At eighteen, I left Laurie's apartment with two suitcases, four boxes of books, and enough food to survive a natural disaster without relying on public assistance.
My mother had spent the previous three days turning my departure for college into a military operation. Every time I thought I had finished packing, she reappeared with another stack of clothes, a box of medicine, or some object whose absence she insisted would inevitably lead to my ruin.
On the morning of my departure, I discovered a sewing kit carefully wedged between my criminal-law and criminal-sociology textbooks. I lifted it out of the box with two fingers, then crossed the living room, where Laurie was checking the contents of a bag filled with towels for the third time.
She wore wide cream-colored pants, an orange blouse, and a scarf tied around her hair. Even at eight in the morning, surrounded by boxes and rolls of packing tape, she looked better dressed than most wedding guests.
"Mom, I'm going to study criminology in Manhattan. I'm not leaving to open an illegal sewing workshop in a region without electricity."
Laurie looked up at me with the offended expression of an artist whose social usefulness had just been questioned. She took the kit from me, checked that the needles were properly stored, and placed it back inside the box.
"And what do you plan to do when a button falls off right before an important interview? Call the police and wait for a specialized unit to repair your shirt?"
"I'm planning to become a police officer. I'll be able to close the case without further action."
"You're joking now, but you'll thank me when you're the only man in your precinct capable of properly sewing a sleeve back on."
Terrence, who was waiting near the door with several new binders in his arms, intervened before the conversation could become a lecture on the history of menswear.
Where Laurie anticipated clothing, culinary, and emotional disasters, my father viewed college mainly as a war against administrative disorder. He placed his stack on top of a box that was already nearly impossible to close, then explained for the second time that every subject needed its own binder, with separate dividers for lectures, assignments, and supplementary reading.
"I already have binders," I reminded him. "You gave them to me for Christmas."
"These are reinforced. The rings on the others had started to bend."
"After three years of use."
"Exactly. You'll be working harder in college."
I looked at Laurie, then Terrence, before gesturing toward the boxes now occupying half the living room.
"I'm moving twenty minutes away by subway. You both realize I can come back and get something if I need it?"
Nathan and Jamal arrived just as I said that.
Nathan wore an old T-shirt showing the skeleton of a tyrannosaurus and regarded the stack of boxes with cautious admiration. Jamal, who had agreed to help on the condition that no one ask him to wake up before nine, appeared at nine forty-five carrying a coffee and looking like a man returning from an expedition.
He tried to lift one of my book boxes, set it back down almost immediately, and asked whether I genuinely intended to bring my entire library.
"Only the useful books," I answered.
"There are at least thirty in this one. Exactly how many useless books do you own?"
"I would prefer not to answer without my attorney present."
Terrence suppressed a smile. Jamal planted one foot against the box and pushed it toward the entrance, muttering that I had no reason to transport the penal code as though the continued existence of American justice personally depended on my dorm room.
The university was in Manhattan, close enough for me to return home regularly but far enough away to make me feel as though I were beginning a truly independent life.
I had chosen an accelerated criminal-justice program with a concentration in criminology and several law modules. The credits I had earned during high school, combined with the summer semesters I intended to take, were supposed to allow me to finish in three years.
The plan seemed almost too neat: graduate at around twenty-one, enter the New York Police Academy, gain at least a year of field experience, then apply to the FBI once my age and background were sufficient.
Quantico remained a distant goal, a line drawn in pencil through a life that might easily decide to head in another direction, but I needed a destination. Without one, I risked turning every day into abstract preparation for some future catastrophe.
The dormitory occupied a renovated old building a few streets from campus. The lobby had retained its stone columns and excessively high ceiling, but the upper floors had been painted an impersonal beige that made every corridor resemble a waiting room.
Students and their parents moved between rooms carrying lamps, boxes, and pieces of furniture whose dimensions no one had bothered to check. The air smelled of cleaning products, new cardboard, and dust disturbed by the move.
My room was on the fourth floor, at the end of a narrow corridor where an entire family was attempting to maneuver a small refrigerator without scraping the walls.
My roommate's name was Daniel Kim.
He studied accounting, played guitar without knowing a single complete song, and apparently considered the floor an additional storage surface. When we entered, he was sitting in the middle of a pile of unpacked clothes, trying to connect a stereo whose cables appeared to have been tied together by a personal enemy.
He looked up at my boxes, my family, and my two friends, then stared at the stack of books for a long moment.
"Are you moving in for four years, or preparing a bunker capable of surviving the end of the world?"
"Three years, normally. As for the end of the world, I prefer to keep several options open."
Daniel laughed, probably because he thought I was joking.
Jamal placed a box on my desk and explained that I was exactly the kind of person who knew the exam dates before the professors did. Nathan added that I had probably already prepared a study schedule running all the way to graduation.
They were barely exaggerating.
Laurie spent the next hour judging the curtains, the quality of the sheets provided by the residence, and the almost complete absence of color in the room. Terrence inspected the lock, tested the smoke detector, and made me repeat the route to both emergency exits.
Nathan discovered a specialized bookstore a few streets away from a flyer abandoned on the desk, while Jamal lay down on my bed and claimed to be testing the mattress for safety reasons.
Their presence filled the room so completely that I did not immediately realize how different it would feel once the door closed behind them.
When everything was finally arranged, Laurie hugged me in the middle of the corridor with enough intensity that several students had to walk around us. Then she placed both hands against my cheeks and examined me as though trying to memorize every detail of my face before a journey lasting several years.
"You call me tonight. Not tomorrow morning, not when you have a problem, not after you forget to eat for two days. Tonight."
"I'll probably still be alive in a few hours."
"Malcolm, that was not a question."
"I'll call."
Terrence held out his hand by reflex, then seemed to realize we were not ending a business meeting. He pulled me briefly against him, awkwardly enough that his shoulder struck mine, but his hand remained against my back longer than expected.
"Work seriously, keep your documents organized, and don't let the first few weeks convince you that you can postpone everything. I've seen enough intelligent students fail simply because they believed they could recover an entire semester in three nights."
"I was personally planning to drop out after the first party."
"You're joking, but I know someone who almost did exactly that."
He glanced toward Laurie, who was waiting near the elevator, then added in a quieter voice:
"Try to enjoy these years as well. You don't need to turn every day into an investment in your future."
I looked at him, genuinely surprised.
Terrence cleared his throat and corrected himself almost immediately.
"Within reason, obviously. I am not encouraging you to develop an addiction or compromise your academic record."
That sounded more like him.
After they left, the room suddenly seemed much larger, although it had not gained a single inch. Daniel dropped onto his bed, stared at the closed door, and declared that my parents seemed nice, although my mother frightened him slightly.
"She only asked why you don't have curtains," I replied, opening my first box.
"She asked as though living without curtains revealed a profound moral deficiency."
I smiled and knelt in front of the pile of books.
That was when I saw the figure near the door.
It was tall, motionless, and vaguely human. I could make out neither a face nor clothing, only a dark shape in the corner of my vision, like someone who had stopped in the doorway to watch me.
