by Jason Krate
* * *
Rachel stood there, dumbstruck by what Baron Knight had said.
But he wasn't done.
"There is no such thing as 'Gods love'….he does NOT love us…and if he does then he sure as hell doesn't love me. And you are a goddamn fool to believe he…." Baron Knight then stopped in his rant.
"Go ahead, say it!" Rachel Addison said sternly, "You won't change my mind. My faith is all I have left of my happier times, it's what gives me strength. What gives you strength Hmmm, Hate? Vengeance…what makes you strong to survive this hell that is our very lives Baron Knight? What makes you and your hate so much better than my faith? "
"I'm sorry" Baron Knight said.
"What?" Rachel Addison asked, completely taken aback by this.
"I'm…I'm sorry…" Baron Knight stammered before regaining his composure, "I dint realize it… till now."
"Didn't realize what?" Rachel Addison asked confused by Baron Knight's sudden change in tone and attitude.
Baron Knight's eyes wasn't staring at her, but to the statue behind her.
A collection of them.
All female figures, surrounding a female figure he knew very well.
A statue that any Christian mother of any background would undoubtable know very intimately among the others of her stature.
It was because of these statues that Rachel had been praying to a moment ago that Baron Knight began to realize why Rachel had returned to the church.
"That statue….you're not praying to God. You're praying to the Virgin Mary, Mother of Jesus, patron saint of mothers whose statue is also accompanied by St. Anne, and St. Monica among others. This is a center for mothers to pray to the saints of mothers." Baron Knight deduced, " So either you went out to do your job while I was recovering and your praying for forgiveness and strength to continue fornicating with scumbags to support yourself and your daughter…or you're doing this because you are a mother who is very worried about your daughter for some reason and is praying for guidance and help. Your daughter was not at the apartment you live in was she? She wasn't there when you got there like you figured she would be."
Rachel was so stunned by this she didn't speak, just nod.
"You think she might have…?" Baron Knight began, but then he stopped "No…it's none of my business. I don't care…just….go back to your praying. You're probably wasting your breath. She's probably fine."
He then turned around with a swish of his cloak and walked away into the darker section of the Church, heading for the bell tower.
Rachel Addison was so stunned and unsure of what to think that she didn't know Father Morris was behind her until he spoke.
"He's a very conflicted soul, I can tell" he said, "He reminds me of you when you first started coming her to pray for forgiveness for your profession and strength to continue on for your daughters sake."
"He's a bastard" Rachel Addison said, "forgive my language father, but he is…and he's a psychopath as well. You saw how he acted, saved my life or no he is a creep. You heard him. He is so sure of himself and his story. He thinks that humans are to blame for wrecking the world."
"He's not wrong my child" Father Morris said sadly, "Humanity is not guiltless in what happened to make the world like this."
"What do you mean?" Rachel Addison asked, turning to face the elderly priest "Are you saying he IS telling the truth?"
"Yes he is" Father Morris said, looking her in the eye "a long time ago things were different my child. It was a different world, and then one day…it got even more different. More wonderful, but also more dangerous. Metahumans emerged. Somewhere terrible people given powers that none of their ilk should ever have been bestowed, and the rest were good people who wanted to use their powers to improve the world and protect people. Metahumans, humans, it mattered not to them. They were what was once called "superheroes". The popped up one by one…until they eventually made a cabal. A team. They called themselves the "Heroes Legion"…." He saw the surprise in her eyes when he mentioned that name "yes, I was there as well. It is like he said my child. The Heroes Legion defended metahumans and humans from supervillains and bigoted people and organizations that wanted to eliminate, enslave and control them as weapons. They saved the world hundreds of times to very little fanfare and adulation, a lot of people blamed them for the disasters they stopped, but they continued to be defenders because they believed in doing the right thing. Your new friend…Baron Knight….I was a young monk when he was running around the city."
"So…you're saying that he is telling the truth? About the weapon?" Rachel Addison asked, genuinely curious.
Hearing it from Baron Knight was one thing, but to hear it from someone else who said he had been there saying the same story that conflicted with her parents story about the death of the old world.
She couldn't help but wonder, even though part of her didn't want to know.
Because if they were telling the truth, then it meant Baron Knight was right about her parents.
"It was a little more complicated than that" Father Morris explained, "There was a member of the Heroes Legion. A man who wore a suit of iron like the knights you see on the murals of this church. This suit of armor was alive, it had a mind of its own and called itself 'Cyber-29'. It was captured by an organization called S.T.R.I.K.E (Special Taskforce Reserved for Inhuman Kinds Extermination)…they had a different acronym before but they were as he said…extremists and bigots given power they never should have been given. They saw the Robo-warrior suit and it's 'advanced artificial intelligence' as the key to wiping out what they saw as the threat to humanity and…heh…'the American governments dominance'….Metahumans. They took Cyber-29, and they broke his code…his very being…and rebuilt him into something he was not. A killer. They called this end product THANATOS (The Honest Answer Needed in America To obliterate Super beings), it was intended to be the final solution to the Metahuman threat as they called it."
