Authors: Heather Killough-Walden
* * * *
When Max stepped out of the transporter cube with a dozen men behind him, Ty was not expecting the company. He and April
backed up, and
Ty had his crossbow
in his hand in record time.
April drew her short sword a mere second later.
“What the –” Ty blinked at Max, his gaze shooting from the GC guards to his captain in
frank
confusion.
Max held
his hands
up in placation
. “Easy, Ty. GC granted us the temporary help because Victoria is as precious to them as she i
s to us.” He
nodded to the men behind him, who were staring at Ty and April with something between indifference and distaste. They were dressed in the gray and tan leather uniforms of Game Control, their swords still in their scabbards, their GC issue Game bands gleaming in gold and black metal on their wrists. “These guys are here to help if Black gets nasty.”
The GC guards differed slightly in hair and eye color, but because
they were dressed the same, wore the same expressions, and were approximately the same height, it gave the impression
they were carbon copies of one another.
They were a
military unit comprised of many, but equaling one.
It was disconcerting
to Ty. They vaguely reminded him of a collective of ants o
r worker bees. Mindless.
Drones.
“Ok
aaay
,
” he muttered, still unsure. His right hand continued to grip the crossbow tightly
. “So explain the g
eek
freak
.” He nodded toward the Arthur
that stood directly beside Max. It was Arthur One. His
white uniform
was
too
white, his pristine hair,
nails and shoes
were
too
pristine. He looked
like one of the robots he was
always working on.
Ty didn’t l
ike the Arthurs all that much, but
he especially didn’t like Arthur One. They had history, in a manner of speaking. That is t
o say, Arthur One was a letch – a
nd Ty wasn’t.
But now, Arthur One simply blinked at him and cocked his head to one side. His expression was quite different from the usual smirk of aversion he wore when around Ty Murrey. In fact, it wasn’t a smirk at all.
It was a
look of puzzlement and uncertainty. He was staring at him,
in fact
, as if he didn’t even know who Ty was.
Ty’s brow knit
.
“He’s been rehabilitated,” Max said.
Ty glanced at his captain. Max shrugged. “Don’t ask me. I have no idea what that’s all about. B
ut whatever problem you two had
with each other, you no longer have. We need his help and I expect you to le
t him do his job. Got it
?”
Max was
back in captain mode again, so
Ty
nodded. It was easy for him to automatically fa
ll into rank. It was what he’d been trained to do. They were a tight troop, the Red team
,
because Victoria had taught them well. She was good at training a company of Gamers and she’d been given some of the best Gamers to work with.
April put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently. He glanced over at her, but she was looking at Max. “Where is Victoria?”
she asked.
“She’s been tracked to a small border town on the edge of Ocanus, which isn’t far from here.”
“How was she tracked?” April asked.
Max’s blue gaze swiveled to her and pinned her to the spot. “It isn’t important. It’ll take us approximately twenty minutes to get there if we leave now.” He looked at Ty again. “Murrey, I want you to take this a
nd try to talk to her first in case she
doesn’t trust me.”
He handed Ty a small red device. It had a blinking green light on it and a single black button. “What is it?”
h
e asked, turning it over in his hand.
He
looked
up. “And why wouldn’t
she trust you?”
“Like I said,
she may have been
brainwashed by Black.
Who knows what he’ll force her to believe?
He’ll figure out that I’m coming for her, and a
t the very least, he’ll att
empt to drive a wedge between us
.” He focused on the device
. “This is a base bomb. Get it near Victoria and press the button. It’ll knock her out for thir
ty seconds. It’ll be e
nough time for you to restrain her with these.” He held his hand out to Arthur One.
The techie placed a set of leather bracelets in his hand. In turn, Max held them out to Ty.
“And what are those?” Ty asked, suddenly feeling a little overwhelmed by everything Blood was throwing at him.
“These are neutralizing bracelets. I believe you’ve heard them referred to as ‘saps.’ Place them around Victoria’s wrists and it will neutralize her powers
so we can
get her back to GC headquarters.”
Ty took the
hesitantly took the bracelets and
placed them in the pocke
t of his uniform jacket. “Is any of this stuff going to hurt her?
” He glanced down at the base bomb again. “How does this thing work?”
“Victoria possesses a tracking device in her blood stream. This sends out a pulse signal that is answered by that device. The signal travels to her brain and instantly
puts her to sleep
. It won’t hurt her
,
” Max explained.
“Why does she have a tracking device in her blood stream?” April asked.
Ty
had been about to ask the same thing
.
“Again, that
isn’t important right now
,” Max said
.
“
What
is
important is separating her from Victor Black and getting her back inside the wall before any more damage is done.”
Ty took a deep breath and sighed. He placed the base bomb in his pocket. “What about Victor?”
