Our car turned into a road entrance meant for traffic coming into the UN headquarters car park. We stopped for a moment, there was a beeping sound and a metal barrier lifted into the air to allow us to pass through into the car park. However, instead of continuing down the clearly marked route further into the car park, we turned to one side, off the road, and headed towards a concrete wall. We weren’t going very fast, but I sucked in my breath and said “What—?”

There was another beeping sound and a rectangle of concrete swung up into the air just in time to create an opening for us. It swung shut behind us without so much as a click.

“Woah...” I said like a moron.

Beyond the secret entrance, we drove down a tunnel, dark except for bright blue cats’ eyes that lined either side of the roadway. From the curve of their light and the motion of the car I could tell that we were going around and down, underground, driving underneath the UN headquarters.

“What is this place?” I asked, transfixed by the cats’ eyes.

“Welcome,” said Abram, “to the place we affectionately refer to as ‘The Base’, the secret headquarters of the UN’s international peacekeeping initiative, ‘Miracle Force’.”

Light shone ahead. The tunnel straightened up out of its spiral descent and all at once we emerged from it into an enormous, concrete hangar.

At least, hangar was the best word I could think of. The room was vast; the ceiling looked like it was about four storeys high. Huge floodlights hung from it, illuminating its concrete grey floor and walls, the other three of which stood hundreds of metres away. In the far distance a number of doors led off it. To one side stood a row of black limos like the one we were currently in parked next to each other, which we drove towards. I didn’t manage to count how many. There was also a row of different coloured sports cars (was that an Aston Martin?), a big truck with a load of jet-skis mounted on a trailer behind it, and on the other side of the room a frigging jet-plane.

“How does all this fit underneath the United Nations?” I said, lost in wonder.

“Not just under the UN,” said Abram. “The Base extends under the East river on one side, and into Midtown on the other. We are quite far underground. It did take a very long time to hollow out. We’re quite well equipped here, as you’ll discover. You’ll live here, eat here, sleep here, train here, relax here. And from now on, your education will happen here.”

“Education…?”

“Of course. It’s very important that Miracle Force recruits receive the highest quality of education. You’ll start with a mixed programme including work sent from your school, of course, until you’ve sat your SATs. Then you’ll attend a college of your choice before returning to us full-time.”

“I don’t have enough money for college. I was going to try to get a scholarship.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that, Gonzalo. We’ll pay the entirety of your college tuition, and then some. You’ll be on a Miracle Force scholarship, if you want to think of it like that. But there’ll be plenty of time to sort all of that out later.”

A Miracle Force scholarship… The world had gone golden again, like it had that time Ali had agreed to go out for a coffee with me. For a moment, the huge hangar looked like the hall of a grand palace, bathed in sunlight. I couldn’t believe my luck.

We parked on the end of the row of limousines and my door was opened by a man in an old-fashioned driver’s uniform complete with brown leather cap. George.

“Sir,” he said, and doffed his cap as I got out of the car and he closed the door behind me. He gave me a cheeky wink.

Abram motioned for me to get in with him to the back seats of a little white cart that was also parked behind the limousines, like the carts you get on golf courses. George climbed into the driver’s seat and led us off.

“Where to, Commander?” he said. George’s British voice was refined, well-enunciated, even posh. He wasn’t your regular kind of cab driver.

“I’ll talk with him in the mess hall,” said Abram.

The mess hall. That was a military term. It sounded basic, functional, unassuming. Not like this hangar, or either of my hosts, or anything else about this place that I had seen so far.

Sure enough, when George drove us to one of the metal doors and escorted us down the smaller corridor beyond to another door, it opened onto a candlelit, king-size living room with soft, richly patterned carpets and rugs, a roaring log fire set into one of the oak-panelled walls, and a collection of gigantic, delicious couches and armchairs. I began to salivate just at the prospect of sitting in one of them.

“Will that be all, Commander?” asked George, still holding the door open for us.

“Some hot chocolate, I think,” said Abram. “And a glucose bar. He’s been through a lot. Come, sit down, Gonzalo.”

No sooner than I had collapsed into a particularly indulgent-looking armchair opposite another which Abram sat in, George reappeared with a mug of steaming hot chocolate and a small wrapped-up bar that tasted sticky. He left us to it, shutting the door behind him.

“Comfortable?” said Abram. His perpetual smile kept his dark-and-grey beard drawn back slightly from his mouth on each side. Just now I thought he looked like a friendly bear.

“Yes,” I said, a little sheepishly. I took a sip of the chocolate, which was right in the Goldlilocks zone—not too hot, not too cold. The deep armchair felt so good to my tired and aching legs and backside.

“Now you can ask your questions.”

I wasted no time. This place was amazing, and the chair so comfortable, but there were things I needed to know. “Who were the people that attacked me at my apartment?”

