True Heroes

by Gann, Myles

  The bitter tones of his explanation caused tense trigger fingers to squeeze a little closer to their metallic callings.

  ‘I can take care of them in one move.’

  He used his better judgment and remained relaxed. As much as he tried, his senses were still high enough to sense a person approaching from behind. The two at his back let the lightly-stepping person through. Warm breath caressed his ears before bitter sympathy slapped against his drums. “Carol had a heart attack on the way to the hospital. They said she died before she made it through the doors.” She gave a single sob into his ear. “I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine how you must feel.”

  ‘No, you can’t,’ both Caleb and his power shouted from his head. They couldn’t have sounded more different. There was something crippling both entities; Caleb’s power felt glee as palpable as air and water while Caleb himself felt his head lose all blood. His hand caught his head in an attempt to keep his body still but it wasn’t working. His heart and lungs suddenly held all blood and air for themselves, carelessly hoarding in unbridled panic as the rest of his body was left with his nerves, writhing and twisting with white-hot pain. A shudder transformed throughout his body into a constant twitch as his eyes struggled to keep back flooding. The glass floor seemed to give way.

  “Yeah, yeah, very sad. Come with us or we’ll make the pain go away permanently.”

  The General stood as tears began to water the ground beneath Caleb’s downturned face. In his mind’s arena, his crumpled body was in shambles and approached by his power, whose face was not as mirthful as he surely felt some measure of the torture Caleb now felt. Its cold hand attempted a warm gesture. Its hand on his shoulder, it offered him an alternative in his ear. ‘Take the end of pain I offer. You know I can take the pain away. Let’s show them pain. Show them the very meaning of pain.’

  Without a word or glance, Caleb simply stood and stepped aside, giving over the reins to his kingdom. His power didn’t smile but simply assumed its place while Caleb fell with tatters of life and broken glass surrounding him into the abyss.

  ---

  With a single breath of free air, Power illuminated Caleb’s hallowed eyes. The open capillaries all over the face of Power slowly began to relax themselves closed and the clear tendrils of energy began to unfurl and stretch along the ground. The General must’ve given some signal during the mental transition as a few hands found their ways to his relaxed shoulders. As soon as its domain was extended to everything it’d need, it stood up suddenly, pushing its green chair back into the guards with enough force to send them both flying. A slight push sent the General’s chair into two more guards, their bodies flailing in mid-air. Before any triggers had even been touched, Power raised its hands and, again using slight force, smashed energy against the last guards’ chests, flinging them in different directions.

  They stood face-to-face, it and General Fink, as Power could only muster a small smile. “I wanted to do that all in one motion. I’ve been cooped up for too long.” A horrified General drew his pistol, but found it difficult to pull the trigger with a small sliver of energy behind the trigger. “Look at the taste of carnage around you, General. Whatever made you think you could take me against my will? Maybe bring someone bigger next time. At least I’ll have to try to lift them.”

  Power heard the distant thudding of more than one helicopter forthcoming across the outer city and turned its brightened eyes to confirm. It stretched the physics of sight over forty yards until a very clear picture came into their seeing irises. “Only four men per copter.” Its whisper was cut off by an oddly sharp wind hitting the back of his neck. Turning its head revealed the General, dropping his pistol and gripping at his hand in pain.

  It breathed a chuckle. “You don’t seem to understand the situation, General. I’ll make it simple: you could never generate enough energy to scratch my surface. All you see is skin before you when the reality is far different. The skin you see would never be a factor of your anger; my tensed field of energy would be rock to your autumn breeze. You’ve barely got the balls, and never will have the brawn. Hm, the look on your face is intriguing. You’re anger still boils over but your fear constrains you from daring to make a move.” Power finally illuminated Caleb’s eyes completely. “You came looking for something unstoppable.”

  Power moved faster than the General could see. Less than a blink elapsed, it being all the time needed for Power to destroy whatever small threat the two helicopters represented. Such was the extent of Power’s increased abilities; what used to take a few seconds had been shaved to one. Its formerly inefficient movements had polished into single swipes to cut through both copter guns, two arms of energy reaching up and turning the swirling blades into scrap, all in mid jump before it spring-boarded off the falling husks and back towards the coward General. The shells of metal fell with all four men helpless in each crashing copter as it allowed a crooked smile to cross its borrowed face.

  ‘Enough.’

  Caleb’s weak voice echoed heavily from inside its hollowed self. ‘I told you I would handle it.’

  ‘Keep going like this and it’ll be over before it ever begins. You don’t have enough energy to take on the entire army at a time.’

  ‘Your tears haven’t ensoggened your logical mind I see.’

  ‘I don’t want people to die. I just wanna be alone now.’

  Caleb’s foothold was its sole restriction; his annoying assurance that it could only hold out so long with one arm pushing Caleb away while the other fought the world. He knew Power; he knew it couldn’t ravish the lands as it so pleased without his cooperation. ‘Some part of you isn’t ready to give up quite yet. So be it. I’m in control at least.’

