Kingdom of Heroes (10 page)

The Detective chuckled. He had never heard someone say so much without breathing.

Ice stepped back a couple of feet. “Fire,” she said, “I’m fine. I’m fine. Nothing broken, no bullet holes, barely even scraped.”

The blonde turned towards The Detective. “And you,” she cried out, lunging towards him and wrapping her arms tightly around his ribcage. “Thank you, thank you so much for saving her from being killed. I know she hasn’t said a word to you about it, so I’m going to do it for both of us. Thank you so much.”

“I didn’t do anything,” he said, holding his arms awkwardly above the blonde’s body, unsure whether to hug her back or just keep them in the air. “I just---”

“You just saved her life,” the blonde said, squeezing him tighter. “She told me how you pushed her out of the way of the bullets, and she said that if you had not been there, she would be dead now. And how you got shot in the process.”

A grin grew across his face. “She did?” He turned his gaze toward Ice. She rolled her eyes at him and looked in the other direction.

The blonde pulled away from him. She was a pretty woman, a woman he could tell was once gorgeous, but had now redesigned herself as a mother and a wife, with beauty becoming less of a priority. She was slim, not well endowed, with shoulder length blond hair, and she smelled like baby powder. But she had a face that was almost perfect, a face that had probably made more than her fair share of men melt, which seemed fitting for a woman people called Fire. “I am so sorry. Here I am hugging you without properly introducing myself. My name is Pamela Blaze,” she said, holding out her hand for a shake. He went to take her hand, only for her to grab his arm instead, pulling him in for another hug.

Ice laughed. “I should have warned you that Fire Maiden is a hugger.”

“Blaze?” The Detective asked. He decided not hugging back was a fight he wasn’t going to win, so he put his arms around the blonde and returned her squeeze.

“My maiden name was McAllister,” she answered, releasing him from her grip and pulling back. “But wouldn’t you know it that a woman who can cover herself in flames and shoot fire from her hands would marry a man named Richard Blaze. He can turn invisible, which is really annoying, especially since he only does it when I need him to do something.”

“Where are the kids?” Ice asked, coming to The Detective’s rescue.

Fire turned towards her old partner. “They’re at the house with Emily.” She seemed to tear up a little. “Oh God, Gabby, how am I going to tell her about Adam? It’ll break her heart.”

“Just wait,” Ice replied, “after we stop this guy, I’ll come over, and we’ll tell her together. I won’t let you do this alone. I promise.” Ice reached over and gave her a hug, revealing a side of The Ice Queen he had never seen before: a side that had feelings.

“Do you think you can stop this guy, Gabby?” Fire asked.

Ice pulled away from the hug and held her old partner by the shoulders, looking her in the eyes. “I don’t want you to worry about it. I want you to worry about you, those two babies, and Emily. Where’s Richard right now?”

“He’s in Shore City for business. Why?”

“I want you, the babies, and your sister on the first plane out of here,” Ice said in return, a sense of urgency in her voice. “Tonight, first thing tomorrow, as soon as possible, I need you to fly to Richard and stay there until this is all over. Okay?”

Fire tried to speak. “But---”

“No buts,” Ice interrupted. “As soon as possible, okay?”

“Okay,” the blonde said, visibly giving in to her friend’s demands. “Oh, I almost forgot.” She turned to The Detective and reached down to retrieve the bag she brought in with her. She handed it to him. “It’s one of my husband’s shirts. I hope it fits. You’re a little bit bigger than him, but it should be close.”

“Thank you,” he said, looking inside the bag which held a white button-up shirt. “I really appreciate it.”

Fire reached over to him and pulled the trench coat away from his left shoulder. “Oh my God,” she said when she saw the bloody shirt he was wearing. “Ice, this is still bleeding out. Do you want me to redo the bandage for him?”

“No,” Ice answered without hesitation, guiding the blonde towards the door. “I’ll take care of him. I need you on that plane.”

“Fine.” Fire reached over and kissed Ice on the cheek. “Now be nice to him; he’s a keeper.”

“A keeper? I took him out of prison tonight. How’s that a keeper?”

The blonde gave her friend one last hug. “You know as well as I do that being locked up doesn’t mean what it used to.” She looked at The Detective. “Have you ever killed anyone?” she asked.

“Not today, no,” he answered.

“See, Gabby, he hasn’t killed anyone at all today. That’s a keeper in my book.”

“You need a new book,” Ice responded, pushing her old partner out the door.

“I have a quick question,” The Detective said, just as the blonde turned to leave. “Does the phrase, ‘They’re not the family you deserve,’ mean anything at all to you?”

Fire stopped and looked at him. He could hear her heartbeat speed up; he could smell the little bit of sweat that broke out on her forehead. “No, nothing at all,” she lied to him.