Abram fixed me with a penetrating look, his kind smile for once giving way to a serious flat line.

After a moment he said “I’m afraid not everyone in the world has as noble intentions for metahumans as the United Nations do, Gonzalo. The people who attacked you in your home were nationalist terrorists.”

“Hold on,” I said. “‘Metahumans’?” He had used the word earlier too.

“Yes,” Abram nodded, “it’s the word we use to talk about people like yourself. I know it’s a little comicbook, but it’s the best word we have. ‘Superhero’ is a little too comicbook, really… As I’m sure you know, ‘meta’ can mean ‘beyond’ in Greek, so ‘metahuman’ means ‘beyond human’. Sometimes people have used the alternative Latin term ‘homo superior’, but that has speciesist connotations, and it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.”

I went silent for a moment, thinking this over. Yes, that’s actually what I was, wasn’t I? I knew the term from comics and superhero films, but I had never thought of myself like that before. A metahuman.

“So there are others like me?” I asked, my imagination starting to whir.

“Yes. One or two that we’ve found so far.”

“One or two?”

“My apologies. One other that we have made contact with, so far.”

“Where did my powers come from?”

“Now that, as of yet, is a mystery. We simply don’t know. Though we’ve got people working on it. All we know for the moment is that there are metahumans, and more are appearing. Since this was found out, a great deal of important diplomatic and construction work has been done to set up my organisation in order to be able to recruit metahumans, whenever they appear and member nations of the UN identify them, in the service of the wider world’s interests. But unfortunately we are not the only people trying to get hold of metahumans.”

My train of thought changed back onto a track it had been on a moment before. “Right. So the people who attacked me in my apartment were terrorists trying to capture me?”

“Indeed.” Abram ran his fingers over his beard. “They were most likely from an international terrorist organisation called Viper, a right-wing extremist group that want all the countries of the world to be fully autonomous states, as divided and independent from each other as possible.”

“‘Viper’?” I remembered something. “One of the men who attacked me had a tattoo on his neck of a snake wrapped around a sword pointing downwards. Does that have anything to do with ‘Viper’?”

Abram’s eyes seemed to grow in size for a moment, but then they shrank back to normal. “You see much, Gonzalo. Yes, that is their symbol. It was definitely Viper, then.”

He slipped his phone out of his jacket and tapped in a few things.

“What do you think they wanted with me?”

“Hm? Well, they most likely wanted to capture you so that they could use you for their own purposes. We do know of a...number of metahumans who may have possibly been drawn to their side already...”

“Their side?”

“I mean, their organisation, of course.” Abram put his phone away and returned his serious stare to me. “I am assuming that they attacked you with tranquilisers?”

“At first.” I rubbed my neck. “But when that didn’t work, they switched to bullets.” My face twitched at the memory. I started to shake, ever so slightly. I remembered that it must be late into the night and that not so long ago I had nearly collapsed from exhaustion.

“Gosh, did they really?” said Abram, for once not showing much empathy for what I was experiencing. “They must have been prepared to do anything to bring you in, or to stop us from reaching you. But you weren’t even hurt…” His eyes lost focus and he gazed past my left ear at nothing for a moment.

I remembered the sensation of the bullets pinging off my chest. Those people had been prepared to kill me… A shiver convulsed my chest. I let out something that had been stewing in my mind for some time. “Mr...er, Commander Abram, don’t you think it’s quite a big coincidence that I was attacked and that you picked me up on the same night? I mean, like, what are the chances that both things would happen at almost exactly the same time?”

He seemed to come back to himself with a jolt. “What? Oh, my dear Gonzalo, coincidence has nothing to do with it. Your case was being processed and we were going to make contact with you soon. You only had your doctor’s appointment last week, after all. And as we didn’t know just how advanced your powers were yet we didn’t feel any particular sense of urgency. But when you made the extent of your powers known at that high school party earlier this evening we knew we had to act immediately.”

My cheeks went red hot and I shrank back into the comfy armchair, willing it to swallow me up. I had forgotten about the party. How had I forgotten about the party? It had been eclipsed—even it had been eclipsed—by the fight at my apartment and what was happening now.

Abram read my embarrassment with ease. “Yes, we know about what happened at Samantha Summer’s house, Gonzalo.”

Oh no. My superhero career was over. I had jeopardised it before it had even started.

Abram laughed quietly to himself. “Don’t look so terrified, young man. I think given the situation you actually handled yourself quite admirably. You showed quite an astounding amount of self-control...up to a point. But then you did let go of yourself somewhat, granted. We will have to work on improving your self-control even further. Channelling some of that pent-up anger in a more...helpful direction.”

“You know everything, then…” I said wistfully, and sighed. I was relieved that my actions at Sam’s party weren’t going to disqualify me from…whatever this was, but I was still embarrassed about what I had done.

