Kingdom of Heroes (19 page)

“
Forgive me,
” the machine replied as it aimed both of its wrist guns at him and began to fire, “
if I don’t believe you.
”

Oh well, The Detective thought to himself as he dove past the newest wave of bullets being fired in his general vicinity, so much for the honest approach.

The Detective watched as the Iron Knight armor flew hundreds of feet into the air, where it stayed, staring down at him and the red haired woman with metal skin.

“Is he always this homicidal or is this something new?” The Detective asked the woman he assumed was Metal Girl.

She lowered her head away from the sky and looked at him. “Who exactly are you?”

“Me?” The Detective answered. “I’m nobody.”

Before she could say anything in return, the mechanized battle armor flew down from the sky and slammed into Metal Girl, sending her flying across the estate. She landed hard against a patch of trees which stood on the edge of the forest, ripping several of them in half as she tore through. The armor landed, turned back towards The Detective, and fired more bullets which barely missed their intended target.

The Detective wound up on all fours next to the badly damaged house. He scurried to his feet, placing his back against the wall facing away from the armor. He moved his head around the corner and looked at the man trying to kill him. “I wasn’t lying,” he yelled. “I’m just here for Ice. You can do whatever the fuck you want with the rest of them.”

With a slow pace, the machine walked towards him. “
She is one of them; she has to die as well.
”

“Well, there’s the rub, I guess,” The Detective replied. “You see, I need her alive for a while until I can get some answers.”

“
She will not tell you the truth.
” The armor continued walking toward the house. “
The Seven never tell the truth. They take anything and everything within their reach, killing, destroying, without repercussion, without penalty, and no one has been able to stop them, until now.
”

“I understand your pain there, chief,” The Detective answered as he took the gun from his coat and pulled it up next to his chest, completely unsure what good a pistol was going to do against this metal behemoth. At least it made him feel better for a moment. “Once I ask my questions, you’re free to do with her whatever you wish.” The Detective was unsure if the last statement was a lie or not. Maybe he would help Ice fight; maybe he wouldn’t. It seemed to all came down to what she had to say for herself.

The Detective heard the sound of a female voice from behind the machine. He looked around the corner in time to see Metal Girl talking to nothing and nobody. “I’ll do what I can,” she said to no one in particular. Then, before The Iron Knight could react, she ran towards it, lowering her shoulder and ramming into it from behind. It landed a few hundred feet away.

Suddenly, as a disembodied voice spoke inside of his head, The Detective realized who she had been talking to. “Hope has provided you with a distraction. Now hurry into the house; I have need of your assistance.”

“Please go quickly,” Metal Girl said, turning towards The Detective with a look of desperation covering her metallic face. “Steven needs you.”

“Where is he?” The Detective asked, not really wanting to help but filled with a mixture of curiosity and a desire to get himself out of the middle of this two person fight.

“Upstairs,” she answered.

He turned to his right and made a hard dash for the door located at the other end of the wall.

_______________________________________________

Journal Entry

[Found on page 37]

Note: The following is a transcription of a video found on Barren’s computer, recorded from his penthouse. It was taped on the day Steven Quincy was shot through the spine by an assassin’s bullet during The Seven’s victory rally outside of the new capital building, just days after the end of the war.

(The recording begins with an empty apartment, but within a few seconds, Barren appears in the room, dragging Metal Girl into the room by her upper arm.)

Barren: Get your ass in here, young lady.

Metal Girl: (ripping her arm away from Barren) Let me go, and stop talking to me like I’m a damn kid.

Barren: You’re fucking eighteen years old. You are a damn kid. Now sit the hell down until I can figure out what to do with you.

Metal Girl: (yelling) Fuck you! I need to be at the hospital with Steven.

Barren: What you need to do is sit your ass on the couch until you calm the fuck down. You cannot, I repeat, cannot act like that in public anymore. We are in a precarious position here, trying to balance whatever peace we’ve achieved, and you cannot be at the hospital, threatening to kill the doctors if they don’t fix your boyfriend.

