Foresight Opens (Being Heroes, Being Villains Anthology)

Summary:  Foresight, the head of Hero Force, is the strongest clairvoyant in the world. He isn’t enough. The opening salvo of the superhero anthology coming this fall!

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A/N: It’s finally happening! I’m editing the superhero anthology that I’ll be releasing in a month or so. This will include stories that I’ve previously posted here and on tumblr, including some revamped old ones, some newer ones, and some never seen before. Never seen before…except on Patreon!

I hope you all like the opening prologue where we finally meet Foresight, the head of Hero Force.

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Nobody is sitting at the meeting table. Foresight runs his hand along the back of the chairs, pushing the odd one in, fixing the angle of the next. It’s quiet without the gentle scuff of uniform boots on the carpet, the rustling of papers, the furtive whispers of his top staff. When they’re here, the room feels small. It’s only now, when he’s alone, that the meeting table seems to stretch.

When he first became Head of Hero Force, nearly two decades ago, the table had been round. He thinks that Sergeant Knox had brought it from his apartment, an oak relic that no longer fit his civilian identity’s taste. It could seat six heroes, ten if they stood. That tabletop is mounted in front of Foresight’s office now. Foresight knows the story of every blemish, every pockmark and scorch mark. Years of coming together with the most powerful heroes in the country, their struggle to save the day writ across the wood.

This table is set for forty people. It’s long and rectangular with two definitive heads. He tries not to see the symbolism of that. Foresight stops in the middle of it, fingers curling as he stares at his chair at the front of the room.

“I am getting old,” he says into the dark.

He is old, for a hero. He’s tried for two decades to raise the life expectancy, but…here he is. An outlier. Fourty-years-old with all of his fingers and limbs still intact. A miracle. He aches when he moves and there’s a ringing in his ears. No, not a ringing. Screaming. His power…he’s avoided it for too long. It’s overflowing.

Foresight closes his eyes. Breathes in deeply. The vision seeps through the barrier he keeps erected. It boils like water in his mind’s eye, like oil, swirling and hissing until it settles into an unfamiliar scene.

“Bathroom,” he murmurs. A long time ago, he used to tape his visions on an old recorder. Names, times, words, any detail that he might be able to piece together into a big enough picture to do something with. Unfortunately, he now knows the power of his visions in the wrong hands. The world knows. He threw the tape recorder away too late. Still, the speaking habit remains. “Yellow light. Not LED. A shower curtain half-pulled back and a tub filled with ruddy water.”

Blood. He stands in the bathroom, a half-step behind the woman in front of the sink. He can smell it, fresh and new. There are crumpled, black clothes on the ground behind him. They’re wet. With water? With blood? The shadows pool too deeply along the wall for him to tell.

The woman— perhaps 22 —is staring into the mirror. It’s an old mirror, the backing of it cracking and crumbling, dissolving the woman’s image along her forehead and chin where it’s particularly bad. Her black eyes are unwavering as she meets her own gaze. Her long, brown hair is plastered against her naked back, wet from the bath she emerged from.

Foresight doesn’t want to be here. He doesn’t want to be smelling this young woman’s blood, doesn’t want to be seeing the hatred in her eyes, doesn’t want to be feeling the sorrow rolling off her in toxic waves.

But he is. His power has tight hold of him now, locking him in as unwilling voyeur to her equally unwilling performance.

“Damn you,” she says. Her voice is rough. From screaming? From disuse? Her thin lower lip trembles. “I helped. I helped, damn it.”

Foresight doesn’t recognize her, but that doesn’t mean she’s not one of his. A hero pushed to her breaking point? A villain his networks didn’t reach in time? Or a civilian whose life he is intruding upon?

Hero Force is both more and less that Foresight ever imagined. A megalithic organization of super-powered individuals determined to stop those with evil intentions. It’s expanded faster than anyone thought possible to the point that he can actually afford to turn people away. Only the strongest heroes, the best trained, the most determined, become part of Hero Force. No more cannon fodder heroes who leap into harm’s way. They’re elite. Qualified. Structured.

There are still too many.

Foresight is failing. He can feel so many things slipping through his fingers. He can’t protect his heroes, not as he once did. Their faces are unknown to him - for good reason. If he knows them, others can find them. Everyone expects him to know now. That’s why he must know as little as possible.

The woman’s arms are thickly muscled, a sign of a physical fighter. Her shoulders knot and twist as she fights against her own emotions. A sob bursts free and her chest spasms as she works to keep the next one in. It’s a losing battle.

