Issue #15: The Bank Robber

I was four years old when I came to know of my past life.

Just hit my head on a playground, then, BAM! Edmund The Genius came into existence.

Back then, I was so enraptured by the fact that I was living in a world filled with superheroes that I forgot how totally dangerous and conniving this world truly was. It was only that I first met Lex Luthor that I was first reminded by that fact. The man's morals are as dark as his inky irises. If not for the fact that I had to make a connection between him and my current father, then I would have hopped out of town the moment he looked at me as if I was Superboy and he was Project Cadmus.

Anyway, my true meeting with the new species of humanity, known as metahumans, was on that cold metal platform. There were ten of them, all screaming and begging for their lives. I could not move, so there I was, gazing at them with fear in my eyes. True Fear. Ever since that day, I've made a point not to remember how they screamed as the blood was extracted out of them and injected into me. And, yet, here I was, looking at one of them.

"Hello… Jake. I'm sorry if I didn't, uh, remember you. I'm Edmund." I reply with an awkward bow.

Jake laughs again, shaking his head as if seeing the most amusing thing in the world. "No offense, kid, but you should really see what you look like right now!"

He points towards the ink below us and, lo-and-behold, there I am.

"What the?"

The rippling liquid revealed my true form. A hulking figure shining with an iridescent hue, an amalgamation of almost a dozen entities chained together by a bright white light that encompasses my form like an avatar of some god.

"Jesus christ…" my mutterings seems very funny to the guy as he cackles away.

"Man, if I'd known this was how I would die, then I would still have robbed those banks!" Jake seems to think that he's a very funny guy,

"Look, not to cut in on your fun, but… what are you doing here?" I ask.

Jake's gaze turns serious as he holds up two fingers. "Two reasons: First, I wanted to give you advice on life and my powers; second, to say goodbye."

"G-goodbye? I thought your soul lives in me?" I'm understandably perplexed, brows furrowing instinctively.

Zatara stitched the souls together, allowing me a spiritual reprieve and time to heal without the threat of the combined weight of the metahuman spirits forever on my shoulders. It doesn't make sense, unless my activation of his ability allowed me to consume a part of him. This may be part of the ritual, something that the Court hoped to achieve.

I look down and scan my stitched abomination.

Jake notices what I'm doing and points at a color. "I'm the light blue one. See… there, see the white light is kind of like consuming it? Like converting it? Yeah, that's what's happening."

'I'm consuming his soul. Dear god.'

I look back at Jake, horror and worry in my eyes. Or at least the spiritual representation of my eyes. "Fuck, I-I didn't mean it, man. I-I just-was people were trying to hurt me–"

"It's alright!" Jake gives me a bright smile as he places his hands on my large forearms, metaphorically and literally holding me together. "I'm just happy I saved you in your time of need. Kinda makes up for all the bad things I did!"

"Thank you, then," I nod my head. "What's this about life and power advice, then?"

Jake's eyes widened. "Oh, yeah. Forgot. Listen, I'm not a good guy, nor an evil guy. I'm just some dude who did bad things. I hurt people, but only accidentally…"

'Yeah, he sounds like he's making excuses.'

"The thing with my portals is that the highest I can do is about my height, no further. And the furthest I can throw it is about 5-10 meters–Oh, here's a trick I've learned: If you've seen it once, then you can throw a portal in it as long as you perfectly imagine the environment and where in that space you want the portal to open."

I would have liked to say something, but Jake seems adamant on imparting knowledge or, more likely, it's been months since he last had someone to talk to and just wanted to grieve before departing my soul.

"Look, I know it might seem like a good idea, alright? But don't. Ever. Put your finger inside of a closing portal? Understand?" Jake produces his right hand and reveals his nail-less middle finger.

"Anyway, what else do you need to know? Oh, yeah. Generating portals drains your body of its nutrients. My solution was stealing those granola bars Star Labs gave to Flash, but don't eat too much of it. You'll get the shits." He shudders momentarily before asking, "Are you still creating portals automatically?"

"Uh, what? I just had it, like, a few minutes ago." I scratch the back of my head, but instead of feeling skin and hair, my hands brush against an elastic fiber-like substance. 

"Well, that's something you have to learn, kid. My power is a window to something terrible and the sooner you learn to control it, to tame it, the less it will corrupt you," Jake suddenly scowls in grim determination, basking me in his radiant wisdom. "It's going to be hard. Even I took about a month and I'm a fucking genius."

He snaps his fingers, creating two wholly different portals in front of me. A square one with three meters in both length and height, borders glowing with an unnatural light blue hue, while the other is a normal eye-shaped portal that I used earlier.

"Listen, kid. So long as you put your mind into it, the portal comes out like an eye, with variations to size and length. Sometimes, that eye is impractical–I learned that the hard way–so I figured that maybe we can change its shape or something, but you need to control it from the start."

"The start?"

He nods, "You can't do it right now, but every time you create a portal, try to imagine it being created. Imagine the world peeling back and creating a window to… something. Try to… find the intent of the portal."

"Intent? Are you making this up?"

