I was able to see what the men were doing besides preparing. My neighbors were being pulled out of their houses and taken away from the scene. I wondered how large of an area was being evacuated. In some of the fights of humans vs. XPCA, entire cities had been destroyed. If they knew who I was and they were here to take me in, they had to be preparing for an Exhuman event on that scale.

As though alerted by my movement in the window, two floodlights turned on and beamed directly into my room, blinding me. Lights flared to life outside everywhere, and an air-raid siren sounded in the distance. Barely a black silhouette against the blinding lights outside, I saw one man walk forward slowly with a bullhorn in hand until he was halfway between me and the line of armed and armored soldiers.

“Exhuman Athan Ashton, this is Deputy Director Blackett of the Exhuman Pacification and Control Agency. We are here to remove you from this populated area and prevent the potential damage you could cause to this area and the people who reside here. Please, if there is any humanity left in you, The XPCA urges you to find it within yourself to come quietly.”

He sounded almost bored, like this was a script he read daily. I wondered if this was routine now for him and all the dozens of men outside. From the cagey looks the soldiers were shooting each other, I didn’t think so. And there hadn’t been a huge Exhuman event for months. Maybe these guys were good at quietly making Exhumans surrender, or maybe there just hadn’t been any in a long time.

I didn’t know, but it irked me that with my and potentially their lives on the line, this guy couldn’t even put an emphasis on the word ‘please.’

I heard VTOLs in the air now, and wondered if they’d been using some technology to hover silently before, or had only just arrived to back up Deputy Director Blackhead’s little speech.

I took a deep breath and went outside my room, where the rest of the house seemed to be similarly lit up by floodlights in the windows. It was disorienting and surreal, being inside the house with stripes so brightly lit and stripes still dark. Walking down the hall felt like walking through a strobe light.

Before I got to the top of the stairs, my parent’s bedroom door banged open. Dad was there with Mom behind him, both looking not-very-awake, but very panicked.

“What’s going on out there?” he asked, grabbing me by the shoulders. I shrugged him off and didn’t know how to respond.

“I dunno Dad. Earlier yesterday, after the game, Brick and I were fooling around and lightning came out of nowhere and hit something. I guess…I think…maybe it was me. The lightning came from me. Maybe.”

Emotions surged across his face, but it only took a few seconds before his face turned beet red and he recoiled from me.

“Exhuman,” he hissed at me. My mom gasped and turned white.

“I didn’t do anything!” I said, but he jumped when I moved.

“Get out of my house, Exhuman!” he barked.

“Dad–“

“I am no father of yours. Now GET OUT!”

I felt his words stab me, and felt tears begin to well behind my eyes. Was that all we were? Two or three sentences away from this? All the times he’d told me how proud he was of me, how happy he was I was his son, all the things we’d done and memories we’d shared…gone in a heartbeat.

“Mom, I–“

“DON’T YOU TALK TO HER,” Dad shouted, even louder now. His voice echoed through the house.

I swallowed a lump in my throat and tried to speak clearly. “Mom, I love you. I didn’t do anything I promise.”

She looked like she was ready to cry too, but just turned away instead of meeting my eyes.

“There, you said your piece, now get out,” Dad growled. I didn’t have anything else to say…nothing else I thought they’d listen to. I went downstairs.

I found Lia standing in the kitchen with tears running down her face. She was still wearing the same dirty sweatshirt and old volleyball shorts. Around her were dirty pots and pans and bowls, and a stack of pancakes, with some more cooking on the stove.

My heart broke completely when I saw her standing there. It was only about an hour before we’d normally be waking up, and she must have snuck downstairs to make a family breakfast for us all. I wondered if it had anything to do with us arguing last night.

But now, I could never know. I couldn’t face her anymore. Mom and Dad yelling at me was one thing, but if I saw the same transformation of hate go across Lia’s face as I saw on theirs, it would break me. I took a deep breath, and then ran out the front door while avoiding her gaze.

Outside, I could see nothing but the lights. A half dozen sets of floodlights were trained on me from every angle. Vaguely, below them, I could see shadows stir, which I knew to be dozens of men with all kinds of exotic weapons, any one of which would kill me instantly…if I were a human still.

“Exhuman Athan Ashton,” said Blackett over the bullhorn, like it was my job title. “Put your hands on your head and lay face down on the pavement. You will be detained for the safety of others. Do not attempt to resist.”

Tears were running down my cheeks now, and my face burned. My heart was skipping beats, left and right, and I felt like I might piss myself at any moment. Mostly, I was afraid, but I also felt a burning shame. A shame for what? I had done nothing.

