Bee (EXTENDED)
Bee
When a man has been alive for as long as life can remember, it becomes a challenge to pin down what exactly his first memory is. Though finer details and early strokes have faded away from his heavy-laden mind over the centuries, one strong first impression remains, and must always remain.
It went something like this.
0.
The surroundings were of strange vegetation, the world humid and fertile. He was scarcely a man among mammals, just a thing with a barely burgeoning consciousness. There were others like him close by, but not close enough to share in the revelation that was just about to occur. They were a herd, or a tribe. A mother and father followed closely, perhaps, or maybe all that remained were siblings. All he could recall for certain is that they were a family, fighting for survival amongst a flourishing wasteland. Inhospitable to what they were then, but soon, a world that was not theirs would bow beneath the feet of what they would become.
They were traveling. Always roaming. The world was brilliant in new ways at every turn, just coming to fruition, exploring itself and its creation, but no one stopped to appreciate it. No one knew how. Not until wonder came into his vocabulary and changed the way his eyes soaked in the world. That wonder, he would come to understand, was a spark gifted to a rare few of the race. A gene that would make them extraordinary.
The first thing he saw when that wonder struck his heart were the colors. Before him, a field of flowers. So vibrant. Like the sun had come down and made a place in the grass. There were hundreds if not thousands of flowers colored as viciously as the burning star above, orange and red and yellow all begging to be admired. Upon one of the flowers, a bumbling little creature, yellow and black, eager in its work. Though he did not know the word then, his mind ascribes it to the feeling now; enchanting.
His uncalloused hand came to rest near the petals of the brilliant poppy, a muddy finger outstretched in invitation. Strange, that beneath all the dirt and grime, the barbarian he was had not a scratch upon him. He didn’t know it then, but beneath the world’s muck, he would always be clean and unmarred, as if he had never walked this earth at all. The fuzzy little bumblebee, drunk with pollen, hardly knew the difference between its quest along the petals and this open appendage, and wandered dreamily onto his palm, its small, sticky legs making circles along his skin. Bringing it up to eye level, the man admired the insect with all the marvel he could muster. It was such a ripe, poignant feeling. A feeling of elation, of ecstaticness. A feeling that the world was rich and wonderful, full of magic he could so barely comprehend but wanted to know. This memory is one he clings onto because of that wonder. It is a memory he must cling onto. Because if that wonder is lost, there is no hope for his endless life.
Much of the flora and fauna from this memory no longer even dreams of existing. But the bumblebee carried on, and though it had indeed changed over the long stretches of time that ran the flowers it once pollinated from extinct, new seeds bloomed, new bumblebees were born, and life continued.
Life always continued. This was both the blessing and curse of the man who called himself --
1.
“Bee?” shouted the barmaid over the noise. “What kinda name is that?!”
“It’s my name, thank you,” Bee shouted back. “Will you please pass it along to the gentleman in the back, and say I’m here for the job?”
Raucous. Saloons were dreadful places, becoming increasingly worse the darker the day got. Often stepping inside one made Bee regret leaving his life of British pleasantries behind, but it had been far past overdue to craft a new face, and America had everyone simply buzzing. New opportunity this, new frontier that. He’d heard it all before, of course, but that never squashed the hope that something might be different this time. Though it wasn’t like he had much of a choice. A man like him had to move, no matter where the tide took him.
Here, he’d traded his cufflinks for boot spurs and lapels for lassos. Entering into a new culture each time was akin to jumping into a fairytale, and Bee had met the brothers Grimm personally. Sometimes, Bee couldn’t believe the greetings and traditions and holidays that the humans made up. Then, he would have to remind himself that he, too, was human. Sort of.
One arm on the bar, Bee drummed his fingers in waiting. He was no fortune teller, no time traveler. Despite his eons, he did not know the earth’s next step. He did not pretend to be a psychic, or a god, or a deity. He simply tried, wherever he went, to be an honest man.
Sometimes, however, honest men needed to eat.
And sometimes, honest men liked a little excitement with their dinner.
