In the middle of the city, the skyscrapers were tall, but the avenues were wide. It was easy to fly down them, roughly in the same direction as the dot. It felt great to be living out my superhero dreams. I wondered if I had time to stop and fight some crime. How did you even spot crime when you were flying several hundred miles per hour hundreds of feet above a city street? It would have to be one heck of an obvious crime.
I was bathed in light for a second, the spotlight on a police helicopter momentarily tracking me. Despite the military not listening to civilian complaints, it seems the police did. Even though my transit through the city was only a few minutes, they had been on the ball. It didn't help them much. The helicopter was far too slow to keep up with me. They couldn't even track me with their spotlight, I was moving so fast. Thirty seconds later the helicopter was out of sight, and I was approaching the far outskirts of the city.
"Jake, bad news. While civilian traffic is not monitored by the military, police traffic is. The combat air patrol has been redirected. They'll be here in less than a minute."
"Fuck."
Adjusting my posture, I decelerated hard, the g-forces pressing me in my suit. I looked around, seeing that I was surrounded by five- and six-story apartment buildings. Most of the lights were off, but I had to assume that I was currently on someone's camera phone, maybe live-streaming it to the Internet.
I picked a likely building close by and with a thought shot toward the roof. I landed and ducked down, trying to decrease my visibility to the neighboring buildings.
The roof was covered with air-conditioners, vents, and ductwork, but on the other side of it from where I landed there was a roof access door. In the movies, people were always coming up to the roofs to smoke, but on this roof, there was no evidence of people. I didn't have time to think about it.
I crouch walked over to the roof access door and pulled on the handle. It was locked. There was no way that was going to stop me. I pulled, hard. The handle came off in my hand.
"Christ," I muttered, and pulled Excalibur free. Charging the chisel tip, I plunged it through the soft steel of the door and wiggled it around, smashing and cutting the locking mechanism hidden on the other side. I opened the door and ducked inside, closing it behind me but leaving it open a crack.
The landing at the top of the stairs was much larger than it needed to be for whatever reason, and it took me a moment to notice that I wasn't alone. Three boys were sitting on the floor not far away, papers on the floor all around them. One of them had what I immediately recognized as a Game Master screen, and the floor between them was full of dice and a collection of lead miniatures on a map grid.
The three of them looked up at me, mouths gaping. One of them was holding a bright red D20 in his right hand, ready to roll.
"Sorry guys. Don't worry about me, I'll be outta here soon."
The kid with the D20 in his hand was the first to break out of the trance they were in. He was a small kid, with round wire-rimmed glasses and scruffy brown hair framing a thin face. They all had the same kind of look to them—nerdy white kids. I had been one of them, once upon a time. It'd been ages since I'd been able to play D&D with my friends, and I missed it.
"Are you an alien?" the kid asked.
"Nope, Earthling just like you, kid. I just gotta wait here until the people looking for me move on."
The roar of a jet engine passed close overhead just as I finished saying that. Through the cracked door I caught a glimpse of a sleek fighter flying by.
"Who's looking for you, mister?" The DM asked.
"Well, the military actually. They don't like me flying around. It makes them suspicious."
The DM nodded at that. "Makes sense."
"Are you a superhero, mister? What's your name?" The third kid asked. He was the only one of the three that didn't have glasses. He had your basic buzzcut, but was small like the other two. It had been so long since I'd been that age, I had no idea how old the kids were. I could only guess that they were twelve or thirteen.
"I'm Jake. I'm not a superhero, just a guy. A friend of mine modified the armor to make it look like this. She saw too many superhero movies."
I heard a familiar sound, a phone telling its owner about a notification. That sound was ingrained in my brain, even though I hadn't been hearing it for some time. That familiar, addictive chime that means look at me, I'm your phone, and I have something important, or at least diverting, to show you.
The DM pulled a smartphone out of the pocket of his jacket, lying on the floor nearby. He looked at the screen for a moment, and gestured his two friends close to look at it with him.
I cracked open the door bit more, and peered outside. I hadn't seen the jets for a while, but for all I knew they were still quite close. After all, if they were monitoring civilian traffic, they might know that I had gone into hiding.
"Brick, where are the jets?" I asked.
"They are flying a spiral search pattern. Military helicopters are coming in as well. You can't stay there, Jake. If they continue their current search pattern, you will need to depart in approximately three minutes to maximize your chances of escaping without detection."
"Jake, this is you," The DM said and showed
