"Yeah, that's me."
"You've got powered armor, and you can fly. You've even got super strength. How are you not a superhero?" The first kid, still clutching his D20, asked.
He looked pretty skeptical, and I didn't blame him.
"Okay, well, fine, I've got the tools. I'm not a crimefighter, though. I'm just a guy that lucked into some alien technology. I'm trying to save the Earth."
I trailed off. Maybe I was a superhero. The kids certainly didn't look convinced.
"I've got to get out of here in a couple minutes, guys. Can you not tell anybody I was here? At least not for about thirty or forty minutes?" I asked.
The boys all nodded. "Aliens are real?" the DM asked.
"They sure are, kid. There are lots of them, too. My friend that modified this armor, her name's Metra. She's an alien, and she's my friend. I've got another friend called Regar, he's a different kind of alien. The galaxy is full of them. Don't worry, things are about to get a lot more interesting here on Earth."
The kids started babbling to each other, talking so fast and over each other that I couldn't understand a word. I smiled. I remembered what it was like to be that age, if only vaguely. That desire for there to be more to the world than getting an education and a job, and finally working, sleeping, and eating until you die. That there must be something more to the universe, more than just us humans and our squalid little planet. That was what had pushed me into D&D, and other role-playing games. That need to escape from the boring every day of 21st-century life on Earth. I hadn't really spent any time simply appreciating the facts of my new life, but seeing it through the eyes of these kids, I realized just how lucky I was.
"One minute, Jake."
"Kids, I gotta go. Watch the news, you'll see me again. Maybe I'll come up with a superhero name."
I pushed the door open, kicking a piece of the lock out of the way as I stepped onto the roof. The boys crowded the doorway behind me, watching closely.
"Good luck, Jake. Don't let them catch you," the kid with the buzzcut yelled.
I waved and then with a thought arced into the air. I dropped down below the level of the roofs and pushed the propulsion units in my feet and palms hard as I streaked toward the blue navigation point that Brick had laid down.
"Fly as low as possible, Jake. The fighters' radar is very capable."
I grunted, acknowledging his suggestion. The only way I could do it was the obvious one. I dropped to just above the level of the traffic on the street below me. Trucks and cars went by underneath, close enough to touch. People in the streets saw me coming and raised their phones to capture the sight. My only hope was that they'd be too slow to upload, and the military would be too slow to collate the data. I needed to be out of the city and long gone before they figured out which direction I was going.
I crossed a river, following the road over a bridge.
The city was thinning out and giving way to scrub desert. Sticking to the road had been convenient—a way to get out of the sprawl of the city and not run into any buildings while doing so. As soon as the multistory apartment buildings fell behind me, I left the road and flew directly toward the blue waypoint marker.
"The patrol is not deviating from its search pattern. I believe your escape was successful, for now. Remain low until you enter the hills ahead."
I followed his advice. It felt lucky that the ground was quite flat here, without much in the way of civilization. Small stubby cactuses and brush—no trees, no hills, and only the occasional building, small shack, or isolated house. They were usually off my path, and I didn't need to worry about them. The hills came up quickly, and I tucked myself into the gap between them.
"Brick, as much fun as that was, can we avoid any cities for the rest of the trip?" I asked.
"Yes, I've already adjusted the route. That was my mistake. I apologize Jake."
"No big deal."
I didn't know what I would've done if the fighters had spotted me. Theoretically I could have perhaps shot one down with my GN-75, but pissing off the US government any more than I already had wasn't on my bucket list.
Chapter Thirty: Flight in the Dark
I’D BEEN FLYING NORTH in the darkness following the blue navigation waypoints for twenty minutes or so, nearly hypnotized by the sensation of flight, when Brick spoke.
"Jake, I am concerned. The civilians that were present at the base, the True Believers as Marty calls them, were streaming everything during our raid. The video they've captured is now breaking news all over the planet."
"What's the problem? I don't see how that affects us."
"Almost immediately after our show above the base started, one or more parties began tracing the origins of Marty's original video, rather aggressively. Several of the control hubs I've set up for compromised systems are currently under attack."
"That was fast. The government, I guess?"
"That seems very unlikely. The scale and speed of the response are beyond what unaugmented human hackers should be capable of. The scope of attacks on my systems is growing rapidly. The attackers are now attempting to penetrate several hundred of my third-tier control hubs."
"You're the owner of the Internet now, aren't you? Can't you just squish them?"
"We come to the root of my concerns, Jake. My connection to the Internet is through the relatively low-bandwidth mobile phone towers in our area. Very soon I will not have the bandwidth to respond to all of the attacks at once. Once that point is reached, they will penetrate a control
