Kingdom of Heroes (11 page)

“Were you all super powered?”

“Two of us were, and the third, she wasn’t,” he answered, still holding the back of her hands and staring out the glass. “They chained me up in some old abandoned warehouse, with my hands up over my head. I could hear the other two screaming for hours before they finally made it to me. They used this former superhero from America to do the torturing, this bastard who called himself The Lash, cause he could make a telekinetic whip with his mind.

“I remember him. I hated that son of a bitch, him and his invisible weapon. He was so damn cocky and full of himself; I couldn’t believe he was on our side. I thought about killing him myself a couple of times during the war.”

He laughed. “I wish you had, would’ve saved me so much trouble. So where was I?”

“You were tied up.”

“Oh yeah. So I’m tied up, and this bastard starts whipping me with his invisible telekinetic whip. I’m losing blood all over the floor, and these two other guys keep asking me about the security codes for the Minister’s home. I didn’t give up the codes, but I did keep talking. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but people tend to think I’m a bit of a smart ass at times.”

“I’ve noticed,” she replied quickly.

“I have no idea how people come up with that image of me.” He looked back at her and slightly smiled. “But it seems to happen more than not. So the more I talked, the more pissed off The Lash got. The other two kept asking their questions; The Lash kept whipping, and I kept on being my pleasant to be around self. I guess they got tired of asking and went off to question one of the others. The joke was on them, though.” He laughed a little bit beneath his breath, turning back towards the window. “I was the only one of the three who knew the codes, and I wasn’t going to tell them.”

She squeezed him tighter, a hug that was almost as impressive as the one Fire Maiden had given him earlier in the night. “How’d you get out?”

“They knew about my enhanced senses and all of that, but they had missed the memo about what happens when I’m scared, angry, or in pain. Once they left me alone for a few minutes, I broke free of my chains. The dumbasses actually left all of my stuff in the room with me. I found my gun; I found The Lash, and I put half a clip into his brain. Then I found the other two. The normal of the two died with two bullets in his chest, and the third was a teleporter, and he removed himself from the situation.” He sighed. “The other two members of my team were dead. I was too late to save them.”

She pulled his head around towards her. “You did what you could; you did your job.”

“I didn’t do it soon enough,” he said, smiling a half smile in her direction. He turned around and pulled her close against his body, then kissed her full red lips. She still tasted like strawberries. “I’m tired of talking. Is there anything we can do that doesn‘t involve conversation?”

She grabbed him by the hand and pulled him back to the bed. “We have a few options,” she said with a smile.

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Journal Entry

[Found on page 31]

Note: The following is the written transcript of video footage taken from The Agent’s personal computer. I attest to the authenticity of the video, having seen it for myself, and I hereby describe the events from the video file.

(The video begins with The Agent sitting at a table across from a man called Roberts, apparently one of The Agent’s operatives. An armed guard stands behind Roberts, who, though under guard, is apparently not a prisoner.)

The Agent: So, what happened?

Roberts: I don’t know (sounding scared). It all went wrong.

The Agent: Just calm down, and tell me. We need to know what went wrong.

Roberts: Okay (taking a deep breath). We followed your orders to the tee. We kidnapped three members of the Prime Minister’s security team. We took them to the warehouse you told us about. We interrogated them---

The Agent: Did you let The Lash help in the interrogation process?

Roberts: Of course. He did that freaky thing he does where he whips the air with his hands and wounds open up on people. The first two, the guy who could fly and the normal girl, both broke fairly easily, but they swore they didn’t know the codes. Lash eventually got too rough and ended up killing them both.

The Agent: And the third guy, the man with the enhanced senses?

Roberts: He wouldn’t break. We tried; The Lash beat him until the guy’s back was like a fucking pool of blood, but he wouldn’t talk. Well, he talked; he talked the whole goddamn time, but he wouldn’t give up the codes.

The Agent: So what went wrong?

Roberts: Whoever gave you the info on this guy fucked up big time. The guy had more than just enhanced senses. The three of us left the room for thirty seconds, tops, and the guy breaks his chains. He somehow found a pistol, and he blew The Lash’s brains out (becoming visibly upset). They went everywhere. His brains were fucking everywhere.

The Agent: Calm down. What happened to Stephens?

Roberts: (takes another deep breath) The guy shot Stephens twice in the chest. He never had a chance. Then out of nowhere, before I could calm myself and teleport away, the guy leaps across the room and lands on top of me, pinning me to the ground with his elbow on my throat. He put the gun in my mouth; look (opens his mouth and points to his teeth), he rammed it in there so hard he broke two of my teeth.

The Agent: Fascinating. Then what happened? He obviously didn’t kill you.

Roberts: He said if I teleported, he would pull the trigger the moment we reappeared. I was too scared to do anything anyways. The guy was fucking insane. But most importantly, he knew. He said he knew who sent us there, and he told me he would let me live if I sent a message back to The Agent, back to you.

The Agent: And what’s this important message?

Roberts: He said to tell you that Canada was protected and to stay out of it, or that would be your brains sprayed on the wall. And then he just let me go; he just walked away and let me go. The guy was fucking nuts.

The Agent: (standing up) I need you to wait here while I inform the others of these events. Are you sure that’s everything you know?

Roberts: That’s it; that’s everything.

The Agent: Then that is all I need from you. (The Agent nods to the guard, who pulls out his gun, places the barrel behind Roberts’ head, and pulls the trigger, leaving Roberts’ brains splattered across the table. The Agent looks up at the camera.) Do you see? (yelling) Do you see what happens when you fail me? If any of you disappoint me like this again, that will be you. Do you hear me? You will not fail me again.

