Deadly Paths

by Jack Parker

  The nature of the game meant there was much more to cover than the subtle drama unfolding under the watchful eyes of the many hidden cameras in the Luxor ballroom. Thankfully, it was almost time to start sending all the footage from that particular room to the editing room floor, as only Ming and Siren had yet to figure out where to go next, or that they should be moving at all. Soon they would get some hints. Sometimes it took such methods just to save money on time. One of the problems was Ming stood a good chance of winning the poker game overall. If he won, he would probably have to be awarded a car or something, since the show could not legally become a gambling show without sending the proceeds to charity – in this case, the national cerebral palsy foundation.

  Jake and Nova were fast approaching the challenge area, and Blade and Tora had just moments ago figured out they needed to be someplace else and had quietly started to make their way. The challenge itself involved different ways of covering the nearly seven miles of Vegas strip between the Luxor and Caesar's Palace, and it was already a bitch to shoot video of screaming contestants as they zip-lined from a Luxor window to a rooftop where two more options for travel awaited them.

  What really set Grace's hair on fire, especially this early in the game, was that six of the contestants were taking a completely different route to the main event of the mission. This group of six had to be followed with a different set of cameras, and it was often not entirely predictable what they would decide to do or what route they would take. Still emanating fury, Grace marched across the control room floor to a section of employees watching monitors labeled by an overhanging sign that read MANTA CONTROL.

  "Tell me that at least everything is going well with our group of traitors," Grace snarled at the crew. One young man pushed his glasses back into place as he stood.

  "Oh it's going quite well, Director Goodson," the MANTA controller said proudly. "As you know we have successfully already recruited four players into siding with our Malevolent Anarchist National Terrorist Alliance, and each team is slowly making their way—"

  "Spare me the details, Morton I just want to know if we have camera crews and interview teams in place. I don't want to go chasing a bunch of trouble making MANTAS all over the damn city like last season! We can barely keep crews in line when we know where they are going! Which—"

  "Grace."

  The voice came from her shoulder. She ignored it.

  "Which of them is closest?"

  "Grace."

  Now a hand lay on her shoulder.

  "Salsa and Rowdy are closest to being in position, Ma'am. But they have a conflict. Rowdy seems to realize something is up. Now Charlie and Mako are much more interesting. You see they both—"

  Grace finally got fed up with whoever was trying to get her attention.

  "Fucking what?" she snarled, whirling on whoever had dared intrude.

  Steave gave her a warm smile and held up a cup with something hot and steaming.

  "Thought you might like some coffee. You never did go get any. Black with a tiny bit of sugar right?"

  Grace took a deep breath an accepted the gift. What was it about this young man that she felt no issues with about him calling her by her first name? There was just something in his eyes that seemed curious, like he had a million secrets to tell. Grace liked finding out about secrets. The presence of her new assistant manager calmed her somewhat.

  "Thank you, Steve. But it would be a bigger help if you knew how to fix this. We've never had so many go MANTA this early before. That means they'll be attempting hits on their fellow players left and right, and I don't know if we even have the crew to cover it, much less the interview team that didn't do their damn job!"

  With these last words Grace let her voice grow to a yell again as she very intentionally hurled them at the interview team to let them know she was still furious. Steve only chuckled at her.

  "Don't worry so much will you?" he said soothingly. "All of the MANTA players were given a simple task this time and there is only really one or two places for each of them to go. They have to assassinate Carlo Benedetto with a paint ball sniper shot before the Agency Members can get to him right?"

  Grace nodded.

  "And they know where he is really going to be speaking, right?"

  Grace nodded again and quickly added, "They do if the MANTA players managed to convince their partners still loyal to the agency that their original information was a ruse."

  Morton spoke up.

  "And they all did, Director. But as I was about to say both Charlie and Mako on the same team both joined MANTA and they both know it so that's one less hit to worry about."

  Grace felt her clenched fists begin to loosen as she relaxed a little more. Hits where tricky business. They were extremely important to get on film, but you never really knew exactly when a MANTA aligned player was going to try one. Normally, players were not so inclined to join the bad guys so early, because if you were discovered you could easily be executed by the other players at a trial at the end of a mission. Since each mission awarded those who successfully complete it a twenty thousand dollar bonus, it was usually considered more prudent to have a few missions under your belt first before going rogue. However, a MANTA player could win more by acquiring the money that would have been won by any player they eliminate with a hit. A MANTA player was free to target any other player they came across in a mission, and a hit was successful if they could mark their target with a tiny tracking device without their target noticing for the duration of the mission. MANTA players were also typically given a mission to complete that was counter to what the rest of the players were trying to accomplish. Successful MANTA missions made the missions harder in the next round for the Agency players, and awarded information and other advantages in the next round to the MANTA player.

  Naturally, the rules became problematic if more than one hit was successful or more than one trial for execution was called for in a round. Eliminating too many players at once would make for a very short season. So there had to be failsafes in place to manipulate results at times.

  "Morton," Grace said carefully. "Did you make any restrictions for the hit this round?"

  "Just that they could not do it to their own partner," Morton said.

