The Heart Stoppers

I'VE GOT ALL THIS RINGING IN MY EARS AND ONE ON MY FINGER

There is a piercing echo bouncing all around in my ear drums as Zack stands over me, tears streaking down his face and removing the soot of the blown up building as they slide down his face. He shakes me, repeatedly crying my name as he tries to wake me through the hysteria.

"Hayden," he says my name again and again in a shaky voice.

I lift my head slowly from the cement, eyes landing on the rubble of the banquet hall.

With eyes wide in shock, I sit up. "They're dead. They're all dead," I say softly to myself in eerie calm. "Austin. Gibby. Hartle. Jerry. Oh, God, Freeman...all dead."

Zack runs to the disintegrated building, and I don't follow him. He yells about finding survivors even though there are none. There will be none. Every single agent in the AFO was in there. And they are all dead.

Except for us.

We spend the night at the banquet hall: myself sitting on the concrete in shock as Zack searches all night for someone, anyone.

♣♦♥♠

We went home as dawn hit, deciding that an explosion like this would be found eventually. And we couldn't have our names on it. The last two members of the AFO. We'd be sought out, by the good and the bad.

Zack had asked on the ride home if he could sleep in my room tonight, just for tonight. And I had to tell him that we couldn't stay here anymore; it wasn't safe here anymore. But for tonight, he could sleep in my room like the scared little boy he needs to be.

"Uh, Hayden," Zack calls nervously from the kitchen after we arrive home.

"Yeah?" I walk toward his voice, stopping dead in my tracks when I see it.

Tigger meows from the ground, also staring up at the words written in blood on the stark white walls of the kitchen.

"If they ever cross you, kill them all."

"Hayden, what does it mean?"

I stare, my eyes filling with shame as they read over the words repeatedly. I pull my lips in on themselves as I close my eyes in disappointment with myself.

"It was during my first meeting with The Men after Rocky had been murdered. I said that to them in spite; these agents, courageous men and women had crossed me, all having a hand in killing Rocky. Some indirect, and few directly. And I had said this to them because I knew I didn't have the guts to kill them all. I was mad, and I was seventeen, and I didn't think they had the guts to do it either. I don't know who crossed them or how, but Zack, it...it wasn't us," I slink down onto the floor in miserable sorrow.

Silence follows my story, looming above us like the horror of the end of the existence of everyone you've ever known.

"They're all dead, Hayden," he says in a hushed tone as he leans on the counter.

"I know... And we're not."