A Sinister Game (28 page)

Max tamped down his disappointment. He would have liked to have the Red team’s resident genius on his side
as well
, but there was no time to go searching for him where he was most likely sequestered in the TGB’s gigantic, many-leveled
, labyrinthine
library.

Ty and April would have to do.

“Ty! April!” h
e called, taking the tone of
a team captain who was once all
business and in charge.

The laughter from the ro
om beyond stopped at once. W
ithin a few
seconds
, the two team players
were
making their way around the corner.

Ty was busily
re-buttoning
his downtime uniform jacket, which had been opened to reveal the expanse of dark brown skin and trained muscle beneath. April was straightening her undershirt. Her shoulder
length shock of red hair was slightly mussed.

Max tried not to let his impatience show. Instead, he wore the worried expression he wanted them to see and
met
them
halfway. “Victoria’s in danger,” he said. “
Black has her beyond the wall
.
We have to help her.”

Ty blinked
.
April’s jaw dropped open.

It was a good ten seconds before e
ither of them spoke
.

Ty shook his head quickly, and held up his hand
. “Hold up. What are you saying
, Blood
?”

“I didn’t learn of it until this morning, but apparently Victor Black challenged Victoria to
a private Game,” Max explained
in as calm a tone as possible. He allowed some of the real anger he felt to edge hi
s words in order to lend
credibility
to his story
.

“In doing so, he lure
d her beyond the wall
.
You know how dark leaders are, a
nd he’s the worst
of them.” He made a face
to show his “distaste,” and
the other two with perfect predictability mirrored it
.

“No kidding,” April agreed. “He
is
the worst.” Something in her expression glossed over for a moment and she shrugged. “He’s hot,
though….” She shook herself. “But you’re right. H
e’s bad.”

Ty shot her a hard
look, but she missed it because she was looking back up
at Max.

“
How did he get her to accept that kind of challenge
?”
s
he asked. Max could read her mind as easily as if he were reading a children’s book. S
he was concerned and confused, a
nd
growing
antsy.

It was p
erfect.

“I don’t know,” Max
lied. “But
she did.
”
H
e shook his head, sighing in frustration
that was only partially faked
. “She
’s put everything in jeopardy with this. And if Black has his way, who knows what he’ll do with her? He could brainwash her, turn her against us and Game Control
.
The man’s gone rogue.
” He ran his hand through his brown hair and paced away from them in a show of agitated aggravation.

They were buying the performance.
Probably because it was so
damn
real.

Victoria’
s team was very loyal. Suddenly
it occurred to Max
that he should be grateful Simon wasn’t
there
after all. Simon Roon was very smart and
of all of them, he might have actually
maintained enough skepticism to question
what Max was saying.

“We have to go after
her,” Ty said, his jaw set in
determination.

“Agreed,” April added. She squared her shoulders. “We need to find Simon. He can figure out what we should do first.”

Idiots
, Max thought.
They’re idiots. They’re not even asking me how I
know any of this
. This is too easy.

“
There’s no time,” Max told them
as he strode to
the transporter cube. “We need to head out now. Victoria’s out there alone with Black.” He
pressed the control to open the door.
“The longer we wait, the more time he has to do whatever it is he’s
planning
.” He used a bit of his
d
ark leader power then, letting
his influence
sink into their minds
with iniquity
. He filled their heads with dark images, helping their apprehension along.

April was at his side in an instant, her pallor having gone decidedly pale.

Ty was behind her. “How do you know all of this?”
he
asked.

Max blinked. He hadn’t been expecting that.

“
How do you know she breached the wall
?” April asked
, adding to Max’s surprise.
Maybe they weren’t as idiotic as he’d pegged. He had Victoria to thank for that; her leadership and training were showing now.

He
rec
overed quickly
. “
I know
,” he answered plainly. The transporter doors slid open and he stepped inside. “This morning, a friend told me he’d
seen Victoria and Black speaking
yesterday. I tried to locate her using the computers
and failed
. Her Ga
me band wa
s in her quarters
.” He paused,
raising his brows
. “You getting in?”

The two realized they were
standing outside of the
open
, waiting
cube
and
hurriedly ste
pped into the transporter. Th
e doors slid shut behind them.