The barmaid returned, giving him a once-over of both suspicion and disbelief as she beckoned him behind the bar. She was right to be suspicious - he had yet to perfect southern nonchalance, the ability to hold a piece of straw between his teeth for ungodly amounts of time. Or maybe it wasn’t his mannerisms, but his appearance. Bee looked nothing like the bright-eyed cowboys of the frontier. He was tall and broad, with a nose so aquiline it looked almost neolithic. Dark eyes, bushy brows, squarish jaw, boxy form. He looked not like a man, but rather a rough rock sculpted into sentience and given life.
Or, maybe she was just suspicious of how he’d found his way into the secret entry place of one of the west’s greatest criminals with no invitation. That would also be a rather reasonable guess.
He was led to the back, which was not just a storeroom, but a small meeting room, with a table and chairs in the center of the alcohol-lined shelves. A rough looking man, boots kicked up onto the table, cowboy hat tipped to hide his face, sat in the seat at the head of the table as if it were his throne. Bee had seen many kings in his lifetime, but he’d long since decided that the demeanor of a man was what made them more like royalty than anything else. This man, certainly, was going to act like a king.
“Priscilla says you’re here for the job,” he drawled, that southern snarl snagging sharp in Bee’s ears. “How’d you even find out ‘bout that, stranger?”
Bee straightened his shoulders, taking the seat across from the man without invitation. “I run in certain circles, as do you.”
“And where would those circles be collidin’?”
Bee smiled. “When they have need of special people.”
The man’s cowboy hat tipped up. Finally, Bee could see his eyes. Green jewels, glittering with suspicion beneath an unkempt beard and a twisted scar above the brow. A pleasant amount of life in those eyes, Bee thought, all things considered.
Then the man pulled out a pistol and leveled it at Bee.
“Oh.” Bee said with a small pout. “There’s no need for that, really.”
“I don’t mess with the likes of you,” the man snarled. “Mutants.”
“We prefer the term metahumans,” Bee said, “and I thought you’d appreciate a man with talents joining you on your high stakes robbery, no?”
“Are you the one they’re whisperin’ ‘bout, huh?” he hissed, leaning over the tabletop. “The killer?”
“No,” said Bee, with the innocence of a child.
“No? ‘Cause I heard about him, y’know. Glowing red eyes. Pullin’ people ‘part with his mind. Leavin’ em out for the dogs.”
“Very nasty sounding thing,” Bee agreed earnestly. “But I do none of that.”
“Prove it,” he said, slamming a fist on the table, perhaps in an effort to make Bee flinch. He did not. “Show me yer glow.”
Bee tilted his head in curiosity. This man did know a fair bit about his kind. The glow, for starters, was their greatest giveaway, but for Bee it was not so simple.
“Well, I would like to prove to you I am not this tasteless serial killer.” Bee gave a nod of understanding. “How about you shoot me?”
The ruffian balked. It wasn’t often the man that you wanted to shoot asked you to do it, but Bee carried on as if this were as simple as asking about the weather.
“Shoot me, yes. Choose your location, really, it doesn’t matter to me. And if you can get it somewhere quite plausible, that’d be impressive, you know? Like the mouth or between the --”
BANG.
Bee’s brains splattered the wall behind him.
There was a moment of dead silence before a glow erupted in his lifeless eyes. White, pure white, encapsulating the entirety of his sclera and giving off a subtle radiance that brightened the bloody hole between his eyes. Despite the viscera spattered behind him, the cowboy could watch as, piece by piece, first the mush of his brain, then the bone surrounding it, then his skin, all knit back together with a practiced determination, like an ant returning home with its crumbs at all costs.
In all, it took about a minute for Bee’s head to put itself back together. When it was done, he blinked a bit, and the glow faded out of existence, leaving his own sharp, brown eyes to nail the man who had shot him with a large grin.
“Wow!” Bee exclaimed, rather excited. “You just went for it!”
The man sputtered something intelligible, white as a sheet.
“Oh, that was brilliant.” Bee went on, his English accent poking through. “Wow, you were really ready to be done with me, eh?” A full chested laugh escaped him. “Priceless!”
Now feeling some of that rugged southern confidence he’d seen everyone swaggering about with, Bee put his feet up on the table. A drawl began to come through, dripping with sarcasm. “Oh, c’mon, son. Lighten up. You’ve just added an unkillable man to your crew. Or, rather, as the boss of your crew, now.”
