The Heritage Paper

Chapter 58



Jamie fired the gun at the armed guard. Another direct hit. A second guard thought he could sneak behind him, but Jamie was too smart for that. He turned and fired—two more down—and he yelled out in exuberance. It was hard work saving humanity, but it sure was a lot of fun.

Maggie looked at him with big-sister disapproval. “You know Mom doesn’t let you play that game.”

Jamie didn’t take his eyes off the eighty-inch plasma screen gracing the wall of the room. It’s where he fought the battle for humanity on the game Halo that he played on his new Xbox, a gift from the kidnappers.

Jamie dramatically craned his neck, purposely hamming it up. “I just looked—Mom’s not here. Too bad, so sad, for her.”

“I’m not one of your stupid friends, so don’t try to play me.”

He let out a frustrated sigh. “I keep asking you to play multi-player.”

“I didn’t mean it that way. So you think just because Mom’s not here you can get away with anything you want?”

Jamie killed a couple more Covenant Soldiers with a tactical grenade launch. He sighed again. “Why do you always try to ruin all the fun!?”

Maggie paced the room, looking for a way out. It might have been the most beautiful room she’d ever been in, but it was still a prison.

“Dad would know what to do if he was here,” she grumbled, just loud enough for Jamie, the Master Chief of the United Nations Space Command, to hear.

“If Dad was here he’d be all—go to your room, do your homework, go to sleep. He’d never let us stay up all night playing Halo and eating M&Ms … and on a school night!”

Jamie continued having success, killing another cybernetically enhanced Super Soldier. He was also dressed for success, wearing the tuxedo their kidnappers left out for him. Maggie refused to put on the dress they provided her, choosing to remain in her pajamas with a pair of crocs, although she did put Jamie’s oversized hoodie sweatshirt on over her top. She wanted to hide in it.

“You know that stupid game takes place in the 26th Century,” she said. “So if we don’t stop the Apostles, the Reich will only be halfway through their thousand years of terror by that time. That will be the real enemy taking over the earth.”

“Don’t you know I don’t care what you say?” He put the control down for a quick moment and put his hands over his ears. “Stop talking! Stop talking!”

"If you like that Xbox so much, why don’t you marry it?”

“Why don’t you marry TJ?”

“Right after you marry Haley Burkhardt.”

Jamie paused, looking defeated. “Hey—that’s not a fair one.”

“Can you just stop playing for a minute and help me figure a way out of here?”

“Don’t you get it—I don’t want to leave!”

She couldn’t take it anymore. She grabbed the controller out of his hand, and threw it across the room. Without Jamie’s expertise, the Master Chief was a sitting duck for the Covenant Soldiers and was ambushed.

“Hey—you made me die.”

“If you don’t help me, you really are going to die. We all will.”

“Uncle Eddie said I could play the game.”

“Uncle Eddie is a real a*shole.”

“I’m going to tell him what you said.”

“I don’t care.”

Jamie jumped up on the bed and started screaming. “Uncle Eddie! Uncle Eddie!”

Maggie leaped on top of him and forcefully placed her hand over his mouth. But it was too late. The door opened and a man in a suit walked in.

But it wasn’t Eddie.

It was Jim Kingston.

The next president of the United States.