Both the Hermes looked confused. Donny heard the murmurs of the Prometheus around, as they began to speculate on the event.
“He does have a power after all!”
“He’s more powerful than even Jay was!”
“Yeah, at least Jay was limited to the three known powers.”
“He almost killed us!”
Donny could feel that his thoughts were secure now. None of the Prometheus dared to enter his mind, and even if they did, they had backed too far away from him now to get a deep reading. A Hermes suddenly ran up next to Sly.
“Sly, one of the other Prometheus got a reading from a passing Hermes. The big Titan named Lenny apparently threw their papers up to the catwalk, so we won’t find the map down here. Our Prometheus said the Hermes didn’t seem to know what was going on, except that there are a bunch of Titans guarding a rock formation that looks like a plus sign.”
“Ok, good, that must be the real location. Let’s go. We need to dig there. Everyone, let’s go!” Sly was clearly still shaken up.
“Everyone? Should we come too?” The Hermes asked who were holding Jay.
“You? Umm, it’s up to you. I mean, no, hold him. But be careful. It’s not worth getting fried over!” Sly ran off, giving one more incredulous look at Donny before he left.
Donny was left alone with the two Hermes guards now. Donny could see that the Hermes did not like being left here to guard Donny, not because they feared him, but because they did not believe he was that big a threat. Donny was still smaller than most, and despite the ravings of the Prometheus group that just left, they had no evidence that he had any powers. Soon, one of them broke the silence, speaking to the other Hermes over Donny’s head.
“I don’t understand why we need two perfectly good Hermes to stand around and hold this kid,” one of them said angrily.
“I know, I wish there was something around that we could tie him too. We should have been given posts or something at the start that we could use for prisoners. It doesn’t make much sense to give us rope but nothing to tie people up to.”
Donny got an idea. “You mean you guys didn’t get a table like we did?” Donny said. Then he did his best to pretend that he did not mean to say what he did.
“That’s right! We do have a table! Let’s go tie him to that. As long as he is tied down there, we don’t need to stand right by his side, as long as we are close by to make sure he isn’t rescued or anything.”
The two Hermes carried Donny in the direction of their door. Donny struggled with them in order to slow them down, and while he struggled he tried desperately to look around for his rock formation. To his dismay, the table came into sight without his ever finding the formation he was looking for. Surely I should have passed it long ago. The map showed it near the center. Donny was losing hope, when he was struck dumb by a sight a few feet in front of him. The very first rock formation, the one closest to the brown team’s door, was the one he was looking for. There it is, Donny thought, that’s the one our orb is being held under!
The two Hermes tied Donny to their table, and began talking to each other casually. Donny waited on the table patiently. At least I’ll know when the brown team is getting close. Donny thought.
Hours passed. Donny was torn between his distress over his team not having set out to find him, and his relief over the brown team not having returned to claim the orb. Donny had tried everything he could think of to get free of the table. He studied the ropes calmly, in the hopes of finding some weakness in the knots, or some piece of him that was tied too loosely that he could wiggle free. He found nothing, but still tried to quietly make his way out. He tried countless movements, but nothing won him any ground.
Donny was in the process of retracing the ropes to see if he missed some weakness when he noticed a small group approaching. They were still far off, and Donny could not twist his head to get a good view of them. His two guards had not noticed either, for they were too far lost in their own conversation to be paying much attention to the game.
Whether it was Donny’s teammates or his foes, Donny could see just enough to know they were coming with a purpose. Either the brown team has discovered the correct location, or my own team finally needs me. Donny turned away from the approaching group. If it was his own team, he would not want to bring attention to them by staring. He would wait patiently.
“Look out!”
The cry of panic was like music to Donny’s ears. He turned to look at what was happening, able to see perfectly now that the action had reached the guards to his right. Two of his Hermes had arrived, and were engaging the Hermes from the brown team. Their momentum, along with the brown Hermes pair having become too relaxed, gave the necessary advantage. The brown members were knocked down, and once they were on the ground they could be held by one of the jade team Hermes while the other untied Donny. Donny refused to wait until he was untied to ask questions.
“Did you find something?”
“Yes, our metal detectors picked something up. It’s between…”
“It doesn’t matter, leave me! Go dig it up, and bring it here!”
“These knots are tight…”
“I said leave me! Go! NOW!”
The Hermes who had been untying Donny dashed off to the other, and with a quick ‘come on’ the two of them fled the area. The two guards were left on the ground, which they made quick work of changing. The two guards ran off as soon as they were up, and the only thing Donny heard them say before leaving was “they found it! I hope we found ours first!”
Donny laughed to himself once they were gone. Nope, you haven’t found yours yet.
It was surprising how quickly his team made it back. Out in front was Zahrah, holding a small metal orb. Many others could be seen coming behind her.
“What do I do with it?” She asked hurriedly, while glancing behind her at the approaching crowd.
“Who’s coming behind you?” Donny asked, worried.
