by Jay Phillips
She looked up at him. “What the hell was that?” she asked in a quiet but forceful voice. “Provoking him like that, were you trying to get yourself killed?”
“Not really, just figured I had the chance to say it, might as well get it out of my system.”
She smiled at him again; this time it was the happy smile he had seen a few times. “I was impressed. Think I got a little excited right around the time you told him to go fuck himself.”
“Nice to know I can still impress the pretty girl with my shenanigans; it’s like high school all over again.” He stumbled a little bit as he stood there, his feet seemingly unwilling to cooperate with the rest of his body; despite his best efforts to not let it show, she noticed anyways.
“What was that?” she asked in a loud whisper. “Are you okay?”
“Nothing,” he replied, suddenly not sure if he was holding her up or her him.
She leaned next to him and pulled his coat away from the wound on his shoulder. The hemorrhaging had gotten worse; the entire interior of his coat was soaked in crimson and scarlet. “You’re bleeding to death.”
“Probably,” he answered with a grin. “Does dying make my whole speech back there seem any less brave?”
“Goddamn you,” she said, her whisper becoming ever so louder. “Do not give up; do you hear me?”
He straightened himself up and let go of her, not sure at the time which one of them would be the first to fall to the ground, but they both managed to stand on their own. He stretched out his neck, moving it from side-to-side, and he gave her a quick nod.
“I’m okay,” he said, trying his damnest to reassure her. He had come too far for either of them to give up now. “I’m tired, but I’m okay.”
She looked up at him, the sweetest look of concern present within her pretty eyes. “You better be. I’m not leaving here without you. You got that?”
“Yes, beautiful, we leave together, no questions asked,” he replied, hating the fact that he had just blatantly lied to her. He doubted his ability to walk without help, let alone being able to leave there without a body bag to climb into. The only thing keeping him going at that moment was the adrenaline surging throughout him and the piss and vinegar that made up his personality.
“Detective,” The Agent called without turning away from the giant glass wall.
The Detective let go of Emily and began walking across the large room, passing by the giant monitors, looking closely as he walked by at all the different camera angles The Agent had at his disposal. Knowing more were probably available at the touch of a button, the two screens showed at least a thousand different locations between them, each displaying a different corner, street, building top, hallway, or house. East Coast, the South, the North, the West Coast, The Agent could literally be everywhere at once and everywhere else in-between. With teleporters and assassins at his command, not to mention his armies of armed troops, it was no wonder he had kept the entire country under his thumb for so long.
The Detective made it to the glass, and he looked out over the city. As impressive as the view had been from Ice’s bedroom, it paled in comparison to the view he was currently seeing. The entire city was displayed in front of him, every building, every light, every home, all lit up by the seemingly continuous flashes of lightning that ripped through the heavens.
He turned and looked at the Agent, who still stared out the glass. Despite his size and strength, his face had a tiredness to it, a sense of weakness, that The Detective had never noticed in any picture or clip of The Agent. His stint as being America’s own personal savior had definitely taken its toll on the man, not that it was anything less than what he deserved. To The Detective, Rogers deserved so much worse.
“Look at it, Detective,” the Agent said, breaking the silence in the room. “Look at what I have created. It’s a utopia. There are no homeless; there is no crime, no drugs. Everyone has a job, and no one goes hungry. Everyone has just what they need. It may not always be enough, but it’s always what they need. When Adam killed Barren, it was the first unsanctioned, the first unapproved murder in almost five years. I make sure no one breaks my laws, and everyone is safer for it. They are happier because I took control.”
The Detective turned and looked at him. “You really believe that, don’t you? You really believe this is a better place since you and your cronies took power? You think because you took away the option to commit a crime, the chance to make a mistake, the option to grow up and be what you want, that you made the world a better place?”
“Yes, Detective, I do,” Rogers answered as he turned towards The Detective. “I protect them from themselves; I have saved them from choice. If the choice to make a mistake is taken away, nobody will make one. I have created a perfect world, where hunger, addiction, crime, where none of this exists. My people, normals and super powered alike, are finally safe.”
The Agent pointed out to the edge of the city, the area that used to be considered the slums. “After I was blessed with my powers, I worked that area, The Commons, for years, tearing through drug dens, destroying bands of criminals with automatic weapons who could care less what innocents they caught in the crossfire. For every one I took off the street, whether I dropped them off at a precinct or bashed their brains off the curb, two or three more pieces of scum would take their place. You were a police officer at some point; you know exactly what I’m talking about.”
The Detective nodded. As much as he didn’t want to agree with this man, he couldn’t help but understand what he was saying.
