Truth
"So, let me get this straight; You and "Leon" fought a giant flaming, uh, guy, that could generate energy from his palms?" Thomas was asking.
"Correct, you got it." Kane said, nodding his head, you could tell he was a little excited by the thought of explaining his experience.
There was a long pause before Thomas spoke again, "Get some sleep."
"He had wings, I promise you that!"
"Just stop wasting my time, ok?" Thomas was annoyed, behind any help coffee could bring. Kane took a long, stern look at the Wing detective, then stalked out of the room.
Leon stared hard at the ceiling, lying on his bed. The panels were cracked and falling apart, but he didn't care, he was placing his life's last events in order. Remembering every detail of the battle, and how Trevor so easily won. It was as if the officer didn't hear anything, none of the taunts or screams, he just had it all planned out. Like he had some special score to settle and when he said, "' It must be done...'"
Leon sat up, repeating the words in his head. Why did the parade take place, why was there any need for celebration?
Flop!
The paper landed beside his feet on the carpet, Jeremy was leaning against the doorframe. Jostled from his thought, he picked up the paper.
"Page 6, first article." Jeremy ordered.
He turned to it, found the article, and read it aloud. "Direct saves old theater and Enforcer." Leon looked up at his brother, who just kept glaring at the paper. He started reading, "At approximately 8:07 Saturday evening, a supposed rally took place within the old Rekus Theater. At 9:25, shots rang out. An Enforcer officer had infiltrated the building with the help of citizen Leon Orson." He looked up again from the paper.
"Keep reading."
"An alleged criminal by the code name Cinder was reported to be on the scene when the shots were fired. An assassination attempt of rally members nearly succeeded, but the Enforcer tried to take control of the situation. Captain Trevor Apollos of the Direct faction showed his bravery once again by apprehending the criminal and saving the Enforcer and victim."
Jeremy winced at the word "victim". Before Leon could finish the article, Jeremy spoke the rest from memory, "The guards were identified as Shadous followers and taken to the Wing facility of prisoners. The rest of it is just praise to Trevor about his life and all the "brave" things he's done."
"Shadous? They've been gone for years, the gang wars went with them." Leon was the older of the two and could remember the wars more clearly.
"Not according to Direct."
Leon slowly came to the conclusion, they're covering it up, blaming someone else. He grasped the paper in both hands and charged outside, heading straight for the Enforcer headquarters.
He was surprised to find Kane waiting for him, leaning on a lamppost, fanning himself with the paper. "You're late, I expected you a little more than five minutes ago."
"You get the paper faster."
"Well, that's true." Kane waited for the conversation to begin, still fanning himself.
"We need to fight this, somehow." Leon finally said.
"We just might be able to, follow me." Kane turned and began to walk down toward the Rekus, Leon sprinted to keep up to pace.
Clunk! The doorframe board fell to the floor when Kane's shoulder nicked it. The stage was a wreck, well; actually, it was the best looking thing in the whole room. Charred chairs littered the floor; the smell of burnt flesh filled the air.
"Why are we hear?" Leon asked impatiently.
"Shh." Kane scanned the area. Nothing, why did I come back? Direct covered it all up. He started for the door.
"Wait." Leon said, grabbing Kane's arm and pointing at a pile of debris. Both gazed at it, then Kane's eyes went wide. Sprinting over to it, he dug into the pile. A few minutes later, he cleared all the rocks away to reveal a limp, dead wing. Kane smiled to himself, recalling how it got there.
He ripped a piece off the burnt chairs, and said, "This is radioactive. And this," He held up the wing, "is our way of getting out the truth. Follow me."
The Wing Headquarters was a huge structure, holding centuries of facts, but not knowledge; that was Exodus. It was similar to the castle-like look of Sword of Vengeance, which was to the edge of the city. This building was exactly in the center, as to be the perfect distance from anything. Kane was the first up to the door and inside, Leon charged after him.
"Thomas Apollos please, I need to speak with him." Kane told the desk clerk.
"Excuse me?"
"Thomas Apollos, it's urgent."
The clerk looked him over in amusement, then looked more intently at his duffel bag. "What's in there?" he gestured to the bag.
"That's for Apollos only." Kane stated.
"Oh really, I think I should take a look." He snatched up the bag.
