A Once Crowded Sky (36 page)

Pen looks away from Soldier and looks up at Prophetier, the sky behind him now crowded with the colors of a new day.

“You’re the hero, Pen.” Prophetier smiles wide. “Save us.”

Then a yell from outside the circle, it’s not clear from whom, but the voice is loud, strong, and is followed by another voice, equally loud and equally strong, and then another and another.

. . . Pen, boy, Pen, he’s right, you’ve got to get going, kid, it’s time, Pen, there’s not much time, you’ve got to do it, we’re counting on you, Pen, we could all be killed, Pen, we’ve got to get fighting, Pen, do it, son, do good, stop messing around, save us, Pen, save us, please, please, get it together, for Christ’s sake, Pen, you’re doing this for us, Pen, for us, Pen, for us, for him . . .

The voices keep going, each agreeing with the next, encouraging Pen to overcome these distractions and stop worrying, to turn around and approach the light, throw himself upon it, and let his body burn, shed, sweep away, ash into the breeze.

In front of Pen, Soldier arches his neck, picks his head off the ground. As always, his face is hard, resolute; his eyes retain their aggressive blue, the unadulterated blue you’d actually want in the eyes of your hero. As always, he speaks plainly.

“Don’t,” Soldier says, and his eyes shut. His neck seems to give in, and he falls back into the dirt.

Panic—and Pen glares over his shoulder at the flower of light. How it dims in the light of the rising sun. The shouting, people he’s known forever urging Pen to move and move now. It scares them. It could strike at any time. It got control of Ultimate. Wait too long and the threat comes back.

Every man’s life, the life of the world. What was one man next to that? One sidekick? Nothing. From the beginning. When Ultimate first came to him, isn’t that what he’d said? That the boy meant nothing now, that now he could do good. It was something like that.

Pen looks back at Soldier, squeezes Soldier’s hand; it’s so frail, used, and Pen doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know how to play this game. Prophetier’s still yelling. They’re all still yelling. And there must be a solution. And Ultimate’s voice comes to him. Urging him to find the solution. And Pen doesn’t know what to do, and he looks back to the light.

Again images curl out of The Blue. There’s Ultimate, but he’s not flying. The Man With The Metal Face is hunched over a table, and there’s blood on the table, a bloodied body lying still on the table, and The Man With The Metal Face is staring down at the body, a boy’s body, and Ultimate’s trembling, and it’s the first time Pen’s ever seen him tremble, and Pen lets go of Soldier; he stands and steps toward The Blue.

Ultimate straightens and stares out of the light. His eyes meet Pen’s eyes; the familiar whirl and click of Ultimate’s pupils opening and closing. Inside The Blue, Ultimate puts his fingers to his chest, digs his metal fingers into his metal chest, and he pulls and pulls, ripping open a hole, an open wound from which hang strands of colored wires. Without hesitation Ultimate reaches into the hole in his own chest and removes a heart, a metal, beating heart.

The tremble becomes a quake; Ultimate appears to cave into himself. But still he holds on to his heart, clutching down hard as his body twitches out of control. Pen, of course, notices the eyes, how they’ve already lost that whirl and click, and Pen knows that at the center of the light Ultimate is dying.

Ultimate again bends over the table, and using his free hand, he reaches down into the bloody body lying there, and he removes a bloody, beating heart. A sudden spasm pulses through Ultimate, and he rides it, a heart held tight in both of his fists, one made of metal the other of flesh. Then for a moment he calms, seems to freeze, to die, to transform from
the great robot into a noble, idle statue. But only for a moment. Ultimate jerks awake and thrusts one hand back into the body on the table, one hand back into his own chest; he makes the exchange, places his own metal heart into the boy and boy’s bloody heart into himself.

And the boy moves, lives, gasps for breath, and Ultimate falls to his knees, still trembling but moving, living. The camera swings up, and Pen recognizes the boy on the table, and Pen fingers the long scar that runs down his chest, that has run down his chest since that day Ultimate beat into him, that adventurous day when Ultimate took Pen back to the metal room and saved him, as if he were saving the whole world.

