A Sinister Game (16 page)

She gasped, coughed because of it, and demanded, “Where are my clothes?”

“Your clothes were soaked,” Max said
. He gestured to where they had been laid out on rocks near the fire. “They’re drying. You can put them on now if you don’t mind chafed skin.”

“I can heal chafed skin,
”
she told him
.

He gave her raised brow. “You’re welcome to this,” he offered, curling his fingers under the hem of his black shirt. He began to raise it up to take it off.

Victoria could have stopped him. She fully planned on drying her clothes using her light leader telekinetic abilities, but… s
omething kept her silent
.

Max quickly lifted the
shirt over his head, the toned muscles of his abdomen and chest rippling with the movement.

Victoria felt her blush deepen.

When he handed his shirt to her, she smiled. It was impish, she knew.
“
I can
also dry my own
clothes a hell of
a lot faster than the fire can.
”

She concentrated, sending hot rivulets of air moving quickly over and through the clothing laid out. Within seconds, the dark stains of water were shrinking to nothing and the clothes were dry.

He gave her a bemused look. She blinked up at him. “I can’t get dressed with you watching me,” she told him.

Max sighed, shook his head, and slipped the shirt back on, turning around to give her privacy. Victoria stood up, and as she did, she noticed that she had been sitting on leather. He’d laid her atop of his Game uniform jacket. That was why he wasn’t wearing it now, despite the relative cold in the air.

She digested this,
noticing the way it made her feel warmer. Then she
pulled her clothes from the rocks and began dressing.
When she’d finished
with everything including her boots
, she ran a hand through her long damp locks to comb them out and stared at the fire. The flames jumped a few inches, crackling and popping with new hyperactivity, reacting to her inner turmoil.

The magnitude of her situation hit her. She was running from Victor Black, she’d attacked Arthur One, she’d broken every law in Game Control’s books, she’d left the Field, and now Max was here with her – breaking the rules as well.

This is a disaster.

It was bad enough for her. The last thing she’d wanted was to pull her team in with her. How in the world had Max even found h
er? And why had he gone looking
in the first place?

“Okay,” she finally sighed, “You can turn around.”

Max failed to hide his look of disappointment at finding her fully clothed – and that temporarily distracted Victoria. But she hurriedly shoved the distraction away.
“How did you find me?”

Max eyed her in silence for a moment. His expression was
suddenly
unreadable.
After a moment, h
e cocked his head
to the side
and asked a question of his own. “Why did you venture beyond the wall?”

“Crap, Max
.
” Victoria felt helpless. “You saved my life, so I can’t say
that I’m not happy you found me
, but this is honestl
y not how I wanted things
to play out.”

“Play out?”
h
e asked
, bending to pick his jacket up off of the floor and slip it back on
. He still gave no outward indication as to his mood. But Victoria had known him a long time. She could almost feel the storm buil
ding behind the deceptively calm blue skies in
his eyes.

“Yes,” she said. “
Play
.” She sighed again and moved to the rocks where her clothes had been
previously
laid out
and sat down.
“Victor Black approached me at the TGB the other day.”

Max stiffened. She could see it, and
she knew she had his attention
whether she wanted it or not.

“He offered me a deal.” She swallowed hard. “More or less.”

Max said nothing. He crossed his arms over his chest and waited.

“He proposed a Game, a p
rivate
one, j
ust between us. Seven rounds, as usual. O
nly I didn’t have to beat him, I
just had to escape him. If he was able to capture me, then I –” Her voice caught and her eyes widened just a touch. She quickly looked away. She felt strange. Hot and cold. The memory of her conversation with Black was bringing her nerve endings to life. She could
see the nearly glowing
green of his eyes so clearly. She could hear the sound of his accented voice
, s
o deep and intoxicating. She could see the blue tint to his ultra-black hair and recall how she’d wanted to touch it.

It was disconcerting.

To make matters worse, letting Max in on the details of this Game now felt distinctly like cheating. She’d already come this far.
Was she breaking the
ir private
rules
now
? Would Black consider this a forfeit?

How would he even know?
s
he wondered. She didn’t have to tell him
.
No,
I
don’t
have
to tell him.
He can read my mind
, she thought
ruefully.
He’ll know
.

When she looked back up at Max, it was to find that the storm building inside of him had
finally
made its way
in
to the blue of his eyes. They were visibly darker than before. His entire visage was grim.

“You made a deal with Victor Black.” His voice was tight, his tone low. “I don’t need to ask what he wanted from you, Victoria.”
His
eyes blazed a hot trail down her body and back up again.
“That much is decidedly obvious.”