“Both teams, once they saw us digging, they signaled to the rest of their team and the entire brown team set upon us. I managed to break away, but the rest of our team is now trying to slow them down, although nobody knows why they’re doing it.”
“Ok, get me untied.”
Zahrah made quick work of the knots. Donny was surprised how easily she got through them, especially after the other Hermes had so much difficulty. By the time Donny swung himself off the table, many Hermes from both teams were now arriving.
“Give me that shovel! Zahrah, you stay right with me, no matter what, and keep the orb with you,” Donny called out, first to one of his Hermes, then to Zahrah who looked distressed over not knowing what to do.
Donny waited until both teams had fully arrived. Then he began to call out. “Quickly! Everybody back towards our door! It’s under the rock formation like a star!” He made like he was leading the charge, but his foot was in the ropes, and so he never left the table. “Go! Go! Go!” Donny called to his team. “Dig under the star rock formation! We’re almost there!”
The brown team seemed to listen to Donny better than his own team, as the charge towards the star shaped formation was led mostly by the opposing team. Donny continued pretending to be stuck until there were only three left there; himself, Zahrah, and Lenny, who had started running off, but turned around to help Donny get his foot out of the ropes.
“It’s ok Lenny; I was just pretending to be stuck. Quickly, before they get wise. Lenny, Dig as quickly as you can under that rock formation there, the one that looks like a Y.”
Lenny took the shovel, and began digging frantically, dirt flying all over the place. Donny wanted to tell him he could calm down, but he knew this would just confuse Lenny, since he just told him to dig quickly. Lenny soon struck something metallic, and when the sand was moved away from it, there was a second orb buried under the sand.
“Ok Zahrah, touch our orb to theirs.” Donny was too excited to contain himself, and was partially in disbelief over what was ab
out to happen. Sure enough, the moment Zahrah’s orb made contact with the one in the sand, an alarm sounded, and a voice cried out. “The game has ended; the Jade team has secured their globe and made contact. Make your way back out the door from which you had entered. Thank you for participating in this year’s simulation games!”
CHAPTER 1 2
DONNY, LENNY, AND Zahrah jogged back to where Donny had sent the two teams. On their way they passed the brown team, as they moved back towards their own door. Sly glared at Donny as he passed, but Donny could see there was still a hint of fear in his eyes. When the three of them got close to the rest of the jade team, they could see that they were all dancing with joy around the star shaped rock formation. The ground by the rock formation had taken a few hits with a shovel, but it was apparent that no actual digging had taken place. Had the brown team been less able to stop his own team from digging, they might have discovered sooner that the spot was a fake.
Duke walked out to join the three of them, walking next to Donny.
“You have some explaining to do.”
“Do I?” Donny asked innocently.
“Oh yeah. Your team is torn between the joy of victory and the utter confusion of having no idea how it happened.”
“I’m sorry for keeping everyone in the dark. The point of the game was to withhold information from the other team, and I figured it would be much easier for one person to hide the information than the whole team.”
“Well the game is over now, so can you tell me what we had inadvertently succeeded in doing?”
“We were given a picture of a rock formation that our globe was under, as well as a map to where that rock formation is supposed to be. Our goal was to find their globe, and bring it back to where ours is buried. By touching their globe to ours, or if ours is already gone then to the metal stand underneath it, the game ends and we win. If they found our globe first and made contact with their own, they would have won.”
“But we never made contact, we never even started digging.”
“Actually, the star shaped formation was a decoy. I figured if our team believed it was under there, their team would as well. They were in such a hurry to guard this formation that they didn’t think to keep anyone anywhere else. The three of us went to the real location and made the necessary contact.”
“Ok, I guess all that makes sense, but there is one more big question I have to ask you,” Duke said, unable to keep a smirk off his face, “how do you explain the ranting of some of the brown members, claiming you were hiding a power all along? One of them claimed to have been struck by lighting.”
Donny had to smile back. It was a lucky break, that he was able to deceive so many of them so easily. “It’s a trick I learned from my Advanced Mind Distortion class. We learned recently about the possibility of causing a burning sensation if we concentrated on getting burned while a Prometheus was in our heads. With the whole class being on other teams, I decided to try and take the technique a step further. I closed my eyes, and imagined the area around myself, with all the Prometheus around trying to pry into my mind. Then I imagined a bolt of lightning striking between myself and Sly, and imagined that electricity was coursing through myself. They were too deep into my mind to avoid it by that point.”
“So there is no power after all? They just think you can control lightning?”
“No, there is no power. Just an illusion I was lucky enough to conjure up.”
“Too bad, it would have been a nice little trick to have in your back pocket. These games would be much easier if you could just zap the enemies into submission.”
The four of them reached the rest of the team, and joined the patting of backs and the congratulations. Donny got on top of the star rock formation to get everyone’s attention. Silence fell quickly. Donny had planned to tell them there would be a practice later that night, but now that he was looking out at the crowd, he could see the damage that had been done. Everyone was smiling, but everyone was hurt in some way as well. In his rush at the end of the game, he had not noticed that Lenny had blood coming from his nose, and a cut across his forehead. Zahrah’s right sleeve was torn, and she was clearly favoring the right arm. Many were sitting, unable to remain on their feet. There were cuts, bruises, sweat, and injuries all over. Donny had missed a lot during his time in captivity, but in the end it was clear that he had made out better than the rest. They had been fighting that entire time, without the satisfaction of knowing what they were fighting for. And the brown team had not played nicely.
