True Heroes

by Gann, Myles

  After two hours of moving and loading, Caleb felt his knees give out from beneath him. A few strangers held under his arms and carried him out of the foggy disaster zone and he soon found a seat beneath his tired limbs, an oxygen mask around his mouth, and Alice’s hands wrapping roughly around his neck. Her first sentences were completely drowned out by the rapid buzz within his enclosed skull, but three deep breathes from the generous tank finally returned his senses. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes,” he said through the mask before removing it. “Have to get back in there.”

  “No, you need to rest. They’ve got equipment out there ready to move anything if they find someone. Please stay here, right here. I’ll go tell them where you are if you stay right here and rest.”

  Caleb lazily shook his head while fighting to retain his consciousness. “Take a mask.”

  She grabbed a thin mask and quickly left. He watched from the small corner-shop as everyone relayed between the clear day at his front and the early morning, thick fog where once had stood a building. He turned in his seat while flexing his power. ‘Rest it or we won’t be around to help.’ “Caleb?”

  He scanned the medical personnel and moaning patients slowly before David walked up from between several of them. “David. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah, fine. You don’t look too good.”

  He walked around to the front of the chair and started to examine Caleb. ‘He’s not trembling anymore. His eyes are focused and driven.’

  ‘A tragedy like this kind of demands his A-game. A job doesn’t rank at this level.’

  “I saw you out there just now. That was amazing.”

  ‘His tone is flat.’

  ‘Paranoia doesn’t rank on this level either.’ “Yeah, I guess the secret’s out there now.”

  “I suppose it is.” Caleb lowered and twisted off the oxygen while intently looking down to David from a few inches away. “You’re not cut or injured at all.”

  David looked up, and Caleb could suddenly see everything David had been hiding. ‘For one moment, we were all-knowing of David.’ “You sure you’re okay? There’s something coming off of you….”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Caleb pushed a small amount of Power into his eyes, and a cascade of purple waves came from the object in David’s jacket pocket. The psychologist recoiled onto his knees from Caleb’s eyes, but Caleb snatched his shirt and retrieved the small piece of paper. David didn’t attempt to fight. “I think you know all about waves. Like the fear that’s coming out of every pore on your body.” Caleb stood and threw David back into the chair. “You probably need a seat more than I do. Schemes and killing take a lot out of the knees, I hear.”

  David looked down and clenched his fists across the top of the wooden armrests.

  “We keep running into each other.”

  Caleb held his hand up to stop Stanley’s banter. “Look at me!” David obeyed with salty tears becoming preeminent. “Before I open this letter, you might want to tell me what happened, because this paper could be the end of everything for you.”

  “Everything?”

  “Everything you love and hold dear.”

  David laughed quickly. “Tell me then, hero, what do I have? Tell me one goddamn thing that I have! No Alice, no group, no real job. I’m a nobody. Take anything you want from me.”

  “You are not a nobody. All you’ve ever been is a man that’s too in love with the question of the world to ever see how it really was. You think the world is all about decisions and actions that promote who you are and validate ‘David,’ but that’s bull. You know it’s bull.” Caleb calmed down. ‘He had the letter. He was glad I came. He always knew….’ “And you’re trying to destroy yourself. That’s why you had the letter and let Alice bring me.”

  David had his hair by the roots and his glasses fallen in his lap. “Please,” he begged between sobs, “don’t tell Alice.”

  “Stay back little lady.”

  Alice fought out of Stanley’s grip and walked into Caleb’s turned chest and hug. She struggled and tried to rip his arms from their coil, but could find no real fight in her body. “Let me go Caleb!”

  Her look scalded against the side of his face, but he didn’t budge. “Talk, not hit. Don’t you dare be like him.”

  David held his head up. “I’m sorry, Alice.”

  “Oh don’t you even say that! You would lie to me now? Of all times to ever lie to me you see this as the best? You’re polluting the air these poor people are breathing! You don’t care at all! He’s right, you just wanted there to be an answer. You wanted the world to be changed by you and you didn’t care how! All of those faces—” Her final word rose from anger into a higher pitched signal of the beginning of a torrent of agony as what little fight she had left escaped through slow sobs as Caleb lowered her to her knees. “There’s nothing left of them. There’s nothing left of you. Someone took every ounce of sensitivity, caring, and compassion you had left. Those things were in you first! It’s not fair, and now they’re gone forever, and you don’t care a bit.”

  Her hands gripped tightly to Caleb’s dusted shirt as she openly sobbed between sharp inhales into the crevice of his shoulder. Caleb stood her up with all the grace he could, feeling his own eyes liquefy as he caught a glimpse of her face. Stanley took her into a soft hug as Caleb turned around with tears on each cheek. ‘There’s still something wrong.’

  Power arose softly and met Caleb at the threshold with a soft voice. ‘Yes. Her crying hurts so badly. There is something wrong.’

  ‘That’s not what I mean.’ His eyes glowed tremendous shades of blue as he stared at David’s pathetic attempt to control every emotion that tugged at his mind’s attention. ‘Enjoy the show in his eyes.’