"I would advise against that." He was grinning under his mask.
"Aaaagh!" the clerk only had to glance at the severed wing to get the picture. He composed himself, zipped up the bag, and then waved them through.
"Yep, this is radioactive residue on the fabric." Thomas leaned back in his chair, away from the scanner. "What do you want me to say, so there's radioactivity going on, so what, it happens."
"Are we right?" Leon asked.
"I doubt radioactive chair material is going to go very far in the way of evidence- Whoa! Geez!" Thomas fell out of his chair when his feet scrambled backward at the sight of the decaying wing Kane had slammed on the table. "What the heck is that?" He said when he found his bearings.
"It was my clearance." Kane chuckled.
"The clerk saw this? What did he do?"
Leon mimicked the face the clerk made, laughing convulsively. Thomas laughed too, then quickly stopped when he got a better look at the dead flesh. "Uh, it looks, um, sliced off."
"Trevor's sword." That's all Kane said until Leon piped in.
"Could you scan it?"
"We'll use the bigger version, uh, could you," he nodded toward the wing, "get that?"
Leon obliged with a snicker.
"So where to now, for you I mean. You could stay with us." Jeremy was talking to Mortar just outside the house.
"No, that might provide some danger for you. I know a place; it's on the outskirts, for people like us. You're welcome to come and see if you like?" He took a step south, paused, uncertain, then continued to walk away.
Hey, if Leon can run out, I will too. Jeremy thought about it, then bolted to catch up.
Thunk! The wing slammed on the table, shaking a few beakers; Thomas reacted to stop them from falling.
Crash! The glass skittered across the floor opposite Leon's feet. The officer had obviously failed to save that beaker but salvaged the rest.
They were in the observatory; telescopes, big scanners, and information files were set up everywhere. A giant telescope stood in the center of the circular room.
"How many solar systems do you watch with this?" Leon had walked over the center telescope and was fingering over the controls, only lightly touching the keys. On one, he touched it a little too hard.
"Don't touch that, it's not a telescope!" Thomas yelled at Leon.
The machine shook and began to hum; the hum became a screech, then a high-pitched Elmo screaming. The first thing that flashed in Kane's mind was, Gun.
"Oh my- Oof!" Leon grunted when Kane shoved him out of the way of the red beam that now engulfed his rescuer.
It was, basically, a very large, beat-up shack. Tools and old firearms that rotted and stunk of sweat were strewn across the wall. Mortar entered, giving a joyous "hello" to everyone he knew and introducing himself to anyone new. Jeremy, after taking a deep breath of fresh air outside, cautiously entered, eyeing random homeless rebels. Some stared him back, stared at his clean clothes and clean hygiene.
"Forge!" Mortar took the hand of one of the less grungy men and hoisted him to his feet. "I would like you to meet my friend, Jeremy."
The man outstretched his hand, which was covered in a heavy gauntlet. Jeremy took it after a moment's hesitation and a small feeling of respect brushed over them. "So, I hear your brother saved some lives, including that of yours." His voice was deep and full, a speaker's voice. He looked about sixty, perhaps younger; maybe it was the light.
Mortar left the two alone and attended to other things.
When Jeremy said nothing in return, Forge changed the subject. "I know you don't know many people here, but, I think you should meet these two." He motioned to two men in the far corner who were the most talkative, Jeremy now noticed. "They arrived just two days ago and they've already brightened everyone's day."
"Hey, fella's!" Forge half-yelled to the two men, surprising one of them, they could tell because he shook a little. Both stood, one looked short and heavyset, but when he removed his large trench coat, he was wearing bulky armor. At first Jeremy thought he was a soldier and he was in trouble, but he could find no mark of any of the factions upon him or his armor. The other man left his coat on and stuck out his arm in a jerked movement, greeting with, "H'cow do hyou do? My hname is Vor'."
Vor' had a heavy Russian accent and smelled slightly of whiskey. The one in armor brought his hand out in one swift motion and sounded only slightly English. "And I am Jim. You are?"
"J-Jeremy," he didn't mean to stutter, he just really hadn't said his own name in a while.
