"Oh, I get it. Alienation."
"Alien nation?"
"No, alienation, stupid. The state of being withdrawn or disaffected from the outside world." She looked over, through the glass. "He's all alone."
-- Underground, Tales from the City

Chase Collins's thirteenth birthday ended in disappointment and a trip to the hospital when he broke down into seizures in the middle of the pool. For seventy two seconds he had even stopped breathing, prompting a spectacular rescue by his uncle and a lot of screaming from his adoptive mother. Everyone at the party was gone by the time he was loaded onto the ambulance, bundled up in a blanket. They'd all either run away or had been spirited away by their parents, who were afraid that whatever had caused the Collins boy's eyes to bleed black and his body to try to break itself apart was contagious.

He spent the night in the hospital, monitors beeping all around him and hooked up to an IV of something that he was old enough to recognize as a placebo treatment. Saline solution. It was useless, but it looked effective enough for his parents to be soothed.

Chase wasn't soothed at all. He was terrified.

Something had happened to him, he wasn't sure what. Something that involved the world being plunged into darkness as he passed out and woke up coughing chlorine. He knew he was adopted, his parents had told him as soon as they thought he was old enough to understand, making sure that he knew that didn't mean they loved him any less. Which was cool. That part didn't matter.

It was the part where no one had any idea how to find his birth parents or what kind of congenital problems they might have had, that part, that scared him. What if he had epilepsy? What if he had a wasting disease, something that would slowly kill him and take away his ability to walk, to swim, to move?

No way of knowing. There was no way to tell except to spend more days in the hospital, going through test after test. Being rolled onto his side and feeling the needle sliding between his bones and trying not to scream at the pain. Having tube after tube of blood drawn for no damn reason, because shouldn't they already know from having tested it once that it wasn't there? Scans from noisy, intimidating machines. More scans. More tests.

His parents finally called an end to it and brought him home after a two-hour fit of hysterics. No one at the hospital had been able to figure out what was wrong with him. There wasn't anything they could do, and he hadn't had another fit. Quite the contrary.

He still didn't know what was happening to him, but he had some idea of what it had done. Okay, maybe not so much an idea of what it had done but he could do things now that he'd only seen in movies before. Maybe he was a mutant. Maybe he was a sorcerer. But he had powers now. He could do things. Terrible things. Wonderful things.

Maybe there really wasn't anything wrong with him. Maybe it was just what he was born to be.

By the time Chase Collins had turned fourteen he had learned that using his power made his eyes burn black, gave him a little headache or at least it had at first, and made his eyes prickle like he was going to cry. But damn, it felt good.

Not just the power, although that felt good too. Electricity burning hot in his veins. But also the ability to do almost anything he wanted, and being able to get away with it. That was the important part. He got away with it.

Last year of Junior High was his first year on the freshman swim team for high school, the only kid from the Junior High to make the special tryouts. He'd been dreading it at first, expecting the bullying, the teasing, all the boys who had passed some arbitrary line of maturity to pick on the one who was still a kid. Not with this power burning him up from inside. People who tried to pick on him quickly learned that their luck went real bad, real quick.

After that, they were even nice to him. Adopted him as one of their own, and even though there was always that sense that something was kind of out of joint they were okay. Like big brothers, they watched out for him. Stepped up behind him when the rival teams sneered, not that they sneered for long. Just long enough for Chase to breeze down the lanes and back again and destroy them.

And the kind of cool thing was, once he'd gotten them to stop teasing him, after he'd smoked the first few competitors in the first couple of meets he was okay. He didn't have to threaten, to make things happen. Things were happening all on their own and they were good things, this time.

Not like the pool. Not like how everyone had avoided him afterwards. Months went by and still no one knew what he had and somehow word had gotten out that he'd been in the hospital, that he had some kind of nervous fit, and no one wanted to catch it. Brain disease. Brain tumor. Epilepsy. Worse than the staring and the edginess and the everyone treating him like he'd fall into another fit if they touched him wrong was the pity. Chase hated pity. As though they were so much better than him.

But for a little while, for a few months, he was okay. He was on the High School swim team already, had a group of friends, was settling in. After the first few weeks he didn't even need the powers. Only used them casually, to change the channel when he was too lazy to get off the couch, to re-heat his pizza when he didn't feel like going to the microwave. Little things. Quiet things.

He'd read X-Men. He knew how that storyline ended.

