Kingdom of Heroes (33 page)

She stayed silent for a few moments, allowing him the opportunity to climb down two more flights without any interruptions. His movements seemed faster, smoother, easier. Maybe he wasn’t as hurt as he thought he was. Or maybe he was just pissed off. Not only at The Agent and his assassin duo, but at himself, angry for giving up when everything seemed the darkest. It could have been her power, he tried to convince himself. Maybe, just maybe, her ability to dull the senses affected him. It was obvious that was why he couldn’t pull the trigger until Emily was in control of her body, but it wasn’t the obvious reason of why he just sat there, allowing her the opportunity to take his life. Quitting had never been something he did, and it didn’t make sense to him why he would do it then.

“I’m sure it was her power,” the female voice said from within his head. “I saw the things she could do; she could just make people lay down in front of her while she killed them. Her influence is extraordinary.”

He passed the sign for the third floor. “You sound impressed.”

“Not impressed, per se, just in awe of the way she can control her abilities. I have no such control.”

“You seemed to be doing pretty good from where I stood.”

She chuckled. It wasn’t a funny laugh as much as it was an uncomfortable one. “You didn’t see my nose bleeding while I was inside of her or how much I cried after you shot her.”

“You cried?”

“Like a baby.”

He passed the sign for the second floor, then finished off the last flight in record time. He reached the door that led to the lobby and opened it, revealing a room filled with smoke. The fire was spreading even faster than he thought it had. Instead of heading toward the front doors, he made his way through the haze to the elevator.

“Where are you going?” Emily asked from his thoughts.

“Nowhere,” he answered as he pushed the button marked with an arrow facing up. After a few seconds, the bell dinged, and the door opened. The Detective, surprised the damn thing was still working, bent down and retrieved his hat from the elevator floor. He returned it to his head and headed for the door.

“Your hat?” she asked in a tone that seemed half annoyed and half amused.

“Can’t look cool without my hat,” he said as he walked toward the front doors. He stopped just short of opening them and looked toward the corner for the surveillance camera. He found it, just above the door that led to the stairwell, the red light in its lens burning at a steady pace. The Detective looked up at it and tipped his hat. “Be seeing you soon,” he said just before turning toward the front doors, opening them, and stepping out into the still pouring rain.

_______________________________________________

Journal Entry

[Found on page 62]

Note: The following is a transcription of a video found on Rogers’ computer, recorded several years ago post-war. It shows Rogers in his study, talking to Grant, his lawyer/ personal assistant/ personal ass kisser.

The Agent: Did we receive the results.

Grant: Yes, sir.

Agent: And Fire?

Grant: She has no idea that we know.

Agent: The doctor who did the testing, how did you persuade him to share?

Grant: Bribery this time, sir. I thought I would change things up a bit. (Grant hands The Agent a file).

Agent: (opening the file and going through the contents) A level six telepath, and here Fire would have me believe her little sister to be nothing more than a simple empath.

Grant: Level six for the moment, sir. If you go through the doctor’s notes, you can see that he actually measured her power at a much higher level, a level nine to be exact, but Fire’s attempts to keep her sister’s telepathy hidden and the girl’s fear of her own power have resulted in the girl building blocks around her ability, psychically inhibiting her ability’s growth.

Agent: And if these barriers were to break?

Grant: She would be on par with the most powerful psychics in the country, maybe even comparable to Psychosis himself. Would you have me bring her in for your recruitment program?

Agent: No, Grant. Let Fire believe she has me fooled. We’ll just keep this bit of information to ourselves until the need arises to use it.

(End video)

_______________________________________________

The Detective stood in the rain and leaned up against the truck, allowing the falling water to wash the blood and failure from his face. All of the people who had gathered in front of the building were gone by the time he came out, which he deemed a pretty good idea. After all, they were the real targets here, not him. The farther they were away from this place, the better. He thought about the woman with the child, the one he managed to rescue from the burning apartment. He hoped she and her child were safe. It was nice to think that he had actually managed to save someone in all of this.

The top half of the building was engulfed in flames, yet there wasn’t a fire truck or rescue vehicle in sight. Not that he really expected there to be one. This was The Agent cleaning up a mess; he wanted these people dead and all the evidence removed. Why would he send someone to put out the fire he had his people set?

It was almost eleven at night; storm clouds and the smoke from the fire blocked out any chance of seeing a star or the moon, giving the night a much lonelier feel than it would of normally had. Everything he saw had a feeling of finality to it, as if this would be his last storm, his last rainfall, his last burning twenty story apartment building. Well, the building fire was actually a first and a last all rolled into a nice neat package.

