by Jay Phillips
He tried to get to his feet, only to be pushed back down by a cloaked hand. The brother stood over him as a glow began to develop within the center of Dark’s cloak. Within a second or so, the sister appeared from the middle of her brother, and she walked out with her light blade extended from her right fist. She stepped in front of The Detective, before dropping to her knees and straddling his stomach. She looked down at him; the wound in her shoulder bled profusely along her arm and onto The Detective.
“You could have been such a fun pet,” she said, her voice still oozing the same controlling tone she had earlier. “We could have been together forever.”
“Not a chance in hell,” The Detective replied suddenly realizing he couldn’t move his arms. He looked up to see that Dark held him pinned down. “Can’t take me by yourself, gotta have help; that’s just sad.”
Light bent down until she was almost nose-to-nose with him. He could feel the warm heat from her skin. “What’s sad is how your little mind bitch has to watch you die while she’s helpless to stop it.”
“Go to hell,” he said in return, unable to find anything witty or intelligent at that exact moment.
“You first, my pet.”
He felt the blade enter his skin, just below his sternum, burning through his flesh like a smoldering scalpel. Even with all of the adrenaline pumping throughout his organs, he felt every inch of it as it cut through him. She held the blade there, twisting it around, making the wound as deep and deadly as she possibly could. He could feel his blood gushing from the hole, running down his abdomen and across each of his sides. He pushed against the man holding his arms down, but he couldn’t budge him. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a beautiful woman holding a large gun.
“Get the fuck off of him!” Emily yelled from the terrace, the gun firmly aimed at the two siblings. She didn’t wait for a response. The first bullet tore through Light’s right bicep, ripping through skin and bone before implanting itself into the far wall. She pulled the arm up, tearing the blade out of The Detective in the process, before grabbing her wounded arm and crying out in pain. Emily aimed the second and third bullets at Dark, who immediately made himself intangible, allowing both bullets to pass harmlessly through him.
The Detective felt the now intangible hands lifted from his wrists, and he immediately took advantage of the opportunity, grabbing Light with his free hands and pushing her backwards as far as he could, just wanting her as far from him as he could possibly get her. He rolled over and placed a hand against the open hole just below his chest. Blood poured through the spaces between his fingers. He put as much pressure as he could on the wound, even as he tried to make his way to his feet.
Ozone suddenly filled the air, and he helplessly watched as Dark teleported behind Emily, grabbing her by the hair and slinging her to the ground. She landed hard against the bricked terrace. He looked around in time to see Light climbing up, suddenly ignoring him and slowly making her way towards the terrace, towards Emily.
The Detective again tried to climb to his feet, only to feel more and more blood gushing as he rose. “It doesn’t matter,” he told himself out loud. “It doesn’t matter what happens to you; you have to help her. You have to save her.” He found his footing and began walking, suddenly unsure of how much farther his feet would be able to take him.
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The Agent bent down and held the machine in his arms, staring down at the head and hoping for some kind of a light, some kind of a sign of life. There was nothing. No movement, no sound, no lights, nothing but a cold dead machine. Up until now, Adam had still been alive, even if it had been inside of one of Barren’s constructs. Up until this exact moment, his son had still been here, had still been able to fight, to tell his father about all of the mistakes he had made, all of the ways he had let him down, as both a father and a mentor. He just wanted to hear his voice one last time, just to know that it wasn’t completely over, that it didn’t have to end this way.
Out of the corner of The Agent’s eye, he watched Emily fly through the air and land hard on the bricked terrace. Without a word she, she rose to her feet and reached around herself, taking a gun out from behind her back. She walked to the edge of the terrace, the spot where the glass window had once stood as a divider. She said some words he couldn’t quite make out, just before firing the gun into the apartment. One, two, three bullets flew into his home, but he didn’t care. Everything he cared about, at that exact moment, laid silent in his arms.
Again, he watched as Emily was knocked backwards, but he didn’t care. He no longer cared about anything.
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Emily opened her eyes in time to see Light walking towards her, the blade on her fist fully extended. The glowing woman had a trio of wounds on her upper body: the two shoulder wounds The Detective had given her and a bullet hole in her bicep that Emily herself had just delivered. Just beyond Light, standing in the section where the terrace met the apartment, her brother waited, seemingly standing guard should Emily try to run or if The Detective tried to interfere.
But something was different. No, she thought to herself, everything was different. Everything was completely different. She was outside, outside in the rain, outside of the apartment, outside of the constraints of the telepathic blocks. She could see. She could see everything and anything. Thousand of voices appeared in her head, people from all of the surrounding buildings invaded her thoughts.
She forced them all out. They didn’t matter. The only ones that mattered were the two with her on the terrace. She could feel The Agent to her right, holding a dead suit of armor in his arms and crying over the son he lost. Hypocrite, she thought to herself, more like the son he killed. She then found the other set of thoughts that mattered, the mind of the glowing woman who walked towards her. Emily put everything she had into entering that mind, pushing her way into the assassin’s psyche.