He chuckles, "50-50. Listen, Intent is the most important thing. You gotta make sure that beast knows who owns it!"

Unlike the eye-shaped portal, the square portal feels like a different breed of dimensional pocket. As if it's the refined product of hundreds upon hundreds of the eye-shaped portal.

"I know, right?" Jake remarks, smirking at his work. "I can only create this after a full breakfast in the real world, maybe two or three times within a few seconds in duration."

As time passes, I can't help but notice that Jake's form, albeit physical in nature, gains a hint of incorporeality to it; Like it's being slowly washed over by the darkness. He seems to notice it too as he looks down at his body and sighs, shaking his head as if it was a shame.

"Guess time's nearly up." He says, "Listen, kid. Your power is yours to use. No once, not even me or god, could ever tell you what to do with it, so live free. Do with it what you want and never let society tell you what to do!"

Jake's form takes on a more opaque form as he says his goodbye to me, a content smile evident on his face.

"Goodbye, Jake!" I say to his vanishing form, "Thank you for giving me powers to join the Justice League!"

Jake abruptly glares at me. He scrunches his face, as if taking a long hard dump. Like clockwork, his incorporeal form begins slowly gaining its material back.

"W-What are you doing?" I ask, waving him along. "Just go into the light, man!"

"I'm trying to take back my powers. Hargh!" His roar echoes across the void like space we are in.

I purse my lips, shame creeping up my cheeks. "I, uh, don't think you can do that. Besides, your legs are gone."

"C'mon, man. Just five more minutes! Look, kid, I don't know what the Justice League or Society or whatever, but it sounds like one of those superhero groups. And I can't have you–Point is, I expected a kid to go nuts with my powers. Take your crush out for a date and teleport flowers or become rich–"

"–By robbing banks, then getting pinched by the cops?" I scoff at the criminal. 

"I didn't get pinched by pigs, alright? Damn that fucking speedster." He gives me an exasperated sigh, like I'm some punk kid. "I'm not gonna stop you from becoming a damn supe, but damn it, you gotta at least enjoy your youth."

Jake's surprisingly wise about this thing, but I do suppose he has a point. If not for the memories of my past life, I would have been delighted to gain this power and would be scribing a hundred different ways to use this for shits and giggles.

"But I'm not an ordinary kid." My thoughts are spoken aloud, startling Jake. "I, uh, I meant… I've experienced shit no other kid my age has and, frankly, I have people out there that need protecting."

"Perhaps, but you have a lifetime to think about what you wanna do. Don't listen to the schmucks that tell you that you need to choose now. They don't know shit." Jake gives a soft smile as he bends down to a squat and rests his arms on his knees. "You can pivot anytime you want. Free will, man. That's what separates us humans from the animals."

It's not every day that you get taught a lesson about the rigidity of society's expectations of their youths. I suppose I should have expected that from a career criminal, especially one so cavalier about his continuous non-existence.

"I know, Jake. I'll make sure to think about it." I say, surprisingly sighing in relief. "God, you could have been a motivational speaker, you know?"

"I would've killed myself first." He shakes my head. 

He didn't say anything for a brief moment. "Guess that's as good an answer as any. No matter what you choose, make sure you don't kill yourself for some ungrateful schmucks, alright?"

A laugh escapes my mouth. "Deal!"

Jake extends his hand, which I take. For a moment, the two of us just stared at each other's eyes before Jake vanished into a fine mist.

His soul is now gone, part of his spirit forever. I look down and see nine distinct colors besides my bright white form.

I offer the bank robber a moment of silence before speaking to the world, "I'd like to wake up now, please."

•••

The sounds of hysterical shouting are what I awoke to the moment I remove myself from the inky void where I met Jake. Blinking away the gnawing colors of the ceiling fixtures, I rouse myself out of the heaviness of my eyes. I can still feel the removal of his spirit from the depths of my soul, as if I was being imbued by a warm energy. His consumed soul is nourishing my body and my newfound powers.

Even now, I can feel that I could conjure a few more portals than when we were being chased by Mr. Freeze. Speaking of, I have been trying to move from wherever I am, but my blurry surroundings keep getting in my way. I can't even move my fingers and, frankly, that is a little disconcerting. Mewling with frustration, I crack the dry drool that has glued my mouth shut and let out a breath of fresh air.

"Help…" I yelp, hoping to gain the attention of someone.

I try to crack my neck to break away from the numbing brightness of the light fixtures above me, but it's as if someone or something is holding my neck stiff. Not only my neck, my whole body feels moist and tight like I'm in some kind of coffin.

With the frustration of my inability welling up inside of me, fear soon begins to take root. My eyes dart to and fro and my words become gibberish as my attempts devolve into a mess of abject madness.

I need to get out. I need to move. Any telepathic creatures respond to these thoughts. I'm somewhere within…

"Settle down, Edmund." A stern yet guiding voice startles me as my bleary eyes notice the chiseled face in front of me. "You're in a safe space. You cannot move because your injuries are too severe for Earthly medical features."

He rubs something in front of me with his blue forearms, allowing me to gaze at his deeply handsome features. 

'Is that glass? Am I in a glass tube?'

