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DATE:3nd of September, the 70th year after the Coronation
LOCATION: Concord Metropolis
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The next day we both overslept. I was woken up by incessant phone calls. Both were ringing. The meeting Pamela arranged had gone through. The bad news was that it was scheduled to start in 15 minutes. Like what? Do they expect me to teleport there? Oh, wait…
Safe to say we arrived late by half an hour or more. I didn't count. Pamela followed me, but was told to wait outside the meeting room just like how John did last time. This time there were quite a few guards posted throughout the association. The meeting room especially had some bulky ones. Why were they so on edge? That manor bombing? Oh right.
And inside was even more tense than outside. They all looked unwell. A lack of sleep? Morgan at the very least didn't appear changed. I mean, big deal, one of the most defended and seemingly important sites of congregation in Concord was bombed and a hero agency leader died. Yeah, I can't comment on that last part.
"So what is the revelation?" Morgan was stern, unlike last time. Guess mind games can only go so far.
I wasn't particularly dressed for the occasion and even forgot my mask, but I stood straight over my seat, then tilted my head while reading the room. I saw Surge, that feisty guy, D or something, the Salvian, the woman with glasses, Anisa and.. Yeah, I don't know who the rest are.
I'm surprised that they were actually looking forward to hearing what I had to say. To have so many expectations…
"So I infiltrated the lab and confirmed that Meyer isn't in contact with Secundo Manus. The opposite really, he is working on a weapon against UltraMan." Whether there was a mole in the association like Matrix pondered didn't matter. In fact, goading Secundo Manus out of his hole was exactly what I needed.
"And what evidence did you bring to guarantee that?" Morgan asked pessimistically.
"What evidence are you expecting? Should I have had a photo shoot with Karl? Fuck off."
"What an attitude." scoffed one of the other leaders. He… eh, who cares about him.
Some others also commented, but I can't be bothered to give them attention.
"I agree with Matrix." Now Surge added. I didn't like the glare he gave me. "The whole point of this infiltration was to erase the doubt between us." Like what does it even matter?
"The Salvian man can use his palm or whatever, I don't really care."
"This isn't something that can just be stopped with words." Dammit Surge. He rose from his seat to meet me. "I don't know whether you actually managed to confirm it, but your attitude is harrowing. How could you talk about something like this so trivially?!" Now he was getting mad.
I glanced around again to see the rest not willing to intervene. I couldn't help but pinch my nose in exhaustion.
"Ok? So like, go there yourself? I don't think Karl would attack you."
"And what if he really wasn't on our side and I walked right into a trap. Do you even think! This is exactly the problem I was talking about. You don't listen. You think that just because you haven't failed yet, that you are somehow blessed with a sec-"
"Can you shut the fuck up?" Like screw Surge. He was taken aback by my seemingly 'bold' expression. Some silence for once.
"To me it seems like you are just scared. Heaven's sake, you are a hero, not some ordinary man that 'dies' from danger. Grow some balls old man."
"You think I haven't fought? That I haven't seen so many imperious people like you to know that-"
"That's enough Surge." Morgan came with a save for once. "Mr. Carter clearly isn't the type of man to care about recounting the past."
"That's a good one." Nice one Insel. Einsel? How was he called exactly? I had to stop myself from raising my arm in approval. It would only enrage Surge uselessly.
"Mr. Carter, while it is easy to focus on the idea that we are stronger than most, the events from the last embers of August showed the world otherwise. Mrs. Frank was clearly assassinated with the occasion of the Aurelian ball." Hmmm, she really was? I wouldn't call it an assassination.
"You didn't know, right?" Commented the woman with big glasses. What was her name again?
"I kind of did."
"What?!" Could Surge calm down already?
"Wouldn't it be stranger if I didn't?"
"First of all, I think we should all take a seat."
Morgan was struggling with setting the mood. I don't really know why he bothers. Still, Surge followed so I might as well do the same.
"What I'm trying to tell you, Mr. Carter, is that we can't afford to look down on our enemies. We don't have UltraMan to save the day."
"But we shouldn't need UltraMan either. I fought with a lot of their lieutenants and minions and whatever. If Maia was either weak enough or reckless enough to be ambushed there, then she never was that great."
Right? I killed her with her own knife. Interrogating me is one thing. If she wasn't stupid enough to try to also kill me, then she would have survived. It was in fact a death brought by her own doing. A suicide? What a moron. I feel bad for the villains. They are blamed for a suicide.
Of course, my words weren't met that well. It's not that they hit personally, but they were a threat to all of them. The concept of 'your own futility' isn't easy to accept by seemingly all-powerful individuals.
