A Sinister Game (27 page)

Max
considered himself fortunate
that he’d been keeping
close tabs
on
Victoria when everything had reached a boiling point.

She’d tried so hard to be discreet and keep it secret, but it was his job to watch over her, so he’d noticed when she started practicing at night without her Game band.
He naturally began
to suspect t
hat she might one day soon attempt to leave
the Field.
So
he’d had that special bottle of sleeping pills created for her. Each capsule contained a tracking device that, once swallowed, would find its way into her blood stream.

Without that, he never would have found her.
She would have drowned in the Mare.

“She’ll be the death of us, Blood.”

“It isn’t Victoria, sir. It’s Black. He is the one who instigated this.”

“It doesn’t matter. The longer Red stays beyond the boundaries of the Field, the more memories she’ll regain. And if
she recalls enough of them, well –
” He stopped and fixed Max with a stare the color of wet slate. “She would have the backing of almost any Gamer on the Field. She’s charismatic a
nd capable. People
fear
Black, b
ut they
love
Victoria Red. I don’t think I need to remind you what will happen if too many Gamers realize the Game they’ve be
en playing all along is a farce and
attempt to venture beyond the wall.”

“No sir.”

The Game Lord’s dark gray gaze intensified. “I
f this mess ultimately leads to a
reawakening of the Old Ones and their self-profes
sed ranking in the world, Blood,
”
h
e sh
ook his head, his tone lowering,
“
w
e
will
be the first to go.”

Max had to agree with that. There would be vengeance on the deities’ minds. Their power had b
een stolen, their champions
used.

The wall
around the Field
sapped their strength and fed it to a few chosen mortals, giving immortality to those inside the wall even as it shortened the life span
s
of those in the outside sectors by half. Max doubted that this was going over well with the old gods. At the moment, the deities could do nothing to stop it.

But if the wall were to cease
functioning, that would change.

“
Fix
this, Blood. Get
Victor
Black and the Red Rose back inside the wall before everything falls apart.”

“I need a dozen men, Arthur One, and supplies
,
” Max said.

“Take and do
what you must.
I
n case Black decides to come back inside the wall for whatever reason, post guards at the transporter cubes.” The Game Lord’s jaw muscles tensed and his gray eyes darkened
to nearly black
. “If it comes down to a fight inside the wall, try to get him to the rehabilitation center without doing any permanent damage to him. And speaking o
f that, since you requested him
I should tell you that Arthur One is
in
rehabilitation
at the moment.
Black’s handiwork
.
He should be finished within a few hours.”

Max
nodded
. “I
’ll post the guards.”
He
turned to leave.

“One more thing
Blood.”

Max
stopped,
looking back over his shoulder
.

“I want them alive.” Their eyes met
,
blue on gray. “Especially Rose. Do I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly
.” He waited a moment. With
a single
nod before he left, he added, “S
ir.”

* * * *

Something had been bothering Victor ever since his meeting with Blood on the shore of the Mare. The captain of the Red team had
found Victoria outside the wall in the first place. He’d saved her from the transporter cube accident that had dumped her into the ocean.

And then, hours later, when Victoria ran from them both and headed for the forest, Blood had told Victor
tha
t he knew where to find her
again
.

How
, exactly?

Victor was grateful
beyond words that Blood had found Victoria the first time
. If
he hadn’t, she would be dead. She would be d
rowned and most likely floating somewhere half in and half out of the water along the Mare’s shoreline.

But the question of
how
still niggled at him.

And how had he tracked her to that village, Ocanus?

He wasn’t able to follow her by reading her mind. Victor was sure of
that
at least. No matter what the lay person might believe, a
d
ark leader’s telepathic powers were only so strong, and distance was its greatest weakness. Within sheer seconds of her mad-dash flee from the shore, Victoria had been too far away for either of them to track by following her thoughts.

Yet
somehow, Maxwell Blood was always one step ahead – and one step closer to Victoria
.

At this point,
Victor was willing to bet just about everything he had that Blood
was locating her
by using a tracking device
. Such
devices were impossible to attach
to Game and downtime uniforms; t
he uniforms had been designed that way, in order to make Game play fair.
But there were other ways to track a person, and it was the only logical explanation.

There had been a tickle of a concern in the back of his head since the night he’d sent Victoria that
dream
. She’d been sleeping so deeply, it had been difficult to infiltrate her unconscious mind enough to make her feel what he’d wanted her to feel. It was
too
deep a sleep, unnatural even
.