  ‘The sad part is he’s probably enjoying it more than we are. He’s never felt more alive.’

  Caleb walked forward and leaned his frame across David’s withering self. “There are a lot of things I would find suitable for a punishment here. It’s not about me or Alice.”

  “He said you’d kill me if you found out. Do you think that scares me? What else in this world could possibly scare me after what I’ve done?”

  Caleb smiled and laughed through fierce eyes. “The right thing to do is to let you live, so you will, even if you think you want to die. Now, though, life is what you need. No, you’re going to live because it would be wrong to take revenge on you, but rest assured, that is the only thing holding my hand back from feeling the back of your spine through your mouth.” Caleb straightened his body as two police officers wandered by and were waved over by Stanley. “No, David, you want to live so badly? Get ready to live.”

  - - -

  ‘As he stares out the window and she looks as though the world has broken her back, what is it, exactly, that we feel here?’

  Caleb folded his hands before his mouth. ‘Not feeling much of anything.’

  ‘We would’ve had the same reaction as her not a year ago.’

  ‘Things change.’

  ‘Suddenly, I feel as though we aren’t talking about the same “thing.”’

  ‘We are. You just don’t realize it.’

  “What will happen to David?”

  He looked on sympathetically as Alice’s head rose and looked from one distracted mind to the other. Stanley was the first to respond, “He’s going where all bad people go.”

  Her head lowered again. “I was so hard on him.”

  Stanley laughed. “Hard? He deserved worse.”

  “No, he didn’t,” Caleb interjected. “He…didn’t deserve what happened to him. Not in the world of right-and-wrong at least. If we’re talking rationally then yeah she should’ve tortured him to death.”

  “He deserved something.”

  “He got it. He deserved something slow and thought provoking, something that’ll eventually bring his mind back to the idea that what he did was wrong on every level.”

  Stanley pushed off the window
. “You’re trying to reform the guy? You can’t go through something like that and still come out the other side a human being. She said it: there’s nothing to save.”

  “Stephen wrote the letter while he was surrounded by energy because he knew that David would be caught with traces of energy flowing off of it. If you’re ever around the renegade for more than a heartbeat, you can feel his energy no matter how sensitive you are. That’s an overwhelming feeling, and David knew that somehow. He had the letter in his pocket because he wanted to be caught. There was something inside of him trying to destroy what he’d become. That’s remorse. That’s human. That’s…something to save.”

  “It took you years to get over accidents with your parents, Caleb. How could he possibly be helped?”

  He interrupted his line of sight and looked towards Alice’s desperate face. “Something wrong happened today. Something that shouldn’t have happened. I was short-sighted; the war wasn’t the cause of the problems of this country—this world. Just another symptom. There’s something deeper and more subtle, and yet more encompassing. People need to be shown that right things can be acted upon…,” Caleb’s voice trailed off into a thought. ‘They must be done for no other reason. If I do this, I risk Alice. I risk everything I know and have against which my life is a trifle. I have no inherent reason to fight Stephen again. There’s no pride at stake or world-domination plan. So he killed some people; quite a few people have. Yet….’ “This is something the world has laid at my feet: a right-and-wrong choice that must be carried through.” He looked between both entranced peoples. “I’m sorry, but I’m not done yet.”

  Alice held his wrist. “You’ve already done something selfless. Isn’t that enough?”

  “There has to be something set selfless against the very idea of wrong. Against everything this world has fought to destroy. If not, then right and wrong don’t matter and we’re here again.”

  Stanley walked closer with his hands gripping his hips. “You’re creating some journey here that’s a no-win for you. It could be that there’s something else out there, but what if you go there and there’s nothing more to be done? Or if you die at the psycho’s hands?”

  “Stanley, but what if this works?”

  His friend backed down and paced back to the opposite wall. “I have no idea. Maybe that’s why I’m against it. I don’t think me being against it will sway you though.”

  Caleb shook his head. “This isn’t the most-right thing of all time. There’s no such thing. This is simply right, and it must be done. Win, lose, die, or live, the right message will finally come through, and you two will see what that means.”

  “You’ll be able to show us better if we have a front row seat.”

  Alice’s hand snaked around his wrist and grabbed between his extended fingers. “I…can’t stop you from doing what you think is right. Just know that I’ll be going in alone in the end.”

  Stanley turned back with his hands behind his head. “Just know that we’ll be waiting for you then.”

  Alice smiled despite her sad eyes while Stanley and Caleb found their looks clicking, and Power stared into the indeterminate void between Caleb’s mind and his own, watching it grow steadily beyond its reach.

  Chapter 23

  Caleb hopped out of the back of the truck and stayed crouched as he landed.

  “We’ll need essentials and that’s it, Alice.”

  “Like I don’t know that already.”

  “I just know you enjoy bringing memories….”

  ‘Purple from the door.’

  Caleb extended his power quickly and held back Stanley from the doorway. Alice stayed in the driver’s seat

  while Caleb quickly scanned. ‘Another envelope.’

  ‘This one’s coated. He truly didn’t want you to miss this one.’

