The existence of metas has spawned the organic growth of a number of organizations that are often troublesome in their outlook. Obviously, the hate groups are a threat, but only a minor one since most metas are more than capable of defending themselves against hate crimes.

Of much more, concern, however, are the groups that spring up guaranteeing the ability to turn normal people into metas. Most normal humans can never hope to match the power of a metahuman, which has led to a sort of angst-fueled depression and inferiority complex among many, especially in nations where meritocracy, however false, is the ideal, such as the United States and Australia.

This is fertile ground for the depredations of con artists that promise meta awakenings, for a hefty price. Awakening almost always occurs in response to situations involving extreme stress, such as deadly threats that cannot be survived without a meta ability, and thus such promises often turn grisly.

So far, there is absolutely no way to even detect who may be capable of awakening, let alone what form their power will take. It can be argued, however, that discovering a method to determine in advance who has meta potential would lead to even greater existential angst as the dream of becoming superpowered would be inevitably crushed among those without the potential.

Doctor Laramie Wade, Meta Psychology and public perception. May, 1996 edition of psychology today.

It was almost 15 minutes before Agent and Provisional Special Agent returned. She looked… well… not chastened, exactly, but less actively hostile.

“I would like to apologize for my unprofessional behavior.” She started, standing on the other side of the table with the back of the chair she had been sitting on previously between her hands. “My information sources did not exactly match with the official reports. It is entirely possible that my nonstandard methods of questioning might have led to an information mismatch.”

Agent Baldwin spoke up. “Special Agent Andropolis was instrumental in providing us with the information that led to the raid in which you were apprehended. Since you don’t appear to have taken the raid personally, and appeared to be relieved at being removed from the situation, I am not hesitating to inform you of her involvement. Your evident relief at being arrested is the strongest reason why you were chosen to be part of this pilot program since that and your subsequent cooperation have proven that you are,” he coughed a little, almost as though strangling for a moment over the word, “trustworthy.”

I shrugged, “Did your questioning methods involve roughing up probably the only mid-level dealer on the east coast, the one that was the only real link between the distributor and the Cuban production plant?” I asked curiously.

Antonia nodded, “Yes. In exchange for reduced persecution, he was happy to provide your name as the primary cook for the Cuban facility.”

That son of my mother managed to sell me out, again. “Was his name Paul?” I asked.

She nodded, “Yes, do you know who he is?”

I nodded, “Yes, my brother. He was the one that sold me to the Cartel as a cook. He also robbed our family before they died and changed the will so he would inherit all of their property, and then sold it all.” I shrugged. “Don’t you mean reduced prosecution?”

She shrugged a little, “I take it you don’t like him? I said what I mean. He walked away with only a few broken bones. He didn’t get picked up by the police though, although I am willing,” she took a look at Agent Baldwin, “to help rectify that issue as part of the negotiation. I was informed by Agent Baldwin that they had chemically traced the designer drug that caused so many deaths back to a formula created by Echomancer that was released first in Seattle. It was very cheap to produce, and its high body count was enough to get it shut down in Seattle before they started redistributing it in DC.”

I sighed and shook my head. “That’s the problem with cheap drugs. When your distribution is in the millions, why should you care what kills a few thousand low-class Americans? From the Cartel’s point of view, they would be dead from Meth or Crack or something in a few months anyway. Echo was nasty crap. They tried to get me to make it, but I don’t do bulk, and I cannot replicate a lot of chemical formulas like that. What I do is empowered, not chemistry. I am not Heisenberg.”

She looked a bit confused, “What do you mean by it's not chemistry?”

I sighed, “I don’t create chemical reactions like chemistry does. The end result is chemical, but it’s more like a superpower, like what Ankylosaur does with his power armor. It works because I empower it. That’s why I create small batches. I can read a material, figure out what it does, and then combine it with my ability to create a new potion, pill, elixir, salve, or something like that. I have to inject it with my power to make it work, but if you handed me all the ingredients for whatever drug you wanted, I’d just be confused. I could probably create something with a drug-like effect out of it, but it wouldn’t be whatever you were expecting, and I can run out of energy very quickly if I am too specific with the end result, or try to create too much of it.”

I chuckled a little bit, “That’s why Ace was sold for ten thousand dollars a dose. A half an hour of pure fun, no downsides except maybe preferring it to a selfish sexual partner. I could only make about a hundred doses a day before I ran out of energy, but a golden goose that lays a million-dollar egg every day was worth keeping. The thing was, the only ingredients required were distilled water, lime juice, and a viagra pill for each dose.”

She looked confused, “That formula doesn’t make any sense. It’s not even illegal!”