I turned my head sharply.
The corridor remained visible beyond the still-open door, but no student stood in front of our room. A boy passed several yards away carrying a fish-shaped lamp, then disappeared through another doorway.
"You okay?" Daniel asked, having noticed my movement.
I continued staring into the corridor for several seconds before shaking my head.
"I thought I saw someone come in."
"Probably our neighbor with the lamp. I think it's best not to speak to him until we know why he owns that thing."
I accepted the explanation because it was reasonable and the alternative made no sense.
At the time.
---
My first few weeks at college were less spectacular than I had imagined, but infinitely more exhausting.
The campus consisted of a collection of modern buildings wedged between the noisy streets of Manhattan. The halls smelled of coffee, damp paper, and food students ate while walking so they would not lose five minutes.
The elevators were always full, the corridors constantly crowded, and the classrooms ranged from enormous lecture halls lit by fluorescent tubes to small rooms where thirty people tried to balance notebooks on writing tablets designed for children.
I quickly discovered that possessing an adult's memories and having prepared for college for several years did not make it easy. It gave me an advantage in certain subjects, nothing more.
The introductory criminology classes covered concepts I had encountered before, but placed them within a more rigorous framework based on studies and statistics rather than intuition. Sociology forced me to consider crime as something more complex than the simple consequence of poor individual choices.
Criminal law constantly reminded me that a truth that could not be legally established was insufficient to convict someone.
Some students found that frustrating.
So did I, but I had grown up with Terrence. I had learned long ago that procedure was not an artificial obstacle placed in front of justice. It was also one of the few protections preventing authority from settling for a conviction based on certainty alone.
I spent much of my time in the university library.
The building occupied several floors, and its enormous windows looked out over streets that seemed active at every hour of the day. Inside, the silence was never complete. Ventilation systems hummed, pages turned, keyboards clicked, and someone always ended up spilling coffee in a corner.
The tables were covered with textbooks, study cards, and students asleep on their own arms.
I liked the place.
It resembled neither Laurie's colorful studio nor Terrence's perfectly ordered office, but it possessed its own kind of functional disorder: hundreds of people simultaneously trying to understand something.
I continued training as well.
The campus gym was small, overheated, and frequented by several men convinced that every mirror had been installed so they could admire their arms. I ran early in the morning before classes, continued gymnastics at a nearby club, and found a dojo where I could practice twice a week.
My schedule should have left little room for anything else, but Daniel quickly decided it was his moral duty to prevent me from becoming a hermit.
Before he managed to drag me to my first party, however, a seemingly insignificant piece of news reminded me that the DC Universe continued moving forward while I prepared for exams.
I learned about Bruce Wayne's disappearance one morning in the campus cafeteria.
It was a little after seven. The windows were covered with condensation, the employees were still filling the displays, and a line of half-awake students waited in front of the coffee machines.
I had taken a seat near a window with my notes, a bowl of overly soft cereal, and a copy of the newspaper someone had left on the previous table.
Bruce's face appeared in a photograph near the bottom of the front page.
He had grown since the pictures published after his parents' murders. His features had hardened, his hair was longer, and he stared at the camera with the closed expression journalists interpreted according to their needs.
Some saw the arrogance of an excessively wealthy heir.
Others saw the scars left by a traumatized child who had grown up under constant media attention.
The headline was relatively restrained.
WAYNE HEIR LEAVES COUNTRY WITHOUT OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT
The article explained that Bruce Wayne had interrupted his studies, left Gotham, and almost entirely withdrawn from public life. Wayne Enterprises refused to comment on his movements.
Alfred Pennyworth had released a statement that was as polite as it was useless, claiming that Mr. Wayne intended to travel and continue his education abroad, away from media attention.
Lacking any real information, journalists filled the space with theories: a personal crisis, a disagreement with the board, a journey of self-discovery, private medical treatment, or an affair with a European actress whose existence no other newspaper seemed able to confirm.
I reread the section about his education several times.
To an ordinary reader, Bruce Wayne had simply used his fortune to disappear and see the world.
To me, it meant something else.
Traveling. Learning. Distancing himself from Gotham and its resources.
It sounded like the beginning of his training.
The young boy who had listened to his parents die in an alley was probably preparing to become Batman.
I slowly lowered the newspaper and looked around.
Two students were arguing about a basketball game. A girl slept with her forehead resting against her textbook. Behind the counter, an employee replaced a tray of pastries without paying the slightest attention to the news playing on the television.
To them, a young billionaire had left to travel.
To me, a countdown had begun.
Daniel arrived a few minutes later and placed his tray across from me. He followed my gaze, noticed Bruce's photograph, and smiled.
"You're interested in billionaire heirs now? I would have thought you preferred ordinary criminals."
"I'm interested in people who disappear without saying where they're going."
"You've been studying criminology for less than two months and you already sound like the narrator of a documentary."
He bit into a piece of toast, then pointed toward the newspaper.
"If I were him, I'd disappear too. He could buy an island, never see another professor, and hire someone to attend meetings in his place."
"I don't think he left to rest."
Daniel shrugged.
"You know him personally?"
"No."
Not yet, I thought.
And I was not sure I wanted that to change.
That night, I opened my old notebook and recorded the date of Bruce's departure. I added that he had probably begun his training and that his return to Gotham remained impossible to predict.
I stared at that final line for a while.
In the stories I knew, Batman appeared when Gotham became sick enough to need a symbol.
That did not mean he cured it.
---
Daniel eventually succeeded in bringing me to a party hosted at an apartment shared by four students.
The place was on the sixth floor of a building without an elevator, and it was difficult to determine whether the smell in the stairwell came from dampness, garbage, or some unknown life-form.
Inside, the music was loud enough to make the windows vibrate. The air smelled of beer, sweat, and a scented candle desperately attempting to conceal everything else.
People danced in the living room while others shouted in order to hold conversations less than three feet apart.
At first, I remained near one wall holding a plastic cup, surveying the apartment as though it were a crime scene that had not yet produced a victim.
I had identified the exits, the fire escape, the kitchen window, and the boy discreetly removing several bottles from the refrigerator.
Daniel elbowed me.
"Stop looking at the doors. No one is going to attack you."
"I'm not looking at the doors."
"You've already identified both exits, checked the condition of the fire escape, and noticed that the guy in the green shirt is stealing beer."
I glanced toward the kitchen.
"He took four."
"That is not your problem. You are here to enjoy yourself, talk to people, and perhaps discover that a party is not an evacuation drill."
"I'm trying."
"You try like someone filling out a form."
He abandoned me to join a group near the speakers.
I took a sip of warm beer and immediately understood that it had been selected according to price and no other criterion.
"You look as though you regret every decision that brought you here."
The voice came from my right.
A young woman leaned against the wall with her arms crossed. She wore a denim jacket covered in small pins, and her curly hair was tied up above her head. I had already seen her speak several times in my criminal-sociology class.
Nia Brooks.
She had a particular way of smiling whenever she knew a professor had just said something questionable.
"Only the decisions made after accepting this beer," I replied.
