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DATE:24nd of August, the 70th year after the Coronation
LOCATION: Con
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I found John in the hallway. He informed me that Alice wasn't ready yet and that we'd meet her at his car.
The trip to the underground parking lot wasn't long, but I still felt a deep-seated exhaustion. Mentally, the drugs had me buzzing, but my feet ached with a pain that the chemical high couldn't touch. I was at least aware enough to know my body was running on fumes. It would be a problem if I suddenly collapsed in the middle of a meeting because I couldn't feel the engine about to seize.
At some point on the way, I noticed John was wearing a big pair of glasses. I asked him about it.
He said it was an injury from our little run-in with The Donn. His retina had been slightly damaged, and the glasses were to protect his eyes from reflections while driving. I don't know… bald, with glasses and a goatee? He looked a little needy for such a muscular guy.
Anyhow, his SUV was as ridiculously giant as ever. He told me to get inside so he could start the AC. I agreed. Staining a fresh shirt with sweat would be a waste.
John took the driver's seat, and I sat to his right, using the visor mirror to arrange my hair. No gel, so my hands would have to do.
"You mentioned Mundi earlier," I said, breaking the silence. "Did he provide that drug concoction?"
"Yes," John said, turning the key. "Mundi has quite a few of those formulas developed specifically for you."
"Probably from all the data he gets spying on me."
"Yeah…" he admitted quietly.
"Hey, John?"
"What is it?"
"Why didn't you say anything when you found out I was an undead?" Even though I was looking at my reflection, I saw his hands tighten on the steering wheel in my peripheral vision.
"What are you talking about?" he asked, his voice a little too casual.
"Don't fuck with me," I said, my tone flat. I wasn't angry, just tired of the games. I finished with my hair and turned to look at him. "I'm not up for wasting any more time on this."
He scoffed, taking a moment to collect his words. "There are many heroes whose bodies and cells act abnormally. How was I supposed to think anything of yours?" He shook his head slightly. "I don't know what you're thinking, but it isn't like that. It's true that your cells act abnormally, but I wouldn't call them 'dead.'"
"My cells don't reach apoptosis," I stated, my voice flat. "They don't die. How else would you call them? Not cancer?"
He breathed in deeply, his gaze fixed on the road ahead. "It's true that… them appearing from nowhere isn't how a normal body acts—"
I cut him off. "You must have taken samples for testing. What happened to them?"
"That's what I mean," he said, a hint of frustration in his voice. "Good that you asked. Your cells require sustenance, just like any other. They die without it. They also die after a while outside your body, even if they're fed, but I'm not sure why that happens." He paused. "In any case, you can't call them undead, nor are they immortal. What's clear is that your biology isn't human anymore. I heard Mundi said you were like this because of magic?"
What a joke. So what if I need to eat? Don't vampires feed on blood? What difference does it make if I can eat normal food? It doesn't change the fact that I haven't aged a day in fifteen years.
"Yes," I said. "I was brought back to life by something other than a human."
"Personally, I don't believe in magic," John said with a shrug. "But then again, our powers aren't exactly scientific either."
"I didn't ask for your philosophical take on this," I snapped, my patience wearing thin. "I asked why you didn't tell me."
"Didn't I say that already? There are heroes with similar characteristics. Heroes I've healed personally." He was trying to play it cool, but I could see the stress etched deep under his skin. His jaw was clenched, the muscles in his forearms pulsing. He was angry.
"Haah, this is getting nowhere," I sighed. "Why are you such a scumbag? I thought you were a better person than this."
"Hey," he said, his voice dropping. "What is this really about?"
"Don't play dumb, John. You're not a simple man. You knew from the very beginning. Who I was. You knew I wasn't William Carter from the moment I was first brought to that hospital. You would have seen the difference between my cells and those of the Carter family. Hell, I look twenty-five and William was supposed to be Ultraman's age. You knew I was a killer after that incident with the vampire at the Academy." My voice rose, the anger finally breaking through my tired facade. "Hey, look at me!" I jabbed a finger towards his face.
He slapped my hand away, his own hand shooting out to grab the front of my shirt. A vein pulsed on his temple. "Look at what!? What exactly are you insinuating?"
