by Jay Phillips
He stopped the truck and got out. He walked a few yards towards the house and picked up his hat, which was lying exactly where it had been after he had dodged to avoid The Iron Knight’s gunfire. He placed the fedora back on his head, and despite suddenly feeling a little more like his old self, it wasn’t enough to placate the feeling of sadness nor the indecisiveness of his current situation. He took one last sniff of the air and the overwhelming stench of death contained within it, and he knew it was well past time to go.
The Detective climbed back in the truck, hat securely in place on his aching skull; he placed the truck back into gear and drove towards the driveway, which led through the woods and away from this place.
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Journal Entry
[Found on page 65]
Note: The following is a letter/ correspondence found on Rogers’ computer; it is apparently a communication between an insider within the government and a rebel group working against The Seven.
From: Red Hot
To: The Truth
Subject: Cameras
I am taking a great risk here to give you this information, but I feel it needs to be shared. The Agent is currently in the process of having a secret camera network built throughout the country. By the time he’s done, every street corner, every building, every home, every hallway will have a camera in or on it, a camera that will connect directly to The Agent’s tower. He and the private security team he is building will have access to our every move. We won’t be able to breath without him knowing about it. Something has to be done. I’m enclosing maps detailing the infrastructure plans for this project. God help us if this comes to fruition.
From: The Truth
To: Red Hot
Subject: Re: Cameras
Thanks for the information, but what exactly do you expect me to do with this? I can’t exactly take on The Seven by myself.
From: Red Hot
To: The Truth
Subject: Re: Re: Cameras
Asshole, you call yourself The Truth. You build websites about spreading reality and freeing the country from tyranny, but when I send you some actual usable intel, you act like you don’t know what to do with it. Get up off your ass, get some people together, send this information out to the masses, and rally this damn country so that they will stand up and fight this oppression. It has to start somewhere, and it has to start now. -Red Hot
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The Detective stopped the truck at the edge of the highway with two options in front of him: left or right. Never had there been a simpler choice that had seemed quite so hard. He could go right, north to the safety of another country’s border. If, that was, he could make it that far before being confronted by more of The Agent’s seemingly numerous hit-squads. Or he could go left, back towards Metro City, back to The Agent, back to The Iron Knight, back to the fight.
The drive to this point had been quite uneventful. Five minutes of driveway had led through thick, dense, old forest. The driveway eventually led to an old two lane road, and signs pointed him towards the highway, where, twenty minutes or so later, he now sat: tired, in pain, and beyond confused.
There was always right. Right always sounded good. North wasn’t bad either; north was cold, uneventful, safe. Three things that sounded really good to him at the moment.
To the left, there was the city. There was fighting, pain, the chance of being killed, or worse, being locked up again. There was no hope, no sanity, just more blood and anguish, nothing good could come from going left. But to the right, to the city, there were answers, and he needed answers. To know why he had been put through all of this, why he had been chosen for this particular exercise in futility, was something he thought he needed to know. Why him?
But---there was that damn word again---to the right, there was some kind of hope, a chance of escaping all of this with both his body and his sanity partially intact. No answers, but answers were always overrated; they never really gave the satisfaction he thought they would. Usually they just raised more questions than they ever solved. Right led away from all of this, away from the fighting, away from this screwed up situation that wasn’t of his making.
So what if Rogers’ sent a couple of hit-squads after him; it wouldn’t be the first time he had to avoid danger, and it wouldn’t be the last. But at least going right would make them have to find him; it wouldn’t be him willingly driving into the belly of the beast. It would be him giving himself a chance, giving himself some kind of hope, giving himself a greater chance of survival.
Left held answers; right, at the very least, held the chance of freedom. Left meant more pain, suffering, and probably a quick death by placing himself in between an angry robot and a power mad despot. He couldn’t think of a single damn thing that made going left worth it. But deep in his heart, he knew that was a lie.
There were several things that going left could provide: answers, reasons why, vengeance, the truth. There was nothing on the face of this planet he wanted more than to see Rogers get everything he had coming, seeing that would mean more to him than freedom and sanity combined. He still owed The Agent for the many scars littered across his back. He still owed The Agent for a few other things as well, and the memory of Angelica, after the little trip down memory lane Psychosis had granted him earlier in the day, was firmly planted at the forefront of his mind.
But right was safe; it gave him a chance to come out of all of this with his head still attached to his shoulders. Left held the chance for answers, the chance for vengeance, the opportunity to see someone pay for their crimes against him, their crimes against the nation. Right held hope; left held a sure death at best and imprisonment at the worst. Neither seemed quite appealing at the moment.
“What about me?” a female voice asked from the passenger seat beside him. “Am I appealing enough to go left for?”
“Maybe,” he said in return, doing his best to keep his shock from coming out in his voice.