She examined my cup.
"You know no one is forcing you to finish it?"
"I paid three dollars to get in. I need some minimum return on my investment."
"So you're trying to make your presence at a college party financially worthwhile?"
"I'm a student. Every expense requires justification."
She burst out laughing, a genuine, loud laugh that carried even over the music.
"You're Malcolm, right? The guy who corrected the professor for fifteen minutes about the difference between correlation and causation."
"And you're Nia. The one who asked whether his example about poverty came from a study or his imagination."
"You know my name."
"We have two classes together."
"Or you've already investigated me."
"I only begin investigations after the second date."
Her smile widened as she tilted her head.
"So according to you, this is already our first date?"
I felt heat rise into my face but refused to retreat.
"That depends. Are you planning to stand against this wall all night?"
"That mostly depends on whether you can ask me to dance without first producing a risk-assessment report."
I looked toward the tightly packed crowd in the middle of the living room.
"I would probably prefer an oral examination."
"I didn't ask what you preferred."
She put her cup on a shelf and held out her hand.
I danced badly.
Not in the slightly awkward way that could be interpreted as charming, but like a man attempting to transmit different instructions to every part of his body.
Years of gymnastics, karate, and physical control had done absolutely nothing to prepare me for moving without a specific purpose.
Nia found it hilarious.
She was not truly mocking me, but her laughter made any attempt to preserve my dignity impossible. After a few minutes, I began laughing too.
We spent much of the evening together.
We talked about our classes, the city, and our families. She wanted to become a civil-rights attorney. Her father taught history, her mother worked as a nurse, and her grandmother apparently controlled the entire family from a house in the Bronx.
When I asked for her number before leaving, she looked at me with exaggerated seriousness.
"Are you actually going to call, or are you one of those boys who waits three days because a magazine told him it makes him mysterious?"
"I can wait four days if you want a more intense experience."
"Try it and I'll deliberately give you the number of a pizza place."
I called the next day.
Over the following months, we dated without immediately becoming an official couple. We studied in cafés, went to the movies, and sometimes spent entire evenings walking through Manhattan without any destination.
Nia enjoyed arguing almost as much as I did, but she refused to let me turn every personal conversation into an exercise in logic.
One evening, after I spent several minutes explaining why her criticism of a restaurant lacked objective evidence, she put down her fork and looked at me with amused exhaustion.
"Malcolm, when I tell you I don't like this soup, I am not inviting you to build a case proving that my judgment is legally insufficient."
"I'm only trying to understand what you disliked about it."
"It tasted like soup."
"That isn't very specific."
She slowly pushed the bowl toward me.
"In that case, you can spend the rest of the evening with it. Your relationship looks more promising than ours."
I improved.
Slowly.
During that same year, another familiar name entered the news in far more spectacular fashion.
Unlike Bruce Wayne, Lex Luthor did not quietly disappear. On the contrary, he seemed to decide that no one on the continent should be allowed to remain unaware of his arrival.
The major announcement played on the screens in the university's main lobby. I was leaving a criminal-law class when the news channels interrupted their regular programming to broadcast a conference in Metropolis.
An enormous stage had been constructed in front of a glass building that was still unfinished. Flags bearing a purple-and-green symbol flew above a crowd of journalists, investors, and elected officials.
Lex Luthor stood at the center.
He was younger than the image I remembered. Elegant and perfectly at ease before the cameras, he wore a dark suit whose apparent simplicity probably cost several years of my tuition.
Behind him, the name of his new company occupied an entire screen.
LEXCORP
I stood motionless in the middle of the lobby as other students walked around me on their way to class.
Lex spoke about innovation, energy independence, advanced medicine, and technologies capable of transforming the lives of millions.
His voice was precise and confident, yet warm enough to create the impression that he was speaking personally to every viewer.
He was not merely presenting a company.
He was presenting the future.
The media immediately accepted his version of events.
Within weeks, Lex Luthor was being described as the genius of the century, the new face of American progress, and the man who would turn Metropolis into the technological capital of the country.
Magazines placed his portrait on their covers. Networks analyzed his childhood, his degrees, his patents, and his supposed ability to understand engineering, finance, and international politics with equal brilliance.
Journalists seemed to have collectively agreed to present every one of his statements as fact before his projects had produced any results.
Nia found me in the library one evening, surrounded by financial newspapers and several articles about LexCorp.
She placed her bag on the chair beside me, picked up one of the magazines, and studied Lex's smiling portrait.
"I didn't know initial public offerings fascinated you this much."
"He built almost all of this himself."
"According to press releases written by people he pays to explain that he built almost all of this himself."
"He's still probably one of the most intelligent men on the planet."
"That doesn't mean he's honest, generous, or even capable of choosing an appropriate tie."
She turned a few pages, then studied me more closely.
"You don't like him."
It was not a question.
I stared at the photograph.
Lex looked perfectly human. Ambitious without seeming threatening. Confident without appearing arrogant.
Nothing indicated the man he might become.
"I don't know him."
"You've already used that sentence to avoid answering me. Why does he make you uncomfortable?"
I took time to consider my response.
I obviously could not explain that Lex Luthor usually became the obsessive enemy of an invulnerable alien.
"Because everyone already seems to believe him. He has barely accomplished anything publicly, but journalists talk about him as though history has already rendered its verdict."
Nia examined the magazine again, then nodded slowly.
"That I can understand. Rich men love presenting their ambition as a form of public service."
I could not accuse Lex of crimes he had not yet committed.
Perhaps this version would be different.
Perhaps he would never become Superman's enemy.
Yet I knew that a man capable of charming the media, investors, and political officials so quickly could prove more dangerous than an ordinary criminal.
A criminal needed to hide his actions.
Lex Luthor possessed the talent to convince the world that those actions were necessary.
In my notebook, I moved his name from the "probable" column to "confirmed."
Then I added:
LexCorp founded in Metropolis. Luthor described as the genius of the century. No known criminal activity. Do not confuse future knowledge with present evidence.
The last sentence came from Terrence.
It was frustrating.
It was also necessary.
Between classes, training, Nia, and my research, my first year passed almost too quickly.
Throughout it all, the figure continued appearing in my blind spot.
I saw it reflected in a library window, at the end of a corridor after a classroom had closed, or behind me in the bathroom mirror.
Whenever I turned my head, it was gone.
At first, I attributed the sightings to fatigue. I slept too little, drank more coffee than I would have believed possible, and spent several hours each day reading text printed in tiny letters.
Then the figure began to grow clearer.
I made out a dark shirt, a tie, and the shape of an adult man.
One night, I woke suddenly in my room.
Daniel slept in the other bed with a blanket pulled over his head. Orange light from the streetlamps filtered through the curtains and divided the furniture into dark shapes.
Someone stood near my desk.
I stopped breathing.
The figure remained blurry, almost transparent, but I could distinguish its shoulders, its tilted face, and the unmistakable impression that it was watching me.
I slowly reached toward the bedside lamp.
When the light came on, nothing was there.
I remained sitting in bed for several minutes, my heart beating too quickly, then examined the desk, the window, and every corner of the room.
