Chapter 31: Chapter thirty

Present day

 

Reaper was wearing his armour, his second skin, for the first time in almost a year. It should have calmed him, but instead it only added to his frustration. He stood in the small room inside a large building. The room he was in was once someone’s office, but had been designated ‘backstage’ for the press conference he was about to give. Just down the hall, the media waited, eagerly awaiting the first public statement given from one of the world’s only superheroes.

Reaper snorted to himself in disgust at the thought of all those cretins, falling over one another to get the story of their pathetic careers. They probably had what they thought of as hard-hitting questions prepared, designed to catch him off guard and trip him up. They should be grateful. He was the reason they could sleep soundly in their beds at night. Instead, they would be hungry for whatever scraps he threw to them, and snap at the hand that fed them.

As if they could catch Reaper off guard. As if there was anything they could ask that hadn’t already crossed his mind, or any question that the Program speech writers hadn’t already crafted an answer for.

A small man with a clipboard opened the door and flinched at the sight of Reaper. Reaper smiled behind his skull mask at that.

“Ah, they’re ready for you now. So, um, whenever you’re ready, ah, sir.”

Reaper walked past the man, wanting this charade to be over with. He strode down a wide hallway lost in his own thoughts. There was a time when he would have noted every exit and piece of cover in the hall, but he had long since offloaded that to his subconscious, and could now do so without thinking. He briefly smirked at the idea of explaining that process to the waiting reporters as if they could understand.

He entered a large room and took the stage, walking briskly to the podium in the center while a hush flowed out from him and across the room. Whatever gibbering questions the reporters had been preparing to ask died on their tongues as they caught their first true glimpse of something from a world they didn’t, and couldn’t, understand. He was darkness and death, stalking the world’s criminals while this lot slept on soft beds and dreamed soft dreams.

“As you know,” he began, already deviating from the carefully crafted script the Program had written for him. He would get the meaning across, but he would use his own words. That small rebellion he could afford, and it would have to be enough. For now.

“Bodycount, Dusk, Oblivion and myself have protected the world for many years.” He ignored the various copycat superheroes who had come and gone over the years. They were irrelevant amateurs.

“Two of us have even laid down our lives while doing so.” Well, perhaps one, but if Oblivion was dead, Reaper would eat his mask.

“But,” he said, having to force the word out. This was the part where his bonds chaffed him most. He loathed the words he was about to say, but he had to say them. Until he had enough information to take Smythe’s head and assume control of the Program, he had to do what the old man ordered.

“We have been wrong.” The words fell like a plane with no wings. Whatever the reporters had been expecting him to say, it hadn’t been that.

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“We sought out threats to your safety and we took them out. We saved lives. But to do so we killed people. I cannot speak for the others, but at the time, I thought it was the only way. I see now how wrong I was. I see now that safety cannot be bought with murder.”

Reaper could see that the reporters were eating this up. A couple of them looked to be about to cry. He had never been so repulsed in his life.

“That is why,” he said, gripping the podium so tight that the wood began to crack, “I will be turning myself in to the authorities after this press conference to stand trial for my crimes.”

Federal agents stood at every entrance. They shuffled nervously as he spoke, as though they had some inkling of the danger he represented.

“But that isn’t why I’m here today.” Several reporters practically fell out of their seats at that. What could be bigger than the voluntary arrest of Reaper himself?

“I am here today to introduce the first of the next generation of heroes. A man I have spent the last year training, and who will offer the world what I could not: hope.”

At his cue, a man in white armour, stylized to evoke the image of a medieval knight, stepped into the room and took the stage next to Reaper. Everything about him was designed to look heroic, from the completely unnecessary tips of his helmet to the points of his boots.

Reaper stepped aside from the podium and took his place behind the man in white armour as he stepped up to the podium and addressed the crowd.

“It is an honour to be here with you today. You can call me White Knight, and I’m here to answer any questions you might have.”

The room practically exploded with noise as the reporters clamoured to have their questions heard over the others. White Knight quieted them with a gesture and reassured them that he would get to all of them.

Behind his mask, Reaper stared daggers at the other man. White Knight was one of only two graduates from Smythe’s new crop of would-be heroes, and he was Smythe’s answer to the rising tide of negative public opinion regarding superheroes. The people had been too safe for too long, and were beginning to take their frustrations out on their protectors. Reaper had suggested bombing a few civilian targets and placing the blame on some extremist group to get them back on side, but Smythe had chosen to move towards a new group of ‘friendlier’ heroes instead. White Knight was to be Reaper’s replacement, and Reaper hated him for it.

White Knight answered every question, sticking to the Program’s script designed to allay any concerns about his association with Reaper while also portraying him as grateful, humble and honest. Reaper knew all of this to be a lie. He hadn’t trained White Knight, but he had sparred with him on occasion, and while the boy might be zealous and naive enough to believe some of what he was saying, he certainly wasn’t the paragon of honour and humility that Smythe was selling him as.

Eventually, the press conference came to an end and Reaper turned himself in to the waiting agents, counting down the minutes until his escape.

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