Kingdom of Heroes (42 page)

Emily stopped struggling, and The Detective let her go. She wrapped herself around his good right arm. He could smell the tears in her eyes, the tears she was fighting back. He knew if she’d had her powers in this room, The Agent would be a mind wiped husk right now. No training, no patches behind his ear, nothing would have stopped her.

“Now, Detective, thanks to you, thanks to Ice, and thanks to Emily here, I can finally begin to spread my peace and safety to the rest of the world.”

“What are you talking about?” Emily asked, her voice barely an octave or so below yelling. “We haven’t done anything to help you.”

The Detective looked down at her, and it all suddenly made sense. Him and Ice at the scene of Barren’s death, watching from the side as Speed Demon was killed, just happening to be at the scene when every member of The Seven was either killed or critically injured. Now, finally, when it no long mattered, it all made sense. “I did. I didn’t mean to. I should have realized at the time, but like the idiot I am, I didn’t. I just couldn’t see the forest for the trees; I couldn’t find the whole master plan until now, when it’s too late.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked, her pretty eyes still filled with tears. “You didn’t do anything to help him.”

“But my dear,” The Agent began as he walked over to the giant monitor on the left and picked up a small remote from the console’s base, “he helped me so very much.” The Agent pointed the remote at the monitor, and the image on both screens changed.

The Detective turned his head to look as the first video began to play. It was a recording of him in Barren’s apartment, holding his gun and standing over the corpse. The clip ended, and another began. This video showed The Detective standing in the middle of a road, looking down without any emotion at Speed Demon’s decapitated body. The clip faded away as another began. This was a still image of The Detective standing over a naked, bloody, injured Fire. Emily put her hands over her eyes, doing everything she could not to look at her sister in that condition.

“I love how this one worked out,” The Agent proclaimed as the still image faded into a video clip of The Detective shooting three guards on the roof of a hospital parking garage. “It looks like you didn’t get the chance to kill Fire on the first attempt, so you came to the hospital to finish her off. I really must say it’s quite fortuitous.”

The Detective rubbed his forehead. He looked up just in time for the next video, a clip of him standing at the foot of Steven Quincy’s bed, aiming a gun and telling the old man how he was going to blow his brains out. It faded into him, sitting on the ground, gun in hand as The Ice Queen shattered into a thousand tiny pieces. The next shot showed him climbing out of a truck, picking up his hat, and driving away as the Quincy estate burned down in the distance.

“I couldn’t find a decent image of you interacting with Metal Girl, so I had to make due with the scene of you driving away from the burning house where they’ll find her charred corpse.”

The Detective shook his head, knowing he had truly and completely played right into the old bastard’s hands. The video faded into an image of Adam’s building as the fire raged across the upper levels, and The Detective nonchalantly walked out of the front doors, slightly limping and slow, but looking the part of someone who seemed content with his actions, someone who had probably set the fire that would leave the building in ashes.

The Detective turned towards the old man. “And tomorrow they’ll find Adam’s corpse in the building’s remains, so it’ll look like I killed him then burned the apartment down to cover my tracks.”

“You catch on quick,” The Agent replied with a nod of his head. “Not quick enough, mind you, but you figured it out when it counts.”

The burning building faded into an image of The Detective, holding one guard as a human shield before he pushed the now dead man onto the guard on the left and spun himself behind the other, placing the gun beneath his chin and pulling the trigger. He then calmly walked over to the other guard, who remained helplessly pinned to the ground. The Detective placed the gun barrel against his forehead and pulled the trigger. After that, the video faded to black.

The Detective shook his head. “I wondered why you made it so fucking easy to get in here. Now I know. You just needed a recording of me trying to work my way to you. You overpowered tyrannical bitch.”

The Agent ignored the insult and everything else that was said. “After my failed takeover of our northern neighbor, I was notified by the majority of the remaining superpowers, the newly formed League of Nations, letting me know that any attempted attack on a sovereign nation would be met with equal and collective force from the rest of the world’s forces. They promised to obliterate us if I made another move to expand my political power. But, and this is a huge point, if America was attacked first and I received approval from the League, I would be allowed to counter-attack any invading country.

“Now tell me Detective,” The Agent continued, a calm expression covering his bearded face, “how does this look: a high ranking member of Canadian national security, a spy on American soil, is on hand while each member of The Seven is assassinated, each of them murdered by a Canadian operative under orders from his adopted government to end The Seven’s administration.”

The Detective shook his head again. “And you knew the only person capable of achieving such a feat would be a rage fueled Adam, who you knew would take The Iron Knight armor and rip through each and every one of The Seven, until you were the only one left alive. And in the process, you place me at each and every location, just before or just after every killing, knowing that it would look like I had killed them all. It is a hell of a plan.”

The Agent just looked at him without a word, his face still covered in the same calm, stoic expression.

“But there is no way the League would ever grant you permission to invade another country; the rest of the world is scared to death of what this country has become. There’s no way.”

The Agent smiled, his teeth still as white and effervescent as they had been when he was a young man. “I submitted part of my proof three hours ago; the permission for retaliation came two hours ago, and my forces converged on the Canadian capital one hour ago. The Prime Minister surrendered himself into custody just moments before you arrived.”

“Goddamn it,” The Detective exclaimed.

The Agent continued. “I’ll submit the remaining evidence later. The images of you forcing your way into my home and the autopsies on Metal Girl and Adam will be used to further validate my claim. Just imagine, Detective, at how shocked the rest of the world was at your involvement in this, after all, you being such a well respected and highly decorated member of the Prime Minister’s staff. To think that someone as high within the government as yourself would act alone is unfathomable. The League had no choice but to recognize my legal right to retaliate, to defend not only myself but my entire country from further attack.”

