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In the second half of the twenty-first century, following increases in the industrial world, variations in the polar ecosystem creating larger and more frequent storms, and pollution penetrating both the human dermis and respiratory systems, the genetic makeup of some humans adapted to the new world, and the Altereds came to be. Some experienced changes as minute as thicker skin and protection against the simple paper cut, while others witnessed drastic changes in response to new environmental threats.
Thus were born families like the Swans, where triplets Anne, Andrew, and Andrea could alter their outer layer of skin into a coat of feathers that helped protect them when threatened by rain or snow. There was no irony lost on their names and their abilities, though it did not always follow heritage or surnames.
Others were not as lucky to experience controlled alterations. The Schmidt boy went through high school with elaborately long fingers and nails that were regularly sharp and a threat to those around him. Before graduation, he was transitioned to home schooling and eventually swept off to Washington D.C. to be examined. Andy Roberts, a fifty-year-old father of three who worked a sales job with a regional carpeting king, experienced scaling skin that shed itself once a month. And Suzanne Lawrence grew patches of fur on her arms and legs to protect her against particularly harsh blizzards in New England.
Brock Kelly, Jared’s employee, had lived most of his junior high in the arid Arizona desert as his father finished out a career in the armed services, and now the skin of his hands and wrists is a rough, pale grey patch of hide. Others grew fur in the coldest corners of Alaska while survivors of excessive storms around the Gulf Coast sprouted gills to accept oxygen even when neighborhoods were flooded for weeks at a time.
Altereds was the name the Chronicle assigned, while other names were whispered behind backs—beasts, monsters, animals.
Many went into hiding; few dared to stay above ground and face criticism, which just made things easier, quieter for sure. Jared understood with an Altered on his payroll; Brock was low-key about it all and Jared thought life was going well.
These cases began as national sensations and governmental programs attempted to carefully introduce the transformations of the human system into society. They were all considered safe and accidental, and some Americans easily accepted the situations as a fun sort of distraction from how badly the world was changing over time.
The reality check came in the form of those like the Black Falcon with exceptional abilities that developed efficiently in a single generation, as opposed to minute whisker growth over time until the third generation born to the century experienced a full mop of hair covering one’s arms. People like the Black Falcon weren’t fun side shows.
Creatures that appeared on the scene prior to the Black Falcon shocked the world well before it was ready to witness the changes in creation. A young woman living in Alaska, who walked a good mile to and from work and home, grew a full foot during her twenties to accommodate the high drifts of snow she had to trudge through each way. An older man fighting through a flood had sprouted fins to survive deep waters while he attempted to save his neighbors from homes completely under water when dams broke in Colorado. Many others went mostly undocumented, but gossip and tall tales followed their escape from their hometowns.
The Black Falcon was the first to be accepted, but soon became one of hundreds to be rejected.
There were precious few who still held him in high esteem, but none could save his reputation and reintroduce him to society with dignity. There were too many mistakes in his past. A handful of other accidents, some appearances where he created chaos, rather than stopped it. A police chase was stopped with the interruption of fluttering wings antagonizing the cops as they raced down Lake Shore Drive, and the perpetrator escaped into the grid of Downtown streets. And instead of stopping purse snatchers, he became one himself as he swept down to street level and disrupted women on their way to work or mothers trying to manage excitable little tourists.
Jared found it hard to believe in such negligence, not from the man he admired from afar.
It’s raining. Or more accurately, water is being dumped from the sky. It falls in thick sheets, blurring Jared’s sight out the front windshield of his four-door, hand-me-down, teal sedan that he’s never wanted, never liked, but didn’t have to buy. It’s lasted him since he graduated college; it can get him through this storm.
The windshield wipers are set to high, thumping from one side of the glass to the other, and back again. It’s giving him a world-class headache. Red brake lights pixelate in the foreground as raindrops obstruct most objects before him. He is careful to maneuver between cars to avoid the bad drivers, and wonders if they’re all doing their best to avoid him as well.
He passes a tiny sports car that’s sun-bright yellow and no more than three feet off the ground. As he watches it through his passenger side window, he laughs to himself that he wouldn’t have fit inside that box after his ninth birthday. He imagines someone folded up like an accordion to squeeze into the driver’s seat, no matter how fantastically elaborate its instrumentation must be with home controls and meteorological scans. Then he laughs aloud when he realizes the man stuck in a midlife crisis can’t steer the wheels that are now half covered in the rainwater building up in the streets with nowhere to go. Too bad rubber is still just rubber.
