A Sinister Game

by Heather Killough-Walden

  But maybe she didn’t need to be that specific….

  She began to formulate a response in her mind, one that was not necessarily a lie, but was not a whole truth, either. However, before she had drawn a full breath to give him an answer, something vibrated beneath her on the couch. It felt like a very, very small electric current.

  She was about to ask Arthur if he knew what it was, when it happened again. This one was stronger than the first one. Some of her muscles tensed up a little under the electric current and her teeth pressed together.

  As Victoria’s innate alarm bells began to ring, a third electric current hit her. This time it was hard and fast and it hurt like hell. Pain shot up her spine as the lab around her seemed to tilt and she feared she would slide into the wall. She was helpless to avoid it when her back arched off of the couch and stars erupted behind her lids as the gripping pressure of the electricity suddenly forced them shut.

  Miraculously, she didn’t slide across the room to slam into the wall. Instead, the current released her and she slumped, stunned senseless by the terrible electric shock that was gone as quickly as it had come.

  “That was a doozy, wasn’t it?”

  Arthur’s voice. It sounded hollow, as if it was coming to her through a tunnel. It was punctuated by an erratic drumbeat that kind of hurt. She was pretty sure it was her heart.

  “See, the thing is, that couch is actually constructed of a very fine wire and leather mesh material.” He laughed. “You can’t see the metal in it, but it’s there. And it’s solid gold, an excellent conductor of electricity.”

  There was a shift of weight and she was being lifted. Then she was set down again.

  Arthur’s voice was in her ear. “I’ve been playing with the effects of electric charges over the last twenty years. I’ve perfected a certain type of conductivity, which renders a human’s musculature unresponsive for anywhere from five to fifteen minutes, depending on the individual.”

  She couldn’t answer him. She couldn’t talk or even open her eyes.

  She could barely breathe.

  “I could just turn you over to GC for asking me to give you that code, you know. But I won’t,” he said. “No princess, I have something much more fun in mind.”

  Chapter Eight

  “I can’t believe my luck. The most beautiful girl on the Field walks into my bar and she’s not even wearing her Game band. She’s defenseless! And then she asks me to go somewhere private with her.” He laughed greasily. “Does it get any better than that?” There was a pause before he added, “It’s about to.”

  Victoria could feel Arthur’s hands on her body, yanking her arms over her head, spreading her legs. She was still wearing all of her clothes, but her stomach felt sick and her muscles felt as sore as they did two days after a grueling workout in one of the TGB training rooms. That jolt of electricity had tensed every muscle in her body to the point of pain; some had torn and others had stretched beyond their capacity.

  She was also unduly tired. She supposed that was the fault of the electric shock as well, but she wasn’t so tired that she was willing to give up without a fight.

  She knew that Arthur would expect her to be without her powers right now because she wasn’t wearing her band. She suddenly grateful beyond words that she’d decided to go against regulations and practice without it.

  If she could look around the room, she could get a sense of what she might use as a telekinetic weapon. But she couldn’t lift her head. She could barely force her eyes open before they stubbornly fluttered shut again.

  They were no longer in the mainframe room; she could tell that much. If they had been, Victoria could at least throw the stupid Captain’s Chair at him. She knew where it was and had a general idea of how heavy it would be. But nothing in this room was familiar to her.

  It must have been some kind of bedroom, because she could feel the bed beneath her. She could smell it, too. It smelled as if he should have washed the sheets a week ago, maybe two. It smelled like sweat and a hint of morning breath.

  She tried to talk. “Let … go….” Her voice wasn’t quite working yet. She couldn’t make the muscles of her throat form the words correctly, and her breathing was too shallow.

  “Don’t try to talk, princess. It’ll take you longer to readjust if you do. And nothing you can say is going to make me change my mind, anyway.” He punctuated his last words with a tight pull of the rubber-encased wire that he’d wrapped around her left boot and secured to the baseboard of his bed.

  Victoria felt bile inch up her esophagus. She tried to swallow to keep it down, but the burning, aching attempt only failed when her muscles wouldn’t respond and she suddenly tasted the iron-acid bitterness at the back of her mouth.

  She could always set him on fire.

  But she had never tried to light anyone on fire before. The thought increased her nausea. The results could be disastrous. She could not only kill Arthur – but kill herself as well if the fire spread.

  Was it worth it?

  Arthur One finished tying her down and then came to stand beside her at the edge of the bed. She forced her eyes open once more to stare up at him. The look she saw there, in the depths of those lewd, hungry brown eyes, caused more bile to slide inexorably toward the back of her tongue.

  It was worth it. She made up her mind.

  “Warning you…” she croaked.

  He threw back his head and laughed.

  Victoria closed her eyes and pictured his brown hair as nothing but a mass of red, orange and yellow flames. She felt the swirl of energy begin to churn and eddy inside of her. She imagined that energy fanning out, riding down her arms and legs, and leaving her body.

  She watched those flames in her mind’s eye. She felt their heat. So much heat, crackling, popping, rising, feeding off of the oxygen in the room.

