Kingdom of Heroes (32 page)

On the stairs to his right, just above where he sat motionless, he heard the now familiar pop with its accompanying stench of ozone. The area around The Detective became noticeably darker, as if all of the light in the stairwell had simply been drained away. He managed to turn his head as far to the right as he could, which wasn’t very far, and he looked up towards the sound. The dark figure appeared at the top of the stairs; his head moved down toward The Detective, his black cloak still covering his face, leaving The Detective no way to read whatever emotion this thing could be feeling. He was sure it wasn’t anything nice or pleasant.

In the middle of the dark figure’s cloak, a small light appeared. The Detective knew what was going to happen next. The light grew brighter and brighter, and finally, the blonde walked out from the center of the darkness, her overwhelming light cutting through the black, swathing the area in an inhuman light.

She walked out of the cloaked figure, onto the top stair, then down the stairs towards The Detective. She stared into his eyes as she walked, her vibrant glow seeming brighter than ever. He noticed she stepped gingerly and with a noticeable limp on her right side, probably the result of the many floors they had fallen through.

“Poor puppy,” she said as she came closer. “He’s fallen, and he can’t rise to the occasion. Not even for me.”

“Oh, I can get up,” he lied in return. “I just choose not to. It’s a personal choice.”

She smiled. “That’s my puppy. Playful until the end.”

He looked at her, and he suddenly found himself longing for the time when gazing at her meant an absolute numbness. But now, with all of the extra adrenaline running through him, there was no way it would work. That was just his luck. The bad guy’s power to numb the senses would stop working on him when he was about to die, the one time he actually hoped for a bit of numbness.

She climbed in front of him, straddled his legs, and lowered herself onto his crotch; he wasn’t paralyzed; he could still feel her touch from below the waist. She brought her left hand up to his cheek and rubbed it gently, caressing it with a lover’s touch. “You don’t know how much I wanted to keep you, but sadly, I doubt they would let me. No wild animals, that’s what they always tell me. And you, handsome, are as wild as they come.” She rubbed her hand through his hair. “But if you had been my pet, we could have had so much fun.”

“Fun for you maybe,” he said with a smirk. He figured he should probably get the smirk in a couple of more times before the end. “Me…I’m having a blast right now.”

“I bet you are.” She grinded herself against him, then turned toward the dark figure. “Please?” she asked.

The head beneath the cloak shook from side-to-side; The Detective took that as a no. So did she. “Oh well,” she said. “At least we had tonight. That means something, doesn’t it?”

“Not to me,” he said, smirking for what he assumed would be the last time. “I doubt I’ll even remember you in the morning.”

She brought up her right hand, the blade of light already in place at the end of her fist. “My pet still has bite even as I’m about to put it to sleep. Oh well, all I can say now is goodnight to my sweet little puppy.”

She moved the blade toward his face, directly at his left eye. He figured he probably had enough strength left to kick her off, to try and run down a couple of flights of stairs, but how far could he run before they caught him? Two flights? Three? Would he even be able to escape her grasp at the moment? Did he even want to?

This was it, the end of the line. He had no fight left, no will to flee, nowhere left to run to, and no reason to resist. This was where it all came to an end, and to be honest, this was as good of a place as any. Why not give up? Why not let go of the pain? What did he have left to fight for? Revenge? What was he going to do, walk up and shoot Agent America himself in the head? He would just be left there like an idiot as the crumpled bullet fell to the ground while The Agent stood there unharmed.

This was better; this was for the best. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew he was probably just telling himself a happy little lie to get through the moment, but at least he felt some kind of comfort while thinking it was all for the best.

The blonde moved the blade closer and closer to his eye. The blade seemed to grow in size with every centimeter it came nearer. He thought about shutting his eye, but it felt like a moot point. Open, closed, either way he was going to be dead.

And then, she stopped. The blade stopped moving, and her arm stiffened, leaving it motionless in the air. Her face, like her arm, seemed frozen in the moment, unflinching, stationary; she didn’t blink or breathe. Everything about her had just paused. The Detective wasn’t as much relieved as he was confused. This wasn’t anything of his doing. Suddenly, she spoke, her lips moving while the rest of her remained completely still.

“Detective,” she said in a voice that wasn’t hers, in a voice that belonged to Emily. “I broke through her defenses, but I can’t hold her for long. Get up, get out of here.”

“Not sure if I can,” he said, still confused but slowly catching on to what was going on. “I’m not exactly sure which body parts work right now, and which ones don’t. Besides, big brother up there will be on me before I turn the corner.”

“Then take out your gun and shoot her. I’ll hold her until---”

He interrupted. “If I kill her with you inside, I’ll kill you both.”

“I can get out in time.”

“No,” he said in return, “you can’t.”

And then it occurred to him, it didn’t all have to end like this. He had the chance, a small chance though it was, to make one last heroic gesture. What did he have to lose at this point? What would they do if it didn’t work out, kill him? It didn’t matter; he was dead either way. He figured it was better to go out in a blaze of glory than just sitting there like the chump he was.

It would have to be quick; he could already see the cloaked teleporter from the corner of his eye. Old big and ominous was starting to notice something was wrong; his sister hadn’t moved for at least thirty seconds. He began to move down the stairs. The Detective knew what he had to do, and it had to be a single, fast, fluid motion, no room for second chances, no time for an error. He had to be perfect.

He moved his right hand into his coat and pulled his gun free from the holster. In as smooth of a motion as he could muster, he centered the barrel against the blonde’s right shoulder and pulled the trigger. He heard two completely separate women scream out in unison as the bullet passed through the blonde’s flesh and into the wall on the other side of the room.

