Tuesday. Eleven days since the Omnitrix.
Silas walked into Metropolis Prep at 7:38 AM with the camo watch showing 7:38 and his bag on his right shoulder and the specific low-grade alertness he'd been carrying since day one. The camo mode had changed things more than he'd expected. Not dramatically the sleeve situation was resolved, nobody was looking at his wrist anymore, the girl in English had stopped asking. But there was something subtler than that. With the watch hidden he had more bandwidth for everything else and he hadn't noticed how much the constant minor management of his left arm had been costing him until it stopped.
'You've been running at maybe eighty percent this whole time. Didn't notice because there was nothing to compare it to.'
Devon was already at his locker, tie crooked the way it always was, scrolling his phone with the focused attention of someone who had found something that annoyed him.
"Okafor posted the chem grades," Devon said without looking up.
"Yeah?" Silas said.
"Ninety-three. I got a seventy-one," Devon said.
"That's up from last time," Silas said.
"It's a D-plus," Devon said.
"Still up," Silas said.
"You're very supportive for someone who got a ninety-three," Devon said, closing his locker.
They walked to homeroom. The route was automatic after three years, their feet knowing the corners without their brains being involved.
"You doing anything after school?" Devon asked.
"Probably," Silas said.
"Probably meaning yes or probably meaning you don't want to say?" Devon asked.
"Probably meaning I've got stuff to do," Silas said.
"Right," Devon said, in the flat tone that meant he'd filed something away.
....
Metropolis General at 3 AM had its own specific quality. Not quiet hospitals were never quiet but settled. The daytime urgency replaced by a slower rhythm. The fluorescent light was the same at 3 AM as it was at 3 PM but it felt different. More honest somehow. Like the building had stopped performing.
Denise Foster was in the fourth-floor break room, eleven minutes into a fifteen-minute break, with a cup of coffee that had gone lukewarm and her phone face-up on the table.
No messages from Silas. Good. That was what she wanted. No messages meant nothing had gone wrong between 10 PM and now.
She drank the cold coffee because she needed the caffeine more than the warmth.
The fear she was carrying right now was the quiet kind. Not the acute version she'd felt on night one when Silas had come through the door with a glowing device sealed to his wrist that kind was loud and immediate and you dealt with it by making decisions. This kind was different. It lived in the back of your awareness without demanding anything. A low hum. A reminder.
'He's careful. More careful than most adults I know. He tells me what I need to know.'
She knew that. She believed it. She also knew that careful and systematic didn't protect a sixteen-year-old from the specific chaos of a world that contained Superman and Intergang and technology nobody on Earth could explain. Careful helped. It wasn't a guarantee.
Priya stuck her head in.
"Denise. Bay six when you're back. Hendricks patient's pressure is dropping again," Priya said.
"Two minutes," Denise said.
She finished the coffee. Rinsed the cup. Picked up her phone once more. Still nothing from Silas.
She thought about the Omnitrix sitting on her son's wrist two miles away, pulsing its slow green heartbeat in the dark of his room while he slept. She thought about Hamilton, who came every Friday and got almost nothing and came back anyway because he was that kind of person. She thought about Devon, who had been watching Silas for eleven days with the patience of someone who trusted that the answer was coming.
'He's got good people. That's not nothing. That's actually a lot.'
She clipped her badge on and went back to work. Bay six. The Hendricks patient. Falling pressure and fifteen years of knowing exactly what to do.
The fear stayed where it was. She left it there.
....
Lunch. Silas and Devon at their usual table. Devon was on his phone the way Devon was always on his phone at lunch, which meant he was reading something and forming opinions about it.
"Huh," Devon said.
"What?" Silas said.
"Daily Planet," Devon said, and held his phone across the table.
City section. Small headline. WITNESS DESCRIBES UNIDENTIFIED FIGURE IN SOUTHSIDE ROBBERY DISRUPTION. Lois Lane's byline. Three paragraphs.
Silas read it carefully while keeping his face at the angle of mild interest.
The shopkeeper Mr. Yusuf Osman, sixty-three, owner of a 24-hour convenience store on Garrick Street had described the figure as large, non-human, capable of significant speed. Unable to provide further physical details due to the shock of the encounter. He confirmed the figure had intervened to stop an armed robbery, ensured he could call for help, and left before police arrived. He described the young man who appeared after as wearing a dark hoodie. He had not connected the two.
'He didn't connect us. He saw XLR8 and then he saw a kid in a hoodie and his brain filed them as separate events. Lucky. That is actually lucky.'
The article noted this was the second reported sighting of an unidentified transforming entity in the Metropolis Southside. Lois Lane had sourced a second incident report from the MCPD the alley situation. Description vague.
Silas handed the phone back.
"Weird," Silas said.
"Transforming entity. New one even for this city," Devon said, going back to his food.
"Metropolis has everything," Silas said.
"True," Devon said.
Devon ate three bites. Then, not looking up:
"The hoodie thing," Devon said.
"What about it?" Silas said.
"Dark hoodie, young male. You wear a dark hoodie basically every day outside school," Devon said.
Silas met his eyes. Devon met his back. The table between them felt very specific.
"Lots of people wear dark hoodies, Dev," Silas said.
"Yeah," Devon said. He went back to his tray.
"Yeah they do."
He didn't push it. Kept eating. Moved to something else a video he'd seen, a thing that happened in history class. Nothing important. And Silas talked back and watched Devon not push it and understood exactly what that was costing him to not push it.
'He knows. He doesn't have proof but he knows. And he's choosing to wait because he's Devon and Devon waits. And every day I don't tell him that choice costs him something.'
....
After last period Devon caught up with him at the school entrance.
"Can I ask you something?" Devon said.
"Go ahead," Silas said.
Devon stopped walking. Silas stopped two steps later. They stood on the pavement outside the school gate with students moving past in both directions.
"The article," Devon said.
"The transforming thing. Is it you? Is it something to do with you?"
Silas looked at him. Devon looked back with eleven days of watching behind his eyes. Asking directly. Giving Silas the chance to just say yes.
'He deserves yes. He deserves the whole truth. We both know that and we're both standing here knowing it.'
The number 12 bus pulled up across the street. Their bus.
"Dev. I don't know what you're talking about," Silas said.
The words came out level and clean and completely false and they both knew it. Devon's expression didn't change. He didn't argue. He just looked at Silas for one more second with the look of someone who's had a door closed in their face by someone they trust, and then he turned and walked to the bus stop.
Silas followed. They got on. Two rows apart. The bus pulled into traffic.
Devon didn't say anything else the whole ride. Silas didn't either. Devon looked out his window. Silas looked out his. Metropolis went past, indifferent.
'You just lied to Devon. Twelve years and you looked him in the eye and said I don't know what you're talking about.'
The camo watch pulsed once. Slow. The resting heartbeat.
'I know. I know I did. It was the right call and it still felt wrong and I don't know what to do with both of those things being true at the same time except carry them.'
Devon got off two stops before Silas. He didn't look back as he stepped off. Silas watched him go through the window hands in his pockets, walking the way Devon walked when something was bothering him but he'd decided not to show it.
The doors closed. The bus moved on.
'I'm sorry, Dev. Not yet. But soon. I promise that's true.'