  FIRE.

  The sudden shriek from beside the bed was all the reward she needed. It was her blessed confirmation that her attempt had been successful.

  As Arthur babbled and screamed incoherently and backed away from the bed, Victoria’s strength flooded back to her, aided in its return by the use of her abilities. Healing was a light leader power. She thought of her muscles, torn or weak or over-stretched inside of her body, and she imagined them whole again. Strong.

  And they were. She flexed to make sure, and was pleased with the results.

  Then she turned her concentration outward, to the wires at her wrists and ankles. She opened her eyes and looked up, arching her neck to get a view of her hands. Two red wires bit into the skin around her wrists and were wrapped in knots around the wooden posts at the head of the bed.

  She focused on the one around her left wrist just as Arthur One’s screams pitched up an octave in pain.

  The wires began to slide and slip, and soon her left wrist was free. She used her left hand to free her right and then she sat up. She glanced around the room hurriedly, taking everything in even as she went to work on the wires around her legs.

  Arthur had backed up against one wall and was flailing madly; his clothing had caught on fire, as had the curtains that he’d undoubtedly brushed against at some point. Heat from the flames was roiling outward and if Victoria hadn’t been a very powerful light leader, the high temperatures would have been uncomfortable to her at this point.

  As it was, she could sense that the fire was growing out of control. If too many more things were allowed to catch, then she would not be able to force the flames back down again when she was free, much less escape the building smoke that was already beginning to pinprick at her lungs.

  Victoria finished releasing both legs and then slid quickly off the bed. She backed up toward the room’s single, white metal door and once more looked around.

  There was a window against one wall. Curtains had been drawn, but were now on fire. There was a dresser against another wall. The closet door was open; it contained uniforms and two pairs of shoes. The floor was marble. There was a big leather ch
air beside the closet – or was it leather and gold mesh?

  She took all of this in quickly and returned her attention to Arthur. He was completely engulfed by flame at this point and his flailing was beginning to slow. He dropped to his knees.

  I did that to him, she thought. I set a man on fire.

  Victoria swallowed forcefully and concentrated on pulling together the energy she would need to squelch the flames.

  She closed her eyes and saw Arthur whole again. He was dressed in his white uniform and white leather boots, his short black hair untouched by the blazing fingers that were currently destroying him. She saw his brown eyes in his wrinkle-free face with its weak chin and too-wide mouth and small nose. She saw his skinny neck and the collar of his jacket, all the way down to the small cheese stain just below the zipper lock on his left pocket. She saw him as he was before the fire that now encased him.

  She kept the image and its details clearly in her mind and allowed the tentacles of her power to unwind.

  The heat in the room subsided. The crackling and popping of rising flames quieted and died down. Finally, Arthur’s screeching wails hushed to whimpers – and then into silence.

  Victoria opened her eyes.

  “You…” Arthur knelt a few feet away, his entire form shaking from head to toe. He was whole again, completely healed as if he had not been on fire only seconds before. He looked down at his hands, turning them over in disbelieving fascination. He felt the hair on his head. And then – he looked at Victoria as if she were a monster, the devil, a pile of vomit, or all three wrapped into one. “You… evil, temptress bitch!” His voice shook as he spat his accusation.

  Victoria had never hurt anyone like this before. Despite the self-preservation, she knew she had officially crossed some kind of line. And that darkness drew ever closer.

  Though she was almost as shocked at what she had done as Arthur was, Victoria knew enough about strategy to realize that now was also not the time to show it. An attack meant nothing if you didn’t follow up on it, plant your feet and stand your ground.

  “Give me the code, Arthur, or I will light you up again and I’ll leave you in here to die that way,” she commanded. She knew that burning the way he had been burning had to hurt like nothing he’d ever imagined. She was hoping the memory of the pain alone would serve to coerce his cooperation.

  “Fuck you,” he hissed.

  Victoria wasted no time.

  She narrowed her gaze. Energy coursed through the room and the bed began to rise slowly off the floor. Arthur glanced nervously at it. It rose a foot. Then two. And then it hovered in the air, three feet above the marble before it suddenly spun around like a top and then went flying past Arthur to slam into the door behind him. There, it lodged itself against the only official exit in the room, effectively blocking it.

  Victoria smiled as Arthur’s face went progressively white. She looked at the window; the metal frame around the glass began to heat up and melt. It dripped in columns of molten metal from the top of the window to the sill below and then instantly cooled, forming bars across the glass.

  That exit was now blocked as well.

  “Last chance, Arthur. Get back to the console and figure out the code or I’m going to melt your boots into your feet. It’ll hurt. A lot.”

  Arthur glanced from the windows to the blocked door and back to Victoria again. She could hear his breath in the room, ragged and riddled with emotion. He stared at her, but his expression was more afraid now than it was furious.

  He looked at the door one last time. And then he twitched.

  “F-fine. B-but the console is in the other room. And you’ve locked us in.”