Daniel eventually groaned beneath his blanket and told me to turn off the light.
The following day, I made an appointment with campus health services.
The doctor asked about my sleep, caffeine consumption, stress level, and any family history of similar symptoms. I answered honestly every question that did not concern my death and reincarnation.
He concluded that I was probably experiencing fatigue, stress, and visual migraines.
I reduced my caffeine.
I slept more.
The figure remained.
I began to consider a possibility I had always pushed aside.
Perhaps I was going insane.
---
My second year was more difficult.
The classes became more specialized, and the professors less willing to accept approximate reasoning. I took modules on criminal procedure, criminal psychology, investigative methods, and constitutional law.
Several instructors still worked in the police, the courts, or federal agencies, which meant they could destroy in a few sentences theories we had spent hours constructing.
Professor Adler, who taught criminal procedure, had worked as a prosecutor for twenty years before discovering a late calling for academic humiliation.
During our first class, he entered the lecture hall carrying a file and wrote on the board:
EVIDENCE CAN BE TRUE AND INADMISSIBLE.
He turned toward us and studied the room with an almost hostile calm.
"Those of you who find that unfair may leave now. The rest of you may understand by the end of the semester that procedure does not exist to prevent you from arresting the guilty. It exists because you will not always know with certainty who is guilty."
I immediately liked his class.
The exams were grueling.
We had to analyze complex situations, identify possible violations, and sometimes defend several opposing interpretations. I spent nights studying with Nia in the library.
She had officially become my girlfriend after explaining that we already behaved like a couple and that my need to define every stage was becoming ridiculous.
"You could simply ask whether I want to date you seriously," she had said one evening.
"Ask you exactly what?"
She stared at me in silence for several seconds.
"You see? That is precisely the problem."
I kissed her before she could continue.
Our relationship was not perfect.
I studied too much. Nia was involved in several organizations and rarely allowed an injustice to pass unchallenged, even when she had no immediate means of correcting it.
We argued about our schedules, our priorities, and my tendency to withdraw from the world whenever something concerned me.
The figure gradually made that last flaw worse.
Meanwhile, familiar names continued appearing in newspapers in the most ordinary ways possible.
Clark Kent entered my life through a one-hundred-and-eighty-word article about the probable closure of a small neighborhood library.
I would never have noticed it if his name had not been printed beneath the headline.
By Clark Kent, Junior Correspondent
The article appeared in the local section of the Daily Planet, wedged between an announcement about roadwork and the report of a city-council meeting.
Clark explained how a budget cut threatened a facility used by children and working-class families. He had interviewed a librarian, two parents, and a boy who did his homework there because his apartment was too noisy.
No aliens.
No catastrophe.
No spectacular revelation.
Only a modest story about a place whose disappearance would probably never make the front page.
Yet I reread it several times.
The style was simple, almost excessively sincere. Clark did not attempt to dramatize the issue or draw attention to his own investigation. He allowed the people involved to explain why the library mattered to them.
I began looking for his name in later editions.
He wrote about injured workers, a farm threatened with closure, a fundraiser for a family whose apartment building had burned, and a teacher using his own salary to purchase school supplies.
Always small stories.
Always people the major media might have ignored.
Had I not known his name, I would have seen nothing more than a conscientious young journalist at the beginning of his career.
But I knew.
Somewhere in Metropolis, Clark Kent was already working for the Daily Planet.
Superman might not yet exist publicly, but the man behind the symbol had begun telling the stories of ordinary people.
Lois Lane was much harder to miss.
Her name appeared increasingly often above articles about municipal corruption, questionable public contracts, and companies refusing to answer certain questions.
Her first front-page story came a few months later.
I discovered the newspaper at a newsstand near campus. A photograph of the Metropolis municipal building occupied half the page.
The headline announced that several officials had awarded public contracts to companies owned by their relatives.
Beneath it, Lois's name appeared in lettering large enough that no one could miss it.
She had obtained internal documents, interviewed employees, and reconstructed a system of favoritism that had been operating for years.
Two officials resigned within the week, and an official investigation was opened.
Other media outlets began describing her as a relentless young journalist, a new voice at the Daily Planet, and a reporter stubborn enough to ask questions others avoided.
In a photograph published several days later, Lois stood outside the newspaper's offices holding a notebook in one hand and wearing a tired smile.
In the background, slightly out of focus, Clark Kent held a stack of files against his chest.
I studied the image for a long time in a café.
Nia followed my gaze.
"You know her too?"
"Who?"
"Lois Lane. You're looking at her article as though she just revealed the existence of aliens."
"She's good."
"She forced two men who thought they were untouchable to resign. Personally, I already like her."
She picked up the paper and began reading the article.
I continued studying the photograph.
Lois was already becoming the journalist I knew.
Clark remained in the background.
Lex was building his empire.
Bruce had disappeared.
The pieces were falling into place.
For years, I had viewed the DC Universe as a future storm that would eventually reach my life.
I now understood that it had already begun.
It was simply still distant enough for the rest of the world to see nothing more than a change in the weather.
I increasingly lost track of conversations because I thought I saw someone standing behind Nia.
One evening, in an almost empty restaurant, she placed her hand over mine and waited for me to stop staring at the reflection in the window.
The restaurant was small, lit by lamps hanging above the tables. Rain tapped gently against the glass, and music barely covered the conversations of the other customers.
"You're looking behind me again," she said.
I returned my attention to her.
"Sorry. I'm tired."
"You've been using that answer a lot lately. Is someone following you? Have you received threats or discovered something you refuse to tell me?"
"No. Nothing like that."
"Then explain why you keep checking doors, windows, and reflections as though you expect someone to walk through a wall."
The precision of the sentence chilled me.
I wanted to answer her.
Not tell her everything, obviously, but give her enough truth to understand that my silence did not come from a lack of trust.
Then the figure appeared behind her.
Clearer than ever.
A tall Black man in a dark blue uniform.
A black stain covered one side of his shirt.
Blood.
I rose so violently that my chair fell to the floor.
Nia jumped, and several customers turned toward us.
"Malcolm, what is it?"
I moved around the table.
No one was there.
The server near the counter had frozen with a plate in his hands. Nia slowly stood, her face caught between fear and concern.
"You saw something. Don't tell me you're only tired. What did you see?"
I picked up the chair.
My hands were trembling.
"I thought I saw someone."
"Who?"
I could not say the name.
Frank.
We left the restaurant shortly afterward.
Nia tried again to make me talk, but I repeated that I was exhausted and promised to see a doctor.
She accepted the promise.
Not the explanation.
Our relationship did not end immediately, but something cracked that night.
I could not ask her to trust me while keeping the most important part of my existence closed away from her.
Several months later, we decided to separate.
The conversation took place on a bench near the Hudson. The wind carried the cold smell of the river and lifted Nia's curls around her face.
"I care about you," she said, staring at the water. "But I always feel as though there's a locked door somewhere inside you. You let me approach it, then stand in front of it whenever I try to understand what's behind it."