Pausing, feeling a surge of excitement, Bee reached over and grabbed the man’s hat off his head, donning the cowboy accessory for himself. He sat back, appeased, while the man looked at him, dumbfounded. “Now, let’s talk split, hm? Twenty eighty is generous, no? Just to be clear though, I am the eighty, if you should want to keep your life.”
The man was left gaping at him, dumbstruck. Bee tipped his hat, chuckling to himself. “How do you say it? Oh. Yeehaw.”
2.
Despite having a century to watch man’s method of wasting time with booze evolve, Bee had not been able to decide what was worse; a pub, or a saloon.
The musty green walls were almost damp with what they’d absorbed over the decades. A TV blared in the corner, some dull sport capturing the drunk faces of his fellow bargoers, and the sound of cue sticks hitting 8-balls echoed behind him in a lilting, stumbling rhythm. The smell of liquor and cigarettes entangled in the atmosphere for a nasty dance, and the bartender leaned over the counter, refilling his glass of whiskey without needing to be asked. All his senses were occupied by the instruments of the tavern. But despite the stagnant air, there was a flow to a place like this. An unspoken pattern.
The push and pull of time had more tempo than most knew. Bee’s life thus far had been spent walking the edge of the shore, learning the tells of the high and low tides. A hundred years ago, America had been new and shiny, the promise of gold gleaming in everyone’s hungry gaze. In the thick of it, he had done his dance as an American frontiersman and entrepreneur, and come out a wealthy man. But the world had changed. There was no more thrill of the chase; no tangible American dream. Just sleazy pubs with carpets stained in the stink of regret. Dark things had been born out of the hunger for gold and riches, and rather than come out above it all, his people had been pushed to hide underground. Gone were the days that a metahuman could tout themselves as a mythological creature, exert their power with no explanation. Technology cataloged one’s every move, and all of their lore had faded into legend, giving way to a tedious, deadened world. They were afraid to be seen by those uninspired, those without gift. And that fear had inspired a whole new host of dangers to rise to the surface.
Bee raised his chin, and with a simple catch of the eye, had liquor in his glass yet again. The bartender was on autopilot, humming to herself as she dragged a rag across the countertop, doing everything with subconscious years of expertise. Bee craned his neck to steal a look into her eyes, a glossed-over, hazy blue. He wasn’t a bloodhound. He couldn’t tell if she was metahuman, not with certainty. But there was an inkling, a small, smothered spark of wonder in her sunken cheekbones. And as she caught his gaze, he allowed his pure white glow to flicker in greeting.
She was not startled, rather, she seemed saddened. She held his eyes for a moment, before shaking her head and lowering her stare back down to the countertop, continuing to clean it even though it was already sparkling.
“You shouldn’t do that around here,” she murmured. “It’s dangerous.”
“I’m sorry,” Bee said, and he was. His people were terrified, and Bee was never able to feel that same sense of danger. How could he, if he never really was in danger? They all feared losing their lives. But his could never be lost.
“I’m filling in for Daedalus,” Bee continued, voice lowered. “What’s the count this week?”
“Three. Waiting in the underpass for transport,” she replied, gaze still on the bar.
“How hot are they?”
“Two are a sibling pair who have been being tailed by the RPME for three weeks now. The other just came into his abilities, and had to leave after revealing himself at his workplace. We think the RPME are aware, but he hasn’t had a run in yet.”
Bee felt a growl bubble in his throat. A despicable organization had risen to capitalize on all the hidden power. The Research Lab for the Physically & Mentally Enhanced was one large part of the reason why metahumans had begun to cower in the shadows. A twisted organization, the RPME focused on the torture and experimentation of metahumans in total secret. Because the general public still did not know about the existence, the RPME could operate without correction, without punishment. They had become experts in snatching metahumans away in the night, never to be seen again. The few who had managed to escape told horror stories of being tortured and experimented upon to unseen ends. Metahumans young and old could vanish in an instant, others could spend their entire lives being hunted out of every home, each new life upended the moment it began. No one knew who was truly running the show, nor what they were trying to achieve with their metahuman experimentation. All they knew was that they were in constant danger. The RPME could be anywhere at any moment, posing as a coworker, a cashier, or any kind figure on the street, employing any and all kinds of tactics to catch a metahuman off their guard and whisk them away to somewhere they would never be found again.
