Authors: Heather Killough-Walden
Not that Victoria would admit as much to anyone. It was just something she noticed. That was all.
Victoria tapped her fingers on the console in front of her.
Black
had essentially cleared the board and moved one of his pieces. She
knew
it. With every fiber o
f her being, she knew that he’
d begun another Game.
But this one was different.
With
a cursory glance at her dead control screen, she had to admit that she was running blind. This Game was already beyond anything Victoria had ever played
… and it felt…
personal
.
What was hi
s pl
an? Why was he doing this now, a
fter so many years of playing by the rules? Why would he break any of them at this juncture?
She
closed her e
yes and sat back in her chair. With a flush of warmth across her skin, s
he
recalled his last words to her. Her team had just won the game,
barely
managing to make it to
quadrant four before the Gray T
e
am and despite all of Victor’s
efforts.
And then, as if time had slowed down and the moment had become exponentially more vital, the light and dark leaders had faced off
on the cliffs in quadrant four, the wind whipping their ha
ir into a frenzy, Victor’s
vivid
green eyes burning a hole through her.
“Don’t you grow tired of it, Victoria? I know you do. I can feel your weariness. You can’t hide it from me.”
He’
d moved toward her, closing the distance between them so that the bands they wore on their arms began to heat up painfully – a warning that barriers were being breached. A reminder of protocol.
He’d ignored it, a
nd she had let him. She refused to back up
as he came to stand
a mere breath away, so close that she could smell the leather of his uniform and hear the ragged catch to his breathing
as he implored her
.
“
I see the questions in your eyes, Red
,
”
he whispered, his very lightly accented voice wreaking havoc with her senses.
“I
have the answers. Give in to me. Join me
. There need be no secrets between us.”
She could feel his words caress her lips and the world seemed to slow around them.
S
he had the sudden, nearly overwhelming urge to
reach up and touc
h his hair where the deep black
shining locks brushed against the collar of his jacket
.
Victoria felt stunned
as he raise
d his right
hand
and pulled off his glove. She held her breath as, i
n a move utterl
y belying all regulatory codes,
he touched her
very gently
,
brushing
the backs of his
fingers across her cheek.
Max had stepped in then. He’d drawn his sword and swept between them, knocking Victoria back several paces. She’d caught herself in time to see Black and her captain standing boot to boot, head to head, their gazes locked in silent challenge.
When her silver wristband flashed brightly and Black’s did the same, the end of the Game was signaled a
nd both teams were instant
ly transported back to their headquarters.
It was sudden and it was harsh and, this time it was
oddly
painful.
It had been the fourth time that Black had approached her as he had and told her to give in to him. To surrender.
This time, upon returning to their headquarters,
Victoria had gone
straight to the contr
ol room, shaken
and u
neasy. She hadn’t wanted her team to see the emotion in her face or notice the tension riding her body. She
frankly
hadn’t wanted to face the truth of what had just transpired.
What he was asking for – it went beyond giving up and losing this Game. It was something more. She felt it in her gut, and she knew that Black was well
aware
that she could feel it. There was something unspoken transpiring between them.
He’d really pushed it this time.
By all righ
ts she c
ould have turned Black in for daring to touch another
t
eam leader on the Field. But she wouldn’t. She couldn’t.
Because it wasn’t just one
t
eam leader touching another. It wasn’t
just
Black breaking a rule.
It was Victor. Touching
her
.
And that was different.
* * * *
“I need you to deliver a message to the Red leader.” Victor Black strode across the room to the messenger who had been summoned there. As far as the messenger was concerned, the Game was on downtime. He would be allowed into each territory and there was nothing in the rules that stated
t
eam leaders were not allowed to communicate while a Game was not running.
So the young boy took the small wooden box that Black handed him and nodde
d his assent. He left the Gray T
eam’s headquarters at a brisk run, heading for the transporters that would shift him from Black’s quadrant to Red’s.
Victor watched him go.
Then he turned back to the tall windows that stretched from floor to ceiling along one wall of his massive quarters.
He
peered ou
t over the lights of the Field and the sectors that stretched beyond the wall
below.
Then his gaze shifted and locked onto the tall Red tower in the far distance.
Enough time had passed, he was sure. Now
he just needed to lay the trap, s
pin the web.
And invite the butterfly
in
for a drink.
* * * *
Victoria read
the note again. She
chewed
on the inside of her cheek
and read the note
with its scrawling black letters
one last time.