"It isn't because I don't trust you."
"I know. I think that's exactly what makes it harder. You don't trust anyone to carry part of what frightens you. You think keeping everything to yourself protects other people, but it only makes you unreachable."
I lowered my eyes toward my hands.
She was right.
I still could not explain why.
Nia kissed my cheek before leaving.
I remained on the bench for a long time after she was gone.
The figure stood on the other side of the path.
This time, it did not disappear when I turned my head.
We watched each other for several seconds.
Then a group of joggers passed between us, and it vanished.
---
The night before my twentieth birthday, I barely slept.
I was spending the weekend at Laurie's, and she had insisted on organizing a dinner despite my protests that turning twenty was not a particularly significant birthday.
"You are officially leaving adolescence," she had declared while placing a cake in the refrigerator. "It is the end of an era."
"I left adolescence mentally a long time ago."
"That sentence is enough to prove otherwise."
My bedroom had changed little since high school.
There were more books, the gymnastics medals still hung on the wall, and my old notebook remained hidden beneath the bed.
I had reread it before trying to sleep, as though my own notes might explain the man appearing in reflections.
At around two in the morning, I gave up on sleep and went downstairs to the kitchen.
The apartment was dark except for the small light above the stove. The hum of the refrigerator filled the silence.
I poured myself a glass of water and leaned against the counter.
"You could at least stop watching me from corners," I whispered.
No one answered.
I laughed nervously.
That was where I was now.
I was provoking my hallucinations in my mother's kitchen, barefoot and unable to sleep.
I raised the glass to my lips.
"I didn't know whether you could see me."
The voice came from behind me.
The glass slipped from my hand, passed through the figure, and shattered on the tile.
I turned.
The man stood near the table.
He was no longer blurred.
He was twenty-eight years old, with a short beard, dark circles beneath his eyes, and a dark blue security-guard shirt pierced by two black holes.
Dried blood covered his chest.
My former face.
Frank's face.
I could not move.
He looked down at the broken glass, then raised his head with a slightly embarrassed expression.
"I was hoping for a less expensive reaction. Laurie will probably make you pay for the glass."
His voice was exactly as I remembered it.
Mine.
My old one.
"You don't exist," I whispered.
He inhaled as though he had already considered the conversation.
"I had the same reaction, but it doesn't help us much."
"I'm hallucinating. You're a projection created by my brain."
"That's possible."
"You're in my head."
"Probably, at least partly."
"Then why are you answering me as though you're an independent person?"
He shrugged.
"Because you keep asking questions."
Fear abruptly turned into anger.
I gripped the edge of the counter until I felt the wood pressing into my palms.
"Stop talking like me."
His expression changed.
"I don't talk like you. I talk like me."
"You aren't real."
"I died in a bank before waking up as an invisible ghost twenty years later. My definition of reality has become fairly flexible."
I stared at his bloodstained shirt.
"Who are you?"
He watched me for a long moment.
His smile gradually disappeared.
"Frank."
The name filled the kitchen.
I had carried it inside myself for twenty years.
I had used it to refer to my memories, my former personality, and the life I had lost.
Hearing it spoken by another voice, even one identical to my old voice, made me nauseous.
"No. You can't be Frank. I'm Frank."
He tilted his head slightly.
"You were."
The words struck harder than I expected.
"And what are you supposed to be? A ghost? Part of my soul? A hallucination capable of conversation?"
"I don't know. I remember the bank, Claire, our parents, and the truck that almost ran us over on the morning we died. After that, everything becomes confused."
"Explain."
Frank closed his eyes, searching for words.
"I think I was always there. Not conscious the way I am now. Sometimes I saw what you saw, but it was like looking through fogged glass. Images, sounds, emotions. Laurie singing off-key while she rocked you. Terrence making you read contracts before you were ten. Nathan talking about dinosaurs for hours. I perceived all of it without being able to respond or decide where to look."
He opened his eyes.
"It wasn't my life. It was yours, and I was only a presence buried somewhere behind it."
I thought about every time I had seen him.
"Why now? Why at twenty?"
"I don't know. Maybe something needed time to take shape. Maybe you needed to become different enough from me for us to exist separately."
"You're remarkably useless for someone who has just overturned my entire understanding of existence."
"I've only had an independent consciousness for a few minutes. At least give me time to find a manual."
Even through my fear, I recognized the defensive humor.
Frank did that.
I did that.
I looked again at his uniform.
"Are you in pain?"
He looked down at his chest.
"No. I can see the wounds, but I don't feel them. I tried changing my clothes, but the uniform always comes back. Apparently, my soul chose the least flattering memory available."
A brief laugh escaped me.
Then my legs stopped supporting me, and I slid down the cabinet to the floor, avoiding the broken glass.
Frank crouched in front of me without making a sound.
"Are you okay?"
"No."
"At least that's honest."
"I spent twenty years trying to understand whether I was still you. Every time my tastes changed, every time I did something Frank wouldn't have done, I wondered whether I was losing part of myself. Now you're sitting in the kitchen as though there have always been two of us."
Frank sat across from me.
His body placed no weight on the tile.
"You aren't losing me."
"If you're Frank, who am I?"
He remained silent long enough that I looked up at him.
"Malcolm," he finally answered. "You have my memories, and you probably began with a large part of my personality. But you lived twenty years I never lived. You grew up with Laurie and Terrence. You loved people I barely know. You made choices I might not have made."
"You're certain?"
"You went dancing voluntarily."
I frowned.
"You saw that?"
"Pieces."
"You danced even worse than I did."
"Impossible. I had more dignity."
Footsteps sounded upstairs.
Both of us froze.
Laurie appeared in the kitchen doorway a few seconds later, wearing a robe and still half asleep.
"Malcolm? I heard something break."
Her gaze passed directly through Frank before settling on me and the debris.
Frank turned toward her.
"Mom," he whispered.
Laurie did not react.
She could not see him.
She hurried toward me, helped me up, and inspected my feet and hands.
"Are you hurt? Why were you sitting on the floor?"
"I dropped the glass."
"You look like you've seen a ghost."
Frank raised an eyebrow.
I had to turn away to hide my reaction.
Laurie insisted on cleaning it herself, but I managed to persuade her to return to bed.
Once the final pieces of glass had been thrown away, Frank and I stood facing each other in the silent kitchen.
"We need to discover exactly what you are," I said.
He slowly nodded.
"Finally, something we agree on completely."
---
We spent the following weeks testing his limits with caution that was sometimes extremely relative.
First, we needed to find places where no one would catch me talking to myself.
My dorm room was unavailable whenever Daniel was present, and Laurie's apartment created too many risks.
We mainly used an empty training room early in the morning, an old warehouse rented by my gymnastics club, and the roof of the residence.
Frank could move freely around me in his spiritual form.
He passed through walls, doors, furniture, and people without making a sound. He disturbed no air, left no footprints, and appeared neither on cameras nor in mirrors.
To ordinary people, he did not exist.
Only I could see and hear him.
We quickly assumed that magicians, mediums, ghosts, and certain supernatural creatures could probably perceive him.