“When is the transport arriving?” Bee muttered.
“Midnight,” she whispered back.
He tutted to himself, downing his drink in one go. If he were running the show, Bee wouldn’t stand for this kind of skulking around. His idea of taking back control would be to blow his brains out on national television and show the world that metahumans were very, very real, to end this game of aliases once and for all. But Bee had made a vow long ago that he would not do such a thing. Over time, to still that desire thrumming within him, he’d come to consider himself as more of a rock perched on a very tall cliff, one precariously left there by the receding of oceans and changing of geographies. Privy to the view, but not part of the change. Just a bystander. He was a comfortable onlooker, a moving, living relic. With his cemented place in time, he scared other metahumans with his longevity (a concept they barely knew the first thing about) and he knew that they would not be happy if he upended their claustrophobic little lives just because his was unendable.
But as much of a bystander that Bee tried to be, there were some old friends who knew how to twist his arm and ask for a favor. Daedalus was one of those few. He had cashed in, and though Bee’s abilities were in no way offensive, he made a very good shield, and was to play bodyguard for this caravan of endangered metahumans.
As Bee pushed his glass back to the bartender, she reached over and placed her hand atop his. Bee looked up, startled, and found her eyes alive with a desperation so powerful it banished all her previous fear.
Her grip tightened, and she spoke just firm enough to keep her voice from quivering. “Keep them safe.”
The raw despair in her voice stunned him to silence. His vision doubled, and Bee found himself seeing not the woman in front of him, but the woman he’d once loved. The woman to whom he’d promised he would not lay his heavy hand on the stream of time. The woman who’d grabbed him, loved him, twisted him inside out and then begged him, saying, You know too much. You’ll always know too much. Stay out of it. Stay out of our lives.
What about our life? He’d asked. Averting her eyes, she’d replied.
It doesn’t matter. It will only be a blip for you.
And yet he lived in that time like no other.
It took him too long to gather his wits. When he did, he snatched his hand away from hers and grunted. “Of course I will.”
She recoiled. Bee sat back as well, trying to still his hammering heart. In a few moments he would leave for the underpass, greet the metahumans running for their lives, and promise them safe passage. He would take any bullet that the RPME loosed their way in hopes that they could make it to the other side unharmed. Then he would watch as their transport faded into the twilight, and wonder what sorry group of metahumans he would be roped into helping next.
He had no reason to stay. Having passed on her message, the bartender went back to work, doing her best not to look his way. Even though Bee didn’t hate being called to put bandaids on these situations as much as he pretended to, something made him linger among the musk and decay of the dingy pub for just a little longer.
He was not a psychic, but he was coming to accept that he did have a bit of a sixth sense for certain things. Not a psychic, no, but maybe an empath. An empath of empires. That had a good ring to it. After so much time watching dynasties rise and fall, he could feel it in the air when one was due for a change. An earth shattering one. True to his word, Bee would have nothing to do with it. But the weight of the wind had suddenly shifted; Bee sat straight, poised, waiting for the whisper of a voice that always ushered in the next great catalyst. And despite the ruckus, a pub, saloon or otherwise was always the best place to feel something earth shattering happen.
“Do you need anything else?” the bartender said, obviously waiting for him to go, and Bee swore he could hear the horses of the frontier clambering behind the swinging wooden doors. There it was; another memory washing over him like a wave, only to recede and leave him in the sand, stranded in a foreign time like a beached whale. He inhaled, and shook his head.
“No,” Bee said. “I’m waiting.”
Her brows pinched together. “For?”
After a pause, Bee spoke. “For a friend. A very old friend of mine.”
A jarring cut on the TV took the channel from soccer to static. Then, a flash of text across the screen. BREAKING NEWS. All the hazy faces in the pub came alive as they watched the very first broadcasted footage of metahumans on live TV.
