Number five was the most extraordinary of our group. Every cell in his body was able to operate independently. The powers that this granted him were so vast, they defied categorisation. At the very least he could change shape at will and he healed almost instantly. After a while he stopped wearing clothes as they hindered his abilities and he could quite easily make it look as if he were dressed. He disconcerted me greatly. especially after I realised that his eyes were simply for show. His entire body could see and sense anything in every direction. I am sure that he never slept.

My own powers were far simpler. I had the ability to make myself, and anything I came into contact with, intangible. I could pass through anything and make anything I wished almost completely weightless. I could lift as much as I wanted and throw it exceptional distances. I could move faster as I had no weight to carry and air resistance was nothing to me. Of course, my powers remained limited like the others. Nothing I phased was ever truly weightless and there was a limit to the amount of material I could render intangible. People, cars, possibly even buses were fine. Buildings were not.

-Alice

Our powers defined us further. Number one could hypnotise with a word. His voice could work itself into your mind and make you do whatever he wanted of you. All along you’d be thinking it was your idea. I often wonder if he ever used it on us. I know the other members of the organisation were apparently immune, but we were never informed if we shared this immunity. I find it unlikely.

Number two absorbed people. She took them over completely and could become them at will. The ultimate disguise. I never fully understood the physics behind it. Where the mass went or came from. She had to undergo more surgery after they deemed making her entire skin absorbent was a bad idea. Before they isolated her ability to her hands she had already accidentally absorbed several people.

Number four had a plethora of mental powers. Telepathy, telekinesis, and clairvoyance. She was to be our communications. She could know what was coming and could inform us with a simple thought. Her powers were limited though. Her telepathy only worked over a small distance, her telekinesis was weak, and her clairvoyance stretched only a mere hour into the future. I believe they’d programmed these hindrances into her, especially after what happened later.

-Alice

Details came later. We were told that we formed an experimental unit. We had volunteered to undergo treatments that would grant us special skills. Our task was to be espionage. Our memories had been erased and we were to be told little, reducing the amount of compromising information we could provide if we were to be captured. We weren’t even given names, simply numbers. Maybe I would have made a James Bond quip if I’d had any memory of the concept.

Our numbers were somewhat more complex, featuring letters that apparently stood for important things, but really they were simply one to five. I was number three. Number one was a few inches taller than me, with black hair and eyes that told you instantly why he had been chosen to lead our unit. Number two was a dark-haired girl. Her eyes merely looked sad and resigned. She never seemed like she wished to be there. Number four was our second female team member. Her hair was blonde and chin-length. Her eyes were bright and flitted about the room almost constantly. Her smile was lop-sided. The final member of our team, number five, had no hair and his eyes were black. I tried not to look at him too often.

-Alice

Explanations arrived though. Once they realised I was awake, the doctors all filed in. They made noises about how I was doing and how everything was a success. As each moment wore on and I formed new memories, then the questions came. They explained all that they felt I needed to know. I was the result of an experiment. Who I had been was unimportant now. Yes, they had erased my memory. They had done so with surgical precision, removing any identity I may have had, but leaving intact every skill. They left it at that and moved on. There were four others in the room with me. From what I could hear, they’d received the same treatment as me and were told the same information. The doctors (or at least that’s what I assume they all were, some of them I never saw again) left and the five of us lay there, all weak, though not tired. We didn’t speak.

I looked at the others, examining them and they did the same to me. Three men (including myself), two women. I judged them all to be around the same young age and assumed I probably was as well. The lack of a mirror obviously hindered me. I pondered on how my memories and identity were gone but it seemed that my analytical skills and knowledge remained. They were very good.

-Alice

The story really begins somewhat earlier. I slide in time to my earliest memory, one of waking. One of dawn.

I awoke in a clean room. Not a hospital bed as this was not a hospital and what I lay upon was not a bed. But the room was clean. It was stark and white and exquisitely sterile. I awoke from a dreamless sleep that, as far as my memory could tell, had no beginning. Any memories I may have had before waking here in this room had be stripped from me in some fashion. They appeared to have been cleanly cut. I experienced no flashes of jumbled images that might hint at anything. All that I retained were traits that had been trained into me. I awoke as a fresh being. A mould that had no definition save a multitude of skills that lived below my conscious, laying dormant like instincts.

