Author: Lucien

“A Russian superhero is a stillborn, stunted thing,” Head of Interpol Moscow, Oleg Yudin, infamously told reporters at a 2009 press conference. His comment was born out of frustration, and he quickly suffered under the lash of the outcry that followed even though Yudin had made a career of blunt statements. This time, he was speaking on the diaspora of Russian metahumans across the globe and the import of foreign superhumans for hire into Moscow itself. Despite the admiration of the rank-and-file for Yudin, however, Moscow’s Police Commissioner and Interpol Secretary General both agreed that it was time for him to step down.

At the time it was seen as a vindication for the proud Russian people, but since then, it’s a move that’s left many people wondering: Was Oleg Yudin right?

There are parts of the world where being a metahuman is plain dangerous: Somalia, Sudan, and Myanmar where civil war has turned regional supers into petty warlords or into weapons of genocide; Iran, Afghanistan, and Yemen where religious unrest have made supers instruments of terrorism or victims of it; and China, North Korea, Syria, and Belarus where metahumans have become tools of the regime. So putting Russia on this map is a tricky, dangerous thing. Not because supers live in fear, and not because the Russians don’t love their supers with the fervor of a European soccer fan rooting for his home team at the World Cup, but because an embarrassment of riches is often laid at a metahuman’s feet. And with so much wealth being thrown their way, it’s hardly surprising that many Russian metas sell their services for profit.

The Cold War had seen its share of state-sponsored heroes posturing in both corners of the ring. It was theater, it was camp with an ultranationalist flair, and it was propaganda. What would become the modern identity of the Russian superhuman was born in the death throes of Communist Russia. The captains of the bureaucracy that held the Soviet administration together, the so-called elite known as the nomenklatura, had already seen the writing on the wall. They, along with ex-KGB and with members of the Russian Mafiya, knew that Communism was dying and that capitalism had already wormed its way into the void for those with connections. It was a money grab for State-resources and crumbling institutions, and in the case of metahumans registered by the Soviet state, a literal power grab for their abilities.

Where supers were once expected to follow and obey the edicts of the Supreme Soviet of Russia by way of special division KGB-Alfa, metas found themselves being courted and wooed by the nomenklatura as bodyguards and by the Mafiya as enforcers. It was a new reality, and whatever old world reservations they might have possessed concerning the “evils of the West” evaporated when the money hit their bank accounts. Not all, but those who did found themselves working with metas who’d evaded government notice and who had been working underground for the Russian Mafiya as so-called akulas or sharks.

The Russian Mafiya, or Bratva, first came to the West in the 1970s and 80s, as détente allowed for the immigration of Russian Jews across the world. Russian mobsters hid among the refugees, gaining a foothold in Brighton Beach as the Odessa Mob, and spreading across North America from there. Akulas, on the other hand, didn’t start appearing until after the fall of Communism, in the 90s when the government also lost track of their key bioweapons scientists and some of their nuclear arsenal. Akulas remained below the public radar, however, until Russian enforcers Zaraza and Ovcharka went after several metahumans for their attacks against the Odessa Mob’s franchise businesses. The pair severely wounded The Ruby Saint and Fearsomebody, but it was the brutal murder of Gallant that pulled The Honor and New York’s Finest into the fight. During the month-long manhunt that saw over two-dozen metahumans pull together to apprehend the pair, Zaraza was captured, but Ovcharka managed to escape North America and vanish back inside Russia.

Suddenly, everyone wanted to know more about the tracksuit-wearing metas who worked for the mob; the public’s fascination with Russian akulas began in earnest and it was impossible to satiate their thirst for news. To the West, akulas represented the ghost of the Cold War come back to haunt the Democratic-loving countries. To the Eastern Bloc, they represented heroes who were unafraid of American bullying and its grandstanding metas. They became the foremost threat to U.S. security according to the FBI, and attendance in the War College surged as supers begged for training to protect them from the ruthless Russian-trained killers.

As more information was made public, it seemed that everyone’s fears were justified. Russia’s supers had either trained under the special division of KGB-Alfa or had honed their skills with the ruthless Bratva. Either way, the akulas were to be feared—the new boogeymen and women with whom nobody wanted to tangle. Quick to rise into public notoriety were the brothers Serp & Molot who were supposed to be the next generation of Soviet worker-heroes before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Saadak the psychic archer who fought in Afghanistan, Krasnyy Golub’ the Systema master, and Mitgh the water-controlling meta turned first female Bratva boss.

Everyone wanted them caught, nobody wanted to tangle with them. Any time Interpol or a Federal Task Force came close to corning a high-profile akula, they would vanish back into Russia or one of the former satellite states where friends in high and low places alike protected them. Interpol launched Operation Atlantic to apprehend wanted akulas, centered in the Moscow office under Oleg Yudin, but without the resources or exosuits of units like New York’s Armored Mobile Police or the help of local metahumans, they were doomed to fail, hence Yudin’s gaff at the press conference.

What Yudin faced, and what still goes on is a combination of two already insurmountable factors. The first is the disparity of wealth in Russia and particularly Moscow, where extravagantly wealthy men and women can buy the best and most powerful metahumans; even the lowest Charlie-class hero can find lucrative employment and the kind of yearly salary the average Muscovite may never see in a lifetime of hard work. Throw on top of that the promise of ability boosting through power brokers in India, Brazil, and the United Arab Emirates, and the allure of more power and money would be enough to test any superhuman’s resolve.

The second is the unspoken fraternity among the Eastern European community of metahumans, that even if you don’t use your abilities for profit, you do not betray your fellow metahuman. It’s what we in the West would better understand as the Blue Wall of Silence, that unspoken rule that police officers do not betray their fellow officers. In this case, it’s called solidarnost’ or ‘solidarity,’ and it is a frightening wall of silence for any Eastern European metahuman thinking of breaking it. At best, you might find yourself outside the protection of your fellow supers, and at worst, hunted by them. Many experts, however, claim the opposite circumstances are equally worse. Akulas are in the business of getting people (especially unaligned metahumans) to owe them favors by helping out with money or manpower… whatever it takes to get a super indebted to them or their bosses. And once you’re in the family, there is no backing out. You’re in for life because these are debts that can never be repaid.

