Kingdom of Heroes (46 page)

He broke himself away from her lips, leaving his just within touch of hers. “Out there, I’m going to be completely bled out in about two minutes. How long have we been in here?”

“About a minute,” she answered in a whisper, still sounding out of breath.

He kissed her again, just before taking his lips away. “How long will a minute be in here?”

“About…” she reached out for his lips only for him to deny her again, telling her without words that the kisses only come with answers. “About another twelve hours,” she finally answered.

“Then you’re right,” he replied, finally relenting and giving her the kiss she needed. “We do have more time.”

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The Detective stared at Emily as she looked back at him. Even though he was smiling at her from the other side of the bed, all he really wanted to do was lean into the pillow under his arm and shut his eyes. But he knew if he did, he would be shutting them for the last time. In this world built within their minds, almost twenty-four hours had passed by, and they had spent the majority of that time in the bed, taking only the occasional break to retrieve food or a bottle of wine from the seemingly always stocked table in the living area. He had tried to take a nap several times during that span, but she always found a reason or a way to keep him awake. But he knew that his time was running short, and as much as he didn’t want it to be, it was how it was. “I’m tired,” he said as he lowered his head to his pillow.

“No,” she said in a firm tone. “You just need some food or something to drink. Do not go asleep.”

He smiled at her. “Beautiful, we can’t put it off forever. How long has it been in the really real world?”

She frowned, her lovely brown eyes filling up with tears. “Almost two minutes.”

“It’s about time.”

Tears began to trickle down her cheeks. “I don’t want it to be.”

He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. “It can’t be helped. Besides, at the rate I was burning out my organs, I probably only had another four or five years left anyways.”

“We could have had those four or five years together,” she said as more tears began to fall. “I think I fell in love with you today.”

“I know,” he said, his voice weak and his eyes becoming harder and harder to hold open. “You remember what I told you to do?”

She nodded. “Yes,” she said as she cried. “I remember.”

“It’s okay,” he said as he leaned back into his pillow. “Even if they were all in my head, you still gave me the greatest twenty-four hours of my life. You gave me somebody to fight for, a reason to come back. I’m happy.”

She nuzzled herself against his chest; he could feel her tears against his skin. He hadn’t lied. He was happy. He had saved her; he had killed The Agent; the world outside was going to change; everything was going to be different, and it was partly thanks to him. He had gotten the chance to make the ultimate difference.

He was so tired. He leaned into his pillow and shut his eyes. He could still feel her against his chest as everything faded into darkness.

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Emily opened her tear filled eyes and looked at him. They were still on the elevator with at least another sixty floors left to go. She leaned into his face and kissed him gently on the lips. “Goodnight Detective,” she said as the tears rolled down her face.

She rose to her feet, trying her best to wipe away the tears only to find herself fighting a losing battle. She looked over at Peterson’s unconscious body and felt overcome by how much she despised the man, how much she hated him and everything he stood for, just another of the many nameless, faceless soldiers hired by men like The Agent to do their bidding, and at the end of this elevator ride, a hundred men just like Peterson anticipated her arrival.

They were all wearing their helmets, each of them protected from her powers, but she could still feel them, every single one of them. She shouldn’t have been able to; the protection built into the helmets should have made it impossible for her powers to work against them at all, and when she had been brought into the building earlier that day, the protection had worked. She hadn’t been able to feel anyone there but herself. But now, now things were different; she was different; everything was different.

She looked down at Peterson. It was so easy to get into his head, into his thoughts. There was no protection there at all. It was like making a hole in tissue, simple, effortless. She could have ripped his mind apart without blinking; it would have been so easy, and she would probably enjoy it as well. Tearing away his thoughts, his memories, everything that made him who he was, it was so tempting, just to shred his mind into tiny pieces, leaving him as nothing more than a husk, an empty shell, living but devoid of life. The thought of doing it was beyond enticing.

But The Detective had given her a plan to follow, and it was a good plan, a safe plan. She felt that she owed it to him, to his memory, to do it the way he thought was right. After all, he had tried so hard to keep her safe; she couldn’t risk throwing all of his actions away just to make herself feel better for the moment, but she couldn’t help but admit it was tempting.

