A Sinister Game (38 page)

He had to.
There was no choice but to play dead.
There was no other way out of this nightmare. In his closed fist, he held the regenerator. It was the key to their salvation.

Somewhere out there on that blood-baptized battlefield, there were two other regenerators.
Dr. Jeannine Cure had given one to S
imon and another to Victor, and even
a third to Thor,
who at the time
had been
masquerading as a human
.

What had Thor done with his pill before
he disappeared and the Game Lord showed up
?
Had the regenerator vanished
along with the god?

Simon was desp
erately hoping that it hadn’t, b
ecause he was going to need it.

A
s soon as the Game Lord had somehow made the gods disappear, the guards had moved in for the kill. A
pril was mortally wounded. He’d watched as a guard had choked her with one hand and plunged his dagger into her abdomen with his other. Ty was unconscious beneath a blow he’d sustained to the head.
Finally, a
fter what Max ha
d done to him, Simon was positive
Victor was either dead
or very nearly so.

Any healing
Victoria
Red
could have doled out was put on ice. The Game Lord had taken her
. It was up to Simon alone
to see this right.

He remained where he was,
lying
on the ground as if unconscious, until the storm above him died down enough that he could make out any other sounds in the clearing.
When there were none forthcoming and he was certain the
Game Lord and his
guards were gone, he slowly opened his eyes.

He sat up.

“Oh
hell
,
” he muttered as he
took in the carnage of the landscape. Three regenerators weren’t going to be enough.

* * * *

When the transporter doors opened, the Game Lord pulled Victoria inside with him. She was spun around and pulled up against him once more. H
e still held the black box with one hand, but h
is
other slid around her
throat
in
a threatening hold that kept her immobile.

As she now faced the doors
, she was able to watch the second person step into the transporter cube. It was Max.

Victoria looked up at him through vision blurred with tears. He was still holding his sword. It was covered in blood.

Victor’s blood.

“I won’t apologize, Victoria,” Max
said
as the oth
er guards piled into the
cube after them
. He
slid his sword back into it
s
scabbard and cont
inued. “There was no helping it this time. Black
was irredeemable.” He paused, taking a deep breath, his gaze moving over her face before he went on. “It needed to be done.”

His bright blue eye
s flashed like the hottest fire
despite the waves
of cold she felt rolling off
him.

“I suppose you hate me now.” H
e stated it simply, without a hint of
emotion. It was only a slightly
remorseful avowal of fact and n
othing more.

Victoria could not even answer him. T
here was a knot in her throat, a
nd her voice had been stolen by misery. Instead she
shut
her eyes
against him. More tears rolled unchecked
down her face.

“Not to worry, captain
,” t
he Game Lord
said
, his tone as light as his grip was hard. “She won’t hate you for long.”

He leaned over to whisper
in Victoria’s ear. “I bet you’re wondering what happened back there
, what happened to your sister
a
nd the others.”

Victoria
opened her eyes
and felt the weight of the saps around her
wrists.

“T
his here is a computer of sorts,” he said,
lifting
the black box. “It is a remote access memory device that will
hold a certain amount of power
in any form. At the moment, it contains both
l
ight and
d
ark power, drained from a
two
leader
s
that were no longer of use to me.”

Victoria eyed the box with a new horror. Two life forces had been drained and placed in a single object. The box was like a miniature, much more insipid version of the wall around the Field.

The Game Lord
went on
. “
Combined, the two powers cancel one another out and act as a magnet, a sort of
black
hole if you will. It will absorb anything – even the power of the gods
to a certain degree
.”

He sighed and Victoria swallowed
, her throat scraping against the grip of his hand
.

“This one’
s useless to me now, of course. Completely used up.
It’s ironic, but the more it absorbs, the less powerfu
l it becomes
.
I have others, though.
”

He dropped the black box
,
and it clamored to the floor of the cube. Without
loosening his hold on her at all, he
t
urned slightly and pressed a series of
buttons on the console beside him. The walls of the transporter began to blur. “Unlike you, Rose Tyrnan.
You
, my dear,
are unique. And you
have centuries upon centur
ies of use
left in
you.”

* * * *

“Come on, come
on!
” Simon lifted Victor’s head and
held his palm over
the man’s
lips. No breath. What good was a regenerator pill going to do him if the man wasn’t even breathing? Breathing came first. Swallowing was most certainly secondary.

However, t
he fact that Victor’s blood continued to stain the ground beneath them meant he was still alive
. A heart had to beat for blood to flow.