(End video)

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Final Journal Entry

[Begins on page 100]

I was thirteen when registration passed. I wasn’t completely sure at the time what that meant. Registration? Was it like registering for school? Did I need a backpack and a new pair of jeans? My parents assured me it was nothing to worry about. They were good, simple folk who always did what the laws told them to do, whether they agreed with it or not. Actually, you would have never known if they agreed with it or not; they kept those kind of things to themselves. They registered me the day after the law passed.

I was thirteen and a half when two government agents showed up at the house. They wore black suits and drove a black sedan; they had laminated identification badges. They asked to see what I could do, and I showed them the abilities I’d picked up from the M-Virus. What I could do, they said, was impressive. The two government employees talked to my parents, and then the four of them talked to me, informing me that I would have to go away to learn how to properly use these abilities I’d never asked to have.

I wasn’t happy. Even though we’d all had it, no one else in my family, neither my parents, nor my sisters, one two years older, one a year older, contracted anything from that damn virus, except me. My youngest sister, six-month old Lily, had been born after the virus, so we weren’t sure if she was going to have abilities or not. I used to pray she wouldn’t.

I argued with the agents; I argued with my parents. I tried to tell them my powers weren’t dangerous. I couldn’t have hurt people with them if I’d wanted to. The government men reassured me. The place would be like summer camp, they said. There would be other kids there like me; we could all learn to use our powers together, and when I was ready, I would come back home, a productive and useful member of society. I wouldn’t even be gone long enough for my family to miss me. They gave me an hour to pack.

It only took me a few minutes to pack a suitcase worth of clothes, seeing as how clothing was all I was allowed to bring to “camp.” I hugged my older sisters good-bye, and I kissed baby Lily on the cheek, silently wondering if she would remember me when, and if, I ever came back. I ignored my parents on the way out; I didn’t say shit to them; I couldn’t. Whether they knew it or not, this was all their fault.

In a few hours, we arrived at the containment center for super-powered individuals, a massive, windowless building with guard towers on each corner, surrounded by barbwire topped chain link fences. This, I knew, was not “camp.” I had to be deloused before I was allowed to step inside of the building proper, which took place outside on a cold winter day, and take my word for it, it wasn’t pleasant.

Once inside, my head was shaved to the scalp. My clothes were tossed into an incinerator, and I was given my own orange jumpsuit. I was fingerprinted, palm printed, and every other kind of print they could think of. They even took a retinal image of my eyes. They took several photographs of me from various angles, none of which, I figured, would end up on a milk carton if I had went missing. Before being placed into the six by six cell which would be my new home, I was sat in a chair and told to pull my jumpsuit down past my shoulder. A man, who wore glasses and was missing one of his front teeth, tattooed my number on the left side of my chest. This number, F41963, would be my new name.

We were allowed out of our cells once a day for a meal, which mainly consisted of grits. God, I still hate grits. Mealtime was the only occasion I actually saw any of my fellow “campers.” The floor I was on was made up of boys and girls, all ranging from twelve to fifteen in age. The higher the floor, the higher the ages of the inmates, and the top floor, it was whispered, was where people were really mistreated. I honestly couldn’t imagine it getting much worse.

I’m sure you won’t be surprised by the fact there was no training in the Hole (as we affectionately called it). Actually, there was one consistent rule in the containment center: no powers. Any use of abilities, they said, would result in corporal punishment. This one time, I was sitting next to this kid who could shoot electricity from his hands. He was talking to me during our daily meal, and when he snapped his fingers to emphasize a point, a small piece of electricity sparked from his hand. A guard pulled his gun and shot the kid twice in the head, killing him instantly. I never even knew the kid’s actual name.

But after about six months or so, six months, I might add, without any contact from the outside world, we began to hear whispers and rumors amongst the guards. War became the word held in the shadows. A war between the normals and us, a war between The Seven and the government holding us as prisoners, it was too much of a dream to actually hope for. But we hoped.

Besides that, life went on for the most part. Some guards were nicer than others, but I fantasized about killing most of them. I spent most of my nights lying awake in my bunk, trying to figure out some way to use my powers to formulate an escape. Every brilliant plan, every ingenious idea, would always be foiled by the thought process, always finding a flaw which would result in my death. And that was the rub. As much as I hated the place and wanted to be free, I also wanted to live. Any idea which ended in my death was instantly deemed a failure, and I would be forced to go back to the drawing board.

Then, after a few months, that word on the tip of everyone’s tongue, prisoner and guard alike, continued to resurface. War. It was happening; we all knew it. You could feel the fear from the guards most of the time, scared to death the mighty Seven would show up at their doorstep and liberate the children they called prisoners. We heard the talk. The Seven had taken California, then the entire West Coast, destroying every military base along their way.

The guards toughened their stance, forbidding us from talking during mealtime, afraid the whispers might unite us against them, might cause us to feel something besides fear. It had. For the first time in over six months, I felt hope. And not the pitiful artificial hope I made myself feel when I calculated my little escape plans. No. I felt real, tangible, so close to me I could taste it, touch it, smell it, hope. I hadn’t been this happy since the time when I was ten, and I’d paid fourteen year old Becky Miller from down the street ten bucks to show me her breasts. I didn’t just think the war was coming; I knew the war was coming, and every one of those guards, every one of those bastards who’d pushed us, tortured us, killed us, would pay for their crimes.

And then, on a night when I was least expecting anything, it happened. Alarms blazed through the compound. Guards yelled and screamed, running across the floor with guns in their hands. Explosions rocked the building. People cried out in pain. I smelled smoke and the stench of flames. I heard a whistling noise I could have sworn was the sound of a missile being fired through the air. Gunfire echoed up and down the corridors. And you could have seen us all standing next to the tiny window slots on our doors. We knew; this had to be it. They had finally come for us. Finally.