When Jared faces forward, a hearse swings out of the driveway of Zimmer’s Funeral Home and into Jared’s lane. The hearse veers into the right lane where Mr. Midlife Crisis is still moseying along with his banana mobile, and then it cuts back in front of Jared so fast that he has to slam both feet down on the brake pedal.
His car skids forward, rutting every few feet like the brakes are half-assing the job, but he knows he can’t stop in time. Not even when he engages the emergency brake, or when he punches the accident alarm on the dash.
Instead of his life flashing before his eyes, it’s the dreaded thought that a hearse will be his undoing. A fucking black double-long vehicle meant to carry the dead from their final gasping breath off to their everlasting resting place will be the last thing that goes through his head. Perhaps literally.
Jared’s fingers burn as he squeezes the steering wheel, and his calf and feet muscles clench in pain as he continues to press down on the brake. He’s sure he’ll break the pedal off with how hard he’s forcing it to the floor. Now every fraction of a second breaks down into every inane thought he could ever have. Including his gratitude that antacids are unneeded in Heaven.
Then he wonders if he’ll actually make it to Heaven, or if there even is one these days. Maybe it has been packed with good souls over time and now there are population issues, and what would God do with that?
His mind goes on to compare Heaven to the prison system’s own overcrowding when his car crashes with a heavy impact between the front headlights, the hood crushed in deep like an arrow pointing right to Jared’s afterlife. The back end of the car rises off the pavement just as the driver’s side air bag nails him in the face and shoves him back against the seat.
The sedan lands on all four wheels in the exact spot of impact, as if the whole world had just paused in that moment and set him back down to earth. Only, Jared is covered in talcum powder and cornstarch. He feels the grit in his eyes and tries to blink it away. The white dust floats in the air as Jared slowly comes back online to look out the front window. He tucks the airbag down as it deflates and there isn’t that damned hearse before him, but a dark figure crouched down on the hood of his car.
The rain still mutes any details outside the car, but Jared can make out a black leather jacket with the collar tipped up and obscuring most of a pale and rain-shiny face. A bare hand presses high on the hood of the car as the rest of the body is folded down near the grill. That hand is human and cut with blood slowly leaking over knuckles, and the body is taking up the entirety of the triangular dent in the car. Yet there is something inhuman about the whole form, and Jared is about to jump out of his seat and check the scene when there’s movement beyond the body.
Jared blinks to see through the particles swirling inside the car and the steam puffing out from under the hood, and that’s when his vision rights itself. Now, he counts dozens upon dozens of dull grey feathers lined up on either side of the man’s body. Together, the feathers make up wings that reach at least six feet in each direction. Jared dumbly thinks he could lie down twice and still not be as wide as that wingspan.
Adrenaline floods his system. His heart beats unbearably fast in his head. His hearing floats between uneven buzzing and white noise. Every muscle locks up, forbidding him from escaping the car to run as far away as possible or even to creep closer to the figure still mounted to the hood of his car.
Jared wipes the inside of the windshield to clear some of the air bag debris and watches the man’s head lift up slowly to meet Jared’s gaze. After a second, Jared thinks it’s beautiful. After another, he knows it’s the Black Falcon.
The Black Falcon is still in the city. The Black Falcon leapt down on the hood of Jared’s car, created a massive crater in the front end, and nearly totaled it. The Black Falcon saved Jared’s life.
Once that registers, Jared fights against his seatbelt and the air bag to get out of the car, take a clearer look at the Black Falcon, and thank the man for not only saving his life, but for proving all of his theories true. That the Black Falcon is still here, and still a hero.
Emergency sirens cry in the distance, and as Jared finally—finally—gets out of the car, red, white, and blue lights flash ahead of him with a fire truck, ambulance, and police cars coming to the charge. He looks from the barrage of crisis headed his way to the Black Falcon still perched on his car. The Black Falcon glances back to see the approaching vehicles, scowls, and then flings himself up with his wings spreading to their farthest reaches to carry him up and out of sight.
Jared tries to follow the path into darkness, but within moments, the Black Falcon is lost in the night. Before he can release a breath, he’s swarmed by emergency personnel—fire, police, medical—all clamoring to check his status, get him away from the car, and ensure the vehicle won’t soon burst into flames. Jared realizes the crowd has grown to include various bystanders and cars stopped as they try to get catch a glimpse of the accident site.