“Wake up,” she spoke into Peterson’s mind. “And stand to your feet.”

He opened his eyes and stood up, slowly finding a standing position.

She looked up at the digital display above the door: twenty floors left to go. “Straighten yourself up,” she yelled into his mind. “You look like shit; your shirt’s untucked; your pants are uneven; you look like you’ve been unconscious all night.”

Peterson began following her orders, fixing his clothes, smoothing down his hair, doing what she had told him to do and making himself presentable.

“That’s somewhat better.” She positioned herself so she was next to him, placing his left hand around her upper right arm, so he could lead her out as his “prisoner.”

She looked down. The Detective’s fedora still laid in the floor next to his body. She bent down, picked it and the journal up, and clutched them both against her chest with her free left hand.

Five floors left.

Four.

Three.

Two.

She took a deep breath and silently, both mentally and physically, prepared herself for what she was about to do. She really hoped The Detective knew what he had been talking about and that this plan was going to work.

One.

The elevator stopped, and the doors slid open. A hundred plus guards pointed their guns directly into the elevator, directly at her and Peterson. The one in the front looked at each of them in turn, first her, then Peterson, and finally The Detective’s blood covered corpse.

“Peterson,” he began, “what the hell has been going on up there? We were under strict orders not to do anything until we received notification from either you or the Chancellor.”

She started to have Peterson speak, to explain what had happened, to explain that she was a prisoner, that the dead man in the elevator was of no concern, to say that The Agent was in trouble and everyone needed to head to the penthouse as fast as possible. Double time, people, double time. But as she looked at them all, as she stared at them and the guns they pointed at her, a rage began to build, a rage seemingly impossible for her to control, and the angrier she became, the easier it was to “see” each and every one of them.

“Fuck this shit,” she said out loud as she shut her eyes. Within a millisecond, she was inside each of their minds, pushing through and past their psychic protection like it wasn’t even there. She mentally ripped them apart, tearing away at their minds as if she were wielding psychic bullets, removing from each and everyone of them the psyche that made them who they were, wiping away their thoughts, erasing their memories. And it was all so easy.

She opened her eyes and watched as a hundred plus soldiers, including Peterson, all fell to the ground in unison, each landing on the hard linoleum floor with the same blank expression on their face, each set of eyes completely emptied of life.

She stepped out of the elevator and walked across the building’s lobby. All of the guards, all of The Agent’s faceless soldiers, continued staring into nothingness, their minds as blank as a clear sheet of paper. She reached the outer doors and stepped in front of the digital touch pad. She inserted the set of numbers she had taken from Peterson’s thoughts earlier, remembering them all as if they had been written into her memory. For all intents and purposes, they had been.

The doors opened, and she stepped out into the still pouring rain. She walked across the front of the building, passing through the large parking lot without thinking about looking back. In the distance, just down the road, she could see the truck The Detective had “borrowed.” It suddenly occurred to her exactly how much she had lost over the past day. Not only had she almost lost her sister, she had lost the two men she cared the most about in the entire world, and she lost a little bit of herself as well, the part of herself that still held any kind of innocence, the part of herself that didn’t find it easy to rip through a hundred minds without a second of hesitation. That part of herself, she realized, would never be recovered.

Despite Adam doing the majority of killing, she knew The Detective would take the blame for the death of The Seven, and she wasn’t sure that was a bad thing. Throughout the rest of the world and most of the states, the demise of America’s rulers would be met with celebration and joy. They would celebrate him as a patriot, a champion. They would worship him as the hero she knew him to be. He deserved no less.

She crossed the road to the truck, The Detective’s hat and the journal still firmly clutched against her chest. She opened the door, climbed into the driver‘s seat, and shook the water out of her hair. The keys were in the ignition, exactly where he told her they would be. She cranked the truck and placed it in gear. She was going to drive to the hospital where her family waited for her, all the while hoping in silence she would be able to see through the rain. She swore this storm was never going to end.

XXX