Emily smiled at him from the other seat, her long black hair falling across her shoulders, leaving wisps of loose hairs falling in front of her slightly freckled face. “Maybe is not an answer, Detective. I need to know if I am worth making a left turn for.”
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SYSTEM REPAIR COMPLETE
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SEARCH LOCATION: FORT XORN
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LOCATION FOUND: 712 MILES WEST FROM METRO CITY
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FLIGHT TIME APPROXIMATELY 1 HOUR
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TELEPORT?
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TELEPORTATION SYSTEM NOT FUNCTIONAL
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ACTIVATE BOOSTERS
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The Detective reached across the truck seat and tried to touch the pretty girl sitting next to him. His hand went through her as if she was just air.
“So what are you?” The Detective asked. “A figment of my imagination or yet another person fucking with my mind?”
“I’m sorry,” Emily said in return, the slightest of smiles appearing on her full lips. “I didn’t know of any other way to contact you.”
“I take it then that you’re not a hallucination?”
“Not quite.”
“You’re just inside of my already broken mind, making me see something that’s not really there.”
She tried smiling again. This one seemed tinged with the slightest hint of sadness. “About sums it up.”
“That’s just swell,” he said as he turned back towards the front, his eyes staring out through the now rain cove
red windshield. “That’s just fucking swell.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I needed you, and this was the only trick I had to get your attention.”
The Detective turned back towards her. “This is quite the trick for a simple empath. I take it you’re more than just a feeling reader.”
She nodded, her wild dark hair falling more into her face as her head bobbed up and down. “Telepath.”
“If you can hack my brain from this distance, you must be one of the more powerful telepaths in the business,” he said, suddenly feeling the need to hide any stray thoughts or memories before she had the chance to see them, only to realize he was probably way too late.
“Maybe,” she said in return, the slight smile fading from her pretty face. “Pammy wouldn’t tell me the results of my tests. She wouldn’t tell The Agent either. She lied to him, gave him a false set of results.”
“And she made you lie to everyone about your ability, knowing that Rogers would never have need for a simple empath.”
“She knew what would happen. The Agent has been collecting people for years, finding the most powerful and adding them to his personal guard.”
A look of realization rolled across The Detective’s face. “And here I’ve spent most of the day feeling sorry for your sister. Somehow, I managed to lump her into the same group as myself, you know, people who were getting dragged into this shit. Apparently, I managed to forget just how much she's known over the years and how little she's done in return.”
“What could she do?” Emily said in return, her voice suddenly filled with a protective need to defend her sister. “For years, she fed as much inside information as she could to any resistance group willing to listen, and if any of them would have actually been willing to fight, she would have joined with them without a second thought. But eventually, all of the resistance groups dried up and faded away, so she did what anyone else would have done, what I would have done, what you would have done: she gave up too. She threw away any ideas of resisting; she quit the administration; she married the man she loved, and she had a family. And you saw this morning what she was willing to do to protect her family.”
The Detective opened his mouth to speak, his argument on the tip of his tongue. Emily interrupted before a syllable could roll from his lips.
“No, Detective,” she said as the slight smile from earlier returned to her face. “There’s no way she could have deceived me about her involvement with the resistance groups. Hello, I’m a telepath. I’m not an easy girl to lie to.”
“I guess you’re not,” he finally managed to sneak in. After that little tirade, he suddenly found himself liking this girl more and more. He had always liked the ones with a little bit of a bite. “This is all great and good, and I’m really glad I managed to help save the one member of The Seven who tried to make a difference. It’s all good. But it does nothing to tell me what the fuck you’re doing in my head right, and why you think I should place my dumb ass back in this shit.
She smiled at him again. “I need you. Isn’t that enough?”
“No,” he said in return, the grimace on his face growing ever larger. “Normally, the sweet and pretty ones like you make me melt, and they can get me to do whatever in the hell they want. But I’ve been having a pretty shitty day; I’m tired; I’m in pain; I’m bleeding from several different spots, and this is the second mind fuck I’ve had in the past few hours. So my answer is no. You are not enough.”
He placed the truck back into drive, turned on the windshield wipers to clear away some of the rain, and started to make a right turn onto the highway. And then he stopped. His one great downfall in life reared its ugly head yet again. As always, he was curious, and he had one more question.
“Why?” he asked as he took his eyes away from the windshield and turned to face her. “Why do you need me back in this? Why do you need my help? What can I do for you, your sister, or your dead best friend?”
“I need answers, Detective,” she said, her pretty brown eyes looking up into his. “And you can help me get them.”
The Detective chuckled. “I’m sorry; I really don’t mean to laugh. But you, in complete sincerity, expect me to go back to certain death, so you, can what, find closure?”
