Free Kingdom of Heroes by Jay Phillips Page A

note. I pulled the note out from under his head. Here, it’s under the mouse, almost a foot away.”
    “Fast forward,” she said.
    She grabbed his hand and placed it back on the mouse. Even with all of the death around them, the touch of her hand made him smile like a giddy school girl. He restrained himself, wiping the smile from his face. Now wasn’t the time to be concerned with how attractive she was.
    He fast-forwarded through the recording. Four days ago…three days ago…two days ago…one day ago, nothing changed, just the dead body slowly decomposing. He kept going. Twelve hours ago…ten…eight…six…he slowed the speed down. A little over five hours ago, just after Anthony Barren had been murdered in his penthouse, an imposing figure appeared on the screen.
    They watched in silence as The Iron Knight armor teleported into the room. It looked around, before noticing the dead body on the desk. The armor grabbed Adam’s corpse by the back of the hair, lifted the head up, and looked at the face, before slamming the decayed head hard against the desktop. It then walked to the other side of the desk and picked up the framed picture, staring at the pretty brunette in the photograph. It carefully placed the frame back in its place and picked up the pen next to the note, scrawling words onto the paper. The armor grabbed the head again, lifting it up and placing the note under it, and then, with a flash of light, the armor disappeared just as easily as it had arrived, teleporting out of the room.
    “Well,” Ice said, a confused look covering her face, “that raises a shit load more questions than it answered.”
    The Detective picked the note back up and stared at it. “At least we know who wrote this last line.”
    “But why?” she asked. “It’s not as if he left any other cryptic clues anywhere else.”
    “I’m more concerned with what he wrote than I am with why he wrote it.” He turned and looked her in the eyes. “Are you sure that last line means nothing to you?”
    “No,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone, her crystal blue eyes staring into his and the sound of her heartbeat speeding up ever so slightly as she spoke.
    “Okay then,” he said in return, placing the note back on the desk. “One other thing though.” He pointed at the computer monitor. “When our killer showed up, he didn’t exactly seemed prepared for a fight. You notice that?”
    “Actually,” she answered, “I had. He just teleported into the room like he knew there wasn’t going to be anything of danger waiting on him here.”
    “Exactly.” The Detective stood up straight and rubbed his forehead, then walked toward the door. “So now what?”
    “The Agent has a special crew coming to…” She looked around the room, “…to clean up all of this.”
    “And us?” The Detective asked, rubbing his wounded shoulder without thinking about it. “What’s the next step for us?”
    “He wants us to go back to my place and wait until morning. He’s putting together some kind of an assault team for us to use, just in case the two of us can’t handle the Knight armor alone.” She pointed to The Detective’s shirt. “And I asked Fire to come by and bring you one of her husband’s shirts. You are a bloody mess.”
    He looked down at his blood soaked shirt. The wound had apparently been leaking through the bandage; he hadn’t noticed. “Well, I guess I am.”
    “Come on, 616” she said as she walked out the door. “There’s not a goddamn thing left for us to do here.”
    He watched her walk out. Once he was sure she couldn’t see, he turned back to the desk and picked up the piece of paper. He folded the note in half, placing it inside his back pocket. He turned back towards the door and silently followed her out of the room.
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    TIME REMAINING: 7H47M36S
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    TIME REMAINING: 7H47M35S
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    ACCESS FILE: SELF DEFENSE