"That you're not the nice guy you pretend to be," I spat. "You must have known I was Ultraman's killer. You knew what I'd done, and yet you still recommended I stay at the Academy. How many people could I have killed?"
A dry chuckle escaped him, the sound sharp and humorless. "But you didn't," he said, his grip tightening. "Is that what this is all about?"
"I could have."
"Yet you didn't," he retorted, his eyes boring into mine. "You even went above and beyond to find a killer no other hero could touch in that neighborhood, and then you brought down the Headmistress for her crimes." He let go of my shirt, his hand falling away. "So what if I let you, a killer, roam free? Aren't many of the heroes killers?"
He let go of my shirt and switched his vision back to the parking lot filled with cars.
He let go of my shirt, the sudden release of tension making me sway slightly. He turned his gaze back to the parking lot, a chaotic mess of circling cars and frustrated drivers.
"I saw how desperate you were to not be found," he said, his voice low and even. "I was certain you wouldn't do anything stupid. A killer good enough to end Ultraman wouldn't make careless mistakes. I wanted to use you... to find the one who ordered the assassination. The Donn. Clearly a betrayed agent this good would try to get revenge. I only had to follow you." He sighed, a sound of weary resignation. "I… didn't expect you to end up with Alice. That was a surprise. I thought you were manipulating her, using her as a shield. But even that turned out to be a good deed. I've heard from her how many times you saved her life." He shrugged, a gesture that seemed to carry the weight of the last few months. "At that point, what could I have done?"
"So you're saying I'm a nice guy?" I asked, the words dripping with sarcasm. "You must be joking."
"Why would I joke about something like this?" he shot back, his eyes still on the road. "Do you remember? Only twenty-two days ago, you agreed to come and help me. To save my hospital from Damos. Why would you do that? I heard from Alice you two were separated at the time. What reason could you possibly have had to come and save a building full of commoners you didn't even know?"
He was right. The question echoed one I had asked myself at the time.
"In a perfect world," John continued, his voice hardening with conviction, "we wouldn't need to place our hopes on the small chance that people like you act like heroes. In a perfect world, people like you would have justice served to them on a platter. But we don't live in a perfect world, do we?" His gaze flickered towards me. "When that savage, Big Head, kidnapped those reporters ten days ago, who saved them? For hours, no one did a thing. Not the police, not the so-called heroes. Who decided to intervene? You. You put your life on the line with absolutely no benefit to yourself. You took off your armor in front of armed terrorists just to prove a point. I could make the excuse that I was busy in surgery, but how is that right? How could I have faced myself if they had died?" He wasn't angry. His expression was one of intense, painful focus.
"So what if I saved some people?" I countered, my last defense feeling weak even to my own ears. "You really think I did it out of heroism?"
"It doesn't matter why you did it," he said, his voice cutting through my argument like a scalpel. "That is what my friend Kevin never understood. Results matter. Actions matter."
I had nothing left. What more could I say? He was right. I turned away from him, my gaze falling on the parking lot outside. It was a symphony of chaos, a mess of honking horns and drivers fighting for spaces. It was so busy…
The back door of the SUV opened, and Alice slid inside. The pressing silence that had filled the car, thick and heavy with unspoken things, finally broke.
From what I caught in the rearview mirror, Alice looked serious—her elegant black dress embroidered with delicate rose details made her seem almost fragile, yet composed. She applied final touches to her makeup using a small mirror, the metal fixator on her left hand lending an almost unnatural dexterity to an otherwise injured limb. Such a slender, graceful figure. Lucky guy, huh?
Still, black? The color didn't quite suit her. That thought made me wonder—how many days had it been since her father died?
Whatever.
John started driving immediately, no time wasted, so I followed suit.
"Alice, did Crater manage to recover my phone from that van?" I asked.
The change in her was immediate and stark. The professional composure she'd just been wearing vanished, and her face went pale. Panic, sharp and real, twitched in her features.
"I… I didn't remember to ask him," she admitted, her voice shaky. She looked at me, her eyes wide with a fear that went far beyond a lost piece of hardware. "Emily," she whispered, her voice cracking. "She's in there. What if they… what if they hurt her?"