Victoria’s stomach knotted and her heart rate kicked up a notch.

“But I
will
ask you what Black could possibly offer
you
that was so important it was worth breaching the wall and leaving the Field.”

He was pinning her to the spot with this question.

But
she
was the
Red Team leader,
not him. And not only did she not want to answer his question,
he
still hadn’t answered
hers
.

She squared her shoulders.
“Max, how did you find me?”
s
he repeated, this time allowing
some of her inherent power to lend
weight
to
her words.

His head rose a little, and he peered at her through narrowed blue slits.
“Very well. Another Gamer saw you leave the TGB with Arthur One. I don’t trust the man – never have.” He paused and looked down at the ground. “So I transported to his lab and Arthur and I had a little talk.”

Victoria blinked. “You what?”

“He gave me a transporter code to get past the wall, but there are four codes – and I knew he wouldn’t give me the same one he gave you.” His expression hardened, something dangerous flashing in his blue eyes. “
W
hen he let it slip that I was ‘probably too late anyway,’ I knew he’d sent you into the Mare.”

Victoria was stunned.
Too much about what Max was telling her made no sense
. How had he made it into Arthur’s lab without the code? How had he gotten past all of the junk that she’d shoved up against the door of the inner lab? How had Max retrieved the breach code for the Mare Ocean from Arthur One once he’d realized what the techie had done?

She didn’t know which question to ask first. And she was feeling sort of dizzy.

“Here,” Max moved with deft speed, closing the distance between them and bending to retrieve the canteen of water that he’d left on the ground before. “Drink this. You’re dehydrated. You vomited something like a hundred times when I was reviving you. That’s why your throat hurt so bad.”

Another deep flush of red swept across Victoria’s face and neck, but this one was born of embarrassment. She took the canteen from him and brought it to her lips.

“Go slow. Don’t drink too much or you’ll just retch again.”

“Do
you have to keep making such
references?”

Max smiled, looking sheepish. “Sorry.” He knelt beside her as she tilted the canteen and took a drink. “For what it’s w
orth, you’re a very dainty vomiter
.”

She nearly c
hoked on the water when she suddenly laughed, but she
managed to finish swallowing
. T
hen
she lowered the canteen and wiped
her mouth on the ba
ck of her hand.

Max, now smiling,
said,
“I suppose you want to know how I managed to remove all of the furniture and computer equipment you stacked against Arthur’s door.”

Victoria’s eyes widened a little. She nodded.

“And I bet you’re wondering how I managed to get the key code to gain entrance to Arthur’s lab in the first place.”

“Well…” she stammered. “Yes, actually.”

“Let’s just say that I’ve spent a fair share of time training Simon Roon
,
” he said, referring to the fourth and “brainiest” member of Red Team
.
“
And Simon spends a good deal of time with books.”
He grinned, and she couldn’t help but grin back
.

Simon Roon was intelligent
,
well read
, and knowledgeable about nearly everything almost to a fault. Victoria had to admit that if anyone could figure out how to gain access into Arthur One’s private lab, it would be Simon. But the furniture and computer bits?

“As for the crap you piled up in our way – the Yellow leader owes Ty a favor, so we collected. He telekinesed it down for us and we swore him to secrecy.”

“If Ty and Simon helped you, where are they?” She and Max were alone in the camp. “And where’s April?”

“They were all there in the lab, actually, including April. But once I had the code, I told them I was going alone.” His gaze darkened and his tone lowered. “The fewer of us to break Game Control’s firmest law
s
, the better.”

Victoria sighed. “Oh, Max. I’m so sorry about all of this.”

“What did he offer you, Victoria? What did he promise
to give you
if he lost?” He
asked the question as if he were
desperate for some semblance of a
ny sane answer,
some clue as to what would make Victoria put her life and her team’s reputation at such risk.

But, the absolute truth was…
Victoria had no idea why she’d agreed to play Black’s
dangerous
Game.

Yes, he’d thrown his weight around. He had invaded her d
reams. He’d threatened her team, in particular
Max. But she hadn’t been
completely
without option
s
i
f she’d decided to turn him down. She could have turned to her team for help. She could have
gone directly to their main building and notified Game Control. D
espite the probability that they would make the situation difficult for her
and might have even taken away her leadership status for getting involved in such an ordeal
, in the end
she would have spared herself all of this, spared her team, and
Victor would have regretted cornering her the way he had.

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?
s
he asked herself.
Was it because I want
ed
to win?

Or
…
.
She thought of Victor’s words
:
“T
hen you’ll join me. You’ll give yourself to me for one night…
.
”