That kind of sleep
was a drugged
sleep, and as far as he knew, Victoria w
as not the kind to make much
use of the Medical Research Unit and its various remedies.

If
Victor’s gut feeling was right
,
Maxwell Blood had given her a sleep
medication
containing tracking devices. They would
lead him to her should she ever try to escape the Field.

Bloody hell
.
At the very least, Max
was a very capable and experienced
d
ark leader. At the very worst,
he
was working for Game Control.

Either way, Max
would be able to track Victoria again in no time and Victor needed help. He wasn’t stupid. He knew this was no longer a Game of one-on-one. The rules had changed
,
and the stakes were too high.

John Storm was Victor’s
closest friend
and one hell of a fighter. Victor was certain that Storm would be more than willing to join forces with his team leader. The man had been itching to take on Game Control for a
very
long time.

Jeannine Cure was the head Foster in the M
edical
R
esearch
U
nit
. She was in charge of all of the comings and goings in the medical facility and had authority over every doctor and nurse within its walls. Like Black, Jeannine had long had her suspicions about the true nature of the wall and the Game that they all worked so hard to keep up.

Jeannine’s
boyfriend
, whose name was Jonathan,
was one of the men who worked under the Arthurs in the Technical Research Facility.
There, he kept a low profile and
as a result, saw and heard a lot of what happened within the TRF.

Jonathan
could help Victor track Victoria using the same
technology that Blood was using. Jea
n
nine
was sure to have a medical ace up her sleeve that could be put to good use getting rid of a hand full of Blood’s men, at the very least. And Storm was always
good in a fight
.

All three would all be a boon to Victor
right now.

The problem
was getting to them, and in fact getting back inside the wall
.
If
Victor was right about
Blood working for Game Control,
they’d have called out the troops by now and
would be guarding the cubes on the other side.

Victor eyed the transporter before him with wary determination. He knew that once he got inside and pressed a button, he would be sending himself headlong into some sort of ambush.

Gods
, I’ll be killed for sure.

Victor frowned. What
the bloody hell
was a god?

This was not the first time he’d muttered the term, mentally or aloud. He realized that now.

Come to think of it
,
he recalled
hearing
the same phrase
inside of Victoria’s head when he’d had her up against the wall of her room at the tavern in Ocanus. He’d
used it himself
after she’d fallen
.

Victor shook his head
as if to clear it. Being outside of the wall was messing with
him. It was messing with
everyone
.
He
stubbornly
pushed the stra
ngeness to the back of his mind
and concentrated on the task at hand.

This was the same transporter cube that Victoria had nearly drowned in when she’d arrived outside of the wall. But she hadn’t had the advantage of a
dark leader’s powers.

It
was no longer immersed beneath twelve fathoms of ocean water.
Instead, it
rested on a thick plane of rime, well above the surface of the Mare, where Victor had raised it
on a
hastily formed
glacier of
ice.

He was not going to drown attempting to use it. He was just going to have to blast his way back out again once he reached the other side.

Victor took a deep breath and exhaled through his nose. He could feel his eyes glowing, cold and bright. He had no choice in this.

It was now or never.

So be it,
he thought.
He was going to get to Victoria. He was going to save her from whatever the duplicitous
Blood
had planned for her,
and
at whatever the cost. If that cost was a thousand lives,
possibly his own, then he would
pay it. For Victoria
.

So be it.

* * * *

Max thought carefully on what he was about to do. He was alone in the transporter cube, having given his men the order to prepare and wait for him at the TGB.

There was something he wanted to try bef
ore he left the Field again and
Arthur One was still in rehabilitation.
He had a little time.

What he had planned might make all of the difference in the world when it came to retrieving Victoria
and bringing her back inside
the wall. He di
dn’t want to hurt her. He would
if he had to
, and he could have someone else heal her
. But he truly didn’t want to.

With practiced ease, Max slid back into his role as team captain, placed the impassive mask of
collaboration across his
face, and punched in the code that would take him to the Red tower.

The transporter whirred to life, blurring the cube around him in that impossible way it always did. Within seconds, he had arrived and the doors wer
e sliding open
.

Max stepped out into the Red tower’s main meeting room and looked around. It was empty at the moment, but there were sounds coming fro
m one of the rooms adjoining it. He heard
female laughter and the
clink
of toasting glasses.

It was
April and Ty. If they were together and drinking, the
n they were undoubtedly alone, w
hich meant that Simon knew to give them their privacy for the evening.