I almost scoffed. "Hurt her? Alice, it's a program. An advanced one, sure, but it's lines of code in a box. We just need to get the phone back."
"No!" The sharpness in her tone made me blink. "She's not just a program. She thinks, Will. She learns. I know you don't see it, but she's..." She trailed off, searching for the right word. "...aware."
Aware. It was a sentimental, ridiculous notion, the kind of thing someone who grew up reading too many stories would believe. Even with everything that happened between me and that thing, I could at most call its developments "misguided". And yet, before I could dismiss it, her expression shifted, the fear for the AI overshadowed by a deeper, more immediate terror—one directed at me.
"That's not even what scares me the most," she said, her voice dropping to a raw whisper. She leaned forward, her good hand gripping the back of my seat. "It's you. Without her, you're… you're exposed. You need her, more than you'll ever admit. And the thought of you walking into that meeting," she gestured vaguely towards the world outside the car, "like this... it terrifies me." Let's be serious. The only terrifying thing about that meeting is that I have no idea who any of them are and I don't have Emily to tell me.
But overall…
Her words hit a nerve, because as much as I hated the sentimental bullshit, she wasn't wrong about the other part. Exposed. Vulnerable. The thought I'd had just moments ago echoed back: Since when had I started depending on her so much? The fact that Alice, in her naive way, could see it so clearly was... irritating.
I reached over the central console, my movements stiff, and placed a hand on her shoulder. It was more to stop her trembling than to offer any real comfort.
"Calm down," I told her firmly, my voice flatter than I intended. "It's a tool. A very useful one, but still a tool. We'll get it back. Worst case, we ask Mundi to locate her." I forced a wry smile, trying to cut through the thick tension in the car. "Looks like you'll have to be my secretary until then. I'm certainly not up to dealing with all this paperwork right now."
John said nothing from the driver's seat, but I saw his eyes flicker to the rearview mirror, a new layer of worry settling onto his already hard-focused expression. He didn't know the specifics, but he was smart enough to piece it together.
Either way, it was troubling. My body was a wreck, my powers were shot, and now my greatest tactical asset was missing.
I hadn't been this exposed in a very long time. It was dangerous.
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The SUV slid to a halt in a reserved slot in the subterranean parking garage, a concrete tomb reserved for the self-important. John killed the engine, and the ensuing silence was somehow louder than the argument we'd just had. He and Alice got out. I followed, my body protesting with every step. The drugs still sang in my veins, a frantic, jittery energy that did nothing to mask the profound weariness deep in my bones.
We rode an elevator up, a mirrored cage that showed me three figures I barely recognized. John, looking tense and out of place in his casual clothes. Alice, a porcelain doll in a funeral dress, her beauty a strange, fragile armor against the world. And me, a patchwork of new, red scars and a borrowed suit, my face a mask of bored indifference that I didn't have to fake.
Out of place huh...
The doors opened with a soft chime, releasing us into the belly of the beast.
The headquarters of the Hero Alliance was exactly as I hadn't bothered to remember it: a monument to corporate vanity masquerading as a bastion of hope. The lobby was a vast, sterile expanse of polished marble and shimmering chrome, so bright and clean it felt like an operating theater. The air conditioning was cranked so high it felt like a morgue. It probably was, just with better lighting.
The place reeked of industrial cleaner mixed with something sickly sweet, like dying flowers. A pathetic attempt to mask the smell of all the tourists trudging through. Wall-mounted screens played their usual propaganda on loop: heroes shaking hands, slow-motion rubble clearing, empty slogans like "Unity is Our Shield" and "A Stronger Concord, Together."
Complete bullshit.
John led the way, his shoulders rigid as he pushed through the crowd. Alice walked beside me without a word. I might as well have been heading to my execution—this whole "alliance" thing was already testing what little patience I had left. Every face we passed made my jaw clench tighter.
A pair of junior heroes strutted past—probably fresh Academy graduates, maybe even my former students. Their costumes were still crisp, faces glowing with that nauseating smugness only rookies could manage. They laughed too loud, performing for anyone watching.
Perfect little peacocks, drunk on imagined glory. They saw fame and endorsement deals ahead. They couldn't see the blood, the filth, the screaming waiting in the dark.
I really don't get how they are fooled to become heroes.