Solidarnost’ applies to the United States, where Russian mobsters have created a thriving mercenary industry in renting out their akulas on contract for other organizations. That said, the hold of solidarnost’ is not as broad here simply because the Russian Mob is more actively surveilled and hunted by American authorities. It’s created a more tightly knit group of akulas who distrust outsiders and rarely fill their ranks with anyone who isn’t originally Eastern European (and thus vetted by people back home).

Unfortunately, there is no hope of it getting better anytime soon as the Mafiya continues to export Eastern European supers and rich Russians import expat metas. Moscow has consistently ranked as the top billionaire city in the world over the past six years, with over 85 billionaires living in the Russian capital of capitalism. Many of them are billionaires thanks to Russia’s oil boom, and they are young and eager to surround themselves with nothing but the best status symbols regardless the cost: Cars, art, mansions, metas. There is a high demand for superhumans, and moreso for experienced metas. This means a brisk trade in both local talent and among expats who washed out on their two-year tours in Europe and North America. With the average salary of Muscovites at $1,200 a month, it’s not surprising that many Russian metas forego patrolling the streets to fight crime when a salaried position pays for a life of comfort for them and their entire family.

Also adding worry and fear of a bloody future involving akulas is what many organized-crime experts are calling an inevitable war between the Mafiyah and the Cartels. Both organizations rent metahumans out as soldiers, and the drug and human smuggling trade is bringing in Cartel-loyal supers from throughout Central and South America up into the United States. With deep pockets on both sides and territory to secure, it seems likely that a mob war between the two will see the first wide scale conflicts between metahumans. If my contacts are to be believed, both the Russians and Cartels are already planning for the eventual conflict by training their mercenaries and importing more metas into North American strongholds. This alone should worry North America’s superheroes, who should be preparing for the worst.

Shredded Gym is called the Venice Beach of the East Coast, if New York had surf, sun, palm trees, and roller-skates. The analogy is lost on most people until you walk into the glass and steel building and see the hard bodies parading around in tight and skimpy clothing that even the best of us would be too uncomfortable to wear or wear well. It’s almost a competition in who can skirt the laws of public nudity without actually getting arrested and I can’t decide if it’s a lesson in anatomy or a reflection of my own self-esteem. Your abs don’t show that clearly if you’re over 8 to 10% body fat, so to see that level of precision in muscle definition, I have to wonder if the percentages here haven’t dipped into the negatives.

Shredded Gym is not the first meta-inspired gym, but it is the largest and most successful. It was started by a methuman named Super-Flex, a hero more known for his antics than his crime-fighting abilities. Regardless the criticism, he takes it with all the aplomb of an Eighties wrestler challenging all contenders on national television. The news crews and talk shows love him, and he’s equal part charisma and showmanship. Not bad for a Charlie-class meta whose body building career started before his trigger event and took off like a rocket afterward.

Despite his antics, Super-Flex is actually a savvy entrepreneur by the name of Jeremy Pena who has managed to make Shredded Gym as chic as Manhattan’s trendiest nightclubs. What makes it so popular isn’t just its metahuman clientele, but the opportunity to watch them train, to exercise on state-of-the-art equipment like the magnetic resistance plates, and to shop at a proshop whose supplements are so cutting edge in terms of nutrition that even professional athletes shop at Pro-Shred; it comes at a steep price, but nobody can argue with the results.

Shredded Gym has grown from its humble beginnings as a 7,000 square foot gym in Upper Manhattan, to the 80,000 square foot titan it is today in the heart of Midtown. The four-story façade is made from shatterproof glass and showcases the three levels of fitness madness for curious pedestrians. The front desk organizes tours of the facilities, but these are mostly behind plates of glass designed to keep people from patrons from their workouts. It also lends the interior an interesting weight that’s part battleship and part starship with its riveted walls and clean solid plate windows. Add to that a parkour gym with an aerial track for the flighted and agilely gifted, private weight rooms for superstars like Grimsta and Bombshell Betty, a high class fitness bar, and frictionless rooms that bring core exercise to a whole new level, and you can understand the appeal of hitting a gym whose guest pass alone is $250 and whose initiation fee is $5,000. Unless you’re a metahuman, in which case Super-Flex himself is more than willing to lower or waive membership costs so long as you train in front of the general public and put on a show of strength, resistance, dexterity, or what are known as aura effects. After all, Shredded Gym is where people can safely train alongside metahumans and tell the tale at their next social event of the brute doing 5-ton chest presses or the speedster racing in the mega-track ball.

While Super-Flex has been accused by various heroes of promoting the worst in superhuman culture, he’s also volunteered staff and facilities to help train a number of heroes to be street-ready for their tours, as well as offered boot camps, private parkour time for team-training sessions for groups like The Samaritan Guard, and given seminars on exercising and regimes. Publicly, Shredded Gym says they don’t condone vigilante behavior, but they do mirror the War College philosophy that a well-trained superhuman is a lower risk to the public safety.

Super-Flex takes none of the criticism personally, however, and neither does his alter ego, Jeremy Pena. “It’s just business,” he says with a wide grin. “Haters are gonna go after the big players because that’s where the notoriety’s at, and I’ll take their bitching as a compliment. Every time some hero complains about us, we see more visitors.”

What may sound like a cavalier attitude towards the rest of the metahuman community actually masks a deep respect for superheroes in general. Super-Flex donates time and staff to events like Hero Week and to various charities to help disaster victims through drives and personal donations. “Am I making money off the phenomenon? Hell, yeah,” Super-Flex says. “But I never tap the well without putting back, and I’m not biting the hand that feeds me.”

