Kingdom of Heroes (25 page)

He shook his head back and forth; the movement made his head feel as if it was in the grasp of an invisible vise. But he couldn’t shake it off nor free himself from the sadness. It was there. As he stood there, staring at the now bloody clearing, the sadness remained, even if he couldn’t understand why.

Thunder rolled in the distance. He turned toward the smoke and flames that had once been a large house. He needed a way out of there. The teleporter who brought him here was dead, and since he couldn’t add flying to his short list of abilities, he needed transportation out of this place. To where, though, was a question he hadn’t quite answered yet.

But he knew the house had a driveway, and a driveway that had belonged to members of The Seven should have a car or two. So slowly, and eventually surely, he began to walk out of the clearing and back to the house burning in the distance.

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Journal Entry

[Found on page 52]

Note: The following is a transcription of a video found on Barren’s computer, recorded from what seems to be the capital building of California, located in Shore City. It was taped during the middle of the war, shortly before the Seven engineered my escape from The Hole.

(The video begins with four members of The Seven, The Agent, The Ice Queen, Psychosis, and Barren, standing in a room and having what appears to be a strategy session.)

Ice Queen: (in an excited tone) They have a fucking what?

The Agent: A cure, Ice, they found a cure.

Ice: They can take our powers away?

Barren: I saw it for myself. They gave The It a dose the other day. It was in a gas form; they sprayed it in his face. The rocks covering his body just disappeared; his skin turned back to normal flesh. Then they put a bullet in his skull.

Ice: If they can take our powers away, how the hell are we supposed to fight that?

Agent: We have a plan.

Barren: Ever heard of a technokinetic?

Ice: Someone with the power to control machines?

Barren: Not just control, they can become part of the machine, transferring their minds into the machine’s infrastructure, causing the machine to obey their every command.

Ice: They’re also rare as hell. We’re not talking a run of the mill telekinetic here.

Agent: We found one. Knight has done some searching for us. He’s currently being held in The Hole.

Ice: The Hole? You mean he’s a goddamn kid?

Barren: He’s the only one we could find.

Ice: Seriously, Agent, you’re prepared to throw a kid onto the battlefield?

Agent: As of right now, we have no other choice. The government is manufacturing the cure in several different inaccessible secure locations. Within a month, they will have enough on hand to use against all of us. This kid, this…what is his name, Knight?

Barren: Adam

Agent: This Adam could easily communicate with the machines making the cure, telling them to stop production, telling them to destroy the cure they have already made. This could forever turn the war in our favor.

Ice: It all sounds great on paper, but how are you going to turn a kid into a soldier? How are you going to convince him that he has to fight?

Agent: (walking to a window and looking out of it) Psychosis has a plan, but it is one that will require us all to take a step out of our comfort zone. It is a plan where we must all be willing to do what we have never done before.

(End video)

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The Detective found cars, several of them to be exact, each nicer than the last; all of them safely tucked away in a garage built separate from the mansion. Located about a hundred yards from the melee and destruction, the garage remained intact while the mansion burned. The Detective had found cars, but he couldn’t find keys. Despite being incarcerated in a maximum security prison for the past year and being considered one of the country’s greatest criminals, he had absolutely no idea how to “hot-wire” a car. The whole master criminal gig was kind of new to him.

Smoke and flames continued to billow from the ruin that had once been a house, and thunder continued to rumble in the now darkened sky. He could feel the occasional light rain drop fall on his skin. He walked from car to car, hoping that one might contain an ignition key. Seven cars, seven searches through each, looking inside the glove boxes, opening all of the visors, looking through every pocket that could possibly hold a key. Seven failures.

He walked around to the back of the garage, and there it sat, the answer to his unspoken prayers. An old, beat up truck sat behind the building, windows down, doors unlocked, keys in the ignition. He opened the door and climbed into the driver’s seat; it just needed to crank. He turned the key, and the engine rumbled to life. He sat there for a second, staring out the front windshield, still trying to take in everything that had just happened.

The mansion continued burning in the distance; just beyond the fire, in a clearing past the woods, black birds were probably finishing up what remained of The Ice Queen’s shattered corpse. Dark clouds loomed just behind him, gathering ominously in the truck’s rearview mirror, and all he could do was sit there, listening to the engine, absolutely and completely unsure of what to do next. Did he drive the truck as far as he could, taking himself out of this place, out of the city, the state, and somehow, the country? Or did he drive back to the city and hand the truck over to The Iron Knight, so he could ram it up The Agent’s ass?

“Why?” he asked himself out loud. What did he have to prove? He wasn’t a physical match for either The Agent or Adam, who had somehow managed to download his consciousness into The Iron Knight armor. So what could he do? Show up and be a cheerleader, root for the metal guy to take out the big strong guy? He would be playing right into Rogers’ hands; after all, the guy was obviously using him for something, and the more The Detective stayed involved, the deeper he got into all of this, the harder it would be to pull himself out. Wasn’t he smarter than that?

“Not really,” he said out loud to no one.

He looked in the mirror. His face was barely recognizable; bruises and cuts covered the majority of it, and the rest, well, the rest looked like a man who hadn’t slept in days. His shoulder hurt like a mother; his head throbbed from having a tree rammed into it, not to mention the mental mindfuck the psychic corpse had given him, and somewhere, deep inside, he still felt that one emotion, that one raw, nagging nerve boiling up from the internal pool of sewage he had once called his soul. Sadness. It was still there, and he didn’t like it.

