Alice walked into ORIGIN''s hangar bay, a large metal tunnel where technicians and mechanics kept and maintained the Black Swan. The huge, black jet whined and occasionally roared as it prepared for takeoff.
Alice was walking confidently in her new body glove. The brown, leathery material felt like a second skin, and the jacket felt perfectly warm. She pulled at her sensor-packed gloves and adjusted the goggles on her head above her eyes. Her heavy boots clicked rhythmically on the concrete floor. Before boarding, she gave a final tug on the bomber jacket around her shoulders.
Athena, who was waiting silently by the open cargo door to the Swan, furrowed her eyebrows. "You do realize that brown leather hasn''t been a part of military uniforms since early last century."
"I know," Alice said with a smile, "but this has special meaning for me. It looks like something I own."
Athena, her interest piqued, asked, "family heirloom?"
"My grandfather''s," she answered. "He was a bomber pilot in World War II."
Athena nodded appreciatively. "There were other models with more armor."
Alice shrugged. She felt right wearing it.
Athena, apparently approving of Alice''s choice in outfitting, led her and the rest of the crew aboard. Ethan scrambled on last, now wearing a black, tactical jacket over the t-shirt she saw earlier.
"I''m still working on my own costume," he whispered conspiratorially.
Alice grinned.
"I''m sure it''ll be glorious," she said.
As the Black Swan rocketed towards the airspace where Alice would intercept the passenger jet, Clawson and Athena re-briefed everyone aboard on the specifics of their mission. Once the Swan was just outside the jet''s radar range, Alice would depart carrying Ethan. The two of them would wait for the airliner''s pilot, who was still secretly in communication with outside help, to open the landing gear just enough for Alice and Ethan to get inside. Clawson showed them diagrams and blueprints, explaining how to access the cabin from a series of mechanical access hatches. Their orders were to get as close to the hijackers as possible without them knowing they were there.
"I don''t need to remind you what might happen if these guys realize two operatives had just boarded their aircraft," he warned.
Alice''s imagination was good enough to imagine what might happen, though she wished it wasn''t.
Clawson also briefed their complement of RaTS, including the remaining members of Meta Team, that would meet the jet once it had landed. They would secure the hostages, take the hijackers into custody if they were still alive, and administer medical aid to any injured.
He dismissed the crew to continue their preparations for the rest of the flight, and the RaTS set themselves to the task of outfitting themselves with weaponry, clothing, and equipment.
"Hey, Alice," called Ethan above the drone of the Swan''s engines. "Check this out!"
Alice watched Ethan grin as he took a black oxygen mask from a rack on the bulkhead. The mask, Alice knew, was designed for jumping out of planes at high altitudes, but Ethan seemed to have found a far more amusing use for it. He slapped it on his face, and though the mask concealed his grin, it did nothing to hide the mischief in his smiling eyes.
"Clawson," Ethan gasped between heavy, exaggerated breaths, "Clawson!"
Clawson, who''d been speaking in hushed voices with Athena and Joshua, gave Ethan an exasperated look.
"Clawson!" continued Ethan, apparently not intimidated by the ORIGIN director''s glare. "I am your father!"
Clawson''s eyes went wide, and his body appeared to tremble with rage. "Take that stupid mask your face and stop acting like a child!"
Alice''s heart leapt in her throat at the sound of his anger. She knew that Clawson was occasionally hard on Ethan, but she''d never before been present to hear the disciplinary exchange.
"Oh, c''mon," Ethan said as he took off the mask. Alice could see his smile, though still present, had lost its edge. It was softer now, more sheepish. "It was just a joke. I thought you liked Star Wars."
Alice saw crew members make a point of not looking directly at either Clawson''s or Ethan''s face. They busied themselves with tightening harnesses and checking weapons.
Clawson advanced on Ethan and lowered his voice to a coarse, menacing growl. "If you spent half as much effort developing yourself as a team leader as you did making stupid jokes, you wouldn''t be standing here wondering why no one takes you seriously." And in a voice even lower, Alice barely made out, "And don''t you ever joke about my father, Ethan."
Clawson was shorter than Ethan, and Ethan was a nigh indestructible powerhouse metahuman, yet it was Ethan who backed away. His face, Alice could see, was the sort of practiced blankness that comes with years of enduring hard criticism. Though Ethan was unreadable on the outside, she had a feeling he was anything but calm on the inside.
Clawson returned to Athena''s side and whispered "keep everyone on task" before he disappeared into one of the Swan''s many compartments.
When Alice tried following Clawson, she felt a hand on her shoulder. It was Athena.
"It''s probably best you stay out of this," Athena said. "This isn''t the first time. These two just have...difficulties sometimes. They both just need space."
