Chapter Thirty-Two: ‘Steadfast heart, expect not refuge...’

Hector kept his helm on in front of the ladies. Even if it was splattered with blood, he still preferred that to revealing his haggard, tear-stricken face. He honestly wasn’t sure he would be able to talk to them right now without something to hide behind.

“So it’s safe now?” Sheryl asked. “It’s r-really safe? You’re sure?”

“Yeah...”

Sheryl seemed reluctant with her relief. “And the police--where are they?”

“Out front,” he said. “I’ll take you to them.”

“N-no,” she said, backing away. “I’ll go on my own. It’s safe, right?”

“Y-yeah, it is...”

“Don’t get me wrong,” said Sheryl. “I’m grateful. You saved me. But. But you. Please, just--just stay away from me from now on. I don’t--I mean--please...”

Hector frowned beneath his helm. He tried to extend a hand toward her, but she flinched.

“No, please! This is all just too much! I don’t want anything to do with you!” She ran away from him. “I’m sorry!”

He watched her go. He couldn’t really blame her. He was the reason she was in danger to begin with. It was probably better this way, honestly. He just wished it didn’t feel so awful.

“She’s just traumatized,” said Ms. Trent. “Give her some time.”

He doubted time would make much difference. He looked at his teacher.

Small cuts riddled her face. Her hair and clothes were all a mess. She didn’t look any less traumatized than Sheryl, really.

“H-how are you feeling?” he asked her.

“Alive. Thanks to you.”

“Don’t be too grateful. I... I’m the reason he was trying to kill you...”

“I don’t understand,” she said as they began walking. “What was he trying to accomplish, exactly? That was your father, wasn’t it?”

“That thing was not my dad. It was... a monster. It killed him and took his body...”

She hesitated. “I wish I couldn’t believe you. But after... well... I’m not about to doubt your word.”

“It was trying to... hurt me, I guess...” He took a quiet breath. “It’s dead now, but... it sure as hell succeeded...”

“Why did it want to hurt you? Because you’re the Darksteel Soldier?”

Hector paused at that. “...The what?”

“Oh, come on. I’ve seen the news. A young, black male in a metal helmet, terrorizing criminals around the city. You can’t tell me that’s some other guy.”

“Yeah, o-okay, that’s me, but... the Darksteel Soldier?”

“Isn’t that what you call yourself?”

“Uh... no...”

“Well, that’s what they’re calling you. You didn’t know?”

“I, uh... I haven’t really... been paying attention to the news lately...”

“Hmm.” Ms. Trent eyed him again. “I started seeing the reports a couple weeks ago, and I had my suspicions about you, y’know. I remembered that helmet you made. And you’d been missing a lot of club meetings. But still. I didn’t really think it could be you. You’re just. So...”

“Y-yeah, I know... I’m still surprised, myself...”

“Never can tell with the quiet ones, I suppose.”

For both their sakes, Hector avoided hallways that he knew would have dead bodies, but they still had to pass his group of four metal statues from earlier. Ms. Trent looked directly at them, and then at him, but she did not ask the obvious question. Perhaps she already knew all she wanted to.

He escorted Ms. Trent out to the side parking lot, where he’d left his motorcycle, and found a large crowd of students and police officers. He was quietly relieved to see that so many people had made it out safely.

A sudden shriek drew his attention, and he saw a group of students pointing at him from behind the line of police officers.

“That’s him!” one girl shouted. “I saw him kill someone!”

“Just look at him! He’s covered in blood!”

“He killed that boy in the bathroom!”

The police pulled out tasers and started toward him, all seven of them at once.

“No!” yelled Ms. Trent. “He’s not the murderer! He protected us!”

The officers exchanged uncertain glances but still persisted. “Please come with us,” said the closest one. “We just need to sort all this out.”

Hector looked over the crowd another time, across a myriad of angry and terrified faces. He could also see the motorcycle laying on the sidewalk, no more than five meters away from him. Suddenly, he had a decision to make.

Now more than ever, he wished Garovel were here.