Now it makes sense as to why it was still blurry even after I've blinked away the rheum from my eyes. Something I knew because Dick could not freaking stop telling me all about it when Bruce got him that science fact book as a gift for his birthday.

The stiffness that contorts my body is suddenly removed, causing my unnatural breathing to go back to normal. 'I didn't even know I was breathing like that.'

"He's awake?" Another voice resounded from somewhere my head cannot turn to, a familiar one.

"Yes, removing him from the cabin." The handsome man clicks some button that makes a popping sound before the glass in front of me hisses like a pregnant cat and splits in the middle.

A sudden rise in temperature should have made me uncomfortable, but the thick plaster wrapping around my body helps regulate my internal temperature. The handsome man draws closer with a small blade in his hands as he begins removing the plaster with a deep incision just below my chin. The way he let the blade glide through the surface of the plaster, as though it were paper, really put me off. He cut that thing off with so much care that I began being really envious of his partner.

"There… we… go." He grins at his handiwork, helping me up and out of the tube with a steady hand.

Just like that, I'm free to move again. And, by god, is my body sore. Everything feels like it's being crawled on by ants, stretching body parts just worsens the feeling.

"That's your body healing," He remarks as he goes back towards the control panels. "When you're done, you can meet with your mentor. Just head to the nearest exit."

"Thank you!" I say and he responds with a nod.

Now that I have time to look, this looks more like a laboratory than a medical facility. The walls look like hexagon metal sheets linked together with seamless architecture, giving it a sleek, futuristic look. A dozen large cylindrical test tubes filled with masses of oscillating azure-hued flesh lie past the glass cabin that helped me heal from my grievous wounds. Pipes atop the ceiling run from corner to corner as it fueled god knows what in this room. I don't like it here and it's not because I don't understand the stuff in this room or my vocabulary fails to describe half the devices that's producing sound and smell. 

'I'm a total science guy. I can make a volcano out of baking soda and vinegar.'

"My nephew made that face when I told him he's not cut out for lab work." The handsome man remarks with a chuckle.

I quickly fix my expression. "No, I just… wait, are you doing what I think you're doing?"

I walk up to the screen, staring in awe at the figure of an average human male at the center as the handsome man begins working on simulations. The figure rapidly aging before a window showed and informs us that the figure died from an unknown disease.

Everything else seems gibberish to me, more than gibberish actually. It looks like downright alien technology. Elements on the leftmost screen reminded me of that scene in the Matrix when Neo got in touch with his powers. The numbers, or what I assumed to be numbers, seem chaotic and random, but there are hints that certain characters are being used more often than the rest. Such characters are then copied by the handsome man and pasted onto the bottom-left screen where he types out a code of some sort.

Once he presses enter, the simulation would run again. This procedure lasted for more than three minutes as I just stared at the almost clinical handiwork in which he operated. He made seven simulations, all of which resulted in abject failure. The second one died because of an infection in seven different organs, the fourth immediately gained stave IV heart cancer, and the seventh lasted for thirty-four simulated years before succumbing to an unhealthy amount of radiation poisoning.

It just seems like it's a waste of energy and time to do this and I told him so, but he just shook his head and continued, not even wasting time to respond verbally or to tell me off.

Just when I was getting bored with waiting for each simulation to run, a sudden thought popped into my head.

"Hey, sir." I call out to him, looking suspiciously at the alien characters as it flits from number to number. "I get that you're trying to alter a human's gene using whatever those alien things are, but why are you using an adult?"

The handsome looks at me quizzically. "What do you mean? Adults are optimal subjects, physically developed and mentally cohesive"

I take the time to vocalize my thoughts. "I get that, but… human genome is like a Jenga tower and instead of playing with your hands on a sturdy table, you're going at it on a freeway in a Mclaren with claws for hands. You get what I'm saying? "

The handsome man gazes back towards the screen and crosses his arms in contemplation. "You're saying that… adults are harder to reconfigure, because they're already built. That I should be doing newer lifeforms."

I don't know if that's what I mean, but I just nod as fast as I could. "Uh, sure, yeah, basically!"

The handsome man begins working the simulation using my idea. First, he removes the adult figure and replaces it with an egg-like creature. 'Oh, that's a fetus. I forgot about those.'

He then turns towards the alien characters. Having been familiar with this procedure, the handsome man quickly copied the elusive variables within the codes and not the ones that pop up every so often. That was what he did during the seventh run, so we figured that the more apparent it is, the more volatile the reaction it will have on the human genome.

I actually am nervous as the man places the extracted characters and runs the simulation. My clammy hands tightly grip the cushioned arm of the leather chair that I brought after the fourth run.

Slowly, but surely, the fetus simulation begins to grow healthily. Turning from the germinal period to the embryonic where it stumbles a little, but catches up during the fetal period.

My body felt the nerves firing up as the baby was born healthy, happy, and, surprisingly, alive.

"Whoo!" My shout startles the handsome man, but I don't care. I jump away from my chair, a euphoric expression on my face as I shout as loud as I can.

"I just birthed a whole new race of human fucking beings! I'm a god!"