I nodded, “Right. It’s all about sympathetic vibrations. Lime works because sex and tequila are popular, but an alcohol component could lead to questions. Viagra is obvious, and water is the suspension that holds them together. It’s only half an hour because that was the best I could do for something generic that works for everyone. If I were using ingredients custom-associated for an individual, technically it could produce a state of uhh... permanent orgasm. That would not be a good thing, because someone would eventually die from not caring about anything but the sensations, but if you associated the sensation with, say,” I looked at her closely, and made a guess since I couldn’t use my abilities without setting off the remote EEG’s. “Feathers, champagne, and moonlight with your favorite experience, I could blend a substance out of feathers and champagne under a full moon that would permanently bliss out a normal person with a weak will.”

Baldwin chuckled, “Now I see why they wanted you handled with kid gloves. That also explains why your charges were resisting arrest through the use of metahuman abilities, rather than anything drug-related.”

I nodded, “Exactly. Resisting arrest is a nothing charge, and when I get out I can get it annulled easily. But Res Loco considers me a loose end, and if I am not on meta probation 24/7 with an empowered officer, or in the meta wing under powered lockdown, well, Blanco has almost 30 cartel members locked up here. I would have to either eliminate them or they would take me out. I am not a murderer by choice, so I’d rather be locked up naked than have to crawl over a pile of dead bodies, get kidnapped again to lay golden eggs, or wind up as a high-value bounty for some assassin.”

Karen Axehead shrugged, “That’s why I am his public defender. Normally I work for Proteus defending public metas from things like property damage and wrongful death suits that they were only peripherally involved with, but in this case, the team manager of the New Sentinels specifically asked me to play the Pro Bono card with emphasis on pleading guilty. I am a class F Metahuman, registered, and my gift is specialized information recovery, which means when I look for a loophole, I find it. Alchemyst here is a material witness to the identities of no less than seven of the major players, and his testimony can put five of them in the chair, and two of them behind bars for the rest of their lives.”

“Hey, can I petition for a secret identity name change?” I asked Karen, “I think Doctor Jekyll would be way cooler or even Doctor Moreau. I could probably work on turning Provisional Special Agent her into a sexy catgirl, since metas have more than enough energy for that, and I could make you a little less stunning.”

Karen actually smiled. “Oh, I have my moments.” She said mysteriously. “No, you are registered as an offender under the name Alchemyst. You cannot change it officially until you are off parole, a couple of years from now. If you use a different identity, you will be in violation of your parole conditions unless you are using your real name as a civilian. If you do this, I strongly recommend wearing a mask.” She looked at my jumpsuit, “And some clothes.”

I shrugged, “Well, assuming they agree to my parole conditions, I will be surrounded by capes almost constantly. Kind of hard for a non-meta set of thugs to take me out at that point.”

Baldwin sighed. “Okay, since you have clearly thought this through, tell us what you think you can get away with as parole conditions.”

I grinned, “Oh, I don’t think it will be that onerous.” I chuckled a little evilly, watching the nervous glances that flickered between Agent and Provisional Special Agent.

I thoroughly enjoyed the ribs I got from Pete’s Place in Frederick. For some stupid reason, all of the movies at Seven Locks had commercial breaks, and between the idiotic men who couldn’t figure out how to keep a house from stinking like dogs without their brilliant wives' ability to decipher the intricacies of spray deodorant and guys who’s razors only work if their head was a cube, there was often a commercial for Pete’s famous rib place in Frederick. Like Prison inmates escaping from seven locks would have ribs as their first priority. Then again, they were my first priority, and I was out for right now, so maybe Pete’s ribs were a genius advertising ploy.

We were dressed in civilian clothing. That meant for the agents their usual suits, and for me, a pair of jeans and a tee-shirt with a ghost wolf print on it from a nearby truck stop, as well as underclothes, socks, and a pair of sneakers. Unsurprisingly, the shirt was a bit tight since they only went up to 2x and between my height and musculature, it hung a bit oddly and was tight in places, like my upper arms, that had barely been places four years before.

It had only been three days since our little conference room conflict, but the Agents hadn’t even had to consult with their bosses before agreeing to most of my stipulations. I had an anklet with a radio locator but without any explosives in it, finally. The usual Metarestraints were useless, but the anklet contained an EEG that would record whenever my brainwaves indicated I was using my abilities, and I was expected to have a reason for each and every use.

