chutes. He thought he could do something similar by not turning on his light until he had fallen most of the way to the ground. Then he would dramatically fly up and away instead of floating to earth. He had become used to being high in the air, but falling was another story. It was the scariest thing he had ever done. He managed to push away panic long enough to see people on the ground look up and react. He turned on his light and felt the power support him and give him the ability to lift himself higher at will. He flew over the gawkers and smiled to himself to see their awed reaction. Being super was FUN! Orienting himself and standing upright in the air, glowing like a miniature sun, Mike found the black smoke of the fire and headed towards it. Mike’s life had changed a lot in the last two days. After sleeping off his homeless nights, he had awoken to another great meal in his hotel suite. Then Mr. Bromgren had visited, and introduced Mike to Missy Barnes and Tom Nelson. Mr. Bromgren said Missy was Mike’s “personal liaison” to the Society for Civic Duty, the group that Bromgren represented. She would get Mike anything he needed. Missy warmly shook his hand, and said she was so honored to work with the next great hero. Mike could barely think when she was talking to him. Tom was going to be his trainer, Mr. Bromgren said. Mike looked at the balding forty-ish man and, though he didn’t say it out loud, was skeptical. What could this guy teach him? Tom grinned and, as if he knew what Mike was thinking, closed his eyes and stiffened. His skin rippled and started to change color. He became shiny silver, reflecting everything around him. His head became completely bald, and as shiny as the rest of him. “Chrome!” Mike said, delighted. “You were in the Protectors! When I was a kid, I had a Protectors poster with you in it.” “When you were a kid?” Chrome asked. “You mean last week?” At first Mike was stung by the joke, but he saw that Chrome was smiling. Even his teeth were shiny metal. He looked a little weird wearing brown pants, an open collared shirt and a sport jacket instead of the red and yellow costume from the poster, but it was definitely him. “What happened? You kind of disappeared.“ The shiny figure shimmered and the balding, unimpressive Tom Nelson reappeared. “I blew out a knee in a battle with Vector,” Tom said. “I couldn’t walk for months.” “And the Protectors dumped you?” Mike asked. “Can’t save the world with a cripple on the team, kid. Don’t worry about it; I still get a small pension.” “But -” Mike said, his shining childhood image of America’s premiere superhero team beginning to tarnish. “It’s all about you now, Sun Man,” Tom said. “We need to get you ready for the big time.” Missy said she had some other business, and vanished into an elevator. For the rest of the day, Tom took Mike around to various parts of the building. First Mike got a thorough medical exam. As he sat naked and shivering on the cold metal table, Dr. Spangler, a young man who looked barely older than Mike himself, did all the standard doctor stuff. He was particularly interested in the amulet embedded in Mike’s chest. “All those powers came from this?” he asked, tapping the disc with a pen. “I guess so; I sure didn’t have them before.” “Any idea how it works?” “No.” “Where’d you find it?” “Camping out in the desert one night. I felt something when I lay down so I dug a little and found it.” “Very interesting,” Dr. Spangler said. “Hold still so I can see this.” Spangler looked at the markings on the amulet with a magnifying glass and sketched them out on a piece of paper. What that had to do with Mike’s health wasn’t clear. After that Tom took Mike far down to a basement level of the building. They entered an enormous room that was well lit, but almost empty. A section of brick wall stood in one area, a steel panel about eight feet tall stood on one edge, held in place by metal braces. A tarp covered something in a corner. “So what can you do?” Tom asked. “What?” “What are your powers, Mr. Superhero? Show me what you got.” “Uh,” Mike said, thinking. “Flying, plus I lifted a big storage container and flew with it.” “That’s it?” Tom said. “I guess.” “I once knew a guy who called himself The Human Armadillo who could do more than that. Let’s try a few things.” Tom walked over to the brick wall. He turned to Mike. “Punch through this wall.” Mike walked up to the wall. He hadn’t actually punched anything, except in imaginary battles with super villains. “I’ll try.” He turned on his light. “Whoa,” Tom said, shading his eyes with one hand. “You should add blinding people to your list of powers.” He produced a pair of sunglasses from his jacket and put them on. Now shining with a light that made the