Other than his face, the mirror showed him the clouds gathering in the distance. Whatever he decided, he was going to have to figure it out real soon because those clouds were about to bear down on him, and he had no plans on sitting next to all of this death and carnage while waiting out a storm.

Without making a decision either way, he shut the driver’s side door, placed the truck in gear, and pushed his foot against the gas pedal. Instead of heading toward the driveway and his eventual decision, he drove in the direction of the flaming house, moving the truck near the spot where he and the teleporter had materialized at just a few hours earlier.

He stopped the truck and got out. He walked a few yards towards the house and picked up his hat, which was lying exactly where it had been after he had dodged to avoid The Iron Knight’s gunfire. He placed the fedora back on his head, and despite suddenly feeling a little more like his old self, it wasn’t enough to placate the feeling of sadness nor the indecisiveness of his current situation. He took one last sniff of the air and the overwhelming stench of death contained within it, and he knew it was well past time to go.

The Detective climbed back in the truck, hat securely in place on his aching skull; he placed the truck back into gear and drove towards the driveway, which led through the woods and away from this place.

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Journal Entry

[Found on page 65]

Note: The following is a letter/ correspondence found on Rogers’ computer; it is apparently a communication between an insider within the government and a rebel group working against The Seven.

From: Red Hot

To: The Truth

Subject: Cameras

I am taking a great risk here to give you this information, but I feel it needs to be shared. The Agent is currently in the process of having a secret camera network built throughout the country. By the time he’s done, every street corner, every building, every home, every hallway will have a camera in or on it, a camera that will connect directly to The Agent’s tower. He and the private security team he is building will have access to our every move. We won’t be able to breath without him knowing about it. Something has to be done. I’m enclosing maps detailing the infrastructure plans for this project. God help us if this comes to fruition.

From: The Truth

To: Red Hot

Subject: Re: Cameras

Thanks for the information, but what exactly do you expect me to do with this? I can’t exactly take on The Seven by myself.

From: Red Hot

To: The Truth

Subject: Re: Re: Cameras

Asshole, you call yourself The Truth. You build websites about spreading reality and freeing the country from tyranny, but when I send you some actual usable intel, you act like you don’t know what to do with it. Get up off your ass, get some people together, send this information out to the masses, and rally this damn country so that they will stand up and fight this oppression. It has to start somewhere, and it has to start now. -Red Hot

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The Detective stopped the truck at the edge of the highway with two options in front of him: left or right. Never had there been a simpler choice that had seemed quite so hard. He could go right, north to the safety of another country’s border. If, that was, he could make it that far before being confronted by more of The Agent’s seemingly numerous hit-squads. Or he could go left, back towards Metro City, back to The Agent, back to The Iron Knight, back to the fight.

The drive to this point had been quite uneventful. Five minutes of driveway had led through thick, dense, old forest. The driveway eventually led to an old two lane road, and signs pointed him towards the highway, where, twenty minutes or so later, he now sat: tired, in pain, and beyond confused.

There was always right. Right always sounded good. North wasn’t bad either; north was cold, uneventful, safe. Three things that sounded really good to him at the moment.

To the left, there was the city. There was fighting, pain, the chance of being killed, or worse, being locked up again. There was no hope, no sanity, just more blood and anguish, nothing good could come from going left. But to the right, to the city, there were answers, and he needed answers. To know why he had been put through all of this, why he had been chosen for this particular exercise in futility, was something he thought he needed to know. Why him?

But---there was that damn word again---to the right, there was some kind of hope, a chance of escaping all of this with both his body and his sanity partially intact. No answers, but answers were always overrated; they never really gave the satisfaction he thought they would. Usually they just raised more questions than they ever solved. Right led away from all of this, away from the fighting, away from this screwed up situation that wasn’t of his making.

So what if Rogers’ sent a couple of hit-squads after him; it wouldn’t be the first time he had to avoid danger, and it wouldn’t be the last. But at least going right would make them have to find him; it wouldn’t be him willingly driving into the belly of the beast. It would be him giving himself a chance, giving himself some kind of hope, giving himself a greater chance of survival.

Left held answers; right, at the very least, held the chance of freedom. Left meant more pain, suffering, and probably a quick death by placing himself in between an angry robot and a power mad despot. He couldn’t think of a single damn thing that made going left worth it. But deep in his heart, he knew that was a lie.

There were several things that going left could provide: answers, reasons why, vengeance, the truth. There was nothing on the face of this planet he wanted more than to see Rogers get everything he had coming, seeing that would mean more to him than freedom and sanity combined. He still owed The Agent for the many scars littered across his back. He still owed The Agent for a few other things as well, and the memory of Angelica, after the little trip down memory lane Psychosis had granted him earlier in the day, was firmly planted at the forefront of his mind.

But right was safe; it gave him a chance to come out of all of this with his head still attached to his shoulders. Left held the chance for answers, the chance for vengeance, the opportunity to see someone pay for their crimes against him, their crimes against the nation. Right held hope; left held a sure death at best and imprisonment at the worst. Neither seemed quite appealing at the moment.