A Sinister Game (13 page)

“You
what
?” he finally asked. He wasn’t even entirely sure that he’d heard her correctly.

“You heard me, Ar
thur. I need out of the Field, a
nd fast. Before sundown, in fact.”

So, he
had
heard correctly. The access code was top secret. Actually, that was putting it lightly. The code was so valuable that an inordinate number of precautionary measures had been taken to ensure that it remained a secret for everyone but Arthur One and Game Control’s higher officials.

In fact, because many
d
ark leaders had the ability to read minds, Arthur’s memory was wiped of the information as soon as he’d entered the code into its safeguarded envelope within his lab’s most
un-hackable
computer.

He was
the only one who could reach it, a
nd he wasn’t certain
he could do so before sundown e
ven if he’d wanted to.

Which he didn’t.

What he
did
want
to do before sundown
was get Victoria Red stripped naked and wired down to his bed so that he could have his way with her.

He had to keep himself from smiling now as the thought blossomed to its full beauty within his mind.

He would pretend to help her, and then take her by surprise. He would k
nock her senseless. By the time she woke up, she would be helpless.

W
hen he was finished with her – in a few days, maybe – he would wipe the ordeal from her memory. He’d figured out how to do that recently. There was only so long Game Control could keep a sec
ret like that from Arthur One; h
e wasn’t
head tech for nothing
.

Right now, Red was watching him with those sultry, golden eyes th
at held so very many emotions. At the moment, m
ost of them were scare
d. There was trepidation there, and
worry. She so badly wanted him to agree.

Might as well give her what she wants!

“Okay,” he told her, throwing in a sigh for good measure. “But the deal is
twenty
years, not ten, and you have to understand that the code is well hidden. It might take me longer than you want for me to retrieve it. You’ll have to be patient.”

*****

Though she
was really trying
not to, Victoria was
feeling the pressure of time and therefore
frowning when the transporter doors reopened a minute later and
t
he
y
stepped out into the main tech lab at the center of the Technical Research Facility
. This was
where Arthur One – and Arthur Two, Arthur Three, and every other Art
hur all the way up to Arthur 77 –
worked day and night on keeping the Field and all of its equipment running smoothly.

This main lab was currently empty. Only Arthur One had the transporter code to take them there. She had never
before
seen
this room from the inside
. It was as white as Room 55 of the TGB, but it beeped and whirred and was filled with computers that looked
like people, but were somehow
not
people
.

It admittedly
gave Victoria the creeps. But she suppressed her shudder, figuring it would be rude, and told herself to focus on th
e task at hand: Make the deal and g
et the code.

Then get out.

She didn’t like having to do this. She didn’t like the idea of going against Game Control regulations. She felt like the line between
l
ight and
d
ark was becoming blurred for her. First, there was the practice at night without her Game band. Then the lie that she’d told to Max.
And now this.

It didn’t feel right
.
But she had no choice.

“This way,” Arthur One spoke over his shoulder, gesturing for her to follow him back thro
ugh the stacks of machinery, loose
wires
,
and
“
body
” parts
toward a hall at the other end of the main room.

They walked down this hall and turned a corner into yet another room filled with machinery, but this one was more orderly. There
were no robot pieces
. Against one wall was
the TRF’s mainframe computer – a
ll forty square feet of it.

In front of the gigantic beeping, blinking panel was a single plush, white leather chair. It looked to Victoria like a
C
aptain’s
C
hair in its isolated self-importance.

Against the wall on the far side and directly opposite the main frame
were
a couch, two love seats, and a coffee table with a marble white and black chess set atop it. The white king’s pawn had already been moved, expectantly, two spaces forward.

“Go ahead and have a seat, Red. I’ll get started. You may as well get comfortable, because it’s going to take me a while.”

“Define
a while
,” she said.

“Probably longer than you want to wait, and definitely longer than I want to take, but hopefully not so long that our deal will be void. Good enough?” he asked.

She wrapped her arms around her chest
. She could feel time slipping like silt through a tight grip.
“Fine,” she nodded. “B
ut please hurry.”
S
he turned and made her way to the couch.

“Just out of curiosity, why do you need to leave the Field?” Arthur asked a
s he sat down in his
C
aptain’s
C
hair
to begin
pressing buttons and flicking switches.

Victoria sat down, watched him, and considered her answer. She was getting a bad taste in her mouth already, just thinking about the lie she would probably have to tell him. She couldn’t let him in on t
he Game between her and Black; t
hat was a given.

But maybe she didn’t need to be that specific…
.

