Adam, the First Man

I jerked from an unplanned nap -- I had almost as much reason for exhaustion as he did -- and looked at once at the screen. Adam was no longer there. The sensor alarms were flashing but had muted when I passed out.

Knives of panic carved my spine.

The cage was an electric vapor dome within a bare room barely large enough to contain it. With the falling charged particles, it was a sparkling snow globe in a shoebox, a spotlight on the show's star. Adam could not have escaped. Nothing was destroyed, and, for the moment, I had not been punched into the top floor of my home.

The cell was not empty. On the floor, surrounded by Adam's costume, lay sleeping a nude woman in her late twenties. She had long, curling brown hair that could use a brush, which did nothing to hide her.

I held the button for the speaker to startle her awake with static. She roused, looked around in confusion, concern, then resignation. She never landed upon fear as I would, waking into a cell. Only then did she realize her state of dress, covering herself with her hands. She tried to turn Adam's costume into something that might protect her better, knotting the arms and legs.

This accomplished, she looked around, found one of the cameras, and extended both middle fingers.

From the cameras and sensors, it was clear that she had nothing but the costume. I had provided few places in the cell where something could be hidden. Aside from the toilet, there was not even a mat on which Adam could have rested. In time, I would have given him such luxuries once I had more fully assessed him. I was a compassionate man. I did not hate my enemy, but I could not coddle him, not after all I had suffered at his hands. The world deserved better than him.

"Who are you?" I demanded through the microphone. I was a floor above, well hidden, but I might as well have been in the next room as far as anyone in the cell would have known.

"Well, who are you?" she asked. Her voice did not contain any apprehension that might have made sense. "Since I didn't kidnap you, I should get to know who is hosting me, don't you think?"

I turned the camera on so my face would appear amid the electric barrier. Should I scowl? Look triumphant? In the absence of certainty, I kept my expression neutral. Whoever this woman was, she was a mystery, not a triumph.

I wished I had shaved and had a shower since capturing Adam, but that couldn't be helped now. This was the face I presented to her. It would have to suffice.

She looked at my image for five seconds. "That doesn't help. You think I should know you. Are you famous? Infamous?" She tightened the costume around her midsection, using the arms as a belt. It did not cover her chest now, and she did not seem to care. "So that I know, are your intentions to rape or murder me? Anything like that? I like to be prepared."

I didn't know what to make of this abruptness, but I rushed to answer. "No, I don't have any intentions for you. I don't know why you are there."

"Right, of course, you wouldn't have intentions," she said, almost to herself. "This is a good ground for us to start from. You, intentionless. Me, getting my bearings."

"Where is Adam?"

She rubbed her face, trailing her fingers down her neck. "Do you think you could get me proper clothes before this goes much further? Jeans and a t-shirt would be fine. Size 2, small. I won't bother you for a bra -- I wouldn't trust a strange man to pick one out -- but assume I would like underwear, too, if you can."

"Where is Adam?" I asked more urgently. She might not have a cause for fear (though maybe she did), but the disappearance of my enemy gave me every reason for mounting terror.

She sat on the ground, wiggling as though to find comfort there without success. "Okay, let me run through what I have so far, and you can correct me where I missed something. Sound fair?"

I didn't say anything, did not agree to these terms, but that did not seem to matter.

Dissatisfied with the floor, she stood again. As her mind kicked into gear, her movements became more emphatic, a professor in her classroom. "You captured Adam and imprisoned him here. You've said almost as much. That takes some doing." She touched the barrier, jerking her hand back. "This is an electromagnetic particulate field. You know he would break out of anything traditional, but he wasn't going to be bright enough to figure out how to disrupt this any time soon. I suspect you know how he feels about electricity. I hope you at least had the pleasure of watching him try to punch it or fly into it." She smirked, imagining this. "You are smarter than he is, which isn't hard. Adam has all the sense of a hammer and about the same use. You've had him imprisoned for at least eighteen hours." She held her stomach a moment. "Speaking of, while there is a toilet here, I would prefer privacy sooner rather than later. You were not watching your monitor, or you would know where he was already. Careless of you." She glanced up at the wrong camera. "How am I doing?"