It was a fight, an escape, or something in between. What looked to be a group of bedraggled teenagers in hospital gowns were displayed on camera, wielding ungodly abilities against faceless soldiers. Their assailants were dressed in black combat gear and armed to the teeth, but they seemed to be no match for the awesome powers the teens were displaying. Unimaginable, fantastical things; one conjuring an impenetrable force field of light, another wielding wings of flame. They were all working as a force against their oppressors, but despite the harsh circumstances, they were winning.
A chorus of confusion began to sing.
“Is that girl throwing flame from her hands?”
“This is bullshit. It’s photoshopped.”
“If it was photoshopped it wouldn’t be on live TV!”
“Jerry, that kid is flying!”
“Ho-ly shit. Are you tellin’ me superpowers are real?!”
Rousing the bartender from her stupor with a raise of his glass, Bee signaled for a refill. “My old friend is here. Your friends won’t have trouble getting to their transport tonight.” He met her eyes with a glaze of disappointment. “Will you pour me another?”
3.
The year was twenty-one-hundred-something. Pubs were now called gizmohatches. Bee thought that was the most stupid name of them all.
Bee was enjoying a drink, or a “WH.SKY%43”, as most standard alcoholic beverages were now called, conveniently alphanumerically labeled based on their alcohol content. Not that it mattered too much - it was all produced synthetically anyway. Everything was different now. Neon, machine-made, artificial. Most food was eaten in the form of powdered packets; daily enrichment was enjoyed through virtual reality. The majority of basic human jobs were automated. To hammer that fact, in front of him was a robot, perfectly mixing each drink.
“Can you really call yourself a bartender?” Bee blurted, desperate to make conversation with someone, so desperate that he would make conversation with something. The robot was tall and metallic, with copper notches and screens on its head barely resembling a face, more like a tin can with two lifeless eye holes.
“That is my assigned profession,” beeped the robot, cleaning a glass with a rag and one of its claw-like hands, in the same motions as bartenders of ye olde.
“Assigned profession,” Bee echoed mockingly. “Assigned robot profession. What a fucking world.”
Though there were few, each and every one of the patrons surrounding him was a metahuman, dressed to the nines in futuristic gear, garish hair colors, and glowing eyes abound. Not only were they metahuman, but most were cybernetically enhanced, sporting highly optimized prosthetic limbs, modified internal organs, reinforced steel bones. Bee had never sat in a bar surrounded by his brethren that wasn’t thirty feet below surface level in an abandoned train system, or hidden in a location one could only reach if given exact coordinates. It wasn’t a mistake that he chose to make conversation with the robot instead of the metahumans; these were barely his people anymore, even if they were categorically metahuman. Bee had spent his entire life either intimidating other metahumans, hiding from them, or judging them. But here he was, surrounded by cyborgs, in a world where nearly everyone had a little metahuman spark in them, yet the wonder was thin.
He had never felt so alien.
It was all because of that damn broadcast. Something that Bee had thought for so long needed to happen ended up becoming their downfall. Once metahumans had been shunted into public view one hundred years ago, things advanced very quickly. Too quickly for Bee’s liking. He usually enjoyed savoring the slow changes, but skyscrapers had climbed the sky so fast that in just a few short decades, he could hardly see the stars any longer. Metahumans were everywhere, and for once, Bee felt like the claustrophobic one, watching streets become unbearably cramped and superpowers crowd every corner. Once upon a time, they had been special and rare. But now they were the many. And that many had advanced the world at the speed of light.
Outside, hovercraft zipped past the shanty hatch. People spoke on holo-communicators, videochatting with projections that appeared in front of their faces, created by the little crystal implants in their brains that most citizens had willingly received through an operation so common, none thought it out of place or invasive at all. The world was overrun with all sorts of meddlesome technological ameliorations that Bee was disappointed to be associated with. Especially because of all the horrors that it had brought on. While the privileged indulged in their advancements, the fuel necessary to create them was nearly dry. Crops barely grew among their smog filled skies, and the world was too crowded to feed with what little sprouted. They were running out of food, out of energy, out of clean air and open space and anything that made human life feasibly worth living. For the very first time, Bee felt time running thin. And he didn’t like to think about what would happen when the whole world finally croaked and he was left standing.
