When the alarms on his phone sent Detective John Hills of the CPD opening his eyes and snapping to the bedside counter, the first thing the detective saw was his iPhone 8. Fair enough. But the second thing he saw...was a white envelope, sitting right next to his smartphone.
Wait...that ain't right!
Perhaps it was the fact that he was barely awake, but it took the detective a few moments to come to one simple conclusion. He didn't put that envelope there, and considering he had divorced his wife two years ago and the wife took the kids and he had been living by himself since then…
The thirty-four-year-old police veteran acted swiftly. He quickly turned and slid out of bed as rapidly as his body could carry him. His hand reached to the bed counter, opened the first drawer, and brushed past a pack of condoms and drew his service weapon. A trusty Glock.
Now with his weapon in hand, the detective felt a lot more confident. Slowly, he scanned the bedroom, checking every single corner to make sure no one was hiding there. After he peeked under the bed, he moved into the bathroom. That was cleared as well, followed by the kitchen and the living room. Soon, it became obvious that he was alone in his apartment.
Whoever left the envelope there was long gone.
With a dark frown on his face, the detective turned back to the bedside counter and opened the envelope. Even now, as the adrenaline was still coursing through his veins, the man was thinking. Whoever did this obviously didn't want him dead. So...was this some sort of message? Maybe a threat? From who?
Being a police detective meant inevitably making a lot of enemies. Plus, this was Chicago, and Hills worked in one of the worst parts of the city. A lot of key players in town could be angry at him.
The envelope was mostly white, but what quickly caught the man's eyes was a symbol on the back of the envelope. The symbol also acted as a seal, covering the opening of the envelope. It reminded the Detective of the capital letter 'I', but on a deeper examination, the detective realized that letter was made to resemble a sword. The bottom of the letter was as sharp as a blade.
That might be the weirdest part yet. None of the local drug cartels or gangs would bother with doing something like this.
The detective tore the seal open and finally found his way to the letter, and as soon as he read the first lines, the sweat started coming down.
Detective John Hills of the Chicago Police Department,
You are guilty of sins beyond redemption. You have committed crimes that can only be punished by death. This is merely a notification of your impending fate.
Your execution will begin in 18 hours. Use this time to bid farewell to your loved ones for, by tomorrow this time, you will have paid for your transgressions with your life.
May your death serve as a warning to all.
The Lady Inquisitor.
"The Lady Inquisitor?" The Detective snickered as loudly as he could. He was talking out loud for the first time this morning, but the sound of his voice in the small apartment wasn't enough to comfort his beating heart. What the hell is going on here? This is definitely not the work of the mob! And...the crimes he committed? What crimes was the letter talking about?
His iPhone was still buzzing, reminding the Detective that he still had a job to do. Hills sighed. He was clearly frustrated, and he took out that frustration by turning the letter into a ball and tossing it into the garbage can.
"The Lady Inquisitor...whoever you are, if you think you can scare me off, you are painfully mistaken." He looked around the room, talking both to himself and to whoever else might be listening. "Try this again, and I will shoot you dead right where you stand! Execution? Hmff...what a joke!"
With that declaration, the man made his way into the bathroom with his handgun still in his grip. Yes, the death threat did bother him a lot, but he still had work to do!
---
The day went rather smoothly. John was on high alert the entire day, so much so that even the slightest movement startled him. Even his partner could tell something was wrong with him.
"You alright, pal?" His partner asked him more than once, but John could only nod.
After a day of paperwork, the Detective made his way back to his department. Despite the letter, he made no attempt to spend this night somewhere else or contact outside help. All he did was sign out a few more handgun magazines from the CPD armory.
It seemed like the Detective wanted to handle this all on his own.
That night, John did his best to stay awake. The several cups of coffee he bought on the way home helped with that. As night fell and the sky went dark, the man slowly sat down on a worn-out sofa in the living room. As soon as John felt his body sinking into the battered leather covering of the sofa, he heard a series of familiar screeches coming from beneath his seat.
It was unsurprising, considering the sofa had been here for years. The interesting thing was that John had more than enough money to replace the sofa, much like he had more than enough money to rent a better and larger apartment than the one he was in now. But the detective simply didn't bother. The sofa was still working, no? So why spend the time to replace it?
With the press of a button on the remote, John turned on the TV before him. On the TV screen, a news anchor was making comments on the Chicago mayor's promise to keep crime rates down and the city safe. The detective could only snicker. The number of unsolved case files back at the precinct could fill an entire office room! Only politicians could make such blatantly foolish promises.
Seconds became minutes, which then became hours. John did his best to stay awake. He really did. But a few more hours into the night, the detective was finally beaten. Slowly, his head nodded off, and his eyes closed.
If someone was keeping track of the time, they would realize that from the minute the detective opened the letter to now...was exactly 18 hours.
---
"John Hills."
A voice woke the Detective up almost immediately. As soon as his eyes snapped open, the Detective felt horrified. How? How in the world did he fall asleep? How long had it been? But he didn't have the time to check his phone or his watch as the man realized something horrifying.
He was no longer in that shitty living room in his shitty apartment. No...he was somewhere foreign. As far as he could see, this was a floor wide enough to extend into the distance, but all the edges and corners of the floor were covered in darkness so he couldn't see a thing. The ground was white. So white that there didn't appear to be a single strand of dust on top.
"John Hills."