The DC Universe contained enough beings capable of seeing souls that we did not treat his invisibility as an absolute guarantee.
We had no desire, however, to find a magician merely to test the theory.
His range was limited.
During our first experiment on the roof, Frank walked away while I remained near the door. The night was cold, and wind moved between the buildings without appearing to touch his body.
At around twenty-five feet, he slowed and placed a hand against his chest.
"I feel tension. As though something inside me is pulling me back toward you."
"Come back."
"I can go farther."
"Frank, your body is already starting to blur."
He examined his hands, then gave me an almost amused look.
"You're using exactly the same tone as Terrence when he knows someone is about to make a mistake."
"And you're about to make that mistake purely to determine the exact limit."
"I recognize your influence as well."
He took another step.
His figure distorted, then vanished.
A brutal pressure passed through my skull.
I staggered backward with my hands against my temples, and Frank suddenly burst out of my body like a projected image.
He remained bent over with his hands on his knees, although he probably did not need to breathe.
"Thirty feet," he whispered.
"You could have destroyed yourself."
"But now we know."
I stared at him for a long moment.
"I finally understand why my parents always seemed exhausted."
His range increased slightly when he remained entirely intangible.
Whenever he attempted to interact with the physical world, maintaining distance became more difficult.
Our first attempt at materialization involved a coin placed on the floor.
Frank knelt beside it and passed his fingers through the metal several times before managing to make the tips of his fingers appear more solid.
The coin moved by a fraction of an inch.
He pulled back sharply.
"I felt it."
"Did it hurt?"
"No. It was cold. I hadn't actually felt anything since my death."
After several attempts, he managed to hold the coin between two fingers.
To me, it rested in his hand.
On footage recorded with a small camera, it floated by itself a foot above the floor.
Frank held it for several seconds before it slipped away.
His arm became translucent up to the elbow.
"It consumes something," he observed.
"Your cohesion."
"You just invented that term."
"It accurately describes the phenomenon."
"It mostly sounds better than my arm is disappearing."
His cohesion returned after several minutes of rest.
With practice, Frank learned to materialize a hand, an arm, or a leg without making his entire body solid.
He could open a door, move a light object, or strike a target.
When he materialized completely, he possessed physical strength identical to mine.
We discovered that using a weighted barbell.
After watching me lift a hundred and fifty pounds, Frank grasped the bar and managed to lift it as well.
To a camera, the metal rose by itself through the air.
He lowered it and stared at his hands with visible fascination.
"So physically, there really are two of us."
"When you're materialized, yes."
"Do you realize how many moves we could have made easier over the years?"
"I was thinking more about arrests, rescues, and dangerous interventions."
"That is why you became less fun than me."
He could carry an object, but the object never became spiritual with him.
Whenever he turned intangible again, anything he was holding fell.
He therefore could not pass through a wall carrying a weapon or bag. He needed to drop the object, cross the material, then materialize on the other side to act.
His voice remained inaudible to others while he was spiritual.
By materializing his throat and mouth, he managed to produce a few weak, distorted words.
Anyone present would merely have heard a voice without a visible source.
We decided not to repeat the experiment in public.
The most important discovery occurred by accident at the dojo.
I was training with a heavier partner while Frank watched from one corner of the room. Since his appearance, he commented almost constantly on my movements, taking advantage of the fact that no one else could hear him.
"Your guard is too high. He'll target your ribs."
I blocked the first blow.
"I know."
"Your back foot is badly positioned. You'll lose your balance."
"I can't answer you in front of everyone."
"You just did."
My partner took advantage of the distraction and struck me in the ribs.
The impact should have knocked the air out of me.
Instead, I felt only dull pressure, as though it had stopped beneath my skin.
Frank shouted.
He vanished from the corner of the room.
I felt him inside me.
It was neither an image nor a simple voice.
It was a second presence superimposed over my body, positioned behind my muscles and bones.
My partner stepped back and asked whether I was all right.
I touched my ribs.
The pain was almost nonexistent.
Inside my mind, Frank was swearing.
After class, I hurried into the empty locker room.
Frank emerged from my body and appeared beside the lockers. A pale crack ran across his side, and his face was tight.
"What did you do?"
"I don't know. I saw the blow coming and wanted to take it for you. Then I found myself inside you."
He examined the crack.
"Which is a particularly strange sentence to say aloud."
I lifted my shirt.
Only slight redness marked my skin.
"You absorbed the impact."
"Looks like it."
His form took almost an hour to regain its stability.
We tested the fusion afterward with far more caution.
When Frank entered my body, he continued speaking to me mentally and perceived the world through my senses.
He remained an independent consciousness, but his presence overlaid my movements.
He could transfer part of the force from blows I received into his spiritual form.
Light impacts cost him little.
More violent blows rapidly reduced his cohesion.
When it dropped too far, his form became translucent and he lost the ability to interact with matter.
The first time he reached that limit, he remained unable to materialize for almost two days.
He could still appear, observe, and speak to me, but his hands passed through every object.
"I feel completely useless," he complained as we sat in my room.
"You can still observe, think, and warn me about danger."
"So I've become an invisible consultant."
"You wanted to work in law enforcement."
"I wanted to be a police officer, not a floating moral conscience."
"The moral part will require several more years of training."
His cohesion naturally returned over time.
Rest accelerated the process, especially when he remained inside my body.
That increased my fatigue and hunger, however, as though my body provided some of the energy needed to rebuild him.
Offensive use required more work.
Frank could materialize beside me and strike independently. We then became two coordinated fighters, one of whom was invisible.
To truly combine our strength into a single movement, however, he needed to fuse with me.
Our first attempt in front of a punching bag was disastrous.
"You need to reproduce my movement exactly," I explained.
"I know how to throw a punch."
"You died with fairly limited training."
"And you paid for twelve years to have a man repeatedly tell you to keep your hands up. We all have weaknesses."
I struck.
Frank synchronized too late.
Pain crossed my shoulder, and the bag barely moved.
"Excellent," he commented. "We have discovered how to injure ourselves with twice the efficiency."
It took us several weeks to properly coordinate our movements.
When we finally succeeded, the result was obvious.
My fist struck the bag, and Frank's strength overlaid mine from within.
The bag folded around the impact before swinging violently backward.
The metal chain snapped taut with a sharp sound.
I stepped away, rubbing my wrist.
"Almost twice the force."
"Yes, but your body still absorbs the impact."
"So no maximum-strength attacks without protection or physical reinforcement."
We had not become superhuman.
We were two men capable of sharing the same movement.
Two human forces applied to the same point could be considerable, but they remained limited by my joints, bones, and durability.
The power made us dangerous.
Not invincible.
That distinction was reassuring.
It was also essential.
---
Frank's presence transformed my life in a more intimate way than his physical abilities.
For the first time since my rebirth, I could speak to someone who understood exactly what I had lost.
We talked about our former parents, Claire, the bank, and our death.
I told him about my first months in the crib, the anger, the guilt, and the fear that I had taken the place of a child who should have existed without me.