"But it wasn't the bomb that killed her, was it? It was a knife." The woman with glasses remarked half heartedly. This almost made my eyes wide. Right. There must have been a corpse, otherwise if the explosion hit, she would have been listed as 'missing' in the news.
"Of course. It wouldn't be an ambush if she had just been caught in the blast." That's a broken logic, but whatever, I can't find any excuse.
"Actually, Carter, I do have a question regarding that." Morgan probed wearily.
I gestured to follow up on it. Yeah, quite a situation.
"What were you doing at that party? You aren't the type to… connect." He was sitting with a knuckle over another. The tone was casual, but this was very well another interrogation. And in front of everybody. Social pressure huh.
"And why can't I?" I knew where he was leading me towards. And… I also knew how to make fools out of all of them. He made a mistake by asking me so openly. I had the perfect punt.
"If you are talking about how we went to a private room before the explosion, then it's exactly how it seems-"
They all tensed up. I kept the pause precisely for that.
"Maia made advances towards me and I rejected her."
Anisa's laugh filled the room. It was very obnoxious.
"That's totally up that bitches alley. Right Morgy?" That's a new one.
"Enough!" Surge snapped at her. Then he faced me.
"Are you joking with us?"
"Why would I joke about it? What else would we even discuss? Everyone knows what actually happens in those rooms" Phahahahahahahahhahahahaha. I can't believe I'm so crafty.
Surge seemingly didn't know with what to counter.
Of course he wouldn't. Screw Surge.
A chuckle from the other side caught my attention. "So you're telling me you passed on a hottie like Maia?" It was a 20 something old guy. His hair was spiky and he had this sort of Laser-Focused Presence. His tone wasn't mocking. It was, distraught? Was he actually interested in gossip around women?
"I guess you still had that girl Alice, right? She's a handful too." I forgot about the hero dating culture. To think it saved me like this. What a joke.
Morgan didn't let him continue.
"This isn't the point of the meeting!" He left a pause and adjusted his position, slightly leaning over the table. "Supposing that Meyer is on our side, we need to discuss our next move. You still didn't confirm whether the Wondrous is on his side. They may still be moles." That again?
"Who cares if there are moles?" This made him grimace. As if waiting for me to continue.
"This whole 'campaign' around stopping Secundo Manus is useless. It's a game of cat and mouse. And we have no lead on the lair. Karl will make a way to stop UltraMan . We'll just wait on that. You want a plan? Just keep the city standing until then."
Surge objected. "And what if he fails?"
"I don't think he will. He was pretty close to finishing." He wasn't, but it's clear that they have no way of confirming. This is actually bait.
Then Morgan followed up. "And what if the Wondrous attack him to stop it." Yeah, there's clearly something about Matrix. He has no reason to fixate so much on eradicating them, unless…
"So I'll stop them if that happens. Clearly none of you would. But I'm evidently capable of it."
"Capable?" He was genuinely pondering about something. A plan.
"You think you can replace him?" Durr, or at least that is what I think his name was, uttered with venom in his voice. I was amazed that such a hot headed man kept quiet until now. He didn't name anyone particularly, but I knew what he was talking about.
"Why would I replace anyone? Nothing is my responsibility." I placed extra weight on that 'my'. "You all seem to forget that these are times of chaos, not of peace. People die in war. And my mercy is only afforded to the powerless. I expect this pinacle"-quote on quote" of our power structure to hold itself. If it can't and must be supported, then it never was a peak at all, was it?"
Surge expressed harrowingly "Is that what you really think?"
"I don't believe there was ever a need for me to voice anything. I am a very transparent man." Such a lie.
I got up from the table and left without waiting for a reply. I couldn't help but grin on the way out.
To think they are so scared of that idiot's death. Safe to say I won't be attending her funeral.
_________
Outside the room we started walking towards the taxi line.
"So many goons here." Pamela wasn't particularly impressed with the HQ.
"I think they call themselves side-kicks, though I never cared to confirm."
"You seemed to have had a hard time out there."
She wasn't particularly worried, but Pamela evidently started to understand when I liked something and when I didn't. She adapts faster than I gave her credit for.
"I think they had it harder." Maybe.
"You think so?" She giggled at that. "Still, I couldn't reach Mike."
"He's an idiot that got outplayed. Of course you can't reach him. Mike is either licking his wounds or drinking away the shame."
"Yeah, I guess he failed quite a bit."
"You guess?" I raised an eyebrow at that.
Pamela Patted me on the back.
"Then it's up to us."
"Except Mike is the only one that can teleport. We move too slow like this to possibly fight the Combine."
"Then we can track down that hacker from before."
She made a pause and raised her chin, looking directly at the sun.
"It would have been easier if you let him finish his message…" Was she blaming me? Screw off.
"I guess…"
We didn't do much afterwards. I didn't have a direction so I might as well focus on recovering.