The Detective turned around and placed his head against the giant glass window. How stupid could he be? How could someone like him, someone that prided himself on knowing the answers before anyone else, be caught so unaware, so clueless when it mattered the most. He blamed pretty women; he had always been far too easily distracted when pretty women were involved.

“And what about Adam?” Emily asked from behind him. “You just toss him away like he’s nothing, without even a second thought?”

“No, my dear, no,” Rogers replied, his face suddenly going from a look of satisfaction to a solemn expression that The Detective couldn’t tell was real or not. “Sacrificing Adam for the greater good was the absolute hardest decision I have ever had to make. I…” He paused for a second, almost as if he was actually going to choke up at the words he was about to say. “…love him, and I always will. But the world is succumbing to violence and death, pain and suffering, just like this country used to be; sacrifices had to be made in the name of goodness. No one was more proud of their child than I was of mine, and I still am. But I had to release him; I had to give him the truth, so he would act. Because I know that, besides myself, he was the only one capable and strong enough to kill them all.”

“What now?” the Detective asked without turning away from the view of the skyline. “You’ve got exactly what you want. I’ve taken the blame for killing The Seven. No one has any clue that you’ve used your own son as a disposable assassin and that you’ve just basically committed a coup on your own people, consolidating control of the country from seven different people down to one. You’ve almost won.”

“Almost?” The Agent asked.

The Detective continued staring out the glass, taking in a few more sniffs of the air while he could. Honey was such a wonderful aroma. “Well, there’s still Fire; she’s still alive, and from what I’ve heard and read, she hasn’t been the most loyal of soldiers. But I’m sure you have a rolodex full of names, each just waiting on the call to remove her as a problem.”

The Agent said nothing, answering everything in his silence. Emily’s face grew more despondent.

“Then there’s us,” The Detective continued, noticing another scent that hadn’t been there earlier, a scent he hadn’t smelled since he had been in Adam‘s building. “We’re a liability, and you obviously, despite your agreements with both of us, have no choice but to eliminate us from the equation.”

“Obviously,” The Agent answered, his voice returning to his good neighbor routine.

“And from the smell of ozone that just appeared, it’s safe to assume that you have no plans on doing this particular dirty work yourself.”

“That’s not good,” Emily exclaimed, having been in his mind earlier when he fought them, knowing exactly what this meant. “From where?”

“The kitchen,” The Detective answered. “Where Dark’s powers can hide them in the shadows. They’re both there, just lying in wait for him to give the order.”

“In war,” The Agent began, “one must always have dedicated soldiers who never question orders. Light and Dark are mine. And yes, Detective, tonight you and Emily will die by their hands. Even if I wanted you two to live, I have no choice. Like the rest of The Seven, your deaths guarantee that my utopia will spread to the entire world.”

“And that brings me to your third problem,” The Detective said, his eyes still glued to the view of Metro City being hammered by the storm.

“And what would that be?”

The Detective smiled as a red and black armored suit flew above the terrace, its rocket boots seemingly at full power.

“Him,” The Detective answered as Adam raised his lone remaining wrist gun towards the glass and opened fire. The Detective grabbed Emily and pulled her across the room, both landing on the ground as the glass window exploded all around them.

_______________________________________________

The Detective rolled on top of Emily, doing everything he could to protect her from the shower of glass that engulfed them both. They both watched as Adam continued to fire the mini gun on his wrist, aiming it at the center of The Agent’s chest. Each of the hundreds of bullets bounced harmlessly off of Roger’s chest. He just casually stood there and allowed them to hit him before slowly walking toward the terrace, toward the onslaught of projectiles.

“It doesn’t have to be this way, son,” The Agent yelled over the sound of constant gunfire. “It doesn’t have to end like this.”

“Are you okay?” The Detective asked her as he looked her over, making sure any cuts she may have were only superficial.

She smiled at him, seemingly enjoying him being on top of her and making such a fuss about her condition. “I’ll live. You still with me?”

“For the moment,” he replied.

“If we die, I am going to be so pissed.”

“Yeah?” he asked as he climbed to his feet, offering her a hand up once he found his footing. “Why’s that, excluding the obvious reasons, of course.”

“I was totally going to put out on that first date,” she said as he pulled her up. “And you have no idea what you’re going to be missing.”

“Oh, I have a pretty good idea,” he added just before the strong smell of ozone filled his senses. “Behind me---now.”

But he didn’t get the words out before a glowing blonde woman lunged from the darkness, bypassing him and tackling Emily instead, driving her hard onto the glass covered ground, the blade from her fist extended, the pointy end placed firmly against Emily’s throat.

“I know you,” Light said, her voice the same calm seductive tone he remembered from earlier. “You’re the bitch who was in my thoughts. I don’t like having people in my head. I bet you won’t like it either.” She added as she pulled her hand up and aimed the blade towards Emily’s forehead. Without another sound, she began to thrust the blade toward Emily’s skull.

_______________________________________________

Adam kept the suit hovered above the terrace and continued firing bullets towards his adopted father’s chest, each and every one just simply bouncing off of the old man’s impervious skin. The Agent began walking towards him, seemingly oblivious to the payload striking him.

“It doesn’t have to be this way, son,” The Agent yelled over the sound of constant gunfire. “It doesn’t have to end like this.”

The sound of gunfire ended, replaced by the whirring of the mini gun as it continued turning without anymore bullets left to fire. “
How else can it end, Dad? You killed them all, and you expect me to do nothing?”