Alice looked Athena in the eye. "I have questions," she said. "I think I need answers."
Athena was silent for a long time, seeming to have difficulty deciding whether she wanted to look at Ethan, who was busying himself with something at the other end of the cargo bay, or at the door Clawson had disappeared behind.
"Go ahead," she said, letting go of Alice''s shoulder. "Tell him what you need to tell him. Ask questions if you like. But I can''t guarantee he''ll give you any answers."
The inside of the compartment was identical to the one Alice had visited after her first rescue mission when she spoke to Athena in private.
Clawson looked up from a holographic display. He had been reviewing maps, diagrams, and blueprints of the passenger jet.
"You should be getting ready," he said.
Alice nodded her head. "I think I am ready, but I''m worried."
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Clawson steepled his fingers. "You''re concerned about that little chastisement I gave Ethan."
Alice nodded.
"Don''t worry about it. You''ve known for a long time that Ethan and I don''t always see eye-to-eye. He needs guidance."
Alice sat in a chair opposite Clawson and tried to read his facial expression, but she might as well have tried to read a block of ice.
"Clawson, I want to keep doing this. I want to help. I want to make a difference. But if I''m going to do that, I need to understand the people doing it with me. I don''t understand why you''re so hard on him. I don''t know why you keep him so confined and criticize him and expect so much of him. I need to know why. And I need to know why his stupid Darth Vader impersonation made you so upset. Ethan and I work very close together, and I depend heavily on you to help me make sense of...all this. I need to trust you."
Clawson said nothing as he leaned back in his chair. Alice began to wonder if she''d gone too far. Perhaps she was sick of watching Ethan be emotionally kicked like a dog. Maybe she just had fewer answers than she could stand after spending almost half a year in the service of ORIGIN. Maybe she just hated it when people she liked couldn''t get along.
After a long, quiet minute, he tapped some keys on his desk. A picture appeared on his screen, though Alice was unable to see it well at that angle.
"How much did I tell you about Divinity?" he asked.
Alice shrugged, not knowing how her answer to his question would help. "He was the first publicly recognized metahuman. He was strong. He could fly. You worked with him. I don''t know, a lot of stuff."
Clawson drummed his fingers on the desk, his eyes focused on something Alice couldn''t see. A memory, maybe.
"I didn''t just work with him," he corrected. He turned the screen so Alice could see it properly.
The picture displayed was a photograph. It looked like a professional family portrait. There was a man, a woman, and a young boy, maybe only eight or nine. The woman was beautiful and brown skinned with slanted eyes, probably Filipino. The boy had teeth missing from his wide smile, and his eyes sparkled, eyes shaped much like the woman''s, though he had lighter skin. The woman behind him was obviously his mother; she could see the two of them also shared the same round cheeks and wide mouth.
But it was the man who stood out most. Alice only took a moment to recognize the classically handsome features, handsome in the ways Ethan was handsome, and soon she realized the truth. She wasn''t used to seeing him in something so normal as a striped, button-up shirt and a wristwatch. Only in his farewell video had he looked so ordinary. The face she recognized from a thousand news reports, blogs, memes, t-shirts, magazines, and book covers. She''d seen the same intelligent, slightly squinting eyes, dark hair, and broad chin on the face of the most powerful, mysterious man in modern history.
"That''s Divinity?" she asked, knowing the answer to her own question. "And this is his family?"
Clawson nodded.
Alice looked at the picture, and then looked at Clawson again. "You said you didn''t just work with him. You knew his family. You knew him personally."
She squinted at Clawson, trying to imagine him with color in his hair. She stared long and hard at his cheeks and lips, the truth dawning on her like a door into sunlight being thrown wide open. Divinity had been getting old before she was born. And Clawson looked like he could be the right age.
"You''re the boy. You''re his son," she declared.
A sliver of a smile appeared on the corner of Clawson''s mouth.
"Everyone at ORIGIN holds Divinity as an inspiration, a hero, and a model for the future. But for me, he was Dad. I ate with him. I slept in his bed when I was scared. I cleaned the garage with him."
Alice found herself unable to take her eyes away from Clawson''s face. He was lighter somehow, as though buoyed up by his memories. She''d never before seen a look of fondness on his face, nor of admiration and love. He was, for a moment, that boy in the picture who loved his father but took so much after his mother. She had a feeling this was a side to him not many people had ever seen.
"My father was a symbol of strength and a herald of peace to the world, but to me he was more. He was a representation of everything a man could be if he chose."