I had included a ‘special’ massage from Madam Li’s to work out the Prison kinks, as a joke, and was utterly surprised when they agreed. I quickly explained that I had absolutely zero interest in committing a solicitation felony the moment I got out. Madam Li’s was illegal, but the senators and lobbyists on Capitol Hill would be very upset if the local police departments cracked down on their favorite place to unwind from the daily grind of lining their pockets with special interest bribes and taxpayer money.

There were a few places where no one would budge. The anklet, obviously, was one of them. The costume was number two, and I was a little irritated that they refused to include me in the design phase. That was apparently dealt with by professional image consultants for the various new teams that were forming, and their job was already complicated enough dealing with the infestation of blackety black, urban camo, and scary animal costumes that vigilantes seem to favor.

Number three, and by far the worst, was that Proteus wasn’t stupid. My itinerary was entirely out of my hands, and they promised to send a virtual parade of agents and wanna-be agents past me to see if I could spot the one in approximately a million that might be an unawakened meta. They hadn’t blatantly demanded that I create elixirs for any I found, but the writing on the wall was in Viking runes as big as a house. The thing about elixir was that, unlike stress awakenings, people who knew they were going to pop could work to surround themselves, or someone could surround them, with an environment that could encourage certain abilities.

Want to be a brick or melee type? Down an elixir, lift some weights, get in a fight with a trained martial artist. Want to be a sharpshooter? Head to the range with a bottle. Fire control, ice control, metal control? The environments were often easy to manipulate.

Of course, only about half of the controlled environments actually worked, especially for lesser gifts. Being a meta marksman was a very low-level gift even if it was highly valued by the military. There were tons of metas that ‘rarely miss’ and it was only really useful against civilians or metas that couldn’t bounce bullets.

And a lot of times, the elixir just activated a gift that you were intrinsically suited for, despite the environment. Step into a raging inferno and smother the flames with piles and piles of whipped cream that spewed from your armpits. Jump out of a plane and you might fly, might splash at the bottom as a big jelly that lets you survive, or you might just hit the ground and die as all the plants around you mourned the loss of their new plant god. That was especially true if I custom-made a dose of elixir. You were much more powerful, but nothing you did would influence your abilities.

Add in the fact that the vast majority of metas had powers that were F class, and your ‘combat-capable metas’ were actually pretty damned rare. A lot of metas had abilities that were useful only under whatever extremely rare circumstances triggered them, like the Human Airbag that triggered when his car hit a bridge but was almost useless for anything but surviving impacts, or even Karen Trafficstopper whose abilities were extraordinarily useful in civilian jobs but useless for anything superpowered.

I doubted very much that my ‘third job’ was going to amount to much. It had been tried in prison for a while, and my total successes were two. The first was a girl whose smile not only made her more beautiful and made men around her happy but had the added ability to create a slight glow. She had a glowing smile, not exactly what Proteus was hoping for. The second was an agent who could leap amazingly far and survive his landing. That had potential and was labeled class D because he was almost completely immune to impact damage while jumping, and an immune man dropping from 5000 feet onto an enemy was quite dangerous since he also seemed to ignore terminal velocity. If someone was stupid enough to hold still for long enough to get mushroom-stomped by Agent Mario, they could have a very bad day.

I sort of wondered what level I was categorized as if I were a meta rather than whatever the hell a Parahuman was. I mean, I knew I would categorize myself as a Class D or C at least despite my hindbrain’s insistence that I was a class E para since I could create a potion that could triple your healing speed with only a few simple ingredients, but I was not bulletproof and I hadn’t told anyone about my regeneration or physical traits. Major Victory was a class C and had only slightly better stats, although, to be fair, he also had about 50 years of experience and a pair of indestructible bracers that could bounce bullets and shoot ropes as both weapons and swing lines.

Maybe I should learn to bounce bullets? It sounded like a very painful learning process though. I could probably reinforce my forearms for that, but it would take energy and I was close to tapped. You could also buy a pair of steel bracers online from an armorer for about two hundred bucks. I didn’t think I could react faster than a bullet could, but I could certainly see where someone was aiming and try to keep a piece of armor near that spot.

I had never really considered the hero thing. Ever since my gift had shown itself after my mom died, I mostly had been concerned with survival and dealing with my own emotional devastation. I used to worship superheroes, just like all boys my age, but it is amazing how learning that you are stuck at ground zero between two sets of costumed freaks could make you reassess your priorities. Metas were great in fiction and fantasy, but in the real world, both heroes and villains were just one more set of natural hazards that slaughtered humans caught too near the eruption.

These ribs were really good. The best I had eaten, really. One of the upshots of my abilities is that I could cook really well, especially when it came to sauces, but I would have a tough time matching these. I waved a rib at Baldwin. “These are amazing. Thank you very much. I hope you are getting reimbursed?”

