Kingdom of Heroes

by Jay Phillips

  “Not a clue,” she said as she stood next to him, staring at the screen along with him.

  He felt her shoulders rub against his and realized this was the closest he had come to intimate touch in a long time. He rubbed his forefinger across the keyboard, feeling for something.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Feeling for the deepest fingerprints to see which keys he’s used the most.”

  “You can do that?”

  He turned and smiled at her. “Extra sensitive senses, remember? That includes touch. E-O-P-H. These four have the most residue.”

  “Hope,” she said without hesitation.

  He typed the word into the computer, bringing up the systems menu. He clicked the link labeled ‘Security Cams’ and searched for the right time. “Nothing,” he said, staring at the blank screen.

  “How can there be nothing?”

  “All footage from five this afternoon on has been wiped clean. There’s nothing to see.”

  “Godamni-” Ice started to say, only to be interrupted by the sound of gunfire and yelling coming from the street forty floors below them. Without hesitation, they both ran to the elevator.

  _______________________________________________

  The armor tracked Speed Demon’s every movement, allowing it to keep up with the speedster despite the armor’s inability to move at the same speed. North ran full out through the empty city streets, but the machine was able to anticipate the projected path, allowing it to teleport within striking distance of The Demon.

  “Seriously, dude,” North yelled at the armor that appeared in front of him. “What the fuck is your problem?”

  “You have to die, North,” the computerized voice said, just before teleporting away and rematerializing a hundred yards away, directly in front of The Speed Demon yet again. “You all have to die for what you’ve done.”

  “I haven’t done nothing to you.” North ran hard, but the Iron Knight armor continued to show up directly in his path. “Go…“ North ran past it again, “fuck…” and again, “yourself” and again. He couldn’t get away.

  “You and your friends have already fucked me over enough for one lifetime, Demon,” the armor answered, continually appearing in North’s path. “This all ends now, tonight, for all of us.”

  Speed Demon continued running, then stopped directly in front of the Barren Building, where a group of policeman, a dozen or so, were already gathered, having been brought in to create a barrier due to Barren’s murder. The armor appeared next to him. “Shoot this motherfucker!” North yelled to the cops, who immediately followed the order, pulling out their pistols and shooting at the armor.

  The armor’s deflector shields blocked all of the bullets, and then the machine raised its wrists, returning fire and placing bullets into each cop who had fired their weapon. The armor looked at North. “This was the plan? To find police so they could shoot me? Sad.”

  “Just needed a distraction.” Speed Demon launched himself at the armor, throwing punches faster than the eye could see. Sonic booms could be heard from every fist that connected, causing the armor to momentarily take a step back. The machine threw a clumsy roundhouse back, which North easily allowed to go above his head.

  “Fuck you!” North screamed, punching the armor as hard and fast as he could in the mid-section. A crack in the machine’s ribcage began to form, which North noticed. He began to concentrate on that exact spot, trying hard to open it up further.

  The armor grabbed The Speed Demon by the throat, the mechanical hand squeezing itself completely closed, crushing North’s windpipe. The machine gripped until it held The Speed Demon’s spine in its grasp and placed its other hand on North’s shoulder. The armor pulled up, ripping The Demon’s head from his body with the spinal cord still attached.

  _______________________________________________

  The Detective ran from the building first, just in time to see The Iron Knight ripping The Speed Demon’s head off of his body. The Detective stopped in his tracks, staring at the blood covered machine holding Billy North’s head and backbone in its hand.

  “Billy!” Ice screamed as she ran past The Detective.

  The machine, still holding the head with its right hand, saw her and raised its left wrist gun, opening fire on The Ice Queen. The Detective jumped, pushing her out of the way as bullets flew past them both. Gunfire trailed behind them as he continued running with her in his grasp, until finally landing behind a parked police car.

  “Stay here,” he said.

  “Fuck you!” she yelled at him. “This motherfucker just killed Billy, and I’m not going to just cower here beh---”

  The Detective leaned in and kissed her hard on the lips as bullets continued to fly dangerously close to their heads. He pulled back, taking in the complete look of shock covering her face. “Now that I’ve got your attention,” he said, suddenly relishing the fact that she tasted like strawberries, “I’m going to run out and get his attention. When he’s focused on me, blast him, shoot him, freeze him, whatever it is you do, with everything you’ve got.” He pulled the gun out of his coat. “You know what to do?”

  She nodded.

  He was suddenly quite happy with himself for stealing that kiss, realizing it may well be the last one he would ever have. He ran out from cover; bullets followed him even as the machine continued shooting at the car Ice used for cover. He knew it was going to take something special to get this asshole to pay all of its attention to him. He continued dodging bullets, running closer and closer to the machine, until he noticed something; he dove at the machine, ramming the barrel of his pistol into a crack in the armor’s midsection.

  He pulled the trigger three times; without warning, lines of electricity rolled across The Iron Knight. Sparks flew from the armor, and for a split second, the world around The Detective turned into darkness. Then the lights came back on, and the armor threw him off, like a child tossing a stuffed animal.