There is no denying that there’s a fortune to be made off being a metahuman, which is a line that divides the superhuman from the superhero. Many heroes refuse to monetize their persona for fear that it would undermine their message, but that is contrary to the reality facing today’s powered elite, some of who have had their brand appropriated by other companies. Super-Flex calls his gym an extension of himself as a brand, and one can’t argue with his success. Grimsta, Bombshell Betty, and Super-Flex are a new generation of socially savvy heroes who have managed to capitalize on the new cultural norms and some pundits in the community argue that it isn’t these entrepreneurs who have sold out their identities, but conventional heroes who may have fallen behind on the times.

Regardless, Shredded Gym has become a shining example in the mainstreaming of metahumans. To some, this is a necessary normalization process to making supers more productive members of society, while others feel that establishments like Shredded Gym are merely creating a new social caste and a new category of superstar.

Continuing our conversation with Jake Simmons, star reporter and blogger for stormchasers.com and his experiences covering the exploits of Storm Chasers: The men and women who dive into natural disasters, hoping to trigger their transformation into metahumans. You can read Part I of the interview (here).

Jake Simmons is flying out from JFK International Airport to Caracas, Venezuela to cover the opening of the first government-sanctioned foray into Danger Tourism at the Maracaibo Resort. The newly built resort is situated in the path of an ongoing storm that hits the region 180 days a year for ten hours at night with violent lightning storms. Jake has agreed to discuss the phenomenon of Storm Chasing with us, a dangerous hobby that kills one in a hundred of its pursuers. In today’s installment, he tells us how it can be even more dangerous, and recounts an episode with one of today’s most frightening villains.

HERO BEAT: What’s your most memorable moment in Storm Chasing?

JAKE: You’re talking positive? It had to be that massive sandstorm that hit Syria and Lebanon last year. I was in the region, putting together a report on the Syrian War and seeing if the conflict created more opportunities for triggers.

HERO BEAT: But you’re usually against promoting war zones for Storm Chasers.

JAKE: Yeah, no, absolutely. This was something I was doing privately for a U.S. firm as one of several experts on trigger events. The Syrian and Yemen Civil Wars were pulling in a lot of Arab metahumans and freelancers, and I was trying to see if it created conditions for more triggers or not.

HERO BEAT: Did you find anything interesting?

JAKE: Nothing I can report on now, but I have exclusive rights to post the findings first, so I’m hoping to share those soon. Anyway, we’d just landed in Rafik Hariri International for some R&R when the sandstorm rolled in. Trigger events from sandstorms were rare, but I’d never been in one, so I figured it’d be a good article for the site. The entire experience was surreal. Once I checked in to my hotel, I wandered around Beirut. It felt like I was the last man standing. The streets were empty and visibility went murky after a few feet. Seriously, I’d seen better visibility on dives. It was like everything was lit through an orange filter. The sun doesn’t go out the way you’d expect during torrential rainfall; sunlight is refracted until it’s almost a nimbus that settles in. There’s an orange glow, sound is muffled—it doesn’t carry.

HERO BEAT: Sounds eerie.

JAKE: That’s not the half of it. I was wandering around Taleet Jounblat when I hear a boom—it’s muffled and it’s somewhere above me. I’m thinking artillery, I’m thinking any second now, I’m going to see debris or a shell come down. But it keeps going, keeps moving, and I’m hearing two sounds now. One’s a ‘boom,’ one’s a ‘fwoosh,’ and they keep pushing the sand away. I start feeling it too, the pressure waves through the sandstorm, and I’m seeing the sand ripple. It was a trip.

HERO BEAT: Metahumans?

JAKE: Yeah, Alnnar Alzzll and al Muhandis it turns out, and I was pissed. I was right there, and I couldn’t see the fight. I could only hear them, flying and blasting each other. I caught a flash now and again, but I didn’t see shit.

HERO BEAT: But both are listed as heroes, right?

JAKE: Alnnar Alzzll is Sunni and al Muhandis is Shiite, so yeah, they’re technically heroes but in opposite sects, so that’d make them villains to each other. The two sects came to blows in Lebanon back in July, so this was an encore, I’m guessing. Nobody saw what happened, but the next day, I find this nice coffee shop and sit there while these old timers told me what they heard. Man, you should hear the way they spun the fight. It sounded like the match of the century. I just wish I could have seen it.

HERO BEAT: But that wasn’t your most dangerous experience?

JAKE: No, not even close. The sandstorm was just surreal and kinda beautiful and all kinds of frustrating. But mostly tourism apocalypse… something I felt safe doing—the worst that happened? My throat was raw at the end. The most dangerous thing that happened to me, though…that was the time I almost retired. I saw people die, I got battered something rough, and it, uh… it was because I’d been kidnapped. We got kidnapped, I mean.

HERO BEAT: Kidnapped? And who’s we?

JAKE: I’m not sure what else to call it? Those of us who got pushed into it don’t like to talk about it, but I’ve never felt so—vulnerable in my life. So violated. I thought I was going to die, and for a while, I wanted to.

At this moment, I realized Jake was having a problem reliving the moment, so I gave him a minute to compose himself. He sipped his cup of coffee, and the nervousness I’d seen earlier had been replaced by introspection. When he spoke again, his voice was cautious, the words careful.

JAKE: It was a few years back, close to 1:00 in the morning. I’d just finished writing an article for stormchasers.com, and I was ready to crash. Then the air changed, like all of a sudden. I could feel it, like someone had flipped the dimmer switch on everything. Then he was standing in the room… Bangarang.

HERO BEAT: You were face-to-face with Bangarang?