Frank remained silent for a long time when I explained that final fear.
"I don't think you took Malcolm's place," he eventually said.
"You can't know that."
"No. But I know you are Malcolm. You aren't merely a body I borrowed. Maybe the reincarnation broke us in two. You would be the part that continued living, and I would be the part that remained attached to death."
We were sitting on the dormitory roof late at night.
The city glowed around us, enormous and indifferent.
Frank had learned to temporarily remove the blood from his uniform, but the stains returned whenever he stopped concentrating.
"Do you regret not living my life?" I asked.
He looked toward the illuminated windows of the neighboring buildings.
"I'm jealous sometimes. You grew up with Laurie and Terrence. You have friends, an education, and even an ex-girlfriend, although you managed to lose her by turning every conversation into an interrogation."
"Thank you for the analysis."
"I died at twenty-eight with a life I was constantly postponing until tomorrow. You learned to live before reaching that age."
He turned toward me.
"But I don't want to take it from you."
"You couldn't."
"I know. You became far too stubborn."
"That came from you."
"No. That is clearly Terrence."
Frank represented my former life, but he was no longer me.
He retained certain certainties I had lost. He trusted uniforms, institutions, and the idea that a good person could always make the correct choice if they tried hard enough.
I had grown up as a Black man in a world that taught me earlier than it had taught him to distrust authority and the way it selected its suspects.
Frank was more direct.
I was more cautious.
He wanted to act.
I wanted to understand before moving.
We argued often.
It made us better.
---
As I approached twenty-one, my old notebook no longer contained only uncertain memories of comic books.
It had become a timeline.
Bruce Wayne remained absent from Gotham.
The media occasionally reported sightings in Europe, Asia, or the Middle East, but no photograph was clear enough to confirm anything.
Every year he spent away made columnists more mocking and members of the Wayne Enterprises board more nervous.
I knew he would return.
I simply did not know in what condition.
LexCorp grew at an almost alarming pace.
The company purchased laboratories, secured public contracts, and announced technological advances every few months.
Lex Luthor was no longer merely an industrialist.
He had become a celebrity whom the media invited to speak about science, economics, foreign policy, and occasionally subjects in which he possessed no obvious experience.
His exceptional intelligence now appeared to serve as universal justification for his authority.
Lois Lane regularly earned new front-page stories.
Her name was becoming known beyond Metropolis, and she made enemies with impressive regularity.
Clark Kent continued mainly writing his small articles about accidents, neglected neighborhoods, and ordinary people.
His name sometimes appeared beneath Lois's on a major investigation, but he always seemed to remain slightly in the background, as though he preferred the story to receive attention rather than himself.
I found that almost amusing.
The most powerful man on the planet was learning how to go unnoticed in a newsroom.
All of them were moving toward something.
Bruce toward Gotham.
Lex toward power.
Lois toward the truth.
Clark toward a symbol he might not yet have chosen.
And me toward a uniform.
I completed my degree at twenty-one.
The three years had been intense.
I had taken summer semesters, accepted a workload even Terrence considered excessive, and spent enough nights in the library to learn the habits of every custodian.
My thesis focused on mistaken identifications, the role of bias in investigations, and the way an initial theory could contaminate the entire interpretation of a case.
The subject came as much from my experiences as from my studies.
The store, Jamal, Terrence's work, and Harris's advice had all left their mark.
Frank helped me study.
He passed through library walls to check which rooms were empty, read over my shoulder, and questioned me while I walked through the corridors.
"What are the limits of a consensual search?" he asked one evening.
"Consent must be voluntary, and the search cannot exceed what was authorized."
"And if the person withdraws consent during the search?"
"The officers must stop unless they now possess some other legal justification."
"Good. Now explain the difference between a hunch and reasonable suspicion."
I closed my book.
"You enjoy playing professor far too much."
"I always dreamed of being right with official authority."
Other students sometimes caught me muttering to myself.
I therefore developed the habit of wearing an earpiece, even when it was connected to nothing.
People accepted the idea of a permanent telephone conversation much more easily than that of an invisible ghost.
The day of graduation, the sky was clear and the air already warm.
The ceremony took place in an auditorium filled with families, photographers, and students trying not to trip over their robes.
Laurie began crying before the first names were called.
Terrence wore his best suit and pretended not to be emotional, although he removed his glasses three times to wipe them.
Nathan had brought a book about fossils that he claimed he had been planning to give me for ten years.
Jamal took photographs and provided commentary as though covering a presidential inauguration.
Frank stood near the stage, invisible to everyone else.
When my name was called, I crossed the stage and accepted my diploma.
Laurie's applause probably drowned out the rest of the row.
I looked at Frank.
"We did it," I thought.
He shook his head with a faint smile.
"No. You did it. I mostly asked questions and walked through a few walls."
After the ceremony, Laurie hugged me with enough force to wrinkle the document.
"My baby graduated."
"Your baby is almost six foot three."
"You could be ten feet tall and running the country. You would still be my baby."
Terrence waited until she released me before embracing me as well.
"Three years, with honors. I'm impressed."
"You sound surprised."
"I'm mostly surprised you didn't attempt to finish in two."
"I considered it."
"Of course you did."
He finally smiled.
"I'm proud of you, Malcolm."
Frank stood behind them.
His expression was more difficult to read.
He had known different parents, a different family, but he watched Laurie and Terrence with an affection born from twenty years spent observing our life from within.
For the first time, I wondered whether he considered them his parents as well.
He met my gaze.
"Don't become emotional during the photographs. Laurie will notice that you're looking at someone behind her."
Too late.
---
The police academy began a few months later.
The transition from university classrooms to police training was brutal.
The complex appeared designed to remind recruits that they were no longer students. The corridors were clean, the rooms austere, and every day was organized down to the minute.
We wore training uniforms, responded immediately to orders, and quickly discovered that a few seconds of delay could become the entire group's problem.
The first week was devoted to rules, discipline, and the methodical destruction of excessive confidence.
Several recruits had served in the military.
Others had come directly from college, like me.
My experience in gymnastics, karate, and running helped, but it did not make anything easy.
Physical training sometimes began before sunrise.
We ran through the cold air, moved from one exercise to another, and learned to function despite exhaustion.
The instructors corrected every detail, from our posture to the way we held a notebook.
The lead instructor for my group was Sergeant Morales.
She had a calm voice, which made her far more intimidating than the instructors who shouted.
During our first intervention exercise, she placed us in front of a closed door in a simulation corridor.
"Beaumont, tell me what you know about what is behind that door."
"Nothing, Sergeant."
"Then why is your hand already positioned near your weapon?"
I immediately moved it away.
"I'm anticipating a possible threat."
"No. You are inventing a threat to justify a response you have already chosen. Those are not the same thing."
Frank, invisible behind her, gave me a satisfied look.
I resisted the urge to answer him.
The academy taught firearms, driving, arrest procedures, first aid, report writing, and the management of situations where no answer was perfect.
We also learned to recognize our mistakes and understand how our own behavior could worsen a scene.
Frank attended almost everything.
