Kingdom of Heroes (15 page)

Demon: But we can’t just go to war with these people. We promised to protect them, and I can’t see war and protecting being anywhere near the other.

Agent: And what did they promise us, Demon? Remember life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I shed blood for this country on the battlefield. In the past five years, the seven of us have all bled for this nation, and for what? To be tossed to the side like nothing? To be seen as nothing more than common criminals for having abilities that, the last I checked, none of us asked for?

Fire: Okay, somebody explain exactly how the seven of us are supposed to take on the entire United States military?

Ice: We recruit.

Fire: Recruit? Seriously, recruit?

Ice: Yes, Fire, we recruit.

Fire: Alright, Gabby, if we take in every active costumed crime fighter in the country, what does that leave us with? Twenty-five people? Thirty?

Ice: There are plenty of people with powers who aren’t crime fighters.

Demon: Yeah, some are super villains. Do you want to bring them in too?

Ice: Actually, Demon, yes, I think we should. We should bring them and anyone and everyone with powers. They face the same persecution as we do. They should be allowed to fight along with the rest of us.

Fire: Now that’s insane.

Agent: Why is it insane, Fire? What is insane about offering a people the opportunity to fight back against oppression?

Fire: (looking around the room at the other members) Hope, Steven, Anthony, please chime in and help me here. Tell them this is not right. Tell them this is crazy.

Psychosis: (placing his left hand onto Metal’s Girl’s lower back, almost as if he’s telling her to not speak) I can’t say that, Pamela. Hope and I have promised The Agent our total support no matter what he chooses to do.

Fire: Anthony?

Barren: I don’t know, Pam. I was on the fence, but I’m starting to think it may be the only choice we have.

Demon: On the fence? I thought you were on the wagon, or off the wagon, or whichever one means you’re drinking like an alcoholic fish.

Barren: Shut the fuck up, Billy. Honestly, this is not a good time for your bullshit.

Ice: Really, Demon, can’t you take a goddamn thing seriously for a half minute. Do you always have to come up with some kind of nonsense when we’re trying to do something important?

Demon: (throwing his hands up in the air) Excuse the hell out of me for trying to lighten the mood around here.

Agent: We have to decide what we’re going to do, and we have to decide now. I need to know who’s in and who is out. And if you’re out, then you’re out, and we fight this war without you.

Ice: I’m in, no question.

Agent: Psychosis?

Psychosis: In.

Metal Girl: I go where Steven goes. I’m in.

Agent: Knight?

Barren: In.

Agent: Demon?

Demon: In, I guess.

(Every head in the room turns and look at Fire.)

Fire: Apparently, you’re all going to do this no matter what I say, and I have to be with Gabby to protect her. So I’m in, but not without reservations.

Agent: Good enough.

Ice: Okay, so now what do we do?

Agent: First and foremost, we all have to ask ourselves, right now, today, exactly how far across the line we can go before we’ve gone too far. And then, once we’ve decided that point, we have to take it farther. It’s the only way we’ll be able to save this country from itself.

(End video)

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The Detective tossed his hat and coat on the back of a chair and paced back and forth across the hospital waiting room. Being shot at, finding dead bodies scattered around, getting tortured, pain, blood, and other assorted injuries, all of that came naturally. This, being confined to a room and being told to wait for answers, this was too much like prison for his taste, and it didn’t come natural. He wasn’t built for this at all.

He looked up at the camera in the corner and wondered if The Agent was just sitting around and watching everything that was happening. He wouldn’t have doubted it. It had been said that Rogers had a camera on every corner and inside every building, and the man hadn’t been seen in person in several years, using lackeys like Grant as his mouthpiece and relying on them to spread his orders and commands throughout the nation.

“It’s going to be okay,” he heard the brunette, Fire’s little sister Emily, say. At first he thought she was talking to him, but he took a second look and watched her speak in a soft voice to the two babies, twins barely six months old. She sat in a chair against the far wall and rocked the babies back and forth, a hand on each of their matching strollers.

Emily appeared no older than twenty-five, with just longer than shoulder length dark hair that seemed to continually fall in front of her eyes. She had a petite figure that was complimented by the short, white sundress she wore. She almost looked like a younger, raven haired doppelganger of her sister, but with big brown eyes, a small button shaped nose, and a small patch of freckles across both of her cheeks, but Emily, in her own way, was slightly prettier than Fire, maybe even bordering on beautiful. And she smelled like honey.

Despite the fact she hadn’t been talking to him, he knew the words she spoke were correct; Fire was going to be okay. In the car on the way there, Fire had briefly woke up, and he had tried to keep her talking, a vain attempt to obtain some kind of information from her. It hadn’t worked, not that he had really thought it would. Clutching at straws had become his new favorite hobby.

As soon as he had pulled the car into the hospital, with The Ice Queen barely seconds behind him, the doctors rushed Fire Maiden straight to surgery. Ice waited by the operating room and continually brought reports whenever she received them. All of the initial information was promising. No major organs hit, no major arteries damaged, it was as if a bullet had been fired into Fire’s body from someone who was trying not to kill her. He assumed the guy in the armor wanted to hurt her but didn’t want her to die. A personal connection? The killer has some kind of feelings for her? There was something important he continued to miss here, and more people were going to die until he figured out exactly what that was.

“It’s going to be okay,” he heard Emily say again, her voice soft and sweet like the purr of a kitten. “Did you hear me?” she asked.

He stopped pacing and turned towards her. “I’m sorry,” he said, an awkward smile on his face. “Were you talking to me?”

“Yes, Mr. Detective,” she answered with a large smile on her face, “I’m talking to you. And I’m trying to tell you it’s going to be okay.”

