I’d seen Julie a couple more times. We talked and flew around, she liked heights. I was on final warning at work for coming in late. I found a studio apartment downtown; it helped to be near the action. I slept less than ever. I survived on a diet of Red Bull, Monster, coffee, and Mountain Dew, it felt like college all over again.
One day at work, lawyers served me divorce papers, the separation from my wife hadn’t really sunk in until then. On patrol that night I heard a security alarm going off at a GAP. Burglars. Burglars were generally only mildly more intelligent than muggers. I flew down to check it out and noticed the door was ripped off its hinges and the doorframe was scorched.
I stepped into the store and saw a scrawny kid with a fohawk trying on cloths, not what I expected at all.
“Hey kid, down on the ground.”
“Better keep walking, mind your own business old man.” If he looked 23, he sounded 17.
I walked toward him. “Kid you’ve got no idea what you’re up against. I’ll ask you one more time, get down.”
I’ll give him this, the kid was about action. He extended all ten fingers and white arcs of electricity shot at me. Have you ever stuck your finger in an outlet? It’s like that times a thousand. The force tossed me into a rack of thongs. As I tried to clear my head, I heard him walk over to me.
“I’m Jolt. Remember it when the cops find you.” Jolt? The kid named himself after a soda? Where the hell do people come up with these names?
I pushed myself forward and tackled him into a display of polos. He looked amazed and confused. Good, it was his first time meeting someone else with powers too. We trashed that GAP; what he didn’t electrocute and fry, I knocked over or smashed. In the end I had to fly his unconscious ass to the police station and warn them in person. The cops were confused as hell and begged me to take him. Yeah, your tax dollars hard at work.
After that I sat atop a McDonald’s billboard on the side of the highway and thought. If there are more people like me, how could I find them?
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