Chapter 24: Secret Origin

By a/k/a Simon
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Another dream, bringing the grand total to four in three nights. But unlike the previous three, this latest one wasn’t a nightmare. It was a revelation. Between the time he returned from the woods the night before, to the moment he woke up just after noon on Monday, a huge weight had been lifted off Eddie’s shoulders. For the first time, he knew the truth about his powers.

The dream didn’t jar him, or ruin his sleep. When he woke up, he was the most rested he’d been since returning from space, despite the ache of bruises from the fight with Ryan. His eyes opened to the day and he could sense that the time was approaching for resolution.

Eddie stopped at the top of the stairs to stretch. Looking down he saw Shane walk by on his way to the kitchen. He walked, not hobbled. Shane wasn’t using his cane; his stride was perfectly healthy. Eddie stood there and waited. When Shane came back he sensed someone watching him and looked to see Eddie’s quizzical expression. He patted the side of his supposedly bad leg. “Having a good day,” he said, explaining his miraculous ability to walk unaided.

Eddie’s expression turned sour, but he kept silent, letting his eyes speak for him.

“You don’t need to be telling anyone about this,” Shane said.

“How about you ease up on Meg a little,” Eddie bargained. “Then maybe I’ll forget what I saw.”

Shane wasn’t used to be in the position he’d put so many in so many times. He hated knowing someone had the goods on him. But there was nothing he could do. It didn’t make him respect Eddie anymore, but now he feared him a little, feared what trouble he could cause. Shane nodded reluctantly and walked back to the living room.


Eddie stepped into the shower and thought through everything. He replayed his dreams and nightmares, taking as much from them as he could. He thought of the girl, Samantha Orton, having the strength at such a young age to come to the wake. He mulled over every word Murphy had said at the lake, keeping fresh the wisdom that had been passed on to him. But mostly, he thought of Megan and what his feelings really were toward her. He didn’t have an answer yet, but he felt like he was very close. Just like Murphy having a moment of lucidity, Eddie could sense the fog that had hung over him beginning to lift.

After his shower, Eddie came downstairs, just as Megan and Greta were returning from their trip to the market, each carrying two enormous platters of deli meat on their arms, bulging bags of rolls dangling in their hands. Hazel walked in with the bottles of soda and a box of doughnuts as Shane walked into the front hall, cane in hand. “What took you people so long?” he asked in an ornery tone. Then he caught a glare from Eddie and noticeably cooled off. “I mean, are those the doughnuts?” It was amazing how easily he was trained.

Hazel and Shane headed into the kitchen to pick through the box of doughnuts as Megan’s cell phone rang. After a short conversation she announced that she had to leave for a bit, that she had to do a quick favor for a friend. She didn’t explain anymore than that and was quickly gone, leaving Greta and Eddie confused by her mysterious departure.

They moved into the living room and sat down, Eddie at the end of the couch next to Murphy in his wheelchair. Murphy was deep into his delusion; the most noise out of him an occasional unintelligible mutter. He stared at the television and Eddie wondered if, somewhere far inside his head, Murphy knew what was going on but was trapped behind layer upon layer of degenerative delirium. It was such a stark contrast to the man he’d chased into the woods only twelve hours before. Eddie had been down for days about his loss of power. But Eddie could still stand up, he could walk around, he could tell people what he was thinking. Compared to Murphy, Eddie was still superhuman.

“Everything go alright with the platters?” Eddie asked, making conversation with Greta.

“Just fine,” she bounced her head pleasantly. “Everything okay here while I was gone?”

Eddie turned his head and looked toward the kitchen doorway, to where Shane was sitting, gorging on doughnuts. “Just fine,” he echoed, somewhat impressed with himself.

The conversation was stifled and on the verge of dying. They’d both spent so much time over the past few days talking, verbalizing so many emotions and worries. Everything had been so heavy that they only had so much more energy for difficult conversations, conversations with no answers. They were dying for something light.

“I’ve been having these dreams,” Eddie began, capturing Greta’s attention. She turned away from the television and listened intently as he told her about the three dreams he’d already had, leading up to the latest and most crucial, his origin.

