Chapter Text
It’s called the Gift of Perfect Knowledge. Of course, this is because someone once asked me “Hey, what’s your superpower?” and the name popped right up as it always did. I wonder if that means my superpower named itself. I’ve never had the courage to ask.
I can ask myself things and know the answer instantly; this made my schooling from the age of nine comparatively easy—at least to start. I just thought I was smart at first; I mumbled a math question under my breath during a quiz and instantly knew how to solve it. I thought it was a fluke.
That feeling lasted about ten minutes. Fourth grade math is easy, those numbers never lie, never change; they have rules, and they are bound to those rules (Please do not ask me about college math). Numbers don’t usually conjure the full scope of this power.
Social Studies was where the problems started. Even a fourth grade level of inquiry led to things I couldn’t possibly know. I saw—and yes, I see the answers to my questions as if I had been there to witness—the full scope of events as we studied them. Battlefields. Invasions. It was too much at nine to see the unbridled truth—even the most non-invasive questions designed for nine year olds conjured the worst of humanity’s hubris—and events of unexpected kindness. I was home for a week after that lesson and delirious screaming from a nine year old having a full blown melt down got me a visit to the doctor. I asked her “What is wrong with me?”
The truth is that nothing is ‘wrong’ with me. I knew it so clearly it drowned out whatever she was saying in response. She wanted me to get an MRI. I asked what that was and got the full extremely technical answer. It was dizzying.
If there is one limit to this power, it’s that it doesn’t hold back just because I don’t understand. I had to form a foundation of knowledge of my own so that I could understand the answers I received; I had to force this Gift to a nine year old’s level. It meant a lot of clarifying questions. It didn’t take long to connect these visions to spoken questions and that I had to actually speak or someone else had to ask.
I homeschooled after that. I was right, nothing was medically wrong with me which put my parents at ease. I asked myself how I got this way. In a world of superheroes, special powers were nothing new. Chemical spills, radiation exposure, magical contracts or training, genetic mutation, aliens—we’ve heard it all. I was the ultimate result of an experiment done in secret in the States during the Cold War—my grandmother was an unwitting test subject, but she showed no signs that the substance in her morning coffee was affecting her, eventually resigned her position as a secretary to the scientist who ran the experiment, got married and moved with her family to Canada. My existence was a delayed response to that experiment.
I knew enough about any government at that point to know I should keep this hidden. I pretended to study hard. It was important to me to understand the things I knew, not to simply regurgitate the answers when asked. Fortunately, the school system is fine with simply producing the answers whether you homeschool or not. I graduated early.
The scope of it was what surprised me. I get perfect answers on everything small or large. “Does this document have any grammatical errors?” Yes, eleven of them. They are on pages 1, 4, 5, and 9. “Can I learn magic?” Yes, here are four ways, most of them involve talking to something beyond my comprehension. The one that doesn’t involves striking up a conversation with a blind old man who lives in southern Kansas named Dennis and convincing him to teach me. “Who is the magician Dennis from Kansas?” The answer was Dennis’ life story from the time he figured out he had magic to finding, learning from, and then killing his teacher who blinded him with his last breath. I decided not to go to Kansas. It’s a bit far from Canada anyway.
No one was about to take a nine year old seriously but I wanted to help. I wrote an anonymous letter to the Hero Association Office in Kansas with details about a murdered magician and how to find and bind his killer and bring him to justice. I asked myself dozens of questions on how to achieve this, who would need to be there to get it done the fastest, how to contain a mad mage. I compiled a plan, typed it out, put it in an envelope and sent it off. I didn’t use my real name. I didn’t even put my home address; I used the library across town.
Dennis put up a good fight but the magician who took him down had his ultimate weakness thanks to me. It wasn’t much of a fight. It was a slam dunk trial too. The magical superheroes were talking about it for months, but I knew what would happen if I came forward like they wanted me to—I had asked myself what would. The answers were all some variation of being too young to withstand the consequences. That was the first time I witnessed my own theoretical death.
I had a choice to make when I was nineteen. Psychic superheroes aren’t allowed to play the lottery. I could ‘win’ the lottery in secret, keep to myself, disappear into the mountains. I should have done that, but I wanted to help. If I went at least partially public with my powers, I could help people. There were renowned psychics consulted about things all the time. The ones contracted to the Hero Association got benefits and protection from villains looking to abuse them. I could see any roadblocks in the way. I could eliminate the downsides before they start. I only needed to know how to ask.
It was a mistake from minute one. When I explained to the recruiter about what I could do, they were skeptical. I hadn’t done very well on the physical aptitude test. Most psychics had blind spots or issues with reliability or method. They brought out their flash cards, they asked their board approved questions. Luckily, the application form requests a list of your powers, so they knew I was applying as a psychic and didn’t need to ask me what my powers were. Questions with large answers sometimes hurt. My mother once angrily gestured to a news broadcast “What is wrong with the world?” That vast answer knocked me out for four days.
I guessed everything right—ten years in the dark should have taught me patience but I was tired of hiding. I wanted to help. I could help. I wanted to be seen rather than be the one who just sees.
I was. No one had been this accurate before. I was told I was going to do my probation with the Hero Association Alpha Squad—the International Branch by the end of the interview. The Alpha Squad sent their leader—their powerhouse, their center—to meet me and see if he agreed. He’d be arriving in under an hour.
