Our first order of business was to find the next clue.
As our experience suggested, something would be leading us to our next stop on this wild goose chase. First was the carving on the nightstand. Then the map in the diner. Now the arcade. If the pattern continued Rory was the key to finding this one. The diner was my place, my little slice of heaven in Nova City. Grace knew that. The Dungeon was Rory's.
We started by checking the arcade games.
I check Ms. Pacman first. A line of the screen was burned out, leaving a black streak in the display. That didn't exactly seem like the obvious clues Grace left previously. There was no mysterious writing on the sides of the box. No spare change left in the coin return slot. I even managed to climb on top of the sofa to check the top for something that would lead us to Grace. No such luck.
The more we searched, from one game to the next, I had a more and more difficult time picturing Grace in the Dungeon. Even if she had just started hanging out here because her boyfriend did.
Coming from a family that owned the White Palace Resort, also known as the center of Nova City and the subsequent tourism business, she should have spent her time window shopping in Queen Plaza or sneaking out to penthouse parties. Instead, she spent her time in an arcade and the weekends fighting crime. Just goes to show that people aren't always what they seem. Then again, I wouldn't have pegged her as someone who would stage her own kidnapping. Because the longer we continued our search through Nova City, the more it seemed like that was what had happened.
We spent two hours in the store. When no clues cropped up on the frames of the arcade games, we moved on to comics. There were too many to go through in one day. Too many to go through in one lifetime. And we didn't have that kind of time.
Eventually, we ended up back in the arcade section, staring down at Spiders. It was the least catchy of the games: white box, no music due to a blown speaker, and actual cobwebs. The game wasn't popular.
Hence us standing in front of it.
"I can't believe we missed this the first time around," Kennedy muttered. She was right.
The screen was flashing the high scores, all relatively low according to Rory. Before the score was the winner's name. I wouldn't have noticed the importance of the names at first. They seemed to come straight from the mind of a preteen boy.
1. GUTS 33,768
2. R00D 27,617
3. AAAH 25,999
4. CHICS 24,003
5. END 20,746
It had been Harper who noticed the pattern.
Spelled down the screen at the beginning of each of the five names was GRACE. She literally spelled it out for us.
She should have left more instructions. An old arcade game that we had double and triple checked for clues didn't give us much to go on. It wasn't exactly a map to a strategic point in the city.
Or it wasn't to me.
"Maybe she got eaten by spiders?" I offered when my mind was exhausted.
Harper motioned to the screen names. "Or offended by someone who was rude in the arcade and left screaming?"
We turned to Kennedy. She sighed but obliged our childish ways. Never say people can't change. "Probably led us all the way here only for us to find a dead end."
"That's a pleasant view, Miss Gloomy," I laughed with a well-aimed poke at her side. She jumped away.
"Like being eaten by spiders is any better?"
YOU ARE READING
Saving a Superhero
AdventureIt's one thing to be a part-time vigilante whose deeds are so secret that even you can't remember them. I could deal with that. It's a completely different thing to be settled into a perfectly normal life only to have the past literally hold a...
