Monday came the way Mondays did, completely indifferent to everything that had happened over the weekend. Silas sat through homeroom and first period with his left arm tucked close and his right hand doing everything and the Omnitrix pulsing its slow green heartbeat under his sleeve, warm and patient and entirely unaware that it was making his life complicated.
The sleeve thing was getting worse. He'd caught three separate people glancing at his left wrist in the past week. A girl in English had asked if his watch was new. He'd said yeah and changed the subject and spent the rest of the period with his arm under the desk. Mr. Okafor had paused twice during chemistry to look at him in the way Mr. Okafor looked at things that didn't fit the expected data.
'You need an actual solution for this. Not a workaround. Something real.'
He was sitting in second period English, Ms. Reyes going through the last chapters of Invisible Man while Silas was supposed to be annotating but was instead turning the problem over the way he turned everything over. Methodically. From every angle.
The device was the most advanced piece of technology on the planet. It had blanked every scanner Hamilton brought for three weeks running. It synced to his heartbeat. It made decisions on its own. It had travelled across who knew how many light years to find him specifically.
'Something that sophisticated has to have thought about the problem of existing in the world without getting noticed. It didn't come all this way to get spotted by a girl in English class.'
He looked down at his left wrist under the desk. The thick matte black band. The raised faceplate glowing faint green through the fabric. Unmistakable. The opposite of subtle.
'There has to be something I haven't tried yet.'
He spent the rest of English running his fingers along the band slowly, feeling for anything he hadn't clocked before. Variations in texture. Pressure points. Anything. Ms. Reyes called on him twice and he answered correctly both times without fully registering the questions, which was either impressive or slightly worrying.
....
Hamilton arrived at 6 PM with his satchel and a different piece of equipment than last week, same as every week. Tonight it was something small and cylindrical that he aimed at the Omnitrix with the quiet focus of someone who had decided this week was going to be different.
The device returned a blank readout. Same as always.
Hamilton set it down. Picked up his tea. Said nothing for a moment in the way he did when he was reorganizing his approach.
"The sleeve situation still a problem?" Hamilton asked.
"Yeah. Getting noticed more," Silas said.
"By anyone specific?" Hamilton asked.
"Classmates. My chemistry teacher. Devon's been ignoring it but that's that won't last much longer," Silas said.
Hamilton nodded. Made a note. Then he looked at Silas over his glasses with the expression he used when he was about to say something he wasn't sure would land.
"Have you considered just interacting with it differently? You've described something that responds to emotional state, that anticipates need, that makes autonomous decisions. That's not a passive device. Have you tried communicating the problem to it directly?" Hamilton asked.
"Like talking to it," Silas said.
"Like treating it as something that might respond, yes," Hamilton said.
Silas looked at the Omnitrix. Felt a bit ridiculous. Did it anyway, because Hamilton had a point and Silas was practical enough to try things that felt stupid if they might work.
He pressed his fingers along the band slowly. Not looking for a mechanism this time. Just trying to communicate something. The classroom. The girl asking about the watch.
The sleeve situation. The problem of existing in a school building with something this visible on his wrist.
'I need you to be less obvious. I need to be in a room without people noticing you.'
His fingers found two points on the band, one on each side, halfway along. He pressed them simultaneously without meaning to.
The Omnitrix clicked once.
The green glow died. The raised faceplate retracted flush with the band. The matte black composite shifted texture under his fingers and when Silas looked down at his wrist he was wearing an ordinary watch. Plain, slim, round white face, black numerals, a brown strap that looked like leather. The kind of watch a grandfather might give a grandchild.
He stared at it.
Hamilton stared at it.
It was showing the correct time.
"Huh," Silas said.
He pressed the two points again quickly. The Omnitrix clicked back green faceplate, raised dome, active mode, the whole thing. He glanced at Hamilton, who was already reaching for his scanner with the careful movements of someone trying not to move too fast.
'Wait. He's going to scan it in camo mode. I just showed him a new capability without thinking about it.'
But it was already done. Hamilton had the scanner aimed. The display lit up for the first time in seven sessions.
He looked at the readout for a long moment.
"It's reading as a standard quartz movement. Mass-produced. Available in about forty retail outlets in this area," Hamilton said.
"That's all it shows?" Silas asked.
"That's all my equipment believes it's looking at," Hamilton said. He lowered the scanner slowly.
A silence. The refrigerator hummed. Outside, a car passed.
"Seven weeks I've been bringing equipment here," Hamilton said.
"I know," Silas said.
"And it just decided to look like something else," Hamilton said.
"Looks like," Silas said.
Hamilton wrote something in his notebook. Silas didn't ask what. He was busy making a mental note of his own he'd just handed Hamilton a capability without thinking, let the discovery happen in front of a witness, and hadn't controlled what got seen. That was careless. He filed it under things to be more careful about.
'He got the camo mode. He didn't get the trigger gesture. Keep it that way.'
The warmth under the watch face pulsed slow and steady. Silas kept his expression neutral.
"Camo mode," Silas said, just to say something.
"Camo mode," Hamilton agreed, writing it down.
"What else did this week's form show you?" Hamilton asked, moving on with the practiced ease of someone who knew when to take what he'd been given and not push for more.