“That’s okay,” he replied, not ready to force the issue.

Ice pushed her friend out the door. “Go. I don’t want to hear from you until you’re safely out west.”

She shut the door. They could hear Fire yell, “I love you, Gabby,” as she walked down the hall.

“I love you too, Fire,” Ice said in a quiet voice only she and The Detective could hear.

“Gabby?” he asked her, his now trademark smirk covering his stubbly face.

“Tell you what, 616,” she said as she smiled at him. “I’ll talk real names with you when you share yours.”

He nodded. “Fair enough, princess.”

She pointed toward a hallway on the other side of the room. “The shower is down the hall and in my bedroom. You need to wash that old blood off, so I can get you patched back up before you bleed to death.”

“Didn’t think you cared,” he replied as he walked towards the hallway.

She shook her head from side-to-side. “Go now, before I change my mind and let you bleed out right here in the middle of my goddamn living room.”

He chuckled as he walked, looking back at her just to see the annoyed look on her beautiful face.

_______________________________________________

Journal Entry

[Found on page 78]

Note: The following is a speech given by the Canadian Prime Minister five years ago after a failed takeover attempt by several super powered operatives.

(The Minister sits at his desk, presumably in his office, wearing a black suit. He is visibly injured with several cuts and scrapes spread across his face. His nose looks broken.)

The Prime Minister: I speak tonight not only to my fellow Canadians, but also to the rest of our friends in the free world. Tonight, Canada resisted a takeover attempt from an armada made up of super powered soldiers. While I will publicly admit that some of these men and women were our own Canadian brothers and sisters, the majority of the attackers were American, acting on orders from our southern neighbor’s self appointed dictator, Bruce Rogers, the man once known as Agent America.

These murderous invaders targeted both our House Of Commons and my private home, hoping to use the old idea of dividing and conquering to their advantage. Luckily for us, our government’s private security team, made up of both normal humans and super powered operatives, was more than up to the task of defending this great nation. And while several losses were amassed on our side, brave men and women who will always and forever be considered amongst this country’s greatest heroes, this attacking force was decimated by our defenses, proving once and for all that a coalition of “normals” and “supers” cannot only survive together but thrive together.

On a personal note, I would like to publicly thank a member of our security force, a man who asked not to be named. Chancellor Rogers chose to not only target me, but to also target my wife and daughter, innocents in this cold war between our two nations. This man I mentioned, this hero, put himself between two bullets aimed at my family and gallantly defended them without regard for his own safety or well being. I, personally, will forever celebrate this man, a former American citizen, I might add, as a hero not only to me but to this great nation.

In closing, I send this message to the Americans. Stay off of Canadian soil. Canada is protected from those who would do evil, including the all powerful Seven. If you come to this country with murderous intent, be prepared to fight and be prepared to be defeated. And to my fellow Canadians, sleep well tonight knowing that your country is still the home to freedom.

God bless Canada, and God bless those throughout the world who choose to embrace liberty.

(End speech)

_______________________________________________

_

_

_

SEARCH DESIGNATION: 616

_

_

_

1 RESULT: OPEN RESULT

_

_

_

Super Powered Containment Unit #3

Prisoner 616

Real Name: Unknown

Known by the moniker The Detective

Abilities: Enhanced senses, increased hearing, highly accurate olfactory abilities, and advanced levels of taste and touch. Adrenaline gland is five times the size of a normal’s, resulting in intermittent increases in strength and speed.

Current containment status: Classified.

Current location: Classified.

_

_

_

CLOSE RESULT

_

_

_

_______________________________________________

After his shower, The Detective sat on the end of The Ice Queen’s bed, wearing nothing but his pants. He didn’t see any reason to put a clean shirt over a wound that was still oozing blood. He was amazed that a place this big only had one bedroom and a single bathroom. Obviously, she wasn’t planning on company. The bedroom was something to behold, with a bed twice as large as a king size, covered in pillows and much softer looking than the bunk he used to have in Canada. He assumed he would be regulated to one of the three couches in the living room.

There was also a closet which was bigger than most every home he’d ever had. But all of those places were dumps, so he guessed it didn’t count as an accurate comparison. Yet the truly remarkable aspect of the bedroom was the window which made up the entire outer wall, providing a view of the entire city being bathed in moonlight. He was impressed.

Ice had told him to wait in there for her to patch him back up. She’d probably expected him to sit in the desk chair by the door, but the bed was way too comfortable looking to pass up. That, and he figured sitting on her bed without permission would irritate her, and he loved the look on her face when she was annoyed with him. She walked in, a load of bandages and tape in her hands.