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The Detective knew he had to get there. He had no choice; he had to protect her. He held onto the side of the giant monitor for support, using it to keep his balance. The world was running away from him almost as fast as his blood was running from his body. It took everything he had to stand, let alone to actually walk. He looked around for his gun that he had lost when he had been thrown into the monitor. He found it in the floor, right next to the pool of blood he had left behind. He bent down to retrieve the pistol, knowing he only had about three bullets left, but three was better than nothing. He looked ahead towards the terrace.
Dark stood there, a silent sentinel, guarding the space, making sure no one interrupted his sister’s work. Light walked toward Emily, blade extended, and The Detective knew what came next. He had no choice; she was out there about to die, and there was no way he was going to let that happen, not on his watch, not again. He let go of the monitor that currently held him up. He took a step. It hurt like hell, but it didn’t matter. Emily needed him.
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Emily could feel all of the defenses, but they were breakable. She had done it once before; she could do it again. She found Light’s most recent memory: The Detective was on his back; Light straddled him, her blade out and ready for use. Emily could feel it break through the skin, the blood spreading all over her hand as if she was the one doing the stabbing. The crimson liquid was warm and sticky, and she could see the look on his face, the tremendous pain that he expressed.
Suddenly, there were no defenses, nothing in her way, nothing that could stop her. Emily felt it rise through her like a white hot stream of lava, a burning rage that tore through her thoughts, and by extension, through Light’s thoughts as well. The anger Emily felt as she watched The Detective being stabbed, the pain he felt, the agony on his face, pulled away any urge she had to hold back. After resisting her powers her whole life, always afraid to use them, afraid of hurting the person o
n the other end, afraid of everyone finding out what she really was, she no longer cared. She slashed through Light’s thoughts, ripping, clawing, tearing away everything that made her who she was. Memories were erased, replaced with an empty void, a nothingness that would leave her nothing more than a vacant husk, still living but devoid of life.
“This is for The Detective,” Emily said into Light’s mind as she tore away the last pieces of Light’s psyche, the few remaining bits of humanity the assassin had left.
Emily opened her eyes and watched with a quiet satisfaction as Light collapsed into a heap some ten feet away from her.
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The Detective slowly walked toward the terrace, his gun held firmly in his right hand, the left still trying in vain to hold pressure on his new stab wound. The pain had left and still hadn’t returned; he had far too much adrenaline to feel much of anything. No pain, but there was the knowledge that this was it, the last great ride, the last play, the last move left on the board. But if he was going, he was bound and determined not to be going alone.
He looked out to the terrace, and for a moment, stopped in his tracks. Emily was overcome by energy; it flowed across her body, causing her hair to appear to stand on its ends and her large brown eyes to turn almost completely black.
“She’s outside,” he said out loud to himself. “And she’s got her powers back.”
He turned away from her in time to see Light come to a complete stop, just standing there, ten feet or so away from Emily, seemingly unable to move, completely motionless. Within a few seconds, the glowing woman quit glowing and fell to the ground. Her cloaked brother heard the commotion and turned around just in time to see his sister crumple. With a flash of ozone, he teleported away and reappeared a half second later over Light’s body, wrapping her within his cloak and holding her unmoving body. He let out a noise that The Detective couldn’t describe. It resembled a combination of a scream and a deep moan.
The Detective continued walking, crossing the distance between him and those on the outside far quicker than he would have believed himself able. By the time he actually stepped onto the terrace, Emily had returned to her normal self; she sat on her knees a good ten feet or so away from him, her eyes and hair back to their usual normal non-psychic energy conducting condition. The heavy rain soaked her from head to toe, but she didn’t seem to notice. She just sat there and smiled at him with her usual sad smile.
Dark continued covering his sister with his cloak, wrapping all of her except for her head, leaving her blank eyes staring up into the cloud covered sky. He sat there and held her in a tight embrace, staring down at her and continually making the same horrible wailing noise as before. Without a word of his own, The Detective slowly walked behind him. He raised his pistol until it was aimed directly at the back of Dark’s head. Feeling no reason to hesitate, The Detective pulled the trigger, spraying the cloaked man’s black brains all over the wet ground. Light rolled to the ground, falling from her brother’s arms as his dead body fell onto the bricked terrace. The Detective turned towards Emily.
“Is Light dead?” he asked as he aimed the gun towards the would-be assassin’s forehead.
Emily shook her head from side-to-side. “No, just turned into an empty shell. I hollowed her out. She can’t hurt anyone anymore.”
The Detective pulled the trigger and watched as the bullet entered the blonde’s skull. A single line of blood trickled from the still smoking bullet hole. “No need to take a chance,” he said as he turned away from the now dead brother and sister duo and walked towards Emily. “Got your powers back, I see.”
“And then some,” she added with a nod. She looked him up and down, paying particular attention to the new hole in his upper abdomen. “Are you okay?”
