Heroes ☤ H.S.

TWO

"You're clear to go." I hear Payne's voice on the silver chip on my ear. I dash out of the tall grass and find my way quickly to the wall of an old building. I can hear my heart beating and I hope it isn't loud enough to give me away.

I'm wearing the thick material under several layers of coats and pants. My hair is tucked into my hat, that's concealing some sort of helmet, but I let a few strands falls down to hide the chip in my ear. The gun is tightly bound to my waist and hidden beneath the coats. I look exactly like a poor, shivering civilian.

"Two soldiers, heading your way." Payne's voice says again and I scramble for cover by a dumpster. They're watching my movement on a digital map, thanks to the signals this chip sends. But they can only see me and inanimate objects on that map, the rest—the soldiers and civilians and stray animals—they see on the security cameras.

I try not to breathe as I hear the two soldiers coming nearer. "Can you believe it?" One of them says.

"I did not see that shit coming." The other responds and both of them laugh.

"Can you even imagine that brat trying to shoot anyone?" The first one says and then I hear him do some sort of high squeaky voice and scream around. His companion starts laughing his head off.

"Yeah, man. The others say he's a killer, but can some piece of shit like that possibly even kill an ant? I was expecting to see some sort of a war hero, not a weak prince." I hear the other say. I strain to hear more but they had already past me and their voices are barely muffled noises.

I let out a sigh and peek behind my hideout to see their backs walking in the opposite direction. I run out from the dumpster then roll behind an old house.

I leaned up against the wall. The cement was so cold that I flinched when my hands made contact with it. But that was good. It means this house has not been touched for a long time.

There was a huge patch of tall grasses in front of the house and a window big enough to look through but small enough to hide me. It's the perfect place to spy on unsuspecting soldiers.

I wait for Payne's voice to see if he'd warn me of any passing soldier, but the chip remained silent.
I make my way to the back door of the abandoned house and slowly open it. The door made an awful sound but thankfully it was the same time a stray dog decided to bark its heart out.

I sneak my way through the house to the little window and position myself as quietly as possible, one knee on the ground. No sooner than a minute a soldier passes by, but he was alone and he said nothing.

The seconds of silence slip by my fingers and I almost jump when I hear Payne's voice. "No..." he breathed the word. "It couldn't be. Could it?" I hear him say and I wish whole-heartedly that these things work in two ways, so I could ask him what the hell he's talking about.

I heard stories that two way communication devices used to exist. But that was before the huge war that almost killed everyone and destroyed everything. The war happened roughly a hundred years before I was born and people have advanced during that time, but I hear we haven't quite reached the old level of technology.

Since the war, they say the world was peaceful again, well until I turned eight and The Capital took over. They took everything away. They implemented ridiculous rules and even more ridiculous punishments. They killed everything that life stood for. They destroyed beauty. They tried to brand me as insane and throw me into an asylum. But I escaped. I found Payne and turned into an all out rebel.

"It's too impossible." Payne finally says and I snap back into the present. "It isn't him." Payne says and I wonder why he's still saying this to me. "I'm just sure of it, Louis." Payne snapped and I realized that he wasn't talking to me.