“I stood in front of Adam’s apartment; I felt what he felt. For a moment, before he blocked me out, I could see a book, a journal, a record of what he was going to do, and I knew he wanted me to have it. I know it can help us”
“Then go get it. Shit, you’re physically a hell of a lot closer than I am. What’s stopping you?”
Emily looked at him, a disappointed expression, almost like a pout, momentarily covering her face. “You cuss a lot, don’t you?”
“I tend to when I‘m stressed,” he said as he returned her gaze. “You didn’t answer my question. What’s stopping you from collecting it yourself.”
The sadness returned to her face. “After I met you this morning, after I read you in the hospital, I can feel them now. They’re killing because of you; they’re killing anyone who knows you, anyone who’s seen you. They‘re wiping your memory from the city one, two, three deaths at a time.”
The Detective looked at her as he reached up and slowly rubbed his sore temples. “You’re pretty, but you make my head hurt.”
“It happens when I’m in someone’s head too long. Sorry.”
“It’s not the telepathy,” he said, his old smirk almost creeping onto his tired and battered face. “It’s your storytelling. It would give me a headache on the best of days.”
She pouted again. “You’re mean.”
“Yes, I am,” he replied as he continued rubbing his temples. His head really was pounding. “Now tell me your story again, slowly, this time with details.”
“If I could touch you, I would so hit you right now.”
He smiled. “That’s the reaction I usually get from pretty girls.”
“It’ll take too long to explain,” she said, ignoring his last comment. “Shut your eyes, and I’ll show you.”
“Is it going to hurt?”
“Only if I want it to, and I’m about to lean in that direction.”
He smirked. “Who’s mean now?”
“You obviously have a way of bringing it out in people.”
“It’s a talent.”
She shook her head in frustration. “Detective. Your eyes please.”
He sighed and closed his eyes. He could instantly see them, two of them, one made out of what seemed to be pure darkness, the other, pure light. Were they hunting for him? No. They were after him but in a roundabout way. They were eliminating his memory, killing anyone and everyone who had knowledge of him or his release from prison.
“Who are they?” The Detective asked without opening his eyes.
Her voice came from inside his mind. “Killers. Assassins. Trained murderers.”
“The Agent’s?”
“Yes. One of his personal squads.”
“And they're eliminating anyone who has seen me? Anyone who knows about my release?”
“Seems so.”
He opened his eyes. The images from inside his mind disappeared, replaced by the pretty girl sitting beside him. Sadly, she wasn’t anymore real than the pictures in his thoughts had been. “Where are they now?”
Her frown returned. “Heading to Adam’s building. They are going to kill anyone who may have caught a glimpse of you and Gabby walking the halls together.”
“So, they’re going to kill everyone there.”
“That appears to be the plan.”
“And after that?” he asked, already knowing the answer.
Her frown spread across her face. “They come to the hospital, and they kill me, my sister, and the babies, eliminating the only remaining people who have seen you.”
He sighed, just as another question popped into his crowded and overworked mind. “Not to call into question your telepathic superiority, but, exactly how do you know all of this?”
> The slightest of looks, almost a look of recognition, as if she had been waiting for this question, appeared on her face. “When I read you this morning, I sensed them. Their thoughts were so heavy on you, so focused on eliminating your memory, I could feel them as they pictured you in their thoughts.” She shook her head. “It’s hard to explain. After I read you, it linked me to anyone with you on their mind. I don’t know if it happens to all telepaths, Pammy wouldn’t actually allow me to be around any other telepaths, but it happens to me. I read someone, and I can sense other people who are actively thinking about them.”
“Sounds exciting.”
“It’s not, believe me. I read one person, and then, I’m in the head of anyone and everyone who just happens to be having a stray thought about them. And you really are a jackass, aren’t you?”
He smirked in her general direction. “I tend to be, yeah.”
“That’s how I found them,” she continued. “I can’t actively read them; they’ve had training to keep telepaths from fully seeing their thoughts, but I got enough to know what they’re doing.”
“Then leave,” he said in return, his voice filled with actually concern. “Take your sister, the babies, and yourself, and get the hell out of Dodge. What’s stopping you?”
She shook her head from side to side. Her pretty black hair swung through the air. “We can’t. Pammy can’t be moved; she’s still critical.”
“You and the babies---”
She interrupted again. “Where can we go, Detective? The Agent has a private army of teleporters, telepaths, and trained killers. Where ever we run, if he wants us found, he’ll find us.”
He took his hat off and placed it on the seat between them. He turned back towards the windshield, then went back to rubbing his temples. “What can I do?”
“Adam’s book, his journal. I felt it that night; there’s information in there, maybe a way to kill The Agent. If we had it, if we knew what Adam knew…” She paused for the briefest of moments. “Maybe we could help him finish this; maybe we could help him kill Rogers.”
“Or we could be killed in the process.”
She smiled at him, the same soft but sad little smile. “I’m going to be killed either way, Detective.”