“No,” he answered as he shook his head from side-to-side. The Detective looked toward The Agent, who sat on the soaked terrace, clutching the remains of The Iron Knight armor in his arms and staring down at the helmet, the once glowing red eyes now empty and devoid of life. The Agent’s face was ravaged by tears, and he no longer played the part of the world’s most powerful despot. Instead, he looked like an old man mourning the death of his adopted son. “What can you do with Rogers?”
The Detective watched as Emily’s eyes returned to their previous state, becoming black as coal. Her hair rose to their ends as if every strand floated above her head. He could almost feel the psychic energy that rolled off her body. He was quite impressed.
She turned and smiled at him. Not the sad smile from earlier, this was an expression of power, the look of someone who knew exactly what she was capable of. “I can do anything I want to him,” she answered.
“Then what are you waiting for,” he said as he turned toward The Agent and slowly walked the distance between them. “Show me what you got, beautiful.”
The Detective watched as The Agent dropped the armor from his arms and rose to his feet; his eyes had the same faraway, distant, blank look that Light’s had just before The Detective placed a bullet in her head. “Is he yours?”
“He is---for the moment,” Emily answered, her voice filled with a combination of strain and the intense power flowing from her. “He’s strong, so very strong; he’s in my head, telling me all the reasons why I can’t hold him, but I can. He’s not going anywhere.”
The Detective stood next to The Agent. The most powerful man in the country, immeasurable strength, impervious to harm, brought down because he “invited” an extremely powerful psychic to his house and forgot to make sure his terrace was psychic proof. “Can you shut down his powers?”
“I can,” she said, her voice becoming something almost similar to a growl. “And I did. He is now, for all intents, a normal.”
The Detective smiled at him as he looked him up and down. This old man had caused so much damage, so much pain, and yet for the briefest of moments, The Detective almost felt sorry for him. He wouldn’t have been out here, he wouldn’t be in this situation if he hadn’t been mourning his son, lamenting the loss of what was probably the last person on the face of the Earth who actually gave a damn about him. But, The Detective reminded himself, his son wouldn’t be dead if The Agent hadn’t woke up the memories, the same memories that would cause someone to throw away everything they knew just for the chance at revenge. The Detective shook all thoughts of pity to the side.
“You’ve done so much damage,” The Detective said, tightening the grip on his pistol. “Ruined so many lives, hurt so many people, and you don’t even see it. You just believe it was all for the best. Well let me be the last one to tell you, it wasn’t.”
“Without…me…” The Agent said with a struggle, fighting through Emily’s control to try and have the last say, “this…country…will…fall…into…chaos.”
The Detective brought his pistol up and placed the barrel against The Agent’s right eye. “Then let it fall,” he said as he pulled the trigger. The bullet pierced Rogers’ eye, passed through his brain, and blew a large hole out the back of his skull. Blood, brains, and large chunks of bone showered the soaked ground, and The Agent’s dead body fell to the ground, landing hard on top of The Iron Knight armor.
The Detective placed the empty pistol back in his holster as he looked at the scene, all the while doing his best to suppress a smile. The Agent dead, it was something he never believed he would truly see, but there it was. He looked down at his left hand, still covering the stab wound in his sternum, and he knew it was a miracle he was still alive; he had been lucky enough to survive long enough be the one to pull the trigger. He knew he couldn’t ask for much more that.
He turned around, and Emily had already crossed the distance between them. Her hair and eyes were back to their old selves, leaving no hint of the power she had just wielded. He looked at her, smiled, and fell to one knee. His right hand dropped to the ground, trying to support his weight just to keep himself from falling over.
She grabbed the upper p
art of his left arm. “We have to get out of here.”
“You have to get out of here,” he corrected. “I’m sorry, beautiful, but I’m not going anywhere. This is it.”
She gave him a stern look, her face a concentrated mix of anger and sadness. “I am not leaving without you, jackass. Now get your ass up and come with me.”
He really liked it when she was mean and that worried him. There was obviously something seriously wrong with him. He used the last of his strength to pull himself up to his feet. She held his arm and guided him through the carnage.
“I swear,” she began, “everywhere we go, nothing but dead bodies.”
“It’s a talent,” he replied, his voice noticeably weaker.
“Jackass, do not die on me, not yet.”
They crossed the threshold that separated the terrace from the penthouse. He looked at her, and she winced ever so slightly as they entered the psychic barriers, but nothing like the last time she had encountered them. He knew that something had woke up in her, some level of power he doubted even she knew about. They continued walking, across the piles of shattered glass, past the giant monitors, and into the kitchen. She stopped in front of the counter long enough to retrieve his hat and the journal.
“We’re almost there,” she said with a smile as she pulled him towards the elevators.
“And what happens when we get there?” His voice was barely above a whisper. It was taking everything he had left just to remain on his feet.
She smiled that sad smile, the one he was learning to not like very much. “We get to go on our date,” she answered.
They stopped in front of the closed elevators, and she pushed the button to call the lift.
“Beautiful, I’m not going to make it,” he whispered as he looked down at his blood soaked left hand, still trying in vain to hold back the bleeding.