"And this weapon, this man made weapon…" Rachel Addison asked, briefly looking back over her shoulders to where Baron Knight had disappeared, "That's what really destroyed the Old World."
"Yes and no. You see…our biggest mistake as a species my dear child is that we think we are all different…but we were all made by god's hands. Metahumans were no different. The only thing different about them was the gene that gave them powers, they were human like us. No more, no less. But for some people…that wasn't enough to convince them otherwise about Metahumans. They turned Cyber-29 into THANATOS and set him loose against the Metahumans and The Heroes Legion were top priority targets." Father Morris said as he began lighting candles, with a rueful look on his face "That's when it happened."
"When what happened" Rachel Addison asked.
"THANATOS had the ability to scan people's genetics to identify metahumans or potential ones as well as possessing the ability to learn. After killing 200 innocent metahumans and humans who had the gene…it began to wonder "what IS a metahuman and what makes them different from humans?" It came to the conclusion that Metahumans ARE Human regardless of the M-Gene. It realized that as a result, Metahumans could be born from human parents and the gene could be passed down…I'm not entirely sure what it thought. But I think what happened was it decided that if humans could become metahumans and metahumans were human…then the only way it could eliminate the metahuman threat was to eliminate all of humanity. The wastelands of the eastern states of our country are testaments to that horrifying conclusion it came to…the battle was large and it took weeks. It finally ended here in Brightmoon City, but at great cost."
"The massacre…" Rebbecca Addison said in silent realization, "he said…he said humans were responsible for the massacre. He never said of what. Now I'm starting to see…"
"Yes…the Heroes Legion stopped him. They shut down the world with something called an EMP to defeat THANATOS once and for all. It was the only choice, S.T.R.I.P.E had created the ultimate weapon, and the only way to defeat it was to get rid of electricity.
No energy, no way for an energy digital being like THANATOS to exist. But….all the Heroes and neutral metahumans…."
Father Morris crossed himself with his hand as he remembered, "from my church…to the docks there were bodies. Not just metahumans, but humans as well. In Rook's park where the final battle occurred, there were so many fallen heroes slain that you couldn't walk without stepping on a corpse. Not that anyone cared. People walked all over the bodies of heroes who died to save them like they were nothing."
Rachel Addison didn't say anything, she was in disbelief at what she was hearing.
"One metahuman hero had survived" Father Morris continued his story, "he walked through the crowds and over the dead Heroes Legion members like how my father had described himself walking through the aftermath of a battlefield in Iraq. He was numb, until he saw a news crew using the bodies of his wife and daughter as a way to hold up a tripod in a futile attempt to record the carnage. He didn't take that lightly. I still remember seeing him holding their bodies in his arm, his wife, daughter and sons…the sound he made, that was the kind of sound a man who has lost his whole world makes. The people didn't care, they started asking him questions, spouting anti-metahuman slurs….until eventually he said "LEAVE ME ALONE!" and he vanished…taking all the metahuman corpses with him in a massive flash of light and a puff of smoke. That was the last time anyone in Brightmoon City saw the Baron Knight…until now."
"But why?" Rachel Addison asked, looking back in the direction Baron Knight had gone "why has he returned? I wouldn't have if I was him."
"Maybe you should ask him yourself" Father Morris suggested.
"He won't talk to me" Rachel Addison said in disagreement.
Why would he?
She had been so sure of the story her parents had told her, she wasn't sure if she could admit she was wrong.
"Only if you won't listen to him" Father Morris said wisely, "maybe if you do so…he will listen to you. There is still a hero in there…his rescue of you is proof of that…and believe it or not, you might need his help to find your daughter. He always had a soft spot for children and families."
* * *
Rachel Addison walked up the stairs of the old church's south bell tower, following after Baron Knight.
She wasn't sure if he was still here until she heard a sound.
Music.
Some kind of acoustic instrument was playing a tune.
It was haunting.
It was…almost hypnotic.
It seemed to draw her further up the bell tower, until she was standing there in the belfry room.
There, sitting on the overhang of the belfry with his legs jetting out into open air outside the church was in fact the Baron Knight.
He was playing a small handheld acoustic instrument.
Rachel Addison recognized it as an acoustic guitar.
She wondered where he had gotten that, but she came to the immediate conclusion he had borrowed it from the church's storage room where the instruments for mass and special events were kept.
She stood there and listened to the song the old Knight of the Night was playing.
When he finished, He spoke "I know you're there Rachel…"
"It's beautiful" Rachel Addison said in regards to the tune that the old hero had been playing.
"It's a folk tune from my late wife's place of birth" Baron Knight said, not turning to face her.