Max continued. “
At lunch today, one of the Arthurs
, Arthur thirty-two,
asked to speak with me
. In confidence, he told me that his controls had registered an energy spike for one of the tr
ansporter
s
. He said it took the cube to an outside sector. He’d heard I was searching for Victoria, and apparently
no one can find Black either.
We put two and two together
.
”

Ty whistled low. Max read his thoughts. He was thinking that those circumstan
ces were incredibly lucky. H
e was
also
won
dering how much time they had and h
ow bad things already were.

April was thinking along the same lines.

Max hid the smile
he felt forming on his lips and
inst
ead
punched in the same code that had taken him beyond the wall earlier. It wasn’t the code Victoria had been forced to use, of course.
Unlike Victoria
, Max had access to any code he wanted. He didn’t have to appear in the outside sectors seventy feet under water.

It was part and parcel to holding rank of second in command at Game Control.

“Where are
we going now?” April asked
.

“I’m dropping you two off outside the wall. Then I’m heading back to the TGB
to pick up more help
. We’ll need
supplies too
, but the three of us together are too easy to recognize, so I’ll go
alone. Then I’ll meet
you in Sector three
.” He stepped back from the console and took a deep breath, as if steadying his
nerves and contemplating the task they were about to undertake. “I don’t doubt that Black will have his own little regiment of minions to fall back on if things start to go wrong for him.
He must know that he’s already ruined his chances of continuing as team leader, and there is nothing more desperate than a man with nothing left to lose. We’ll need all
the help we can get.”

Ty cleared his throat. He was looking at the floor of the cube. He ran his hand over his bald head and said, “How are
we planning to keep
this under GC’s radar?”

Max stared at him. In the Gamer’s mind, he was re
ady to fight to save his leader if he had to, b
ut he was afraid of Game Control. He didn’t want the government to find out that Victoria had ventured beyond the wall. He d
idn’t want her to be punished, a
nd he didn’t want to be punished for going after her.

Max couldn’t blame him.

“You don’t need to worry about Game Control,” he calmly assured him, again using his
d
ark leader abili
ty to push his words
home.

We
already know.

Victoria felt strange. As Brom trotted along, things began to look
familiar
to her. It wasn’t the kind of familiarity
that one would get after having just
been somewhere. It was the kind that rests in the back of the mind, asleep and silent, until that whiff of a certain scent or that breeze that feels a certa
in way – or that face that seems
like you’ve seen it in a dream
– comes along to wake it back up again
.

That was what she felt now.
The horse paced through a wilderness that Victoria
almost
knew.
There were
crumbling buildings out here, s
tone structures
that must have fallen hundreds if not thousands
of years ago. They looked like weathered, beaten skeletons of something she might have once walked through. They resembled the worn
out remains of a place that she might have once celebrated a birthday in.

With a cake?

And candles….

There w
ere clusters of these buildings here and there, but the landscape was hollow. She felt a sort of
once-was-ness
. There was no
other way to describe it. She’
d never seen anything like this before.

Within the wall, everything was new. It was clean and shiny
,
and the Arthurs and their teams worked on keeping everything running in perfect condition, all the time. 

But not here. Not this. This was a world that had taken its last breaths long ago. What was the last conversation held within its walls? Who was the last to leave? And why?

How does a
place
…
die?

Brom stopped beside an ancient-looking fountain.
A statue had been erected here,
placed atop what
was once
a school of carved fish. The statue’s features were destroyed, as if smashed with a
sledgehammer
. Its arms were missing. It was a female figure in a long skirt
,
and beneath the hem of the stone skirt was a word. Victoria
could almost make it out….

There was a shifting sound to Victoria’s right.
She
spun in the saddle, her gold gaze searching the shadows between two skeleton buildings.
“Who’s there
?
”

The scuffling-shuffling sound came again.
A twig broke. A moment later,
a woman stepped hesitantly into the light.

Vi
ctoria blinked. The woman’s appearance was unsettling. She looked
strange
. Her face was deeply
and repeatedly
lined,
and
her eyes
were
a
dull,
faded color
shot through with red veins
. Her body was hunched, as if she were carryi
ng a great weight on her back, b
ut there was nothing there.

No one looked like that on the Field.

The woman approached slowly, cautiously. She appeared even more sur
prised than Victoria. In fact…
she looked
so
pale,
so
stunned, Victoria t
hought the woman might be ill or t
ha
t she would perhaps
faint. Surely, only a horrible sickness could cause a person to become so withered?