“Sir, sir,” someone is calling to him. “Can you hear me?”
A light moves in front of his face, back and forth, and he realizes it’s a paramedic with a flashlight.
“Pupils are slightly dilated. Pressure is 130 over 90. We should take him in.”
More voices fade in and out as Jared continues to stare into the black sky. Even when all he can see is the rain, the drops grow larger as they fall closer to earth. Just like he imagines the Black Falcon had come down upon his car. From where, Jared has no idea.
“Sir, are you okay? Can you hear me? Sir?”
Again the penlight runs across his face, though suddenly the rain ceases to drop on him. He is finally broken from his frozen moment and blinks at all that have surrounded him to realize a firefighter is holding a thick, flannel blanket above Jared’s head to allow him to dry. The paramedic is still checking for wounds and a cop is narrowing his eyes when Jared remains silent. He waves a hand in front of Jared’s face and grimaces.
“You okay, son?” The police officer turns to the car and back to Jared, now with a raised eyebrow. “Looks like quite an accident you got yourself into.”
Jared only nods, completely void of words to explain what happened, what he witnessed.
“You hit an animal?”
“You hit something that leaves a mark like that,” the cop’s partner says with a small laugh, “it ain’t getting back up and out of here real quick.”
Jared looks off into the distance where street lights narrow down into a single line, seeing the path that brought him to the here and now. As his eyes trail along the light posts, he thinks he spots something, someone. He looks again and perched atop one light post is the same shape that he’d found on his car minutes ago.
The figure rises, stretches its wings, slowly flaps them once then a second time more swiftly, and then leaps up and away for the second exit of the night.
Jared bangs so hard on Chad’s front door that he’s basically punching it, and his hand tells the story with raw knuckles beginning to bleed. Still, he knocks more and watches blood streak the wooden door.
He knows that it’s the middle of the night, but Jared doesn’t care at this point. He just spent a few hours in the ER to be cleared of any injuries, and handed a bottle of eye drops to help the burn and itch of the airbag’s powder. He then hailed a taxi outside the hospital, with his car being towed back to his apartment, and tipped handily to get here as soon as possible.
He keeps pounding on the door and finally shouts for Chad to open this goddamned door right goddamned now!
The door swings open and Jared has to look down at Sophia, who stands in only a white, baggy undershirt. So, apparently Chad got his wish to bed their long-time friend.
“Well, this is a development,” he says dumbly, all other immediacy put on pause.
“Oh, shut up,” she grumbles with a roll of her eyes. She lets him in and turns on one of the living room lights on a side table. “Not like you guys didn’t insist upon it enough.” Her voice goes high on a whine while mocking him, “You two should just shut up and fuck. You guys always argue like an old, married couple.”
“You do argue like an old married couple. But I also thought you had standards.”
“Is that what you came here for? To catch me over here and berate me for it?”
The accident flashes in Jared’s mind and he clenches his sore hands then quickly releases them. “No, not at all.” Excitement burns in his voice and he can’t decide if he should smile or cry over the strange brew of excitement and terror he had witnessed during that accident. “Where’s Chad?”
“Passed out. You know … one tequila, two tequila, thirteen tequila, dead on the floor.” Jared walks to check the bathroom, the kitchen, the dining area, and the hallway to the bedroom while Sophia watches. She leans back on the arm of the lime green sofa—a poor fixture in Chad’s life since college, and Jared has not so fond memories of walking in on Chad getting a blowjob from a Delta Pi recruit at the beginning of sophomore year—and crosses her arms with a frown. “What’s going on, Jay? You’re kinda freaking me out now.”
“Okay, alright.” Jared takes a deep breath, pushes his hands out in a calming motion, and releases air on a long sigh. “Tonight, I almost rear ended a hearse.”
“Sounds kinky,” Chad mumbles by way of entrance, scratching his bare belly then tugging boxers up and into place.
Jared walks to the middle of the room where Chad now stands by Sophia. “No, seriously. I almost rear ended a hearse out on Ashland, but I didn’t.”
Chad leans into Sophia and stage whispers, “Am I supposed to know what that means?”
“I didn’t rear end the hearse because the Black Falcon saved me!” Jared exclaims, now feeling all the exhilaration flow through him from spotting his idol. “The Black Falcon jumped down, right on the hood of my car, and basically slammed me down in place so I never hit the hearse.”
“Is your car alright?” Sophia asks.
