I had been out for almost a day, yet I still woke up tired. I couldn’t remember much from the night before, but Sheriff Ramos’ face spoke volumes. She had sat on a chair in the corner of my bedroom waiting for me to wake up. She had her eyes wide open but didn’t seem to notice I had woken up. I don’t know what horrors were going through her mind, but I had never seen such an empty gaze before.
“You okay?” I asked as I stretched and cracked one bone after the other.
“No…” she sighed. “How do you do it?”
“Do what?” I asked confused.
“How do you just… keep going?”
“I disappeared for four years, remember?” I was joking but she didn’t seem to pick up on it. Truth is, you forget the faces of the ones you’ve killed within seconds, but the faces of those you’ve failed to save stick with you for the rest of your life. I had trouble with that at first. I still vividly remembered the first innocent that had slipped through my fingers and I doubted I would ever forget.
“The trick is to give the people you’ve lost a place in your heart and focus on the ones you did save,” I said as I got out of bed. I was still wearing the dirty clothes from the night before and was craving a hot shower, but that was a luxury I didn’t have the time for. I walked over to the window and witnessed the destruction. Smoke was rising from the still-smoldering town hall. Many of the houses had bullet holes in them and the streets were as good as empty. Every family had lost at least one member or a friend or had suffered some other loss during the attack. I suddenly remembered Minnie and felt as if my heart was turned upside down.
“Who was behind this?” I asked sheriff Ramos.
“I’ve been waiting here by your bed for you to wake up and tell me that,” she answered disgruntled. Unfortunately, I hadn’t the foggiest idea.
“How many died?” I asked.
“Fifty-four of us, seventeen of them.”
“I’m sorry…” I didn’t know what else to say. I regretted ever coming to Kite’s End and putting these kind people in such danger.
“There’s more,” Ramos said, “Isaac’s missing. I believe they’ve taken him or he may have run off into the woods. Either way, he’s no longer here.”
Finding out whether he had run off into the woods or not was easy for me. I called upon every bird and every tree to find him. There was plenty of life in the surrounding forests but none of it was a nine-year-old boy which meant that the soldiers had taken him. Why they had was as much as a mystery to me as to why they had come here in the first place. I assumed they had come for me, but what had prevented them from taking or killing me once I had lost consciousness, I wondered. I wasn’t going to leave Isaac to fend for himself. I’d never really paid much attention to him, but there had to be something about him. Why else would someone send a private army to kidnap him? Why even bother sending an army? There were far easier, cleaner ways to kidnap a child.
The suitcase under my bed hadn’t been opened in four years. A thick layer of dust had gathered on and around it. It was no ordinary suitcase. It was quite literally the case that contained my suit and only I could unlock it. I put my thumb on the scanner and watched the light turn green. Then the case scanned my retina as well and clicked open. It was exactly how I remembered it and it still fit as perfect as it did four years before, almost as if I had never taken it off. It felt good to wear it again. The mind often tends to focus on the negative as a form of survival, but the suit brought back memories of good times, memories I didn’t even know I had any more, more than it did of bad ones. I felt stronger, more secure, ready to take on the world, but in the back of my mind were the same worries and doubts as ever. I didn’t want to go down this path again, but I couldn’t watch from a distance any longer.
“I never knew,” Sheriff Ramos said. She had been watching me suit up and to be honest I had forgotten she was even still there.
“That was the whole point,” I said.
“La Pantera Verde...”
“You look as if you’ve seen a ghost,” I said jokingly.
“I have,” she said without any emotion. “I used to tell my daughter stories about you before going to bed.”
“Used to?”
“The world looked up to you once. Now the Alumni are barely ever heard of.”
“You think that’s a bad thing?”
“Quite the opposite. It was fun at first. After all, what was the harm in a bunch of teenagers stopping some petty crimes? Eventually, people started to lose faith in proper law enforcement.”
“You blame us for what happened in The Hague?”
“Shouldn’t I?”
As much as I wanted to say no, I couldn’t get it out of my mouth. Of course we were to blame. We should have prevented the attacks. Instead, we handed out autographs and took photos with fans.
“I know one thing for sure, though,” Ramos said. “I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
“Don’t worry,” I said, “I won’t be staying much longer. There’s just one more thing I have to do.”
It was far from a traditional funeral. The dead soldiers had been taken away by the authorities, but the people of Kite’s End had to be buried at home. The townsmen had dug holes at the edge of the forest and everyone had gathered there. Normally, the dead would be buried behind the church, but there were just too many. Everyone was dressed in black as befitted the grim mood. All of them had white waxy faces and puffed red eyes. People walked from one grave to the next as nearly everyone had lost more than one friend or relative. Some of them said a few words, while others offered each other a shoulder to cry on. I hadn’t seen collective mourning on such a scale since the attacks in The Hague, of course, the scale of this attack didn’t even come close. I was far from welcome though. Everyone looked at me when I walked over to Minnie’s grave. They all tried to hide they were, but I could feel their judging eyes on me. She had been covered in white sheets as there were far too few coffins. At least she had a headstone. Nothing fancy, but the words engraved on it would make sure she’d live on in memory forever. The vicar held a mass eulogy. He too seemed to blame me. He never said so directly, but I could hear it in the underlining of his words.
Once the dead were covered by the earth, the people were ready to rebuild what had been destroyed, but I wasn’t. Fifty-four piles of disturbed soil in two neat rows. These people deserved better graves. Minnie did more so than any other. Even the forest itself had gone grim.
A white rose. Purity, innocence, honor. The white rose stood for all of these and more. The first popped up on Minnie’s grave. Hundreds more followed as a sea of white began to decorate the graves. It was much better like this and I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Though lacking of words again, the faint smiles on the people’s faces told me enough. I’d get back Isaac for them. I’d avenge Minnie and the others even if it would be the last thing I’d ever do.