Clawson''s face grew heavy again, the worries and cares of directing rescues and battles in a world without his father sagging his chin and stretching the skin on his forehead, gathering wrinkles under his eyes and at the corners of his mouth. He was Clawson again, the man who brutally scolded Ethan for a silly impersonation, and Alice was beginning to understand why.
"I had been helping Dad with his work for decades by the time he died. It had been his wish that I continue his work. He promised that if I did, there would be more people like him to pick up where he left off. He left behind some followers, normal, everyday people who stepped up to the challenge of bringing justice and safety to the world. People he''d trained to do things ordinary people thought would be impossible."
"Athena," Alice said.
"Yes," Clawson confirmed. "People like Athena. People so well trained, so motivated, they almost seemed like metahumans themselves. But they weren''t. For all their skills and talent and genius, they weren''t him. And they weren''t up to the future my dad had promised. I knew back then, like I know now, that we needed someone more than human. More than talented. More than incredibly skilled."
"You needed more metahumans," Alice finished for him.
"I started ORIGIN with one purpose: to find and train the next metahuman to pick up my father''s life''s work where he''d left it. And we met Ethan."
Alice thought of all the jokes Ethan told, all his antics, his goofy tee shirts, and his numerous escape attempts. She thought of Clawson, hoping beyond hope to find someone like his father, but finding Ethan instead.
"When we got him," Clawson continued, "I knew this boy would be pushed harder than any other boy could ever dream. He would be held to so much higher a standard...he would have so much expected of him, that to make him into the man the world needed him to be, I would have to be hard with him. Cold. Perhaps even cruel.
"I''m not stupid. I know what every American boy wants for himself. I know he wants freedom and friends. I know he wants someone to pat him on the back and hold him when he''s sad and laugh when he tells a joke. But he''s not every boy. You see that don''t you? That''s why we can''t treat him like others. He must be more than them. He must be stronger and smarter and more disciplined. That''s his sacrifice. That''s his offering to peace and justice and security. That''s why I must treat him like that. I inherited my father''s legacy, and I must pass it on to the next metahuman hope for this world. Ethan must sacrifice his own emotional needs to be what the world needs him to be. And the world needs him to be Divinity."
It was Alice''s turn to be quiet. She had listened, trembling, as Clawson described Ethan''s "sacrifice". The word kindled something in her, a sort of towering thunderhead of thoughts and indignation threatening lightning she could not contain.
In a moment, she was on her feet.
"Sacrifice?" she thundered. "What kind of sacrifice is taken from someone against his will? You aren''t guiding Ethan. You''re enslaving him. You''re breaking him. Did it ever occur to you that you''re preventing him from being the man you need him to be? Did your father beat you down and break you apart and belittle you to make you who you are? Ever since Ethan left his own family behind to be a part of your father''s legacy, you''ve been the closest thing to a father he''s ever had. Athena is probably the closest thing he has to a mom. Don''t you feel bad about that?"
She realized that she was no longer standing on the floor but floating above it. She had been towering over Clawson, especially since the shorter man was still sitting in his chair. Clawson, however, didn''t look intimidated. He didn''t look angry. Mostly, Alice guessed, he looked sad.
"You may be right," he admitted as she silently drifted back to the floor and sat in her seat. "I know that. I haven''t been the father that Ethan needs. But I did the best I could to ensure that my father''s promise was kept. Perhaps this is all too much for Ethan. Maybe we have expected far too much of him. And if we have, I am responsible for that. I have learned lately that perhaps there is another way to continue my father''s work without needing to drive Ethan to be so much like him."
Alice felt a ball of ice forming in the pit of her stomach, not sure she wanted the answer to her next question. "How?" she asked.
"You," answered Clawson. "My mistake was using Ethan in the first place. I had no idea that you existed. I had no idea that somewhere in Virginia was a little girl who was concealing the fact that she could fly. You already display powers that more closely resemble Divinity''s own than Ethan. And you are so much like him. Athena knew it, too. We both knew the moment we met you that you were like him in so many ways. You''re courageous, selfless, and honorable. You put others before yourself. You''re compassionate. You''re kind."
"We''re done here," Alice interrupted, standing from her seat again. Her lips pressed together in a hard line, unwilling to let more words spill out.
This is why you brought me into ORIGIN? Because I''m the person you''d been beating down Ethan to be? So I could replace him, now that you''ve learned you don''t need him? So you can discard him like a mistake?
"You have no idea what you mean to everyone," Clawson said as she marched to the door. "What you mean to me. You are my father''s promise fulfilled. You are going to do a lot of good for this world."
Alice gripped the doorknob so tightly that it squealed and bent in her grip like a ball of aluminum foil. "After this mission, we''ll see how much I want to do with you."