"Fine," I admitted if just so she could get to the point.

"What am I missing?"

"Where is Adam?"

Her shoulders slumped at my obtuseness. "I'm Adam, obviously."

I took my finger off the transmitter. There had been speculation since Adam appeared in the skies. There was no record of him. I had tried every scan I could think of -- facial, retinal, a hair sample from a few strands recovered from the site of one of his battles -- and could never find evidence that he existed prior. "Adam's secret identity is a woman?"

She breathed out through her teeth, a long hiss, knowing this would take more explanation than she wanted to give. "Not exactly. He has no secret identity. There is Adam, and there is Not Adam, but he doesn't work some menial job and pretend to be a normal person. When he is not present, he does not exist." She crossed her arms over her chest, noticing it was uncovered, and hiked up the costume, her eyes flipping between the four cameras she could see. "Adam is something that happens to me. Think about it like Mr. Hyde. I've been your prisoner long enough that he left my system for the time being. Now, if you were not watching me, I would have tried to break out of here. I may not have succeeded. You are the first to have held him long enough -- he usually brute forces himself out long before now. I still would have tried. But you are watching me now, so there doesn't seem to be a point, you know?" She cinched Adam's unitard more tightly. Had she put it on properly, it would have drooped as though she were a toddler in her mother's dress. Adam exceeded her mass by an easy factor of three. "I'm saying this in part so you can trust me enough to shut off your cameras and let me take a piss. Like, a minute, okay? I have a shy bladder."

I did not answer. She pressed on the toilet seat gingerly.

"You have sensors in the seat and -- just a guess -- you intended to pick through any excrement he left behind, right? Big surprise for you: Adam doesn't poop. I couldn't tell you where the digested food goes. I don't get any nourishment from it. Aside from apples, I doubt he needs to eat at all." She pushed the toilet seat with force, satisfied with what she discovered. "You can switch your surveillance over to the sensors alone, so you know I am not being tricky."

I hesitated to respond. I was smarter than Adam, which was as simple a thing as she said, but she was far cleverer than he was as well. How could she be Adam in any way? I was prepared to deal with a posturing halfwit with a Messiah complex, not her.

"Not for nothing, but you've already seen me naked," she said. "I would prefer that you not watch me pee myself and spoil your nice" -- she pushed her heel into the floor -- "I'm guessing tungsten/carbon fiber floor as a balance between strength and resistivity. No dents from Adam, so it must be strong, or you did a number on him once you electrocuted him. Back to the point, I will drench the floor in piss in a few minutes if you don't promise you are not going to watch me on the toilet. I hope neither of us wants that to happen."

"How would you know I wasn't watching you?" I asked.

"I wouldn't, so I am going to ask you to promise."

I laughed despite myself, forgetting to release the transmission button. She noticed and smirked, shaking her head slightly as though admonishing me.

I pressed it again. "You would take me at my word, even though I have you imprisoned?"

"You didn't mean to have me imprisoned. You haven't killed me yet, so you have something like honor. I'd prefer not to have to consider your ethics with a bladder full of days-old urine. It does speed along my ability to trust for the moment." She shifted her weight in consideration of her biological burden. "I'll go back to scrutinizing you once my bladder is empty. So, promise."

I enabled every sensor I had. I turned off the cameras. Thermal was active. I wasn't stupid. "You have two minutes."

"You are a pri--" The microphone was off before she could get off the final consonants. Prince? Prick?

I watched the footage I had from the motion-triggered camera in fast forward, skipping the hours Adam spent screaming bravado. He flew into the barrier longer than a sensible person would. The electricity would shoot through him each time, and he would go stiff on the ground.

In the video, Adam passed out. His body shrank in an instant, turning into the woman, who remained immobile until I woke her.