  The Detective looked around. They stood on the top of a parking garage. His bullets had somehow caused them both to teleport away. He aimed his gun at the machine.

  The armor’s faceplate turned toward him. “You damaged the operating system,” it said with its computerized voice. “It is nothing that cannot be fixed.” The Iron Knight turned and started to walk away.

  The Detective raised his gun to the machine’s head. “I can’t just let you leave.”

  “And yet you cannot stop me.” The machine continued walking across the concrete. “My fight is not with you, so I will allow you to live.”

  The Detective followed the machine, gun still raised. “Who the fuck are you? Why are you doing this?”

  “They deserve it; they all deserve it.”

  “I can’t say I disagree with you at all, but I need you to stop.” He pulled the hammer back. “If nothing else, maybe you could do it as a personal favor for me?”

  The armor stopped and turned back towards The Detective. “You live for now, but if you show back up with her, I will kill you as one of them.” The Iron Knight opened up the panel on its wrist; lightning like current began to roll around it, sparks flying from the crack in its midsection. “Tell her I’m coming for her; tell her I’m coming for all of them. When this is over, we will all be dead.” And then it disappeared, teleporting away in a burst of electricity.

  The Detective pushed the gun’s hammer down and placed it back into his coat. He lowered himself to the concrete ground, sitting down hard on his bottom. “Well, that just fucking sucked,” he said softly to himself.

  _______________________________________________

  Journal Entry

  [Found on page 71]

  Note: The following is a press release/newspaper article published in every major newspaper in the country approximately one year after the war and a few months after The Seven and their governors assumed control of all news organizations, radio broadcasts, and television stations.

  The Seven announced sever
al new national laws today from the nation’s new capital, Metro City. These laws will be enforced immediately to make our country a safer place for all citizens. Effective immediately, all citizens will be under a 9 p.m. (local standard time) curfew. This law will exclude emergency workers, those with proper credentials, and super powered citizens. Any citizen who does not fall under any of the above exemptions caught out after 9 p.m. will be deemed to be participating in criminal activities and will be sent to their local tribunal for punishment.

  Also effective immediately, all citizens must engage in active employment. Any citizen without a job must report to their local job placement center within the next forty-eight hours for immediate work placement. Any citizen not working will be deemed part of the criminal element and will be properly sanctioned by their local tribunal.

  All non-powered citizens must also apply for a Parenting License before attempting to procreate. Any child born to parents without proper authority will be immediately taken and placed with licensed parents who are unable to conceive. Pricing for the Parenting License will vary based on region or state and will be subject to yearly renewals/reevaluations.

  _______________________________________________

  “Where the fuck is he?” The Ice Queen yelled as she rode to the top of the parking garage on a giant slide made of ice, her body coated in a thick sheath of frozen crystal, her “superhero” form. She sparkled like a diamond.

  The Detective stood up, placing his hat back on his head. “He’s gone. He got away.”

  “Where the hell did he go?” she cried out as she rode her ice slide to the concrete ground, coming to rest next to him. “What the hell did he do, just fucking disappear?.”

  “He just fucking disappeared,” The Detective said, staring at the ice that covered her from head to toe and wanting to ask if he could touch it. “How did you find me anyways?”

  “You two disappeared in a flash of electricity, and then I saw another flash that came from this spot. I iced up and got here as fast as I could.” She threw her hands up in the air. “Apparently, I wasn’t fast enough. Now, how the hell did you end up here?”

  “When I shot inside the armor, it did something to it,” he answered. “We teleported here, and then he teleported away.”

  “Why didn’t he kill you?”

  “I don’t think I’m on his target list,” he said, absentmindedly rubbing his right arm. “He left here without firing another shot.”

  She pointed at him. “Then what’s that?”

  He looked to his right. Blood poured from a hole in his shoulder, running down his arm and dripping off the back of his hand. He sat back down. “So apparently I didn’t dodge that barrage of gunfire as well as I thought I had.”

  She walked over to him and peeled his coat off of his arm. “Take your shirt off.”

  “I don’t think we have time for that, do we?” he asked as she pulled the bloody shirt down past the wound.

  “Not now, you idiot.”

  She touched his bare skin. He felt like he was being rubbed by a beautiful popsicle.

  “It’s through and through,” she said, pulling the shirt back over the hole. “You’ll live. There’s first aid equipment in the car.” She held her hands out, spraying a short ice slide in front of them. “Grab hold; we’ll slide back to the Barren Building.”

  He stood up and positioned himself behind her.

  “Put your hands on my shoulders and hang on.”

  The Detective followed her instructions, gripping her as tight as he could grab a human icicle, and the two of them rode the slide she continually made back to the carnage of the Barren Building.

  _______________________________________________

  Several ambulances and emergency vehicles awaited their return. The Detective realized Ice must have made some calls before coming to find him. He sat on the back of an ambulance, and a nice EMT named Nancy patched him up, putting bandages on both sides of his shoulder. Nancy told him the story of how, back before the war, she had to try hard to keep her telekinetic ability a secret to the world; now though, it came in quite handy during her day-to-day life. He congratulated her on her new found freedom and thanked her for the patch job, then walked away, not really wanting to hear anyone else’s life story.

