Chapter 2 - Silas

Now, I am often given grief for always needing to be right. That day though, while everything seemed off, I really hoped that I could be wrong. Being right just so happened to be both a blessing and a curse.

I opened the door to my ground-floor apartment and walked in. I could hear voices. In the second room of my small home, there sat two men and a woman. I noted one of the men had a dark hat and the other with long black hair slicked back. They were in identical suits, though the woman seemed to be dressed in something less formal. When the man in the fedora spotted me, he bolted upright, a gun in his hand in an instant.

"Who are you?" the nearest man asked forcefully. He seemed to know how to show that he was an evolved. He stepped forward, rather than back, and clenched his fist rather than reaching for the gun at his side. Of course, there was only one issue. I knew all those cues too, and I had a lot of practice with them.

"You would set foot in my home?" I growled, raising one hand. The menacing motion caused both men to step back. I knew they were basics. "I think the question is who you are?"

"Let's all drop the act," another voice warned, "Since we all know none of us are Evolved." It was the woman. How she knew I wasn't Evolved without looking at me was beyond me, considering her chair faced away from the door. In this situation, I did the only thing that seemed reasonable. I laughed.

"How can you possibly know that?" I inquired between chuckles.

"I would have known you were coming. Only a basic could walk in my scanner's range and not be detected," she responded in a British accent, turning to face me. My laughing stopped.

"Scanner?" I asked. I hadn't ever heard of such a thing. Was she saying she had a scanner that could detect Evolved? I looked at the small screen on the device that she turned so I could see. It looked like a radar, but the only ping it made on its sweep was one red dot, moving farther from the center. That must have been Kaity. She lived on the opposite side of the city in a very similar apartment that I had only seen once. Suddenly, the dot stopped moving and turned around.

"Oh, crap…" the man that had pulled the gun said. "Should I deal with them, Tay?" The man raised his gun, and before whichever of the man's companions was Tay could respond I felt the rage of the implied threat to Kaity coming to my arms. It flowed through my mind and back into my limbs. It was red hot.

"No! That's my friend, and you aren't hurting her!" I shouted. I leaped at the man, throwing my shoulder into his gut. We both hit the floor hard, and I got up to continue my defense, though the man on the floor was still laying there groaning. My moment of heroism was short-lived as I felt the barrel of another gun press against the back of my head.

"Get on the ground," the stranger growled at me, "What kind of basic is friends with an Evolved?" I complied and fell to my knees. Then a knock at the door came. It had to be Kaity.

"Deal with it, Raigh," The woman waved him off. I listened as he went into the front room, then I heard the knock a second time.

"Silas, are you going to open the door? It started raining and I was wondering if I could hang out till it passes? At least open the door!" Kaity shouted through the door. Then I heard the door open, and I couldn't take it anymore. If this woman was going to shoot me, then so be it. Maybe most Evolved deserved what that man was about to do, but not her. Not Kaity. I stood and bolted for the door to the front room. The man had left it open, and I darted through. I saw him draw the gun, pulling back the hammer of the revolver with a click. A look of horror shot across Kaity's face.

"Kaity, run! Get out of here!" I screamed as I tackled the man from behind. A crack rang through the air, stopping my mind. Where were the superheroes when you needed them? I saw Kaity stumble backward, blood flying from her shoulder. She stepped back and her foot slipped on the wet stairs. The three steps were still enough to make for a horrible fall. I watched in slow motion as I slammed the man into the door frame, and Kaity fell to the rain-soaked pavement. She landed with a sickening crack. The man was out cold.

"Si…" She gasped as she lay there. I left the man where he was, though I grabbed the gun as I ran to my best friend. "Si, why can't I feel the pain? Why doesn't it hurt? I… I can't move, Si." I didn't know what to do. My best friend was lying here, bleeding to death from a gunshot, paralyzed from a fall.

As I looked up to the sky, hoping for some miracle, the clouds parted. A figure dressed in a golden suit with a flowing white cape floated to the ground beside me. High Solis herself was here to help.

High Solis landed, took one look at the two of us and stepped up to the man in the door. With a touch, he was a pile of ashes, and High Solis moved further into my home. I heard shouts for only seconds, then they were gone. The jerks who had taken my home and hurt my friend had just been dealt with by a superhero. High Solis came out a minute later and glared at me.

"Please, help her," I gasped. It was all I could say. The superhero stared at me for a moment, then shook her head.

"I've done enough," She muttered. She turned and, with one more glance over her shoulder, shot back into the air. It wasn't long before the city's emergency response unit was there. They took my friend away in the back of the ambulance.

I visited her each day for the next year until I was out of school. Every day I saw her, lying paralyzed, unable to do anything. Every day I saw High Solis's face as she glanced over her shoulder, and every day I would hate it more and more. My only problem was, I was a basic. What in the world was a basic going to do to the city's founding hero? Absolutely nothing. Or at least, that's what I was thinking when I walked into Kaity's room that day. It was the day I tripped over my solution. A little brown box, unmarked except for my name. After greeting Kaity, I tore it open.

"What's this?" I asked, grasping the box's contents. I held up the strange black dome for Kaity to see, but she was as perplexed as I was.

"A helmet maybe? Try it on," she suggested.

"Wait, there's more. There's these… things," I told her, taking out what looked like two black leather sheets with a circular band attached to the end.

"Wrist bracers, dummy."

"How do you know?" I asked back. Without waiting for her answer I slipped the bracers around my forearms and clasped them. It only felt natural for the circular strap to go around my four fingers like brass knuckles, the wire running along the opposite side of my hand as my thumb. I moved on to the helmet and slid it over my wild hair. Kaity let her head fall to the side in her bed so she could see me.

"Wow. You actually look pretty cool like that," Kaity commented. I saw through a visor on the helmet and looked for Kaity's mirror, not that she could really use it. I saw that the visor on the outside glowed an ominous blue, in a T shape. It had thin, highlighting lines around the visor of the same blue, and I almost looked like a superhero.

"Dang, this does look pretty sick," I chuckled while striking a heroic pose. The helmet masked my voice, but that wasn't what made me jump. In front of my fists, which I had placed next to my head in a fighting stance, were glowing blue plates of energy. The bands around my fingers glowed the same blue. It hit me like the morning of the Evolution. I didn't just look like a superhero, I was one. My mind moved to High Solis and her smirk, and I corrected myself. I wasn't a superhero for most of this city. Just to myself, Kaity, and every Basic that braved living in Sol City. To High Solis and her cronies, I would be a supervillain.

"Well, what do you think? What should my name be?" I asked Kaity.

"Silly, isn't that obvious. You've been called it for seven years," she giggled.

"You're right. I guess that's just what I am." I was Basic.