Brightstar

Don’t be a hero.

That’s what was going through Callum Hayes’ mind as he watched his best friend’s house go up in flames, his sister’s mantra piercing through his thirteen-year-old brain as the police held him back. Firemen rushed in, and a second explosion from the machine in the basement all but assured Callum that Ezekiel was dead. And it was all his fault.

“LET ME GO!” Callum screamed as his injured body fruitlessly tried to escape the stern police officer’s hold. Paramedics rushed over to Callum and tried to examine his burned skin, but he was in too much shock and anger to be properly checked.

The house started to collapse as the firefighters ran out, the entire building roaring with a hellish arrogance to force the kid to see the results of his hubris.

***

“Are you sure this is going to be alright?” Ezekiel asked as he shut the basement door behind them. Callum smiled and waved his arms over his contraption, a gleeful sound escaping him.

“Oh, absolutely. All it’s going to do is zap you with a little bit of electricity to get the soup working, and then you should be able to freely absorb energy, like a battery! And then I’ll do it, and we…” Callum took a deep breath, realizing he was beginning to get ahead of himself. “We’ll both be superheroes, like her.”

“I mean, are you sure it’s safe?” Ezekiel carefully approached the machine. It was constructed out of a torn-apart-and-put-back-together-junk MRI machine and pieces of a hyperbaric chamber that he didn’t dare to ask how Callum, an actual child, got his hands on. Tubes and wires protruded from it and originated from a massive lever constructed out of an old stick shift from some ancient car.

“I ran the calculations, and if anything does happen, just tug that lever and the whole thing will die out. All the AI simulations say it’ll work.”

Ezekiel looked at the purple potion that Callum had prepared two doses of. “And that isn’t poison?”

Callum playfully scoffed. “Of course not! I am a gourmet chef of the finest mad scientist variety.” He paused as he saw the worried look on Ezekiel’s face. “You trust me, right, Zeke?”

Ezekiel swallowed his fear and nodded. “Absolutely.”

“You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to…” Callum assured him.

“I want to. We’re going to superheroes, right? Just like Retrograde.” Ezekiel grabbed one of the potions and downed it, surprised at the pleasant concoction. This was supposed to infuse his DNA with the ability to turn his cells into a rechargeable battery for all types of energy, something Callum had been extensively ‘researching’ via deep Internet dives.

“Just like Retrograde.” Callum smiled, opening the cobbled-together machine that no one else knew about. As far as Ezekiel’s parents knew, they were simply working on a school project that required a lot of tools and work, fitting for their position in a special private school for the technically inclined.

Ezekiel hopped in and gave a goofy thumbs-up to his closest friend, his stomach starting to bubble. “Hey, by the way, what was in the potion?”

“Grape juice, a pinch of salt, and a lot of Tylenol.” Callum closed the pod.

Ezekiel chuckled as Callum leaped up to close the pod fully, his height not quite up to par. The younger of the two pulled out a tablet and ran over to turn the garage light off, his olive skin suddenly cast in darkness. His deep blue eyes scanned over the dim screen as he entered a few commands into a program, and he dashed back to the machine.

“Everything all right, doc?” Ezekiel joked, his serious gaze and pale skin contrasting his warmth.

“Yeah. Ready?” Callum positioned his finger over a large button, his black wavy hair blending into the darkness.

“Pull the lever, Kronk!”

Callum hit the button, and Ezekiel instantly started to jitter. He looked over to Callum and gave him a triumphant thumbs-up, to which Callum nodded.

And then there was a spark. Callum looked over as one of the wires exploded from the machine and ripped open one of the tubes, blasting a strange plasma out that melted the concrete on the ceiling and lit the insulation within on fire.

“Callum…!” Ezekiel gradually yelled out as the flames spread rapidly. He reached out to grab the lever, but a piece of the roof fell on it and trapped his arm.

Callum slapped buttons on his tablet, frantically trying to shut down the machine.

“CALLUM!” Ezekiel cried out as the flames crawled up the machine, the entire front side and ceiling of the garage ablaze.

Callum couldn’t respond as a stray piece of debris slashed his arm open and caused him to drop the tablet. The screen shattered as Callum winced, his arm bleeding profusely. He looked around, desperately trying to find a solution as his vision got hazy from the inhalation of smoke. Ezekiel’s parents were back in Japan, so he’d have to go grab his phone in the other room. He rushed over to his friend and tried to force the pod open, but Callum was simply too weak to move it. A wire flung out and sent electricity across the right side of his face, causing his skin to burn and tighten. He stepped back, grasping his face tightly as blood ran down his arm. Adrenaline coursed through his veins, but it simply wasn’t enough.

“I’m going to go get help!” Callum yelled as Ezekiel continued to shake. He convulsed as the pod started to bake him alive, the electricity running through the machine numbing parts of his body and making him unable to move.

Callum dashed to the door as he heard a rumbling. The entire garage was beginning to collapse.

“CALLUM! DON’T LEAVE ME HERE! PLEASE, HELP!” Ezekiel cried out as Callum swung the door open.

Callum’s heart sank as his friend’s pleas were the last thing he heard before he saw a pulsating light. One of the other tubes exploded, throwing Callum out into the kitchen as he stepped through the door. He scrambled up and looked back in terror as all he could hear were screams and flames. All he could see was the inferno rapidly consuming the rudimentary lab.

Callum quickly dialed emergency services as he started to cry. He knew his friend was dead.

Don’t be a hero.

“Ms. Hayes, Callum was found in the school after hours working on some sort of, wait, what did you call it?” A teacher sternly questioned the twelve-year-old.

“A, um, uh… A shield gauntlet,” Callum meekly replied.