As broken and torn as Victor’s body was, it amazed Simon that the dark leader was still alive. I
t also gave him an idea.
If the man’s heart was beating, then his blood was traveling through his veins. Blood was the transport system of the body.

With that thought, Simon lowered Victor’s head into his lap, took the regenerator capsule between his fingers, and
held the pill
over the deeper and more ghastly of Victor’s wounds.

Odin, please let this work
, he prayed
.

H
e snapped the capsule op
en, revealing a wealth of white
crystalline powder that shimmered in the faint wafts of
sunlight spearing through the
clouds
.
Simon lowered the capsule halves to Victor
’s wound and dumped the powder i
nto the gash. He did so carefully and
precisely, making certain
the power-laden dust found its w
ay cleanly into the deep
cut.

When both sides of the capsule were empty, Simon sat back and let out the breath he’d been holding.

H
e waited.

And waited.

He expected the wound to slow
ly mend shut again. He thought
maybe
Victor would open
his eyes and gasp for breath perhaps even
stop bleeding.

But nothing happened.

Simon’s gut clenched.
Hope slipped away
like
a wolf in the fog.

The sudden blinding flash sent
Simon reeled
back, sh
ielding his eyes
. He felt a swell of heat rush over h
im
like a shock wave
.
When it passed
, Simon heard coughing. He lowered his arm
and straightened
to find Victo
r slowly pushing up on his side and
spitting a mouth-full of blood onto the already soaked ground.

“That
hurt
,” Black mumbled before he
wiped his mouth on the leather sleeve of his uniform.

“Black!” Simon rushed to his feet, so shocked and so relieved at the same time, he wasn’t quite sure what to
say or
do next.

Victor looked up at him and
speare
d him with the most intense eyes
Simon had ever seen on a man
. “Where is Victoria?”

* * * *

“Strap her to the chair
.
” The Game Lord gave the order as he moved to the other side of the rehabilitation room, and began
perusing
the controls on the operations console.

Victoria screamed and fought, kicked and jerked, struggling violently against the guard
s that dragged her to the massive leather recliner in the middle
of the room. It was outfitted with metal cuffs where arms and legs would be securely locked down, and above the chair hovered the
Needle
.

The Needle was the pinpoint device that would emit a ray of light and sound so finite,
that
it sliced through the scalp,
skull and brain without bringing harm to anything around it. But it hurt.
It hurt l
ike nothing else in the world, a
nd that pain did not stay localized. It traveled across the body
, bringing agony to every
nerve ending until, usually, the victim passed out beneath its relentless onslaught.

Reprieve didn’t last long, however. The victim would re-awaken due to the same pain. On and on this cycle would continue as the needle silently did its job: Erasing real memories, a
nd planting false ones.

It was
literally the last place in the world Victoria wanted to sit – i
n that chair.
She wanted to plead with the Game Lord to reconsider his actions, but
she
knew it would do no good. If she was going
down, she was taking her pride with her.

“Give her something for the pain,”
Max said
.

Victoria’s wi
de eyes cut to him. He caught her gaze. There
was something in his expression that hadn’t been there only moments before.

What was it?

In her terror
, she possessed neit
her faculty nor patience
to decipher what it might be.
The guards
shoved the saps on her wrists higher up on her arms and lifted her into the chair, four of them having to wrestle her struggling body into place. Once she was held down, they moved her arms and legs into the open metal bindings.

The metal cuffs slid shut ove
r her limbs, closing to a
painful tightness. She knew it was useless, but she pulled against her restraints anyway. She was rewarded for
her efforts with two shallow gashes
in the flesh of her wrists, and two bruised ankles.

“I intend to,” the Game Lord replied to Max’s request.
He turned to her once more
, a syringe held aloft in one gloved hand.

Victoria swallowed loudly
, barely managing to work past her ragged breathing and her racing pulse. She felt dizzy.
This isn’t happening
,
her mind insisted.
None of this is happening.
She couldn’t save herself, and no one else was going to save her. Her
t
eam had been beaten.

Victor was dead
.

Even the gods had abandoned her.

Tears ran unchecked down her cheeks. H
er golden eyes began to glow, despite the saps that were still wrapped tightly around her forearms.

“Now
, now
sweetheart. Don’t cry. This i
s
a harmless
painkiller
.
There’s a sedative in it
as well.” T
he Game Lord approached her.
Victoria shrank into the leather chair. He
smiled and nodded
to one of the guards.