They weren’t quite there yet, though. People were still kicking the bucket around. Metahumans were surviving, smuggling food packets, stealing from the rich, giving to the poor. Despite that lovely Robin Hood idealism, it was like being aboard a sinking ship. And frankly? Bee felt a little bit like he’d lost his touch. Normally he’d be able to keep up with all the change, at least enough to hold fast to self preservation, but this time it had just been too much too soon. Clinging to his old ways had made him stick out like a sore thumb, and those with new fancy, flashy, neon-tinged powers had gobbled him up before he could blink. His skin instantly healed the barcodes citizens tattooed had on their hands to access their bank accounts, and his brain had pushed out the implant the moment they’d put it in. He was a ghost in this society, paying for his booze in the last miserable gizmohatch that accepted the archaic credit card.
Bee stared daggers into the bottom of his drink. Funny, it looked a little different than his normal order. A little darker, a bit thicker. This was already his third, and though it had once been hard to get a proper buzz, the artificial intelligences that now ran bars could tailor drinks to a metahuman’s specific gene, making sure it gave them the desired reaction. Gone were the days that speedsters had to chug quickly to feel any sort of burn, or immortals whose bodies healed too quickly for a hangover were left out of the fun. But this didn’t feel like it was supposed to. His head was getting strangely heavy, his vision beginning to blur. Even his gut was churning uncomfortably, protesting against the drink he’d ingested.
“Robot…” Bee began, raising a finger, his words slurred. “What the hell did you…?”
His head hit the clear countertop with a resounding thunk.
When Bee awoke, he was not in the gizmohatch. Not in a pub, or a saloon, and not at the beginning of time. He was in a tube.
As the dark haze cleared from his vision, Bee’s predicament was illuminated. He was trapped in a glass cylinder that bolted to the floor and rose all the way to the ceiling. Both his hands were stretched out above his head and he was lowered on his knees, trapped in place by many manners of cuffs and bonds that cut him off from even the slightest wiggle. Parts of his coat were cut away to make space for ominous wires with needles that dug into his skin, trailing out into big machines that surrounded his glass prison. It seemed like the machines were not yet active, but with the amount of things stuck in him, he could only imagine this going so many ways.
This, Bee thought to himself, was not good. And for a moment, one guilty moment, he longed for the scenery he had always loved to hate, the mess of music in an old pub, the smell of real alcohol and the bartender of the times doting on him with a smile. But instead of the lost ruckus of happy, stupid, drunk people, there was only one figure that occupied the space in front of his cage.
A very fat and annoying man stepped into view. Bee knew this man from the holographic billboards that plastered the lower ring of Takym, the new name for the fractured America. Lyris Matrikt, the CEO of Big Bux Co., the ruiner of any civilized mercantile system and the man who was surely going to run things into the ground, if Bee had to place any bets. Lyris Matrikt was the monopoly man (though no one in twenty-one-hundred-whatever remembered what Monopoly was) the owner of all, the giver of little. The rich flourished, the poor perished. And this time, there was likely no coming back from it.
“You couldn’t even let me finish my drink!” Bee bellowed.
Lyris Matrikt sniffed. “You seem rather unphased for someone who’s just been kidnapped.”
“Do you know how many people have locked me in cells?” Bee said slowly, voice becoming a bit more even keeled as he reeled his emotions back in. Lyris seemed like the sort of man who’s ego swelled like a balloon - meaning it could be easily popped with the right maneuver. “Generally, I appreciate the vacation. What I don’t appreciate is being interrupted.”
Lyris might have laughed. Or maybe it was a snotty-cough. Bee couldn’t really tell the difference.
“Are you going to ask why I brought you here?”
“No,” said Bee. “You’re going to tell me anyway.”
Lyris paused, squinting at Bee, knowing he was right but not very fond of admitting such things. “Well,” Lyris continued nasally. “It’s a topic that affects all of us, the world’s only immortal man included.”
With a dramatic groan, Bee lolled his head in a very limited go on gesture. “Enlighten me.” He begrudged. Despite the damper being put on his speech, the monopoly man continued.
“I’ve found a new power source,” Lyris said calmly. “One that will last us long past the loss of gasoline and neon. One that will keep my Sanctuary alive forever.”
