A Sinister Game

  So why had she said yes?

  He’d promised he would step down as Gray Leader. After four hundred years in that position, it was quite a pledge. What would it mean? The Gray team would lose more often, that was almost assured. But what was that worth? It was only a Game. Win or lose, it didn’t matter. The teams would keep playing because they were all afraid that if they ever stopped, the world would die. Of disease, or starvation or of strange things that people couldn’t clearly recall and no one could really remember.

  Why did I agree to do this? she asked herself. Was it because I wanted to win?

  Or…. She thought of Victor’s words: “Then you’ll join me. You’ll give yourself to me for one night….”

  Or was it because I wanted to lose?

  Victoria pinched her eyes shut. Oh hell, she thought. The man wants me to help him overthrow Game Control. Losing and joining him in that venture would have disastrous consequences. And all I can think about is the fact that he wants to bed me.

  At the unbidden thought that snaked so insipidly through her brain, Victoria paled. Max noticed the change in her immediately. His furrowed brow and narrowed gaze intimated as much.

  “This isn’t good, Victoria.” He shook his head. “I think you and I need to have a serious talk.” He rose then and moved back to his pack, where he pulled out two foil wrapped protein bars in the thick chocolate coating that Victoria loved so much.

  He tucked one smoothly into the interior pocket of his black leather jacket. The other bar, he held up in front of him by its wrapper. “Bar for your thoughts?”

  Victoria stared at the food. She realized with some horror that she actually hadn’t planned on where she was going to get food for the next three days. In fact, she hadn’t really done any logical planning at all. She had simply run, like an utter idiot. It wasn’t like her at all.

  She’d thought of Black and his power and his eyes and his voice and the fact that he was coming hard for her and she’d taken off like a terrified animal. Victor Black had effectively turned her into a moron.

  “Fine,” she said. “I’ll fill you in. I owe you that much. But we have to talk and walk. We can’t stay in one place for long.” She moved forward with incredible speed, ripped the bar from his grip, and tore into it before he could blink.

  He watched her for a moment, lowered his hand to his waist, and then asked, “Where are we going?”

  “I have no idea,” she said around the bite she’d just taken. “What is there around here?”

  “You know as much as I do, Victoria. Gamers aren’t exactly educated on the sectors outside the Field, are they?” He was watching her intently as she ate, something unspoken flitting behind the piercing blue of his eyes.

  “No,” she replied, simply. That was definitely true. Game Control wanted Gamers to forget everything. They claimed it made it easier for Gamers to accept their roles within the wall, and to cope with the fact that their loved ones in the outside sectors would die long before they did.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she finally said, folding up the second half of the bar and slipping it into her pocket for later. Her stomach was already rebelling a bit from its previous ordeal. “We’ll just walk.”

  She turned and waved her hand at the campfire. It instantly went out, smoke and all. Despite everything, it was liberating to use her powers as she was then, moving with inhuman speed, waving fire in and out of existence. It felt good. “Where there’s a transporter outlet, there have to be people to ride in it, right? There was an outlet near here and it must not have always been under water. So we’ll walk until we find the people who once used it.”

  Max seemed to consider that. Then he sighed, retrieved his sword from where it rested against the boulder, and slid the weapon into its scabbard. He then strapped that to his back, lacing the leather over his shoulders and around his waist.

  “You have a lot of explaining to do,” he told her as he finished tightening the last straps and then fastening the dagger sheath to the inside of his forearm. “And I trust you’re going to do it.”

  With that, he grabbed her by the wrist and began to walk her out of the clearing.

  Victoria was a little startled at the sudden contact. His hand was cold, reminding her of Victor’s. She couldn’t remember him being cold before. The other thing that surprised her was that his grip slid from her wrist to her hand, where his fingers then laced themselves with hers. His hold was firm and unyielding.

  And very, very personal.

  Victoria considered pulling away. But as if he could read her thoughts, Max’s grip tightened. Some kind of dark thrill raced up Victoria’s spine, and warmth coiled once more in her belly.

  He turned to peer down at her as they walked. “I’m listening,” he prompted, pulling her a touch closer with the hand that held hers.

  “Okay,” she started hesitantly. “The deal is this….”

  Chapter Ten

  You didn’t run a team on the playing Field for four hundred years and not learn a trick or two. One of the many tricks Victor Black had learned was how to extract codes from various computer consoles located throughout the Field.

  Doing it while invisible was an added measure of security. Doing it while invisible and time had been temporarily stopped around him ensured that he was virtually undetectable.

  So, it didn’t take long for him to retrieve the code he wanted to get into Arthur One’s private lab.

  As soon as the sun had gone down, Victor’d flown into action, calling in his contacts throughout the Field. Within minutes, he received word that Victoria Red was last seen with Game Control’s head tech, making her way to the TGB transporters.

  The strange thing was – no one knew where she was now. It had been just over three hours since she’d stepped into a transporter cube with Arthur One, and no one had seen Victoria since.

  Was she foolish enough to have remained with Arthur One in his lab? Would she seriously think that she was safe from Victor there? Black doubted it. She wasn’t stupid.

  The mystery of her location remained.