  Grace sighed. "I hope that's enough. I'd like to simply send a few more players away with a burn notice before we go through all this nonsense."

  "It'll be fine," Steve said cheerfully.

  "That may be," Grace said as she turned on a heel and made for the stairs back up to her office. "But if we don't get the camera and interview situation straight not even your charming little face will be able to save anyone in here from me."

  With that, Grace stormed up the stairs, leaving a roomful of frantic technicians wondering how much longer they would have this nice, fun job.

  * * *

  "How high are we supposed to go?" Victoria Kingsly asked their guide, an excitable man from hotel security who had met them at the exit to the 30th floor inclinator. "I thought we were already at the top."

  The security officer had led them to a special maintenance inclinator that had taken them the relatively short distance up the remaining five floors of the large pyramid. They had exited from that short ride out into a narrow maintenance hallway that they had to practically crawl through and been led to a small ladder leading up into the brilliant light at the top of the Luxor.

  "All the way to the top," the overly cheerful man said. He was blocking the way to the ladder, half crouched to avoid hitting his head as he smiled at both her and Jake like he knew a big dirty secret. The man was literally bouncing as if a puppy dog hoping for a treat. "The very tippy-top. They have a challenge up there, you know. Do you know what it is? I'm a big fan of Spy Games. I couldn't believe it when they told me I was actually going to be involved!"

  Oh brother, Victoria thought, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. Another fan in the loop.

  This happened sometimes as certain bystanders had to be informed
of what was going on, or as camera crews needed access to certain areas. In this case, someone in hotel security had to help the contestants get to the top of the Luxor. This amused her greatly, because had she needed to actually get all the way up here herself on a real mission—and for the life of her she could not imagine why—there were a number of far less annoying methods where she would not have had to deal with any prying eyes at all. But that just wasn't good television.

  As Jake indulged the man while he prattled on with the customary small talk questions—How many spies were left?, What were their code names?, Could you help get me onto the show next season?—Victoria's thoughts wandered back to the place she really wanted to be. Back downstairs in that ballroom, and back with Mr. Fukazashi, learning all she could from him. There was something about his engagement to the handsome blond woman, something that was far more important to Victoria than winning this little section of the game. Although it was important for her to stay in the game as long as possible to keep her cover, she was annoyed at being removed from the opportunity gain real information on Carlo Benedetto's other dealings.

  Carlo Benedetto—hotel business tycoon, eccentric philanthropist with several worldwide managed by his dollar who just happened to have connections to the mob and Columbian drug cartels. This was not only her target for the mission, but her entire reason for being on the show. Carlo was no suspected of getting involved in the black market weapons trade. Depending on what he was up to, her bosses at the Central Intelligence Agency were prepared to put an end to all his dealings—permanently. Why they needed a better reason than drugs and organized crime, Victoria did not know. All that she knew is that she had a chance to correct that awful policy with the right evidence, and her biggest leads to that evidence were living it up downstairs. She really wanted to get some one on one time with Fukazashi's blond fiancé. Even her cute but overly silly show partner Jake could tell there was something odd about the pairing and Carlo's interest in them. Victoria wondered if it had anything to do with the Japanese man's camera business.

  Instead of having these questions answered, for appearances sake she had to smile politely at the Spy Games groupie security man, don a pair of goggles, and crawl after Jake up into the brilliant light fixture above her, where an actual representative of the show and a camera man awaited them. Victoria was sure someone back at the agency, the real agency, was having a big laugh at her expense.

  She was so disgruntled with the absurdity of it all that she realized she had forgotten to be nice to the security man. She turned and peered back down the ladder hatch and blew him a kiss before closing the hatch. The man waved lazily and blushed like Dopey after being kissed by snow white, and Victoria felt better. Men were so easy.

  Someone kicked placed a foot on her rear and kicked. She nearly fell flat on her face, but caught herself with her hands and turned to shoot an angry glare at Jake.

  "What the hell?"

  "Watch where you're sticking that thing," he said grinning. "There's barely enough room in here for us, not to mention that big ole' booty."

  The cameraman and a curly haired man squatting with a bunch of what looked like mountain climbing equipment spread out in front of him also grinned at her. Both men are wearing a T-shirt with the Spy Games logo on it, which was simply the words in gold font written as if shot out of a golden gun.

  "Oh ha, ha," Victoria said with a roll of her eyes.

  "What were you doing anyway?" Jake asked. "Do you have to flirt with every guy we run into? Even someone who obviously isn't involved with the show?"

  Victoria leaned forward to poke Jake in the chest as she spoke.

  "Piece of free advice, Buck-o. It always pays to make friends. You never know when you're going to need them."

  "I always make friends with people if I like them," Jake said with a shrug.

  Victoria sighed and shook her head. She didn't feel like explaining how it didn't matter if you liked them or not. "Let's just get this over with. What are we doing up here anyway? What's the big challenge this time, slide down the Luxor like a slide?

  "Nah that's been done before," said the curly haired man. "Fear Factor I think. But close! The idea is you have used a special gadget to create a zip-line because you need to travel fast and MANTA agents are guarding the atrium. You're going to zip-line to another building down there, where you'll do a quick interview and then choose the next part of the challenge."

