I poke my head into the doorway on the left and marvel at the stark contrast. This space gleams with cleanliness. Walls the shade of heather give way to abstract black and white artwork. There isn’t so much as a piece of lint on the hardwood floor. A king size bed covering all but the outline of a decorative black rug faces an embankment of gauze-covered French doors.
A display of photographs sits beside a huge TV with curved screen. I pick up one of the heavy silver frames to get a better look. A smiling couple. The woman’s bright blue eyes crinkle in laughter even though she can’t be more than twenty. Ash-blond curls cascade around her face and shoulders. Her partner folds her into his arms from behind in the classic “prom pose,” complete with awkward space between them.
My eyes snag on his face, mind racing. I place my index finger over the top half of his face and almost drop the frame.
Charade.
Same smile, same build. Brown eyes, the shade of rich maple syrup, shine out of a sharp, high-cheekbones face. This persondoesn’t look like he could fight a marshmallow, let alone be my arch enemy. Do the years really harden us that much?
I replace the picture with a sigh. Whoever Charade was when that picture was taken, he’s not that person now.
The last room is somewhere between the last two on the cleanliness scale. Dust doesn’t cover absolutely every flat surface here, but enough clutter fills the majority of the room that I’m not sure I would even notice if it did. Papers litter the floor like snow on an early winter morning. Some leave a crumpled trail to the wall directly across from the door, at the center of which resides a blackened fireplace.
More of Charade’s academic debris litters the workspace on a massive antique desk and the usable surfaces of a musty, viridian velvet couch nestled in the far corner. I really hope the green hue isn’t actually mold.
Must seems to be the overwhelming theme of the place. It’s not that the space is disused, rather that it was so lovingly overused in its time so as to be in disrepair. It’s the kind of place where time stops without someone to occupy it.
Energy buzzes in the air all around me. It rolls across my skin in waves, waiting for me to harness it. Closing my eyes, I bask in that glow. That tantalizing caress.
Crisp edges on folded pages brush against my fingertips as I sort through them, picking one at random. It’s stiff and wrinkled, a stain decorating the bottom corner in almost a perfect ring. A faintly chemical smell lingers in the cells of the paper. Diagrams dot either side of it like blurred hieroglyphics. Pieces of lines and symbols are smudged almost out of existence. The basic chemistry course I took my freshman year at New Malcolm U is not enough to help me make sense of things.
The thought of Charade handling chemical agents sends a special kind of fear shooting through my system.
Pushing the papers aside, I turn to the desk itself. Rummaging through the first few drawers provides nothing more scintillating than a few quality ballpoint pens. I pocket a heavy teal one with silver accents.
The bottom drawer on the left, however, contains the jackpot. Several soft leather tomes sit within its wooden core.
The papers make a slight hiss as they slide across one another as I gather them into one corner. Settling on the opposite end with my prize clutched in hand, anticipation sings through my veins. Tracing the lines on the soft, textured cover, the earthy smell of leather wafts in faint, tantalizing traces.
Alexander Maxwell.
The Maxwell family is one of the oldest in New Malcolm. So much sadness in one family, but so much good too. The Aristide and Didina Maxwell Foundation for the Arts. The Maxwell Family Memorial Scholarship. The Maxwell College of Science and Engineering at New Malcolm University. The family members themselves always stayed out of the limelight.
The prodigal son died a few years ago.Alexander. Somehow Charade ended up in his house. What was it he said? A friend of the family?
The first few pages provide a brief overview of who Alexander was at the time. It seems to start just after he began attending college. It was one of those old money, Ivy League type private places. He hated it on sight. He wanted to attend NMU where many of his friends decided to go, but the benefits of Wellcromby University were undeniable. It could afford the best professors, offer state-of-the-art systems to its students, and educated some of the most brilliant minds in history.
Under the influence of one of his favorite professors, Alexander enrolled in the Experimental Sciences program with an emphasis on Genetics and Pharmaceuticals. Although he had been a social kid in school, he soon withdrew into the raptureof his studies. He took classes during the day and signed up for extra college credit online at night. A social life apparently didn’t matter. Neither did sleep. Not when he could change the world.
And then he met Moira.
I saw the girl of my dreams today. Her hair is silken gold with the craziest near-black streaks in it. Her eyes are warm and lively, an arresting shade of hazel. I looked into those eyes and her smile lit up with wattage strong enough to jump start my heart. She asked me to sign a petition. I don’t even know what it was for, but I raced to add my name to the list, along with about a dozen others.
I guess that would be a great conversation started for Friday. We’re getting coffee.
Moira made him break out of his shell. Her warmth was infectious, and she cared about the world and the people in it. Before he knew it, Alexander had a network of friends around him and he belonged to about a dozen different clubs, even a notorious secret society on campus.
I grab the next book from the desk, but they must be out of order. Alexander is older in this one. He just finished his PhD and he and Moira are engaged to be married. Planning a spring wedding.
Alexander details his work with the kind of precision and care I would expect from someone in his field. He has been funded to find the Holy Grail in both science and medicine—a remedy that would speed healing. Cure any sickness. He hypothesizes that the answer might lie somewhere with New Malcolm’s superhero population.
Why is there such a huge concentration here compared to our surrounding cities? Is it a genetic defect in the familiesthat settled here? Something in the water? Or do they come here for safety—bigger city equals easier to hide?
From the little I can gather, none share the same background or source. Some are born with abilities while others don’t develop them until their teens—sometimes well into adulthood. The only connection I can find is New Malcolm.
He puts out an open call to Supers willing to undergo an examination for a little extra cash. He’s surprised when so many apply, but there was a huge factory strike and subsequent mass layoff around this time. People needed to eat more than they needed anonymity.
The factories are the lifeblood of New Malcolm and have been for hundreds of years. The work is hard, the safety laws growing lax as more factories established at the edges of the city. It’s not unusual to see someone sitting on the curb on Main Street who has several fingers missing, or worse.