“Right. A shield gauntlet.” The teacher seemed almost disgusted with his response. “Anyways, Ms. Hayes, we can’t let this kind of behavior continue. I don’t mean to be rude, but you need to find a way to keep him supervised.”

Callum’s sister passive-aggressively smiled as she adjusted her round glasses and rested her hand on her curly black bob of hair. Her chocolate skin glistened under the fluorescent light as she tried to keep her cool. “Understood. I’ll be looking into a babysitter.”

Before the teacher could continue with the discussion of punishment, she snatched Callum out of his seat and left the room, with no objection, as everyone in that room knew that Callum would simply get some detention, as he was their top student.

As they climbed into her sedan, Callum’s sister clenched her fist and released a frustrated sigh, her suit crinkling with her anger. “What do you even expect now? Do you think you can just do whatever you want?”

Callum sat in the front seat, ashamed. “No, no, Tessa, that’s… I just wanted to work on it, I can’t do that at home, I can do it here, I’m this close to completing the arm of my suit-”

“Goddamnit Callum, how many times do I have to tell you this?!” Tessa loudly interrupted, jolting her little brother. “Don’t be a hero!”

Callum overcame his shame as it was replaced with anger. “Why are you always trying to tear my dream down?!”

“Because you don’t have fucking superpowers! You’re a kid! You have incredible talents, and you can do anything a human can, but those people aren’t human! They’re superhuman, you don’t have powers!”

“Oh, but you’re one of ‘those’ people, though, aren’t you?!” Callum retorted with venom in his words, his voice cracking.

“Those superheroes are on a whole different level than those like me with my stupid party tricks. My mom allowed this fantasy of yours to fester because we both knew you were grieving Dad, but you need to direct your talents to somewhere that’s feasible. You can be a doctor, a robotic engineer, a scientist, you can do anything, but you don’t have superpowers, so you aren’t going to be a superhero, alright?!” Tessa’s voice started to break as tears ran down her scared face. “I won’t allow this to continue. No more of this, you got it? I… I can’t let you get hurt doing this, I can’t let this consume your life. It’s not healthy.”

Callum sat back. “You don’t think I can be a hero?”

Tessa looked at her little brother’s expressionless face and changed her tone. “You can absolutely still be a hero. There are so many things that big brain and bigger heart of yours can do. But I don’t want you to grow up with these delusions that could get you hurt, alright? I love you, little dude. I’m… I’m sorry I yelled.”

Callum looked back at Tessa. “I’m sorry about all of this.”

I’m sorry.

Callum’s eyes opened to Tessa standing over him as the doctors made sure he was alright. His face was scarred with a pattern befitting of its cause, and his body was weak, but other than that he was mostly fine.

“Sis…”

Tessa immediately wrapped Callum in a deep hug, tears flooding from her eyes. “I’m so glad you’re okay…”

Callum just sat there as the echoes of Ezekiel’s screams reverberated in his mind. “You said to be a superhero you had to have powers, right…” He whispered.

Tessa released him with a shocked look on her face. “What… What do you mean?”

Callum’s voice was devoid of emotion, his blank stare unnerving everyone in the room. “It’s all my fault.”

Tessa shushed Callum and held him close as the doctors left the room. “No, baby, no… You did nothing wrong. There was a fire, and you tried to get help, you couldn’t have done more.”

“I could’ve if I had superpowers.”

Tessa didn’t know how to respond, so she just held her baby brother tightly, her PTSD from when their father died coming back in full force. She hated superheroes for their godlike inability to actually change the world, and no matter what she tried she couldn’t get Callum to understand, because how could she? The events three years prior left completely opposite effects on the siblings, and no matter what she did the reminder of their absolute power that couldn’t be attained made her feel just as hopeless as she did that day.

Don’t be a hero, Dad!

“Don’t be a hero, Callum, she’s only using you to get ahead in classes. The professor knows as well, he’s just not able to realistically do anything about it.” One of Callum’s classmates said over the phone. The freshly nineteen-year-old sighed as he rubbed his aching muscles, fresh from a visit to the gym.

“It’s fine, it’s really not that big of a deal…”

“I just don’t want to see you get walked all over, you know?”

“Yeah, I know. Thanks, man.” Callum hung up the phone and collapsed it into its pen form, connecting it to its wireless charger at his bedside.

Don’t be a hero, huh? Obviously, she’s using me, I know that much, Layla’s told me that much, hell, even Tessa’s told me that much…

He reached down under his bed and looked at a piece of metalwork forged into a four-pointed star. It was his superhero logo, a project he made in a metalworking class in 9th grade. As he started to mature he left his overt obsession with becoming a superhero behind, but deep inside he still wanted to be like the people who saved him and his sister. He was still an absolute nerd for the often dramatized tales of the “official” superheroes under the banner of the International League of Superhumans, or ILOS.

Still, he was quietly working on the same idea he had tried to implement genetically six years ago: Energy absorption and redistribution. Even if he couldn’t be a hero, he knew he was onto something, something Tessa would approve of him pouring his soul into. The rudimentary suit he was developing would also double as a final project for one of his sophomore classes.

To Callum, this project was not only his last bastion of childhood wonder but also a way to repent for his childish foolishness that had cost Ezekiel his life. Ever since that day Tessa had left him alone about his hyper-fixation with superheroes because she believed that Callum’s best way of remembering his friend was via this long process. And Callum knew everything above, he knew it was childish and strange, but he didn’t care. He was determined to help people and be the person he could never be when it really counted.

He wanted to be a hero, even if he wasn’t super. He wanted to change the world like Retrograde, even if he didn’t have an Awakening. Sometimes he toyed around with his childhood dream, though. He flipped the star in his hands over and read the inscription on the back, the name contained within flooding his mind with his lofty dreams cut short by tragedy.

Brightstar.