I got on my knees and put my hands on my head. The ground was cold and wet with morning dew. I didn’t want to lay on it. I shouldn’t have to. I did nothing wrong.

“Why…?” I asked.

“Exhuman Athan Ashton, lay on the ground, now.” Oh sure, now he could stress some words. But not please. I didn’t understand. We all knew what Exhumans were, what they were capable of. Would it kill this guy to treat me with some respect? Some decency?

And I realized at that moment for the first time what Exhuman really meant. Of course I wouldn’t get any human decency. To these people, to Deputy Director Blackett, to the family inside the house behind me, I wasn’t human. I was a very, very dangerous animal which needed to get put down ASAP. It was all in the friggin’ name.

Even though I had done nothing.

“Look,” I said, trying to see into the lights where Blackett was so I could talk in his direction. “I haven’t done anything.”

“Exhuman Athan Ashton, lay on the ground or we will open fire. This is not a negotiation.”

“I didn’t do anything!”

“If it turns out you are not an Exhuman, you will be released without charges. Your abilities will be verified at a later date. Stop talking and lie down NOW!“

“I didn’t do anything! You can’t treat me like this! I’m still a person!”

I heard a boom and felt the air surge around me. Something flew at me from the darkness, but once it got within a few feet of me, a surge of lightning came from just above my head and blasted it out of the air. I felt hot fragments of whatever it was tumble through the air and shower me. I winced as they smoked and bounced off my exposed arms, but tried not to move.

“HOLD YOUR FIRE,” Blackett bellowed. The shadows stirred uneasily in front of me.

He turned back to me. “Exhuman, on the ground now.” No apologies or anything for his men shooting me.

“I’m not going to rampage or anything. I’m not going to hurt anyone, I promise.”

“Then lay on the ground and put your hands on the back of your head. Now.”

I couldn’t see this conversation going anywhere other than a full-scale war in my front yard, or me face down on the pavement, so I quietly leaned forward and laid down on the ground. It was cold and wet, and crying made it hard to breathe. Half my face was hot and wet from the tears, and half cold and wet from the dew.

I heard the stomping of many pairs of boots and closed my eyes and held still. Pairs of hands held down my shoulders and arms, and I heard metal clinking as a pair of handcuffs (presumably some super sci-fi XPCA special cuffs) were brought over. I felt my hands pulled together, and felt metal touch them for a fraction of a second.

And then there was an explosion and the smell of ozone and the screams of men. The hands on my arms and shoulders were gone, and I felt another spray of hot metal shrapnel on the back of my neck and arms. I glanced up and saw men–or what I assumed to be men, because all I could see was their robotic exosuits–jumping back and patting themselves down, some on the ground apparently seizing.

“DO NOT MOVE, EXHUMAN,” the bullhorn blared from painfully close, making me wince. I wasn’t going to. One of the XPCA was laying on the ground next to me, not moving. I hoped he wasn’t dead…but the unnatural stillness, the awkward position in which he was laying. I think I knew.

And in that moment, I joined my family in hating myself too. As I’d professed over and over, I had done nothing wrong. And yet, now a man was dead because of me. These men treated me like a weapon more than a human because even if I did nothing, even kneeling in submission, I was still dangerous to everyone around me.

From then through the rest of the morning, I complied with them without question. It wasn’t just one death, either. Various means of detention were fired, thrown, or placed on me, and each one exploded violently when it contacted me. As I watched the body count rise, I felt I had to say something.

“Um, Deputy Director Blackett?” I asked. He just fixed me with an icy stare. I was fully aware he blamed me for all of this carnage, and I couldn’t disagree. “I don’t know that you need to detain me, sir. I am willing to come peacefully and comply with orders.”

“Exhuman Athan Ashton, I will not repeat myself again. This is not a negotiation.”

“I’m not negotiating. Look around, people are dying. I am killing them. You asked me to submit if I had any humanity left in me…and, well, I do. So let me stop killing people, please.”

He looked me up and down with a frown. He was a tall, thin man, made all the more thin-looking by the huge imposing men in exosuits all around. He had a immaculately trimmed moustache and goatee, and rectangular glasses with thin gold frames atop his pointed nose.

“No, you are not going anywhere without proper restraints. This is not a conversation, Exhuman. Continue to submit.”

“People are dying! Your people! Don’t you care?”

“This is not a conversation. You will be silent,” he said with a bitter coldness, and walked away.