That was probably the reason he longed to see the stars and the moon. He hated to think that the last time he would ever see either of them was while standing nude in The Ice Queen’s bedroom window, watching her roll around in the bed, her too without clothes, beckoning him to come back and join her.

“Well,” Emily said, returning to her post as an apparition standing beside him, the rain still falling through her just as strangely as it had been earlier. “That was quite the series of images.”

“I warned you about my stray thoughts,” he replied, his head bent down by the driver’s side window, rain dripping off of his hat and landing on his soaked face. Blood from his shoulder mixed with the rain that fell from his body, combining into a bloody stream at his feet. “It’s dangerous in my head. I have my demons.”

“Aren’t you just the master of the understatement.”

“I try,” he said, trying his best to find a smile. At the moment, it just wasn’t there. He turned his head and looked at her; not as he had earlier, this time he took a good hard, deep, lingering look. He realized she was probably the last pretty girl he was ever going to see, and he wanted to take in her every feature, her every detail, every little perfection, every little flaw, her beautiful black hair, her full lips, the way the tip of her nose was ever so slight tipped up, her pale, almost flawless skin, the little patches of freckles, her large brown eyes, that, even as an overactive figment of his imagination, seemed to look through him.

He soaked her in as a thirsty man in the desert would drink from a found oasis. He wanted to take in every little drop of her, to preserve her forever in his memories, however short amount of time forever was going to be. He knew he couldn’t afford to waste anything to a simple glance; he had to take the opportunity to imbed her into his mind, into his thoughts. If she was truly the last woman he was ever going to see, he was so glad she was as beautiful as she was.

“What next,” she asked, interrupting his thoughts.

He lowered his head back towards the ground, back to the stream of blood beneath his feet. “I was trying to stare at you.”

“I noticed.” She smiled. “Remember, I see what you see.”

“I’m tired.” The rain around him splashed against the water logged road. “I’m tired of fighting, but I couldn’t live with myself if I stopped.”

“You could run.”

“Where?” he replied. “Trust me, if The Agent wanted me dead, I’d be dead already. He needs me alive. That’s why he called off his monochromatic hit squad. He needs me alive for some reason; he needs me to pay him a visit, and now, I really want to know why.”

Lightning flashed in the sky, and thunder rumbled barely a second behind the strike. The Detective took it as a sign that he should probably seek shelter from the storm raging around him. He opened the truck’s door, and he climbed inside, silently wondering what all of the water dripping from him was going to do to the truck's interior. Oh well, he thought to himself, it wasn’t like it was actually his truck. The image Emily projected into his mind was sitting on the seat beside him, just waiting his arrival.

“He’s going to kill you,” she said, her voice suddenly filled with sadness. “If you go there, he’s going to kill you.”

“Most likely, he will. And if I don’t go, he’ll still find a way to kill me. Either way, I’m probably dead.”

“There has to be another solution, something else we can do,” she said in a tone that was both genuine and overwhelmingly heartfelt, as if she really wanted to find a way for him to come out of this alive, a way he could no longer see.

“If I knew, beautiful, I would tell you.” He remembered what he had come here for in the first place. He reached inside his coat and pulled Adam’s journal from the pocket therein. Somehow, the book had remained dry throughout the rain that had soaked him.

“Maybe,” she began as she looked down at the journal, “maybe there’s something in there that could help. Maybe Adam knew of a way to kill The Agent.”

The Detective smiled at her, giving her a look that combined a mixture of pity and understanding. “I think if he knew of a way, The Agent would already be dead. Adam’s been working his way around his ‘father.’ If he had known of a sure fire, no questions asked method to kill Rogers, I’m sure that would have been his first stop.”

“Unless,” she replied, “he was saving his most emotional kill for the end.”

The Detective suddenly felt in his element, getting to play the part of the investigator one last time. “His first kill had to be Barren. Killing him was the only way to attain the Iron Knight suit, and without the armor, despite his ability to control machines, he wouldn’t have stood a snowball’s chance on a hot day in Hell against any of the rest. Barren was basically a normal for all intents and purposes, killing him was no doubt the easiest.”

She nodded.