The Detective diverted his attention from the floor and the surroundings and turned back to the figure in front of him. The figure was dressed in a light silver armor that covered her from head to toe. The light reflected off of the shiny metallic surface of the armor. Even the figure's face was fully concealed. A silver helmet with an 'I' engraved in the front covered her head. She wore black leather gloves and boots. All of these attires covered every inch of her body and fully masked her identity.
Overall, the figure was a beautiful sight. A perfect demonstration of aesthetics and efficiency.
If the poor detective wasn't shaken to the core, he might even appreciate it.
But as of the moment, the man had no intention of admiring the beautiful design of the strange armor the figure was wearing. All he knew was that he had been kidnapped. Someone sneaked into his room last night and left a death threat. Now, 18 hours later, that someone had returned for his life, as promised.
A civilian might be on his knees and begging for his life by now, but the Detective had other ideas in mind. In a flash, his hand reached down to his holster and drew his Glock handgun. Even as he raised it at the figure and took aim, the figure made no attempt to take cover or stop him.
"Who are you?" With his weapon trained to the armored figure's head, the Detective finally had some confidence restored to him. It didn't take him too long to start barking orders. A sense of authority returned to him. "Identify yourself! Now! Do it now!"
The figure didn't identify herself. All she did was tilt her head and let out a cold snicker in amusement. Now that the Detective was fully conscious, he recognized the sound the figure made likely wasn't her natural voice. It felt...synthesized. Almost mechanical. Still, he could tell it was coming from a woman.
"I am not going to ask twice!" The Detective gripped the handle of his Glock even tighter. "Do it now! Who are you...and you mentioned my crimes!" He gulped. a look of fear in his eyes. "What...what are you talking about? What do you know?"
Once again, no answer.
The figure stood there, so silent and still that it was almost a haunting sight.
The Detective bit his lips before suddenly making up his mind. Without another moment of delay, he opened fire. He pulled the trigger again and again and felt the familiar recoil push against his wrist. Bang. Bang. Bang. The man shot round after round until he was completely out of ammo.
There was just one problem.
Unlike the many victims of the Detective, the silver-armored figure wasn't lying in a puddle of her own blood, bleeding out and dying. She merely stood there, unmoved and fazed. Just as the Detective thought he somehow missed all the shots he took in close proximity, he saw something that sent chills down his spine.
In front of the woman, floating in a line across the air, were 17 handgun bullets.
John looked down at the bullets, looked down at his handgun, and then back at the line of bullets. That was when the Inquisitor finally spoke up.
"To answer your question, I am the Lady Inquisitor. Of course, what truly matters to you is that I will be your executioner."
The Lady Inquisitor took a step ahead. As if a signal was given, all the bullets collapsed and hit the white ground, resulting in a wave of metallic clashing sound that echoed through the boundless chamber.
Detective Hills took a step back. He had a few extra magazines in his back pocket, but he didn't even think of reaching for it. What did this so-called Lady Inquisitor have? Telekinesis? Some sort of high-tech force field? Regardless of her power, it was clear she couldn't be defeated by bullets.
"Please…" Finally realizing the deadliness of the situation, Detective Hills dropped his weapon and quietly backed off. He wanted to place as much distance between him and her as possible. "I'm innocent! I didn't do anything!"
The Lady Inquisitor had no intention of going after him. Not yet. All she did was wave her gloved hand, and a phone flew out of her pocket and positioned itself in front of the Detective. Its camera was turned on and started recording.
Unknown to the Detective, the moment the camera was turned on, a signal was sent across the entire nation. And soon, everything changed.
In a lecture hall in Austin, Texas, the computer the professor was using to project course content onto the screen suddenly vibrated twice. Before anyone could even notice it, the projection flashed, and the mathematical formulas and examples on the screen were replaced by a single footage. A single live-streamed footage.
The footage of Detective Hills.
In a clinic in California, the TV attached to the corner of the waiting room was no longer playing a football game.
In an accounting firm located 30 stories high in the heart of New York City, across dozens of cubicles, all the computers and laptops buzzed, their screens now occupied by things completely unrelated to balance sheets and financial statements.
The live stream reached every single corner of the United States. Phones. TVs. Laptops. Computers. Almost everything electronic equipped with a screen was taken over by the footage. Within moments, almost everyone in the nation, hundreds of millions of people, found themselves staring at the face of one Detective John Hills.
White-collar workers stopped working. Those in meetings stopped talking. Students in classrooms and lecture halls exploded into a million different conversations. Many of them tried to find out what happened on Google, only to realize their phones were taken over as well.
In the White House, as the aides scrambled to find help, President Anderson found himself staring at the same footage as countless millions of fellow Americans. He was having a meeting with some of his top officials, but that was no longer happening.
"How the hell did they hack our network?" One of the Congressmen cried out in disbelief.
"Who can be doing this? China? Russia?"
"Sir, it's happening all over the White House!" One of the aides looked up from a telephone, terrified. "Everything is down! Phones. Computers. Our cybersecurity engineers are locked out of their own devices! Nothing is responding to our commands! They are just...playing this video! And if it's happening here...maybe it's happening all over the country?"
"Oh god!" Another man drew in a sharp breath.
President Anderson bit his lips. He was a white man in his sixties, but he looked much younger than that. As the others were paralyzed by what just happened, he simply sat there calmly. Panicking could do very little in situations like this.
"Sir!" Another official raised his voice. "We must do something!"
"I'm sure our cybersecurity personnel are doing all that they can." The President said slowly as he tapped the laptop screen. "All we can do now is wait...and watch."
The officials exchanged glances before sitting back down. Their eyes were all trained on the screen as they anxiously waited to see what would happen next.