A news headline was curious: "Immolator returns.", but I didn't pay much attention to it. The Immolator had escaped in the same incident as Biz. If he hadn't done anything up until now, then he hadn't recovered since he faced UltraMan . Making a side-kick might have been a last ditch attempt to pass his legacy.
Wait.
Was that guy's death the reason why he showed up? Because he was angry? How futile.
Anyway, the reason why I wasn't worried is that multiple heroes were dispatched to deal with him already. Including that girl from yesterday. And the stage of the fight was an open plaza. So she probably won't hold back anymore.
Then again, the biggest reason is that it's simply not my problem. If Pamela didn't care to push me there, then why intervene?
So I started stretching out to relax my muscles. Then I began wasting time with other unimportant activities. Like looking up how to track a number. Anything that would focus my mind.
Except, hours passed and no news of winning came. It was a stalemate. Hardly at that. Most dispatched heroes died or retreated due to injuries. That young hero, Aira, summoned a whole army of abominations to hold The Immolator at bay. Each creature was more disgusting than the last.
I didn't need Pamela to nag me and ran towards the equipment, putting it on in a hurry, before we both ran downstairs to a taxi.
We began watching the situation attentively on our way there. Then I saw it. That girl from earlier lost control. She managed to kill The Immolator, forming a pile of monsters over him, but she couldn't recall them. They started spreading from the plaza, seemingly going to target civilians.
By the time I got close and the taxi driver forced us out, she had also lost herself. Cameras filmed the 'hero' going by the new name 'Maira'. And how she was a witch or whatever. Then she started flying and the cameras lost her position.
Pamela's phone was already at her ear before I'd fully processed the footage cutting to static. She had that look, the one where she's listening to something she already knows she won't like.
"Downtown," she said, voice flat. Then a pause. "Yes. Understood."
She lowered the phone and looked at me. "She's marching toward the south-eastern financial district. Army's already engaged. They're not doing well."
"With bullets?"
"Bullets. What else do they have?" She said it like it was a diagnosis. "They evacuated the perimeter, but the monsters are pushing through faster than they can clear the blocks. The Legion's scrambling every available hero within range, but..."
"But there aren't many," I finished.
She didn't answer. She didn't need to. The Legion's roster had been thinning with all those cases of corruption within our ranks. I wouldn't want to be part of it either. The ones left were seemingly indoctrinated in this idea that I was a "hero" that stood for "something".
"They want you to take out Aira," Pamela said.
"It's actually Maira now."
"Whatever! Lower-tier heroes are handling the monsters. We're supposed to neutralize "Maira" before she reaches the core district."
"Neutralize," I repeated.
"Put her to sleep, ideally. They're emphasizing non-lethal. The Legion's reputation is already damaged." Not that I particularly care.
I looked at her. She looked at me. We both knew what that meant.
"I don't have a sedative," I said.
Maybe if they made the effort to deliver one, but they either didn't actually care or couldn't. And in both cases it was out of my hands.
"I know."
"My only one is..." I gestured vaguely at my own hands, at the way time bent around them when I pushed hard enough. "Well. Permanent."
She was quiet for a moment. Then: "Then don't use it."
"Advice noted."
We started moving again. The streets were emptier now, people had either fled or locked themselves inside, and the ones who hadn't were already gone. The sound of distant gunfire echoed off the buildings, sporadic and wrong, like someone playing a recording of a battle at the wrong speed.
Pamela's phone buzzed again. She glanced at it, then at me. "She's turned east. Cutting through the old market district. That puts her three blocks from the bank towers if she keeps this pace."
"Charming," I said. "Does she have a destination, or is she just... spreading?"
"Unclear. HQ says she's not responding to any comms." Her personality changed, but she shouldn't have forgotten how to use devices…
"Great. A witch who doesn't answer her phone. Truly the apex predator."
Pamela didn't laugh. She was scanning the rooftops as we moved, her eyes tracking something I couldn't see. Ghosts, probably. Or maybe just the way the air felt wrong. Thick, charged, like before a storm.
We ran into the first stragglers five minutes later. Not monsters. The opposite. Civilians, or what was left of them. A man dragging a woman by the arm, her leg bent at an angle that suggested it had stopped being a leg somewhere between useful and decorative. A kid sitting on a curb, staring at nothing, his shirt soaked through with something that wasn't his blood.
Pamela stopped. I didn't.
"William—"
"Keep moving," I said, not looking back. "They're already gone. We're not."
She hesitated, then followed. I could feel her eyes on me.
The monsters started appearing in clusters after that. Small ones at first, things that looked like dogs if dogs had too many joints and teeth where eyes should be. Then larger. Humanoid, but stretched, like someone had taken a person and pulled them from both ends until the proportions stopped making sense.