With his free left hand, The Detective pushed her away from him, and he moved himself up to his knees as fast as he could. He heard the pop and smelled the ozone a fraction of a second before big brother appeared, and The Detective knew exactly where he would be. He whipped the gun around as fast as he could, aiming the barrel at an angle above his own head.

The cloaked figure appeared directly where The Detective knew he would, and the barrel of the gun was already there and waiting, already in position beneath the big man’s cloaked chin. And just like The Detective thought he would, the cloaked figure turned himself intangible and placed his ghost-like hand inside of The Detective’s chest. The stalemate stood there. If the cloaked teleporter turned himself solid, it would effectively leave a giant hole in The Detective’s chest, but without a word between them, they both knew that The Detective would have a millisecond before death set in to pull the trigger and send a bullet into the big man’s then solid head.

The Detective could hear the blonde crying and writhing on the concrete floor a few feet away from them. There was only one voice now, leaving him sure that the pain of the bullet had been enough to force Emily to retreat back into her own head. That was good. If this went as wrong as The Detective figured it would, he wouldn’t want her to have to bear witness to his personal end.

“Stop this!” The Agent’s booming voice yelled from the corner of the ceiling. Without looking, without moving his line of sight from the black figure in front of him, The Detective knew instantly where the voice came from: a surveillance camera positioned in the corner of the stairwell. Apparently, The Agent’s camera came with two way speakers as well. Fancy, The Detective thought to himself.

“Light, Dark,” The Agent’s disembodied voice said from the speaker, giving these two the first names The Detective had managed to hear. “Your job here is done. The Detective is not your priority at the moment. He has an appointment he must keep. Do you understand?”

The figure in front of The Detective, the being apparently known as Dark, nodded his still intangible head up and down, signifying his acceptance of The Agent’s orders. Without a word, Dark pulled his hand from The Detective’s chest. Dark, paying absolutely zero attention to the man with the gun, bent down in front of the blonde, and lovingly stroked her hair with his dark hand, before gently lifting his bleeding sister into his arms, and with the usual pop, they disappeared, leaving only the stench of burnt ozone in their place.

The Detective, physically and emotionally exhausted, dropped the gun to the ground beside his knees, and bent over, suddenly desperate to catch his breath.

_______________________________________________

“Are you okay?“ Emily’s voice asked from within his mind.

“Peachy,” The Detective said in return as he struggled to climb into a standing position. He returned the gun to its holster while simultaneously checking the inside of the coat for the journal he had come here for. It was still there. “You?”

“Getting shot really hurts.”

“That’s what they say.” With his left hand tightly gripping the guardrail, he stood up straight, allowing his back and legs to stretch as far as they could, noting that it didn’t seem like anything was broken. Bruised, cracked maybe, but not completely broken, everything seemed to at least work. “What did you expect it to feel like? A light tickle?”

“Jackass, I knew it would hurt. I just didn’t expect it to hurt that much just through a psychic connection. I could feel the bullet as if it was traveling through my own skin. It was awful.”

He released the rail; while still off balance and wobbly, he could at least stand up without support. “Sounds like it. Can you sense any more survivors on any of the floors?”

“No,” she replied, a solemn tone obvious within her voice. “The few who did have already made it outside; most of them are gathered in front of the building. Where did those two, Light and Dark, go?”

“No idea.” He took a step. No pain yet, but with the extraordinary amount of adrenaline pumping through his system, it would probably be a while before he felt the actual hurt. “Probably someplace to recover. Maybe back to The Agent’s tower. Did you get anything from them while you were inside her head.”

“Lots.”

“And?” he asked as he chained multiple steps together, readying himself for the fourteen flights of stairs waiting for him.

“It was horrible. They killed so many people tonight. Anyone who has or might have known about your release, anyone who has seen you, most of the people in this building. I saw each and every death, as if I was there.”

He reached the stairs and bent his left knee to step down. It was extremely stiff, only managing to bend after making a horrible snapping sound. He figured he was really going to feel that one later. “You weren’t in control of her for that long; how could you have seen that much?”

She sighed. “It wasn’t necessarily the time I spent in control of her as much as it was the time I spent trying to actually get in. I had to break through her defenses, and in the process of doing that, all of her recent memories came flooding into me.”

“Sounds complicated,” he replied after making it down the first flight. Only thirteen more to go. The smell of smoke had grown throughout the stairwell, and he knew the fire was spreading faster, taking more and more of the structure with it along the way. “Oh yeah, before I forget, thanks.”

It was as if he could hear her smile from inside of his mind. “I did good, didn’t I?” she said, the solemn tone replaced by the sound of self satisfaction.

“You did.” The steps became easier and easier with every one he took. He was still stiff, still cracking and popping in strange ways, but he was moving slightly faster than he expected he should be able to. “She had me dead to rights. I owe you one.”

“Consider us even.”

“Not yet,” he said, trying to remember if he had saved her life at any point in this. “Far as I can tell, the score is you one and me zero.”

She paused for the briefest of moments. “You saved my life just by coming back.”

It was his turn to hesitate before speaking. How had him coming back saved her life? What had he done other than retrieve what may or may not be a useless journal, the last will and testament of a suicidal man who wanted The Seven dead? The Detective had no answers to any of these questions, but he always had a smart ass comment available at a moment’s notice.

“Well, ain’t I just the goddamn hero in this piece.”

The solemn tone returned to her pretty voice. “You are, Detective. You just don’t know it yet.”

“If I am,” he said, seeing the sign for the seventh floor. Halfway there. “I sure as hell don’t feel like it right now.”