Idiots.
We passed monitors flashing stock tickers and market data. A suit with perfectly slicked hair barked into his phone, voice dripping condescension. Not a hero—a parasite feeding off the chaos.
He looked up as we walked by, eyes scanning us like a spreadsheet. Calculating our worth and finding us lacking. I could see the rot in him, the casual cruelty of someone who saw people as numbers on a balance sheet.
Everything wrong with the world these heroes claimed to protect.
A secretary with a smile as fake as the plastic in her lips waved at John. Her eyes found me next, lingering on the scars and angry red patches of burned skin showing above my collar. The smile flickered—just for a second—before curiosity took over.
She glanced at the woman near her and whispered as if I couldn't hear: "Did you see William Carter? He looks terrible."
The security checkpoint was manned by a guard built like a brick wall but with the soft look of someone who spent more time at lunch than the gym. His eyes caught my face, then my hands—a flicker of disgust crossing his features.
"Special clearance huh," he grunted to John, waving us through without looking at me again. As if I might be contagious.
My eyes found the centerpiece: a massive print of a burning cityscape. I think IT was the fight against The Haymaker?
As we moved deeper into the facility, the walls were lined with framed photos of the Alliance's "greatest triumphs,". My eyes scanned the images until they landed on a massive print, the centerpiece of the collection. I think it was the final battle against the Haymaker.
Anyway, I could see a ragged red boot on the ground between Ultraman's feet. So this confirmed it.
Ultraman stood tall among the ruins obscuring the villain. He was showing his back to the camera, his many muscles pulsating through his suit. Blazer was beside him, having turned for the photo, wreathed in flames and full of dried blood, but taking an arrogant pose.
But the third figure caught my attention. A green jumpsuit with a spherical mask on which was painted an unhappy face. He resembled some kind of amateur. His hands were crossed and glowing red through some kind of aura. Who was he? I didn't remember such a figure between the Legion members.
Something about him screamed fraud.
Alice leaned in, voice low against the passive hum of AC. "That's Surge. He quit the legion after this fight and founded his own agency.
Don't you remember? You saw him last time you were summoned here."
Nah, I didn't.
Of course I didn't remember. Why would I waste brain space on another suit?
You are correct. My apologies for losing the order of events. Here is the revised scene, focusing strictly on the moment Kassius enters the meeting room, with the specified changes.
At the end of a long white corridor stood heavy steel doors. The meeting room. John paused, turning to me.
"Are you ready?" he asked quietly.
"No," I said, and pushed past him.
The doors swung open. Stale air hit me---a thick mix of old coffee and quiet desperation. A polished table dominated the room, surrounded by Concord's hero agency leaders. Every eye turned my way.
I glanced down the hall and saw a group of men in sharp, tailored suits as if to see Surge, but I quickly remembered. They weren't wearing costumes. He could be any of them.
I saw it all in their faces: politicians, opportunists, cowards, and fools. Has-beens and never-weres, if you ask me. No wonder I couldn't remember them.
I ignored their stares and whispered comments, the mix of fear and disdain rolling off them like a bad smell. Alice followed me in, her heels clicking softly on the polished floor, and slid into the chair beside the one I chose at the far end of the table. John remained outside.
Too low of a rank I guess.
As I slumped into the chair, my gaze swept across the room again, taking in the collection of self-important suits. Most of them had already dismissed me, turning back to their hushed conversations or their glowing tablets. But my eyes snagged on one who hadn't looked away. A woman, impeccably dressed, with eyes the color of fresh blood. About 40 years old if I were to assume, but she seems to age gracefully.
While the others had looked at me with a predictable mix of fear and contempt, her gaze was different. It was cold, sharp, and unnervingly intelligent. There was no fear in her eyes, only a flicker of what looked like recognition, followed by a chillingly detached calculation. It was the look of a predator sizing up a rival, a look that seemed to pierce right through the flesh and bone to the broken, undead thing I was beneath. Was she reading my mind?
Seeing her smile confirmed it.
I held her gaze for a beat longer than was comfortable before turning away. I filed the encounter away. She could be a problem.
The man at the head of the table cleared his throat, a pompous sound that echoed in the tense silence.
This was so stupid.