Hector took a long, tired breath. Fleeing from the police right now seemed exhausting. He almost let them arrest him on that impulse alone. But he had not forgotten. He’d killed several “people” today. And explaining that to the police seemed not only tiresome but downright impossible.

He would have liked more time to deliberate, but the cops didn’t look prepared to oblige. So he turned their tasers into metal bricks and ran for the bike during the confusion. Ms. Trent yelled something after him, but he couldn’t hear what it was.

One of the officers ran toward him with a nightstick as he started the bike. Hector raised a wall before the man reached him, and then peeled off the sidewalk. He circled wide around the crowd, hugging the edge of the parking lot until he found the road.

An unpleasant surprise was waiting for him, however. He passed under a police chopper, and when he looked back, he saw it turning around to pursue him.

He returned wide eyes to the road ahead. “How the fuck do I lose a helicopter?!”

He didn’t even know where he was going. It wasn’t like he could just go back to his house. And after a few minutes, he heard more sirens and saw flashing lights in his rearview mirror. The police must have also been clearing the streets ahead of him, because traffic soon became nonexistent--which was helpful insofar as ensuring he didn’t crash into anyone, but he figured it also meant they’d set up road blocks for him.

Sure enough, within a matter of minutes, he spotted a police barricade dead ahead. Four massive trucks filled the street and sidewalks, lights flashing with uniformed officers waiting, weapons drawn.

He only had one idea. And it felt like one of the stupidest things he’d ever thought of.

He wanted a bridge, one that would go above the police trucks and then back down. But he had never created such a thing before. He had never materialized an actual structure, let alone one that needed to support the force of a motorcycle hurtling uphill at 150 km/h.

But he did his best, creating iron steadily ahead of the speeding bike. He made it extra wide, expecting the tires to lose traction against the metal, and then he ramped it up, perhaps a bit too steeply as he felt the bike jolt. And as he climbed and the metal began to buckle, he added crisscrossing support beams.

The bridge sagged as he passed over the blockade. He was too afraid to give it proper support, not wanting to accidentally skewer one of the cops below on a sudden pillar. But he reached the other side quickly enough and tried to give it beams again; only, it was too steep now, and the tires started sliding. The bridge crumpled behind him as well, and he annihilated it before it crushed someone.

The bike hit the road, front tire first, and for a second, he thought it would flip over, but then the rear tire met pavement, and he found his balance again. The engine started grinding as he sped away.

He soon saw cars on the road again and had to slow down. Then he noticed an upcoming traffic jam. And the sheer number of pedestrians meant that mounting the curb was also out of the question. He could try to slip between stopped cars with the motorcycle, but he wasn’t entirely sure it would fit. Instead, he decided to stop altogether, turning the front tire and placing one foot on asphalt as he looked back toward the helicopter.

The chopper was certainly persistent. Clearly, as long as it remained in pursuit, police cars would keep finding him. If he couldn’t flee from it, then he needed to neutralize it--without harming whoever was inside, of course.

Hector waited for the helicopter to draw closer. Then he attached four metal pillars to its landing skids and looped the other ends around separate streetlights. He added a fifth to the tail and attached it to a fire hydrant. He turned the bike around and rode off in a different direction, this time without his pursuer.

He just went straight. He didn’t know what else to do. The more he tried to think, the worse he felt. After a while, he ran out of city. He kept going.

Barren grasslands filled the horizon, save the occasional rise of boulders. He pulled into the road’s shoulder, then into the grass and dirt, and finally stopped next to a cluster of rocks.

And it was finally quiet. He finally had space to breathe. To think. He got off the bike. He pulled off the helm and let it drop from his fingers while he looked out, Brighton in the distance.

He collapsed. Unconsciousness embraced him then and there.

When he awoke, his face was in the dirt. Blue sky and white clouds greeted him. The sun had only just begun to wane.

Hector shut his eyes. ‘...Garovel?’

‘Hector! Where are you?! What the fuck happened?!’

He started sobbing.