Sanctuary. Bee had heard whispers of the multibillionaire making a little oasis for him and his rich little compatriots. An invite-only society with artificial green trees and synthetic blue water, said to outlast the impending apocalypse. Were they already so close to the end? He thought he would have more time before the rumors became real. When had it all gotten so far away from him?
Anger rising, Bee spat at the glass. Lyris flinched a little, but regained composure quickly. He stared at Bee for a moment, insulted, then continued.
“Metahumans.” Lyris went on. “So much power in them. My Sanctuary can run on that power forever. And what better a source than the oldest man alive?”
Despite the circumstance, looking at this rotund bastard actually made Bee look forward to being the last person alive. Just to watch him wither and rot. Lifting his chin, a sparkle of inspiration simmered in Bee’s eyes as he caught Lyris’ gaze. Lyris, unhappy and unsettled to see such passion in his prisoner, stepped back.
“My old friend is coming,” Bee said gently. “Will you tell him I say hello?”
Lyris sneered and turned away, the machinery surrounding Bee’s prison coming to life in his wake. A series of threatening signals and tones began to sound, and Bee could feel his blood being leached out of him by the tubes stuck around his body.
Bee felt panic. It started as a poison in his stomach that bubbled up through his chest to his throat. He had not felt panic in a long time, not since he’d been dropped in a vat of sulfuric acid in 1979, and not since Maria had told him to leave and never come back. Both times, Bee’s heart and body had stitched itself back together despite it being an impossible task. So it wasn’t his life he was panicked for, because he had quite a lot of confidence in its infinity. It was what his life could be used to do. If Lyris had really gotten this right, actually found some way to power his plans with blood, or metahuman energy, or with Bee himself, it would truly be endless. He would be drained and healed and drained and healed over and over again while Lyris pigged out in his palm tree oasis with the 1%.
At first, Bee thrashed about. It was a childish response, but it was a start. He tugged recklessly at the cuffs, tried to shake his knees out of their captivity. The good thing about his powers was that while yes, he could very feasibly become an infinite battery, it also gave him infinite time to try and escape. Bee had no doubt that Lyris was watching on some tucked away camera in a far away room, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t try. So he busied himself a while with as much brute force as his bound body could muster. The bondage creaked and complained, but did not yet budge.
Without Lyris’ wide figure blocking his view, Bee was able to look a little past his glass cage, trying to take in his surroundings. For the most part, it seemed like a large white and sterile room, empty except for ominous equipment and fluorescent lights. But as he squinted harder into the distance. he thought he could make out another cage like his. Beneath the incessant hum of the torture devices plugged into him, there was a sound. A groan.
Bee craned his neck as close to the glass as his confines would allow. There was not just one glass cage ahead of him, but multiple. Each with their own set of villainous machines and groaning and moaning in a terrible chorus. There were people in those cages. Not just people, but metahumans. Metahumans being leached and sucked bone dry just like he was, turned into monstrous… things, remnants of people with their essence removed. Lyris was draining out their power, their wonder, the very thing that made them human and more than human, and using it like a chargeable battery.
Now it was not just panic that twisted his insides. It was terror, wild and reckless, a stallion loose from its bridle. Bee screamed, and yelled, and rattled his bones until his body began to break. His left wrist snapped in the cuff; then his foot twisted backwards, allowing him to drag it through its bonds. His middle twisted and contorted, and soon, his ribs were able to poke out, his stomach distending in odd ways, liberating him of the harness. The wires and IVs popped out. And with one great, monstrous roar, Bee was free of the chains, and sent himself hurtling through the glass.
As a contorted figure of a man, Bee rose from the glass-covered ground, propping himself on limbs that stuck out at odd angles and bones that showed through skin. The lights in the room turned from a blatant white to a blaring red, and an alarm began to sound. The technology whirred and complained in the absence of its subject, flashing error signals on every available screen. This did not stop Bee for a second. The moment he could use his fingers properly again, he grabbed a cart holding one of the machines, and hurtled it through the glass cage of another fellow captive.
This was where things went very wrong.
There must have been something in the machine, some sort of volatile chemical that made the power-extraction process possible; or perhaps it was the abilities of the metahuman with which the machine collided. It could have been both. Whatever it was, it exploded.