I awoke, blinking, into a sterile world. I’m unsure if I had questions when I awoke. I mean, I know many questions came to me later and many more were answered (though many still remain), but I’m not sure if I had the inclination at first. I’m not sure I felt I needed to know who I was before I became aware that there could be a “who” for me to be. I had no memory and so I had no gaps in it which needed to be filled.

-Alice

My mind is screaming at me that he’s dead. That I killed him. Blood’s pounding through my temples. Rhythmic voices, crying my failures. I shut it out and grab the girl and start to run.

I leave her at a hospital. They’ll take care of her, I think. I disappear before anyone can see me. I stop in an alleyway across the street and look back. I watch the ambulances pull in and out and watch the people who come and go. Injuries don’t sleep. I wonder if I’m a hero. I wonder if I did a good thing. I wonder if he’s dead. I’m thinking that, if he’s not, I left a criminal in an alley. He could be there, just waiting to wake up. I saved the girl, but I let him get away. I’m not a hero. Not yet.

I turn and walk away. I head back to where I woke up this morning. A dirty street, littered and damp, just waiting for me. It’s a fitting home, I’m sure of that now. While one day my actions might elevate me from this, for now, I sleep here. This was my first attempt at becoming who I’m going to be. Gutterman.

-Alice

And then I’m falling. I missed the jump and I’m dropping to the street below. Barely thinking, my mind does the right thing before I hit the ground and I fall through it. Somehow I stop myself and I pull my body up and out of the pavement. Don’t ask me how that part works, it just happens. It’s like swimming, except the water is concrete and you’re a shadow. But somehow it happens and I’m stood on the ground once more and I’m staring at the back of a man. The back of a man bent over an unconscious woman. The fucker’s just unbuttoning his belt. I got here just in time, I think to myself. But I didn’t. She’s already been hurt.

I grab the bastard and throw him into the wall. I phase him and he becomes weightless and the laws of physics throw him harder. As he leaves my grip he becomes corporeal and hits the wall. The sound is… I don’t know. I don’t know how to describe the sound. Go and throw a live body into a wall and then imagine if you could’ve thrown him with the same force you would a tennis ball. That’s the sound. That’s the sound of my first fuck up.

-Alice

I’m stood on the roof of a building. I’m stood here and I’m thinking. I’m not a hero. This isn’t a movie and I don’t know what I’m doing here. I’m a reckless amateur idiot. It’s the roof of an abandoned building. It had to be abandoned. You stand on the roof of an occupied one and someone’s eventually gonna come out and ask you what the fuck you’re doing on their roof. So now I’m alone. I’m looking down and I’m listening and I hear and see nothing. I’m thinking to myself that nothing’s going to happen. I’ll be up here all night and nothing will happen. I’m a fool and an idiot. An idiot stood on a roof.

And then I hear it. A sharp cry, cut off so suddenly. The thing I’ve been waiting for and also what I’ve been dreading. Before I even know what the hell I’m doing, I’m running. I’m running and I’m throwing myself through the air. I make myself weightless and I can run faster and I can jump farther. I’m running over rooftops, past windows, not caring if they’re occupied. Not caring if people ask what I’m doing. All I know is that I’m needed somewhere.

-Alice

As darkness falls upon dark streets
Drunk voices call refrain
A tale of one who’s phantomwise
His presence they explain

Beware the Gutterman, my son
Who creeps with feet not there
He hunts in shadow and in dark
And beats with fists of air

No home is his, no place to rest
The city his abode
The alleyways are his comfort
The corners, his commode

Fighting crime is no parlor trick
Nor powers that he holds
How he disappears like shadow
Is a story untold

A bitter man though he may be
A criminal, he’s not
A vigilante, not a thief
Gives thanks for what he’s got

This burden that he carries so
To use his power right
The information that he knows
Could set this world alight

A “super”-hero, some may say
A “menace”, others claim
He does what he believes he should
And treats them both the same

Commit no crime and you’ll be fine
But the guilty should so care
A scream drifts down an alleyway
“Of the Gutterman, beware”

-Alice