“I see you’ve just made yourself comfortable,” she said, a sarcastic tone in her voice. She took a long look at his shirtless body. “And I see you’ve managed to stay in shape during your stint in prison.”

“Well,” he said, flexing his arms a little now that he knew she was looking, “I do what I can.” He pointed to the wall of glass. “Aren’t you worried about peeping toms?”

She walked next to him and looked at the wound on his shoulder. “We’re on the sixtieth floor. This is the second tallest building in the city, so no, I’m not worried about peeping toms. Why have you got something to hide, something you‘re afraid of people seeing?”

“Well there’s a freckle on my back I’m really insecure about,” he answered with a smile.

“Whatever.” She positioned herself directly in front of him, her body less than a foot away from his face. “I see the bleeding has slowed down, but we’ve got to get this thing covered before it gets infected. I can’t let you die on me until we catch this bastard.”

“Yep,” he answered, hopelessly distracted by how close she was to him.

She leaned in closer, placing a bandage on his back. Her shirt pulled up a little, and he could see her flat stomach. She had a small snowflake tattooed around her bellybutton. Before he even realized he was doing it, he bent his head forward and planted a kiss on her bare stomach. She didn’t pull back. He thought he would risk her wrath and do it again. He placed his lips to the right of her naval and then again on the left. She didn’t pull away.

“So what’s your deal?” she asked in a voice that was almost sweet. “When you wanted to distract me in the middle of a fight, you kiss me, and when I’m trying to do something here that takes concentration, you start kissing on me again. Do you want me to screw up on this and you bleed to death?”

“Yep,” he answered, kissing a little bit above her bellybutton.

“Did you hear a word I just said?” she asked.

“You wanted to know if I like to use kissing to distract you, and after thinking long and hard on the subject, and much internal debate, I decided that the answer is, in a single word, yep.” He continued kissing her stomach, working his way beneath her tattoo.

“I hate you,” she said as she finished taping up the front of his shoulder.

“I hate me too,” he said, moving his lips to the edge of her skirt. He brought his hands up and gently unbuttoned it, kissing her much lower than before.

“If I bandaged you wrong and you bleed to death, it’s so not my fault.”

“I won’t blame you,” he said as he gently pushed her shirt up and kissed just below her breasts.

“You’d better not,” she said as a little moan escaped her lips. “Fuck it.” she said finally, bending down and kissing him deep on the lips. She pushed him back onto the bed and climbed on top of him, straddling him with her legs and kissing him as hard as he’d ever been kissed before.

_______________________________________________

Journal Entry

[Found on page 57]

Note: The following is a transcription of a video found on Rogers’ computer, recorded almost a year ago from his penthouse. The Agent is sitting at his desk while his favorite lackey, the lawyer named Grant, stands across from him.

The Agent: (opening a file folder that Grant had just handed him) What do we know about him?

Grant: Nothing more than we did. He didn’t say a word during his tribunal, not the first syllable.

Agent: Any luck finding out who he was?

Grant: No, sir. He probably employed a pre-war technokinetic to eliminate his old identity. We even hacked the Canadian database. They know less about him than we do.

Agent: No family, no friends, no one in the world to care whether he lives or dies.

Grant: For all intents and purposes, sir, that is correct. May I ask a question?

Agent: Within limits.

Grant: Why go through all of this, just for this one particular man? A fake people smuggling operation to lure him back to the states, a rigged tribunal to find him guilty of treason, a maximum security containment unit usually reserved for the most powerful, the most dangerous of supers, why go through all of this just for this…Detective?

Agent: I never forget a wrong, Grant. You would be wise to always remember that. This Detective is simply a wrong I am finally going to make right.

(End video)

_______________________________________________

_

_

_

REPAIR TIME REMAINING: 4H47M36S

_

_

_

REPAIR TIME REMAINING: 4H47M35S

_

_

_

REPAIR TIME REMAINING: 4H47M34S

_

_

_

REPAIR TIME REMAINING: 4H47M33S

_

_

_

REPAIR TIME REMAINING: 4H47M32S

_

_

_

REPAIR TIME REMAINING: 4H47M31S

_

_

_

REPAIR TIME REMAINING: 4H47M30S

_

_

_

REPAIR TIME REMAINING: 4H47M29S

_

_

_

FILE SYSTEM REPAIR: COMPLETE

_

_

_

ACCESS FILE: SELF DEFENSE PROTOCOLS

_

_

_

FILE LOCATED: OPEN FILE

_

_

_

SEARCH WITHIN FILE: FIRE MAIDEN

_______________________________________________

Journal Entry

[Found on page 79]

Note: The following is a newspaper column published in New York’s Daily Sun illegally the day the government took over all media stations.

