Kingdom of Heroes (22 page)

Ice never noticed his backwards movement, or at least she didn’t let on to him if she had. She was too busy staring down the metal figure in the sky above them. “Where’s Quincy and Hope?” Ice shouted.

“
In the mansion,
” the machine answered, “
dead.
”

“Dead?” Ice asked as the realization of being one of the final two slowly crept across her pale face. “Both of them?”

“
Yes.
”

“Good,” The Detective interjected loud enough for the other two to hear.

Ice turned sharply in his direction. “What in the fuck do you mean, ‘good?’”

“After the mental mind fuck your decrepit, psychic friend gave me, you’re lucky I didn’t fucking kill him myself.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” she asked, a confused tone in her voice.

The Detective shook his pounding head from side-to-side; he wasn’t used to feeling pain while his adrenaline was surging. “The story’s too long. I’ll have to tell you later.”

“
I’m sorry, Detective. There won’t be a later.
”

The Iron Knight opened up its right hand and pointed the palm at The Detective. A repulsor beam fired from the armored gauntlet, striking The Detective square in the chest. The impact sent him flying across the forest; his back and head slammed hard against the broad side of a large oak tree. He began to black out, but he fought it off, forcing himself to stay awake.

Ice threw the borrowed coat aside and held her hands out in front of her nude body. Frozen particles flowed from her palms and fingertips, coating her in an icy sheath. She created an ice slide in front of her, rising into the air until she stood as high in the air as the metal suit. It opened fire on her, spraying her with enough bullets to kill dozens of ordinary men. The high impact artillery shells bounced off of her icy skin as if they were nothing.

“You’re going to shoot me?” Ice asked as she watched several more bullets deflect off of her chest. “You really are just as fucking stupid as I always thought you were.”

“
I’m just getting started. I thought I would begin out with the basics and work my way up.
”

“Let me know how successful that is for you,” she responded as she created more slide in front of her and swirled around the armor, spraying it repeatedly with frozen beams of ice from her hands. The Iron Knight rose higher into the sky and fired more bullets; The Ice Queen increased her elevation to match, continually firing large shards of ice in the machine’s general direction. They continued fighting across the sky, neither seeming to gain the upper hand on the other.

The Detective leaned up against the tree. At the moment, it was the only thing keeping him upright. Trying to keep track of the action in the sky was almost impossible in his current state. He shook his pounding head, trying to force some of the cobwebs out. He rolled over to his side and pushed himself up into an all fours position. He used the tree for balance as he stood upright. He walked, slow and wobbly, to the clearing below where Ice and the machine fought. He reached down and picked up his coat. He needed it; that’s where he kept his gun.

“
You tired yet?
” the computerized voice asked his female opponent.

“Not in the least,” Ice answered, sounding out of breath as she made another swirl, covering the armor’s backside in a thick, frozen coat.

The would-be Iron Knight stopped, hovered in mid-air, and lowered its wrist guns toward the ground. Ice stopped as well. It seemed at first glance that she was trying to see what the man in the armor was going to do next, but it became glaringly obvious, as she stood atop her giant slide and her chest heaved heavily in and out, that she was simply trying to catch her breath.

“What?” she asked. “Done already?”

“
It was my understanding,
” the machine replied in its only tone of voice, “
that you become weaker as you expand energy, leaving you more and more vulnerable as the fight progresses.
”

“And who the fuck told you that?” Ice responded, out of breath and gasping hard for air.

“
Barren did,
” the armor said. “
Actually, to be exact, it’s inside of the armor’s computer system. There are all kinds of files on how to kill The Seven, with you included, of course.
”

Ice bent over and held her knees in her hands but managed to keep her eyes on the machine across from her. “So did you pick up any other brilliant insights from the drunk, or is that it, just that I get tired? Whoop dee fucking doo, you goddamn bitch.”

“
No, there was more. He explained in full detail how, even with a special bullet he designed to pierce the outer shell of your powered form, that you would have to be placed into a weakened state before you could be truly damaged.
”

“Wha---” she started to ask, only to be interrupted by the armor raising its right hand and firing a repulsor beam directly into her chest. The blow knocked her off of her slide, and she fell for almost three seconds before coming to a hard stop against the ground below, landing nearly thirty feet from where The Detective stood and watched.

The Iron Knight flew straight down and rammed the armor’s right shoulder directly into Ice’s frozen sternum. A look of pain covered her crystallized face as the machine straddled her and began to punch her in the area around her chest. Left, then right, the machine let each metal fist take turns ramming into her frozen skin.

“
You see,
” the computerized voice said as it continued punching, “
according to Barren’s intel, even with an explosive bullet made specially from Metal Girl’s unique DNA, the area which is about to be penetrated, in this case the area around your heart, will have to be properly softened to allow the bullet to pass through your ice covering. Interesting, isn‘t it?
”

Ice turned her head towards The Detective and mouthed the words, “Help me.”

The Iron Knight stopped punching and placed a hand on each side of Ice’s head, turning her face back towards him. “
You need to be focused on me; you need to look at me as you die.
”

“You need to go fuck yourself,” Ice said as she reached over and grabbed the machine’s left arm with both of her hands. She let loose with as much power as she could produce, freezing the machine’s appendage solid. She fell back against the ground, exhausted.