JAKE: Yeah, and I swear… never again. The way he looked at me like, I don’t know, a bird checking out a worm, it freaked me out. It was like he wasn’t even human. And then he chirped or something, poked me with his staff, and my apartment disappeared. It’s suddenly daylight, and I’m out by the side of the road. At a bus stop. It’s warmer, but not by much, and there’s no snow. I’m dressed in slacks and a white shirt, and I’m not myself. I know that. I can think clearly and all that, but I’m not me. I am, but I’m in someone else’s skin. There’s all these other people standing around, some looking confused. About maybe a dozen, and they’re all Japanese and we’re all staring at each other.

HERO BEAT: When was this?

JAKE: March 11^th.

HERO BEAT: March 11^th?

JAKE: 2011. The Tōhoku Earthquake and Tsunami.

He leaves that hanging in the air a moment, and I don’t know what to say, what to ask. The journalist side of me wants to doubt what he’s saying, but I can’t. After a moment, he continues, calmly.

JAKE: So, I say “what’s going on?” in English, but it comes out kinda garbled, like I haven’t spoken English for years. And this old woman answers in English but with this French accent. Other people start talking, and we realize it’s happening to all of us, different people in someone else’s body, and we’re all hyped on adrenaline and some of us looked scrapped up. Like we’d gotten into a fight or something. I can remember mandarins lying in the road, and a grocery bag on the ground. Some cars are parked, the drivers looking dazed and walking over to us. It was surreal. Then we hear the chirp again. Bangarang is there. And he’s looking past us, over our shoulders. We look and I saw it, the way the horizon seemed to be moving, shifting. And there’s this thunder, and the ground’s trembling.

HERO BEAT: How come nobody heard any of this?

JAKE: We kept our mouths shut, are you kidding? We didn’t want him coming back. He knew where we lived and he plucked us from our lives like it was nothing.

HERO BEAT: So… what happened?

JAKE: I was expecting him—Bangarang—to be laughing or something, you know, but by the time we look back, he’s just gone and this thing is growing larger. Panic and adrenaline kick in, but it’s weird. It’s someone else’s panic and adrenaline, and it feels like I just put on someone else’s sweaty socks. But we started running across this open field to these buildings we see in the distance, but man, every time I look back, and I looked back a lot, that line of black water seems miles closer. It was this black smudge, and everything it touches just vanishes, like it never mattered enough to leave an echo or shadow. I saw the fires burning on top of this layer of white. My brain couldn’t process it. I thought it was an oil spill, I thought it was the ocean on fire.

He’s quiet a moment and looks to the side, unwilling to make eye contact with me, like something inside him is ready to break if he looks my way. He shakes his head and finds the strength to continue, but I notice he can’t maintain eye contact for the rest of his experience.

JAKE: This thing’s bearing down on us. And every time I look back, we’ve lost someone. They’ve fallen, or they can’t run, or they’ve split off for some patch of higher ground that’s not high at all. I know there’s nothing high enough for miles… nothing I can see. The buildings in the distance aren’t any closer, and it’s all just, fucking flat terrain. That’s when I spot them… specks in the sky, darting around and swooping down to save people.

HERO BEAT: Metas?

JAKE: Yeah. I screamed at them, begging them to save us. I remember being so fucking angry that they weren’t coming down for us, but there’s no way they could see us. After, I saw the footage. I saw what they were looking at from that high up. I can’t imagine how helpless they felt, watching this thing just crush a countryside. All they could do was pull people from out of its way, knowing that every life they got to higher ground, a hundred more had to die. How do you live with that?

HERO BEAT: But some managed to save more, right?

JAKE: Definitely. Gentle Mountain diverted the tsunami around a couple of villages and Hero Fleet mobilized over a hundred of his drones to save people from drowning. But that was a drop in the bucket, and Japan’s metas suffered from some heavy PTSD after the tsunami.

HERO BEAT: What about you? How did you survive?

JAKE: Survive… that’s, uhm, that’s not what I’d call it. I fell and watched other people run past me, but it was too late for all of us. There was nowhere to go, and I just, kinda gave up. This thing, this surge of black water and debris, and fire and black smoke and thunder… it was like hell had come for me. Then just like that, there he was again, Bangarang. Standing near me, staring up at it. No fear. Just curiosity. And I swear, just as the first surge of water was about to barrel into me, I was home again.

HERO BEAT: Just like that?

JAKE: Just like that, like it never happened. Only it did, and there I was in my kitchen, alone, sweating through my t-shirt, my heart hammering like I’d run a marathon and lost. After, I tried to convince myself it was a bad dream, until I started seeing the news wires pick this thing up.

HERO BEAT: What happened after that?

JAKE: I couldn’t sleep for days. I was terrified and sleeping pills couldn’t even put a dent in me. I even checked myself into a hotel, I couldn’t go back home. I couldn’t stop watching the news. And then I start hearing chatter on some of hardcore storm chaser sites, people I knew and respected, asking if “anything strange” happened to anyone else during the tsunami or if anyone knew if Bangarang could transplant your thoughts into other people’s bodies. Slowly, we reached out and connected with each other. It was such a relief, knowing you weren’t alone, weren’t crazy. There were about two dozen of us… I wasn’t the only one, and I heard a couple of storm chasers even died… strokes during the event.

HERO BEAT: And none of you approached the police?

JAKE: And say what? Some of us tried, and we were laughed out of the stations. Others were scared shitless that Bangarang would come for us, but we couldn’t figure out why he’d done it. Was it a game? Was he making a point?  

HERO BEAT: Not that I’m not grateful for the story, but why talk about it now? And why to me? Isn’t this the kind of thing you’d want to cover in your own blog?

JAKE: My editor doesn’t believe me and she’s worried about offending the Japanese people. She’s afraid we’ll look insensitive or callous. We’ve fought about putting this thing out there. I’ve been through enough therapy that I’m tired of being afraid of talking about it. I’m tired of keeping it in. I’m hoping you can reach more people through Hero Beat, and maybe someone can give us answers.

HERO BEAT: So what would you like to ask my readers?

