Chapter 587

One of the fake police officers managed to fire at Michael before McKenna put him down.

The shotgun blast hit Michael with enough force to throw him completely off balance. He went tumbling over the station’s upper level, his body twisting through the air as he fell.

For one strange instant, he looked like an angel who had lost his wings and been cast out of heaven.

Then he crashed to the floor below.

By the time Michael managed to drag himself out from the wreckage of the shelving he’d smashed into, Coulson was already walking toward him.

He drew his sidearm, then deliberately set it on the ground.

A gesture of peace.

Coulson was still trying, right to the end, to save a man who had simply lost his way.

"What’s this supposed to mean?" Michael snapped. "You planning to settle this peacefully?"

"You already know we’ve got a team surrounding this place. I know what you’re trying to do."

"I know what happened to you too," Coulson said. "You’re being poisoned. And I know the last person who carried that device exploded. You need help, Mr. Michael."

"You think this thing is what’s making me suffer?"

Michael sounded increasingly frantic, as though he’d finally realized there was nowhere left to run.

He raised his left arm and dragged down his sleeve.

The strange centipede-like device wrapped around his forearm gleamed beneath it.

"They took my job. They took my home. People have been exploited and robbed for years. Then someone finally stands up and fights back, and what do they do? They make an example out of him."

Evenson watched from the railing above.

Who exactly does this guy think he is?

Spartacus?

The great liberator rising against oppression?

The comparison was a little ambitious.

Michael had lost his job. That was tragic, sure, but it was hardly the same thing as surviving an arena as its legendary champion.

And without that thing strapped to his arm, who would even be paying attention to him?

"Even if you destroy this building and bury all of us under the rubble," Coulson said, "you won’t have solved anything."

He was still trying to keep Michael grounded in reality.

But Michael had been pushed far beyond his limits.

He’d lost his job. He’d been deceived. He’d become a living bomb. Now he was cornered with nowhere left to go.

All he wanted was to scream.

"Liars!"

His voice cracked with rage.

"All you people do is lie!"

Michael had become so paranoid that he no longer believed anyone.

"You told us if we worked hard enough, we’d have a place to live! You told us all we had to do was be human! But there are better things than us. Gods. Giants."

His voice rose.

"Then what does that make us?"

Evenson slowly shook his head from across the room.

Gods?

Every second he listened to this guy, Michael sounded more like a middle-aged man having an existential crisis after reading too many fantasy novels.

Had he ever even met a god?

And saying this stuff in front of Coulson was almost impressive.

"I know," Coulson said quietly. "I’ve seen gods myself. And I’ve paid a terrible price for that privilege. It nearly cost me everything."

Evenson nearly laughed.

Coulson hadn’t merely seen gods.

He’d interrogated Thor in New Mexico.

He’d stood aboard the Helicarrier and blasted Loki into a wall.

That second achievement alone had always made Evenson think Coulson deserved a title.

The God-Smasher?

No.

The God-Puncher?

He was still trying to decide when—

Boom.

Something heavy landed on the floor.

"Are you actually stupid?"

McKenna had jumped down from the second floor.

She adjusted the brim of her wide hat and started walking toward Michael.

Two steps.

Then her eyebrow twitched.

Her revolver was in her hand before anyone could follow the motion.

But she wasn’t aiming at Michael.

She flipped the weapon up over her shoulder and fired backward at an angle.

Ward hit the floor hard.

He stared at the sniper rifle in front of him.

Or, more accurately, at the two pieces it had just been turned into.

Cold sweat ran down his face.

He’d seen an unknown woman leap from the second floor into the station below. The drop had to be at least thirty meters, yet she’d landed with nothing more than a slight bend of the knees.

Not human.

So Ward had done what came naturally.

He’d watched her through his scope.

Apparently, she’d noticed.

And shot his rifle out of his hands without even looking at him.

"Kid, I don’t like people pointing guns at me."

McKenna lowered the smoking revolver from over her shoulder.

She spun it once around her finger, then slipped it back into its holster.

"So if you ever wave that sniper rifle over my head again, I guarantee you’ll get a nice look at your own brains."

She paused.

Then grimaced.

"Oh, God. That’s embarrassing."

She took another drag from the cigar she’d been smoking.

"And this thing..."

She pulled the cigar from her mouth and stared at it with disgust.

"Why am I even smoking this? I’m going to give myself mouth cancer."

McKenna ignored everyone around her and continued grumbling.

There were some things she wisely kept to herself.

My boss has way too much fun making me do this crap.

She finally seemed to remember why she’d come.

"Where were we?"

She looked back at Michael.

"Oh, right."

She pointed at him.

"You’ve got something seriously wrong with your head."

She paused.

"And I repeated myself because I felt that point was important."

Coulson stared at her.

Where the hell had this woman come from?

She moved like she had all the time in the world, completely casual in the middle of a potentially catastrophic situation.

But everything coming out of her mouth seemed specifically designed to make things worse.

"All that nonsense about how hard work is supposed to fix everything..." McKenna took another drag and removed the cigar again. "I’ve heard it plenty of times."

She shrugged.

"My instructors used to say it constantly. Sweat more during training, bleed less on the battlefield."