  Victor stepped into another transporter cube and let the doors slide shut behind him. He entered the code to Arthur’s private lab and waited. The cube whirred to life, blurring around its edges as it skated through space to bring him to his destination.

  When it stopped and the doors slid open again, Victor faced a vast empty lab – and a wall on the other side, completely covered in stacked furniture and computer parts.

  “What the hell?” His brow furrowed and he scanned the area beyond, not only with his eyes, but with the feelers of his power.

  Arthur One was in the room beyond that blocked wall and doorway. Black could sense his mind, angry and vengeful. The man was not well.

  At once, Victor was on alert and ready to fight. Something had gone extremely wrong here, and the last person to be seen with Arthur was Victoria.

  With one strong gesture of his gloved hand, Victor waved every item, large and small, away from the wall across the room and sent it flying to the side, where it slammed loudly against the adjacent wall. Some of the items split or cracked before they fell to the marble floor below; others shattered completely. Victor paid them no heed. With a few long strides, he was across the room and standing before the double sliding doors that led to the inner sanctum of Arthur One’s lab.

  Again, he reached out and grabbed hold of Arthur’s mind, this time ruthlessly extracting the code from its depths. As he did so, snippets of other images raced through his thoughts, a side effect of his search through Arthur’s fury-fevered brain.

  What he saw there darkened his handsome visage into a dangerous mask.

  Victoria….

  Victor bared his teeth and punched in the code on the pad to his left. The doors slid open. Arthur One was hunched over in his white leather chair mumbling about “fire” and “crazy bitches” as Victor walked in, but he spun to meet Victor’s gaze as soon as he realized he was no longer alone.

&n
bsp; Arthur shrieked as Victor strode to the chair, grabbed him by the lapels of his white jacket, and knocked the chair aside so that it went sailing back into the wall.

  “You think Red is scary, mate?” Victor hissed.

  Arthur stared down at him, and a pitiful whimper escaped his throat. “Wh-what?” he stammered, his brown eyes wide.

  Victor smiled a dark smile. “What she did to escape you was nothing. Wait until I’m done with you.” With that, he focused his energy on Arthur’s wild eyes and delved deep.

  He was fast and furious and merciless. Every terrifying image he could muster, he sent hurling through the man’s brain, forcing the waking nightmares to take form with terrible detail. He built upon them and dug deeper; the maws of laughing demons grew bile-dripping fangs, bottomless waters darkened with the swimming forms of giant, waiting sea creatures, and the walls of Arthur’s mind dripped with blood. Somewhere in the recesses of the techie’s subconscious, he was running from swarms of snakes, insects, and spiders. Ghosts inhabited his robots, changing them from the inside out; the faux women’s fingers sharpened into claws, their hair became a mass of flames that melted their skin, and their perfect vaginas developed rims of slicing, razor-sharp blades.

  At length, the light of sanity drained entirely from Arthur One’s eyes and they lost focus, still open but staring at nothing. His breathing became the mumbled mutterings of irreversible psychosis, and his body went slack where Victor held him several feet off the ground.

  When drool pooled in the corner of Arthur’s open mouth, Victor let him drop. He took a step back from the prone form of Game Control’s now useless head tech and tried to get himself back under control.

  He closed his glowing green eyes and took a deep breath. His head was aching and his hands were shaking. The connection he’d shared with his victim had inadvertently filled his own mind with the images of Victoria’s demise.

  And the barely tamped fury that now rushed through his veins like liquid fire was nearly painful. He opened his eyes again and glared down at the fallen techie. It wasn’t enough. Madness wasn’t enough. He wanted to do it all over again.

  With a roar of rage, Victor spun around and shattered every glass screen on the floor-to-ceiling console of the TRF’s mainframe computer. The console began to spark and hiss. Smoke billowed out in thin streams through the seams in the metal. At the same time, a thin coating of rime began to cover the buttons and gauges, spreading across the computer with rapid determination until it dove through the cracks in the screens and iced the computer over from the inside.

  The damage would take a long time to repair.

  It still wasn’t enough. But it would have to do for now, because one of the most alarming bits of information he’d pulled from Arthur’s brain was the fact that Victoria had been sent into the Mare Ocean.

  Right now it was night. Victor knew that the darkness would make it that much more difficult for Victoria to make her way to the surface of the water once the transporter cube opened. She could very well drown.

  He didn’t have much time, if any at all. She could have pulled herself out long ago. Or she could be dead.

  * * * *

  Victoria walked in silence beside Max. Her mind worked overtime. Something about what Max had shared with her felt out of place. It gave her that strange sensation that one gets when they know they’ve left something behind on a trip but can’t recall what it was.

  But she was tired. She’d used quite a bit of power in Arthur’s lab. She’d just used a bit more to dry her clothes and put the fire out and heal herself. She wasn’t at her best. She could use more food, too.

  “Try some more of your bar. You should be okay to eat it now.”

  Victoria glanced at him, surprised. “How did you know I was thinking about food?”

  “We’ve worked together too long,” he said, smiling. “I know you.”

  Victoria pulled the second half of her bar out and took a bite.