“Yes,” he agreed, “your sister is going to be fine.”

“I’m not talking about her, though I do appreciate your vote of confidence. It helps right now; it really does. No, right now, I’m talking about you. You are worried, stressed, trying to find answers to a question you’re not sure you completely understand, and you’re feeling trapped by this room.”

A look of confusion covered his tired face. “And you got all of that from me…how?”

“Oh,” she said in return, suddenly looking the slightest bit embarrassed. “Didn’t Pam or Gabby tell you about me?”

He shook his head from side-to-side.

“I’m an empath,” she said with a self-conscious smile. “I can tell what emotions other people are feeling, and I can sometimes control their emotions and make them feel what I want them to. That’s what I’m doing to these two---” she nodded at the twins she continued to rock back and forth. “---right now. I’m mentally telling them to be happy.”

He smiled. “I was wondering how two little ones were behaving so well in public. That’s a handy trick.”

“It can be.”

“So, I’m feeling all of that?” he asked. “ I wasn’t sure I had that many emotions left. I’d hoped I would have abandoned most of them all by now.”

“Well,” she said, “that’s not all you’re feeling; there’s more, if you’re interested.”

He suddenly felt like the unwilling victim of a party game, but he went along with it. “Sure, let’s see what you’ve got.”

She closed her eyes. “At the moment, you feel like the unwilling victim of a party game, but you’re being nice and going along with it.”

He felt his face slightly flush.

“You like Gabby,” she continued. “And you really enjoyed your time together last night, but you’re not sure if you can trust her on any level. You are concerned about my sister, but deep down, you need her alive for information. And you think I’m pretty, but the word beautiful keeps popping up in your thoughts.”

“And you got all of that from my emotions?” he asked, suddenly feeling quite uncomfortable.

She opened her eyes and smiled at him. “Yep.”

“That really is a good trick,” he said as he sat down next to her and looked at the twins. A boy sucking his thumb, a girl wrapped in a pink blanket with a pacifier hanging loosely from her mouth, they were quite adorable as they slept. “The way you do it, it’s almost like telepathy, or maybe you’re just really good at it.”

“Proximity,” she said quickly as she turned to look at him. “It’s all about how physically close I am to the other person. The closer I am, the more I read.”

Sitting next to her, he suddenly felt the need to not think or feel anything. Best to keep the rest of his feelings to himself. “What about the guy who attacked your sister? Did you get anything from him?”

“What I felt was very faint,” she said with a sigh. “It was just the vaguest of feelings.”

“Anything at this point would help.”

She looked up at him and smiled, a sweet and kind expression that made him feel almost special that someone so nice and pretty would smile at him like that. “I’m not overly enthusiastic when it comes to remembering anything about today,” she said.

“I know,” he said, trying his best to be sympathetic, another act which didn’t come natural to him. “Anything at all would help.”

She leaned back and closed her eyes like she did when she read him. “When we first saw him, I felt hatred, pain, a desire for vengeance. But then, for a split-second, he looked into the car at me, and I felt a sadness, a longing, a hopelessness.” She opened her eyes and looked at The Detective. “Does that help?”

“Somewhat.” He stood up and walked over to the other side of the room and looked out a window. “Who’s Adam?” he asked, fishing for information and trying to keep his emotions on the subject as closed as he could, lest she find out something that wasn’t his to tell.

“He’s my best friend, almost like my brother,” she said with another sigh as a frown covered her face. “Or at least he was. Why? Have you seen him?”

“Ice mentioned him in passing,” he lied. Lying had always been, of course, an act which did come natural. “Why do you say ‘was?’”

Emily leaned back against her chair. “I haven’t heard from him in almost three weeks. He won’t answer my calls or my texts. I went to his place last week, and he wouldn’t open the door. But I knew he was there. I could feel him.”

“How did he feel?”

“Angry,” she answered. “Very angry. And it kind of pissed me off that he would just sit there and not open the door, so I left in a bit of a huff myself. And then, out of nowhere, I got a message on my phone from him yesterday morning.”

“Yesterday?” The Detective asked, trying not to think too hard about how a corpse could use a cell phone. “What did it say?”

She reached down to a bag by her feet and fumbled around for something. She pulled out a cell phone, flipped it open, and thumbed through her list of messages. She found the one she wanted and handed the phone to him. “Here,” she said, “read it.”

He read the message out loud. “Emily, look above my bed for the answers. I’m sorry, and I love you.” He handed the phone back to her. “What’s above his bed?”

“Nothing but ceiling,” she answered, her voice filled with frustration. “Now what the hell does he expect me to do with that?”

The Detective shrugged his shoulders and looked back out the window.

She placed the phone back in her bag. “Men suck,” she said. “Present company excluded, of course.”

He turned back towards her and smiled. “You don’t have to exclude me. I agree with you one hundred percent. Men suck, myself included. If I was a woman, I would totally be a lesbian.”

She smiled and laughed, covering her mouth to muffle the sound and not wake the babies.

“That’s good,” he said with a slight grin of his own. “You’re very pretty when you smile; I was hoping I could get you to do it again.”

She blushed slightly and started to turn away, and then her phone emitted a beep. The Detective turned away to give her privacy as she bent down and took the phone from the bag. He looked out the window and noticed how the early morning sun was giving way to noon, when Emily tapped him on the shoulder.

“It’s for you,” she said, handing him the phone.

“Me?” he asked. “If it’s that heavy breather guy again, I told him to stop calling me here.”

She laughed under her breath. He couldn’t help but notice she had a cute laugh. “No,” she said. “It’s from Gabby.”