Then she placed
the note on the table and took the coin out of the box. It was a solid platinum coin. On one side was the Gray crest. On the other was a single letter
:
“B.”
Victoria turned the coin over in her hands a few times
before straightening, pocketing the coin and the note, and turning
bac
k to the windows
. She had an amazing view of
each of the quadrants from
up here.
Her personal quarters wer
e the highest rooms in the Red T
eam tower. Looking out to one side, she could see the distant right angle o
f the Field’s impenetrable wall
and the forested sector beyond it. She often wondered what lived in that forest. It was dark at
night, j
ust a long patch of black that must have been hundreds of acres across.
On the other side
of the Field
she could see the wall fade into nothing but darkness, blending with the ocean that it sliced into in the second quadrant.
Victoria pulled her gaze from the darkness and the unknown and focused it on the Gray tower, which stood miles away
,
opposite of her own, and rose just as high. She thought of the man wh
o lived within its highest rooms
.
This was probably a very bad idea.
Victor Black was the
d
ark
team leader.
Victoria
released a
frustrated sigh. “Dark” was an overly simplistic and, in her opinion, incredibly misused term for what Black and his team had to do day in and day out. After all, there was nothing wrong with the dark. She preferred it to daylight, actually. She came awake at night. She loved the stars. She felt more energized beneath the softer, bluer light of the moon.
But no one had ever come up with a better description
for it, so
“dark,” it stayed. In ever
y
Game, someone had to be the hero, a
nd someone had to be the villain.
The Gray Team had always been a dark team. Red had always been considered light.
Hundreds of years ago, Victor Black’s aptitude exams had garnered the attention of Game Control and earned him the rank of Gray
Team leader b
ecause
,
as it would seem,
that was where his talents tended to lie
.
It did fit him perfectly, Victoria had to admit.
His Game plans were devious, trick
y, deceitful, and underhanded. But then again, it was difficult to tell how much of that was really him and how much of it was the role he was forced to play. His plans
had
to be
deceitful and underhanded
. It was his
job
.
It was the fact that he was so good at it and that it seemed to come naturally to him that
worried Victoria.
Because despite the fact that her entire team was at the TGB, celebrating what they thought was a well
-
earned break
,
and
despite the fact that
as far as Game Control was concerned, no new Game had begun, Victoria knew differently. Victor was Playing.
The invitation she’d just pocketed was part of this new Game. She should have ignored it.
But she’d weighed her options and she truly felt that she had no other choice.
Black wasn’t a man to be ignored.
Besides
,
h
e claimed that he only wanted to talk.
In a decade, despite all of his talents and darkness, one thing that Victor Black had never done was lie to her.
Not once. It was
something about his character…. There was a depth to him that went beyond the color of his uniform, and lying was not in it.
The coin
he’d sent her
would get her into his private ro
om at the TGB. S
he had to admire his confidence, arrogant though it was, in expecting her to use it.
He was right, too.
She
would
meet with him.
She would hear him out
, but not under his terms
. If this was going to be a Game in any sense of the word, then she would make her own moves. She would meet with him
on safe ground, in neutral territory, and surrounded by
her own team members
.
Not
in his private room.
If he wanted to talk to her so badly, he would have to find her himself.
At that moment, it was the
only means s
he possessed of throwing
the ball back in
to
his court.
When Victoria neared the door to her personal quarters, she stopped and turned to consider the Game band that rested in its glass case on the cabinet against one wall. It wasn’t customary to wear the band
s when Game wasn’t in Play, but
i
t amplified her abilities and made it easier for her to access her powers.
S
he might need that edge tonight.
Besides
, knowing him,
Black
was most likely wearing
his
.
Victoria opened the case, extracted the silver cuff-like band, and touched it to her right wrist. The device immediately ensnared her arm, hugging tightly to her flesh as it melded with her body, sending an electric jolt of energy through the pathway of her nerves and into her brain.
For an instant she saw lightning. She heard crackling.
And then it was gone. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, closing the glass case once more.
She was
used to the sensation by now, a
fter all of these years. At this point, donning the device was like brushing her teeth. It was somewhat annoying, but more often than not, necessary.
With one last glance at her quarters, Victoria stepped through the archway leading into the hall beyond and closed the door behind her.
When the
transporter slid shut in front of
her, Victoria had the fleeting thought that she should have worn something else. At first, the image of a low-cut dress floated before her mind’s eye. It was hurriedly chased away by the much more practical thought of a downtime uniform.