I apologize for the brevity of this writing, but as I type this, Chancellor Rogers' men are on their way to remove my keyboard from my fingers. Today, we lost the last of our individual freedoms; the right to free speech died a sad death, and she went out, not with a bang, but with the proverbial whimper. We, as Americans, as people, as human beings, deserve better than the tyrant we were given, better than the dictator who claims to look out for our best interest while only looking out for his.

Even his own kind, those with powers, whether they have come to realize it or not, have become nothing more than subservient tools to a man who is no more loyal to them than he is to the proverbial rat that now overruns our once proud cities. Sure, he’s eliminated crime; he’s removed drugs from our streets, and random murders are no longer something we have to fear. Now we have to fear that Rogers' own security squads will invade our homes and eliminate us from society because we did, or said, or thought, something that made us no longer fit into the Chancellor’s seemingly perfect society.

I have to stop now, even though I have so much more to say. There is only so much time to get this, the last honest edition of this paper to be published, to press before The Agent’s men break down the doors. To all who manage to read this, I say to you, pray. Pray for your fellow Americans; pray for our once great country; pray that hope and freedom are one day restored to men and women who deserve so much more than the virtual Hell we have received.

_______________________________________________

The Detective stood in the nude beside the bedroom’s giant window. The city below him held a quaint beauty he had never really noticed, but, of course, he had never quite seen it from this angle before either. The full moon bathed the city like a blanket on a cold night. The light was all encompassing, yet never intruding, portraying the city as a place of beauty instead of the capital of deceit and pain as it had become known.

He realized, in the hours since he had been “released” from prison, he hadn’t really taken the time to let himself breathe and relax, free from the confines of a small containment unit and contemptuous jailers. It was also, while staring out over the vastness of the city, the first time he had truly felt free. Nothing like a bullet wound and sex with a beautiful woman to make a man feel the pangs of freedom.

He turned back and looked at Ice. She laid nude on the bed, the moonlight sparkling off of her beautiful body, glistening in her snow white hair. She rolled on her side and propped her head against her arm. She stared back at him, a content smile across her gorgeous face. He wondered, for the first time, if she had realized that, whether they caught this guy or not, he wasn’t going back to prison, not willingly anyways.

“I believe,” she said, “that half of what we just did is considered illegal under the new regime.”

He looked back at her and smiled. “Not in Canada. There’s fewer laws there concerning what takes place in the bedroom.”

“I see why you like it there,” she said, a genuine tone in her voice.

“There’s less dictatorships, too.” The smile faded from his face, and he turned back to the window.

“You really hate what we’ve done here, don’t you?”

“Does it matter what I think?” he asked without turning around.

“No, not really.” She climbed off of the bed and put her arms around him from behind. He could feel her breasts pressed against his bare skin. She pulled away a little and rubbed his back, touching the many scars that covered it.

She changed the subject. “I see that tonight wasn’t your first bullet,” she remarked, touching the tip of her forefinger finger against the three other bullet hole scars.

He reached around and took her wrist, guiding her hand to the back of his left lung. “That one I got when I was still a cop.” He moved her hand to his right kidney. “Those two earned me the Canadian Medal of Honor.”

“What did you have to do to get that?”

He turned around and smiled at her. “I personally saved the national maple syrup factory from a terrorist attack.”

She gave him a little push against his uninjured shoulder. “You are so full of shit, and I have no idea what I see in you.”

“Maybe it’s my charming wit and lovely personality?” he asked.

“You wish,” she said in return, still rubbing his back. “More likely, it’s that thing you did with your tongue.”

He smiled at her. “As long as I’m popular, I’m content.”

“What about these?” she asked, rubbing her hands across the other numerous scars covering his flesh. “These look like whip marks.”

“They’re whip marks.”

“I get that, you idiot, but how did you get them?”

He turned his head back towards the window, staring out at a moon that seemed too full to be real. “It’s a long and sordid tale. Are you sure you’ve got the time?”

“Let’s see,” she said, wrapping her arms back around his waist and pressing herself hard against him. “I’m nude, leaning up against a naked idiot, awaiting instructions that aren’t coming until morning. I’d say that I’ve got all the time in the world.”

He put his hands on top of hers, thinking to himself about how soft and cool her skin was. She still smelled like strawberries. “It’s your dime, princess. Let me think---”

“Wait,” she interrupted, “you’re not going to make up some story with an asinine ending just to see the look on my face, are you?”

He laughed. “As much as I love that look you get when you’re annoyed with me, and I do love that look, the answer is no. I’ll tell you the real story.”

“Then please continue,” she replied.

“Somewhere around seven years or so ago, when I was working as part of the Canadian Prime Minister’s personal security detail, three members of the security team were kidnapped from their homes and tortured; the kidnappers were looking for the access codes for the Minister’s family home. I was one of the three.”