Metal Girl: (sitting on the leather couch, holding her face in her hands, tears pouring down her face) I need to be there. I need to be there for him. He would do the same for me.

Barren: (walking to the bar in the corner and making himself a drink) He’d probably leave you for dead then trade your ass in for some other prepubescent piece of tail.

Metal Girl: (yelling again) Fuck you, Anthony! You have no idea what you're fucking talking about.

Barren: (finishing off the drink and pouring another) I know you are way too young to be fooling around with a man his age. It’s just wrong.

Metal Girl: He loves me, and I love him. What the fuck is wrong with that?

Barren: (laughing) What the fuck is wrong with that? He’s a fucking psychopath. He kills people the way a normal person kill insects, without the first sign of remorse or guilt. Life and death don’t mean shit to him.

Metal Girl: And it fucking means something to you? I’ve seen you kill; you’re no fucking different than he is.

Barren: Yeah, I’ve killed. When I’ve had to or been ordered to, yeah, I’ve killed. But I tell you right now, I’ve never received any enjoyment or pleasure from taking another’s life. He’s a fucking monster who takes pleasure in killing, and if you can’t see that, then you’re blind. And I feel sorry for you.

(End video)

_______________________________________________

The house was, in The Detective’s estimation, totaled. The living room had been turned into a furnished pile of rubble, and water shot out from broken pipes in a room which had probably once been a kitchen. Bullet holes covered the walls, allowing miniscule amounts of sunrays to pepper themselves throughout the house. It amazed him to look at the many holes made from the armor’s guns, especially considering that many of those had been aimed at him. As far as he knew, they had all missed. He looked over his body, checking for blood or open wounds. There were none, for now.

He found the stairs near the back of the house. Outside, he could still hear Metal Girl and The Iron Knight trying to beat each other to death. He didn’t have much time to find out what in the hell the psychic wanted with him before the two of them tore through the rest of the house. He wasn’t even sure why he was doing this. The thought in his head was just so compelling, and it appealed to some long buried sense of curiosity or something like that. Maybe he was just running from the scrap taking place outside, or maybe there was something else persuading him to make the trip up the stairs.

He reached the top of the spiraling staircase. Enormous holes had been ripped across the upper levels, allowing huge patches of sunlight through. The second floor smelled vaguely reminiscent of a nursing home, a bad mix of old people and death. With his enhanced olfactory sense, it was almost enough to make him sick. He followed the smell down the long hallway, noticing it became more pungent the closer he came to the large bedroom at the end. The master suite, he assumed.

The Detective opened the double doors and walked in. Instead of a posh bedroom in a mansion, he found a hospital room, complete with air tanks, heart monitors, and an old man hooked to an IV, lying flat in a hospital bed with a oxygen mask strapped to his face. The man was skinny beyond belief, looking like a sack of bones wrapped in skin. The few hairs remaining on his head, there were at least seven left, were white as snow and appeared to be something one would find on an ancient corpse. The rest of his head, along with his neck and most of his face, were covered in large, brown age spots. The Detective’s first impression, with the smell and the old guy’s general condition, was that the guy was dead and had been so for at least a few days.

“Thank you for coming,” the voice in his head said.

“I take it this,” The Detective pointed to the body in the bed, “is you?”

“Yes, Detective, this is me,” the voice answered. “But while my physical body has become feeble and useless, my mind is just as strong, if not more so, than it ever was.”

The Detective looked around the room. “So this is the fate of the man once known as Psychosis: a paralyzed corpse calling out to people with his oh so great mental powers.”

“Yes Detective,” the voice answered, “this is the fate of the greatest mind of a generation, a man who once made entire armies quake in the knowledge of his presence.”

“It’s good to see your condition has taught you humility.”