Jared laughs hysterically. “Is my car alright? Are you kidding me? Are you listening to what I’m saying?”
“Unfortunately,” Chad replies just before yawning.
“The Black Falcon!” Jared exclaims again, now slapping the outer side of one hand into the palm of the other with every syllable. "The Black Falcon came down from the sky, pegged my car in place, and saved … my … life.”
Chad and Sophia stare at him for long, uncomfortable moments before looking at each other. Chad slowly blinks, walks to Jared, and pats him on the shoulder. “Jay, go home. You’re drunk.”
“No, I’m not! I’m telling you, it really happened! Just listen for a—”
“Good night, Jay,” Chad calls over his shoulder as he leads Sophia back to the bedroom.
Jared stands alone in Chad’s living room. He spins in place with a sigh to wonder where on earth his life is headed now that he has actually seen the Black Falcon and his friends think he’s crazy.
He stares out the living room window, out onto the street, and watches the rain continue to fall as heavily as it did before his life nearly ended at the tail end of that uncontrolled hearse.
Jared blinks when he sees a figure moving outside, across the street, on the sidewalk. It’s huddled near bushes, but Jared can see the shine of rainwater on a leather jacket. There are no wings, but Jared is certain that it’s the same build and shape as the man who landed on his car.
There is no way of knowing if the Black Falcon can see Jared staring right back. Jared slowly goes to the front door, opens it, and steps out onto the porch. In that short time, the Black Falcon has flown up into the sky and all Jared sees is the quick flutter of wings before he’s gone behind the trees.
At home, Jared spends the last few hours of the night sitting at the edge of his couch and staring at the compu-screen on the wall. With his pocket tablet, he scans through a variety of Altered blogs and reads all of the Black Falcon’s greatest hits. Probably for the fortieth time, but now he’s a man possessed. He critiques every photo—some professionally taken by Chronicle staff, but far more captured by citizens on photo-tabs with bad lighting and poor focus. He analyzes each image to make out the same face, hair, build, and jacket. He even attempts to match the hands that he saw on the hood of his car.
He sets a few out in a grid on the compu-screen, and stands back to view them all together as a mosaic. There is a picture of the Black Falcon carrying a seemingly lifeless pre-teen girl out of the second story window of a burning home. There is one of him swooping down from the Monroe Bridge to halt the suicide attempt of a thirty-four-year-old business man who had just lost his job and couldn’t support his family. Others illustrate him arriving on scene or leaving a crisis that he prevented. Then there is the one in the upper right corner of the set-up. The Black Falcon is crouched to the ground with one hand down for balance and his wings spread out with the poise of an angel.
Jared blinks at the photo. He steps up to the screen, swipes away the others, and stretches the one left behind so it fills the entirety of his living room wall. He stares at it for long enough that so many of the features blur together. Even so, he is absolutely, positively, unconditionally sure that it is the same exact figure he saw on the hood of his car.
He swipes the portrait off screen and starts his search again.
Over the next week, Jared checks web alerts, news sites, the nightly news programs, anything that might tell of the Black Falcon’s appearance before, during, or after Jared’s pre-empted accident.
There isn’t a single trace of him.
Still, Jared continues his efforts to track down every word written about the Black Falcon. He even logs sightings from fan web pages (and even the hate blogs), checks his pocket tab at work at an unhealthy rate with his employees glaring at him for always drifting off during conversations. He shoves his living room couch, chair, and coffee table out of the way, and drags a city map from the compu-screen to the opposite wall. From there, he taps at the screen for color-coded pushpins to tell the Black Falcon’s story. Just like he has always wanted to do, but he never let himself get that far.
Green pins are official sightings told in the media, blue represent eye witness accounts, and red stands for observations made by those opposed to the Altereds. There is a fair spread across the city’s boundaries with a rainbow of pins filling in the Loop. Jared knows that makes sense, with a dense population of residents and workers congregating downtown more often than in the further reaches of the dilapidated city. But he is curious about a mix of red and blue pins that stretch out to the west. The pins flare out then all stop right at the northern end of the Canaryville neighborhood where meatpackers had thrived a few centuries ago until the land was leveled to make way for new factories. Now, abandoned buildings stand like ghosts. That short stretch of the former, infamous Union Stock Yards has laid vacant for years, except for all these links to the Black Falcon.