“From there, he moved on through the list, going from the weakest to the strongest. North was next. His speed was no match against the suit’s power. Your sister-” He could see her cringe the moment he said the word “sister.” “---seemed to be the most emotional task for him so far. Whatever he had felt for you and her seemed to have lingered. He let her live, but he still had to send her a message, to send them all a message of how far he was willing to take all of this.”

“But Pammy’s power level was immense,” she said in return. “There’s no way she would have been on the weaker list.”

“Barren’s armor, I’m sure, probably contained some type of anti-fire protection, but I still believe Fire managed to do some kind of damage. Notice the amount of time between each attack. I believe Adam has had to allow the armor time to repair before he could move on to the next target.”

“Makes sense, I guess.” Emily looked at him, her face emotionally blank, yet he could tell she was paying attention. “So after Pammy, he went after Quincy and Hope, and Gabby, she was what, just in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

He shook his head back and forth. “No. I think Adam knew exactly what he was doing. He managed to get Ice up there, away from all of the others, and he managed to get her there after he killed the corpse and his girlfriend. It was all about timing, all about managing to catch each of them in a one-on-one situation. Together, they were The Seven, the greatest group of supers ever assembled, unstoppable as long as they were united. Apart, they were vulnerable, susceptible, exposed, and he knew that. I give him complete credit for being the first one to come up with and execute a viable plan to rid the world of the scum---”

The image of Emily glared at him from the passenger seat.

“Fire excluded, of course,” he added in an apologetic tone.

“Of course.”

“But,” The Detective continued, turning his head away from Emily and toward the window on his left, staring at the burning building through the still falling rain, “I still believe if he had a plan to stop Rogers, that would have been his second stop after Barren. I think he, like the rest of the world, has yet to figure out a way to stop The Agent.”

“And how do you fit into all of this?” she asked, causing him to turn away from the flames and back towards her. “Why does The Agent need you to come to him so bad?”

“No idea,” he answered, truly realizing, for the first time, that he had no idea what his role in all of this was. Twenty four hours ago, when he was riding in Ice’s little two seater, on their way to Barren’s crime scene, he thought he knew; he thought he had a purpose in all of this. Now, he realized just how wrong he had been. “I don’t know why he released me. I don’t know why he sent me out with Ice to find the killer; besides, I’m sure he knew Adam was in Barren’s armor all along.”

“How---” she started to ask before he interrupted.

“Rogers has cameras everywhere, surveillance of every city, every corner, every building, every home. No one in this country farts without him knowing the scent and how long it lasted. How could Adam have taken the time to do this---” The Detective reached down and held up the journal. “---without The Agent knowing about it. It would have been virtually impossible. No, he knew, and that leads to my most important question. Why did he need me? Why did he release me just to follow Ice around like a dog on a chain? Why would he send me a teleporter when Ice abandoned me at the hospital? Did he know I would use the little bastard to send me back into the shit? And why in the hell does he need me to come to him so bad that he would call off his best killers when they had me dead?”

She smiled at him, her seeming permanent smile that was more out of sadness and melancholy than any kind of joy. “You have to know, don’t you? Even if it kills you?”

“Gotta go somehow,” he said, trying his best to muster a smile or any other kind of facial expression, only to fail miserably. “Might as well go out doing what I love.”

A quizzical looked covered her face. “And what exactly is that, getting answers?”

“No,” he replied, “being a nuisance.”

“So you’re willing to die just to annoy The Agent? Does that sound like a good reason to you?”

“As good of a reason as any other.” He reached over and turned the truck’s ignition; it cranked to life. He looked out the window. The fire continued to ravage the apartment building; the top half of the building was now engulfed with flames, taking with it Adam’s body along with any and all evidence The Detective had ever sat foot inside. He had to admit it, The Agent knew how to clean up his messes. But, he realized, one mess remained, and two other people who had encountered him in the past twenty four hours were still alive, viable witnesses to the whole damn mess. And it suddenly occurred to him that they shouldn’t be.

If he had been in The Agent’s predicament, Emily and her sister would have been amongst the first removed from the situation. A public figure, a former member of the administration whose life had been saved by the same man he was trying to keep hidden, what if she woke up and told someone? Who was there to keep her quiet?

And then it occurred to him, all at once, rushing through his thoughts a thousand miles a minute, so many answers, so little time. Why had Emily tried so hard to keep him from making that right turn? He had no chance against The Agent; how did his coming back save her and her sister from The Agent? Why did she keep saying that he had already saved her life?

“I’m sorry,” Emily said from his thoughts, already knowing what he was going to say before the words escaped his lips.

