Bolt

18| Time For Some Truth Soup.

Nuhaila was as beautiful as the last time I saw her. She wasn't wearing her hijab this time, letting her dark hair flow down to her shoulders. Something was different about her, though. I didn't know how to explain it, but her energy seemed off. The bored look she had while staring at Shiver's corpse wasn't there. Now, an intense one took hold of her eyes, even though she had a slight smile on her face.

"You have questions, I assume," she said after retaking her seat. I stood beside her, but my eyes focused on the surrounding screens.

Why are they surveilling Tombstone?

People were still trying to escape the dome, blood on their knuckles as they kept punching it. Soldiers inside and outside shot bullets, missiles, and grenades, failing to break it.

"Why are you doing this?" I asked her. Have they been watching me too?

Nuhaila had a bag of Firefly on her lap. They were chips created in honor of the late supervillain with the same name. Firefly was one of the coolest-looking supervillains ever. Also, she was less of a villain and more of an anti-hero. But because the world governments didn't like that term, they placed her in the villain category.

The Boss ate one piece at a time. "Before I answer that, do you have questions I can answer quickly?"

"Is this what you meant when you told me you were independent?"

She smiled. "Yes."

"How did I get here?"

"You came by yourself."

"How? I didn't even know this place existed."

She shrugged before licking the bright purple powder from her fingertips. Then she crumpled the empty bag and handed it to Caleb, who threw it in the bin at the corner of the room.

Nuhaila swiveled her chair toward me. "Are you sure you're ready to know the whole truth?"

"There is more to—" I observed the room. "—this?"

She nodded. "Answers to why you're here, the dome, your missing memories, and so on. Do you want to know about all of that?"

"Yes."

"Alright."

Maxwell and the blue-haired woman—I learned her name was Teyana—leaned on the wall. The former read a book he picked up from the small shelf beside the control panel, while the latter crossed her arms on her chest, her eyes glued on me. Caleb stood behind Nuhaila. He must've been her right-hand man.

Nuhaila started, "Seventeen years ago you entered a comic book shop wanting to buy Captain Tombstone Vs Zombie Jude, but things didn't go as planned. Three masked men entered the shop and robbed it."

She's telling me about my superhero origin.

The Boss continued. "When the men were escaping, you tried to play hero and punched one of them in the face. Sadly, that's where your heroism ended. The other two had electric pulse cannons. They shot you too many times for a mundane to survive. Luckily, you weren't one. The paramedics had assumed you had died. But they took you to the morgue, and you woke up six hours later with your powers."

Yes, the electric pulse cannons had activated my powers. I became the first black hero from Mamba, signed to a hero management agency, and then got screwed in the end like other naïve black people.

"That's his origin story?" Teyana asked. "How underwhelming."

I ignored her and focused on Nuhaila. "You still haven't told me how we know each other."