  A flashy wink was all Power could muster to the General before it was gone. It came to Caleb’s window and quickly crashed inward. Its outreached field surrounded the closed filing cabinet and hoisted the two-drawer thing to its shoulder. Both psyches heard the various approaching sirens as they turned the body with their load shouldered and Power jogged away. The three-foot high brick fence was gone in a flash. Minutes passed by slower than the miles. In its shower of arrogance, Power didn’t turn or dodge any structures in its way. It simply passed through them. Only trees were in the way after a few seconds, and the next half-an hour was an incensed, bumpy one for Caleb. ‘Let me have control now.’

  ‘You must be kidding. What are you afraid of? Splinters?’

  ‘I need some air. Just…just let me out.’

  It stopped in the middle of a forest as Caleb’s psyche began flailing for control. He kept pushing the phantom of his body into a field before regained his mind’s will. “You think it’s wise to challenge me after locking me away?”

  Caleb’s heart soon felt the intense emotional stress his mind had been concealing. “This is my body not yours.”

  “No, you have the mind. I have the body.” Power came face to face with Caleb’s nearly cowering eyes. “Listen carefully, Caleb. You’ve made the rules this whole dragging time we call life, and now it’s my turn. I gave you forty years to torture me against a chained wall while I played savior whenever you needed me, but enough is enough. You’ve finally, finally, loosened your grip and fallen into chains yourself. So, let’s settle this into a foreseeable future: you are now my dog, which I will call when I need your lovely social skills or a rest for myself. As a dog, you have no opinion. Your voice is nothing but a senseless series of yelps and yips to me. Got that boy?”

  A long silence clouded the energized air around them as Caleb felt his fear and emotions melting away to a hating prejudice. Power suddenly assumed a defensive stance when it saw Caleb’s eyes glowing back with as much passion as its own. “Didn’t get a single word of that, sorry.”

  It turned its head as it flashed from one end of the energy dome to the other, seemingly observing Caleb from every side. “Your little fiery self is back. Why ever so, I wonder?”

  Caleb discovered an answer faster than his synapse se
emed to fire. “I’ve seen your daydreams of razing insanity. The faces of the billions of dead people not changing the picturesque face of lethargy that you can’t help but force onto the world as the ground slowly burns past the point of recognition. Every face we could be saving, damn it! We’ve let so many people down in our lifetime. You used to care about that. I can’t stop caring about that, and I swear to you I won’t let you use me as a vessel for genocide.”

  Power floated above Caleb with arms crossed, taken aback slightly. Its whispers barely created enough green waves to reach the far edge of their capsule. “This man, this little man trapped in his own mind, somehow turned his pain into a formidable determination.” It lowered to the ground and raised its voice. “We’ve let a fraction of people down. There’s still about seven-billion left to completely destroy. Carol was just the start, but apparently that wasn’t enough to send you over the edge. I thought it would be, and yet you still retain control….” Power realized it was rambling. “You’ll run out of heroism sooner or later. I’ll just build myself up further and further until you do, and then I’ll push you so far down a tar pit that you’ll never resurface again. The earth will be turned into a homogenous rock, and you will be buried right in the center of it all.”

  Caleb smiled smugly in an attempt to frustrate his power, and succeeded. “I’ve seen so many heroes come and go. I won’t ever be anchored down by you again, and neither will the world.”

  Another long pause accompanied the impasse. Power suddenly flashed over to the filing cabinet and ripped the top completely off, revealing hundreds of thousands of dollars wrapped in fresh bank slips. “I’d forgotten how much you’d saved. Should be enough for quite a bit if we need it.”

  Even Power could feel how feeble its attempt to sway from Caleb’s intensity truly was.

  “Let’s get to a resting place before the government gets our picture out.” Power flared enough to fold over the remaining metal of the cabinet like a paper shopping bag before folding itself back into Caleb’s body. “I’ll let you drive.”

  Chapter 9

  The military hospital resounded with somber air that felt thick with blood even with the dry of the pristine hallway. More casualties had stained the white sheets within this hospital, on this day, than any other hospital in the American hemisphere. A nurse, paler than the cream colored walls, roughly removed the blood-pressure band from his arm and scribbled quickly on General Fink’s chart before moving on to another room. The MP officers rushed in the hallway, doing grunt work and moving bodies covered from head to toe with bleeding sheets, and all looked as though active duty was a pleasant alternative. The General sat with nothing physically wrong with him as everyone around him faced death or serious injury. The paragraph-long mission report sat at his side: all six personal guards with broken rips, one with a ruptured stomach, two with punctured lungs and two had their chests completely crushed and were dead before the ambulances arrived. There wasn’t guilt inside the General as much as there was anger. An MP guarding his room hadn’t moved his eyes from a point across the room, even during the General’s outburst. “Damn him!”

  General Fink suddenly felt his blood go cold. Outside the room, a parade of armed soldiers lined the hall as a familiar grey-top approached the now terrified man’s door. The stagnant MP was quickly relieved by a fully-armed Private, allowing Major Howard to enter soon after. The suddenly awkward General snapped to his feet and saluted quickly. “Major Howard, sir.”

  “General. Don’t jump around too much now you’ve been through a lot. How’s the ticker?”