He shrugged, “Probably not going to bother. It would take about two hours of paperwork and receipts to get it back, and I am paid pretty well, it would be more trouble than it’s worth.” He took a bite of his pulled pork sandwich.

Agent Andropolis was eating a salad. It looked like a good salad, with the eggs and chicken pieces in it. She wasn’t a vegan, but we were at a barbecue place and she was eating rabbit food. I glared at her salad for a moment. “You do know that you burn about six times as many calories as anyone else, right? You could pack away all of our food and not gain an ounce.”

Antonia shrugged, “I like salad”. Or maybe she liked the fact that it was the cheapest thing on the menu and didn’t want to owe Baldwin anything.

I nodded, “Fine, but if we get someplace with a kitchen I am going to make you some food that will knock your socks off.” I made my voice a falsetto shrill with a thick fake Brooklyn accent. “Yer too skinny! If you don’t eat yer never going to attract a man! I want Grandchildren before I die!”

She rolled her eyes. “Good job. You sound exactly like my grandmother.”

I chuckled, “Well, you look Greek, and it’s a culture thing, and you have a faint hint of where you grew up in your voice. I figured there was about an eighty percent chance that you had to listen to exactly that sort of complaint regularly, and you are going to hear it a lot more with your active lifestyle. You aren’t wearing a ring and don’t have a ring impression on your finger, so you aren’t married. You seem gung-ho about the crimefighting thing, so you probably don’t have a lot of life outside of your work. I figure you are probably dating someone in your department, and neither one of you wants to talk about the future.”

She shrugged a little and took another forkful of salad, waggling it at me. “You forgot about my night job.”

I nodded, “No I didn’t. You aren’t dating anyone because you don’t have time, you are worried that you might hurt them, and most dudes are not particularly comfortable with a girl that could uhh...make them feel like a little girl.” I grinned, “But I didn’t want to mention that because I thought it might be rude.”

She nodded, “Not might, will. And it’s true. No matter how laid back a guy is about it, they cannot handle a girl that is stronger than they are unless they like wearing a gimp suit, and I have zero interest in a man that wants me to spank him or put him in diapers.” She put the fork in her mouth and chewed and swallowed carefully, and then continued, “A broken femur is more than enough warning that I am not safe to date, which leaves the mask set. In my experience, they are even worse than the gimp suits and diapers.”

Agent Baldwin glanced at Antonia. “Are you sure you want to share all this personal information with him?”

She nodded, “He’s hyper-perceptive, but with almost no training in induction or deduction, a lot like my brother. He also has terrible people skills. If we are around him for long enough, which I probably will be, he will eventually figure it out with a lot of false starts and bad guesses. Giving him a little information and a warning now will keep him from trying to make a pass and aggravate us both later on, as well as bad guesses about a supposed boyfriend. He’s good looking but he’s a child, and I don’t date children. It’s expected, though, since almost all hyper-perceptive people are either children or low-function autistics, and he’s a weird combination of both.”

I raised my eyebrows, trying to play it off. “I am autistic?”

She shrugged. “No, you are nearly there. You were fine and dandy being locked in a featureless cell for almost two years with nothing but a library. You have almost no social skills except for the ability to make a joke out of anything, and when I started ripping you apart you didn’t respond with anger even knowing I made a mistake. You are pretty much balled up in fear right this minute, two steps away from banging your head against a wall, and wishing you had these ribs back in your cell right this minute.”

I shrugged, taking a big bite out of the side of one of the ribs. She was sort of right. I wasn’t terrified, exactly, and I didn’t want back in my cell… much. “So, should I let you know if I need a football helmet to sleep?”

She shook her head, “And you cover it up with constant humor. Not a bad defense mechanism since it will allow you to function more or less normally, but it will get you into a lot of trouble when you are talking to the teams. Some of the people you are going to be dealing with take their chosen profession very seriously, and if you make a disrespectful crack about someone’s headgear because they creep you out, you might be collecting your teeth. Some of these boys and girls grew up in the worst sorts of neighborhoods where disrespect cannot be tolerated. They are heroes because they care about people, and vigilantes because they couldn’t care less about someone else’s laws.”

I nodded, “So no jokes?”

She shook her head, “No jokes until you learn how people work. I read your dossier. You went straight from being a social pariah at a private school, where you barely got passing grades, to being a social pariah in college before you were kidnapped, where you were failing. You are reasonably smart, but you aren’t a genius, but you still had the same smarter than you attitude that gets the really smart kids bullied. Kind of all the nerd downsides without the upsides.”

