Chapter 36: Chapter thirty-five

Four years ago

 

Kevin Matthews was no more, he was now Golden Shield. The costume he had made himself, all gold and black with knee and elbow pads for protection. The shield he had made in his buddy’s forge. Usually they just made gear for LARPing, but this time Kevin wasn’t playing games. He was out on patrol for the first time as a real superhero.

He had always admired superheroes, even before they were real. The idea of selfless people with amazing powers struggling to save the world was cool, even if some of the kids he grew up with didn’t think so. When Oblivion and the others had come onto the scene a few years ago, it was like his childhood heroes had stepped out of the pages of the comic books and into reality. Suddenly heroes were everywhere, with hundreds of people dressing up and trying their hand at fighting crime. Kevin had wanted to join in then, but he had been afraid. A lot of those people were arrested, and some of them were killed. Besides, he had figured, fighting crime was something other people did. It wasn’t for him.

All of that had changed when his grandmother had been robbed. Hooligans had broken into her home and beaten her up. That’s when he realized that he couldn’t wait for others to make the world better. He had to pitch in himself.

And, walking down the street in his costume, looking for people who needed help and crimes that needing stopping, that’s exactly what he was doing.

Someone screamed from up ahead.

Kevin’s first instinct was to run away, but if he was going to be a hero, that meant running towards screams. He took a deep breath and set off in that direction at a light jog. It wasn’t exactly running towards danger, but his shield was heavy, and he didn’t want to wind himself before he got there.

 

Oblivion was in an expensive restaurant enjoying a poached pineapple cheesecake when the robbers burst in. He was off the clock, taking some downtime between missions, so he wasn’t in the Oblivion suit and had no weapons on him. He looked up from his plate to see three masked men burst in with handguns and begin parting diners from their valuables. They were mostly focused on the table in the centre of the room, where a group of traders had been running up an impressive bill.

Oblivion went back to his dessert.

 

Kevin burst into the restaurant in time to see a guy in a clown mask holding a man at gunpoint.

“Stop!” he said, proud of how not-terrified he sounded. “The police are already on their way.”

That wasn’t strictly true, at least as far as Kevin knew, but he had heard that the threat of incoming police was enough to deter most criminals.

This one apparently wasn’t deterred, he raised his gun and pointed it at Kevin.

“Oh shit!” Kevin yelped, bringing his shield up in front of his head and closing his eyes. It should be thick enough to stop a bullet from killing him, but it was also untested.

The gun went off. Kevin didn’t die.

He opened his eyes and peeked around his shield, not daring to lower it.

The robber was on the ground, his head facing the wrong way.

Standing over him was a man in a black suit and absolutely no expression on his face. He was looking at Kevin.

“Did you just… kill that guy?” Kevin asked.

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“No,” the man said. “He’s unconscious.”

“But his head…”

“That’s a mask,” the man pointed out.

Now that Kevin looked, it was only the mask that was the wrong way around.

“Oh,” he said, feeling foolish.

“I’d like to talk to you Kevin.

“How do you know my name?”

“I know lots of things. For example, I know you shouldn’t be out, in costume, standing in front of guns. Next time you do, I won’t be there to save you. Go home Kevin, leave the crimefighting to the professionals.”

Understanding hit Kevin slowly, like the dawning of a new day. “You’re… one of them.”

The man gave the barest of nods. “Go home.”

Kevin nodded his head vigorously, turning and practically running from the place.

 

Oblivion turned from the would-be hero and walked back to his table. A waiter was cowering behind cover nearby, and Oblivion asked him if he could box up the rest of his cheesecake to go. The police would be there soon. He had avoided being seen on the restaurant’s security cameras, and the robbers were all still alive, but it still wouldn’t do to stick around for questioning.

He had known the restaurant was being targeted of course, just as he had known Kevin Matthews would be patrolling the area trying his hand at being a superhero. Oblivion might be off the clock, but he was never sloppy. And he had very little to do with his time besides being a superhero. There was only so much time that fine food and drink could take up, so he spent the rest on projects like Kevin. They were less impactful than his usual missions, but they were something.

The terrified waiter got his cheesecake boxed up and Oblivion left the restaurant just as sirens were approaching. He didn’t want them to spot him on their way in, so he scaled a nearby building and found a cooling unit he could sit on.

As he sat there, finishing his dessert with a plastic fork, his phone rang. Only one organization had his number, and he wasn’t due to go on anymore missions till tomorrow, so the call meant something had happened. He answered.

“Confirm identity,” the voice on the other of the line said.

“Oblivion,” he said simply. There was meant to be more to his confirmation than that, but the Program had the best voice analysis software in the world. They knew it was him.

“Identity confirmed. Program Graduate Dusk has died.”

Oblivion stared into the distance. The voice on the other end of the line was still talking, explaining media relations responses and the like, but Oblivion wasn’t listening. There was a hole inside him, a terrible sucking void of grief.

It was, simply put, the worst thing he had ever felt, and he had never been so appreciative of his own muted emotions as he was then. That feeling was painful enough viewed at a distance that he wondered how other people managed when they felt it full force.

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