“I always thought that my powers came from a mistake I made, that I was a bratty kid and had gotten into something at the lab that day that caused whatever happened to happen. I’ve spent all these years thinking it was my fault. I don’t know why now, maybe because of the trauma of losing my powers, but all the mental blocks that were there, keeping me from the truth, are falling away. The first dream was trying to tell me something, putting me there the day it happened. But I woke up before I could see everything, too scared to see the truth. Then, my anxiety caused the two nightmares, playing into all the fears I had, that I’ve just been a tool for Biotron, that it was because my parents died that I got my powers. Now I realize that’s not the case.” Eddie stopped for a second. “Okay, so maybe I was a tool for Biotron. But it wasn’t my fault that my parents died. I remember now. They named me Edison Alva Sanchez, after the guy who invented the lightbulb. Strange name, but that’s what you get with a pair of scientists. I guess I was a light with a broken filament though, because I remember being a little kid and being really sick all the time. I remember my parents taking me to see this guy who said I had a genetic disease, that my DNA had been damaged because my parents were exposed to experimental nuclear energy all the time, under unpredictable conditions. The man said he could fix the problem with a special procedure. The thing is, he wasn’t really trying to cure me out of some noble endeavor. He had an agenda that he didn’t tell them about. He wanted to turn me into some kind of human weapon, a weapon he would control. The whole experiment was designed to give me superpowers so that he could use me to his own ends. He murdered my parents. With their bodies lying on the floor of his lab, still warm, he ran the procedure. But it backfired. The whole place blew up. My disease must have protected me, worked with whatever the guy had planned, because I ended up with superpowers after all. But everyone was killed in the process.”

“And this was all in the dream?” Greta asked.

“Most of it. When I woke up from the dream I had all these new memories, bits and pieces of things I’d overheard over the years while training at Biotron. I was such a blank slate back then that none of it made any sense. But now, with the mental barrier destroyed, everything fell into place.” Eddie had been exuberant through his telling of the story, but then his face turned serious. “My entire time as a superhero I was driven by guilt. I thought it was my fault that my parents were dead. Blaming myself was what kept me going, trying to make amends for this horrible thing I thought I’d done. Now I realize I was wrong all those years.”

“But ask yourself this,” Greta posed. “If you didn’t feel guilty, and you had the powers, would you have been the same hero?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think you would have,” she said. “It’s the kind of person you are, and you can’t change that. Something inside you wants to make the world a better place. I know what that desire looks like. I’ve worked with so many volunteers and charity workers over the years, I can recognize the ones who are genuine and those who are just doing it because they feel guilty.” She wrapped both her hands around his, her old skin was wrinkled but soft. “There are a lot of ways to be a hero, Eddie. You don’t have to stop bullets, or hold up falling buildings, or shoot beams out of your hands to make a difference.”

“I know,” he conceded. “It’s just that that’s the way I’ve known for so long, I’m not sure what other way there is.”

“Do you remember when you were telling me all those stories about what it was like to have powers?” she asked. Eddie nodded. “Can you tell me the one thing all those stories had in common?”

He thought back over the stories. Other than the fact that he had powers then, he couldn’t figure out what she was talking about.

“Every one of those stories involved you working with a team. Those monster people, that Mighty Group, the other one, they were all teams. You can’t tell me it’s a coincidence that the three stories that stick out most out of all the stories you have in your head involve you belonging to something bigger than yourself. What does that tell you?”

He shrugged.

“Did you ever think of joining one of those teams?” she asked.

“It doesn’t really work that way,” he said, explaining. “I wasn’t a monster, so the Misfits wouldn’t have me. The Odd Squad were all family members. And in order to join the Mighty Society you have to go through the Society Mites. A lot of the teams have that kind of apprenticeship program.”

“All of them?” she asked. He shrugged, then shook his head. “You’re just making excuses. I think you’re afraid of being part of something bigger than yourself. You want to, but it scares you. You’re so used to being a loner, but you really just want what we all want. You want somewhere you belong.”