JAKE: Please, I just want answers. I’ve been doing Google searches, trying to figure out where we were. Who we were in. But, I’ve got nothing. I can provide more details about what I saw, so if anyone out there knows anything, please, contact me. But I guess, the thing I’m really hoping to know is… why? That’s the part I really want to know. Why?

It’s 16:40 at JFK International Airport, and Jake Simmons anxiously sips his coffee three hours before his flight to Caracas, Venezuela. He drums his fingers on the table, hardly the figure I was expecting, but Jake Simmons is a contradiction. He’s a nervous flyer, which is a rather strange admission for one of stormchasers.com’s most daring reporters. If there’s a natural disaster, pending or aftermath, Jake is usually catching the next flight out to cover events on the ground.

Unlike herobeat.com, which focuses on the heroes, stormchasers.com caters to regular people hoping for that big break… that one in a billion lightning strike that triggers their Crisis Gene and imbues them with powers. The irony is, you really do have a better shot at being hit by lightning than getting superpowers, but that doesn’t matter to the thousands of visitors who click on stormchasers.com every week, looking for advice or sharing it. Part of me wonders if interviewing their star reporter is ethical, considering that 1 in every 100 Storm Chasers dies in a reckless stunt trying to get closer to natural disasters. That beats out mountain climbing in Nepal as the world’s most dangerous hobby. Even sky diving gives you better odds for survival at 1 in about 150,000.

Storm Chasers, however, are as much a part of the identity of the hero culture as the metahumans themselves, and every single superhero out there has at least one story that involves saving the life of a power groupie looking to self-trigger. So if I’m going to talk to any staffer, it’ll be Jake Simmons, seen by many within the field as the “The Voice of Reason.”

HERO BEAT: I have to ask… the Voice of Reason?

JAKE: [Laughing] Yeah, I don’t get it either. What they call reason, I just call common sense. Don’t go running out into a lightning storm holding an iron pipe over your head. Don’t walk out naked in the middle of an ice storm. Don’t go walking into certain favelas in Rio. Shit like that. A lot of people don’t get that metahumans are triggered when there’s a large-scale event happening… tsunamis, earthquakes, nuclear meltdowns, landslides. Running into danger just because it’s dangerous is the kind of ignorance I’m fighting against.

HERO BEAT: But your critics argue that you, your readers, you still risk life and limb for a one in a million longshot. So why take that kind of chance?

JAKE: For the same reason people play the lottery. Someone’s got to win. For other people, it’s destiny. They feel it in their bones… they were meant to be powered.

HERO BEAT: So, destiny or lottery?

JAKE: For me? Oh… definitely lottery.

HERO BEAT: So where is the lottery taking your tonight?

JAKE: To Venezuela, to Lake Maracaibo where the terrain and weather patterns create massive lightning storms that appear 180 nights a year for ten hours at a shot. It’s a re-occurring natural phenomenon that you can set your watch to.

HERO BEAT: You’ve covered this before, though. In fact, it’s one of your top pick destinations for Storm Chasers looking to trigger their Crisis Gene.

JAKE: It’s definitely insane—over 260 lightning flashes every hour. It’s breathtaking. I’d probably go even if I wasn’t gene-priming. I get together with other Storm Chasers to talk about the latest hotspots, but not this time. This time, I’m covering the Venezuelan Government’s grand opening of danger tourism and the new Maracaibo Resort.

HERO BEAT: Other companies catered to danger tourism and Storm Chasers first though, right?

JAKE: Definitely. You have Sagarmāthā Unlimited in Nepal that takes Storm Chasers up Everest, and there’s Do or Die that offers to take their clients into the Danakil Desert in Ethiopia. But this is the first time that danger tourism is being sanctioned by a government. I’m really curious to see what kind of tourist shop they have set up at Maracaibo Resort.

HERO BEAT: You don’t sound convinced.

JAKE: I’m not sure I buy what it’s saying in the brochure… four people triggered at Maracaibo over the last year? I doubt it, but I’m also a realist, right? Danger Tourism happens in poor countries. There you are, running into mudslides and standing on beaches waiting for a tsunami to come, but this is some poor village’s reality. You’re there as some privileged Westerner hoping to get a superpower, and you see everyone who has to live this poverty and shit on a yearly basis. So I get it when the Venezuelan Government and the locals try cashing in on this. If we’re going to treat their backyard like it’s our playground, they might as well make us pay for the privilege.

HERO BEAT: Is there a fear that this kind of recognition might diminish the adventure or the… authenticity?

JAKE: Purists are always going to bitch about how they were the first ones there, and there’s the very real risk that when a location hits the mainstream, the area gets flooded with amateurs who become a liability to themselves and each other. But even then, most of the hardcore Storm Chasers I know don’t bother with tourist traps like Maracaibo or Everest. They minimize population creep—when too many people ruin your odds—and maximize the danger in places like the Antarctic during winter, or aboard trawlers heading into an Atlantic Storm. Most Storm Chasers want to minimize their personal risk or discomfort, which is self-defeating. The serious ones? They know that powers happen in that potential last second of your life when you’ve got one foot firmly in the grave and no idea where the other foot is. I hate to say it, but the real Storm Chasers we lost were probably the closest to triggering than anyone else.

HERO BEAT: Going back to your readers, they seem to cover a wide-ranging audience.

JAKE: Yeah. I guess that was the one thing I wasn’t expecting. When I first started blogging, I knew I was going to speak to like-minded chasers who were as serious about it as I was. But when our site started getting covered in the Comedy News outlets and Entertainment News, we started attracting curiosity seekers and daredevils.

HERO BEAT: You called it the Vulture Culture meets Jackass in one of your articles.

JAKE: God, yes. People love watching other people fuck up a disaster surfing attempt, and our segment on Storm Chaser Fails is huge. We avoid showing death and significant injury, obviously, but remember when I mentioned common sense? We see a huge lack of it in the videos we get.

HERO BEAT: Are you ever worried that it waters down the legitimacy of your site?