ceiling fluorescents look dark, Mike tentatively punched out at the brick wall. He was pretty sure that he could do it, that was a pretty standard superhero thing. He half expected to hurt his hand badly. With a satisfying crunch, a hole appeared in the wall and several bricks fell to the floor. “Good,” Tom said. “Now try the steel.” Mike approached the big steel plate with some confidence, but not much. When he punched, he got a hole, as before. “Now rip it.” The steel ripped liked cardboard when Mike grabbed it and pulled. “Great,” Tom said. “You’re outclassing The Human Armadillo already.” Mike turned just in time to see Tom throw a hammer at him. He ducked and raised his hands over his head. “Mighty Sun Man Cowers in Fear,” Tom said. “What?” Mike asked. “Tomorrow’s headline if you do that in public. Did the hammer hit you?” “Uh, no. It missed.” “It didn’t miss. It disappeared.” “What do you mean?” “I mean it vanished, went away, disappeared.” Tom produced an automatic pistol from under his jacket and fired three rounds at Mike. The loud reports reverberated off the walls of the large room. “ARE YOU CRAZY?!” Mike shouted. “Are you dead?” Tom asked. “No.” “The bullets went into your light and blinked out. Did you feel anything?” Mike passed his hands over his torso, feeling for bullet holes. “Nothing.” “You might make a hero yet. Let’s try one more thing.” Tom walked to the corner of the room and pulled the tarp off of a large military machine gun on a tripod. “You have got to be kidding,” Mike said. Tom wasn’t. He emptied a full belt of ammo and Sun Man stood unharmed. Mike was impressed with himself. He had no idea before that he was that bulletproof and strong. Tom came up to Mike, pulling something out of his ears. He saw Mike looking at what he was doing. “Ear plugs,” he said. “Never shoot a gun without ear protection.” “What about offensive capabilities?” Tom asked. “Huh?” “Beams or blasts, rays, that kind of thing. From your hands or eyes?” “Not that I know of.” “OK. We’ll work on it next time. You can turn off that light now.” Mike let the light go. As soon as he did, Tom reached up and slapped him across the face. “Ooooow! Why’d you do that?” Mike put a hand to his burning cheek. “That’s bad, kid,” Tom said. “My advice, never turn off the light when you’re in costume. Never.” That wasn’t the end of Mike’s busy day. He returned to his hotel, via limo even though it was just two blocks from the Society building, and settled onto a couch in his suite. He picked up the remote and was about to turn on the big flat screen TV, when there was a knock on the door. Opening the door, Mike found Missy standing in the hall, wearing an outfit with a short skirt and a tiny jacket, that made her look even hotter, if that was possible. “You aren’t ready?“ Missy asked. “Ready for what?“ “They didn’t tell you?“ Missy bustled into the suite, frowning. Mike closed the door. “You must have something better to wear,“ Missy said. “I don’t have any other clothes. My backpack was stolen.“ “All right, I’ll take care of it. Just get washed up. We’re going to a party.“ Take care of it she did. When Mike emerged from the shower, an entire wardrobe had been delivered. Missy fussed over him until she had chosen a look she called “rich boy casual.“ They took the limo up into the Hollywood Hills, into narrow, winding streets that often weren’t wide enough for two cars to pass. In the next few hours, Mike met two famous movie directors, three TV stars, one from a sitcom he hated and the other two from a crime investigation show that he watched occasionally. There were rumors that Paris Hilton was going to show up, but she never did. It didn’t matter; there were lots of other beautiful women, some that even surpassed Missy. Mike ate foods that he had never heard of, all passed around by Hispanic men in catering uniforms. He drank more than he had ever drunk before in his life. No one cared that he was several years shy of legal drinking age. He woke up in the morning in his hotel suite, with no memory of how he got back. The knock on the door that woke him up hurt his head. Tom pushed his way in when Mike opened the door a little. “C’mon,“ he said, “You have an appointment.