Fifteen brought him his first beer, and his first real attempt at a birthday party after the fiasco two years ago. Freshman year in high school was coming up. It deserved a party.

Everyone from the swim team was there and everyone seemed to be having a good time but for the first time he was realizing that they were so much older than he was, and he felt a little out of place. Only a little. They were still horsing around by the pool, having fun, playing their games. He'd be in high school in a couple of months. It wasn't that bad.

Why did he feel so out of place? Was there something wrong with him? Was his swimsuit puckering in weird places?

He dove, a graceful arc into the pool and matching the curve when he pulled up closer to the surface, pulling lengths of colored tile until he'd crossed to the other side. Laughter, joking about how he couldn't resist showing off even in his own backyard. Kindly meant, he knew. But he flushed anyway with the perception of ego that came with it and didn't do that again.

Birthday cake was Devil's food and vanilla ice cream, nothing fancy, just his name and birthday wishes. He'd had a racecar cake once when he was six. Too pretty to eat, almost. This one was gone inside of fifteen minutes and he wished he was six again.

At least until the presents started popping out. There were all kinds of nifty things, the video game he'd wanted, a new mp3 player, autographed t-shirts from the band they'd all gone to see last week but no one had been able to get backstage. Or at least, he hadn't thought anyone had. He'd even thought about using his powers but it was a group effort and he didn't want to be that blatant about it.

One of the girls on the team blushed when she handed him her present. He didn't find out why until the party was over and almost everyone had gone home. Underneath one of the DVDs was a mix CD that he put in, played. He realized he was smiling on the third track, leaning forward and tapping his feet on the fifth. It was flirtation. Mixed CDs were going around between all the couples in high school these days, or playlists if you were hooked up online, which he wasn't. He liked his privacy too much for that.

But this was worth playing a couple times over at least, worth asking her out to a movie. For the first time in months he had a new use for his powers, and he stretched out his arms and cracked his knuckles in a dramatic gesture that was for his benefit alone. He'd take her out, treat her to a good time, a movie, dinner, something nice. He wasn't sure what yet, but maybe Dad would have some ideas where you could take a girl on a first date. She was cute, too, and sweet. And fast in the lanes. Perfect for him.

He got a brand new car for his sixteenth birthday, nothing fancy like a Porsche or anything, a Saturn, useful but sleek-looking at least. He hid his disappointment well, sensing that his father was somehow less than pleased with him the past few days. Or a little apprehensive. He wasn't sure why, his grades were outstanding, his swim team were heading towards state championships and it was mostly because of him. Everyone said so.

His mother just talked to him in his room, away from his father's hearing, and told him some sob story about the tough time he was having at work. Chase knew that was bullshit, he could tell when his Mom was lying to him. She sat too still, smoothing her hands over her knees and the skirt that she only ever wore when she was cooking up some bullshit story for him. She got dressed up for that. But he ate it, and he wasn't sure why.

Jen was still cool, though. At least he had Jen, and to celebrate they went out to the park and took a walk, mysteriously finding the only patch of ground that wasn't wet with dew and settling down for a good hour and a half of hot and heavy. Eventually they decided bare ground wasn't the place to get dirty and walked back to the car. Chase was breathing heavy, sweat-damp and exhilarated.

They got home and his parents were gone, out to dinner with some important clients or something, he wasn't sure who but the point was that they were alone. Had the house all to themselves and his birthday party wasn't till the weekend. He took her upstairs and got her shirt off. She got his belt and the top button on his jeans undone before his mind fogged and there was a moment of deep embarrassment.

Not to worry. No panicking. A little reaching out, and his jeans were clean and he was still breathing hard, but she couldn't have said what had happened. More importantly, she couldn't laugh about it to her girlfriends later. Sex resumed, crested, completed without further incident. It hurt, a little, to make himself go so quick after the first one. Hell, he was sixteen. He could manage.

They curled up together afterwards, drifting in and out and making idle conversation between the after and when his parents came home. The door clicked open before he was ready, and without thinking about it he waved a casual hand, pulled his clothes back to him from where they'd been scattered on the floor by his bed.

Afterwards he sat on the edge of the bed and planted his elbows above his knees, palms into his eyes. Burning eyes. With power or with angry tears, he wasn't sure. His parents still weren't home, the clock was ticking down from eleven, and there was a big hole in the wall where his The Crow poster used to be. Fuck that. It was back up again, the wall behind it intact. Which didn't solve the problem of Jen screaming and running out of the house.