  Around them, emergency workers, all of them super powered since it was well past the normals’ curfew, placed cops into body bags. Another crew placed Billy North’s remains into two separate bags, one for his body, the other for his head and spine. A third crew, the clean-up crew, tried to wash the blood off of the street.

  The Detective walked over and bent down in front of the bag containing North’s head. He unzipped it enough to look at the head and the still attached spinal cord. North’s lifeless eyes stared straight up into the sky, and blood still dripped from the bones and ripped flesh. With nothing new to learn from the corpse, he zipped up the bag and looked around at the entire scene.

  There were no survivors amongst the police officers who tried to take on The Iron Knight, but, The Detective reminded himself, The Iron Knight was dead; Anthony Barren’s hours old corpse sat upstairs, away from the latest batch of death and violence. Whoever was in that armor, whoever shot fourteen cops and ripped The Speed Demon’s head clean off of his body, was not “the” Iron Knight.

  The Ice Queen stood behind an ambulance, a duffle bag next to her ice covered feet. She saw him as he walked towards her, and she seemed to almost smile, a tiny smile that reflected like crystal beneath the street lights. “You okay?” she asked, her voice nearly showing a genuine sense of concern.

  “I’m good,” he answered. “You?”

  “Heartbroken.” A frozen tear fell out of her left eye as she spoke. “Even though Billy was older than me and Fire, he was like our silly little brother. Watching him die was like losing family.”

  The Detective nodded. “If it means anything, I’m sorry.”

  “Nothing for you to be sorry for. You did what you could.” She wiped the falling ice from her eyes, straightened her back out, and cleared her throat, the sadness suddenly disappearing from her frozen face. “Now, you need to turn the fuck around.”

  “Why?” he asked, suddenly feeling the need to lighten things up to change the mood. “Are you naked under that frost?”

  “Actually,” she answered, “I am. When I ‘ice up,’ it freezes my clothes, and they shatter, leaving me completely nude when I’m in my ice form. Therefore, you need to turn your ass around, so I can depower and get dressed.”

  “Okay.” A slight smirk covered his face as he turned away from her. “I’ll be a gentleman this time, but don’t come to expect me to behave this well all the time.”

  “Thanks,” she said in a sarcastic tone.

  He snuck a quick glimpse behind him, only to see that within seconds, the ice covering her body disappeared as if it had never been there at all. He could barely see the back of her bare legs, but he saw enough to know they were long and shapely. He tried to work his glance up higher, and then she spoke to him. Not exactly wanting to get caught, he quickly looked away.

  “Let me ask you something,“ she said from behind his back. “How did you not know you were shot?”

  “Like your bald lawyer friend said earlier, my adrenal gland is quite large, so when I’m under stress, you know, like being shot at by a seven foot tall killer machine, I don’t really feel pain or any other kind of limits.”

  “That’s handy.”

  “Tends to be,” he said in return. “You dressed yet?”

  She walked next to him. “Yes, I am. So now what? How do we find this bastard?”

  He stared at the short skirt and low cut top she was wearing. “Nice outfit. Is that your alternate crime fighting outfit, or are we going out to a super hero nightclub later?”

  “Fuck you,” she answered, a tiny smile returning to her face. “This was all I had in the damn car. Now answer my question, what do we do next to find this motherfucker?”

 
He walked to the other side of the ambulance, staring at the people working to clean up the mess. She followed close behind him.

  “We look at what we’ve got. Two of The Seven are dead, killed by some guy inside of Barren’s armor. Whoever this guy is, he had to have some kind of access to Barren to get into his place to begin with.”

  A look of concern crept onto her smooth face. “So you think this was somebody who had access to Barren, to us? Somebody we knew?”

  “Most likely,” he answered. “How else could somebody have bypassed all of this---” he pointed up the penthouse---“building’s security and make it to Barren without being noticed? And then he pinpointed the exact location of a man who could run faster than the speed of sound, using electronic armor built from the ground up for somebody else. He had to have access to all of this beforehand.”

  “Makes sense.” She stared at the spot in the street where The Speed Demon had been killed.

  “And whatever this guy’s endgame is, from the way he talked, all of this is personal. It’s not political; it’s not the act of a terrorist; it’s the act of a person seeking vengeance.”

  She turned and looked The Detective in the eyes. “And how exactly do you come to that conclusion?”

  “Look at what he, she, it, whatever this thing is, has done. Barren could have just been poisoned or something; this guy took Barren’s own armor and then executed him with it. Look out there, he didn’t just kill North; he ripped him apart.”

  She looked away.

  “And you,” The Detective said, causing her to look back at him. “He opened fire on you the moment he saw you. No plan, no reasoning, just immediately opening fire the moment he realized who you were. Without a doubt, this is personal.”

  “And now?” she asked.

  “And now, the armor is injured; he said so himself. My three bullets managed to fuck up the operating system, and he‘s probably in repair mode. Or if he can’t do that, he’s probably switching to some kind of an alternate plan. He’s got two down and five to go.”