“Congratulations to all of you,” Donny began, “you all did fantastically today. I am sorry that I had to keep you in the dark during the game, but this game was…unusual. It required information to be kept from the opponent, and I knew the first place they would look would be inside your heads. But despite your blindness in the game, you all followed orders perfectly, and allowed us to get the job done as a team. We were able to work as one body, each with their own job, and their own worth. And we won! We beat the brown team, a group that was so sure of their victory. You have all earned a nights rest. Go enjoy yourselves tonight, and we will resume practice tomorrow.”
DONNY AND DUKE made plans to meet for a late dinner that evening and discuss the situation of the games, as neither of them wanted a night off. As they had hoped, the games for the day had ended by the time their meeting came.
Donny had heard rumors that red team had beaten blue team the night before, but he was so focused on his own team’s preparation that he did not pay these rumors any mind. Now Duke showed Donny a chart with the current standings, and the significance occurred to him. “The red team beat the blue?” Donny asked in surprise.
“Yup, that means the number one seed has just been inherited by the yellow team, who we will be facing next Saturday.”
It was a surprising upset. Donny knew that his team had shaken the rankings by having his tenth ranked team beat the team holding the fourth rank, but the red team was ranked eighth, and they had beaten the blue team who had been ranked first.
Donny quickly learned that on the second day, other than their own match, orange team had also beaten grey team, and yellow team had quickly beaten the gold team. This left four teams to compete the following weekend, with jade facing off against yellow, and orange and red facing off.
“We need to redistribute our research efforts, as many teams are no longer worth researching,” Duke reminded Donny.
“Right, we’ll have each group whose team has been eliminated research the team that beat them. So the research groups for black, grey, and orange will research orange, blue and red will research red, and white, brown, gold, and yellow will research yellow.”
“Don’t you think we should put three groups on each team?”
“No, the yellow team looks to be the most formidable, as well as the most immediate threat; I want as much information as possible on them right away.”
Donny was a little distracted during their conversation by the glances he was getting. He knew there were rumors going around about him, and that most of them were flagrantly untrue. Some at least made sense given the situation, claiming that he had some sort of an electrical ability. This rumor was false, but the brown team’s Prometheus members insisted that it was more than a mind distortion, that they were really attacked by a bolt of lightning. Other rumors were more ridiculous, that he and his brother were actually government experiments, and that Donny was the more recent version. It was apparently easier for students to believe he was some sort of robot lab test, than that the youngest student ever accepted into the school, and by far the youngest to lead a simulation games team, had just led his team to such a stunning upset.
“Apparently the yellow team had beaten the gold team in less than an hour. That means they must be a quick team, so we have to be ready for that.”
Duke was all business, and Donny was glad to be pulled back to the subject at hand. He could not allow himself to get preoccupied by what was going on around.
“You’re right Duke, with the speed they won their first match, they are probably focusing offensively, which means their weaknesses would likely be found in their defense.”
“So should we focus on our offense to take advantage of their lack of defense, or focus on our defense to counter their strength of offense?”
Donny did not like either of these situations. They both left too much uncertainty in the game, and he could not afford to be uncertain. Donny was happy with their victory, but he felt like it was too close; the brown team would have won quite quickly if they had started with their metal detectors, instead of focusing completely on their ability to pull the information out of Donny’s team. It was only due to a mistake on the part of the brown team that we even had a chance at winning. Donny thought to himself. He could not help but get a little angry at the unfairness they had faced. What were they thinking putting the orb right next to the enemy door? And why did my map tell me that it was out in the middle of the arena? It made no sense to Donny. At first he had figured he misread the map somehow, but the more he thought about it the more certain he became that the map clearly showed their orb to be in the center of the arena.
“Duke, do you think the school wants us to lose?” Donny asked quietly, leaning forward so Duke could hear him over the other noises from the dining hall.
“Want us to lose? Why would the school want us to lose?”
Donny had many possible reasons in mind, but none that he could share with Duke. He would have to avoid reasons and stick to the facts. “We started our search for their orb by sending out pairs of Hermes with metal detectors to check at each rock formation. They started with the ones closest to our door, since they were not out of the way at all, and moved out from there. If the brown team had done the same, they would have found our orb under the very first rock formation they checked. Why would the school put it under the very first spot?”
“Well they had to put it somewhere. If they considered it unfair to put it in the closest formation to the door, then that formation could just as well have not been there at all. Then the next formation would have become the closest, in which case it would have been unfair to put it under that one. Theoretically you could continue this all the way to the opposite door, and make it unfair to put it under any of the rock formations.”
The Games Villains Play (The Academy Trilogy) Page 12