Adam couldn't shapeshift. He had the typical strongman package: resistance to bullets and blades, superhuman strength and speed, and limited flight. I had compiled every public bit of footage I could of him, and he never did anything more. He flew into a generator accidentally in one battle, stunning himself but surviving electrocution that would fry a human.

He might have never shapeshifted because he never had a need to before, but everything about this woman was so different from Adam. He was an Aryan ubermensch, 300 pounds of pure muscle, a shock of blond hair in a perfect coif, stern blue eyes. Everything about him seemed coiled, ready to pounce. He was nothing like the woman, small and unsteady, dark. I considered at that moment that this divergence was an act to lull me into false assumptions. Why would I even trust her enough for the privacy I had granted her?

The two minutes elapsed. The thermal and sensors indicated that she had used the toilet, three hundred grams lighter once she flushed. The system worked without liquid, a cross between a cat box and a port-a-potty. I flicked the camera and audio on again.

I almost felt guilty activating the electrochromatograph. These would have taken some time to process in a hospital, but my machines were quicker and more attuned.

Urinalysis: color: straw to amber in color, clarity: clear, specific gravity: 1.020, ph: 6.2, bilirubin: negative, uroglobin: negative, protein: negative, glucose: negative, ketones: negative, blood: negative, leukocytes: negative, nitrates: negative.

Differential testing of estrogen and progesterone suggested that her period was overdue.

She was dehydrated and hungry, but not to excess.

Adam's temperature was closer to a fever on the thermal. His muscles glowed near fire when he was about to strike, one of the ways I had been able to avoid his punches. He could not help but telegraph everything.

Her temperature was ninety-eight degrees even. She was worryingly average.

For all my machines could do, I had calibrated them to discovering Adam's true nature. From the biological analysis and sensors, I could extrapolate that she was not a psychic. Her senses seemed within acceptable limits. She had slight myopia. No matter the factors I considered, no matter what my sensors measured, she was not special.

"Were you going to kill Adam?" she asked, sitting in the center of the floor, looking up at a camera in the right front corner.

"No," I admitted. "Just hold him. I'm not a killer."

She tapped the side of her head with one finger. "Good information. But you are a kidnapper and probably otherwise not a great guy if Adam was after you, so it isn't a huge comfort."

I was not about to let myself be charmed. "You expect me to believe you don't remember what you were doing when I caught you?"

"What he was doing. We aren't on speaking terms." She rocked side to side slowly. "I used to have a good idea of what was happening while I was out, while I was him. He would fall asleep, and I would wake up because the apple was out of his system. I wasn't totally there, but I had enough. Not memories, more like clips from a video game playthrough. I could piece together the important parts. We don't directly remember what the other one does."

"The apple?"

She snorted. "Look who is giving whom helpful information now! Yes, apples. The secret ingredient to make Adam appear."

"Why would apples do that?"

She frowned, her eyebrows shooting up, a slight shake. "Witch's curse? Chemistry experiment gone awry? Space aliens? Demonic possession? Future technology? I have no idea. If I eat an apple -- or enough of something that has an apple byproduct, but apples are a sure thing -- I turn into Adam."

I did not have the wherewithal to check her urine for a signature of apple residue to verify, but it was too lunatic to be a lie. She could have made something up that was far easier to believe.

"You know the apple thing now," she said. "Does anyone else? You have a computer there, right? I figure you must."

I typed in a few keywords. "No. No one seriously guessed that." I clicked on a link. "They think his constant eating apples is branding. Adam and the Garden of Eden."

"He is an asshole. I must have come up with his name," she said. "I don't remember, but he isn't smart enough to even put that together. He's not much of a reader." Her expression went blank. "How long have I been gone?"

At once, my mind began devising methods of determining Adam's constant presence in the world, assuming what this woman was telling me was true.

She seemed to know what I was thinking. "You could search for my name and see what I've been up to."

Simpler. "What is your name then? Eve?"