“My condition,” the voice said in return, “has taught me nothing more than what a waste the human body has become and how pointless it truly is.”

The Detective smiled. “Said the man lying in his own feces and covered in bedsores.”

The voice in his head laughed. “That pathetic sack of skin, Detective, is nothing more than a vessel, a means to an end. It is not me. And I have outgrown it.”

“Oh well,” The Detective replied, looking down at the barely breathing old man in the bed. “Sucks to be you then. Cause, from the way I see it, you’re kind of stuck with the piece of shit body you’ve got.”

“Actually Detective, no, I’m not,” the voice said in a tone filled with arrogance. “I’ve spent the past decade trying to perfect a method of transferring my consciousness from this shell to another, one stronger, faster, one filled with the life I haven’t known since an assassin split my spinal cord into two separate pieces. And you, my dear Detective, as luck would have it, are currently in possession of a body that more than suits my needs.”

The Detective laughed loud and hard. “And you think I’m just going to hand my body over to you while I, just what, cease to exist?

“Yes, once I’m in possession of your form, you will, as you phrased it, ‘cease to exist,’ and I will possess your shell and whatever powers you may currently have, as well as my own.”

“Nice plan.” The Detective turned to walk out of the room, “But there’s a slight kink in the design. You see, I’m not going to just let you have my body.”

The voice laughed. “I’m afraid, my friend, that you have absolutely no choice in the matter.”

The Detective’s right arm moved against his will, stretching out towards the old man lying in the bed. The Detective grabbed his right wrist with his left hand and pulled the arm back towards his body. “What the fuck?”

“That, Detective, is what I can do,” the voice answered. “When I’m in your mind, as I am now, I can make you do whatever I need you to do, and once you touch my body, I will be able to complete the transfer, making what is now yours into mine.”

“What you can do is go fuck yourself---” Before he could finish his sentence, The Detective’s right arm shot out again, pulling him toward the old man’s sullen head. He tried to move his left arm, to use it to pull the other arm back, but it refused to move. His feet began to inch towards the bed, moving him ever closer to the dried out carcass.

“My dear Detective, please don’t waste either of our time by resisting; it is truly pointless.”

The Detective ignored the advice of the man who had invaded his thoughts, pulling back with every ounce of energy he could still muster, pulling with anything and everything he had left. Then, a pain ripped through his skull, a pain that made him feel as if a branding iron had been inserted directly into his brain. He heard screaming, but he wasn’t completely sure if it was him. It sounded like him; he assumed it was him, but the screams seemed to come from far away, like an echo from across a canyon.

“Just let yourself go, Detective, and there will be no more pain, no more suffering, no more anger, no more loneliness. Oh yes, the loneliness, I can see it all here in your thoughts, always solitary, always the man isolated from the rest. Even in a room full of people, you’re still alone, aren’t you? And the humor, the smart comments and funny one-liners, nothing more than the mask you wear to keep people from coming too close, the shield to protect you from the hurt. Then last night, you achieve a moment of satisfaction, a moment, somewhere inside your mind, you thought might lead to you becoming a man who wouldn’t have to wear the masks, who wouldn’t have to protect himself, but she betrayed you just like they all have, like they all will. Let go, Detective; let go, and you won’t have to fight these feelings anymore. You won’t have to deal with the agony of who you are, of what you have done, of what you couldn’t do. Just let go, Detective, and it will all be over.”

And then, with zero warning, The Detective was no longer in the master bedroom of a mansion, staring at the decayed body of a madman. Instead, it was fifteen years earlier. The Detective was still a rookie cop, walking a beat, wearing a uniform he never seemed to feel comfortable in. It was cold; he could feel below freezing wind against his face and neck, the only two areas of his body left uncovered. He looked around at the salvage yard where he stood, home to at least a hundred piles of junked out cars and trucks, each stack stretching thirty feet into the night sky. He remembered this place, and he remembered this January night well. This was not a pleasant memory, not in the least.