Jared blinks at the map and imagines the shuttered windows and barricaded doors he’s driven past to get out of town for road trips, taking the state route west to find better roads to carry him on his way. If he were an unwelcomed member of society in need of a place to escape, the lost factories would be the perfect place to set up shop and hide.
He downs the rest of a cold coffee that was fresh over an hour ago, ignores the familiar burn in his stomach, and is determined to check those factories. Only, when he turns from the map to grab his wallet, he sees faded sunlight streak between his nearly closed drapes and realizes he’s about to face a new day and is expected to open the credit union in less than two hours.
Giving up for the night—day, really—Jared dumps his coffee in the kitchen sink and heads to the bathroom for a shower.
His research continues at work. He has a browser on his office wall open to a message board geared towards the love connections between regular citizens and the Altereds.
He is not proud of how far he has fallen here, but he hopes to find out as much as he can about the types of Altereds out there, if there are any like the Black Falcon, if any are related to him, or even know how to find him. He just wants one little thread to unravel.
This is precisely when Celine catches him. Jared yelps and springs up on the wobbly base of his chair, and swears she purposefully snuck up on him to spy.
She rolls her eyes and points at the screen. “I knocked three times, but you’re lost in a haze of puppy love.”
“Puppy love?” Jared not quite shrieks as he shuts down his pocket tab. He clears his throat and spins his chair around to fully face her. “I’m not in a haze of anything.”
Flatly, she says, “Just don’t tell me that you are actually in love with puppies. I know you like dogs, but this is too far.”
He sighs and sits up in his chair. He even attempts to seem businesslike as he sets his hands on his desk. “Can I help you, Celine?”
Still appearing bored, she nods towards the front of the building. “There’s a guy outside looking for you.”
“There is?”
“I just said so.”
“Who?”
“I didn’t bother to catch his name. But he said it was important. And about some feathers.”
Jared furrows his brow in thought, and worry really, to whether someone had tracked all of his internet searches to his job. Would the police bother to find him, or would they even really care?
For a quick second he considers the nasty rhetoric he’s read on all of the Altered hate blogs and is immediately filled with fear for who’s asking after him. He fumbles to get out from behind his desk, feels a quick rise of heartburn, and pops an antacid, then marches out to the lobby. He can handle this. He’s a professional, and can present a simple case to rectify this.
Right through the large panel of windows at the front of the building, he sees the face, the same smooth yet shapely one that saved him from a hearse-induced accident. Standing across the street is the tall man with the slim figure, blonde messy hair, and the black, short leather jacket. His hands are tucked into the pockets of tight jeans, and he’s standing casually on the sidewalk in front of AJ’s Ice Cream Shop, all while staring right at the credit union.
Right at Jared, seems more like it. And Jared feels a chill run up his spine at the prospect of the Black Falcon appearing at his work in the middle of the day. As if he knows Jared’s been tracking his every move of the decade, as if he’s here to stop Jared from diving any deeper into the Black Falcon’s past.
The Black Falcon hasn’t made a daylight appearance in years; Jared’s done the research. His compu-screen history says so.
“No milkshakes for lunch, bozo,” is said just before Jared is shoved by the shoulder. He spins to Chad, who now steps into a fighter’s stance and fakes quick jabs to Jared’s midsection followed by an uppercut.
“Chad?” Jared dumbly asks.
Said friend stretches his arms out in question. “Do I look like someone else?”
“No, I just …” he trails off and looks back outside to an empty sidewalk in front of the ice cream shop.
Chad snaps his fingers before Jared’s eyes then waves his hand. “Earth to Jared. Doo, doo, doo.”
“Yeah, I was just confused,” he recovers, though he doubts Chad believes it. He hardly believes it. “Celine said something about feathers.”
“Why would I say feathers?”
“I don’t know. What did you tell her?”
“I told her to tell you to get ready for Freddie’s. I want some pizza.”
Jared snaps and points at Chad, trying to play off the confusion. “Lunch, right.”
Chad mocks disappointment and mumbles, “You forgot about our lunch date, didn’t you?”
“With my favorite gal?” Jared throws his arm around Chad’s shoulder and marches them to the door. “Never. I just didn’t realize it was that time already.”
“Don’t you dare say ‘gal’ again, or you’re treating.”
“Okay, sweetie,” Jared says with a bright smile, glad he’d played off the confusion of seeing the Black Falcon standing across the street. Still, when they exit the building to walk a few blocks over, Jared can’t help but look over his shoulder for another glimpse. But no one is there.
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