The Paladin. Internationally beloved, first to answer every call he heard. Invincible, flight at supersonic speeds, superstrength. Active for three years now. Everyone knew the Paladin, the Heaven-sent Hero. I almost didn’t have to ask but I did anyway—I was excited. “What sort of person is the Paladin?”
He was not a person, not with…everything. Bloodshed. Bodies. Coverups. The joy he found in killing. A massacre in a nation too far away for anyone to care disguised as a natural disaster. The Hero Association stepped in with ‘humanitarian aid’ and now had unfettered access to the region and its resources. It was the same lesson as the very first I had learned. I was nine years old again seeing a bloody history celebrated and oversimplified in a child’s textbook. After a decade of misspeaking and painful mistakes, I was used to the shock. I could keep my composure—I could! I did. I excused myself from the hall. To freshen up I said. They understood—a personal appearance from the Paladin was a lot to dump on a nineteen year old. I had an hour to figure this out.
“Why is the Paladin coming to meet me?” He wants to know how much I could know—a perfect score on a psychic aptitude test could be problematic for him. It occurred to me then without prompting that there were no telepaths on the Alpha Squad and likely never would be. They probably saw too much.
“How do I defeat the Paladin as I am?” I asked. A costly battle. Half the city crushed between his strength and mine. I’m not a physical fighter—I was too busy studying with my Gift. At best, I have the answers I gained from “How do I teach myself magic? How I do I master magic the fastest? How can I increase my magical power?” I hadn’t intended to use them—I didn’t register them. The Hero Association had no idea. Half the city was far too high a price just to take him down.
“Is there a spell that can defeat the Paladin?” An Invitation for Atonement. A terrible spell that invites the souls of the wrongly slain to seek justice from their killer. If the killer can’t appease their rage, they will take payment in flesh. The Paladin didn’t have enough to sate all of them.
“How do I cast the Invitation for Atonement in under half an hour?”
I returned to the hall, much, much paler than when I had left, hunching forward a bit and airing out my black dress shirt. That earned me a few knowing looks, but I had a mission. The balcony doors were open, inviting. There would only be one chance. I kept my shoulders loose and my hands unclenched and at my sides.
He landed more softly than I expected. I barely felt it under my feet. I smiled when he did. It was obviously nervous on my end. It was effortless on his—he’d done this before, many times. Warm green eyes subtly flick up-down as he looked at me.
“So, Soothsayer,” he starts. “When they called me on my personal line, I was surprised. A hundred percent accuracy is a…rare gift. Can’t wait to see more of it.” He smiled, but I can see how it looked pinched. He’s a good actor, I’ll give him that. I could see him calculating the risk in his head.
I took a deep breath. I couldn’t get so nervous that I couldn’t speak. I needed to be able to speak. I had a plan. This was the crucial step. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t look at his dark hair without seeing the blood dripping from it; it was irrelevant that I knew what those green eyes looked like in the light of a housefire.
“H-hello, Nathan Elliot Madigan-Hill,” I said. His eyebrows rose and he opened his mouth to say something. A wasted effort. “I invite you to atone.”
The spell I had carved into my own chest in the bathroom finished activating when it received a name. I saw the Paladin blur as he surged toward me faster than my eyes could see. If he was capable of going supersonic from a perfect standstill, I’d be dead, but even he needed to build momentum. That alone saved my life because the dead were faster. They poured out of the sigil on my chest as a swarm. He flew right into their embrace losing momentum like a bullet fired into water. Five thousand, nine hundred seventy four pairs of hands held him steady before he could get within five feet of me and pushed back until the entire hall was filled. It was awful but the dead weren’t after me or anyone else.
I already knew what thousands of ghosts tearing the Paladin apart would be like—I couldn’t see past the dead or hear past them, but it was still something else entirely to be there in person. The panel of recruiters were too busy trying to flee to notice me pressed against the back wall. I couldn’t leave and I couldn’t heal my injuries, or the spell would stop. If I wandered out of range, the ghosts would vanish, and I’d have an angry super powered mass murderer gunning for me. I had to sit and wait.
Even thousands of ghosts had trouble with invulnerable skin but not so much that it stopped them. I would have felt bad if I didn’t know. If I hadn’t seen. I dared to think that the swirling storm of ghosts was still too kind a death for him—they spilled out of the windows and into the streets turning downtown Edmonton into a march of the damned. The powers that he thought set him apart from regular humans worked against him, prolonging the inevitable.
When it was done, I picked myself up off the floor and left the way he came in. There were police cars downstairs at this point. Sooner or later, they’d realize it was quiet. If there weren’t any heroes here yet or on their way, there would be.
“How do I get out of here without being caught?”
It only took them six hours to declare me public enemy number one on the news. The Hero Association made an official release that I’d killed the Paladin. Alpha Squad was in my city in under a day turning it upside down looking for me, but I was long gone. The person who killed the Heaven-sent Hero could only be the deadliest supervillain of our time, they said.
I don’t know if I can ever overturn that. I don’t know if I should. I haven’t asked how, and I don’t plan to. What I have asked recently is about the Hero Association. Their heroes. Their secrets. I never wanted to pry unnecessarily. I have always tried to respect people’s privacy, but the actual worst villain of our time sat on a golden throne with the sun eternally shining down on his head and people either didn’t know or let it happen. Neither is acceptable.
If there is one hope, it’s that the Alpha Squad has a powerful and learned sorceress on their team. I asked about her. She might yet recognize the spell I used. She might yet figure out why the Paladin died. She might just ask the right questions. Someone has to.