JAKE: Initially, yeah, but the number of readers who stuck around for the more serious articles and discussions was amazing. I was never expecting those kinds of numbers, and now, people come to the site to read me, to read about my experiences as a Storm Chaser. It’s incredible.

HERO BEAT: So here’s the question on everyone’s mind. Has anyone won the lottery yet?

JAKE: On record, no. But off record, I’m friends with two Storm Chasers who put themselves in harm’s way and ended up triggering.

HERO BEAT: Why off the record? You’d think this would validate all the risks they took.

JAKE: I actually asked them that, but in the end, I think it came down to one thing. Survivor’s guilt. There isn’t one of us who hasn’t had a friend or acquaintance die during Storm Chasing. Or seen someone die during a natural disaster. When the Crisis Gene finally triggers, I think the question switches from “Someone’s got to win,” to “why was I lucky enough to win.”

STAY TUNED NEXT WEEK WHEN WE CONTINUE OUR CONVERSATION WITH JAKE SIMMONS AND HIS EXPERIENCES STORM CHASING.

It’s December, and while light snow dusts New York itself, Central Park is another story. Here shoppers ply the Columbus Circle Holiday Market for gifts, and skaters enjoy a spin around Wollman Rink, but only in Central Park do the small specks of ice turn to fat snowflakes, the crystals so large you’d think they were pulled off a postcard and left to float to the ground. Meanwhile, along Broadway from the Columbus Circle all the way up into Harlem, the median trees glow and flicker with ghostly candlelight. And in Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital, the children will soon watch in awe as a bow-tied army of stuffed animals parade down the corridors and climb into their arms. This is but one of a dozen events happening in the Big Apple, during the season of miracles.

For the past five years, the work of the Herald Society has been as much a tradition of the New York Holidays as the lighting of the tree at Rockefeller Center or the Radio City Music Hall Christmas show or the Chanukah Gala or the American Museum of Natural History’s annual Kwanzaa Celebration. They are a loose society of metahumans who volunteer their time and their powers during the holidays to improve the lives of people, and they aren’t just restricted to New York. Los Angeles has a branch, and there’s talk of more chapters in Tokyo, London, and Sidney.

The Herald Society’s ranks are comprised of metahumans who have shied away from the limelight completely and never taken to the streets as superheroes (or those who put a tour behind them before retiring). Of course, you will find your occasional star like Grimsta or Mizz Verse putting in the occasional time as a volunteer, but the Heralds shy away attention, except as a group once a year.

The Heralds were started by Laticia Broyle, a super-genius inventor and the brain behind the tech firm Spanner House. She’s since used her company as a sponsor for the society, and donated toys for New York’s underprivileged children. Her stuffed animals do not walk, but that’s where her partner, Jess Malloy, comes in. Another Charlie-class meta, the pair met at one of the rare social gatherings held for non-costumed superhumans, and they’ve been together since. Laticia’s company lends its money to the purchase of toys and food for the poor, and Jess animates the figures with her powers.

The exact number of Heralds varies year to year, but perennials include Anita James of James’s Construction, Dr. Terrance Chu, Allan Crane, Randy Elks, and Veni Nayar. Without Anita James’s telekinetic abilities, Santa and his reindeers wouldn’t be seen flying across the city. Without Dr. Terrance Chu’s light-based illusions, there wouldn’t be candlelight sprucing up the trees along Broadway or the special lighting of the world’s largest Menorah at Grand Army Plaza. Without Allan Crane’s super speed, there wouldn’t be the guardian angel who races around, saving people from smaller catastrophes on New York’s slippery streets. And without Randy Elks, there wouldn’t be the weather anomalies that allow large snowflakes to fall over Central Park or pollution-clear nights to celebrate the many festivals and parades. It’s these metas who sit before me in the Spanner House boardroom, drinking coffee and nibbling on finger sandwiches.

“We’re not superheroes,” Laticia says. “We live normal lives and use our tax money to fight crime, but that doesn’t mean we don’t want to be good neighbors.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by the other Heralds. “I repair public and private sites after metas have torn through an area,” Anita James says. “I use my powers for good. This, though. This is all about uplifting people and repaying the city we love. I’d volunteer whether I had powers or not.”

Dr. Terrance Chu is more practical in his approach to the Holidays and his ability to manufacture light shows. “I like to think I’m a one man war against seasonal depression. The Holidays can be a tough time for many people, so I use my lights to generate positive feelings. Blues and greens to calm in frantic places, red and yellow to warm you in places you might feel isolated; I use warm and cold colors to uplift you, to make you think, to make you calm.”

Allan Crane, however, may be the odd one of the bunch. “Total atheist,” he says, laughing. He’s an admitted adrenaline junkie who runs a one-man courier company who claims his only competition is the internet, “and when the internet can deliver parcels and packages faster than me, then I’ll be worried.” In his spare time, he’s helping people, but rarely getting into fights or engaging other metas. “I don’t feel it, you know?” Allan says. “I just like running, and there’s a dozen ways I can be a good Samaritan every night when I’m out for a stroll.” Come December, Laticia hires Allan on an exclusive contract for the Heralds, and all his outings go toward the city. “I get paid to run,” he says. “How fricken awesome is that?”

The Heralds have been gaining popularity and volunteers steadily, both meta and baseline alike, and this year Laticia is starting new initiatives that include helping stock soup kitchens and helping homeless find a place to sleep. “Sure, some metas see this as a way to raise their visibility, but we sniff limelighters out pretty quickly,” Jess Malloy says as she and Laticia hold hands. “It’s really the powered types who prefer the 9-to-5 over the rooftop patrols that come to us. There’s a lot of pressure to wear a cape when you trigger, and there’s a lot of guilt too… are we doing the right thing?” Everyone in the room nods, familiar with the sentiment. Randy Elks picks up the train of thought, adding, “or are we being selfish going into business for ourselves? Being a Herald is one way us non-spandex metas feel like we’re really contributing.”