  The Major patted Robert’s chest a few times, giving him strength to muster a smile. “Just a little too much excitement for a twice turned-over engine. It’s still ticking though.” He sat back on the bed. “How are the other men doing,” he asked in an attempt to be ignorantly innocent.

  All traces of grinning left the room. “Some will live, that’s the good news. You had six in tow and eight in back-up; three will probably live. The ones that survive tell me something rather disturbing that can’t possibly be true, because that would mean you deliberately disobeyed me.” The General felt sweat run down the back of his neck. “They said something crazy like you provoked the young man after I specifically told you to wave the peace flag.” A long pause gripped at the tongue of Robert Fink: veteran of three wars and about to be dishonorably discharged. “I trust…it won’t happen again when we move this project into the next stages.”

  Befuddled eyes looked up from surely ruined hands. “Sir?”

  A half smile raised a corner of the Major’s mouth. “We’ll call this a slap on the wrist considering the circumstances. Let’s be clear though, it’s my orders above your emotions from now on. We’re getting into some heavy shit now, so next time you meet him, you will follow my orders to a ‘T’ and will embody the idea of a courteous host. Your desire for national security now outweighs your personal vendettas, we clear?”

  “Crystal, sir.”

  “Good.” The Major waved in a small white-coat with rimmed glasses and a tiny frame. “Tell him what you found out.”

  The small man produced a file and bravely let it fly from the hip. “Doctor Fink’s research has helped exponentially. We’ve been trying to harness electricity throughout the body without it killing the nervous system, but he showed us that was the wrong method. Mr. Whitmor’s body doesn’t produce electricity, rather it’s technically classified as a pulsing, biometrically occurring thermal energy. Basically his body reacts to adrenaline like a vasodilator in that the adrenals, when opened, effectively spread his natural energy into a much wider and stronger field than a normal person could. It pulses like a heart. Think of it as being yourself inside a giant version of yourself. He can control everything inside the field he creates with a thought. His field naturally wants to protect Mr. Whitmor…,” the man looked around and saw he was rambling. “But on to what you want to hear. He’s capable of producing over half-a-million joules of power at any one point of power, and if we incorporate the same system into our technology, we could produce, theoretically, three times that much.”

  Major Howard nodded spiritedly. “Hear that Robert? That’s enough to stop a rocket to the Moon, not to mention a bullet, in one man, at first. That last stat, Frank.”

  The small man calmly flipped a page. “If those numbers hold up, it’s estimated that a single specialized unit of a dozen people could end the war in a week, with required recharges and strategic advancements.”

  “A dozen men and a week. Pack up hundreds of thousands of men and women and send them home, wash your hands of the sandy, oily wretches for good, and retire to a beach in the Galapagos. It can all be done for them by you, Robert. How does that sound?”

  General Fink smiled. “Sounds like a good retirement present for the country and me.”

  ---

  “Yeah it faces the street here. Eighth floor.”

  Caleb, under careful internal observation, grabbed the room key and nodded his thanks. The rather drab interior of cement walls and red carpet wasn’t made better by the “bellboy” that had a sweat-stained beater stuck to his hairy chest. The interior’s boring lack of ambiance was made better when Caleb exited the swinging doors into the night view. The road curved steeply upward to a higher summit of the small mountain while the sideways view dropped over to a sea of dark green trees in the star-lit night. Power returned without being called to Caleb’s fingertips. That same force gently picked a kitten off the top of the curled cabinet before forcefully hurling it into the shrubbery beneath the bend of the road. Its loud meow faded quickly as the finger indentions in the cabinet served as a suitable glove. It lifted as it counted eight floors and launched itself up. It landed heavily on the cement balcony, and saw a light coming from the room. ‘Not our room.’ A nude woman walked into the living room with her towel carelessly thrown aside, obliviously leaving the shutters open. Caleb would’ve turned his eyes, but Power didn’t.

  Power gently se
t the cabinet in the single chair of the dark balcony and slid open the unlocked door. ‘Don’t you dare,’ Caleb screamed from inside.

  ‘She has to be taught a lesson.’

  The woman was bending down into the top drawer with a bra hanging on her shoulders, unstrapped and bright pink. She never heard a thing as Caleb’s enslaved body rushed through the room and slammed her against the wall. Its hands maneuvered her body until one hand was around her throat while the other constantly moved to deflect her flailing limbs. Her vocal chords were felt under a choking hand while her hands fought; a shot to Caleb’s crotch was blocked, and it readjusted Caleb’s body until both wrists were bound by one hand above her head, and her mouth was blanketed by the other. She found it futile to struggle as Power lain its calming voice across her naked ears. “You would leave your window open to perverts like me? Rapists and thieves breed and thrive off of careless girls like you who think the world couldn’t possibly be watching. Glass is glass no matter what floor you’re on. If there’s one thing you should know it’s that there’s always someone looking for bare breasts and a soft, warm place to stick foreign objects.”

  It carefully removed its hands from her wrists and mouth, receiving only heavy breathing and misty eyes for a while as Caleb pushed as hard as he could muster against his power’s influence. He backed its legs up a few steps before she felt strength enough to speak. “You’re not going to do anything?”