“You made a deal?” The Detective asked, his tone neither angry nor accusative, just blank, emotionless. The image that had sat beside him left without warning, leaving him with just her voice within his head.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. He could tell without seeing her that, wherever she was, she was on the verge of tears. “I’m so sorry.”

“You made a deal to save you and your sister?” He shook his head back and forth, wondering how he could be this stupid. The pretty ones always managed to catch him off guard. “What did you have to give him?”

“You,” she answered as the sound of her crying filled his thoughts. “He needed you to come back to his tower. If I could get you here, he would let me and Gabby live. That was the deal. I promise.”

He rubbed his now throbbing forehead. Her emotions seemed to make her abilities stronger, and he could feel her pounding inside of his skull. “And the little pit-stop here? Just for kicks and giggles?”

“I remembered Adam’s message; I really thought there could be something in there, something that could save us.”

“Us?” he asked, still rubbing his forehead. “I thought you made a deal.”

She chuckled. Not an amused laugh, it was more of the nervous variety. “I’m not stupid, Detective. The deal I made won't hold up anymore than your deal with him will. It’s like you said earlier, if The Agent wants you dead, you’ll be dead. I was hoping, maybe even praying, you would find something in there that could possibly help us all survive this.”

“And if I can’t?” he asked, still not angry as much as confused. “What happens then?”

“You die; I die; my sister and her babies die. And The Agent gets everything he wants.”

Something occurred to him again, something that he, like an idiot, had completely missed. How had she managed to help him by invading the mind of a trained killer, not to mention all of the crying and bleeding that had accompanied the event, while taking care of two small children?

“Where are you right now?” he asked, knowing the answer before the question had truly been asked.

A second or two of silence passed by, leaving him to wonder if she had left his mind rather than provide him with a response. But then, with a sudden jolt of pain throughout his skull, she spoke. “I’m in his tower, on the floor just beneath his living quarters.”

“Are you safe?” he asked, suddenly more concerned for her safety than he was about anything else.

“I am,” she answered. “He had me taken from the hospital, and he said he would kill me immediately if I couldn’t convince you to return to the city. You saved my life for a little while just by coming back.”

“Yay me,” he said, his voice flat. “Now what?”

“Whether you know it or not, Detective, you’re a hero. You can’t help but try and save the girl then kick the bad guy’s ass. It’s all you know.”

He reached down, grabbed the gear shift, and placed the truck in gear. “Goddamn it,” he said as the truck began to move. “I really hate it when I’m so fucking predictable.” He glanced to his left, giving one last look to the building burning in the rain, and he began to drive the truck toward The Agent’s tower.

_______________________________________________

_

_

_

APPROXIMATE FLIGHT TIME LEFT BEFORE ARRIVAL IN METRO CITY: 43 MINUTES

_

_

_

SCAN CITY FOR TRACKING DEVICE

_

_

_

DEVICE FOUND: TRAVELLING IN VEHICLE THROUGH DOWNTOWN METRO CITY

_

_

_

SCAN FOR COMMUNICATION DEVICE IN VEHICLE

_

_

_

SCAN COMPLETE: DEVICE CATEGORY CELLPHONE FOUND. DEVICE NUMBER: 555-0638

_

_

_

DIAL NUMBER?: Y/N

_

_

_

_______________________________________________

The Detective was tired, wet, and bleeding profusely from the hole in his shoulder. His right knee continued to pop and crack in strange and exciting ways. His adrenaline was still too high; he couldn’t feel the pain…yet, but he knew it would be there before long. The pain always managed to show up. And he had a pretty girl in his head giving him directions for the fastest way to a despot’s private tower. All in all, everything was par for the course, just the usual old day.

“Really?” Emily asked from his thoughts. “This is your usual day?”

“Pretty much,” he answered as he tried his best to see through the rain soaked windshield. The storm’s intensity had increased; it took everything he had to keep the winds from blowing the truck out of the road. “I’ve never been what you would call ‘normal.’”

“No kidding,” she added. “Make a left at the next light. That’ll take you straight into downtown.”

“Yes ma’am,” he said in return, suddenly not sure if he could even see a street light through the windshield. The wipers tried in vain to keep up, but he knew it was a losing battle. “Are you still safe?”

“Yes. The Agent has me on the floor beneath his living area. Apparently, his whole penthouse is designed to be telepathic proof, so he had me held here. That way I would be free to contact you, moving you into place for him.”

“Like pieces on a chessboard. Does that make me a pawn?”