Veni Nayar has spent the interview listening. He’s a quiet-spoken man originally from New Delhi, and as a Hindu celebrates none of the December festivals. If his emotion-projection powers frighten some people, imagine how he feels. He’s terrified of imprinting other people with his social anxieties, and has fought to control that part of himself through therapy and medication. It’s been a long fight, but he’s managed to find work with Emergency Services to help during hostage negotiations and to bring jumpers off the ledge. It’s he who speaks up for the first time and he who closes out our interview. “I am told the only way to do good is to fight. Fight crime, fight corruption, fight evil… fight, fight, fight. Fighting scares me, and I hope through this I can show other metas that there are other ways to use their powers, that there are peaceful ways that matter as much. And when better to prove that then during the Holidays when the different faiths intersect and yet none of us really come together?”

When indeed? So whether you celebrate Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Milad an-Nabi, or you just want to spend time with friends and family… Happy Holidays to one and all….

Between January 3^rd and January 7^th of 2015, the Jihadists known as Boko Haram tore through the Nigerian state of Borno. They overran the Multinational Joint Taskforce military base, and massacred over 2000 people in the town of Baga before Heroes without Borders managed to stop their rampage. While Heroes without Borders have never shied away from controversy in the pursuit of upholding human rights, earning them official condemnation from Russia, China, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia among others, this was the first time that HWB’s leader, N’Kondi, spoke before the United Nations about the tragedy. At the 70th Annual General Assembly in New York, she went into unflinching detail about the bloody fighting that included Boko Haram forcing children to wear suicide vests, but she didn’t stop there. She went on to condemn private precognitive firms as being as guilty of murdering the citizens of Baga as the Jihadists who committed the massacre.

“It is the continued privatization of actionable intelligence that has put a price tag on human life, or worse, undervalued it as completely worthless … Had prognostication firms like Sight Unseen or Watchtower Vigilance or Al’Fa Zreniye made public the findings of their visions and clairvoyant probes, they could have saved many innocent lives … But because there wasn’t profit in saving the lives of 2,000 Nigerians, these innocent men, women, and children were left to be butchered.”

Before N’Kondi’s speech, the general public knew little about the shadowy world of private precog firms, firms that used state-sanctioned psychics for the U.S., Russian, and Chinese governments. While the Supreme Court battle continues to rage over whether psychics can be admitted as remote witnesses, N’Kondi’s condemnation exposed the loophole and gray areas that allowed private intelligence services to emerge. It has also raised an even more heated debate over whether psychics can be held accountable for what they see and do not report.

It is that accusation that brings us to the tree-lined avenue in Washington, DC. If you’re driving down New Hampshire Ave NW,  heading southwest off DuPont Square, it’d be easy to miss the five-story building hidden behind the row of holly trees. The steel and reflective glass building houses a number of businesses, but none so intriguing as the secretive Watchtower Vigilance, one of the firms named by N’Kondi as culpable in the massacre.

Watchtower Vigilance is one of several international firms that offer its clients psychic services and protection. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry, and the price tag for their services are often steep. Their clients are a veritable who’s who of Fortune 500 CEOs, Federal agencies including the NSA, FBI, and Secret Service, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and various DAARPA think-tanks looking to protect themselves from foreign spies. If it sounds paranoid, it’s because Russia, China, and even France run so-called Deep Dive Units that employ metas with mental powers to spy on behalf of state-friendly companies. Forget the good old days when Cold War spies stole military secrets. Todays spies are after intellectual property and corning the market on inventions, capitalizing on mergers and acquisitions, gleaning formulas from biopharma and communication giants. You name it… if it’s a fortune maker, it’s up for grabs.

So how does one even start protecting a company against a clairvoyant’s attempt to read your computer screens, from telepaths plucking ideas from your heads, from precogs reverse engineering the visions they receive. Many of these precog firms start with the basics of teaching the companies how to protect themselves. They offer psychic conditioning classes and seminars, training clients how to recognize the telltale signs of mental intrusion, what the industry refers to as “the tickles,” and how to resist them. There is also a good deal of hard science involved. Reflective glass to block line-of-sight psychics, Faraday Cages to block electromagnetic psychics, and copper, steel, and zinc plating to mask against remote viewing. These aren’t even the top of the line solutions and many companies contract meta-inventors to develop cutting edge psychic intrusion countermeasures.

For these firms, it’s a competitive field and its stars draw seven-digit salaries. They’re rockstars in their profession, and it’s hardly surprising that for an industry that relies on learning information and blocking its theft, that intelligence costs. Is it fair, however?

“No,” David Karvanski, founder of Watchtower Vigilance says. “It’s not fair and it’s never going to be fair. If N’Kondi and Heroes without Borders want to paint on costumes and fight crime, let them. I’m not stopping them. But what I do is well above their paygrade and who I tell is way above their clearance. I don’t owe them an explanation.”

Mr. Karvanski’s blunt approach is legendary among those in his field, but few can argue with the results or his argument. Many companies reputedly do their due diligence by reporting what the industry calls lynchpin or “absolute” events to the proper authorities, but alerting foreign governments becomes a political quagmire when the State Department gets involved. Suddenly, lynchpin events can become about leveraging political favor, or withholding it. And the blowback can be even more difficult to manage. Before the Beslan School Hostage Crisis in 2004, the now defunct Paris firm Priorité Un, tried to warn the Russian Federation of an attack. They claim they were ignored and the Russians claimed there was no actionable intel. When Chechen separatists took 1,200 people hostage in the town of Beslan, murdering 334 civilians including 186 school children, the Russian Federation blamed Priorité Un, saying the precogs actually confused the situation and sent investigators in the wrong direction. The resulting blowback eventually closed Priorité Un’s offices for good when they lost the backing of the French government.