Her mouth twisted.

"Except that didn’t work out so well for me. I got seriously wounded and almost died."

"Why?"

She spread her hands.

"Was I not working hard enough? I was a top student."

McKenna pushed the brim of her hat upward with the hand holding her cigar.

"The problem was that there were people working even harder than I was. They trained more. They worked harder. So when our unit went into combat, I was the one who nearly died."

She pointed at Michael.

"And you?"

"Don’t you think it’s possible you lost your job because there were people willing to work harder than you?"

"Your boss runs a factory, not a charity. There were probably a hundred people waiting for your position who were willing to work just as hard without complaining about a sore back every five minutes."

She raised an eyebrow.

"So why should your boss keep you instead of hiring one of them? Wouldn’t that be unfair to those people?"

McKenna’s eyes narrowed.

"And according to my investigation... you were the one who walked away from the factory first."

"I..."

Michael stumbled over the words.

"I was injured! It was a workplace injury!"

"Couldn’t you take medical leave?"

McKenna fired off the questions one after another.

"Didn’t the factory provide compensation for a workplace injury? If they didn’t, why didn’t you go to the union? File a grievance? Take them to arbitration? Sue them?"

She didn’t wait for an answer.

"That’s how normal people solve problems."

Her finger tapped the cigar.

"They don’t believe some idiot promising them they’ll become a superhero, stop showing up to work without telling anyone, and then storm back into the factory demanding their old job when they realize things have gone wrong."

McKenna turned to Coulson and the others.

"Am I wrong?"

Coulson looked like his brain had stopped functioning.

She wasn’t wrong.

Not exactly.

But did she have to say every one of those things while the man in question was glowing orange and apparently moments away from exploding?

Michael’s hands were trembling.

The orange light beneath his skin was becoming brighter.

McKenna wasn’t finished.

"You’re honestly in a worse position than a beggar, Michael."

Coulson’s expression tightened.

McKenna continued without hesitation.

"Beggars survive by asking people for money. They trade their dignity for charity, and the people giving them money get the satisfaction of doing something kind."

She shrugged.

"That’s a fair transaction."

Her gaze hardened.

"But you?"

"You want your employer to pity you enough to give you your job back."

"At the same time, you want to preserve your dignity by offering labor the company doesn’t even need."

McKenna sneered.

"So you want both the charity and the dignity."

"What you really want is everything."

"That’s not dignity."

"That’s greed."

"Shut up!"

Coulson finally snapped.

He hurried over to McKenna.

"Can’t you stop talking for five seconds? Look at him! He’s completely unstable!"

Michael was trembling so violently that his entire body seemed to shake.

Orange light pulsed beneath his skin.

"I told you, I’m telling the truth!"

"Your version of the truth!" Coulson shouted. "Do you have any idea how dangerous this is?"

McKenna barely reacted.

"He thinks of himself as a victim. He’s addicted to the feeling that the world has treated him unfairly."

She put the cigar back between her teeth.

"Now he’s replaced that with the intoxicating feeling that he’s some noble rebel standing against oppression."

She shook her head.

"I honestly can’t believe it. He’s in his thirties. He’s got a grown son. And he still can’t face reality."

Her tone became colder.

"This world is brutally simple. People with ability rise. People without it lose."

"No one’s oppressing you."

She pointed at Michael.

"You’re being oppressed by your own incompetence."

Michael’s breathing became ragged.

"Today might be the most important day of your life."

McKenna’s voice didn’t soften.

"But nobody cares about you."

"They care because of the thing attached to your arm."

"Without it, you’re nothing."

"Evenson..."

Coulson looked at Michael.

The glow was intensifying.

Whatever control remained was disappearing.

He took two steps back.

"Get ready."

Evenson’s voice came through the communicator.

"Always."

Yet McKenna still wasn’t done making the situation worse.

"Oh, and one more thing."

She looked Michael straight in the eyes.

"I forgot to mention that even with that thing attached to your arm, you’re not exactly special."

She gestured around the station.

"The reason all these people came looking for you is because we’re trying to prevent you from taking everyone else with you when you explode."

She shrugged.

"If you were standing alone in the middle of some empty African savanna, you could blow yourself to pieces however you wanted."

"I wouldn’t care."

Michael’s face twisted.

"Aaaahhhhhh!"

Every word McKenna spoke sank into him like a nail.

Everything he’d done had been dismissed.

His suffering had been dismissed.

His rebellion had been dismissed.

Even his value as a person had been reduced to nothing.

The pressure inside him finally broke.

The orange radiance erupted across his body.

Cracks appeared across his skin.

Energy leaked through them like molten light.

He was seconds from exploding.

Then McKenna raised her hand.

Not her right.

Her left.

She reached behind her waist and pulled out a compact launcher.

A dart shot from it.

Thunk.

It struck Michael directly in the neck.

"Hnn—"

His scream stopped abruptly.

The energy inside him seemed to die all at once.

The orange glow faded.

Once.

Twice.

A final furious pulse.

Then nothing.

Michael rolled his eyes back, convulsed twice, and collapsed to the floor.

McKenna calmly put the launcher away.

Then she lifted one finger to her lips.

"Time to turn out the lights..."