He generally remained intangible, observed blind spots, and commented on exercises whenever no one could hear me.
"The recruit to your right is going to trip."
"Concentrate on something else."
"I am concentrating. You are the one who will catch his elbow if you don't move."
He was right.
During combat training, I had to learn not to use our ability.
We had decided no one should discover Frank until we fully understood the risks.
A partner thrown by an invisible force or struck with twice the normal power would have raised questions that were impossible to avoid.
Frank was only supposed to intervene in genuine danger.
The temptation remained strong.
During one exercise, a heavier recruit slammed me against a wall more violently than intended.
Frank instinctively entered my body.
"No," I thought.
"You're going to get hurt."
"I need to handle it myself."
I felt his presence withdraw reluctantly.
I absorbed the impact, used the technique we had been taught, and managed to escape.
Afterward, my ribs remained painful for several hours.
Frank appeared near the locker room.
"You could have let me take part of the impact. That is literally one of my abilities."
"I need to know what I can withstand without you."
"Why? We're partners."
"Because one day your cohesion will be exhausted. If I become incapable of functioning normally without your help, this power will make us weaker instead of stronger."
His expression tightened slightly.
"I'm not a crutch."
"I know. You're my partner. That is exactly why I don't want to turn every movement into a dependency."
The tension left his shoulders.
"A partner who still could have prevented that bruise."
"Are you really going to discuss my ribs all evening?"
"Probably until tomorrow morning."
We continued practicing the fusion discreetly outside training hours.
Our synchronization improved.
Frank could reinforce a movement without destabilizing my body, but we always retained a margin of safety.
The transfer of damage also became more precise.
He could not erase an injury that had already opened or make a bullet disappear from my body, but he could absorb much of the trauma, limit pain, or prevent an impact from causing more serious internal damage.
Every transfer reduced his cohesion.
We never forgot that.
By the end of the academy, I was neither the best shot, nor the fastest, nor the strongest recruit in my class.
I was, however, among the most consistent.
My reports were precise, I remained calm during simulations, and I asked enough questions to irritate several instructors.
On the day of our final evaluation, Sergeant Morales kept me behind after the other recruits had left.
We stood in a room lit by cold fluorescent lights.
Frank leaned against the wall with his arms crossed.
Morales closed my file.
"You want to become a detective."
"Yes, Sergeant."
"Everyone wants to become a detective until they understand that they must first learn to be a police officer. You will spend hours settling disputes between neighbors, taking reports that probably will not lead anywhere, and explaining to people that you cannot immediately solve their problem."
"I understand."
"No, Beaumont. You know. You will only understand when you are standing in front of a mother waiting for an answer you do not possess."
I remained silent.
She studied me for several seconds.
"You are intelligent. You know how to analyze a situation and identify inconsistencies. But you have a tendency to place yourself mentally outside of events, as though you can observe a scene without being part of it."
"In the field, your mere presence will change people's behavior. Your uniform will change the way they speak to you. Your fear, impatience, and prejudices will also alter what happens, even when you are convinced you are being objective."
The observation affected me more deeply than I showed.
"Never limit yourself to observing what everyone else brings into a situation. Ask yourself what you brought into it as well."
She handed me the file.
"You may leave."
When I exited the room, Frank walked beside me.
"She understood you well."
"I know."
"You say that often when you want to prevent a conversation from continuing."
I stopped in the middle of the corridor.
Frank smiled.
"Laurie says exactly the same thing."
"I'm seriously beginning to miss the time when I was alone inside my head."
"Liar."
He was right.
---
The academy graduation ceremony took place when I was twenty-one.
We stood in lines wearing our new uniforms, shoulders straight and shoes perfectly polished.
Our families filled the rows behind us.
The room smelled of new fabric, coffee, and perfume.
I looked down at my jacket.
In my former life, Frank had attached almost sacred importance to his security-guard uniform.
He had ironed it, cared for it, and worn it with the pride of a man trying to approach a dream he had never reached.
Now I wore the uniform he had wanted.
Frank stood to my left.
His old shirt remained marked by bullet holes.
He stared at my badge.
"Do you want to wear it?" I asked mentally.
He smiled, but his eyes shone slightly.
"No."
"You dreamed about it your entire life."
"Yes. But this isn't my life."
He turned toward me.
"It's your uniform, Malcolm."
Laurie was already crying in the front row.
Terrence stood beside her with his back straight and pride visible on his face.
Nathan and Jamal had obtained seats several rows farther back.
Jamal discreetly raised his thumb when our eyes met.
My name was called.
I stepped forward.
Malcolm Harrowing Beaumont.
Graduate.
Police officer for the City of New York.
I took the oath with the other recruits.
My voice remained firm even though my heart pounded violently against my ribs.
I had no illusions.
The uniform would not automatically make me a good person.
It would not make me correct.
It would protect me neither from fear, nor mistakes, nor the temptation to use my authority in the easiest way rather than the best one.
It represented a responsibility.
Frank had dreamed about this moment because he wanted to be useful.
I had learned that wanting to help was not enough.
You had to listen.
Observe.
Question your first conclusions.
Accept that courage could replace neither caution nor competence.
When the ceremony ended, Laurie reached me first.
She wrapped her arms around my neck without caring about the other officers around us.
"Look at you," she whispered. "My God, Malcolm. Look at you."
I laughed against her hair.
"You're going to wrinkle the uniform."
"I have imagined this uniform for twenty years. It can survive a hug."
Terrence waited for his turn, then placed both hands on my shoulders.
He examined the badge, tie, and cut of the jacket with the attention of a man conducting an official inspection.
"It suits you."
"Only suits me?"
"Your mother didn't choose the tailoring."
Laurie struck his arm.
He smiled, then his expression became serious again.
"I'm proud of you, Malcolm. Truly."
"Thank you, Dad."
Frank remained slightly behind us.
Invisible.
Present.
To the world, I was a young officer surrounded by family and friends.
In reality, there were two of us.
A twenty-one-year-old man who had grown up in this life.
And the autonomous spiritual double of the man who had died in the previous one.
Frank had not replaced me.
I had not erased him.
We had become partners.
I knew the following year would resemble neither classes nor simulations.
I would patrol, take reports, enter apartments where no one would be pleased to see me, and discover what the uniform truly meant on the streets of New York.
Quantico remained distant.
The FBI was still only a goal written in an old notebook.
First, I had to learn how to be a police officer.
Accumulate experience.
Understand the city from its sidewalks rather than from files.
I looked at Frank.
"Ready?"
He surveyed the crowd, then my uniform.
"I already made the mistake of believing that a uniform was enough to become the man I wanted to be."
His smile disappeared, replaced by a seriousness I knew well.
"This time, we'll do better."
I nodded slightly.
No one around us noticed our silent exchange.
That would become a habit.
I left the ceremony with Laurie holding one arm, Terrence on the other side, and my friends behind us.
Frank walked several steps away, passing through the crowd without anyone seeing him.
For twenty years, I had believed my second life had forced me to abandon the first.
I had been wrong.
It had merely caught up with me.