Then, of course, there’s always the danger that warning people about a crisis can cause it to evaporate, and rare is the time when a company can prove it was a threat in the first place. So, the question arises… are these companies actually trying to protect their own credibility by reporting on specific events? Are they reporting directly to the State Department and staying clear of political discourse? Are they too afraid to report on foreign events because the information isn’t clear cut? Are they merely as selfish and self-serving as N’Kondi claims? Or is it, like most things in life, a combination of all factors?

Unfortunately, there is another, more tantalizing explanation for why precog firms don’t offer information for free, one that is so far relegated to rumor and insider urban legend. I was having dinner with a source a short time ago and he related a story under the promise of anonymity. It was a story partially told by superpowered vets when it’s late at night and the whiskey bottle comes out. The story concerns the botched hunt for Bangarang, a costly manhunt for the dangerous and unhinged killer that involved a joint task force of FBI and Homeland agents as well as NYPD’s Armored Mobile Police exosquad, and trusted graduates of the War College. That part was a matter of public record, but the bit that my contact shared was new to me and has since been verified through other sources.

It concerned the psychic game of chess involved in trying to corner Bangarang. Precog firms had been hired to find and track Bangarang (an elusive meta who could turn invisible) only to discover that their target was in fact psychic as well. Every time precogs tried to predict his next course of action, he managed to evaporate in one potential future and went down a different path. When clairvoyants and telepaths tried to tag and follow him, he vanished from their mental scans and reappeared miles away in the blink of an eye. It’s for that reason Bangarang is listed as either a Baker or Alpha class meta, and why he has a list of presumed powers including precognition and teleportation… two powers that he’s never publicly exhibited.

Bangarang brings up the interesting possibility why psychics don’t report on certain events; it’s because there are mentats on both sides of equation, each contributing to an uncertain future where events become harder and harder to predict because both sides are playing chess and every move creates a new board in its wake.

Does any of this matter to the surviving family members of the Baga massacre victims? Probably not, but then did the Baga Massacre ever register as a lynchpin event, or was it the victim of corporate greed and, as N’Kondi put it, the privatization of actionable intelligence? Unfortunately, like many secrets of the precognitive industry, the truth may remain lost in the shadows.

It’s Friday night at the end of a long shift, and Harry’s is packed. Obviously, Harrys’ isn’t the bar’s real name, the officers of the Armored Mobile Police (A.M.P.) and the investigative arm better known as Amplitude Squad like to keep their favorite watering hole a secret. So I’m here on my best behavior, knowing the second I spill the beans about this place, I’ll have to answer to a dozen men and women in five-ton exo-suits.

The NYPD and the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department are the most active and successful recruiters for meta-powered officers and exo-suit pilots given the meta-populations in both cities. In the booth with me sits Andrew Rossi, better known as Riot Act. He’s one of a handful of police officers with meta-powers, and I spoke with him about his experiences and what it’s like being a cop with powers.

HERO BEAT: Did you always want to be a cop?

RIOT ACT: Oh yeah, for sure. I actually got into the Academy and everything. I was going to pass on my own two feet when this thing happened.

HERO BEAT: Your trigger event.

RIOT ACT: Class of 2007, the Spring Nor’easter. Flooding, lightning strikes, 18 dead, and me shining like a polished chrome bumper.

HERO BEAT: You tried to keep your abilities a secret at first.

RIOT ACT: Hell yeah! I wanted to be a cop. I didn’t want to get booted. But the eyes. You try telling your training Sergeant why you need to wear sunglasses during drills.

HERO BEAT: So what happened?

RIOT ACT: I told the Sarge and he knew Tango over at the War Academy. They understood, but they said if I wanted to be a cop with powers, I had to go to the War Academy first and then back through basic all over again.

HERO BEAT: That must have been heartbreaking.

RIOT ACT: I thought I was getting railroaded, but the War Academy was all right, you know? I thought I’d be with a bunch of jarheads shouting “Hooah” all the time and getting fed the party line, but there were regular metas there too. It was all about responsible power usage and learning your limits. Normal heroes go just to get vetted to make proper citizen arrests, to learn hand-to-hand basics against powers, to learn tactics, you name it.

HERO BEAT: But you surrender your private identity and if there’s a crisis, you’re on call.

RIOT ACT: I’m on call anyways, and the heroes that’re really serious about being heroes? This gives them a fighting chance to do some good. It builds their connections, it trains them. If it wasn’t for the War Academy, I wouldn’t be a cop right now.

HERO BEAT:  So, what’s it like serving with A.M.P.

RIOT ACT: I love it. I thought I wanted to be a Detective or something, but I don’t think I’ll ever stop serving on the streets. I’m the guy they call in when they have a meta on the loose. Hard to beat that rush.

HERO BEAT:  A.M.P.’s mechanized power armors are pretty state of the art. When do they send you in instead of one of A.M.P.’s exo-units.

RIOT ACT: The exos take longer to suit up—usually it’s in route to a crisis spot aboard one of their V-T Carriers. Me? I’m usually first feet on the ground, or there solo like when some Charlie* decides to try his hand at being naughty.

*Charlie: Slang for Charlie-Class meta.

HERO BEAT: Do the other officers treat you differently because of your powers?

RIOT ACT: Sure. Sometimes. Not in A.M.P. but outside the squad? The young guys look at me and see a loaded gun. Not in the head, but what I can do. I don’t blame them. But the old guys, they’ve seen everything so they don’t even blink. They look at me, chuckle, and say the beer’s on me. When I ask them ‘why?’ They say ‘it’s because you’re a shit magnet.’

HERO BEAT: Do they have a special nickname for you?

RIOT ACT: [Laughs] Yeah. Kegger, on account of my silver skin.

HERO BEAT: And what do you say?

RIOT ACT: Nothing. [Calling out to the bar] I just blind the old farts!

The cheer that comes back speaks of a tightly knit unit. There’s no denying the job is tough and the stress high, but there’s also no doubt that Riot Act is a part of something bigger and that no matter what happens, these other officers have his back.