Pen’s heart for his. A trade. Ultimate’s metal healing Pen’s heart, while Ultimate’s heart healed Pen’s flesh. All those years, The Man With The Metal Face fought with Pen’s heart pumping inside him; all those years, Pen lived with Ultimate’s heart pumping inside him. And Pen had never known. Ultimate didn’t say things. He wasn’t like that. He didn’t like stories.

A metal heart. In Proph’s book, Ultimate told Star-Knight that if Pen had said yes, if Pen had shown up, Ultimate knew Pen would die. Without power, the metal heart inside of Pen would have stopped, the way it stopped in the cat, the dead metal cat Ultimate left to Pen. Before he sacrificed himself, Ultimate let Pen make his decision, let Pen choose life.

But that was before. Before the funeral, the threat, the people saved. Before Pen fought beside Soldier. Before he fought to save Anna. Before he saw Ultimate in The Blue watching Pen today, The Man With The Metal Face watching and smiling that knowing smile, an acknowledgment that one day Pen would finally understand.

My blood is yours. Your blood is mine. You are me. I am you. We are the hero.

Pen feels Ultimate’s metal glow hot inside him, and he steps closer to The Blue, because he’s different now. He’s changed.

In the light, Pen sees Ultimate again smiling, smiling right at him, waiting for him, and Pen wants to make a joke about following his heart, but no one’s near enough to hear. He reaches out his hand, tries to touch the metal man. The skin at the tips of his fingers simmers. The story spirals around his forearm, plucking at his skin, peeling each layer of Pen red as it travels upward and onward. The pain is intense but familiar, and it comforts him.

Soldier watches the boy through half-shut eyelids. There’s still some hope left, a thin prayer of effort and energy, and Soldier expends it best he can, propelling himself up for a second, stretching out toward Pen.

But then old knees do what old knees do, and he falls. Soldier curses them, curses his whole body, his weakness, his age, the wars, and all the rest of it.

Prophetier watches Soldier falter. Soon none of it will matter. This has been the plan. Since the very beginning. Prophetier has renewed a hero, herded a crowd of the most powerful heroes the world had known, felled a great villain, brought off a beautiful climax beautifully. This is his triumph, and it’s lovely. It will be lovely. The stories will be lovely.

A scream—motion at the edge of his vision, and Prophetier turns. No.

“What are you doing?” Prophetier shouts out at Pen, but he can’t be heard over the younger man’s yelps of pain as Pen backs away from the light, clutching his smoldering arm.

The crowd seems to gasp collectively, though it’s really only a few people who are able to react. The rest remain silently stunned, cramped between pity for the boy and what they just had only a moment prior: being close to it, coming back to it.

Pen scratches at his arm, and crusted black skin flakes off. A cry shoots through him, and Pen gags, pukes on himself—bits of orange and yellow ooze onto his shirt and pants, and he lifts his arm, tries to keep the bile from the hurt.

Prophetier’s hand is again at Pen’s neck. There’s a scream in Pen’s ear. And there are shouts from others. But it’s easy to ignore them all; the pain’s so much louder than their poor voices.

Pen throws back a hand—he doesn’t know how hard—and breaks Prophetier’s hold. He tries a few staggered steps and trips. The world surges brown, and the sky slips to the right; and Pen too falls, lands only a few feet from Soldier.

Prophetier follows Pen down, continuing to squeal into his ear. “What are you doing? Go back. You’ve got to go back. Do you hear me? Now, Pen! Now!”

Pen peers into Prophetier’s face, the sunken eyes that beg him to do his duty and save the world one more time.

“No,” Pen says, and he sinks a little farther into the graves below.

Prophetier’s pulse rises, but he resists panicking. But he knows. This
is different. Pen should burn, he should burn bright like the stars. That’s how the story ends. Prophetier needs to act, but he doesn’t know how, and then another figure in the field moves, rises from the dirt.

Soldier crawls toward Pen. He’s not sure what he’ll do when he gets there, but he’ll do something. There’s something to do now.

“Get away!” Prophetier shouts. “Get away from him!”