"Look…" Rachel Addison made the first move for conciliation, "you were right…"
"I overheard your conversation with the good father" Baron Knight said, still not looking at her, instead he looked out at the ruined city "if you've come to apologize you can save your words…I don't deserve them."
Rachel Addison was surprised by this, and decided to change her subject "no…I was trying to say you were right…about why I was praying."
She walked over to him, and sat down beside him.
"Kaitlin wasn't at the apartment, and it was trashed" she explained, "I'm fearful something happened to her…because if she isn't at the apartment or her in the church. I found the paladins that escorted her…they were…shot dead and the Marauders who did so…they were fried."
"Fried?" Baron Knight asked in intrigue.
"Like lightning had struck them…" Rachel Addison explained further, "I think it was the work of another freak…I mean…metahuman. I came back her to pray for strength to find her…I'm afraid that my former employer will find her and…"
"Ball less? Yes, I've met him…" Baron Knight said, with a muffled snicker "if he values his life he wouldn't have continued his pursuit of your daughter."
"You?" Rachel Addison grumbled in dismay, "great…as if losing my job was bad enough now I'll have his ire to worry about. That man has lots of friends outside the city."
"Why are you complaining?" Baron Knight asked surprised, "from your body language and your speech patterns I have observed that you hate being a prostitute. Did I ready you wrong?"
"No" Rachel Addison said, looking uncomfortable with the subject.
"Not something you want to talk about, fine…" Baron Knight said, "we don't have to talk about it, in fact we don't really have to talk to one another at all do we?"
"If I tell you…" Rachel Addison asked, "Will you tell me why you came back to Brightmoon City?"
Baron Knight seemed to pause, as if he was in deep thought about it.
He didn't speak, he just nodded in acknowledgement silently.
"I was 11 years old when I first sold myself to a man to survive. My father died in the trek through the wasteland, and my mother died to leukemia a month before. I was alone, pebble-less and starving." Rachel Addison began her tale, hunching herself in the upward fetal position as she sat next to Baron Knight.
"11 years?" Baron Knight asked in disgust, "I take it that once wasn't enough for that pedophile you sold yourself too to keep yourself from starving to death."
"Oh worse than that…" Rachel Addison shook her head, "he became my pimp. He locked me in a cage and whored me out to anyone who paid…that's when I learned to wield a knife to defend myself from those who wouldn't take "no" for an answer…or tried anything funny. Then he sold me to a prostitution ring in Brightmoon City when I became 16 years of age. The Madame who ran it, she wasn't like the pimp who sold me. She taught me and the other girls how to seduce men, to fake it to earn money, and to defend ourselves more. Eventually I and several other girls got so good at whoring, we ended up being forcibly bought away from Madame Geraldine and put into the services of that asshole you know who sold me to Bone breaker to be his sex slave. I tried to find work somewhere else, leave this 'profession'…but no one wants a whore to work the nurse shift at a medical clinic or help tend the wheat of the harvest. I'm a whore…trapped to be one. That is why I pray to god, because unlike the men I've met in my life…he's there for me. It…gives me comfort to believe he's there, and my parents are watching over me…giving me the strength to continue. If it wasn't for Kaitlin…I'd be all alone, with no reason to stay alive. That little girl I found on the streets, hungry, afraid and alone like I was. If I can make it so she doesn't end up having to resort to my 'profession' to survive this cold and mercilessly apathetic world…then every time I do that, whore myself out for money…is worth it for Kaitlin. You do what you have to do for your child. Even things you don't want to."
"I feel sorry for you" Baron Knight said sadly.
"Why, because I've been through pain and hell most of my life?" Rachel scoffed, "something YOU can relate to? Is that why you feel sorry for me?"
"No." Baron Knight said, in a surprisingly warm tone of voice, "I feel sorry for you, because you were cheated out of an experience you should never have indulged in without your consent…or without someone you trusted or loved."
"Love…" Rachel Addison said wistfully, "there's no such thing as a man who is interested in love, and if there was he is not out there waiting for me. I'm a prostitute…a whore…no man would see past that."
&nb
sp; "A woman I knew once thought that about herself, and you know what…" Baron Knight said encouragingly "she fell in love with a man who loved her…"
"Till he got tired of fucking her I'll bet, till she got fat, old, ugly or a newer model came around the corner" Rachel Addison interrupted cynically.
"You see THAT's why I feel sorry for you" Baron Knight said, "you have never encountered REAL men in your life, just the hormone crazed dregs of society that see you and all women everywhere as walking meat sacks for them to enjoy like chocolates in a box instead the kind that treats women like what they really are. Living human beings with thoughts, wants, dreams…personality. As wonderful creatures of beauty both inside and outside. Ones that understand that they aren't our slaves or our toys, they are our equals and companions. As a result of this you have never experienced love. The kind a man and woman experience."