“
You froze my arm?
” the computerized voice asked. “
Really? That’s your last ditch final plan to keep me from killing you?
”

“No,” The Detective said in return from twenty feet away, his gun held firmly in his hand. “This is the last ditch final plan.” The Detective fired the pistol, and the bullet slammed into the armor’s frozen limb, shattering it into hundreds of crystalline pieces. As The Detective looked into the interior of the armor, into the hole left from where the arm had once been, he realized what he had been missing this entire time.

Inside of the hole, he saw nothing, no man, no body, no person inside telling the armor what to do. He remembered firing into the armor the first time they had met, firing into a crack left from the armor’s fight with Billy North, and finally, at this moment, it occurred to him that he had seen no blood, no signs of pain, nothing from the man inside after he had fired three bullets into the interior of the machine. Only now did it dawn on him, almost twelve hours later, that there was no man within the suit to damage; the Iron Knight was nothing more than an empty shell.

Memories poured through The Detective’s mind, memories that were only hours old yet seemed to be from another lifetime. In the hospital, he had asked Emily about the killer who had shot her sister, and she answered, telling him she had felt a sense of sadness from the armor, a longing, a hopelessness. The Detective remembered watching the security cam footage of Adam Rogers’ suicide, the moment before Adam fired the bullet into his brain, when he had grabbed the computer monitor and held it between his hands for over ten seconds with his eyes rolled into the back of his head.

“He’s a technokinetic,” Ice had said last night.

And finally, it all almost made sense. The armor without a man inside, the three day old corpse sending a message to his best friend, the suicide, the note, the intimate knowledge of The Seven that only one of them could know, all of it pieced together into a half finished puzzle. The Detective now knew the who and the how, but he couldn’t find the why.

“Adam!” The Detective yelled as he aimed the gun at the armor’s helmet. “You don’t have to do this; you don’t have to kill her. We can find another way.”

“
That’s impressive, Detective.
” The armor stood up. “
An outsider with no intimate knowledge of The Seven, and you, single-handedly, worked out my identity. Truly impressive, I really must say.
”

Adam bent down and lifted the half conscious Ice Queen by the throat and tossed her ten feet behind him. The armor now stood between her and The Detective, forcing The Detective to have to go directly through the machine if he wanted to attempt a rescue.

“
As for your statement, Detective, on how there’s another way; well, there isn’t. Adam Rogers is dead; he no longer exists. When I transferred my consciousness into this armor, this glorious piece of technology, I forfeited life, love, hope, and everything else that defines humanity. I am no longer a man, Detective; I am now nothing more than the sentient operating system of a machine, and when the machine ceases to function, I will no longer exist.
”

“Fine then,” The Detective answered, trying to come up with something to say that would get the machine away from Ice. “There’s no hope, and you’re damned. You’ve sacrificed everything to destroy The Seven. In the end, I can’t blame you; I’ve even considered it a few times myself, but you can stop now. You can walk away now without anymore blood on your hands.”

“
It’s far too late to stop, Detective. Besides, I can’t quit now. There are still two of them left.
”

“Hell, kill The Agent. I wouldn’t even think of stopping you. Shit, I’ll help you out if you need it. But let Ice live. You’ve hurt her enough; you’ve sent your message. Let her live like you allowed Fire to live.”

“
Fire treated me with kindness for as long as I have known her. She welcomed me into her family without any hesitation or desire for anything from me in return. She is a good person who was usually pressured into helping The Seven commit their atrocities against the world. She earned the life I granted her.
” The armor pointed its remaining arm towards the still grounded Ice. “
This one, on the other hand, was usually the one forcing Fire into doing acts she didn’t agree with. This one is a self serving manipulator who will do or say anything to further her own agenda. This one is The Agent’s most loyal soldier, and you expect me to let her live?
”

“The short answer, yeah, I do.”

“
The real question here, Detective, is why do you feel such sympathy for one who has used you, one who would continue using you until she breathes her last breath?
”

The Detective answered with silence; he had no real response to the question, at least not a good one, and his head hurt too much to try and come up with one.

“
Maybe, Detective, maybe for your own best interest, I should just go ahead and kill her, thereby freeing you from her obviously destructive influence.
”

“No,” The Detective answered, his voice as calm as he could make it as he attempted to slowly walk around the armor and towards Ice. “It won’t help. I’m sure to fall under some other pretty girl’s destructive influence. It’s been the story of my life.”

Adam reached out with his remaining hand and grabbed The Detective by the throat, lifting him off of the ground with ease. The Detective fired his gun into the armor’s helmet, only for the bullet to bounce off of the faceplate and ricochet out into the woods. He then punched the helmet in vain, hitting it hard enough to make his own knuckles bleed.

Adam lifted him a few inches higher into the air, holding The Detective far enough away where his punches would no longer connect. “
Why are you here, Detective? You see, I know I am being manipulated. I know I’m doing exactly what The Agent wants, but as it turns out, we both want the same thing.
” The armor tossed The Detective across the clearing, and he landed hard against a tree, his head and back striking the same tree he had crashed into moments before. “
So why are you here? Why are you allowing them to manipulate you? Do you feel loyalty to her? I promise, she feels none for you. They are using you just as they have continually used me. You are nothing more than a puppet being pulled by their strings.
”

Ice climbed to her feet; she was shaky and barely able to stand, but she stood up on her own power. “What the fuck are you doing worrying about him, you little bitch. Your fight’s with me, so let’s get this shit over with.”

Adam turned the armor in her direction and raised the remaining wrist gun towards her ice covered chest. Without another word between them, the bullet fired into her upper chest, penetrating the ice sheath that enveloped her body.