+Xtra

By WriterKO

Chapter 1

Dreams are awesome. Superheroes are awesome. Dreams about superheroes, those are pretty much the best things since double-stuffed Oreos. I was rushing through the city with a scarf around my face and a black pea coat unbuttoned. My right hand was in the shape of a gun like how I made it back when I used to play cops and robbers when I was a kid. I heard a girl's voice hum from a Bluetooth earpiece and say, "He went down 5th …then right …right again." I followed the voice's instructions and turned right twice.

"He went down an alley on your left." I rushed to the corner of an alleyway and held my right hand as if it was an actual gun. "You ready?" the girl said from the earpiece.

I could feel myself smile from beneath my scarf. "Don't you know who you're talking to, sweetheart?" I turned into the alley and pointed my fingers towards the back of a silhouetted man who was clawing at a brick wall just twenty-five feet considers what your power is."

"Like your one to talk." The man turned and scrambled into a ball against the bricks behind him. "Just tell The Professor to make sure that there's room in the fish tank." I walked up to the cowering man and pointed my 'handgun' at the center of a small yellow 'X' just above his heart. "Bang."

Bang! Bang! Bang! "Oi, Jay! Wake up, man, we got lecture in fifteen." I was on my back looking up at the ceiling fan of my flat mate bedroom. "Dude, you can't skip again today, you told me you were gonna give me a ride."

I mumbled into my pillow, "Dude, it's not even locked."

My roommate, Calvin, burst into my room and took a moment to admire my wall of rare comics. He made a quick bowing gesture to the wall and turned back to me, "Do you even know what time it is?"

I picked up my cell phone from my nightstand and saw a flashing alarm clock on the screen. It was 9:57. "Oh shit." I was dressed, had brushed teeth, and clean-shaven by 9:59 and in my car by 10:01. After some fancy maneuvers and only three middle fingers by angry drivers, I parked my car and booked it to the computer lab with Calvin.

"See, we got here just in time, dude," I said as I collapsed into one of the chairs in front of a computer.

"Yeah," Calvin said, "but I don't consider collapsing into a chair half covered in sweat a success." He pulled out two flash drives from his pocket and slapped them into the computer. His fingers made an odd rhythmic clicking song on the keyboard. "Jeez, man, one day you're seriously gonna get me kicked outta college."

"You're kidding, right?" I rolled my eyes and leaned back in my chair far enough for me to see the ceiling tiles. "You know, when you get sweaty, it kinda rolls onto the ends of your curls and actually look like beads."

"Why are we friends?"

Calvin slid the keyboard towards me and I started making a few quick clicks to start our game, Ghost. We designed this game to be a simple single-person shooter where the player is an assassin meant to track and put down criminals. "The lag between the click and the bullet is still killing me, Cal. Plus it's trailing to the right a little bit."

"Noted. You know, I just realized that you're having your Middle-Eastern friend make a game about guns and bombs and stuff."

"I think the professor will appreciate that irony. And you're only half Middle-Eastern. Besides, your family's been here since before there was color TV. Pretty sure they got here illegally, but that doesn't matter anymore."

"…How did you ever get accepted here, man?"

"Because I blew away the admission committee with my amazing bull-shitting powers on the essay." I pulled out a volume of Ms. Marvel from my backpack and scanned the pages. "That's what happens when you try to mess with an English major."

"What happens when you mess with a Programming major?"

"Ultron."

Calvin stared at the screen for a bit and said, "You gonna go to the store today?"

"I dunno… I think she's starting to notice me."

"I thought that was the point."

"Naw, man. The point was for me to scope her out and then make my move with some clever conversation starter and then we go live happily ever after."

"Mazel tov, but that hasn't worked really worked for you and it's been what, two years?"

I started to make out shapes form the dots on the ceiling tiles. "…Alright, I'll go today." I checked some of the coding on the computer screen, but my vision blurred slightly and I couldn't tell the difference between what was on the screen and the weird squiggles on the ceiling. "But after I nap. Didn't get all my beauty sleep, and she's worth looking good for. You got this?" I trotted out of the computer lab after Cal waved me off.

I like naps. They're a quick recharge for me that also have the added benefits of killing time and incredibly wacked out dreams. But when my dreams have someone telling me weird stuff about the world ending and chaos awakening, it's kinda not awesome.

I was in a small office with a dark wood desk and walls made of glass. There was a young woman sitting behind the desk wearing a large pair of glasses and had her brown hair in a ponytail. She was wearing a business suit, but she looked as if she couldn't have been that much older than me. I took my time to walk around the office and poked at the Newton's cradle that was on the edge of the desk (actually, it was the only thing on the desk). I looked at the woman whose eyes were following me behind her glasses. "So… are you gonna ask me about my childhood or something?"

She smiled. "I was waiting for you to take a seat."

I looked around the glass office again and saw no empty chairs. I tried to make one by controlling the dream, the way I'm able to sometimes when I'm aware that I'm in a dream, but nothing happened. "You wanna help me out here, love? Unless you want me on your desk, but I don't really wanna mess up what you got going there."

"Oh, I'm so sorry." She scrambled to stand up form behind her desk for a few moments and she snapped her fingers. My favorite wooden chair from my bedroom appeared in a puff of grey smoke.

"Impressive," I said, examining the chair. "You even got the scratches from when I was throwing my knife around."

"Well I just picked it out of your subconscious. It's kinda my thing," she said with a shrug.

I nodded and took a seat. I watched the Newton's cradle for a bit until I finally snapped, "So what's supposed to be happening here? Cause based on past dream experience, we should either be fighting a super giant monster thing or making out… so…"

"Oh, right." She cleared her throat, but I thought I caught her cheeks turn a hint of red. "My name is Alice Carroll, and I'm here to recruit you."

I chewed the inside of my cheek for a second while I thought about things. Nobody ever told me their name in a dream. "This is weird. Okay, so do you want my résumé or something?"

"Oh, it's not like that." Alice propped her glasses onto her forehead. "Something is coming, Mr. Reed. The forces of good and evil will clash in our world, and they simpy do not belong here. You and your team will need to confront these forces to keep humanity safe."

I nodded along with what Alice said, but I couldn't be more lost. I just assumed that it was part of the dream. "So how am I gonna do this exactly?"

"With your power of course."

"Excellent… what powers are we talking here? Flight? Teleportation? Invisibility?"

"That depends on you."

"Man, this dream is so vague."

"Oh, you still think that this is all in your head."

"Kinda."

Alice shook her head and snapped her fingers again. Dozens of holographic screens appeared behind her. My eyes widened as I saw images from throughout my life playing before me. One was showing my first grade talent show where I tripped over my own shoes and ended up with a bloody nose, one showed the day that I got my college acceptance letter, and one showed me this morning when Calvin banged on my door. All of the screens were showing the memories from my own perspective. Somehow, I could feel my nose grow sore when I watched the first, elated joy towards the second, and the grogginess of the third all at the same time. "And now this dream is weird."

Alice rubbed her eyes and waved away the screens, which faded into nothingness. "Look, you clearly don't think that this is real, but you're just gonna have to trust me. I already got in touch with a couple of other people who should be on your team, so they'll approach you about it. Geez, why do the guys always have to be so stubborn?"

"No we're not." I smiled when Alice groaned.

"Just wake up already." And I did.