She coughed. "God, no. Wouldn't that be terrible? I'm Lily Garten. G-A-R-T-E-N."

I typed this in, scrolling through a few name-alikes until I came to her. In the photos on social media, she had brighter eyes and warmer skin but the same wry expression. A few more clicks, and I had my answer.

"You've been missing around four years. Your family thinks you might have been kidnapped by..." My eyes darted over the article. "Oh, this is awful."

"How much more awful can it get?"

"They think someone Adam beat into a coma kidnapped you."

She froze a moment, then collapsed in desperate laughter. "Beat into a coma!" Her mirth unsettled me. "Can you believe it? Are people at least saying nice things about me?"

I clicked. "You have some positive comments, but no one has said anything for about three years. They've given up on finding you."

She shrugged, a perplexing gesture. If I were told that, I would have been horrified, but it was nothing to her that she cared to show. "I can't imagine how they are going to react to me showing up again."

I dreaded having to say it. "Why would you show up again?"

Her laughter stopped. "Ah. This is the part where you tell me you are going to kill me." She sighed. "I wish you wouldn't. Say it, I mean. You aren't going to be able to kill me, but I thought--"

"I told you. I am not a killer."

"Then you are going to keep me imprisoned the rest of my life?" she asked, the question near rhetorical.

"If I let you out, you would find an apple and become Adam, wouldn't you?"

She shook her head, astounded at my cluelessness. "I have spent years not existing. Four years ago, Adam destroyed my life for his vanity, to be the hero no one needed. You think I want to sacrifice myself so he can punish you? If he gets back and knows what I'm saying right now, there is no way he would give me a second chance."

I could not find too much fault in her logic at first.

"It is untrod ground, psychologically," she said. "What I know is that I am no longer trapped inside Adam, thanks to you. Now, I am detained by you, which is something we need to discuss. At least have the opportunity to discuss it as me."

"Not to punish me," I said, finding the flaw, "but for the greater good. Wouldn't you eat an apple so you -- Adam, I mean -- so that Adam could save the world from people like me?"

She brought her fingers close to the barrier, not so much that they burned, but that she felt the resistance. "Oh, I'm not at all interested in that greater good argument. Is Adam doing anything that couldn't be better accomplished under legal aegides? Though you might not be the one to ask. You said you don't kill, so I suppose you aren't a serial killer and lying to me." Her eyes seemed larger and more guileless as she looked up at the cameras. "Child molester, then?"

"Of course not!"

She looked back at her cell, pacing in thought. "You captured Adam. You aren't one of the good guys."

"I am Dr. Anger."

She stopped, an eyebrow cocked. "That's your supervillain name? Dr. Anger?" She sounded poised to mock.

"No, I'm Doctor Gerald Anger. I'm an engineer and lawyer."

A titter. "Ah, so we don't have to waste time pointing out that kidnapping is against the law. But, as a criminal, you aren't keen on the law. What sort of crimes put you on Adam's radar?"

"I disable oil refineries to prevent them from propagating fossil fuels. My associates and I have seen a measurable decrease in the pollutants since we began," I said. "I don't harm the workers. Some have even served as accomplices."

"Not breaking their bones doesn't mean you didn't harm them by destroying their jobs," she said, offhandedly, a teacher correcting her pupil. "You think you are saving the world?"

How often I had heard this question when I practiced environmental law, when I patented solutions to the world's problems that went ignored or corporations bought them only to bury them. How often I had asked it myself. "We can't save the world anymore, but we can slow its descent. We can preserve the world a little longer for another generation."

She nodded, considering this. "Adam is not the most abstract thinker. Something is good, or it is not. Interfering with the capitalist machinations of an oil company likely falls into the 'not' camp for him." She squeezed her eyes shut as though she were in pain at the memory returning. "I was graying influence on him. When he had some of my memories, there was nuance. Even more reason that he wanted to keep me from returning. But really, isn't destroying the world worse than destroying some company's capability to destroy the world?"

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