“Oh, my dear,” Foresight whispers. She can’t hear him. At her age, he was still full of optimism. He thought himself infallible. He thought himself invulnerable. This woman is hitting her breaking point a full decade before he hit his. “I’m sorry.”

So many heroes go down like this. Disintegrating in front of his eyes. There are too many of them and, at the same time, not enough. The villains they face always seem to multiply. Adapt. Forever growing stronger instead of weakening in the face of opposition.

She sobs with her eyes open, transfixed by the sight of her own breakdown. Like an actress fascinated by the mask her face has become. It would be frightening if Foresight didn’t understand it so well.

Hero Force was never supposed to be like this. Foresight created it for civilians, yes, but also for heroes. So they would no longer have to fight alone. Never have to make the tough decision between the city or their family. Never have to fall into darkness alone. One of the first things he incorporated into Hero Force was healthcare. There are counseling services. Options. Less than 40 percent of his heroes sign up for an appointment. Less than 10 percent of those come back for a second. They quit. They retire. They die.

Foresight isn’t infallible anymore.

The woman doesn’t break eye contact with herself. Slowly her sobs taper off. She’s standing in her bathroom, the scent of her own blood in the air, dripping with bath water as she comes back to herself.

“Tell me your name,” Foresight says. Useless. He doesn’t know her face and even he, the head of Hero Force, can’t access aliases. Still, he begs. “Tell me. I’ll find you. I’ll help you.”

He has always only ever wanted to help.

Her black eyes flare with a sickly purple light. Her face twists. “Never again,” she says. The muscles in her back flex. Contort. She stands to her full height and Foresight finds himself stepping back. Scars he didn’t notice before whip across her shoulders like thick cord, pink and new. Her voice is different now. Not hoarse and cracking. It’s deeper. Grittier. Angrier. “I won’t make that mistake again.”

The words are ringing. Foresights blinks as the scene ripples like a pond. I won’t make that mistake again. There’s a mechanical edge to the words, this sinister promise, as if it’s one she’s made before—

Foresight is ripped out of the vision.

He is curled in on himself, half-crouched as if about to spring out of the line of fire. He can no longer hear her biting, violent words. His breath comes in short, sobbing pants. Not enough information. There’s nothing he can do. This vision - it will come to pass or it won’t. He won’t know if he’s part of it until it’s too late.

Slowly, he uncurls. Pushes his shoulders back and breathes in deep. The barrier in front of his power is holding now. The screams are quiet.

Foresight opens his eyes. There is no one at the meeting table. No one at the table, no, but there is someone at the front of the room, between the back of his seat and the wall of dark screens.

“You okay?” Chameleon asks. Her shiny, geometric costume is a kaleidoscope of colors. Red and orange and yellow and blue. She’s not using her power to hide today which means it’s a good one. Her green eyes search his. “Sir?”

Rather than comforting him, her words break him down further. Sir. Five years ago, he was Eyad and she was Sawyer. Friends and working partners. She’d been his second in command for nearly half of that time. By his side, on the frontlines. Then he missed a step. The distance followed. Then the formality.

This job takes everything in the end.

“Fine.” Foresight says.  “Just needed to let out some power.”

“Your eyes were whited out for a while,”  she says, gesturing to her own face. “Pretty bright too. Something I should know about?”

There’s an edge to that question that cuts. She doesn’t really expect an answer. Foresight keeps secrets. Always.

Even when they hurt.

“Just flashes,” he says. He checks his watch. It’s analog and heavy. More expensive than he can afford on a Hero Force budget. A gift from a friend that he also missed a step with. “It’s an hour past the end of your shift. What do you need?”

Chameleon cuts to the chase. “The reports regarding Leviathan in Chicago, sir.” Her mouth thins. “Confirmed. Three Chicago teams deployed. We lost contact with one already.”

Foresight nods. He wants to swear. A transformer-type supervillain in one of the most densely populated cities in the country. Jesus. “What about reports of him working with Coriander?”

“Also confirmed, sir.”

A Supervillain with magic support. Foresight spins on his heel. “Options?”

Chameleon follows him on his heel. “Phantasma is en route. Omit’s team is on standby for evacuations. They offered to go in, but—“

“The highest on their team is a C-class,” Foresight finishes. The halls to his office are brightly, almost surgically, lit. Staff in plain, black masks step out of his way, bowing their heads as he passes. He wishes they’d stop doing that. “No canon fodder. Order the teams we have contact with to divert. Engage as little as possible. Get Leviathan out of the city. Phantasma will intercept.”

“Sir.” Chameleon peels off towards Communications, the department she co-heads.

Foresight throws open the doors to his office alone. His eyes flare bright white.

Time to get to work.