She began to f
ormulate a response in her mind,
one that was not necessarily a lie, but was not a whole truth, either.
However, before she had drawn a full breath to give him an answer, something vibrated beneath her
on the couch. It felt
like a very, very small electric current.

She
was about to ask Arthur if
he knew what it was, when it happened again. This one
was
s
tronger than the first one. Some of her muscles tensed up a little under the electric current and her teeth pressed together.

As Victoria’s in
nate alarm bells began to ring
, a third electric current hit her. This time it was hard and fast and it hurt like hell. Pain shot up her spine as the lab around her seemed to tilt and she feared she would slide into the wall. She was helpless to avoid it when her back arched off of the couch and stars erupted behind her lids as the gripping pressure of the electricity suddenly forced them shut.

Miraculously, she didn’t slide across the room to slam into the wall. Instead, the current released her and she slumped, stunned senseless by the terrible electric shock that was gone as quickly as it had come.

“That was a doozy, wasn’t it?”

Arthur’s voice.
It sounded hollow, as if it was coming to her through a tunnel.
It was punctuated by an erratic drumbeat that kind of hurt. She was pretty sure it was her heart.

“See, the thing is, that couch is actually constructed of a very fine wire and leather mesh material.” He laughed. “You can’t see the metal in it, but it
’s there. And it’s solid gold, a
n excellent conductor of electricity.”

There was a shift of we
ight and she was being lifted. Then she was s
et down again.

Arthur’s voice was in her ear. “I’ve been playing with the effects of electric charges over the last twenty years. I’ve perfected a certain type of conductivity, which renders a human’s musculature unresponsive for anywhere from five to fifteen minutes, depending on the individual.”

She couldn’t answer him. S
he couldn’t talk or
even open her eyes.

She could barely breathe.

“I could just turn you over to GC for asking me to give you that cod
e, you k
now. But I won’t,” he said. “No
princess,
I have something much more fun in mind.”

“I can’t believe my luck.
The most beautiful
girl on the Field walks into my
bar and she’s not e
ven wearing her Game band. She’s defenseless!
And then she asks
me
to go somewhere private with her.
” He laughed greasily. “
Does it get any better than that?
” There was a pause before he added, “It’s about to.”

Victoria could f
eel Arthur’s hands on her body,
yanking her arms over her head, spreading her legs. She
was
still wearing al
l of her clothes, b
ut her stomach felt sick and her muscle
s felt as sore as they
did two days after a grueling workout in
one of the
TGB
training rooms
. That jolt of electricity had tensed every muscle in her body to the point of pain; some had torn and others had stretched beyond their capacity.

She was also
unduly
tired. She supposed that was the fault of the electric shock as well
, b
ut she wasn’t so tired that she was willing to give up without a fight.

She knew that Arthur would expect her to
be without her powers right now
because sh
e wasn’t wearing her band. S
he suddenly
grateful beyond words t
hat s
he’
d decided to go against regulat
ions and practice
without it.

If she could look around the room, she
could get a sense of what she might use as a telekinetic weapon
. But she couldn’t lift her head. She cou
ld barely force her eyes open
before they stubbornly fluttered shut again.

They were no
longer in the mainframe room; s
he could tell that much. If they had been, Victoria could at least throw the stupid
C
aptain’s
C
hair at him. She knew where it was and had a general idea of how heavy
it would be. But nothing in this room
was familiar to her.

It must have been some kind of bedroom, because she could feel the bed beneath her
.
She could
smell
it, too. It smelled as if he should have
washed the sheets a week ago, m
aybe two. It smelled like sweat
and a hint of morning breath.

She tried to talk. “L
et … go…
.
” Her voice wasn’t quite working yet. She couldn’t make the muscles of her throat form the words correctly, and her breathing was too shallow.

“Don’t try to talk, princess. It’ll take you longer to readjust if you do. And nothing you can say is going to make me change my mind, anyway.” He punctuated his last words with a tight pull of the rubber-encased wire that he’d wrapped around h
er left boot
and secured to the baseboard of his bed.

Victoria felt bile inch up her esophagus. She tried to swallow to keep it down, but the burning, aching attempt only failed when her muscles wouldn’t respond and she suddenly tasted the iron-acid bitterness at the back of her mouth.

She could always set him on fire.

But she had never tried to light
anyone on fire before
.
The thought increased her nausea.
The results could be disastrous. She could not only kill Arthur – but kill herself as well
if the fire spread.

Was it worth it?

Arthur One finished tying her down and then came to stand beside her at the edge of the bed. She forced her eyes open once more to stare up at him. The look she saw there, in the depths of those lewd, hungry brown eyes, caused more bile to slide inexorably toward the back of her tongue.

It was worth it. She made up her mind.