But Soldier doesn’t care, and he crawls, and he reaches the boy. “Good,” Soldier says. “Good.”

Prophetier plunges forward and shoves his hand into Soldier’s face, forcing the older man back. “Don’t be fooled,” Prophetier says, addressing Pen, “not by this traitor’s stories.”

“I don’t know what he’s saying.” Soldier’s voice is low and weak. “But we can do this without you dying. Without powers. We can end it. We can beat it and end it. I swear, PenUltimate. I swear.”

“Shut your goddamn mouth!” Prophetier yells as he kicks Soldier in the head, rolling the old man back into the graves. Prophetier bends down, again whispers into Pen’s ear. “Don’t listen to that. Just remember the lesson, what you learned. We all come back.”

There was a long ago when Prophetier was alone. Then he found The Blue, found the stories, wrote them, walked among them, emerged strong and unafraid like all the great heroes living inside all the great myths.

“Remember your wife,” Prophetier says. “She’s still alive, and you need to save her. You need to save all of us.”

And then Prophetier’s stories were gone, but they were gone as they were supposed to be gone, for a reason, as it was shown to him in The Blue: they were gone to bring this boy to this field and have him die and have him be redeemed. You have to be gone to come back.

“You save us, Pen. Get up and save us.”

Prophetier waits, and the crowd waits with him. It’s Pen’s sacrifice, but it’s their story. Finally, an explanation for their suffering, for their actions over the past year. It’s been too long. It’s about damn time.

“Get up, Pen. Get up.”

Soldier’s close to Pen now, inches away. The rank of the boy’s burnt arm is in his nostrils. Soldier looks to the light, sees an image of a young boy leading a charge, running into the blast of guns, and Soldier pushes his face into the ground, trying to mask the smell, bust up the vision.

Something’s waiting at the edge of Soldier, at the weak parts of the man; something’s waiting to tunnel into him, flood him, soak into every good part of what’s now left. It’s got something to do with the wars, and it’s got something to do with Pen, and it aims to overwhelm Soldier, drown him.

He does his best to push it off, to keep what’s coming at bay a while longer so maybe he can be of use, make a good decision for once in his godforsaken life. But it’s a powerful force, and it’s coming strong, and he can see that the walls are leaking and the roof’s starting to slouch. No, there ain’t much time left now before it’ll be coming down good and hard.

So with all he’s got left, Soldier looks to Pen, who’s got the power to ruin everything, and Soldier tries to think of some advice to give the kid, something to say that’s worth a damn at a time like this.

No words come to him that might give comfort. You live so much, you expect to learn some, but sometimes you don’t. Sometimes it all goes by, and you walk away same as you came.

As the barriers inside him give and something wet and cruel plows into the old soldier, all he can think to say is that it’s probably best not to go down on your knees. Whatever’s coming, it’s probably better to face it with a straight back and a keen eye. That way when it hits you and you fall, at least you can say you tried.

Soldier opens his mouth to tell Pen this last piece, this final, feeble moral, but it’s too late, and the hurt that’s coming now comes, and his eyes shrink back into his skull, and his head slacks forward; tears stream down Soldier’s face, dropping to the dirt.

He didn’t have time to say it. It came too fast. He didn’t have time to tell the boy to get up. Get the hell off the ground.

The sun comes out a little farther over the Villains’ Graveyard, and the blue light of the story dims. The wind that curls around the graves teases a few degrees warmer, but no one really notices. As dawn passes, the heroes are as silent as the trees that mark the cemetery’s outline, growing around them in long and intersecting horizontal and vertical columns, forming a tight square around the entire picture.

Pen stands. He looks to the light. He looks to the crowd, to the sky, to the ground, to the stone markers, to the walls of green around him. He runs, and as he runs, he wonders at the power in his legs, at the strings of
metal that Ultimate has sewn there that allow him to get so far so fast that the scene behind him can so rapidly recede into the background, become a vague line penciled across the rising sun.

He’s so fast he doesn’t hear the call of someone from the crowd or maybe inside the circle that tries to chase after him. Probably, he’s glad not to hear it.

“Where are you going, PenUltimate? Where are you running to?”