  “It’s not like you to forget to pack,” Max remarked.

  She frowned. Yes, I know, she thought. But they’d already been over that. She knew that she’d jumped the gun and fled the Field without planning properly and she’d already admitted that it wasn’t like her and was probably a little stupid.

  How many times was he going to bring it up?

  “Like I said, I really didn’t think I had a choice,” she said stubbornly. “Time was of the essence. I barely made it past the wall before nightfall as it was.”

  “You almost died as it was, too.”

  Victoria shot him an incredibly irritated look. You mentioned that a few times, she thought, but refrained from saying out loud. She was frankly tired of arguing. They’d been at it off and on for almost two miles now. She’d come clean and told him everything. As she spoke, Max’s black-clad form became progressively rigid and tense. His expression closed itself off from her, and his eyes took on the look of ice. In fact, his touch had turned a little colder.

  It was probably just her imagination, her perception of his sudden cold demeanor. But it was enough to make her let go of his hand. Reluctantly, he’d allowed her to slip away.

  And then he’d started in on her. He was angry about the stakes that Victor had set on the Game, obviously, but he was also angry that she hadn’t trusted him or confided in him. He was upset that Victoria had not come to him for help when she’d needed him most.

  She’d tried to counter by insisting that it wasn’t his job, wasn’t his place, and that she was trying to protect her team, as was her duty. That had only pissed him off more.

  And so it went.

  They would yell and then settle down and yell some more.

  Now they seemed to be losing their argumentative steam. And Victoria was beginning to get worried about something else entirely.

  They’d gone several miles and hadn’t yet come to a settlement. There should have been something there. Anything. Even one of those fishing villages that were mentioned so frequently in Simon’s ancient books.

  But there was nothing but sandy shoreline, a billion white stars, and an unknown darkness that stretched off into the land and beckoned with its mystery.

  Victoria stopped and turned around, gazing over the dark Mare beyond. Max stopped beside her. She wondered where Victor was now. Had he discovered that she’d left the Field? How far had he gotten? How close is he?

  She shivered.

  “Cold?” Max asked, his jaw rather tight.

  She shook her head. “No. I was just….” Thinking about Black.

  Max waited, arching a brow. His expression told her that he didn’t expect her to finish her sentence, and that he was once again disappointed at her unwillingness to trust him.

  Victoria tried to ignore him. The tide was receding, and she could make out round white objects that were now visible in the smooth, wet sand. I wonder what those are. Without explanation, she headed back toward the shoreline.

  “Where are you going?” Max asked, his tone irritated.

  “We’re not getting anywhere anyway,” Victoria told him, flatly. “And I’ve never seen any of this stuff before.” She blinked. “I think.” She had a funny feeling inside. One of the white disc-like objects rested before her right boot. Its edges had sunk a little into the sand, but it positively gleamed up at her.

  She bent to pick it up and was surprised to find that it was very light. She shook it. Her suspicion that it was hollow was confirmed when something inside rattled.

  There are angels inside.

  Victoria froze. That hadn’t been her own voice in her head, and she would recognize that accent anywhere.

  There was a chuckle, deep and soft and oh, so familiar. Five of them, love. Break it open and you’ll see for yourself.

  Victoria spun around to face Max. The horrified look on her face must have told her captain all he needed to know because in one fluid movement, he both pulled his sword and grabbed her wrist to yank her protectively close.

  How did he d
o that? she thought. Her heart pounded. How could she hear Victor in her head? As a Dark leader, he could read minds – but project his thoughts? That had never been done between a light leader and a dark leader.

  Between two dark leaders it was possible.

  Victoria almost groaned inwardly, but was too frightened to make any sound at all.

  Where are you, Black?

  I’m here.

  She nearly gasped at the sound. It was so close. She yanked her wrist free of Max’s grasp grabbed his wrist instead, turning him to get his attention. “He’s after me – not you. And I can run faster than you.” If she started running now, Black would follow her and ignore Max. She was very fast; was one of her strengths.

  Max fully understood her unspoken intentions. “No way in hell,” he growled, grabbing her by the upper arm this time.

  She used her light leader strength to pull away from him a second time. His gaze narrowed, his grip on his sword tightening. “Don’t you dare do this, Victoria.”

  You breached the wall, clever girl. But bringing the captain along? Black chuckled again and the sound vibrated through her body. Her nipples hardened. Tsk, tsk, he scolded. This doesn’t concern him.

  Victoria stiffened, listening to the smooth, cool voice in her head. It was definitely louder now. Closer. Much closer.

  She frantically glanced around, but saw nothing. That didn’t mean anything, of course. Victor Black could become invisible. The bastard was too damned powerful.

  “I’m not arguing with you any more,” she told Max. And then, before he could object, she lifted him with her telekinesis and sent him flying twenty feet back to land safely on a sand dune. He was up on his feet with incredible, deft ease, but by the time he was racing toward her, Victoria had already broken into a full-out run, heading for the darker, mysterious inland.

  She wished that she could fly. It was supposed to be a light leader ability, but she’d yet to learn of anyone actually manifesting it. How did Game Control know that it was a light ability at all if they’d never even seen it done?