'Good. He's dropping it. For now.'
"Haven't tested a new one this week. Been focusing on the ones I know," Silas said, which was true enough.
....
Saturday. 6 AM. The freight yard, but Silas stopped at the fence and looked at the rectangle of pale sky above the rooflines and thought about what he was planning to test.
'Position seven. The wide flat one. That silhouette is built for moving through something. Air, probably. Maybe water. Either way the freight yard isn't going to cut it.'
He climbed the fence instead of going through the gap. Up and over, dropping onto the roof of the warehouse on the other side, eight storeys up. He crossed to the edge and looked out.
Metropolis in the early morning. The city still assembling itself, the streets half-empty, the light coming in low and orange from the east. He could see the Daily Planet globe from here, dark against the brightening sky. The bay beyond the financial district was flat and grey.
'Okay. This is enough space. Just go straight. Don't do anything complicated. Document what the body can do.'
He hit the dial.
The form that arrived on the rooftop was wide and flat and swept back, deep red, a long tail behind, two small arms tucked close to the body. The wingspan was enormous, maybe twelve feet tip to tip, and it moved before Silas had consciously decided to move it, catching the morning air with the ease of something that had been doing this since before it could think.
'Oh okay, okay, that's hold on'
The form lifted off the rooftop.
The first second was pure instinct and Silas fighting it. The second was him realizing that fighting it was the wrong move, same lesson every time. The third was him letting go.
The form banked east and Metropolis opened up below and Silas forgot entirely about documenting parameters.
He had thought about this. Had imagined it from the ground, what it would look like from up here. The imagining was nothing. The actual thing was nothing like the imagining.
The city from above at dawn was a different entity than the city at street level. The streets he knew his whole life became patterns, shapes, the neighbourhoods visible as districts in a way they never were from inside them. The Daily Planet globe caught the first direct sunlight and blazed gold. The bay was slate and still. Somewhere over the financial district a news drone made its rounds and the form's eyes tracked it automatically, filed it as small and slow, and moved on.
'I've been here my whole life and I have never seen it like this.'
He flew for eleven minutes. Not testing anything. Not running assessments. Just flying. Over the bay and back, banking wide over Hob's Bay, dropping low over Centennial Park, climbing again over the financial district, the wings reading thermals off the sun-warmed rooftops and using them without being asked.
The timer pulsed a warning.
'Already?'
He found the warehouse roof and came down on it clean as the last two minutes ran out, landing with a gentleness the body knew even if Silas hadn't learned it yet. The reversion came. Silas was standing on the warehouse roof in his hoodie, recharge lock cycling red, his face wet from the cold air at altitude.
He sat on the roof edge for a while before climbing back down. The city below was waking up, the familiar hum assembling itself.
'I need a name for that one.'
He thought about it on the climb down. On the walk home. In the shower. Over breakfast. The form was sleek and fast and flight felt like permission, like the air had been waiting for something that shape.
He opened his notebook at the kitchen table and wrote at the top of a fresh page in large letters:
JETRAY.
He looked at it. Felt right.
Then underneath, in smaller letters:
'Position seven. First flight. Metropolis from above at dawn. Eleven minutes. Did not document parameters too busy looking. Will do that next time.'
He paused. Added one more line.
'It was worth it.'
....
Monday lunch. Silas sat across from Devon with his left wrist resting on the table, the Omnitrix in camo mode, looking exactly like the kind of watch nobody would comment on. He had switched it before leaving the apartment and barely thought about it on the walk to school. Three days and it already felt automatic.
Devon was eating and scrolling his phone and talking simultaneously, which was a Devon-specific skill Silas had observed for twelve years without fully understanding how it worked.
"You see the thing about the alien in the Southside last week?" Devon asked, not looking up from his phone.
"What alien?" Silas asked.
"Some thing in a convenience store. Stopped a robbery apparently. Shopkeeper said it was like big, weird, disappeared after. Planet ran a small piece on it," Devon said, holding his phone across the table.
Silas looked at the article. Small, three paragraphs, buried in the city section. No photograph. The shopkeeper's description was vague enough to mean anything.
"Hm," Silas said, handing the phone back.
"Wild right? Like we don't already have enough aliens in this city," Devon said.
"Yeah," Silas said.
"You okay? You've been like somewhere else all morning," Devon said, looking up now.
"Just tired," Silas said.
"You're always tired now," Devon said.
"I'm fine, Dev," Silas said.
Devon looked at him for a moment with the look. The one that meant he was deciding whether to push. Then he went back to his phone.
"Your watch is different," Devon said, not looking up.
Silas's hand moved to his left wrist automatically.
"Got a new one," Silas said.
"Since when do you wear watches?" Devon asked.
"Since now," Silas said.
Devon glanced at it. Glanced at Silas. Went back to his phone without saying anything else.
'He clocked the switch. He doesn't know what it means yet but he clocked it. Devon always clocks everything.'
Silas picked up his fork and ate his lunch and let the normal Monday afternoon happen around him and thought about the rooftop at dawn and the city spread out below and how there were nine more forms he hadn't been in yet, and how each one of them was going to feel like nothing he could have imagined from the outside.
'One at a time. That's the only way to do this. One at a time.'
(Image)