Eddie considered her theory, then dismissed it. “It’s all a moot point now anyway. I can’t be part of a team without powers.”

“You can’t?” she asked. Greta let go of his hands. “You know all those superpowered battles that happen in cities, where offices and apartment buildings get knocked to the ground?” Eddie nodded in understanding. “Do you think that the work ends once the supervillain has been beaten and taken away? Do you think that the workplaces, the homes that have been destroyed are miraculously rebuilt when the dust clears? The real crime isn’t just putting those people in danger. It’s putting them out of work, putting them out on the street. You think you have nightmares? There are people, average citizens, whose lives are tipped over because two super-types duked it out in their neighborhood one afternoon. But long after the hero has flown away, those people are still struggling to survive. They wake up in the middle of the night, screaming, unable to get the memories of destruction out of their heads. They don’t just need saving one day. They don’t just need a hero one day. They need a hero who can stick around, help them out when they need it, keep an eye on them when things get tough. They need a hero who can pick them up, dust them off, and help them start to rebuild their lives. Because the guy in the tights has already moved on to the next fight.”

Eddie was speechless. It was a side of the situation he had never thought of, a detail that had never entered his mind. Suddenly he was picturing every battle he’d been in where a building was demolished or a housing complex was destroyed. How many people had he been responsible for putting out on the street? Years of being a superhero and he always thought of himself as part of the solution. But now he couldn’t think of himself as anything but part of the problem.

“What’s your point?” Eddie asked, sensing there was something else that Greta wasn’t saying.

“What are you going to do about Megan?” she asked.

It caught Eddie off guard. His mind was on his superhero past and it was like opening a different volume of an encyclopedia to think of his troubles with Megan.

“I don’t know yet,” he confessed. “I’ve been giving it a lot of thought. I want to make sure I do the right thing.” Then he asked, “What does Megan have to do with everything you just said?”

Greta wasn’t going to tell him that she knew about the opportunity to get his powers back. That knowledge was Megan’s secret and Megan’s decision when to tell him.

“Those people I was talking about, the people who are left suffering, one of them is her.”

She could tell by his expression that he didn’t understand.

“Do you love her?” she asked.

Eddie looked down, then looked over at the catatonic Murphy. “I don’t know her,” he admitted. “We were married for years, time when normal couples would learn all the little bits and pieces about each other. Instead, I was off knocking buildings over and leaving people homeless.”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Greta eased. “I don’t mean for you to feel worse than you already do. My point is, if you love her, if you want to be with her, you’re going to have to acknowledge that she’s a victim of your superhero lifestyle. To get her back, you have to show her that you’re going to be there this time. She’s learned her lesson. If you’re lucky, she’ll give you a second chance. But it’s not going to come easy and it’s not going to mean just a one-time display of emotion. You can make all the impassioned speeches you want to her. The only way you’re going to get her trust back is with time. This is the long-haul, Eddie. Are you sure you’re up to it?”

So this was that it came down to, he thought. She laid it all out for him. He knew then that it would mean a choice: take Roland Balthasar up on his offer, or make Megan the priority in his life. According to Greta, he couldn’t do both. It was the test that Peter was subjecting him to.

“Don’t answer,” Greta told him. “Think about it.” She got up and started for the kitchen. “Besides, it doesn’t matter what you say to me right now. All that matters is what choice you make and whether you can commit to it.”

Eddie sat in the living room, alone but for his thoughts and the perpetually quaking Murphy. In a low voice, that only he thought he could hear, he wondered, “if only there was some way to be show Megan how I feel and still be a hero.”

In another rare moment of lucidity, Murphy lifted a trembling arm and took Eddie’s hand in his own. Out of the corner of his eye, eyes that briefly seemed occupied with life, he looked at Eddie. Then, through lips that barely moved, he muttered a single word. A name. The moment it passed out into the world Murphy was gone again.

Hearing that name, Eddie realized what he could do. He climbed the stairs to Megan’s room on the second floor and started packing his bag.

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