She was going to tell the rest of the school. He couldn't let that happen.

Chase pushed to his feet and grabbed his jacket and keys, locked the door behind him. He'd driven her here. She couldn't be that hard to find.

Seventeen. Junior year. He was still on the swim team, dominating the swim team really, now that most of his friends had graduated. No girlfriends, something that his mother sometimes worried at him about, but more often he was becoming convinced that she just worried. Not about him. Because of him.

Dad was at work more often than not. The kind of at work that usually meant he was having an affair, but Chase knew what was really going on. Fine. Fucking fine. He spent most of his time in the house by himself, blasting his music out of his room at high volume because he could do that with no one else in the house, lounging on the couch watching television with the sound off. It was the kind of attitude that went well with black clothing and spikes through the face, but he was more comfortable in jeans and a t-shirt. Maybe a button-down over that.

It wasn't all bad. He got to do pretty much whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. As long as his grades were still good he could stay out till two and no one cared. Which he did.

There were parties. He didn't hang out with the swim team anymore, just hovered on the edge of the crowd. He was always welcome because he brought the alcohol, but once he was there people stayed clear of extended conversations with him. There was just something about his smile. No, it was something about the way he said... not anything he said, just something about it. No, it was something about his eyes.

Then he took her upstairs and showed her exactly what it was about his eyes. Along with the rest of him, for that matter. God, she was hot. Wet. A little dazed when they came back down and people avoided her for the rest of the year, but who the hell cared. Not him.

Sixteen had taught him a valuable lesson. As long as you didn't rock the boat, as long as you kept it quiet and out back, they didn't care what you did. In fact, the more they didn't know, the better. He could have anything he wanted as long as they didn't know.

His eighteenth birthday they tried to make it up to him. They were going to take him out on a family camping trip, just the three of them, like it was before. Like it had been, like it was supposed to be.

Too little, too late. Chase seethed the whole morning, smiling through gritted teeth and pretending he hadn't thrown a temper tantrum at his wall again last night. They thought there was construction in the neighborhood. The drywall in his room made popping sounds when he broke his fists on it. Fixed it up just fine for the morning, though. There was no telling that he'd done anything when the wall was intact, when the poster was up and his knuckles were showing nicely tanned flesh.

They loaded up the camping gear with false smiles and broken laughs that rang hollow and tinny in his ears. Every time that woman smiled at him he wanted to hurt her a little more. As if it was real. As if they all didn't know it wasn't real, none of it.

He knew. Chase Collins knew. His parents weren't his parents, they weren't even pretending to be anymore for anyone's benefit but their own. Soothing their conscience with one last ride. One last trip out. One last gasp at freedom.

Mr. Collins meant one last trip before his senior year of high school, but that wasn't how Chase heard it. The words echoed in his mind the whole drive there, every night when he went to sleep between his mother's snoring and his father's pill-soaked stupor. When he ate the burned breakfast of scrambled eggs over a campfire and when they eventually caved and drove out to Waffle House instead. Every gulp of orange juice came with an extra helping of hate. And sickness. Nothing tasted good anymore, nothing filled. He rattled around the edges of a hollowed-out world. He felt old. Tired. Used.

It was, he decided as they drove back early, their fault. One last gasp at freedom, hell, it was all for them. It was their last chance to reassure themselves that they were still, at heart, a family, before they shipped him off to boarding school so that someone else would have to deal with him. So that they wouldn't look at him again and be afraid.

Fine. They didn't want to look at him again, he could deal with that. They wouldn't ever have to look at him again.

Five weeks later he found out.

Homeless guys slept under the bridge all the time; sometimes it was where Chase went to drink his beer in peace. This guy wouldn't leave him alone, though. And he was on the verge of doing something drastic when the rock brained him in the middle of the back. And the hobo stared at him with blackened eyes.

Chase stared. "What the hell..."

They talked. He listened. About the power. About what it did to you, how it used you up from the inside. Every little thing. He soaked up the information as he'd soaked up the terror, the adoration. The power.

He started to whisper. Give it up. You're old. You're tired. You don't want it anymore. Give it up. You're dying. You know you don't want to live. Give it up. Give it to me.

And he did.

Chase screamed. Laughed. Cried.

Go to the top! For you have reached the bottom.