“ They met with the seamstress, who measured Mike thoroughly and started to fit him with white cloth, some of which had the sunburst symbol already printed on it. Less than two hours later, Mike threw himself into thin air, wearing his Sun Man costume for the first time. Finding the fire wasn’t hard. The black smoke and the burning smell provided an easy trail. It wasn’t very far from the Society building, right next to the 10 freeway. Mike paused in mid air when he realized that small flakes were falling all around him. Was it snowing? He had ever lived in a place where it snowed, but he had seen snow in lots of movies. In just a moment, Mike figured out that the snow was ash from the fire. He felt a little silly, then continued on towards the burning building. He didn’t have any way to see inside the building; at least he didn’t think he did. Tom was right; they needed to figure out all his powers. He wasn’t sure he would survive going into the fire, either, but it seemed likely. One of his childhood heroes was The Fireman, who walked into fire and was ever harmed. The least Mike could do was try. He went through a wall on the top floor. Bricks exploded into the industrial space, and Mike hovered above the floor. The whole floor was one big space, with machines that processed cloth in various stages of production. There was no visible fire, but it was very hot and the air burned Mike’s lungs. “Hey!“ a voice shouted. Mike looked towards it and saw four women coming out from behind a large machine. They were carrying another woman, who was passed out. There were too many of them to carry all at once. If he left any behind the fire and smoke might kill them before he got back. The women came close and started talking to him, but he didn’t understand them. They were all Asian. “Anyone speak English?” he asked. They kept speaking Chinese or whatever it was. He could hear the panic in their voices, though. He remembered the forty foot container that he had lifted. He had spread some kind of field around it so it was stable as he flew with it. He had forgotten to mention that to Tom. Could he fly the women together with the field around them? That didn’t seem right. He looked around. There was a metal desk next to a column. Mike walked to it and patted it. They looked uncertain. He took hold of the woman who was passed out and laid her on the desk. He then sat on the edge of the desk. He stood up and gestured. One woman sat on the desk. She looked scared but determined. They were all coughing and Mike knew he had to get them out of there fast. Mike nodded to show he approved, but then realized that all they saw was a glowing figure they could hardly look at. He patted the desk again. The other women sat on the desk too. Mike hoped this would work and he wasn’t about to dump them on the floor. He grabbed the desk and tried to summon the stabilizing field. He felt it come out of him and surround the desk and the women. He lifted and heard the women cry out, but they stayed in place so he started to fly. He had made a big enough hole coming in that he could take this rather odd arrangement out the same way. In open air he felt the rush of cooler, cleaner air and he heard his passengers gasp for air too. Landing near a cluster of fire trucks, he put the desk down and released the field. Several fire fighters rushed up and helped the women towards ambulances. Flashes of light popped around Mike. Reporters and cameramen had arrived. “Sun Man!” some of them shouted. Their pictures were just going to show a blob of light. Mike turned off the light and posed to show off his new costume. “Are you an alien, Sun Man?” a reporter shouted. “We’ll pay for your exclusive story!” another one shouted even more loudly. Mike turned his light back on and took off. He went into the building again and flew through all six floors, but didn’t see anyone else. He flew high into the sky. It felt good. He was not just the image of a hero any more, he was the real thing. ***** Jeremy Bromgren entered an office on the lowest level of the Society for Civic Duty building. It was a large room, decorated with paintings and sculpture that would fetch hundreds of millions of dollars at auction, except that each piece was officially listed as stolen and not recovered. He walked to a spot in front of the massive mahogany desk and stood there. There was no chair. Mr. Brown, which was not his real name, talked for a while on the phone, then put the receiver down and turned his gaze to Bromgren. “Dr. Spangler confirms that the disc is an overseer badge.” Mr. Brown snorted. “All the years we tried to find one, and this stupid kid digs it up by accident.” “Dr. Spangler says that removing it from the boy would not only kill him, but ruin the badge. He says that it grows into its host, sending nerve-like fibers throughout the body. It can’t be separated from the host without destroying its function.” Brown frowned. “Then we need to keep the kid on a leash and keep him from learning everything he can do.” “Yes, sir. I have had a word with Tom. He will keep the boy under control.” “If he can’t, we need to terminate the project, even if it means losing access to the disc.”
“Yes, sir, I agree,” Mr. Bromgren said.
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