  Suddenly Jake looked pale and his normal ear to ear grin disappeared from his face. The cameraman took note and began to focus on his reaction.

  "A-Are you sure that's safe?" he asked.

  "Safe as can be," said the man with the equipment. "I'm Stan. I'll guide you through all the equipment. You'll be in a nice tight harness and we tested it at much higher winds than this with heavy weights. Wires'll hold nine hundred pounds easy."

  "You're not scared are you, Jakey?" Victoria teased.

  "Actually . . . yeah." Jake admitted.

  Victoria turned to Stan. "And I'm just supposed to do this in my lovely dress?"

  "Here."

  A bright orange one-piece jump suit was tossed at her.

  "That should fit over your dress easy," said Stan. "And your shoes should fit in this side pouch. Don't want those falling off to clobber someone now do we?

  Victoria frowned. "These don't seem very stealthy at all."

  "Not supposed to be," Stan said, seeming somewhat baffled by her comment. "You want the cameras and spotlights to pick you out at night so you can look good on TV right?"

  "Oh," she said, feeling embarrassed to be thinking like a real spy. "Right."

  Jake was turning a new shade of green once the jumpsuits and were on, and when Stan opened the tiny window for them to step out onto the platform that had been set up outside he shrunk back against the far wall of the light housing. The wind began to roar past her ears, blowing her hair wildly, and Victoria just wanted to get this part over with.

  "Do we have to do this?" Jake called to her and Stan over the wind. "I mean, what happens if we don't do the challenge?"

  Victoria felt the camera on her now as its operator thought he might get a good shot of either a pep talk or an argument. I don't have time for this, she thought. She was already going to have to make extra plans just to find Fukazashi and the bombshell again, and now he was talking about giving up on the challenge and costing not only money and points, which she cared nothing about, but a time to get to Benedetto first—which could be crucial to her mission. It was always known that Benedetto was involved with the show this season somehow, but it was never imagined in all the briefings she had received that he would be a direct player in one of the shows missions. She might not get a better chance.

  "Oh you're doing this now if I have to knock you out and push you down the wire myself! Yes, we have to! You know how this game works!"

  A head poked out of the trapdoor and addressed Stan. It was a different security officer this time.

  "I've got two more down below," the newcomer said. "Are we ready for them yet?"

  "That's up to Jake here," Stan said half teasingly at Jake. "Says he might not wanna go."

  Victoria grabbed Jake by the scruff of his Jumpsuit and thrust him toward the platform.

  "Hook him up. He's going."

  Jake started to protest, but Victoria shot him a look that told him it was better to be afraid of heights than end up being afraid of her and what she might do to him if he did not get over it. Shaking, Jeff followed all of the safety directions, hooked his harness up properly to the zip line, but on the helmet with the first person view camera, and was even bending his legs to jump as he sat back in the harness—and then shook his head a gesture of frustration.

  Victoria groaned and slapped her forehead.

  "I just can't do it, Nova. It's so windy. I'm sorry. We have to go back."

  "Ugh, get out of the way," Victoria snarled as she hooked herself up, bushing Jake aside. 'I'll show you it's safe."


  "Wait!" Stan called out. "You both have to agree—"

  "He'll figure out he agrees soon!" Victoria called back after leaping from the light chamber with a gleeful whoop.

  She let her voice go silent as she flew down the line, merely taking in the beauty of the city lights around her. The Excalibur hotel, lit op to her left, seemed to be much closer than it actually was, like a full moon low in the sky on a clear night. Her bare feet tingled as they swung free in the warm Nevada night air. She could hear startled shouts as people walking the strip noticed her via the spotlight that followed her all the way down. She kicked her legs forward to gain speed as she passed the halfway point, and her eyes finally relaxed as they escaped the brilliance of the light fixture atop the Luxor—a light so bright it was rumored you could actually see the beam in space. She honestly would have preferred the freedom of a hang glider to the overly safe harness and wire set-up. However, she had to admit to herself that she was having fun, and when she eased onto the platform on the roof of the building on the other end of the line, she was wearing a full grin.

  She was still wearing her grin as she unhooked her harness from the wire, pulled off her helmet and sun-goggles and shook her hair free. The grin remained even though there was no one to meet her on the roof. There were no cameras. Not even a helicopter. She walked down the stairs exiting the platform, with only the sounds of the city to greet her; the honking horns, the sirens, the faint strum of a street musician's guitar far below.

  Maybe I'm supposed to find a challenge stand, she thought. After all this challenge has more to it until we reach Caesar's Palace.

  The show did this sometimes when you had options to choose from, rather than paying some extra hand to meet you. But at first glance there appeared to be no clues at all. She glanced back up the mile or so to the top of the pyramid, seeing if she could spot Jake among the brilliant glow at the summit.

  Behind her, a door at last opened from a stairwell that led down inside the building and a camera crew emerged to meet her—undoubtedly her interview crew to get her reaction from the zip line. She started toward them, and her grin vanished has she realized something was wrong.