T
y could have sworn the vivid blue of
his captain’s eyes grew ominously brighter.
Blood’s powerful gaze narrowed. “Leave him to me.”
* * * *
Even as Max led his makeshift retrieval team deeper into Sector 3, he wondered ho
w much of her memory Victoria, or
Rose Tyrnan
,
had recovered. If she hadn’t recalled much yet, then there might be a cha
nce that he could talk to her, even c
onvince her to come back to the Field with him.
But if she remembered
everything
,
she might not trust him at all. She would put two and two together
and
realize
that he was
working for Game Control, w
hom she would hate for killing her sister and taking her from her parents
.
That was the reason for
the base bomb. He would send Ty and April in first to feel the place out. If she didn’t remember anything, she would
probably agree to talk to them
, and she would still be wary of Victor Black.
Both of those were good things.
If she remembe
red her sister’s death,
then she would in
stantly resist anything Ty would tell her. He would have to use the bomb, a
nd Max would have to move fast.
The Game Lord didn’t want anything happening to his precious Red Rose.
And
neither did Max.
* * * *
Jeannine Cure punched in the code on the console that would seal the Medical Research Unit behind her. It was empty now that GC had ordered its evacuation. She was supposed to have gone with the others, but when the order had come through,
she stayed behind. She’
d known
deep down in her gut that
it had something to do with
Victor
Black.
She’d always had hunches
about things. It made her a good doctor. What machines couldn’t detect, she
would get a gut feeling about, a
nd she’d never been wrong.
So when Game Control
ordered the first evacuation of the Field in Cure’s long tenure as head physician, she
knew
. She knew it was Victor and that the time to take action had finally come.
For many years, Jeannine had harbored doubts about the intentions of Game Control. Patients were often sent to her after having their memories
initially
erased or after “rehabilitation.” Ofte
n, they were in pain. Sometimes
there was minor brain damage.
There were bruises on wrists
and cuts and scrapes in various places on the body. She knew what they were. She was a doctor and not at all an idiot. They were signs of struggle.
Jeannine couldn’t recall her own adoption into the Gaming family
, b
ut in the hundreds of years since, she had seen too much not to wonder.
Victor Black was a
d
ark leader and
there was no arguing that he was
a dangerous man. He seldom had to come into the MRU, as he was powerful enough to keep from getting hurt on
the Playing Field. But over the centuries
,
he’d been in enough that
Cure
had gone from one of the plethora
women in the Field wh
o were both attracted to and terrified of him to Victor
’s friend and confidante.
There was a lot of good in Victor.
She wouldn’t be able to prove it if anyone had asked her to.
It was small things. The way he went easy on those who had just been brought on to the Field, the way he never told a lie, the look he would get in his eyes when he visited the MRU and witnessed someone suffering.
He didn’t like it when people suffered
. As far as Jeannine was concerned, that was the mark of a good man
.
During one of
those earlier infrequent visits, Victor
had inadvertently read Jeannine’s mind. She’d been ang
ry as hell
with
him for doing it,
for invading her privacy in such a manner. But he’d quickly begged forgiveness, insisting that it was hard for him to shut it off after being on the Field for too long.
What wa
s done was done, however. She’
d been thinking that Game Control was hiding something. She’d been going over the patient docket in her mind – two mem
ory wipes, one rehabilitation; t
hree cases with signs of struggle and pain.
Victor
turned to her, took her hands,
and
t
old her that he agreed with her. S
he
had stared at him with wide eyes – b
ut she believed him
unequivocally. It was her gut again
.
That was years ago.
No
w, Jeannine
turned away from the double doors and faced the small group waiting for her in the hall. She took a deep breath and met a pair of intense, green eyes. “Are you sure you want to do this?’
Victor nodded.
“All right.” Jeannine
pulled a few things out of the deep pockets of her lab coat and held them up for everyone to see. “Here’s what I’ve got. If you’re right and Red is carrying a tracking device, then this right here will cause it to become inert and, be
cause the tracker is probably a bio-device, it’ll dissolve
and be processed by her body.” She handed a small black
pouch to Victor
.
He opened it.
Inside was a single capsule. “
The down side is, you have to
get her t
o ingest it
.”
Victor nodded. “Shouldn’t be too difficult,” he quipped. “I’ll just invite her to tea.” He pocketed the pouch and shot Jeannine a skeptical look.
She smiled
sheepishly
and went on.
“This is
for the guards we’ll no doubt
come across. It’s a v
ariant of our anti-nausea gas. It always makes people sleepy, so I extended and strengthened those effects and concentrated
the gas so that it could be placed in something combustible.”
She held up a tiny glass capsule for the others to see.
“In other words, we smash this on the ground and the bad guys go to sleep,” Simon said, nodding at the container.