Bee was, temporarily, obliterated.
4.
Bee was at the end of time.
There might’ve been a saloon here once. Or a pub, or a gizmohatch. Now, there was just dust. He was sat in the crater of destruction, surrounded by nothing but empty wasteland, perched at the height of his own destruction. It had taken quite a while for every splattered piece of Bee to pull itself back together into a body, and by the time it had done so, it had been much too late. Bee’s act of revolution had set off a chain reaction - not just one explosion, but multiple, enormous explosions that rocked Matrikt’s entire facility and detonated every volatile chemical in his employ, taking quite a big chunk of civilization with it. Under the ashes was rubble and ruin, little left to recover, and few lives left to recover what little.
With that, more secrets were revealed, namely, the basement full of sucked-dry metahumans who were unleashed upon the world. ‘Walkers’ as they were called by those who survived, deadened husks of what were once metahumans who had been sucked dry by Matrikt’s experiments (zombies as popular fiction would have called them) were left to roam a barren wasteland and cannibalistically chew on what bare amounts of life remained. This reduced the surviving population incredibly quickly.
There was one chewing on him right now, actually.
It had only half a head but unfortunately its teeth still worked. Like a dog with a bone, the once-human gnawed on his forearm, grumbling and grunting each time Bee’s flesh renewed itself, pleased with the endless source of entertainment and nourishment. Bee allowed it to happen while he reminisced on his mistakes.
Yes, he had slummed it with the last of humanity for a little while once his brain and bones had put themselves back together. There were a few humans in underground shelters, but they all bit the dust sooner or later, no matter what Bee did to protect them. Now all that was left of humanity were the things that moaned and groaned and dragged themselves across endless expanses of dirt. So Bee too had groaned and dragged himself back to the site of his greatest mistake; the resting place of Big Bux Co. The blast site. Ground zero. He sat himself down on a little rock in the center of the crater, and began to wait.
When he finally grew tired of the incessant gnawing, Bee raised his free hand, the one holding a baseball bat, and bashed the poor creature into the dirt where it belonged.
Then, he sat back down in the dust and continued to wait. For his very old friend.
“It’s about time you come and relieve me of my post.” Bee said to the open air, voice tired and gaze glossy. “I know I did nothing particularly important with my time other than, well,” Bee gestured around him, “y’know. But I figure you wanted some sort of accountable reference for life on earth, perhaps? One very long human history book. Or, maybe you just wanted to torture my soul in particular. Well, you can come collect me now, and read up on all the things I’ve witnessed. I can tell it with quite a lot of pizzazz.”
The wind whistled a little. Bee dragged his foot in the dirt and the dried up guts of the walker, mixing them together, making a painting. For the first time in many years, in many decades, in many centuries, Bee felt tears well up in his eyes.
“Did you forget?” Trembling, he asked, “that I was human?”
And the voice of his old friend blessedly came.
No.
A laugh escaped him, one of aching relief. “There you are,” He said tearily. “I thought you were going to leave me here.”
I never left you, Bee.
“I know,” Bee said, voice cracking. “I know.”
I am ready to hear the story you’ve gathered for me.
“I can go?” Bee asked, like a child relieved of a playground duty.
Yes.
There was a sound, a small hum. In front of him, the guts of the walker had sunk into the dry earth, and from its carcass bloomed a flower. Brilliant orange petals, familiar as the blazing sun, beckoning forth a buzzing little bumblebee. Just as he remembered, Bee put forth his finger and invited his old friend onto his finger.
Wonder. Excitement. Enchantment. Bee suddenly, viciously, remembered it all, and those feelings gripped his heart and thrust him back through that first, ancient memory. The thrill to be alive, the excitement to learn and try. His tears came in droves, like the waves that had once drowned him, and wet the earth with salt and life. As he died, he melted, and infused every crack in the rocks with the memories of fragile being and the hunger for change. And this barren world would too grow again, grow humid and flourish with a soul in its roots, a catalog of centuries stored in its stones, in remembrance of a man who had collected every feeling, every emotion, every possible life there was to live and brought it back to the dust and the dirt for it to grow and learn and try again.
Thank you, Bee.
For teaching me.