  He lowered his arm and gently walked inside before leaping to Alice’s door. Even with the hallway light burnt out, his blue eyes were filled with the purple resonance from beneath the dainty ribbon tied to the doorknob. Power reached out before Caleb and unraveled the letter. “In those days the world of mirrors and the world of men were not, as they are now, cut off from each other. They were, besides, quite different; neither beings, nor colors nor shapes were the same. Both kingdoms, the specular and the human, lived in harmony; you could come and go through mirrors. One night the mirror people invaded the earth. Their power was great, but at the end of bloody warfare the magic arts of the Yellow Emperor prevailed. He repulsed the invaders, imprisoned them in their mirrors, and forced on them the task of repeating, as though in a kind of dream, all the actions of men. He stripped them of their power and of their forms and reduced them to mere slavish reflections. Nonetheless, a day will come when the magic spell will be shaken off…. Little by little they will differ from us; little by little they will not imitate us. They will break through the barriers of glass or metal, and this time they will not be defeated.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  Caleb turned to his blue counterpart. “That a confrontation is imminent.”

  “It’s a threat.”

  He opened the door and waved to both awaiting peoples below from Alice’s window.

  “Just a letter and words.”

  Power absorbed into his body again. ‘You know what those words implement.’

  ‘They mean nothing right now. Whatever he’s trying to show doesn’t matter.’

  ‘How does your rival dropping a letter at your doorstep not matter?’

  ‘It’s not changing anything. We’re still leaving tomorrow morning, and all it did for him was leave a trail for us to follow.’

  Power cut down its own thought and stared past Alice and Stanley as they entered the room. ‘The purple runs all

  the way out of the city.’

  ‘We now have our path.’

  ‘Which means he wants us to follow.’

  ‘And follow is what we’ll do.’

  “Coast is clear?”

  Caleb breathed in the last of Power and smiled to Alice. “Yes madam. Just a love-note left by Stephen.”

  Stanley took it and read silently while Alice and Caleb started roaming around for supplies. “What does this crackpot want to do fight or read poetry?”

  Caleb flung open all the cabinets at once. “He wants to bait us into something, or me, at least, which is why you two will promise me one thing before we ever leave this apartment, or we won’t leave this apartment.” He leaned his lower back onto the counter and crossed his arms. “If we go, there will be no negotiation on the chain of command. It will be my word first, second, and always on all matters directly concerning Stephen. Any other situation can be pondered upon at your convenience.”

  Stanley nodded with a smile on his face while Alice was having trouble holding back laughter. “Aye, Captain.”

  Caleb nodded quickly and smiled at himself. “Fair enough, but really.”

  She walked forward with her hands behind her back and a relaxed smile on her face. “How are we going to travel, Captain?”

  “The Caleb Express for as long as that holds up, then we’ll see where the trail turns from there.”

  Stanley was still smiling as he turned towards the door. “I’m going out for supplies, Corporal.”

  “Why do you two not take me as a leader?”

  Stanley turned back and smiled an easier smile. “We’re just not used to seeing the leader side of you.”

  Alice approached his side and kissed his cheek. “You know we’d follow you without the macho-drill-instructor stuff.”

  Caleb looked between them moments before Stanley left with the door shutting behind him. “It has to be that way,” Caleb said directly to Alice’s eyes. “You have to be safe.”

  Her body leaned against his. “Tell me the truth. Tell me what has to happen for this to be right.”

  He scanned her face before answering. “He needs to be stopped.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Unfortunately.�
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  “No, you obviously need to come back alive.”

  “That doesn’t need to happen.”

  Her smile quickly dissipated. “How would he be stopped then?”

  “Here is the one problem with having your thoughts on the inside: fear has a chance of dictating thought.”

  Her body leaned backwards and the contact between them broke. “I have thought about it, but that would be wrong wouldn’t it? How could you die?”

  “Same way as anybody else does.”

  Both of her hands cupped his face and a wide smile sprung again unto her face. “You and the Prince couldn’t die. You’re way too stubborn and he’s too strong. I’m worried over nothing again aren’t I?”

  Caleb looked down to her shoes. ‘Her toes are curling.’

  ‘She’s hurting. Lie to her.’

  “There’s nothing to worry about right now. You’re here, and that’s all that matters.”

  ‘Damn you, Caleb.’

  ‘It’s better this way.’

  Alice smiled and kissed his forehead for an extended moment.

  - - -

  With the moon fully immersed behind the shadow of the globe, Power gently emerged to Alice’s open eyes, seeing a glimmer of happiness it hadn’t expected. “You seem happy.”

  “I’m sleeping in the same bed as Caleb. Why wouldn’t I be happy?”

  “I’m glad you’re feeling accomplished.”

  She sat up and crossed her legs. “It’s nice to see you again.”

  “It’s the same as seeing Caleb with blue glasses on.”

  She sighed playfully. “No, it isn’t. Seeing you means seeing something completely different than Caleb.”

  “You enjoy seeing him more.”

  “That’s why I’m dating him.”

  Power smiled bitterly. “And you say that as if it’s a trivial thing. As if you’re trying to protect me from a truth I’ve already heard from your mouth.”