  “Nonsense.” Victoria rushed him then, with the kind of speed that only a light leader could possess, and grabbed his arm. She spun them both around and ran straight for the wall. Arthur screamed –

  And his scream dissolved into another whimper as they went straight through the wall to come out on the other side unscathed. They were in the mainframe lab again.

  Melding through solid objects was a light leader ability that Victoria had perfected long ago. It was also another that she had never before used off of the Field.

  “Now get to work, Arthur. Don’t piss me off. Don’t make me wait,” she commanded. To make certain he didn’t alert Game Control from the console, she added, “And don’t even think of attempting to contact GC. Long before they make it through that door, I will burn you to a crisp from the inside out. Got it?”

  Arthur froze as if that was exactly what he’d been planning on doing, opened his mouth as if to say something – and then shut it again when she crossed her arms in front of her chest and gave him a warning look.

  He turned away from her to make his shaky way to the Captain’s Chair in front of the giant mainframe console. After a moment of concentration, he began to move his hands over the controls.

  Victoria watched him with a growing sense of unease. She wished she had the dark leader power to read minds. If she did, she could take the code the moment he found it. She was fast running out of precious time.

  “You did something to me with that electric charge, Arthur. I have heat building up inside of me again,” she lied.

  Further down that hole….

  He stopped what he was doing and turned in the chair.

  “If you don’t give me the code soon, I won’t have anywhere to go with it. I’ll have to set it free here again. It’ll eat up your lab,” she gestured to the lab around them. “And probably you, too.”

  With that, Arthur’s eyes widened a little more. He began to work visibly faster. Two and a half minutes later, he was turning back to face her. “I have the code.”

  “Give it to me,” she demanded, coming forward.

  He didn’t take his eyes off of her as a small metal transporter key slid from a slot on the mainframe console and he reached out, grabbed it, and pulled it free. He held it out toward her. It was constructed of solid silver-hued metal, with a series of lines and dots across its flat, rectangular surface.

  “Any transporter will work,” he told her through clenched teeth.

  She took the key from his hand and went very still. For the second time that afternoon, she wished she had a dark leader power. She really wanted to know what was going on in Arthur’s head at that moment. What had he just given her? Was it truly a code? If so, where would it take her? Beyond the wall? Or straight to Game Control’s front door?

  There was no way for her to know.

  One of four… gets her beyond the wall… but not the best one….

  Victoria blinked.

  She’d just heard Arthur’s voice, but he hadn’t spoken. His lips hadn’t moved. His mouth was still closed and he was still staring at her through brown eyes filled with distrust, hatred, and fear.

  Hope she drowns….

  Victoria straightened a little as a realization, both good and absolutely horrible, presented itself to her. She was hearing his thoughts. But she was a light leader. It shouldn’t have been possible.

  In fact, there was only one way that it could be possible.

  She was going dark.

  Victoria shivered, but covered it quickly. “You and your fucking electricity, Arthur. You’ve awakened something inside of me. I feel power here that I didn’t feel before. I don’t know if I can control it –”

  Her act was worthy of some kind of award as she then spun away from him and shoved outward with her right palm, sending the mesh couch, the love seats, the coffee table, and the game of chess flying into the wall behind them. The chessboard shattered, as did most of the pieces. And the mesh couch was instantly engulfed in flames.

  She had to be honest with herself. That had felt good.

  She spun back around and leaned over his Captain’s Chair, one hand on each arm of the seat, caging him in beneath her. He shrank back into the leather as she glared into his eyes.

  “Breathe a word of this to anyone, Arthur One, and I will come for you.
You have no clue as to the extent of my abilities. Fire is child’s play,” she told him. She leaned in even closer so that her lips were mere inches from his. “And if you think that Game Control will stop me before I get to you, just remember this, Arthur.” She smiled and she knew it looked as nasty as it felt. “If I have to, I will die trying to kill you.”

  With that, she slowly rose and took a step back.

  The color had completely drained from Arthur’s face and his eyes were the size of teacups.

  She’ll kill me… let her die outside the wall… good riddance….

  He was sending her outside the wall. That was good enough for her.

  She turned away from him and strode out of the room. When she was in the hall beyond the mainframe lab, she expended a bit more telekinetic energy slamming the door shut behind her and then moving at least a dozen large scrap computer parts down the hall to lodge them against the closed door.

  For the time being, Arthur was locked in, and from the mess she’d made outside of his only exit, she figured it would take at least another light leader to get him back out again.

  Once she was back in the transporter and closing the door behind her, she slumped against the far wall and stared down at the key in her hand.

  Her hand was shaking around the metal key. “I can’t believe I did that,” she whispered. I can’t believe I did any of it at all. That wasn’t me. I set a man on fire. I told him lie after lie. I threatened him and stole from him and locked him in a room without food or water.

  She exhaled a shaky breath and dropped her face into her hands. “What have I become?” she muttered into her palms.

  You know what you’ve become, she told herself. Why else would you be able to hear his thoughts?

  Tears built swiftly in her eyes, and she hurriedly brushed them away, using a touch more force than was necessary. She felt angry suddenly, impatient.