A Sinister Game (14 page)

“Warning you…” she croaked.

He threw back his head and laughed.

Victoria
closed her eyes and pictured his brown hair as nothing but a mass of red, orange and yellow flames. She felt the swirl of energy begin to churn and eddy inside of
her. She imagined that energy
fanning out, riding down her arms and legs, and leaving her body.

She watched those flames in her mind’s eye. Sh
e felt their heat. So much heat, c
rackling, popping, rising, feeding off of the oxygen in the room.

FIRE.

The sudden shriek
from beside the bed was all
the reward she needed. It was h
er blessed confirmation that her
attempt had been successful.

As Arthur babble
d and
screamed incoherently and backed away from the bed, Victoria’s strength flooded back to her, aided in its return by the use of her abilities.
Healing was a light leader power.
She thought of her muscles, torn or weak or ov
er-stretched inside of her body, and she imagined them w
hole
again
.
Strong
.

And they were. She flexed to make sure, and was pleased with the results.

Then she turned her concentration outward, to the wires at her wrists and ankles. She opened her eyes and looked up, arching her neck to get a view of her hands. Two red wires bit into the skin around her wrists and were wrapped in knots around the wooden posts at the head of the bed.

She focused on the one around her left wrist just as Arthur One’s screams pitched up an octave in pain.

The wires b
egan to slide and slip, and soon
her left wrist was free. She used her left hand to free her right and then she sat up. She glanced around the room hurriedly, taking everything in even as she went to work on the wires around her legs.

Arthur had backed up against one wall and was flailing madly; his clothing had caught on fire, as had the curtains that he’d undoubtedly brushed against at some point. Heat from the flames was roiling outward and if Victoria hadn’t been a very powerful
l
ight leader, the high temperatures would have been uncomfortable to her at this point.

As it was, she
could sense that the fire was growing out of control. If too many more things were allowed to catch, then she would not be able to force the flames back down again when she was free
, much less escape the building smoke that was already beginning to pinprick at her lungs
.

Victoria
finished releasing both le
gs and then slid quickly off
the bed. She backed up toward the room’s single, white metal door and once more looked around.

There was a window against one wall. Curtains had been drawn, but were now on fire. There was a dresser against another wall. The closet door was open;
it contained uniforms and
two pairs
of shoes.
The floor was marble. There was a big leather chair beside the closet – or was it leather and
gold mesh
?

She took all of this in
quickly and
returned her attention to Arthur. He was completely engulfed by flame at this point and his flailing was beginning to slow. He dropped to his knees.

I did that to him
, she thought.
I set a man on fire
.

Victoria swallowed forcefully and concentrated on pulling
together the energy she would need to squelch the flames.

She closed her eyes and saw Arthur
whole again. He was d
ressed in his white uniform and white leather boots, his short black hair untouched by the blazing fingers that
were currently destroying him
. She saw his brown eyes in his wrinkle-free face with its weak chin and too-wide mouth and small nose. She saw his skinny neck and the collar of his jacket, all the way down to the small cheese stain just below the zipper lock on his left pocket.
She saw him as he was before the fire that now encased him.

She kept the image and its details clearly in her mind and allowed the tentacles of her power to unwind
.

T
he heat in the room subsided. The crackling and popping of rising flames quieted and died down. Finally, Arthur’s screeching wails hushed to whimpers – and then into silence.

Victoria opened her eyes.

“
You
…” Arthur knelt a few feet away, his entir
e form shaking from head to toe. He was whole again, completely healed a
s if he had not been on fire only seconds before. He looked down at his hands, turning them over in disbelieving fascination. He felt the hair on his head. And then
–
he looked at Victoria as if she were a monste
r, the devil, a pile of vomit,
or all three wrapped into one. “
You
…
evil
, temptress
bitch
!” His voice shook
as he spat his accusation.

Victoria had never
hurt anyone like this before. Despite the
self-preservation
, she knew she had officially crossed some kind of
line. And that
darkness drew ever closer.

Though she was almost as shocked at what she had done as Arthur was, Victoria knew enough about strategy to realize that now was also not the time to show it. An attack meant nothing if you didn’t follow up on it, plant your feet and stand your ground.

“Give me the code, Arthur, o
r I will light you up again and I’ll leave you in here to die that wa
y,
”
she commanded.
She knew that burning the way he had been burning had to hurt like nothing he’d ever imagined. She was hoping the memory of the pain alone would serve to coerce his cooperation.

“
Fuck
you
,
”
h
e hissed.

Victoria wasted no time.