I finished off the last rib and started on an wonderful piece of sweet cornbread. “Close, but I guess my records as a child are sealed. Yeah, I was picked on, and I was kind of a dick, but I am not even close to reasonably smart. That private school was for the handicapped.”

She shook her head. “Montessori schools are not for the handicapped,” and she got to her feet. “We should go. Proteus already has a lot of people they want you to evaluate, and after the Atlantic City thing they want to get some good PR as soon as possible.”

“Atlantic City thing?” I asked curiously, “Sorry, I have been out of the loop.”

Baldwin spoke up, “Yeah, Magman got into a fight in downtown Atlantic City yesterday. Two of the hotel-casinos fell into a sinkhole when he caused a minor earthquake and a bunch of tourists got killed. Proteus is trying to get ahead of it with their vigilante initiative, since most vigilantes are lower power than sponsored heroes and, despite their problems, tend to cause less property damage.”

I shrugged, “That’s why I make such a crappy supervillain. I am just not that good at waltzing into a public place and dropping city blocks.”

Baldwin looked at me curiously for a moment, and then said, “Magman is a hero, not a supervillain.”

We flew into Chicago O’hare airport in the late evening. After the attempted World trade center disaster in 2001, when several extremist hijackers simultaneously took over several large passenger planes and tried to fly them into various New York landmarks, new laws were passed allowing anyone with a small arms safety certification to carry personal firearms on board a public flight. Overnight, terrorist activities dropped almost completely. Since virtually anyone could be a Meta that can shoot laser beams from their eyes, what was the point of preventing civilians from carrying firearms? While being bulletproof was not exactly uncommon among the meta crew, it was not often paired with a decently destructive offensive ability. Firearms were expected to be unloaded with the ammunition carried in a separate pocket or carry-on to prevent accidental misfires, but in the United States, at least, screaming your devotion to a deity while pulling out an automatic firearm generally would get you dead before you could even arm your explosive pajamas.

I understood that in Europe and Australia, different lengths were taken involving meta detectors and insane draconian standards of universal disarmament. I had never been out of the country, though, and couldn’t even imagine people that would allow their grandmother to be strip-searched for weapons and explosive devices before being allowed on a short flight. A recent news story involving a mass shooting in an airport in Brussels that wasn’t ended until a super-team took out two gunmen, with hundreds of travelers injured or dead, was a strong testament to the platform of universal armament that got President Leary Elected.

As we got into a quite nice Ford Taurus with the Proteus logo on the sides. While I didn’t necessarily like or trust Proteus, technically they had my back while I was running their errands. I knew full well that the cartels were well out of their wheelhouse, but if there were a bunch of vigilantes playing registered superheroes, well, vigilantes and Cartels have a long and violent history. I always had a sneaking suspicion that the occasional vigilante attack as well as the DEA that took out the low-level players was what kept them so profitable and helped eliminate their less organized competition, plus the occasional dead vigilante proved that some meta villains were more than happy to take the Cartel’s paychecks.

I sighed, deeply, as Baldwin slid into the driver’s side and Andropolis into the passenger. “Seriously? We are doing it this way? Do you expect me to start screaming about how they fuck you at the drive-through?”

Baldwin shrugged, “Senior Agent. That’s why I get the driver’s seat. If you’d rather shotgun and push Special Agent Andropolis to the back, we can do it that way, but these cars are designed to protect the occupants of the back seat. Right now, we have no idea how much information your enemies have, and I am not going to pretend that no one noticed you left the prison.”

I sighed. “They fuck you at the drive-through.”

Antonia looked confused. Seriously? She never watched the greatest buddy cop action series ever made?

She asked me, “So how does your power work, exactly?”

I shrugged, “I have a pretty good grasp of human biology. When I am touching them, I can tell if their heart rate increases, they produce certain pheromones associated with making statements they believe to be false, and I can smell them.”

She shook her head, “No, I already knew that. When you are touching someone you are like a human lie detector. That’s a fairly common gift for metas, and there are a lot of ways to defeat it. That’s not why you are here. I sort of want to know about the potions.”

I nodded, “I can read things off of substances. If I put them together I can create potions, like recipes. They are based more on the object’s perception than on its chemical formula, although I think chemicals might be important too in some cases. The potions are based on potential. The thing is, the more potential someone has or the potion ingredients have, the stronger it can be.”

“That still doesn’t explain why Proteus wants you enough personally to pull you out of a situation where you could potentially put dozens of highly-placed crooks in jail from relative safety.”

I nodded, “I can create potions that can enhance meta powers.”

Antonia’s eyes, in the rear view mirror, opened wide with shock. “That would explain it.”