“Then you understand the frustration of always taking two steps back. I fought for those streets; I bled for those streets, and then, our own country, the same country I had fought and shed blood for, declares us, supers just like you and me, as the criminals, forsaking us in exchange for all of the scum I had tried so hard to save us from. I---” He corrected himself. “---we had no other choice; we did what we had to do, and in the process, I took the opportunity to finally achieve what I had never thought possible. I made them all safe, each and every one of them. Even if they didn’t want my protection, like you, like the rebels that Emily’s sister used to feed information to, I still protected them from themselves, taking away their opportunity to fight back, removing the need for me to punish them for their actions. There is no more crime because I make sure there is no more crime. It is this way because I will it to be.”
“You were once Agent America.” The Detective replied. “What happened to fighting for freedom?”
The Agent turned back towards the glass. “Freedom? Which is more important, Detective, the right to be free or the right to be protected? What is wrong with being protected from doing harm or having harm done to them? What is wrong with making sure your people are always safe?”
The Detective looked out at the city and the rain that fell upon it. It was beautiful; he couldn’t argue it. He couldn’t argue with The Agent’s devotion to his ideals either. No matter how insane they were, no matter how off kilter, no matter how wrong they were in the end, on some level, he knew that The Agent absolutely believed everything he had done was for the best, that everything he had done and continued doing was his insane attempt to make the world a better place. It was all crazy as fuck, and he didn’t agree with any of it. But he knew that The Agent’s actions weren’t out of malice; he was still just trying to save everyone from themselves. And he was willing to sacrifice anyone or anything to do it.
The Agent turned and looked at him. “This world I have created, Detective, this utopia, now, thanks to you, I can finally spread it to the rest of the world.”
The Detective returned his gaze and took a step away from him and the giant window. He shook his head. “The League of Nations will never let you attack another country. You would have to face an army of supers from across the world. It‘d be suicide.”
“Years ago,” Rogers began, ignoring everything The Detective had just said, “I tried to make Canada as safe as America; I launche
d a little coup to take the country as non-violently as possible. You remember, don’t you? After all, you were one of the ones who assured my failure.”
The Detective smiled. “Oh I remember; I got the scars to prove it.”
“And then a few years later, I had several of my operatives attempt to attain the prime minister’s security codes. And yet again, who was there to ruin my plans?”
The Detective halfway raised his right hand. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Emily standing in the section of the room where the kitchen met the living area. She smiled at him, almost as if it made her proud to know that he was the one who had foiled The Agent’s plans.
“Since then Detective, I’ve kept a close eye on you. I have studied you, watched you, found what makes you tick, how your powers work, things about you I doubt you even knew yourself.”
The Detective shook his head. “You sick bastard. You watched me shower didn’t you. I always suspected you were into such debauchery. Now I know for a fact.”
“You have always used humor when you feel uncomfortably,” The Agent continued, again ignoring The Detective’s last comment. “You can’t leave a question unanswered, no matter what cost the answer. You have never been able to turn down a pretty girl. Look at you over the last day or so. You followed The Ice Queen as if she had you on a leash, never questioning that she only led you where I needed you to be. I even anticipated her attempt to aid you, knowing that your natural charms always seem to break down the strongest defenses. Such a shame, after all, she had been my most loyal soldier.”
“And you let Adam kill her,” The Detective chimed in.
“When she tried to give you a means of escape, she betrayed me. She took a chance on destroying everything, all of my plans, all of my hopes, and why? Because she felt a misguided sense of gratitude towards you? Not that it mattered. A group of armed guards, a teleporter, and you placed yourself exactly where I needed you to be. You are nothing else if not predictable. That’s why I brought in Emily here. You met her; you knew her; I realized after Ice’s death, the tether line bringing you to me had been cut, and I needed another solution. Emily is so sweet, so pretty; I knew you would never be able to live with yourself if you put her in danger. And make no mistake, the threat was always real. If she hadn’t gotten you to take that left turn, I was going to kill her, her sister, her sister’s children. I was going to burn their house down and pretend they never existed. And I probably still will.”
“Go to hell, Rogers!” Emily yelled as she walked the distance between them. “I did everything you wanted! You have no right to hurt them!”
The Detective grabbed her by the shoulders as she walked by, holding her back before she could reach The Agent and launch into him with her delicate fists.
The Agent smiled at the young woman trying to tear herself out of The Detective’s grasp, his voice still emitting the same friendly tone of a man welcoming his neighbors into his home. “I can’t get over how much you have grown. That scrawny little girl who used to hang on to her big sister’s every word has grown up to be such a beautiful young lady, so full of fire and passion, willing to do whatever it takes to protect her family, even when she knows there is nothing she can do. Emily, my dear, if I wanted you or your sister dead, you would be dead. You live because I allow it. Your sister is alive in her hospital bed right now as we speak because I allow it. My city out there is alive and breathing because I allow it. I keep my world safe, but I can always burn it down and begin it again.”
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 not
ified 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.”