I didn't slow down. Neither did Pamela. We weren't here to clear the path. We were here to reach the source.
A hero went down ahead of us. I caught the flash of a costume, something bright and ill-advised, before a monster twice his size brought him down with a single swipe. He didn't get back up. Another hero, a woman, older, armored, tried to hold the line and lasted maybe ten seconds longer.
"Legion's holding the western perimeter," Pamela said, her voice tight. "But they're losing ground. They need you to end this."
"Yeah, yeah."
She didn't respond to that. She was watching the street ahead, where the air had started to shimmer. Not heat, not light, something else. A distortion, like reality itself was warping around a central point.
Maira was close.
We found her at the intersection of Fourth and Meridian, standing in the middle of the street with her arms raised and her head tilted back like she was listening to something none of us could hear. The monsters around her moved in patterns. Organized. They were clearing the streets, pushing outward in a widening circle, and the ones that got too far from her twitched and doubled back like dogs on a leash.
She wasn't flying anymore. She was standing, grounded, and the power radiating off her was visible. A haze, like heat, but colder. Wrong.
Pamela stopped at the corner, pressing herself against the wall. I didn't. I stepped into the intersection, hands loose at my sides, and called out.
"Aira."
She didn't turn. Didn't react. But the monsters nearest to us shifted, their attention snapping toward me like a pack of animals sensing prey.
"Aira," I said again, louder. "You're done."
That got her. She turned slowly, her eyes finding me through the haze, and for a moment I saw something in them. Exhaustion. The kind that comes from carrying something too heavy for too long.
"I can't stop," she said. Her voice was flat, hollow. "I don't know how."
"Then I'll do it for you."
She looked at me for a long moment. Then she lowered her arms, and the monsters surged forward.
I didn't wait. I moved.
Pamela called something after me. A warning, probably, or maybe just my name, but I was already past her, already in the space between seconds, already reaching for the one tool I had that actually worked.
Time slowed. The world stretched. The monsters froze mid-lunge, their claws suspended inches from my face, and Maira's expression shifted from exhaustion to something else. Recognition, maybe, or fear.
I closed the distance between us in a few steps. Took out the gun, but didn't know whether to actually shoot. For one, her monsters may continue to exist even after her death. But seeing how they want me to 'take her out', this probably wasn't the case.
She is young, that much is true. But to hesitate? Me? I was furious. I pulled the trigger.
The world snapped back into motion. The monsters screamed. And Maira fell.
But she didn't die instantly. Even with a hole in her head she started gasping incessantly.
"Cold." she said. "It's so cold."
Was I supposed to comfort her? I didn't have it in me. Instead I walked slowly until I was three steps away and glanced from above at her dying figure.
'I'm so sad. With myself. I fought so much for you." Her breath was ragged. How was she still alive? I wonder…
"And you don't know me. I fought and you don't know me." She kept looking into my eyes, but I wasn't sure what she was searching for. Approval? She wanted me to say that all her life up until now wasn't pointless? Who am I to her to grasp this?
"Of course I do. You're Aira, right." What else could I even say?
This made her cry. She made strange sounds. I think she was having a hard time making tears due to the bleeding. Yeah, that was probably it.
"After UltraMan , I thought, I thought…"
"You thought what?"
I couldn't muster any emotion. What expression could I even give her? Understanding? Compassion? As if. She seemingly believes that a hero would give her companionship. But if a hero lowered himself to her level, then he never was a hero at all. In fact I'd say she wasn't actually looking for a hero at all. She was looking for an idol.
"I just… Agh!" She grasped at her head. The monsters kept wailing since a while earlier. Quite incessant.
We stayed silent, but judging by her expression, her wide eyes, the mouth slightly open, Aira was expecting something. So I waited. Then her lips locked and trembled.
"Please Aionis, end my suffering already."
"You don't have to say it twice." I raised the gun again and clicked a few more times until she stopped whimpering. Her body kept trying to cry for a while even after that. These heroes certainly have strange endurance. Seems more like a curse. Or the fact that I could even pierce her with my gun. That's a first since all the heroes I met. So she wasn't one?
A witch after all.
With quiet dread embedded deep in her tone, Pamela murmured, "Why did you shoot her again?"
"Because she wanted to."
I turned to go, but Pamela remained still. So I grabbed her to cancel the trance.
"We're going."
We didn't talk much on our way back.
Maybe it was because of that, but I could think about myself. About what I did. It was my fault, wasn't it? I saw it on the news and didn't do anything. If I went there instead of wasting time, then perhaps-.... whatever. Those are useless thoughts.
The gall to say that I "didn't know her". As if I owed her anything….
As if…