“Yes,” said Abram. “I’m afraid I do. The police got the events from some of the boys and girls who were at the scene.”

I wondered if Ali had been one of them. I flicked the thought away.

“While I do have some sympathy for your situation,” Abram went on, “You really should have waited until you got the phone call from us, Gonzalo, before you revealed your powers. Your actions at the party had consequences—they are what resulted in Viper attacking you.”

I was too surprised to receive the gentle reprimand graciously. “What? How could they have?”

“News travels fast, Gonzalo. Once you did what you did to those boys, word got out very quickly. I won’t agitate you further with the details now, but we picked it up quite quickly on local police radio and on social media. ‘Boy gone wild at high-school house party and injured seven teenagers, two in critical condition.’”

“Critical condition?” Oh no. In my mind’s eye I saw the image of Donny lying on the grass under the fence, of Bill spread-eagled unconscious in his neighbour’s garden.

“Don’t worry, they’re fine now. I’ve been in touch with the hospital and they’re no longer critical, recovering well in fact.”

I exhaled relief. Wow. I really did need to learn some more self-control.

“Yes. We’re going to have to pay out a fair amount of money to avoid anyone suing you and to keep people quiet...” I gulped down my guilt. This was getting worse and worse. “...but in the end, it looks like there will be no lasting damage done by your garden brawl. Once it got onto the police radio, however, it was only a matter of time before Viper picked it up. Snakes have their ears very close to the ground, you know. All they had to do was find someone who was at the party, figure out from them who you were, and then look up your address. Really, once word got out, it was a race between Viper and us as to who got to you first. In the event, they did, but I’m so glad that you weren’t hurt and they were unsuccessful, and that I was able to pick you up. My only mistake was going to the party first. I should have gone straight to your home, like they did. There was quite a scene to be discovered at Miss Summer’s house...”

I became fascinated by the floor. I couldn’t make eye contact with Abram. I had been so reckless, so careless with my powers. How could I have acted like that, when normally I was so mild-mannered, so cautious about everything?

. Ali. Bill had said something to Ali that had triggered me. But for what? Then she had denied even being my friend, called me a loser with mental health problems and run off. That had been the final straw. I had had nothing left to lose when she said that…

The hurt, the rage, the resentment bubbled up in my stomach again. I shoved them down and looked for the next logical question.

“How did you find me?” I asked.

Abram leaned back in his armchair. “Well, after Miss Summer’s house we went to your address to begin with and found that Viper had got their first, and already gone. We arrived at the same time as the emergency services. For a moment we feared the worst, but then you sent a voicemail to your mother after we had arrived at your apartment. By that time we had your mother safe in our care, so we tried your father. Your father didn’t answer his phone.”

Prick.

“But when we got to his apartment and saw the state of the intercom, we knew you had been there too. When your father eventually came to the door, he confirmed it. From there, all we had to do was send out some cars to search for you in the surrounding area. It is most felicitous that it was my own car that located you. I had a hunch that I might find you in Manhattan.”

So that was what happened. It made sense, I suppose. But I didn’t much care right now. I had more questions, about what the hell this organisation was and what they were going to want me to do for them, but just now I was overwhelmed by exhaustion. My whole body throbbed, from my calves to my arms to my teeth, its exertion catching up with it. I fought just to keep my eyes open.

Abram must have noticed. “Anyway, Gonzalo,” he said, leaning forwards in his chair and putting his hands on his knees. “You must be very tired. You’ve been through a terrible ordeal and you need to get some good rest in order to recover. You’ll feel better in the morning once you’ve had a long sleep. We can talk more then. And there’s someone else I’d like you to meet.”

He stood up and led me to a door. “Who?” I managed.

The door opened onto a carpeted corridor with more doors along it. “Well, you’re not actually our first recruit. You need to meet the first metahuman we recruited for Miracle Force.” He stopped in front of a door with a gold number ‘2’ on it. I was moving up in the world. “But that can wait for tomorrow. For now—sleep.”

He took a key-card from his pocket and pressed it to the door handle, which flashed green for a moment and bleeped. He pushed open the door.

Beyond was what looked like a five-star hotel room. I had been expecting some kind of dormitory with bunks, like a boarding school or a military barracks. Instead, there were two more comfy armchairs like the one in the ‘mess hall’, a huge flat screen TV, a table and a writing desk, a trouser press, a minibar fridge, an en suite bathroom with walk in shower and bath, a sofa, and, to top it all off, an enormous, super-king-size, four-poster bed. I was really moving up in the world.

“As you can see,” said Abram, “here at Miracle Force, we look after our own. Sleep well, Gonzalo.”

He shut the door behind him.

The room was amazing, but I was so tired. Without even bothering to undress, I climbed onto the bed, lay down on top of the purple covers and fell asleep before my head even hit the pillow.