The beam subsided into a thin, red dot, then disappeared. Kane stood there, wondering why he was still alive when the machine whirred again and said in an electronic voice, "Humanoid. Enforcer, Kane Trikes of Crimson Squadron. Height: inaccurate measure. Weight: 30- fzzzzzzzmmmmmt..." Thomas had thrown the switch down. The machine stopped its description and slowed, then finally turned off.
"It goes all the way down to when you last showered." Thomas commented, holding back a chuckle.
A laugh escaped Kane from deep inside as he asked, already knowing the answer, "It's a scanner."
Thomas held out his arms in a look that described what he couldn't say because he was giggling too hard, yes.
Finally, Leon got impatient and yelled; "Can we please get on with this?"
"Right. Back to business." Thomas was serious again as he got the other scanner running to look over their "evidence".
The monitor next to it hummed, beeped, and hummed some more as a DNA strand was drawn from the wing. But, something was wrong, the strand, when it was finished, looked strange...
"Whoa!" Thomas exclaimed in pure bewilderment. Leon rushed over to where Kane had run to look at the display. The strand had the two main legs of the ladder, but there were six more in between the two. These, the computer could not identify.
"Whatever that guy is, he's not human." Thomas muttered.
"Well, duh, considering how he sprouted wings and shot fire from his hands at us." Leon was fed up with people not believing him and he went on raving about how Cinder could do this or that while the others ignored him.
"Is there any way we can get this out in the open, the truth I mean." Kane whispered under Leon's tantrum.
"Too risky; if Direct really had covered up the truth, they'd spot us in a heartbeat and just cover it up again. No, we need to start small. We need to write something explaining this," he motioned again the limp wing, " and let some people know, but in secret."
"But where could we go to announce this?" Kane asked, completely having no idea.
"The outskirts, where the homeless live." Leon had stopped his raving and was listening for most of the conversation, now he finally piped up.
"Give the truth to bums?" Thomas almost laughed at his question.
"No. Most of the rebels live on the outskirts."
Kane was still weary, "Rebels cause uprising, we don't want a war."
"Then we'll keep it subtle."
"We can't count on that, there's no way we can keep this subtle, it's the biggest blow against Direct. We still can't risk losing it." Thomas spoke with a tone that told you he knew what he was talking about.
"What if we used it as bribe?" Leon suggested, trying to give new hope to the subject.
"They'd track us down the moment we contact them." There was a long pause after that, no one said anything, and each thinking of a different plan that kept failing. In the end, they all went back to the outskirts.
Kane gave the word, "I guess we'll have to chance it."
Jeremy was just finishing a game of chess with Forge when Mortar came running full speed into the shack calling, "I think we've got trouble."
At the word "trouble", Jim and Vor' stood and picked up their weapons. For the first time, Jeremy glanced at their weapons. They were things he'd never seen before; he could make reference to old-fashioned guns and kitchenware. Jim's gun was like an average rifle on steroids, with three large slots on the left broadside. Vor's was a mix of a deformed Uzi and telescope. Both automatically cocked as their users stood up.
Mortar finally was breathing normally again and stammered out a description, "There's a huge Enforcer, with a Wing detective, and someone not of the factions, a civilian."
Jeremy was the first to the counter the comment, "Look again, at the civilian."
Mortar made a face, then ran back to the door and took a longer look, his expression changed. "It's your brother, Leon?"
Kane entered first, a little wary on what to expect, then Thomas and Leon. Jeremy sprinted up to them, only glancing at Kane, and asked Leon, "What are you doing here?"
Leon's only answer was a nod toward Kane, who easily took charge. "Where are the newspapers in this establishment?"
While everyone else glared at the Enforcer, only Forge said in a friendly tone, "We only get one, would you like to read it?"
"Yes, please." Kane answered after a moment's hesitation.
Forge brought the paper to him and Kane accepted it, eyeing the fire barrel, eyeing their fireplace. Acting casual, Kane strode up to the barrel and tossed the paper in. There was a quick fffzzzt as the pages exploded into instant ashes within the fire. Now people were starting to get up, giving yells of disapproval. Vor started yelling obscenities in Russian toward the Enforcer.
Ignoring the yells and taunts, he walked calmly back to where Thomas stood at the doorway. Taking the document from the detective's hand, he walked back over to Forge, placing the document into the man's still open palm.
"What is this?" the old man asked in wonder.
"The truth."