She narrowed her gaze.
Energy coursed through the room and the
bed began to rise slowly off the floor
. Arthur glanced nervously at it. It rose a foot. Then two. And then it hovered in the air, three feet above the marble before it suddenly spun around like a top and then went flying past Arthur
to slam into the door behind him. There, it
lodged itself against the only official exit in the room, effectively blocking it.

Victoria
smiled
as Arthur’s face went progressively white. She looked at the window; t
he metal frame around the glass began
to heat up and melt. It dripped
in columns
of molten metal
from the top of the window to the sill below and then instantly cooled, forming bars across the glass.

That exit was now blocked as well.

“Last chance, Arthur. Get back to the console and figure out the code or I’m going to melt your boots into your feet. It’ll hurt. A
lot
.”

Arthur
glanced from the windows to the blocked door and back to Victoria again.
She could hear his breath in the room, ragged and riddled with emotion. He stared at her, but his expression was more afraid now than it was furious.

He l
ooked at the door one last time. And then he twitched.

“F-fine. B-but the console is in the other room. And you’ve locked us in
.
”

“Nonsense.” Victoria rushed him
then, with the kind of speed that only a
l
ight leader could possess, and grabbed his arm. She spun them both around and ran straigh
t for the wall. Arthur screamed –

And
his scream
dissolved
into another whimper
as they went straight through the wall to come out on the other side
unscathed. They were in the
mainframe
lab again.

Melding through solid objects was a light leader ability that Victoria had perfected long ago. It was also another that she had never before used off of the Field.

“Now get to work,
Arthur. Don’t piss me off. D
on’t make me wait
,
”
s
he commanded.
T
o make certain he didn’t a
lert Game Control from the console, she added, “And d
on’t even think of attempting to contact GC.
Long before they make it through that door, I will burn you to a crisp from the inside out. Got it?”

Arthur
froze as if that was exactly what he’d been planning on doing,
opened his mouth as if to say something – and then shut it again when she crossed her arms
in front of her chest and gave him a warning look.

He turned away from her to make his shaky way to the Captain’s Chair in front of the giant mainframe console.
After a moment of concentration, he
began to move his hands over the controls.

Victoria watched him with a growing sense of unease. She wished she had the
d
ark
leader power to read minds. If she did,
she
could take the code the moment he found it. She was fast running out of precious time.

“You did something to me with that electric charge, Arthur. I have heat
building up inside of me again,” she lied.

Further down that hole….

He stopped what he was doing and turned in the chair.

“If you don’t give me the code soon, I won’t have anywhere to go with it. I’ll have to set it free here again. It’ll eat up your lab,” she gestured to the lab around them. “
A
nd probably you, too.”

With that,
Arthur’s
eyes widened a little
more. He began to work visibly faster.
Two and a half minutes later, he was turning back to face her. “I have the code.”

“Give it to me
,
”
s
he demanded
, coming forward.

He didn’t take his eyes off of her as a small metal transporter key slid from a slot on the
mainframe
console and he reached out, grabbed it, and pulled it free. He held it out toward her. It was constructed of solid silver-hued metal, with a series of lines and dots across its flat, rectangular surface.

“Any transporter will work
,
”
h
e told her through clenched teeth.

She took the key from his hand and went very still. For the second time that afternoon, she wished she had a
d
ark leader power. She really wanted to know what was going on in Arthur’s head at that moment. What had he just given her? Was it truly a code? If so, where would it take her? Beyond the wall? Or straight to Game Control’s front door?

There was no way for her to know.

O
ne of four…
gets
her beyond the wall… but not the best one…
.

Victoria blinked.

Sh
e’d just heard Arthur’s voice, b
ut he hadn’t spoken. His lips hadn’t moved. His mouth was still closed and he was still
staring at her through
brown eyes
filled with distrust, hatred, and fear
.

H
ope she drowns…
.

Victoria straightened a little as a realization, both good and absolutely horrible, presented itself to her.
She was hearing his thoughts.
But she was a
light leader. It shouldn’t have been
possible.

In fact, there was only one way that it
could
be possible
.

She was going dark.

Victoria shivered, but
covered it quickly. “You and your fucking electricity, Arthur. You’ve awakened something inside of me. I feel power here that I didn’t feel before. I don’t know if I can control it –”

Her act was worthy of some kind of award as she then spun away from him and shoved outward with her right palm, sending the mesh couch, the love seats, the coffee table, and the game of chess flying into the wall behind them. The
chessboard
shattered, as did most of the pieces. And the mesh couch was instantly engulfed in flames.

She had to be honest with herself. That had felt good.

She spun back around and leaned over his
C
aptain’s
C
hair, one hand on each arm of the seat, caging him in beneath her. He shrank back into the leather as she glared into his eyes.